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The New Apple Advantage

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Re: The New Apple Advantage

#91

Post by felipemnoa »

dasil003 wrote: post #58
felipemnoa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so if a Formula 1 driver wins the race, who gets the credit? The car or the driver? I would say the car is Tim Cook and Steve jobs is the driver.

That's a terrible analogy. There is not just one person making human decisions in Apple. Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great. It's easy to sit on the outside and imagine that Apple doesn't have a decision-maker to equal Jobs, but only time will tell.

>>Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great

You could say the same about the car-driver relationship.

"The driver deservers a lot of credit but the car has hundreds (if not thousands) of parts doing the critical work of moving the car forward"

Or you could substitute parts with designers.

Keep in mind that Steve Jobs chose Tim Cook and Tim Cook worked only with the approval of Steve Jobs. Had Tim Cook not performed (just like the car) be assured that he would have been replaced by a better person (car)? This in no way diminishes the person (car) but notice that the main person doing the decisions is Steve Jobs (The driver).

Had Apple failed everybody would have blamed Steve Jobs not Tim Cook, so I don't understand the double standard.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#92

Post by dagar »

wysiwtf wrote: post #61
jellicle wrote: post #53

What I grasp from this is that John Gruber and Peter Bright are just too dim to understand basic online stores. This qualifies for mockery from Gruber/Bright: > "Everyday Computing" But this is good understandable product description: > "The ultimate everyday notebook" (that second one is Apple's marketing copy for the Macbook Air). The low-end Macbook Air is $999 in Canada. Let's compare. I just priced a Lenovo X220…

Are you sure that X220 is similar enough to an Air, it doesn't look like an air and the design specs are quite bulkier: MacBook Air 11 inch: Height: .68 Weight: 2.38 MacBook Air 13 inch: Height: .68 Weight: 2.96 X220 12 inch: Height: 1.25 Weight: 3.6 I don't think it matters that you spec'ed it out to be slightly faster, I bet many of the people who want an Air-like notebook want the thinnest, cleanest, lightest note…

A fairer comparison might be the X220 with the 6 cell battery which is about 2.9 lbs and around 10 hours (advertised). It also has a 12.5" IPS screen.

I believe the 3.6 lbs you mentioned is with the 9 cell 15 hour battery.

For comparison the 11" and 13" Macbook Airs are rated 5 and 7 hours, respectively.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#93

Post by martingordon »

rayiner wrote: post #81
martingordon wrote: post #22

> It’s even worse if I just browse without searching. The options I get are just… meaningless. Yes, I want “Everyday Computing,” so I want an Inspiron. But hang on, I also want “Design & Performance,” so I want an XPS. Wait a second, I want “Thin & Powerful,” too. This is the crux of the problem with all of Apple's competitors, in the PC business and in mobile. Why choose when you can have everything? Apple's lineup…

I'm a geek and I couldn't care less what WiFi chipset is in my laptop. I was shopping for a ThinkPad X220 for someone, and it had the option of the regular screen or the "premium" screen for $50 more. They don't tell you what the "premium" screen is or why you'd want it. I presume the regular screen is shitty. Can you even imagine Apple offering such an option? A $1000+ laptop with a shitty screen, with a $50 option…

I don't care about WiFi chipsets either and should have added that in my comment. I was just using that as an example of the type of thing geeks might care about.

I just took at the Lenovo page for the first time ever. Of all the PC manufacturers, I've probably spent the most time on Dell's, and Lenovo's site looks like a complete rip-off of theirs.

And that display choice is horrible. Like you said, the $50 gets you a "premium" screen, where the only discernible difference on the page is that it comes with a 3x3 antenna instead of a 2x2. I've never heard of YxY as a measurement for antennas, nor is it readily apparent what 3x3 gives me over 2x2 (speed? power?). Not only that, I have to decide whether a webcam is more important to me than a 3x3 antenna because I can only get the webcam (a $30 add-on, by the way) with the 2x2 antenna.

