Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

statista.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 104 posts

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#91

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

aworks wrote: post #88
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #38

Nice. The only company out of the FAANG which is worth its salt and will survive into the future.

It's behind a paywall but Barron's just removed Apple, Meta and Tesla from their "magnificent seven." Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA remain. They were bearish on Apple due to revenue declines for 4 consecutive quarters and lack of growth in sales in iPhones and Macs as well as a high PE ratio. They suggest Vision Pro won't "move the needle." They prefer Alphabet over Meta and having both in a portfolio might be…

If Barron knew anything about the stock market they would have made money

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#92

Post by hnfong »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #37
jedberg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google glass was ahead of its time. And was creepy with its recording ability and other features it launched with. Also, it was only a display for an attached phone for the most part. It couldn't really do anything. This is a whole computer strapped to your head.

Why would you want a computer strapped to your head? Computers generate heat and have weight that you'd rather put in your pocket than have to support with your neck. To make it work you're stuck with a trade off between performance, weight and battery life when none of those is fun to sacrifice in this context.

You could have said the same things to laptops 40 years ago, and smartphones 20 years ago.

As long as Moore's law limps along, eventually performance/weight/battery will work out.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#93

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the processing power in an AirPod outclasses Apollo 11’s Apollo 11 was in 1969. It had a 2048 KHz processor. The processing power in a Bluetooth headset from the 90s outclasses Apollo 11's. > Most people who have AirPods didn’t have earbuds with the wire. Those who did didn’t wear them like AirPods. Are you really contending that this is a difference of the same magnitude as the iPhone?

> Are you really contending that this is a difference of the same magnitude as the iPhone? Yes. Convincing a large fraction of the population to not only adopt a novel computing device, but attach it to their person in a publicly-visible way is something that happens a few times a generation at most.

Except that you could say the same thing about the watch.

I feel like people are just grasping at straws.

The iPhone changed how people communicate, how they buy things, how they access information.

AirPods got people to stop complaining that Apple took away the headphone jack. I suspect that might have even been the main reason Apple made them.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#94

Post by AnthonyMouse »

hnfong wrote: post #92
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want a computer strapped to your head? Computers generate heat and have weight that you'd rather put in your pocket than have to support with your neck. To make it work you're stuck with a trade off between performance, weight and battery life when none of those is fun to sacrifice in this context.

You could have said the same things to laptops 40 years ago, and smartphones 20 years ago. As long as Moore's law limps along, eventually performance/weight/battery will work out.

Moore's law has been dead for a while now and nobody really knows how much more we can get in terms of performance per watt. But even if it continues to improve, you're implying that what they've got right now is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable

Or maybe worse than that, because the trade off never really goes away. Desktops and servers are still faster than laptops, but portability is a huge advantage, so sacrificing some performance is worth it to have something with you everywhere you go. But how much performance is it worth sacrificing to avoid having a phone in your pocket? Nowhere near as much as it is to avoid lugging a desktop computer around with you.

Or to measure it from the other side, lots of people still have a Macbook even though they also have an iPhone.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#95

Post by funcDropShadow »

sho_hn wrote: post #67
chx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making a touchscreen phone had been the writing on the wall and pretty obvious to many. Really. This reminds of this discussion https://reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wdp6n/what_makes_the_o... I opened a decade ago asking "What makes the Oculus different from previous VR?" and the winning answer was pointing out how much the 1994 IBM Simon Smartphone feature list resembled on the surface the iPhone feature list. In…

I'm not talking about columnists. Journalists are not people who build things. I'm talking about people who build things and think about what to build next. The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point. Lots of devices already worked like this…

> The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point.

Not only the option was there, there were mobile phones with touch screens before the iPhone. Anyone remembers Windows Mobile? It resembled windows very much, including the start button. It was just ridiculous. One of the central innovations of the iPhone was making scrolling with touchpad as natural as flicking a piece of paper over a table. It seemed instantaneous. Most touchpads before the iPhone weren't capacitive. They required a lot of pressure. Using them for scrolling seemed ridiculous.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#96

Post by Izkata »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #95
sho_hn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about columnists. Journalists are not people who build things. I'm talking about people who build things and think about what to build next. The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point. Lots of devices already worked like this…

> The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point. Not only the option was there, there were mobile phones with touch screens before the iPhone. Anyone remembers Windows Mobile? It resembled windows very much, including the start button. It was ju…

My mom had a resistive touchscreen phone years before the iphone. Icons on the home screen and everything. I think it was Samsung, not sure though.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#97

Post by nojvek »

keenmaster wrote: post #64

AI is the greatest threat to Apple’s dominance. They might be spending billions on creating an AI-centric iOS and iPhone, and that would be money well spent. If Android phones put a personal secretary in your pocket, fully integrated throughout the device, then iPhone users would be very tempted to switch without feature parity.

Apple would hire those engineers and build something similar.

AI needs those GPUs/TPUs to run and on mobile phones they need to be power efficient.

Apple has the best flop/$/watt SOCs right now.

But you never know.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#99

Post by hnfong »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #94
hnfong wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have said the same things to laptops 40 years ago, and smartphones 20 years ago. As long as Moore's law limps along, eventually performance/weight/battery will work out.

Moore's law has been dead for a while now and nobody really knows how much more we can get in terms of performance per watt. But even if it continues to improve, you're implying that what they've got right now is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable Or maybe worse than that, because the trade off never really goes away. Desktops and servers are still faster than laptops, but portability is a huge advan…

That's why I said Moore's law limping along.. it has slowed significantly, and the original transistor doubling every 18~24 months is definitely dead, but transistor processes are still improving, slowly.

The trade off is always there, but more people are using their phones over their desktop computer these days.

That said, I do have serious concerns the greater impact to society in general when transistor technology hit a hard roadblock. Probably outside the scope of this discussion though.

Re: Apple Ramps Up R&D Intensity to Pre-iPhone Levels

#100

Post by candiodari »

sho_hn wrote: post #72
astrange wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The novelty in the iPhone wasn't a touchscreen, it was a capacitative multitouch screen and a UI framework that could do their app designs but still at 60fps. Although the last one wasn't purely technical; IIRC Nokia got it, decided it was cool "because it was 60fps", tried to compete just by doing that and failed. > having a proper web browser (which Apple didn't even write themselves) Yeah they did. There wasn't th…

> The novelty in the iPhone wasn't a touchscreen, it was a capacitative multitouch screen and a UI framework that could do their app designs but still at 60fps. I'd agree with this, but it's also not the narrative I was arguing against :-)

In other words: it was the attitude espoused by John Carmack more than Steve Jobs. New technology creates a new market IF you can make it work brilliantly well.

And, frankly, Carmack's "trick", which he does but doesn't admit to, is to rewrite everything from scratch every time he makes a release (more or less). That's how, that's why he got so incredibly good at it. Innovate once, optimize 10x (by throwing away what you got), repeat.

Companies don't do that, because it means having a department make tech demos and nothing else. Again, and again, and again, the SAME tech demo.

Post reply on HN