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The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

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Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#91

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

MAGZine wrote: post #56
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

People have been selling brands for long before Apple has been around. And the "brand," isn't the logo. It is everything that a particular entity means to you, which includes all customer service, sales, advertising contacts. Which includes selling things as a lifestyle. This is marketing 101. I'm not going to pretend that Apple did not significantly influence the direction of product design. It absolutely did. Howev…

Apple absolutely invented competent technology marketing.

If you look at the old issues of Byte, you can immediately see the difference. Most of the ads are generic spec/price lists with maybe some crappy hand-drawn graphics. A few are photos and professionally drawn images with some attempts at metaphor, but they invariably look crude, heavy-handed, jokey, or cartoony.

The primary focus in the early Apple ads is the Apple user at home, with his partner. It's the first thing you see before you get drawn into the copy. It's an attempt to sell soft values, not just hardware specs.

This ownership of soft values is a huge difference that most of the industry still fails to get, and which Apple itself seems to be forgetting.

Apple is the only company ever to create technology products that appeal equally to men and women without relying on any traditional gender branding. (At least that used to be true until "rose gold" appeared.)

MS is sort of catching up now, two decades later. But it's not a natural cultural fit for them, so I'm not expecting a stream of great things.

Google is - well, the brand mascot is an android. That's all anyone needs to know.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#92

Post by LeoNatan25 »

rayiner wrote: post #85
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's first and foremost a bad DPI independence API design, largely due to a terrible backwards compatibility of an even more terrible legacy stack. It is fixed somewhat in their modern stacks, such as WPF and UWP, but the vast majority of Windows software is not written with these frameworks. While it is understandable why the legacy baggage is there and cannot be removed, the end result is a big mess, still to this…

> a much better designed API without a 20-30 year old baggage. Apple's API dates back to the 1980s, just like Windows'. If you want to nitpick, Windows was developed in the early-mid 1980s while Next was developed in the mid-late 1980s.

I mostly meant the software support baggage, but yes, indeed, so many of the Next concepts are still true today in Cocoa API design.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#93

Post by LeoNatan25 »

blinkingled wrote: post #82
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's first and foremost a bad DPI independence API design, largely due to a terrible backwards compatibility of an even more terrible legacy stack. It is fixed somewhat in their modern stacks, such as WPF and UWP, but the vast majority of Windows software is not written with these frameworks. While it is understandable why the legacy baggage is there and cannot be removed, the end result is a big mess, still to this…

As most new apps start to be built on UWP that issue will go away. Also, I am not sure what DPI issues you're facing but I have run W10 on my rMBP for quite some time and it's been thoroughly pleasant. Perhaps your issues are fuzzy text due to mixed DPI, multi monitor setup?

Also, it's not just scaling. Often even if an application scales somewhat correctly, often some elements don't, because it's using some open source that draws something in a terrible manner. Or, assets look blurry because of "16x16 is all you really need" mentality. This used to happen on OS X in the first months, but very quickly and uniformly, developers just fixed their custom code and assets. Not so with Windows developers, sadly.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#94

Post by Spooky23 »

MAGZine wrote: post #56
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

People have been selling brands for long before Apple has been around. And the "brand," isn't the logo. It is everything that a particular entity means to you, which includes all customer service, sales, advertising contacts. Which includes selling things as a lifestyle. This is marketing 101. I'm not going to pretend that Apple did not significantly influence the direction of product design. It absolutely did. Howev…

They didn't invent product marketing, but they perfected the current, most popular industrial design aesthetic and marketing methodology.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#95

Post by serge2k »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #91
MAGZine wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been selling brands for long before Apple has been around. And the "brand," isn't the logo. It is everything that a particular entity means to you, which includes all customer service, sales, advertising contacts. Which includes selling things as a lifestyle. This is marketing 101. I'm not going to pretend that Apple did not significantly influence the direction of product design. It absolutely did. Howev…

Apple absolutely invented competent technology marketing. If you look at the old issues of Byte, you can immediately see the difference. Most of the ads are generic spec/price lists with maybe some crappy hand-drawn graphics. A few are photos and professionally drawn images with some attempts at metaphor, but they invariably look crude, heavy-handed, jokey, or cartoony. The primary focus in the early Apple ads is the…

I thought rose gold was more about appealing to asian markets?

