Live data from Hacker News

Apple is a traditional business

bloomberg.com

101–110 of 248 posts

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#101

I probably now fall into this camp as well. I made fun of Apple for years, but while I still hold an emotional and likely completely irrational dislike for their products, if someone were to ask me for a recommendation on a phone today, the only phone I could recommend in good conscience is an iPhone, because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right now.

Just keep in mind that the NSA has remote sudo access to everything on your phone[0]. It's not completely secure and they're known to abuse their power time to time. [0]: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

[citation needed]

The link you sent just shows that they have zero days on Android: but they also have similar exploits available on iPhones.

Besides, the NSA having zero day vulnerabilities is nothing new and not limited to Android. Saying they have "remote sudo access" is misleading also and implies that they were deliberately built into android, although that may not be what you meant. Either way, the NSA will always have the type of people employed who can find zero days on smartphones and most importantly, not tell anyone about them.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#102
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

Not worth it. Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it. Name a product apple invented that was HUGE? Go ahead and think about that. GUI & Mac was Xerox, the iPhone was Xerox and palm and... Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. Lets look at the design side. MacBooks for a…

> Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things.

Every great creator has stood on the shoulders of giants. That doesn't diminish their greatness. I can't think of a single creation in the past 50 years that isn't a pretty direct consequence of the knowledge that preceded it.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#103
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is luxury in China too. Do you really think it's the average Chinese that are buying iPhones?

A worker at Foxconn has about the same discretionary income as blue collar workers in the states; their food and housing is covered by Foxconn, but isn't normally listed as part of their salary. Now, albeit, they're slightly on the higher end of Chinese workers, but it's not just the shitty aristocrat's kids spending money on iPhones. The people making the things make enough money to buy one, just the same as my hair…

In that case Foxconn isn't an example of an average company paying average wage. The disposable income per capita in China was 36396 chinese yuan in 2017, which makes a little over 400 USD per month. Median disposable income is even lower. You're not even close to buying iPhones with that kind of wages.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#104
post #23

I'm very fond of Apple's business stance; my concern is not with it, but with their technological stance. Apple products are built on lock-in; they are proprietary and closed, not open. Frankly, at this point they're not even really all that good (in fact, sometimes embarrassingly bad — something not limited to Apple!). I want the freedom to tinker, the freedom to review, the freedom to extend. That's why I use Linux…

If you go dig into my comment history I have several comments where I praise Richard Stalman and his commitment to open source. He is the zealot (and I use that word with both positive and negative connotations) that open source needs. But I have to ask what ARE you running then? Intel? AMD? What about your phone? If your going to make this argument in this way you better have a Stalman like response. If you are runn…

Everyone is running closed source somewhere, even Stallman. He says in his web page describing how he does his computing that he uses credit cards sometimes, uses closed source software running on public computers that he doesn't use often, and doesn't consider anything that doesn't regularly update it's software a computer.

You might be in favor of Stallman's compromises but he has a selective argument just like everyone else.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#106
post #97
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it really points to how rarely an innovation like the iPhone really occurs Yeah, but don't forget that the pieces to be able to create the iPhone had to be there first.

> Yeah, but don't forget that the pieces to be able to create the iPhone had to be there first. Like the LG Prada?

Like Palm's existing smartphone with existing smartphone apps, or blackberry.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#107
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

> ...like smart speakers, with their threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase in convenience It seems like everyone in this thread is forgetting that the HomePod[0] is a thing. Apple's privacy practices are better than the other listed companies, but they do have a smart speaker just as capable as the others. [0]: https://www.apple.com/homepod/

The HomePod has a very simple proposition. I give Apple money and they give me a speaker. They aren't trying to use the HomePod to gather data to see what else they can sell me.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#108
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not an incremental leap. It was MASSIVE. Yes, all the technology was there. We had smartphones and they would have continued without the iPhone. The value of the internet in your pocket is too big for the smart phone not to become a huge thing. Eventually. But Apple NAILED the UI. They made it so simple that 3 year olds can use the UI and are confused when other computers don’t work through such great touch co…

It really wasn't as massive a leap as you make it out to be. It's likely that we would have ended up with something very similar to today's smartphones even if the iPhone had never existed. It wasn't the first smartphone. It wasn't the first phone to use a capacitive touch screen. The first iPhone didn't even have the app store - it launched with the 3G a year after the the first iPhone was released, if I remember co…

How long do you think it would have taken? Seriously? It took Google a few years to catch up having their massive resources and Apple as a guidepost.

RIM had no incentive, they were trying to lock you into the BB server product and tried to get consumers on it to. The phone was a means to an end.

MS wanted to push Windows. They’d been trying since CE first appeared and it still didn’t take off. As long as Balmer was there why would they do something different? They KEPT DOING IT even with Apple to follow.

Palm was the closest. I guess they might have been my bet. But they were having trouble and had tr legacy of thinking about things the way PalmOS had done things. That might have slowed them down.

Google was just copying RIM. They’d have gone somewhere, but I don’t know it would look anything like today’s smartphones. That may not be a bad thing.

Apple did not move us up just 2 or 3 years. I don’t know how to come up with an exact number, and obviously it’s not something crazy like 20 or 50. But I could see a decade.

How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? How long would it have taken if they didn’t have the Mac to look at?

Paradigm shifts in UIs are hard to predict. Even if you make a good one it can be really hard to break in when something else is successful (even if only adequate).

Apple defined the modern smartphone, and it wasn’t an IBM PC like thing of taking existing parts and just putting them together. It took a ton more work outside the existing molds.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#109
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to pay anymore.

They still stop running after seven days.

This is completely false, I have several apps that I've built on my own personal account, which is expired because I haven't released a personal app in a year or so, all of them are still running just fine after a year.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...like smart speakers, with their threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase in convenience It seems like everyone in this thread is forgetting that the HomePod[0] is a thing. Apple's privacy practices are better than the other listed companies, but they do have a smart speaker just as capable as the others. [0]: https://www.apple.com/homepod/

The HomePod has a very simple proposition. I give Apple money and they give me a speaker. They aren't trying to use the HomePod to gather data to see what else they can sell me.

Neither are the other two.
Post reply on HN