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Only Apple

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Re: Only Apple

#111

Post by vacri »

eridius wrote: post #99
vacri wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, speaking of changing meanings, the OP said "the most important company in existence ", which is a different claim to the one you're trimming it down to. Next time you're admonishing someone for changing the argument, don't do it yourself.

You're just being pedantic. Adding the words "in existence" to my quotation would have changed nothing at all about my argument. I left it off precisely because it wasn't relevant to the point I was making, which was that you were attacking a very obvious straw man.

Speaking of attacking very obvious straw men, you ignored that I was quoting two parts of the OP. I'm not here to rank companies in a line and award one as the winner, because that's a silly thing to do given the complexity of the human experience.

I was saying that the term "the most important company in existence" is the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of someone with "misplaced nerd allegiance". That was the point of juxtaposing those two snippets. What makes an important company? It depends on what you're talking about, hence the reference to transport or essential services. And if we're talking 'in existence', then that really widens the field. But it's the 'misplaced allegiance' people that come up with phrases like the OP did.

Basically I was calling the OP a hypocrite, deriding others for the same thing the OP is doing. And now you've responded twice, committing the same sins as you accuse me of... changing arguments, straw men, and pedantry.

Re: Only Apple

#112

Post by bane »

leorocky wrote: post #12

There is always a lot of careful insight in Gruber's posts that I like but it is tainted with a type of enthusiasm that doesn't belong in journalism. Even if he is correct, being a cheerleader with liberal praise isn't analysis. It's opinion, and Gruber often reads like an opinionist. Apple is an amazing position to build all kinds of wonderful technology, and Samsung does come across as a shallow copy cat that throw…

He's among the most obvious and ridiculous shills out there in the tech world. He's usually not interesting or insightful and I flag his articles 9 out of 10 times I see them. But this is above average for him and I didn't flag it.

It could be edited to half length if you cut out the apologia, but he's brought forward some interesting points that I think are the nucleus of an interesting discussion this time. I actually sort of just wish he posted the quotes from this article without any of his ridiculous commentary.

Re: Only Apple

#113

Post by anko »

malandrew wrote: post #72
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…

There are different layers of the cloud: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. The only layer Apple gets is SaaS and really only for its own apps/services. Apple keeps trying to do PaaS, but the anti-decentralization and specifically wall-garden approach of a seemless experience across all your Apple devices, but a sometimes intentionally crippled experience across other devices you own and a certainly deficient experience with devic…

I think Apple understands both PaaS (the new icloud stuff in ios8/yosemite) and SaaS (most of their offerings which were decent up until now).

I don't think IaaS really comes into this discussion at all - If they did it or didn't do it, it wouldn't matter because it doesn't change how many phones or devices they sell. IaaS is targeted at a niche - companies/people who can afford server admins.

Calling apple's experience "intentionally crippled" is also disingenuous. Maybe you can find a few examples ie. storage size costs, but generally, they are trading off user simplicity and security against user control.

Apple's not alone in this regard either. You might say Google "intentionally cripple" their open source version of android: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-....

What I find more appalling is that google pretended to be open to get a marketplace advantage.

As for Homekit - can't you just buy home automation devices that adopt more than one standard? I would love for apple to open up more of their new apis to other platforms, but what do they do when an android device's insecurity causes someone's house to be hacked?

Re: Only Apple

#114

Post by bane »

malandrew wrote: post #110
bane wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this points to Apple's fundamental weakness: when they can't control the experience, their efforts are second-rate. It's a weird binary behavior that's tied to the pre-internet days. You buy into Apple's ecosystem and you do Apple-y things and you'll have a world class experience, a 9 or 10 on a 10 point scale. But as soon as you start interfacing with anything else, especially something messy like the Intern…

Excellent comment. The only thing I would contest is the last comment about Samsung. It is like 1/3 of South Korea's economy, but its not a true comparable because it functions more like a keiretsu [0]. At it's core, it's a bank that finances many companies operating in different industries that cooperate when it makes sense. They are a giant in computing, but they also draw a ton of strength from other lines of busi…

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was only referring to the Samsung electronics division (which is quite a bit bigger than all of Apple).

Re: Only Apple

#115

Post by malandrew »

eridius wrote: post #95
MAGZine wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dismiss iCould because it's large data storage. It doesn't prove apple is any good with making web services that people want to use, just that they're good at sending data, receiving it, storing it for later retrieval. I'm not handing out praise for being able to run an smtp server. (alright, that's a bit reductionist, but you get the idea)

> I dismiss iCould because it's large data storage. It's a lot more than that. It's all of Apple's cloud offerings, including email, contacts, calendars, iWork, backup, document synchronization, data-specific synchronization of various things like keychain and mail accounts, photos (storage, syncing, and galleries), it even covers their services like Find My iPhone. There is a lot of stuff Apple is doing with iCloud,…

    "It's all of Apple's cloud offerings, including email, 
    contacts, calendars, iWork, backup, document 
    synchronization, data-specific synchronization of various 
    things like keychain and mail accounts, photos (storage, 
    syncing, and galleries), it even covers their services 
    like Find My iPhone."
Yes, but almost all those APIs are made available as a cloud offering to Apple software only. Third party developers are only afforded the ability to interface with most of these APIs via APIs in FoundationKit.

