Only Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Only Apple

#121

Post by malandrew » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:45 AM UTC

anko wrote: post #113

malandrew wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experie…

Providing only device APIs and few to no network APIs counts as intentionally crippled in my book. But as you said, Google does this as well, but not nearly to the same degree as Apple.

Google doesn't cripple the end-developers, it cripples the OEMs and their ability to take Android in other directions. This sucks because it hurts diversity of ideas that can succeed in the market. I don't like either Google's or Apple's approach here, but Google's is the lesser of two evils.

Re: Only Apple

#122

Post by gress » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:45 AM UTC

MAGZine wrote: post #83

coldtea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, Goo…

Can you explain why anyone would not turn on iCloud backups for their device?

Re: Only Apple

#123

Post by roberthahn » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #107

roberthahn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store." Me either. Even so, I still believe Apple got the model right. If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. Then you would have many options at hand to control your house, car, and life.

> If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. That would require these companies to share interoperability specification. Something Apple tries mightily to not do. All that being said, Apple definitely sets the gold standard on the user-experience axis, and the entire landscape is better for it.

Not at all. Each Apple-like company would create their own inter-op ecosystem for their own devices. In this hypothetical world, Todd would get exactly the choice he asked for - all of the good user experience without the Apple brand.

Re: Only Apple

#124

Post by malandrew » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #114

malandrew wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

No need to apologize. It was a spot on comment.

Re: Only Apple

#125

Post by eridius » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #115

eridius wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 af…

Since when does "cloud" require an API that's open to the entire world? That's never been part of the definition of cloud services before. And there's no compelling argument for why Apple should try and open up iCloud to people who aren't using Apple devices (which is to say, there's no good argument for why it's in Apple's own interest to do that; obviously there are arguments for why other people might want them to provide that access).

Also, there's no such thing as "FoundationKit". There's a framework Foundation.framework, but most of the iCloud-related APIs live elsewhere.

Re: Only Apple

#126

Post by cromwellian » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

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…

I don't think it has anything to do with the hardware. Android does a lot more to drain the battery, the Android Sync mobile is constantly downloading stuff in the background, and Google Now runs continuously.

If you want to see an iPhone 5S have the same battery life as an Android device, turn on Google Now on iOS with Location History.

Re: Only Apple

#127

Post by WoodenChair » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

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 problem with hacker news (and really all online forums) is how plagued it is by "anecdotal" experiences. I would appreciate if people took the time to Google for some facts instead of writing about random anecdotal experiences that might be exceptional or misinformed. rayiner's response is really what would've helped the original post, even if it was coupled with something anecdotal.

Re: Only Apple

#128

Post by mahyarm » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:48 AM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #105

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…

Its odd to imply that Apple iOS has a worse developer experience than Google. IMO, MS is far and away the best but if I had the choice of targeting Apple's 5 devices vs Android 1000, I'd choose Apple. I have not heard spectacular things about Android development, especially with regards to fragmentation that would lead me to believe that from a developer POV Google is better than Apple. Granted that this is only for…

In my experience, the java code is more concise to read and easier to deal with. At work the android client is less 'visually ambitious' than our iphone client, but tends to actually have less bugs and faster development times. Android has put some thought into multi-sized layouts and had the right idea how to do ui layout files from the start with their xml layout files. Android accepts the reality that multiple versions exist and allow you to backport new libraries into old versions. iOS not so much and we feel the pain in our development times and bugs.

Apple did their GUI foundation right with CoreAnimation, touch recognition and choosing c++ & objective-c as the foundation of their mobile OS. Android didn't do it right with java, a garbage collected language and their UI rendering fundamentals, and everything suffers the consequences of that today.

Re: Only Apple

#129

Post by thefreeman » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:51 AM UTC

roberthahn wrote: post #100

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 don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store." Me either. Even so, I still believe Apple got the model right. If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. Then you would have many options at hand to control your house, car, and life.

And you would have to make sure you bought them all from the same company. That is the problem. What if the company makes a great phone but a terrible refrigerator?

Re: Only Apple

#130

Post by cromwellian » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:51 AM UTC

Disneyland can be a more pleasant town experience than a real American main street. But not everyone can afford to live in Disneyland, and not everyone likes the controlled environment.

BTW, Gruber's article claims Apple makes most of their stuff, but as far as I can tell, they only make the CPU. Everything else is licensed ip: camera modules/sensors, GPU (PowerVR), etc.