Whatever respect I had for Lenovo (which is more than any other PC manufacturer thanks to their apparently successful continuation of the ThinkPad) just went down the drain. Average people are supposed to get this stuff? Give me a break.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#94

Post by dasil003 »

felipemnoa wrote: post #91
dasil003 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible analogy. There is not just one person making human decisions in Apple. Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great. It's easy to sit on the outside and imagine that Apple doesn't have a decision-maker to equal Jobs, but only time will tell.

>>Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great You could say the same about the car-driver relationship. "The driver deservers a lot of credit but the car has hundreds (if not thousands) of parts doing the critical work of moving the car forward" Or you could substitute parts with designers. Keep in mind that Steve Job…

Those parts are inanimate, they are not making decisions in and of themselves. Even the engineers working on the cars are operating within the unchanging constraints of physics. Also, if Apple fails people would blame Jobs, but if the car suffers a mechanical failure people don't blame the driver. The driver of a race car needs to push the machine to it's limit but not past it or he will flame out spectacularly. Such is not the case of an established technology company. In fact whole goal of a race is much more uniform than the goal of a company operating in the consumer market where you are contending with the fashion and whims of the public at large.

All in all I just don't see the point of such an analogy. It sheds no insight. Racing cars and building tech companies are no more alike than skydiving and underwater basket weaving.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#95

Post by armandososa »

socratic wrote: post #57
jellicle wrote: post #53

What I grasp from this is that John Gruber and Peter Bright are just too dim to understand basic online stores. This qualifies for mockery from Gruber/Bright: > "Everyday Computing" But this is good understandable product description: > "The ultimate everyday notebook" (that second one is Apple's marketing copy for the Macbook Air). The low-end Macbook Air is $999 in Canada. Let's compare. I just priced a Lenovo X220…

I tried to make this point below in a more subtle way, but you take on the issue more directly. Gruber's arguments never make any sense. Historically, he changes his opinions more or less based on what Apple is currently doing. He adds little value, and it seems clear that he's making a lot of money as a pro-Apple cheerleader from his blog posts. (Which is fine, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't make him a good news…

    Could we possibly, as a community, just agree that a blacklist of Gruber posts is good for us?
If I am to be considered to be part of that community then no, I can't agree with that. I actually like quite a lot the way he writes even if I don't agree with him most of the time.

In fact, I think the community has already agreed that they like Daring Fireball posts, otherwise it wouldn't be on the front page.

We can agree, though, to spend more time in /newest and complain less about what makes to the front page.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#96

Post by glenra »

microarchitect wrote: post #7
jballanc wrote: post #2

There's a story that I've heard told about Tim Cook numerous times. I can't remember the original source (there's a reference here: http://www.cultofmac.com/who-is-apples-new-ceo-tim-cook-bio/... ), but I think it basically sums up Tim: > When in a meeting discussing a problem in China, Tim Cook noted that the problem was “really bad” and that someone should be in China fixing it. Thirty minutes later, Cook then famo…

I understand these things are partly symbolic, but besides that is this really useful? I mean, is there a real business benefit to Apple by making Khan take the next immediate flight to China rather than the one a few hours later. Similarly, what was your friend doing that was so important that he couldn't wait to get a change of clothes? I personally do my best work when I'm relaxed and un-stressed. The apple enviro…

Speaking from experience as somebody who has done this sort of trip: Yes, it's hugely useful and there is a real business benefit.

First off, we're probably talking about a time when there were only a few direct flights a day from SFO to the relevant airport so if he didn't go that afternoon he'd have to wait until the next morning so instead of flying through the night he'd be flying through the day - flying RIGHT THEN means one less day in which your product slips its schedule.