If I can only get access to this stuff via an API on the device, then it is not really cloud API. It's not like Apple is making these APIs available to developers via something like REST.

The only ones that are available are those that have a strong open standard that Apple can't wall gardenify like IMAP/SMTP, CalDAV and CardDAV.

Re: Only Apple

#116

Post by gregoire »

leorocky wrote: post #12

There is always a lot of careful insight in Gruber's posts that I like but it is tainted with a type of enthusiasm that doesn't belong in journalism. Even if he is correct, being a cheerleader with liberal praise isn't analysis. It's opinion, and Gruber often reads like an opinionist. Apple is an amazing position to build all kinds of wonderful technology, and Samsung does come across as a shallow copy cat that throw…

I agree with you, Gruber's posts are indeed sometimes tainted, but Gruber has always claimed that DF is a column, as he explained in an article [0]:

If asked to describe Daring Fireball with just one word, I would not choose weblog. Rather, I would call it a column. Given a few more words, I would call it as a Mac column in the form of a weblog.

He stated it again in an interview[1]:

In 2002, when I started Daring Fireball, doing a sort of columnist-style weblog simply felt like something I was compelled to do. I could write whatever I wanted, however I wanted.

[0]: http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/independent_days

[1]: http://shawnblanc.net/2008/02/interview-john-gruber/

Re: Only Apple

#117

Post by rayiner »

kalleboo wrote: post #98
rayiner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

> 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. That's not my (anecdotal) experience at all. My friends with similarly-specced phones like the Xperia Z1 Compact have their battery last way longer than my iPhone 5S. The iPhone may have better standby life, but we're heavy users, and as soon as you're using it…

The z1c has a 60% larger battery and weights 25% more. Ounce for ounce, or per mAh, though, the iPhone has really impressive battery life. Where it really excels is standby and radio power management. 10 hours of LTE browsing on Anand's and GSMArena's tests. My Nexus 5 is often on its last legs by midday with less than two hours of screen-on, because it'll chew through its battery in weaker-signal conditions. The iPhone tends to avoid killing itself that way.

On the desktop side, Apple is in the 10-12 hour range of light use with the MBA and MBP Retina. Comparable ThinkPads require the six-cell add-on battery to get there.

Re: Only Apple

#118

Post by anko »

bane wrote: post #103
malandrew wrote: post #52

This is largely true, but it draws the playing field Apple wants you to see. There is a large part of the playing field that is omitted, cloud, the web and the Internet in general. And this playing field alone is as important as all the playing fields Apple is competent in combined. Apple is second to last in that respect. Google and Amazon both understand the web a whole heck of a lot better than Apple. Only Samsung…

I think this points to Apple's fundamental weakness: when they can't control the experience, their efforts are second-rate. It's a weird binary behavior that's tied to the pre-internet days. You buy into Apple's ecosystem and you do Apple-y things and you'll have a world class experience, a 9 or 10 on a 10 point scale. But as soon as you start interfacing with anything else, especially something messy like the Intern…

I personally think Safari is better than 5/10. And I'd also suggest that their web browsing (interfacing with something messy like the internet) capability on iphone 1.0 set the standard for internet usage on a mobile device.

I think what you're saying is that apple doesn't try to do everything like google does. They try and remain focussed on products that they think are the most important. I see this as a strength.

Re: Only Apple

#119

Post by gress »

patrickaljord wrote: post #33
sscalia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my cash - the end user. Not other companies looking to get my "attention"

The fact that apple apps such as itunes do not work on android only serves apple and their lockin strategy, not you or your cash.

No, it just means that Android is not a good environment for companies that want to charge money for what they do. Apple is far from the only company that experiences this.

Re: Only Apple

#120

Post by eridius »

vacri wrote: post #111
eridius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just being pedantic. Adding the words "in existence" to my quotation would have changed nothing at all about my argument. I left it off precisely because it wasn't relevant to the point I was making, which was that you were attacking a very obvious straw man.

Speaking of attacking very obvious straw men, you ignored that I was quoting two parts of the OP. I'm not here to rank companies in a line and award one as the winner, because that's a silly thing to do given the complexity of the human experience. I was saying that the term "the most important company in existence" is the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of someone with "misplaced nerd allegiance". That was…

If you wanted to argue against what the op was saying, then you had no reason whatsoever for putting brand new words in op's mouth and attacking those words. But that's what you did, which is why your entire argument is a meaningless straw man attack.

And now you're trying to tell me I'm doing the same thing to you? That's preposterous. Stop trying to be evasive and just admit you committed a rather obvious and stupid logical fallacy and move on with your life.

(don't expect any more responses from me on this thread, since you only seem interested in being defensive)

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