Apple’s Revenue Up⬆️, Power Button Down⬇️

                                                                                                          Image: Duture

Apple’s revenue for Q4 has just been announced. A 6 percent increase in revenue masks larger issues going on in the company.

You see, this week Apple announced a new Mac Mini. Apple have put the power button on the bottom. These baffling decisions keep happening, and it’s emblematic of the issues at the Cupertino firm.

                                                                                                       Image: MacRumors

Apple’s Longstanding Issue

Apple should be at the forefront of user experience, but they keep making the same bizarre choices for hardware and software: form over function.

Some of their current choices verge on parody. 

• A randomly placed camera control button (that makes shooting difficult)

• iTunes Connect

• Putting the USB-C port in the base of the magic mouse

• Introducing Combine in Swift, then rendering it obsolete with Swift Concurrency

• Removing headphone jacks from iPhone

• This Mac Mini power button 

We have a company that is able to create great user experiences but keeps making the wrong choices. Sure, not being able to use the Magic Mouse while charging isn’t a complete showstopper. On the Mac Mini the power button isn’t at least on the center of the underside. And sure, you can theoretically use iTunesConnect.

The problem is that Apple is pushing form over function to an absolute extreme.

Innovation my A**

Apple’s hardware missteps feel eerily familiar to any software developer who’s been handed a sprint goal that’s a cool idea. 

This obsession with false innovation is something developers face regularly, especially when “new” is valued over “effective”, and we simply aren’t listened to.

I’m willing to bet that people within Apple called attention to the missteps I’ve listed here — I mean a power button on the bottom of a computer? Yet the problem is that people within the Apple hierarchy clearly aren’t listening to the voice of their employees. They will be saying that true innovation comes from refining, iterating and perfecting what works rather than a product manager’s crazy idea.

Time to stop being so arrogant, I’d say.

Conclusion

Apple has once again taken the lead in terms of revenue. Yet it’s that growth that has given them permission to make baffling decisions in the misguided quest for novelty.

If Apple don’t start to think about what they actually want to achieve their Q1 2025 report might just be about customers returning software and hardware that makes about as much sense as Apple’s sustainability policies.