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Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

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Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headphone jack is not a legacy port. It is the single most impressive industrial design for a port in history. That's the reason it lasted so long and also the reason it will outlive any wireless nonsense apple brings out to increase their landfill impact.

Speaking for myself, I hate headphone cables. They always get knotted up when stored away, and they're always getting caught on things while I'm wearing the headphones. I'm looking forwards to when wireless headphones are more ubiquitous and cheaper.

Wireless will never have as good of a sound quality as wired does, however. It's a trade-off.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#132
how's the microsoft phone going?

MS always had concepts flying around, remember the fully automated house, the courier, etc etc etc.

they always stumble on the last mile though - but now they release into production anyway.

we had customers try to deploy surfacebooks and encounter failure rates of more than 40%. turns out MS couldn't get the Intel Drivers straight. oh shucks. innovation.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#133
post #66

Apple's ace is osx or macos as it's now called. Without this they would be struggling in the professional computing market. They are already starting to drop the ball on the hardware front. Luckily for them it will take far longer to destroy osx.

Will it take far longer? I don't know... if they continue this push of implementing mobile features on macOS, trying to make it more and more like iOS. This seems like it could be a very effective way of alienating even more pro users. To an extent it has already happened. Seems like Apple has become unwilling to spend resources on features pro users want.

What, in your opinion, has Apple done to macOS to make it more like iOS that alienates pro users? Has any iOS-like feature of macOS actually prevented you from using macOS functionality?

I'm using Sierra and honestly haven't even noticed much difference from the previous OS except for the siri icon on my toolbar.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#134
This Microsoft media push is becoming tiring. Surface Studio is an expensive touchscreen on a stand and for some reason it seems to be worthy of 20 articles a day, and dozens of articles 'spontaneously' wondering whether some mantle of genius has passed from Apple to Microsoft. Neither Apple nor Microsoft are particularly innovative companies. Microsoft is gradually moving from the general purpose computer OS business to the locked down appliance business that Apple pioneered, aiming for an unprotected flank (did graphics people really need Apple laptops? Nope - they'd probably like a drafting table with a tablet surface better), furiously press releasing its ass off, and unleashing the shills.

edit:

"Apple just handed Microsoft the keys to the kingdom"

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-microsoft-macbook-pro-surfac...

How dumb do they think Mac users are? Pretty fucking dumb. I'm not sure they're wrong, but it's going to take a lot more than a touchscreen on a stand and a flood of credulous articles to make Microsoft cool.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#135
post #73

The central premise is that Apple isn't innovative anymore. Let's look at the technologies Apple has materially advanced over the last few years. * Custom screen technology leap-frogging 4K displays directly to 5K, at a full-system price below that of a 4K screen alone from competitors at the time. * wide colour gamut screen tech putting them several years ahead of the competition. * Brand new screen digitiser techno…

> * Custom screen technology leap-frogging 4K displays directly to 5K, at a full-system price below that of a 4K screen alone from competitors at the time.

It's literally just a rebadged LG display.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#137
post #15

There's no real underdog now. Microsoft has a pretty consistent track record of looking at other companies making money, and making a microsoft version of that. Bing, xbox, azure, and zune are pretty obvious examples. Surface doesn't seem to fit that mold at all. They're giving every indication of doing something new. I can't think of a real underdog right now. Apple had this sort of desperation to do something good,…

imho there's stagnation in hardware computing as well as mobile phones. It seems the fastest innovation is either in electric cars (both USA/China) or in machine learning.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a MBP a few years ago. I installed the Boot Camp beta. When it went out of beta it locked up with no ability to change the configuration or installed OSs. The solution was to upgrade (30$) to the latest version of OS X. Which meant I lost all the software that came with the laptop since I didn't want to pay for it again. I had an iPod touch. When I was using it on a certain network it couldn't hit the NTP serve…

I own a perfectly fine iPad 1 and can't use apps for it anymore because Apple said so. This really irks me, at least let me install the latest usable version. The iPad is still working nicely, but the behavior by Apple just sucks.

If you first add the app to iTunes for PC/Mac, then it lets you install the last compatible version of the app on your iDevice!

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#139
post #92
post #15

There's no real underdog now. Microsoft has a pretty consistent track record of looking at other companies making money, and making a microsoft version of that. Bing, xbox, azure, and zune are pretty obvious examples. Surface doesn't seem to fit that mold at all. They're giving every indication of doing something new. I can't think of a real underdog right now. Apple had this sort of desperation to do something good,…

Microsoft is an underdog in mobile devices. Google is an underdog in tablets/desktop devices. Apple is an underdog when it comes to services. It's like rock/paper/scissors :)

It's really not. Google has 7 billion in cash. Every one of the big 5 could spend a couple billion to win a market. They can't. They are incapable of risking losing billions on an idea. They're not startups anymore.

I made a peer comment about google vs Tesla self driving cars that captures the essence. The point is, Google won't sacrifice ad sales to win at tablets. Apple won't sacrifice consumer electronics to win services. None of them are in a do or die situation that startups are in. The big five might see the problem, but they can't make the move. They're structurally incapable of taking the risk.

Re: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple

#140
Lot of people in this thread crapping on Microsoft. I don't know that Microsoft is more brave or more innovative than Apple yet, but I know one thing, they are more brave and innovative than Microsoft five years ago. That's all that matters.

While I'm sure the grand plan is to eat Apple's lunch, they seem more focused on being better than themselves. I think they are onto something with the Surface line, they just need to keep iterating it. They also need to introduce a Surface product that the average consumer can afford--even Apple has done this with the Air line and the non-Pro line.

I have a MacBook now, but I'd love to go to a Surface Studio. If they can work to get up-to-date hardware in all of their offerings, and provide a $1k Macbook Air equivalent, along with a sub $2k iMac equivalent, they'll win.

Microsoft also has one other major hurdle. They lost a ton of ground they were gaining because they chose to force upgrades to Windows 10. I can actually get why they did this from a corporate perspective (Less OSes to support, therefore more money freed up to do other things), but as a user it sucks. They have to build an update to 10 that wins over the people they lost. They have to come out and say "Yes, we want your telemetry data, but we aren't going to force you to give it to us, so from now on, it's opt-in".

As far as Apple goes, I think they know they aren't innovating at the same pace. I think the headphone jack, the escape key, and touch bar are them trying to figure out how to innovate without Steve Jobs. I think Jony Ive is capable, but he needs room to fail to learn. Steve Jobs talked a lot about how as a company, you produce a lot of failures for each success. Steve Jobs was just much better at having many of those failures never see the light of day.

Either way, I don't care who the most innovate company is. I'd rather see them all trying to innovate, because the good stuff they come up with can only benefit the consumer.

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