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#96

Post by tajen »

yladiz wrote: post #52

The thing is, hardware is important but software is arguably more important because it's what you interact with every day (yes, you interact with the hardware too but not directly, besides the keyboard and touch pad). In that respect, I trust Apple more than either Microsoft or Google. I will not trust Google with any of my data unless it's necessary and Microsoft isn't so great in my eyes either due to their ad and…

A paid Linux! That's what I said on this comment about "Ask HN – What innovation would you want to see", which 84 people upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570030

I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio, but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs because of macOS, but envision switching to PCs because the innovation and specs are much better. Had we worked on that, we would have released a credible alternative to Macs, with distrib that would have embraced the Surface Studio while providing 1. the design, 2. the experience and 3.the privacy that everyone is looking for in an Apple computer...

As a reminder, the idea of a Paid Linux is to fund the open-source community with the same flow of money that Apple and Microsoft get from their OS (at $200/yr), in order to provide the same "red carpet" experience for specific profiles of users (either 3D workers, either graphists, whatever profile we target first). At the market level, one great experience for one type of work would develop adoption for Linux on the desktop. At a more selfish level, the benefit to paying for Linux instead of MS/A is that the new improvements are effectively open-source, so we're effectively raising the baseline of what every other distrib can do. The way to make people pay is by only providing their upgrades through authenticated PPAs, which means professionals will pay because it's easier, and hackers will redistribute versions on Torrent, which we don't mind, because hackers are a benefit for Linux. Besides, even hackers understand the value of funding open-source, so they might still participate. A lot of people would rather pay for open-source than closed-source.

I didn't execute on that wish, because I'm not an OS-level person, and I don't have the UX design background necessary for this endeavour. Nor the marketing know-how to execute at a high level. But I really wish someone would do it.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#97

Post by emp_zealoth »

jimbokun wrote: post #8

I was thinking recently how Bill Gates often said the biggest competitor to Windows was the previous version of Windows. Alternate OSes didn't have enough market share or compatible software to really be a threat, but customers always had the option of just not upgrading. iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge…

They have a killer feature for that! Glued in batteries you cannot reasonably replace, unreliable buttons that fail easily, the like

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#98

Post by whyenot »

kristopolous wrote: post #17
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

I always found it offensive that they used long deceased, mostly anti materialist socialists to peddle consumer electronics (as if mother Teresa would be using an ipad with her name etched in the back). They should have tried using a living legend without permission like Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky and see how that went...

You seem to be mis-remembering the facts a little. The Think Different campaign was nearly 20 years ago (1997). If you look at the list of celebrities[1], almost all are/were not "anti materialist socialists."

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#99

Post by gutnor »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #48
threeseed wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn't have anything to stand out anymore They have execution and commitment. When I buy a MacBook Pro I can expect to get many years of use out of it. The hardware execution is almost always exemplary and they will continue to support it on the software side during that tenure. Buying a Windows or Android product feels like you're only going to be supported for a year or two and that's it.

I'm typing this on a 2013 macbook. I use it everyday/allday. I also have a fully functioning Asus laptop from 2009. I'm reasonably confident my 2005 inspiron is still kicking. Those two laptops are still running on their original charger. I'm on my third macbook charger in 3 years. I have a box full of broken apple chargers from merely glancing at the cord. I think you're drastically overestimating the macbook's abil…

> They are simply not what's made the macbook stand out against a sea of black laptops

The major change in there is that the laptop and desktop market has matured enough that, indeed, this year MBP needs to compete with 2012 MBP and every other laptop.

Before those time, just re-releasing the same box with improved internals was enough to sell, hence an ocean of generic laptop where a brand like Apple could rise to the top with a level above polish and attention to details.

The market changed, not because Apple lost its mojo, but because you can't sell a laptop on its spec alone meaning only the Apple way is really profitable now. Apple/Jobs genius was doing it before, allowing them to reap enormous benefits for years.

This year I'm looking at the new MBP to replace my old 2007 MBP. I happen to be happy with the update (unlike many here on HN), but I would have had no problem buying last year model in case of disappointment. Even a refurb 2012 model like my main machine would have been perfectly fine.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#100

Post by cheiVia0 »

bitwize wrote: post #51
rjbwork wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who doesn't have a laptop that hasn't been modeled after the macbook. As soon as they can pack the power i'm looking for in my laptops into an apple style case, i'll be there. Until then i'll be sticking with my boxy black Clevo.

Surprise: Virtually all laptops are modelled after an Apple machine. The boxy black ones are PowerBook clones. Apple established the dedign language used by every laptop manufacturer since, in the early 90s: clamshell case, hinge at the rear, keyboard towards the back of the lower half with the trackpad front and center and all that wonderful blank space on either side usable as wrist rests.

OK, the palm rest and the pointing device, I'll give it to you, but saying that all laptops are Powerbook clones is a big stretch. The "notebook" firm factor originated from NEC UltraLite, released 3 years earlier.

http://old.chuma.org/ultralite/index.shtml

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_UltraLite

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