Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#221

Post by askafriend » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #191

askafriend wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new iPad Pro already benchmarks as high as some of their recent laptops (Yes, I know the thermals are different, etc but bear with me here) My bet is that over the years iPad Pro will expand to do more and more of the jobs that people traditionally use MacBooks (or laptops in general) to do. We'll eventually see a world where most people have iPads, not laptops - thereby relying on A-series chips, not Intel, to g…

I still don't think the iPad is enough even for most consumers. The competition for the iPad pro is the surface, which has more I/O that people would actually use (see that nice USB-A port and headphone jack?) but importantly comes with a full featured OS that everyone has been using for decades. I could see people moving to a surface type device over a laptop because it has a full featured OS, but iOS is just too li…

I think Surface is part of the future too. I think Surface and iPad will dominate traditional laptop sales in the next decade.

They each represent 2 different opinionated views of productivity/creative-focused computing (just like the 2 different opinions of Android vs iOS in mobile computing). I think you're right that today the Surface does far better in the IO department and IO is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. But again, the world isn't standing still, and Apple just released an iPad Pro with USB-C....that's definitely signaling something.

We don't have to make this a conversation about Apple. I think the whole industry is moving in that direction.

Interestingly, I don't have the same belief in ChromeOS. I don't think it'll ever be truly competitive with the Surface or iPad lineup partly because Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the desktop/laptop market. It'll be easy and tempting to move to a Surface device that can do so much more than ChromeOS without changing your existing workflow from Windows.

Android? Well, Android tablets have languished for a very long time - it's basically a dead market walking. The problem isn't so much the hardware languishing as much as it's the software ecosystem that languishes as a result. Even if the Android ecosystem catches up hardware-wise, it'll be a while before the app ecosystem gets kickstarted again.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#222

Post by toasterlovin » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #36

Nokinside wrote: post #34

This partially explains why Berkshire Hathaway is now largest stock holder in Apple. They prefer companies with 'moat'. Ability to innovate is unpredictable.

Of course they do. Moats are great for investors. Not so great for consumers.

Depends on the company. Moats extract additional value from customers. I think Google, Apple, and Amazon are all examples of companies that use that extra value to invest in innovation (benefitting customers in the end). Comcast is a great example of a company that doesn’t.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#223

Post by Wowfunhappy » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #45

Do you know what really worries me about Apple now? So, when SJ came back to Apple, he reorganized their (then at the time) computer lines into more streamlined ones. Something like (I might get some of the names wrong), into consumer/pro and portable/desktop iBook/Powerbook, iMac/Powermac Now look at their line now What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Why are there 2 iPad Pros? Is an iPa…

Apple painted themselves into a bit of a quagmire with the iPhone X branding. There's no way to make "iPhone XS" / "iPhone Excess" not sound stupid†.

Personally, I think they should have just called it the new iPhone X. And eventually we'd start differentiating by year (iPhone X 2017), as we have with the iPad and Mac line for quite some time.

†Then again, this is the company that released a product called "iPad" and managed to make us forget how stupid that sounds.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#224

Post by hinkley » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

brobdingnagians wrote: post #17

adamrezich wrote: post #4

You could say the same or similar things about other companies with similar business models today who rose to prominence because of repeated innovation yet have since become seemingly stagnant: Google, Valve, ...

It seems like stagnation eventually catches up to every company. Google got big on rapid innovation and emphasis on engineering, but by long observation we can see it becomes more and more difficult to do that in a large company, and todays heros on innovation seem to be tomorrows megacorps waiting for the upstarts to overtake them when some large event changes the market. Maybe it's a mix of pride, complaceny, inter…

There’s a pattern in business of changing CEOs during different phases of the company lifecycle. They have CEOs for growth, ones for mergers, ones for IPOs and ones for selling out.

When a company is growing if you let yourself get pulled in too many directions you’ll suffocate. But maybe the message becomes “we concentrate on a few important things” and eventually those things become boring. You need a new message before you become stodgy.

