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John Ternus to become Apple CEO

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Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#671

Post by npunt »

ezst wrote: post #598
VirusNewbie wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airpods? They make more than most SaaS decacorns. How can you not credit that as a massive success that came out of nowhere?

Yes, what about airpods? Little reason to buy them if you are not in the Apple ecosystem, and if you are, and you are a careful buyer, you'll probably settle with other brands which are technically ahead (in either of build, sound or ANR quality, or all, Apple being on the Pareto front of neither). I'm not dismissing the marketing forces behind airpods selling by the millions as a "status symbol", but that's very muc…

Apple plays the 'it's the best for most people' game, not the 'technically ahead in [one or a few feature categories]' game. They make the lion's share of profit in the categories they compete in because they sell to the mass market; there's 2.5 billion active iOS devices!

Every time I see someone here dismiss this success as status symbol-oriented marketing, I just shake my head at how much that signals a deep misunderstanding of how the world works or what most of the human race wants in a product. Nobody wants the Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds because Sony doesn't even give a shit enough to give them a name people can remember. Nobody wants Bose earbuds because nobody wants to open a buggy spyware-laden app to turn on/off noise cancelling. These products are destined to fail because they make simple things complicated, untrustworthy, bothersome.

People are whole-experience buyers, not single-feature buyers, and the experience nearly every person on earth wants is the magical 'I put it in and it works' experience. What people want is all the upside of the magic of technology and none of the cognitive overhead associated with it. The specific choices that make up a product offering - aka the product marketing - reflect the inherent desire of the customer. Any luxury / status symbol aspects come AFTER that.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#672

Post by throwaway27448 »

cesarvarela wrote: post #379
pzo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what’s all bad with us stocks and completely disconnected with market value: Revenue jumped 4x but market capitalization got inflated to 12x.

Some of that is debasement, but some of that is that there is no other brand like Apple. Would you not own stock of the most valuable brand in human history?

Most valued brand, not the most valuable.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#673

Post by artk42 »

hobofan wrote: post #661
71bw wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.

The reason is that Google are highly commercialized first on thier maps, while Apple focused on major markets. E.g. I can remember the times like 2017, when Apple maps was as rocky as possible, but they were working fine in Shenzhen with matching chines to transcriptions, while Google maps sucked at scale there.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#674

Post by louthy »

hobofan wrote: post #661
71bw wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.

I’m in Europe. I use it as part of Apple CarPlay for all my navigation and I think it’s much better than Google Maps (for car navigation, at least)

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#675

Post by maciejzj »

71bw wrote: post #654
btown wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: > “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that…

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

Anecdotal evidence, but I do use Apple Maps in Poland and they work just fine for me, I guess the mileage may vary.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#676

Post by daemin »

71bw wrote: post #654
btown wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: > “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that…

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

I made the mistake of trusting Google Maps with driving directions in Sicily, and it always sent me down tiny single lane (but two way) roads because they were "better" by the algorithm. That taught me to trust my gut and follow the highways/main roads rather than use any shortcuts that an algorithm can conjure up. (I'm sure this has relevance in the age of LLMs).

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#677

Post by friendzis »

freedomben wrote: post #86
trsohmers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software people, in my very direct experience, are terrible at hardware... While in jest, I do think most software engineer's understanding of hardware abstractions is pretty poor and does disservice to the hardware they run on. I know between Moore's Law and Gate's Law which one I would prefer to be the industry standard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law

Generally speaking, I think both are true. Most people seem to have an affinity for either hardware or software, but rarely for both. Those who do are extremely unique. I don't mean that as an insult to anyone, just as an observatin having worked in both (and personally am much better at software than hardware, even though I enjoy both).

Hardware and software have VERY different deployment cost functions and lifecycles. Having "affinity" for one requires a mindset not really suitable for the other and being able to juggle mindsets, especially short vs long term focus is rare in itself.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#678

Post by spacebanana7 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #478
pzo wrote: post #338

I hope Ternus can turn this ship. Apple wasted the last 5 years without any significant innovation/revolution or even without significant evolution. No groundbreaking change from iphone 12 pro in current iphone 17 pro. Before we had many groundbreaking features that redefined how you use smarphone: - gps - flashlight (yes everybody with flashlight in the pocket!) - front selfie camera + video calls - compass + accele…

Don't forget about the Apple Car. 100% of that failed, and Tim spent a decade on it. Quite a bit of attention on here, but it seems we've quickly forgotten all about it since it was never seen. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=apple+car

Apple was wise to get out of the EV business. It's very expensive in terms of factories, regulation etc and not very profitable. They had no first mover advantage, government backing or legacy advantage.

What's the best case scenario? Make few billion a year fuzzed with long term warranty liabilities? That might sound nice, but for apple their companion products like AirPods or the Apple Watch easily clear much better profit. Putting their corporate effort into another companion product is more economically sensible and far less risky.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#679

Post by carefree-bob »

ezst wrote: post #598
VirusNewbie wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airpods? They make more than most SaaS decacorns. How can you not credit that as a massive success that came out of nowhere?

Yes, what about airpods? Little reason to buy them if you are not in the Apple ecosystem, and if you are, and you are a careful buyer, you'll probably settle with other brands which are technically ahead (in either of build, sound or ANR quality, or all, Apple being on the Pareto front of neither). I'm not dismissing the marketing forces behind airpods selling by the millions as a "status symbol", but that's very muc…

Apple didn't use to be a status symbol. I think they earned it. And the fact that they are going all in on Neo tells me they don't care about the status symbol part as much as the profit maximizing. Let me know when Ferrari sells an affordable car.

Re: John Ternus to become Apple CEO

#680

Post by serial_dev »

hobofan wrote: post #661
71bw wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.

I can’t reply to sibling comment, but the Apple Maps native integration in the Apple ecosystem is far far ahead of Google’s. Their CarPlay, Watch, notifications, island etc integration shows how all apps should feel, but not even Google can be bothered to have the integration right.

to be frank, I have a feeling that Google has more / better data.

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