Apple is missing the thing that once made it great

Despite what you might think, given the volume of words the Macalope has spilled over the issue, he is extremely tired of talking about AI. He’s honestly pretty tired of talking about a lot of tech topics that pervade our current doomscape.

So this week, let’s take a week off. Instead of talking about AI or the worrisome intersection of tech and politics or the sad collection of billionaires that dominate technology, let’s talk about something fun.

That is… fun.

Apple is not a completely joyless company, but it’s also not a stretch to point out that it’s not really as much fun as it has been in the past. By and large, Apple runs like a well-oiled machine. Events like the WWDC keynote and product introductions are heavily scripted and filmed in advance. The company’s quarterly results have even become a non-event, thanks to everything being a subscription. Software is a subscription, services are a subscription, even buying hardware can easily be done with interest-free loans that make Apple’s revenue as smooth as the sides of Timothée Chalamet’s face, which seem as yet unable to grow facial hair, forcing him to sport some sort of reverse mutton chop.

Don’t get the Macalope wrong, it is no bad thing to have a company that is stable, dependable, wildly profitable, and still churns out products you genuinely want to buy. This is pretty much the aspirational state for any company. Whining that Apple isn’t as fun as it used to be is some real old-man-yelling-at-an-iCloud energy.

Buuut, por qué no los dos?

What is the Macalope even talking about when he says “fun”? Remember the iPod nano? It seemed like every year Apple would show up on stage, out of breath, and hold up some weird little device and say, “Here’s the new iPod nano. Honestly, even we don’t know what’s going on with this one.” One year the iPod shuffle was a wild shot that failed, but they took the shot. The “Rip, Mix, Burn” campaign was ostensibly predicated on you owning the music, but c’mon. We knew better.

Can you imagine the Apple of today flirting with illegality like that? (Sure, it currently allows apps that let you create non-consensual porn on the App Store, but it doesn’t exactly advertise that or really want anyone to talk about it.)

Yes, it’s easy to exaggerate how much fun Apple used to be in hindsight, and some of it was just the nature of having unscripted events. When interns were scurrying around backstage trying to figure out why the slideshow was stuck, Steve Jobs would just tell a story about his criminal activity in the ‘70s. That was fun! But you don’t have to have unscripted events to have fun.

Apple also lets you do less with your devices these days. iPhones and iPads have proliferated and are more restricted than Macs. Meanwhile, Macs are less repairable and upgradeable than they used to be. There are reasons for that, some good, some bad, but it also just kind of sucks.

Apple devices also often used to come in real colors. Sure, every now and again Apple will allow a blue or a red or an orange to land on an iPhone as if by clerical mistake and the iMacs aren’t bad, but there’s no denying that the company has deliberately toned things down color-wise.

Of course, there are some exceptions to the drabification of Apple. The Little Finder guy is very fun. The MacBook Neo, priced to move and coming in at least a couple of colors that actually register to the human eye as not silver or black, is also fun.

But some of the company’s attempts at fun–Image Playground and last year’s “Crush” ad–have landed like lead balloons. The Macalope isn’t sure who’s making lead balloons or why, but they aren’t getting any more air than they ever did.

While there are many very good reasons not to (investors particularly love stability), the Macalope hopes Apple under John Ternus takes a few more risks product-wise.

Actual colors, for example, would be an easy win here. Yeah, it’s not like Tim Cook picked the colors for the iPhone every year, but he also didn’t say “Is this the best we can do? Gray, dark gray, black, and what’s the other one? ‘Shimmer’? It looks like gray.” If this rumor is true, the last iPhone fully developed under his tenure won’t break the pattern.

A foldable iPhone is certainly a change of pace, but it’s not exactly like it’s a new concept. For the past number of years, the iPhone’s trajectory can be described as “bigger with better cameras”. That’s pretty much it. Sure, it works, it’s just not that much fun.

Ultimately, the Macalope would like to see Apple be a little less stodgy and a little more willing to experiment, even if it means failing from time to time. Is that too much to ask?