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Apple’s 2016 in review

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Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#181

Post by Fnoord »

gutnor wrote: post #169
Fnoord wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to Apple's entry, how many people were saying what they wanted in a smartphone was to remove all those buttons? Except 1) Apple weren't the first innovating in that regard. I don't know who was, I just do know Nokia was experimenting with Nokia 770 and Nokia N800 in 2005-2006. True, they weren't smartphones, but they were going in the right direction. Without many buttons. The Nokia N810 had a keyboard, and t…

He is correct. Blackberry was the leader of the smartphone and the keyboard was his best loved feature. Sure there were other smartphone, Apple wasn't the first, etc But thinking that people would just go 180 was just extraordinary. Apparently people were ready to sacrifice quite a lot for the huge screen of the iPhone.

> Blackberry was the leader of the smartphone

Leader where? Blackberry was never the marketleader world-wide. That was Nokia, and OS-wise it was Symbian until ~2010 when iOS and Android took off. Nokia was never very popular in US though.

> and the keyboard was his best loved feature.

Sure.

Because on screen keyboards were still using resistive touchscreen with pens. Which is a terrible user experience. Apple used capacitive touchscreen instead, and even though the resolution was low, it worked.

Nokia didn't invest enough in Maemo, and didn't want to adopt Android either. When they finally did go with Maemo, Elop came with plan A. Look at the user experience of Sailfish. That could've easily been Nokia in ~2014...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#182

Post by michelb »

hellofunk wrote: post #167
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #8

In 2009 I bought my first Apple product: an 8GB 13" MacBook Pro that cost $3000 ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass). Quite soon after I got an iPhone 3GS. Now every computer in the house (family of four) is an Apple. Every phone is an Apple. Even AirPlay was an influencing factor in selecting a hi-fi receiver (HTR7065). Apple TVs sit next to actual TVs. Yesterday I replaced our fleet of TimeCapsules and Airport…

Forgive my ignorance but what is a Luma? I tried googling it but seems to be a common term.

A device like Eero, https://lumahome.com

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#183

Post by visarga »

visakanv wrote: post #134
loosescrews wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve. Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012: "I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I…

Apple is not into the next wave. If it were, it would be a powerhouse of deep learning hardware and software. The next wave is going to be robotics and conversational agents. You can't make a new Apple with slightly better laptops and phones any more. If, at least, they developed and opened up Siri in the last few years... but it's dead in the water.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#184

Post by phaed »

Apocryphon wrote: post #105

I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market. So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong…

The people who are discontent are all the professionals needing professional machines, and it just so happens they are the also the group who writes all the software, all the blogs, and have loudspeakers to reach millions of followers with their disconent.

Joe blow down the street is not going to be buying a machine all the pros hate.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#185

Post by phaed »

coldtea wrote: post #130
Apocryphon wrote: post #105

I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market. So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong…

> Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown? Obviously the latter. Let's see the quarterly results...

Revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

Lets see if they are still the most profitable company 5 years down the line.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#186

Post by visarga »

wineisfine wrote: post #95
triangleman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure there has been a "shift" like you said? In 2007 Jobs was using the phrase "post-PC", and by the time he died in 2011, more than half of Apple's revenue was iPhone/iPad/etc. To me it seems that Cook is just continuing the trend.

The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. Why should one exclude the other?

> It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware.

You bet! all those billions sitting in their coffers and they still couldn't pull their asses to achieve progress. It is like Microsoft of the XP era.

I was pulling my hairs in 2003 cursing at Bill Gates, then switched to Mac until now. But I think the Mac era is over as well and Bill Gates is cool again. He's really great in his humanitarian work.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#187

Post by Lio »

ciconia wrote: post #104

I have a 2013 13" MBP and have started to look for a specifically non-Apple machine to replace it with. What got me to give up on Apple is not really the high price or infrequent updates but rather the state of macOS and bundled apps. It just sucks. Each upgrade seems to introduce more eye candy, more complications, more bugs, and is also slower. To me it feels like planned obsolescence.

Yep it's like Aperture. If they neglect it long enough people will just move the approved Apple alternative. In the case of Aperture it's Photos, for macOS I think they want us to move to iOS.

It didn't work for Aperture, pros generally moved to Lightroom or something else. For macOS either Linux or Windows seems more likely than iOS.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#188

Post by massysett »

visakanv wrote: post #134
loosescrews wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve. Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012: "I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I…

Bezos isn't following the example of Walton, Sears, or Montgomery Ward. Jobs didn't follow the example of Hewlett. Musk isn't following the example of Henry Ford. It would be a huge mistake for any startup to try to become the next Apple by following the example of Jobs. The Jobs worship has got to stop. He was a unique man in a unique historical circumstance. That time is over. Whether the next big thing comes from Apple or from someone else, it's not going to come from someone who is worshipping and trying to follow Jobs.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#189

Post by zimpenfish »

phaed wrote: post #184
Apocryphon wrote: post #105

I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market. So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong…

The people who are discontent are all the professionals needing professional machines, and it just so happens they are the also the group who writes all the software, all the blogs, and have loudspeakers to reach millions of followers with their disconent. Joe blow down the street is not going to be buying a machine all the pros hate.

Joe Blow down the street doesn't give two figs for "pros" and their blogs. They buy machines that look nice and do the bare minimum they want from a retailer they trust.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#190

Post by Guyag »

visarga wrote: post #183
visakanv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve. Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012: "I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I…

Apple is not into the next wave. If it were, it would be a powerhouse of deep learning hardware and software. The next wave is going to be robotics and conversational agents. You can't make a new Apple with slightly better laptops and phones any more. If, at least, they developed and opened up Siri in the last few years... but it's dead in the water.

Do you know any good resources on the future of conversational agents? In terms of what need they fulfil - I don't use Ok Google/Siri/Cortana, and rarely use my Echo but for music, and find it hard to understand where they fit in. Home automation is the only thing that comes to mind ("only").
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