For anyone interested, I wrote a short piece for the UK's MacUser magazine (published a few weeks ago) about this:
Adam Banks' editorial captured an important point of successful innovation - knowing when to say no. Not saying no leads to a softening of focus, 'mission creep' and eventually to products and services which fall short of expectations and disappoint. Microsoft Office is a good examp[e of a product which, in trying to please all of the people all of the time, ends up pleasing none of them - serviceable yes, pleasing no.
Apple was, is and continues to be a visionary company which, as Adam Banks pointed out, absolutely means knowing when to say no. But saying no is a very close bedfellow indeed of hubris - the ever present danger of losing touch with the real needs and desires of the people who use your products (does anyone remember the Dyson washing machine?). For the last 30 years as an Apple user, I've rolled along with their vision and when, quite rarely, I've been bemused by some aspect of this or that new product, I've told myself that there must be millions of users for whom whatever it is is a compelling useful addition.
Which brings me to the new iWork, also reviewed in the last edition. It's predecessor (iWork 09) attempted to overturn 30 years of deeply embedded human behaviour by removing the Save As option. Ah well, I told myself, there must be loads of people who are new to all this and for whom this autosave function is a lifesaver - hilariously, in practice, Keynote crashes more frequently as a result of this feature, which it never did before, thereby making the function useful.
But now, there is a serious whiff of hubris about the new release of iWork (reviewed in the same edition). Tom Gorham omits to mention a serious loss to Keynote - that the Presenter Notes field cannot be enlarged or changed (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5467879?start=0&tstart=0). If, as is suggested, this is one of a few things which have fallen away in pursuit of a common iOS/Mac platform, where people can work on an iCloud based document simultaneously, then hubris is definitely settling in . . . I don't know anyone who does this, but then maybe there are a few in the corporate corridors of Apple who do. Creating and giving presentations is, by and large, a solo activity - it's people like me (a designer), it's teachers and lecturers, it's business folk - most of whom wouldn't dream of giving a presentation via an iPad, still less work simultaneously with colleagues via iCloud (view yes. Change? You must be joking!)
And many of these people have, over many years, got used to the brilliant Presenter View (with its ability for a big viewable typeface visible from 15 feet) as an aide-memoir in the delivery of a presentation. And I'm pretty sure that even Steve Jobs had the odd note in front of him on those stage front monitors. All now gone!
Function sacrificed on the altar of . . . what exactly? Smells like hubris to me!