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Only Apple

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Re: Only Apple

#141

Post by seabrookmx »

rayiner wrote: post #82
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 h…

I honestly couldn't find a complaint with the Nexus 5. It's a stunning, fluid device. The only leg up in my eyes for the iPhone is the better app curation, but as someone who uses mostly web apps and Hangouts that's not a big demerit to me.

Re: Only Apple

#142

Post by fryguy »

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 just hate that I can't charge my phone in my co-workers car because uses an iPhone. Vertical integration is great and all, but having horrible experiences with outside things isn't.

Re: Only Apple

#143

Post by malandrew »

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.

Actually we are worse for it. No one focuses on cooperating on standards that could provide better experiences anyone. How often do you meet an engineer that has contributed to an IETF RFC or a W3C specification, and implementations of that specification.

If anything, Apple has popularized the tragedy of the commons, giving everyone a false prophet to worship: walled gardens are the way to make seemless experiences.

The only reason walled gardens provide seemless experiences is because everyone trying to make their own walled garden fragments things further.

I know of know experience more seemless than Internet Protocol. RSS and XMPP were also pretty seemless for the user.

A vision of the world where walled gardens are viewed as the only path to a seemless experience produces a vicious cycle leading to a dystopian self fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Only Apple

#144

Post by jimejim »

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…

Can we just call a fanboy a fanboy? He'll always frame discussions of Apple in a positive way. Occasionally, he'll have an interesting insight into the Apple ecosystem, but I had to stop reading since far too often he's making little trollish jabs at everyone else.

I also still disagree with this article. This year was a surprising high note in the amount of stuff that came together assuming it all holds up well after you get past the marketing they're good at. We'll have to wait and see if this is a continuing trend for them or we just got lucky this year. I would love to see it continue.

Re: Only Apple

#145

Post by kalleboo »

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.…

> I don't find iCloud or iTunes or the App Store slow myself.

iTunes and the App Store are way slower than the typical web sites I browse (including other stores such as Amazon). I also have problems with them sometimes just not loading at all (white pages). And this is on LTE or 100 Mbit WiFi.

As a developer, you tell the App Store is janky since you can literally see the propagation of your app updates before your own eyes. Sometimes the "update" button shows up before the update is actually available (and the app store redownloads the same version), sometimes the update is available in search results before the app information page, some times the update push notification comes first, not to mention replication geographically and across the different country stores. It's first an hour after your update is released that the app store is consistent. It's pretty tolerable now, but it used to be way worse and would take up to 10 hours - we'd get complaints from users due to all the failed updates when the store was inconsistent. We still get complaints on new app releases for random "this product is not available" errors for the first couple hours.

Re: Only Apple

#146

Post by seabrookmx »

seiji wrote: post #24
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.

To march out some old tropes: Apple makes money by delighting users so they will continue to buy products. Google makes money by tracking users, forcefully if necessary, and abusing their advertisers. Microsoft makes money out of legacy ties these days—they don't deserve to continue existing.

You clearly have no idea how many enterprise web applications and data centers run on .NET. I will agree Microsoft's legacy is allowing them to limp on in the consumer space, but many companies, new and old, are moving to a MS stack for enterprise due to the great developer experience and seamless integration (not unlike Apple on the consumer side).

How much of the internet is served up by OS X?

Re: Only Apple

#147

Post by mariodiana »

"What we saw last week at WWDC 2014 would not have happened under Steve Jobs."

I watched the keynote from the WWDC, and I was struck by the very positive, upbeat, and friendly vibe that seemed to come from it. I'm a big Steve Jobs fan, and I hate to agree with a statement like the above, but my thoughts after watching the keynote were that Apple is done mourning the passing of their founder and former CEO and, if anything, seems stronger now. "Mercurial" isn't a compliment by anyone's standards, and it isn't easy working under someone like that. Perhaps Apple will thrive in its new era. Watching the keynote, it seemed like the people up on stage were pumped up in a very real way.

Re: Only Apple

#148

Post by hyperbovine »

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.

> Me either.

I think this attitude is a very typical of HN and very atypical of the larger world. Almost everyone I know who does not work in tech would be completely enamored of a single Apple device which seamlessly interfaces with their house, car and life. They would love to live in that world--and soon will. All this hand-wringing by a niche community over Apple's lack of openness seems incongruous when compared to the literally tens of millions who would embrace such a thing with open arms. You really begin to wonder which side has the right of it.

Re: Only Apple

#149

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

gress wrote: post #122
MAGZine wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Privacy concerns. Speed. Efficiency. Mobile data costs.

Re: Only Apple

#150

Post by eridius »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #139
eridius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One single bad experience which could have just as easily been caused by your ISP, or even by you (e.g. by using a DNS provider that interacts badly with CDN geolocation), turns you off forever from a service that otherwise acts better than its competitors? That's a rather extreme statement to make. Besides, do you really think the competing services don't have the same potential for problems with whatever delivery n…

Netflix and Amazon have a different failure mode where they deliver lower picture quality in order to maintain faster-than-real-time delivery. In the case of Amazon, when this happens you get an email within a day refunding the difference between the HD and SD quality stream, if you paid for the HD one. A very good experience.

You consider that a good experience? I hate it when I get a low-quality stream from Netflix. I actually would prefer to be able to force it to buffer the HD stream, even if that means waiting a bit before I start watching.
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