Unauthoritative Pronouncements

Jason Snell released his annual Apple Report Card! It’s a bunch of people that talk about Apple for a living, and some other people that are too online, like myself. The full text of the survey responses is available in a separate post, here.

I tried not to be too wordy, but if you’re following this blog I assume it’s because you’d like me to elaborate on my comments, so I shall. The two things I would like to talk more about are the Apple TV, and Apple’s impact on the world, because I feel like I have a little more to say about both.

Apple TV

The full text of what I submitted about the platform:

Apple really isn’t making any progress on tvOS. I use my Apple TV every day, and it is the only set-top box I would recommend to people, but that doesn’t mean Apple perfected the form. Things are more or less in the same state they were in at the end of 2023 when the Home app was updated with that sidebar that mostly can’t be customized. We still don’t have a unified Home and TV app experience. We don’t have anything for live entertainment short of sports notifications. We don’t have any kind of firm policy on pause screen ads (see the YouTube screensaver controversy from 2024). Apple hasn’t enticed anyone new to add support for the jog wheel they introduced on the remote in 2021.

Sometimes people mention me in regards to my critiques of the Apple TV, and tvOS, but I honestly don’t talk about the platform much these days because there’s nothing worth discussing. My last major post about any of it was prior to WWDC 2024 where I talked about all the things that I didn’t think would be announced. It was quite an extensive list of tvOS shortcomings. I don’t see any reason to repost that every time a point update comes out for tvOS merely to say none of it has been accomplished.

It’s the only smart TV I use, or currently recommend, and the only one I would buy if I had a sudden need for coverage in another room with a new TV. I wouldn’t even consider the built-in software from any TV manufacturer. Most of the world is perfectly content to use those built-in options though instead of paying Apple.

Jason Snell announced on Upgrade that he’s doing a deep dive on all the other streaming platforms right now and I look forward to hearing more about his thoughts. I gave up using the Fire TV because they’ve made the home screen experience worse with every software update, but it does have things like a universal live TV guide that Apple doesn’t. Apple skipping live TV continues to be a huge mistake.

Apple’s Impact On the World

This part of the survey is incredibly broad and encompasses many disparate parts of how Apple runs its company. Maybe it really should be four questions about our perception of: company culture (union-busting, return to office, etc.), green initiatives (carbon neutral Apple Watch), geopolitical issues (DMA, China, Trump), and accessibility. I feel like I, and many of the respondents, have conflicting feelings that kind of all cancel each other out when these things are mixed together like various acids and bases. It leaves us with foamy mess.

I’m of two minds when it comes to Apple’s green initiatives. I think they’re great, but they do design systems where the whole thing has to be recycled instead of upgraded or easily repaired. I believe political and policy stances are really where Apple fell short in 2024. Notably with the European Commission and the trials involving the justice department. Like when we all found out how many billion dollars Google pays Apple to be the default search engine. At present, I can’t say I’m optimistic about the direction things are heading in terms of other political and policy decisions.

That’s an uncharacteristically wishy-washy answer from me. In fairness to me, I was treating it like a review of 2024, not everything that bled into January 2025. To quote another response from Philip Michaels:

Given the current state of affairs in our new kleptocracy, I imagine this score will be very different in a year.

Certainly, if I was responding to “Apple’s impact on the world” for January 2025 alone then I would have written a shorter version of my Tim Cook failing us blog post. The survey was completed before that.

Allow me to digress for a moment to address some feedback that I have received along the lines of, “What do you expect? He’s a CEO.” I expect exactly what I wrote: that Tim Cook meets the ideals he expresses.

When people shrug off things like the inauguration it lets the good stuff people say about Apple’s global impact (carbon neutral products, accessibility, etc.) stick to them, but the bad stuff (being associated with the administration erasing of trans people from existence, persecution of immigrants, using the social platform of an unelected private citizen ransacking the government to post about being in a Severance promo, etc.) roll right off.

If there’s nothing that can be said about Apple’s impact on the world to persuade anyone at Apple to pursue a different course then why do we talk about their developer relations, or image playgrounds, or anything else related to Apple? Of course we want them to change what they are doing. When people complain about Tim Cook transacting with Trump, it’s not because they’re naive.

Last week, I asked the hosts of The Rebound podcast a few loaded questions about Tim Cook, and I thought there was a good conversation that ensued from it. Lex Friedman, Dan Moren, and John Moltz all had thoughtful things to say. (No, I didn’t just ask so they’d mention my blog post.)

I hope we can all think more about Apple’s impact on the world, whether or not we participate in this survey specifically. Much like Phil, I imagine the score will be very different next year, it’s already different for January.