There’s also JWZ’s dotcom era theory about people wanting to make a company successful vs people who want to be at a successful company.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#225

Post by max76 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

mothsonasloth wrote: post #162

Its sad state of affairs that companies are tying and locking down their hardware to specific software: You cant modify the new Xboxes or Playstations. Some Android phones are dependant on the manufacturers customised version of the AOSP. On Macs it is not easy to install another operating system, like you can do with a PC (although I have managed to get Ubuntu 18.10 running on my Macbook Pro 13,1) Consumers are goin…

Sorry, I think consumers are perfectly fine with severe limitations of control over their hardware. The percentage of hacked consumer electronics is slim.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#226

Post by ummonk » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #152

ummonk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. I recently moved from Android to iOS, for privacy reasons as well as wanting a phone that would be supported with software updates for a long time. I've really really enjoyed the switch. Admittedly, it helped that I got the iPhone SE which hadn't been discontinued yet; I might have been less happy with the newer X-series phones, particularly given the sticker price.

> I've really really enjoyed the switch. How so? I've been a mac user for many years but can't really justify the price of an iphone. I've been considering making the switch though, for better integration, privacy and smaller phone. Not sure it's worth it.

Basically just a more intuitive and polished overall user interface. There was definitely some learning time, but once I'd learned some of the common actions, I found it much simpler to work with. But it's probably something that is subjective, so I can't vouch that everyone will feel the same way (indeed, I have some friends who have switched from iOS to Android and found the latter more intuitive).

Of course, the price issue was a little different for me since I prefer not to replace devices often, so the longer software support actually means if I amortize the cost of the phone over the time that I use it, iPhones actually come out ahead of Android phones on price.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

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Post by drb91 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #214

drb91 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting conditions on the use of the hardware is distinctly harmful to consumers in a way that otherwise good design cannot ameliorate.

Conditions like "must log in to a Google account to use this" and "must agree that Google can harvest your private data for financial gain so we can pay off those executives" yes that is harmful.

No argument here :)

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

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Post by wlesieutre » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #179

Apocryphon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that stuff is great, and does not explain why the Mac Mini, an entry-level Apple computer, is somehow proportionally worth $300 more than it used to be.

It's worth more because people are voluntarily paying more. If it wasn't worth $300 more, then people would by paying less for the alternative, but there isn't one. The amount of hours I've wasted on Windows and lost productivity makes me not even think about price when buying something from Apple.

Yeah, I've had Windows 10 uninstall my GPU drivers and replace them with 6-month old ones that don't work. I know they're supporting a bizarre variety of different hardware, but regardless of the reasons the software reliability isn't there.

Granted there's some tradeoff with repairs, if your Mac dies you probably can't go on Newegg, get a replacement part, and have it fixed yourself in 2 days. But that tradeoff has worked out well for me so far.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#229

Post by natch » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #133

baxtr wrote: post #110

What's the point here? - There were mp3 files and player long before the first iPod - Before the iPhone there were other smartphones - Before the iPad there were other tablets - Don't get me started on the Watch... Apple was never an Inventor. Everything they've ever created was built around a technology or even products that existed before. Apple "just" gets the user experience right and and builds products that mos…

I'll give you the watch but the iPod isn't an mp3 player, the iPhone isn't a smartphone, and the iPad isn't a tablet. The iPod is THE mp3 player, the iPhone is THE smartphone, and to a lesser extent the iPad is THE tablet. No, Apple didn't invent the concepts but they created the definitive product using those concepts.

Multi-touch input was an Apple invention, and it enabled the iPhone and the iPad.

Re: Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord

#230

Post by hinkley » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

hunta2097 wrote: post #16

adamrezich wrote: post #4

You could say the same or similar things about other companies with similar business models today who rose to prominence because of repeated innovation yet have since become seemingly stagnant: Google, Valve, ...

I wouldn't say Google is stagnant... Apple users can thank them for forcing Apple to make their phone OS better (and vice-versa with regard to hardware). Google's problem isn't innovation, it's supporting and following-through on their innovations past the honeymoon period.

Google seems stuck in the Xerox Parc trap. They babysit a bunch if twenty something kids while they daydream but they don’t have the tools or drive to mature those efforts into product roadmaps.

Only google is in the uncanny valley. They go far enough to get people engaged a bit then cancel or reimagine the projects (or people wander off and their replacements have different theories?) and so instead of having no product or engagement they get just enough to draw negative attention, pissing people off who thought something good was going to happen and never did. Like Fox Networks with Joss Whedon...