Op-Ed: Apple, please don't half-bake your products

At an Apple event in San Francisco on Sept. 9, the company announced some updated products that are showing signs of being metaphorically half-baked.

Apple has historically always tested, then double-tested its products before a public release to make sure that everything works as its supposed to. But recently, releases from the company seems as though they are not been up to the standards of the "old Apple." For example, the new iTunes App Store Genius tool: Supposedly it will give you some recommendations on apps you'd like based on what you have downloaded. To be honest, however, it's just a waste of time. Yes, I'll admit it's hard to create a recommendation system, and Apple certainly is one of the better companies to have implemented such technology for music, but the apps version just doesn't cut it. Look at these screen-shots for instance: Taken on my iPhone yesterday, they show just how stupid and entirely incorrect these recommendations can be. Since when does the game "Pocket God" relate to "Are you nerdy?" And last I checked, "Newsstand" was an RSS aggregator that works in sync with Google Reader. What on Earth has that got to do with "Billminder with Push notifications"?

Brenton Currie

Questionable recommendations on App store

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Another example is the iPhone OS 3.1 update which was unveiled at the Sept. 9 event. It has bought upon more problems than fixes. Battery issues have been talked about across the Web, as it appears more evident that, for some reason, iPhone batteries are draining quicker than ever under the new update. In both cases, what happened to Apple's usually stringent testing in-house before the product or software upgrade is released to the public? And why was 3.1 rushed out in record time? In fact, I think its the fastest I've ever seen Apple roll out an iPhone OS upgrade. I'm going to give you some credit here Apple. I love what you've done with the new iTunes application arrangement tool, and I'm a big fan of your products. But seriously, it's time to stop rolling out unpredictable and seemingly under-tested software and devices.