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Only Apple

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Re: Only Apple

#81

Post by eridius »

vacri wrote: post #78
seiji wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get what the significance of this post is, and why it is at the top of HN. It's a thoughtful and timely analysis about the most important company currently in existence which many people routinely fail to understand or simply dismiss out of hand due to preexisting prejudice or misplaced nerd allegiance.

" the most important company currently in existence " ... " misplaced nerd allegiance " Having the most liquid assets does not mean that the company is the most important company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow, the world would go on without a hiccough. They are glitzy and glamourous and yes, influential, but there are more important companies out there - particularly in transport or essential services. Edit: Updated…

What op said:

> the most important company

What you said:

> the most fundamentally necessary company

You just changed the entire argument right there, and yet blithely went on as if your counterpoint had any relevance to the original assertion. "The most important company" could be taken a lot of ways, and I highly doubt op was intending that to mean "fundamentally necessary".

Re: Only Apple

#82

Post by rayiner »

Todd wrote: post #70

Sorry to disagree with Gruber, but I don't think a set of devices made by one company is the future. It's always been Apple's play, in part because of the consistency of experience that it affords them, but it also let's them off the hook on the hard problems--device interop, working with varied OEMs, etc. Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forwar…

> Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward.

After a six-month experiment with Android on a Nexus 5, I couldn't disagree more. Separating the folks who make the OS from the folks who make the device just leads to compromises.

Apple has the right model. Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. This is the way forward. I'm extremely excited to see what Microsoft can do with Surface and Lumia brought under one roof.

Re: Only Apple

#83

Post by MAGZine »

coldtea wrote: post #65
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #19

Gruber waves off the other players' devices or operating systems, but takes Apple's web services / cloud infrastructure as a given. Here in reality, Apple's web services are atrocious. Weirdly implemented, slow, and frequently unavailable backend services are not a healthy part of the triad that Gruber is proposing.

> Weirdly implemented, slow, and frequently unavailable backend services Well, they do have the #1 app store, a syncing/backup service used by half a billion people, and the #1 music store in the world (per profit / people). Oh, and a huge music storage service. I don't find iCloud or iTunes or the App Store slow myself. And I'm tens of thousands of miles from the US, and thousands of miles from a decent latency ISP.…

> a syncing/backup service used by half a billion people

Someone unwilling though, yeah? Lots of people I know don't turn on iCloud, and are annoyed with the iTunes implementation.

> and the #1 music store in the world (per profit / people). Oh, and a huge music storage service.

But Apple has done nothing to stop/retain the market of those flocking to music streaming sites (Spotify, which has record growth; rdio, Google Music, among others) except BUY a streaming service with poor adoption.

I think the Open/Close part is part of the reason why Apple's services pale in comparison.

As for speed, I would be very surprised if Apple had better service than Google or Amazon, as these companies are much more invested in the Web than Apple.

Re: Only Apple

#84

Post by sdegutis »

Todd wrote: post #70

Sorry to disagree with Gruber, but I don't think a set of devices made by one company is the future. It's always been Apple's play, in part because of the consistency of experience that it affords them, but it also let's them off the hook on the hard problems--device interop, working with varied OEMs, etc. Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forwar…

I can almost hear the cringing of so many programmers at Apple right now as they read "finally doing interesting things in the developer area with Swift", considering the last 5 years saw tons of excellent improvements to Objective-C.

Re: Only Apple

#85

Post by eridius »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #68
function_seven wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pumps at the local gas station also have such a button. Should he have mentioned those? A reasonable reader understands that "unique", "no one", and "anything" are referring to the market Amazon is selling the device in.

On your way to absurdism you skipped over a bunch of legitimate prior art in the consumer space, such as the OnStar roadside assistance system (press a button in your car, OnStar service rep starts talking through your radio), or even dialing zero on your phone.

Both of those things you cited are services you pay for. I was not familiar with Amazon's Mayday button (not being a Kindle Fire HDX owner I guess), but it appears to be a wholly free service you get merely by owning the device. OnStar and the phone system are both subscription services.

