Apple is not backing down like Steve Jobs. This is a problem.

When Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president and author of Dad's jokes, announced Monday that iTunes would soon be adding access to Mail and Safari, a handful of "whoops" from the public has suggested that some Apple fans took it seriously.

This is not surprising, since these new changes are part of a multitude of features added by iTunes over the years. The purpose of the joke was that it sounds like something that Apple would do.

"I got there!" Federighi told the WWDC crowd of developers in San Jose before revealing that in reality, iTunes features would now be split between three new applications for Mac (music, podcasts and television).

The fact is that this moment of supposed lightness was more revealing of Apple's condition today than Federighi could have realized. He made fun of the iTunes flood, marking the first time that Apple had been attacking one of its own products on stage since Steve Jobs had lamented MobileMe in 2008. But Federighi was doing it in a far-fetched way. We have no explanation for Apple's change of direction, which Jobs – despite all its infamous intransigence – was always ready to offer.

Apple skates dangerously towards self-parody.

This testifies to a more general problem with the biggest technology company in the world today. He hardly ever returns. There are no failed experiments, so there is no beneficial course correction. Apologies are sometimes made, but off-stage, in the form of a statement. CEO Tim Cook and his team can never go wrong.

Tasks may have been difficult at first on topics such as the iPhone 4 Antennagate and MobileMe. As someone who was involved with him in the Silicon Valley press in the 2000s and who often called him home, I remember that common phase of any backtracking of Jobs: a scream "You are an idiot!" But he cared how Apple products were seen, removing those that did not work (RIP Mac Cube), and he always wanted to update us on his evolving philosophy. Like any real entrepreneur, he considered missed experiences as a sign of honor.

For years after being scrapped, Jobs was using its first online subscription service as a line of force. "Now, you could say, why should I believe [Apple]? They brought me MobileMe! ", He launched by presenting iCloud in 2011:" This was not our best moment, let me just say it. But we learned a lot. "

Apple under Cook, meanwhile, skates dangerously towards self-parody. The funniest joke on stage yesterday was not intentional like the word games and word games of Federighi. That's when Apple revealed that the monitor support for the new Mac Pro would cost $ 999.

Thousand dollars for a piece of metal! There have not been idiots for that, but gasps of dismay, even among this audience of Apple developers, the most sympathetic audience possible. The reaction was described by some other participants as "boo, "but I would not say it pushed that far – it's more like a" whisper of discontent. "(Judge for yourself here.)

Good luck that Apple never recognizes that a thousand dollar screen is a price abuse. "Steve Jobs would not have done that" is not a game I like to play very often. Nevertheless, I think the founder was well aware that everything was going too far and that the media would ridicule it. He would never have launched such a product at such a low price.

The question of whether Apple understands why its iPhone sales have slowed in recent years is not very good. I doubt that there is even an internal recognition that users have been reluctant to spend more than $ 1,000 on the overly confusing series of the iPhone X. And even less: does anyone? one wonders if the company will still offer at least one new phone with Touch ID rather than Face ID, or even – will it whisper – an iPhone with a headphone jack? Several articles touting the success of the iPhone 6S as the latest large mobile device continue to attract readers. Apple does not understand this, though, and the 6S model is now a model not to be supported in the latest iOS update.

More troubling, Apple does not recognize when there are serious security issues within it.

More troubling, Apple does not recognize when there are serious security issues within it. Just before Tim Cook goes on stage Monday, wired has published an article on a bug related to Mac OS that allows hackers to invisibly click on security prompts, giving them all kinds of access to your private data. While Apple was confidently informing us of the importance it placed on the protection of privacy, it was an exploit based on the fact that the Mac was granting a surprising number of access to applications such as VLC and Steam. How long can this kind of behavior last before the disaster?

Apple has not commented on the story, of course. Anyone working in technology journalism is terribly used to writing these words: "Apple has not responded to a request for comment". The company's representatives are generally friendly, friendly and helpful in general, but they send them the slightest bad news and they close like a bank window. In such moments, most will say that you can not even mention the fact that you talked to them – even if they said nothing. This is positively Orwellian.

Reading the wired article, it's happened to me (on my Apple TV 4K!) the hit series HBO Chernobyl, a show full of Soviet walls and denials of reality. Obviously, even the most egregious bug on Mac is never going to have the impact of a nuclear fusion.

Still, I watched Apple's answer on the screen, the screen at Apple's answer, but it was already impossible to tell which one was which one.