Now recall that Apple used to have trouble getting enough media attention so they would schedule product announcements around, say, MacWorld or the Superbowl. Big events that cannot be moved. Every day the schedule slips makes it that much more likely you miss the intended product launch window. For Apple, if your product isn't ready to ship, it's not ready to show which means you've wasted a lot of money - your next suitable launch window might be months later by which time the product no longer has a compelling story to tell. Missing the intended launch date can mean the difference between a successful product and a failure.

Conference calls are expensive and tend to involve both high-level people and lower-level people. If the schedule is slipping, the chinese engineers won't necessarily tell you the truth about why it's slipping in that sort of forum - there's a face-saving issue. There are also communications difficulties when people who don't speak english well just nod and say "yes, we'll do that" without really understanding what they're agreeing to. Email can clarify and puts things in writing but the time difference means most exchanges lose at least a day.

Another factor is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". The same factory is trying to build products for you and a variety of other companies. When some other company's product totally unrelated to yours has a crisis, they might choose to rationally pull engineering resources away from your product to serve somebody else...if you're not there to nag and check up on the schedule.

The bottom line is that if you don't have at least one person there most of the time, your product stands a very very low chance of meeting your schedule or your quality targets.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#97

Post by bane »

dasil003 wrote: post #78
bane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but he forms cogent arguments" No he doesn't. The majority of his posts are transparent fact twisting and fantastically uninteresting (as are the predictable comment threads surrounding most of his posts). On the rare occasion he's not outright fanboying for Apple, he can be a decent and breezy writer. Unless he's actually providing some interesting commentary (and yes I do give his posts a read so I don't try and k…

He has his bias, you have yours.

I think we're in violent agreement.

But we can summarize the vast majority of Grubers posts thusly:

"Something about Apple = Great"

then generate a dozen or so threads of nothing but either fawning praise for Gruber or the same repeated complaints about his bias.

At this point Gruber posts and the follow up "conversation" (I'm using it charitably at this point) are something one could probably machine generate, then randomly insert the entire thing into HN's new queue and it would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

in other words, Gruber fails the Turing test and I for one (among apparently several HNers) are tired of having what are essentially Markov chains jamming up the front page.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#98

Post by eropple »

nohat wrote: post #8

The problem with the article he quotes is that it is wrong about the price of the x220. The x220 with default specs on everything except the bluetooth, webcam, ips screen (much nicer than an air btw), 128 GB ssd, and most expensive wifi (includes wimax) is $1290.60 . The ars article claims $1999.

Having owned an X201, test-driven an X220, and having sold the X201 in favor of the 11" Air, I have to disagree - the X220's screen isn't as nice as the Air's. The backlight on the Air can be made about as dim, but also much brighter, and color seems a decent bit more accurate (though that could be that Windows's color management sucks, while OS X's is pretty good).

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#99

Post by bane »

Steko wrote: post #86
socratic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have missed an earlier part of my comment. Because HN requires very high karma thresholds before enabling downvotes, net points are an extremely asymmetric measure. However, one possible solution would be to enable downvotes, but only on controversial posts such as Gruber's. That would enable both sides of the community to speak. How would you feel about such a measure? EDIT: Controversial might be define…

How hard is it for you to not click on something you don't want to read? I see hundreds of posts here every day that I don't click on, some in the top 5. I don't start campaigns to censor these posts, I assume people upvote them because they find value in them. Obviously people find value in Gruber's posts if they are being upvoted. So here's the suggestion again: don't click on it bro . Problem solved.

It'd be better if something I did want to read was in its place.

Re: The New Apple Advantage

#100

Post by [deleted] »

gcb wrote: post #85
dgallagher wrote: post #31

Another way to put this, Apple loosely abides to the "Good, Better, Best" lineup for their product offerings. They don't follow it exactly, but in general, they keep selection simple. This doesn't confuse customers, and allows them to easily compare one thing to another. If you've ever eaten at Panera Bread, you'll usually see people staring at the menu on the wall for a few minutes. Their menu is huge and all over t…

great analogy. and just like with food, anyone who has a clue about what they are ordering, will never enter an apple store.

[deleted]
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