Re: Only Apple

#86

Post by MAGZine »

curun1r wrote: post #76
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I simply don't believe Google has the best interests of anyone at heart except themselves and advertisers. You think Apple has your interests at heart? Or Microsoft? Like Google, they have your cash at heart. Not a thing more.

No, it's very much different than Google. Google doesn't have your cash at heart. They've largely been uninterested in your cash. The cash they do care about is that of the advertisers that use their platform. Apple is unapologetically interested in your money and less interested in impinging on people's privacy. We can argue over which model is preferable to users, with may preferring to pay and others preferring th…

I like to think Google gives you a choice of how you're being advertised to, product depending. Lots of times they give you the option to limit the data you send to marketing firms, or outright limit the data they collect (i.e. location history, search history, etc)

Re: Only Apple

#87

Post by song »

Glide wrote: post #75
song wrote: post #61

> Apple has proceeded from being OK at walking and chewing gum to being good at it. That may be so but honestly the last release of OS X that really worked for me was snow leopard. Just as a quick list of common well known issues with Mavericks that I have and I'm not the only one to have... - Sometimes when I plug in my headphone, there's a bug and audio stops working instead of switching to the headphone. The only…

Btw, I have a coworker that has the external screen problem and he's had it crash 4 times in a day. He had to take it to the Apple store because it's a hardware issue.

Thanks, that's something I'll look into. For me it started happening often with the latest update so that's why I ascribed the issue to software but could be just a coincidence...

Re: Only Apple

#88

Post by eridius »

function_seven wrote: post #58
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he should just learn to write, then, because his statement is totally unqualified. "unique" "no one" and "anything" all appear in this statement. These are words with meanings. "That’s truly remarkable, and a unique Amazon advantage. No one else has anything like this." -- Gruber

The pumps at the local gas station also have such a button. Should he have mentioned those? A reasonable reader understands that "unique", "no one", and "anything" are referring to the market Amazon is selling the device in.

That doesn't seem at all relevant. That's like saying in a retail store you can ask the retail employees for assistance. The addition of a button to summon an employee does not make it special.

What interests me about this Amazon Mayday button (which I had never heard of before) and why I think Gruber talked about it, is because it's a completely free service provided to owners of a consumer device. It's basically customer service, but it's extremely fast (average of 9.75 seconds to get a response? Wow!) and apparently rather comprehensive too (e.g. helping a customer beat an Angry Birds level) as opposed to being restricted to actual tech support with the device in question. This is why Gruber is saying it's remarkable and unique, and I think he's right.

Re: Only Apple

#89

Post by eridius »

MAGZine wrote: post #71
coldtea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Amazon both understand the web a whole heck of a lot better than Apple I really doubt this. Google yes. Amazon no. What has Amazon did that shows it "gets" the Cloud? It has its one (and that's it) highly succesful store front (which is like a Google that only offered the search service). That's is, as far as the Cloud goes for Amazon. As for AWS, the do get cloud infrastructure and services to developer…

I disagree. Kindle is a shining example of this. Apple on the other hand... well, they created iTunes... but that's really the only "cloud" technology that they have besides the actual iCloud (hosted on AWS, possibly?). Apple has shown that they struggle when creating web experiences for customer. Remember ping.fm?

Given that Apple tries to lump all its cloud offerings under the iCloud banner, deliberately dismissing iCloud in order to claim that iTunes is the only "cloud" technology Apple has is extremely disingenuous.

Re: Only Apple

#90

Post by bthomas »

yzzxy wrote: post #38
slm_HN wrote: post #13

Daring Fireball is hard to read because the website is so poorly formatted. I rarely make it past the first paragraph. The font is too small, the margins are too huge and the colors have poor contrast.

Yeah, avant garde doesn't really work for web design as soon as it starts impacing readability.

It's certainly memorable though, and that must help his personal brand. I don't like it either, but I wouldn't dismiss it as a bad idea from his perspective.
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