  
“it’s just a phone…

it’s not that serious.”

But it is.



Because we’re not talking about a small team shipping a buggy feature.



We’re talking about Apple.



A \~$400B/year company.

2.5B+ devices in the world.

Unlimited resources.

Access to the best engineers, designers, and operators on the planet.



And THIS is what the system produced.



Let’s be conservative.



\~300,000+ hours of work

\~$40–50 million spent

\~75,000 hours in meetings

Thousands of decisions



And the output?



A worse keyboard.

More fragile UX.

Battery drain.

Core functionality regressing.



That’s not:

“they messed up”



That’s:

a fully resourced, highly optimized system

producing a worse outcome.



That’s monoculture.



Everyone aligned

Everyone smart

Everyone well-paid



…and still missing the mark on fundamentals.



Tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours…



to make a core tool worse.



And users?



Have no ability to fix it.

No control.

No alternative inside the system.



This is what happens when everything becomes Mother SaaS.



The market consolidates.

Options disappear.

Standards decay.



And the product… gets stagnant.



This is exactly why I’m rooting for the underdogs right now.



Because at this point?



I’m ready to see someone do it better.

Apple update: the numbers