They did loads of tacky things back in the day, we’ve just forgotten about them.

Modern Apple can't even do tacky things.

Tacky things under Jobs were failed experiments. Modern Apple doesn't believe in either experiments or failed experiments.

> Modern Apple doesn't believe in either experiments

Apple Vision Pro qualifies here.

You got me :) I completely forgot about Vision Pro

You and everyone else.

My object permanence for Apple Vision is zero. I completely forget it was ever a thing until somebody mentions it.

One of their costliest, most visible, failed experiments ever.

Which doesn’t disqualify it from disproving the statement above it

I was agreeing!

My apologies for the attitude, what you said makes sense, at least for now.

Well that’s just demonstrably false, even aside from the fact that that’s a fairly large goalpost move.

I think back then their stock was so bad that anything to make it go up was a good thing.

Now Apple is a multi trillion dollar company and they can’t take as much risk.

Given the Vision Pro, and the many billions spent on the now-defunct car project, I’m not so sure this is true.

True but I guess I don’t find those visionary at all.

Historically Apple refines something common that already exists and makes it cool. The last big thing they made cool was the smartphone, followed by the AirPod pros. I think AirPods really pushed headphones ahead. Do you remember how bad wireless headphones used to be?

So I guess I want that sort of Apple experience. If Apple turned ordinary hardware experiences into premium, that would be nice. AR googles are not ordinary experiences. Smartphones were.

That’s just my opinion though.

I agree about project titan/cars. That was a behemoth of a failed experiment experiment.

As for vision pro though and I guess even to a little extent the car exploration, it's sort of "safe" and derivative conceptually.

Steve's experiments were often seemingly directly at odds with profitability. Like, one day he may have looked at the extensive lineup with the "Pro Max" etc, and made the call to cut back down to one iPhone model. Or he would, you know, do something ridiculous like make the next Imac's screen round or something.

It's decisions like that which primarily profit driven mega corporations just can't do.

They could do “tacky things” without affecting a whole product category. Arguably they are doing potentially unprofitable experiments in their main product lines, like with the iPhone mini and the upcoming iPhone Air. They just aren’t “tacky”. I think they could go a bit more outside the comfort zone without immediately jeopardizing profitability and incurring the wrath of the shareholders.

Yep, the fundamental design of the iMac hasn't changed much since the iMac G5 in 2004. Yes, it is thinner, a new material and more refined but it is still a box on a stand with a screen.

They are either turbo sensible or doing silly things like Titan/Vision.

> Yes, it is thinner,

And this has been the only design style they have been going for for 15 years at least: it's now thinner. There are almost no other considerations.

You mean the old classic way of doing business where the company focuses on the product and the customer and not the shareholder? What a shocking and novel idea.

You‘re holding it wrong

I had a 3rd party band-aid sticker on the iPhone 4 I waited in line to buy at the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco. I remember Square handing out aux-input cardreaders for free to me and other line-con attendees pre-purchase. This was jailbreakme times. Cydia pre-exists the Apple App Store on iOS, in case anyone was unaware. Cydia and the wider jb scene used to keep Apple honeset, as Cydia is the original App Store. How the mighty have fallen.