Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple is a traditional business

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 248 posts

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#191

Post by Kalium »

c22 wrote: post #181
Kalium wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a really pointed indictment of our current industry. Wow. Is it? I read it as a series of attacks from someone who thought the status quo was just fine, and doesn't actually understand the value being delivered. Since they don't understand it, there must not be any. Since there isn't any value and it just hurts vulnerable people, it must just be callous evil. For example, Amazon's cashierless store sounds g…

You don't have to talk to cashiers.

True!

I feel like the real point is that cashier jobs are not something to be taken for granted. They are not a constant of the universe. The position serves a purpose, and the purpose is not to employ the underprivileged.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#192

Post by wpdev_63 »

loxs wrote: post #190
wpdev_63 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keep in mind that the NSA has remote sudo access to everything on your phone[0]. It's not completely secure and they're known to abuse their power time to time. [0]: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

Even so, I'm not in the USA and don't plan on visiting very soon. And I'm pretty damn sure my government doesn't have access to it.

You really should give some context to what you say or it's meaningless.

Also if you reside in one of the countries within the 14 eyes, they do have access to your phone[0]. It's a really good reason to think twice about buying american products and visiting their country knowing that they are creating a surveillance state. Wouldn't you agree?

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Other_international_...

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#193

Post by greedo »

btilly wrote: post #65
emodendroket wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs did not single-handedly invent the iPhone.

He did not. But he DID repeatedly question the value propositions that Apple is based on, and produce a new value proposition that cannibalized the existing business. Apple is now fundamentally following the course of milking the last value proposition that they were left with. There is a lot of profit to milk, but long term the industry will leave that value proposition behind and Apple will wind up one of the loser…

In the long term, we're all dead. Apple has been "doomed" for years, but seems to have hung on for 42 years. I think it's highly likely to survive another decade. I'd say that 50+ years in technology is pretty good for a business.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#194

Post by IncRnd »

abritinthebay wrote: post #144
IncRnd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first implementation of a smart phone was likely the LG Prada not the iPhone.

I mean... if you're playing that kind of naive equivalency then the first "smartphones" were the early PDA/Phone hybrids like the HP OmniGo 700LX, the pdQ, or the Nokia 9000 Communicator. But that would be silly, because the modern "smartphone" era was absolutely started with the iPhone.

You misunderstand. My answer was to refute that the innovation in smartphones came about with the iPhone and not the LG Prada which was released the year prior, market penetration notwithstanding. I was talking about smartphones in the vein of the iPhone not of the technology that could be assembled to make a phone.

HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and were like night and day compared to either the Prada or iPhone. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#195

Post by thanatropism »

scarface74 wrote: post #176
zeveb wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what can't you "tinker" with that you would like on OS X - The kernel (yes, there's Darwin — I don't believe it's possible to replace a working macOS kernel with my own build) - The window manager - The Finder - Cocoa - Safari - XCode (although I believe some components are open source) - iMessage - Facetime

The Window Manager - nothing stopping you from using XWindows. The Finder - it's just a file manager, what's stopping you from using any other file manager? Cocoa - is just a Framework for building Mac apps. Nothing stopping you from using another Framework Xcode - just an IDE on top of open source build tools. IMessage - just a messaging program. Nothing stopping you from using another messaging program. FaceTime -…

The word "kernel" has a special meaning for operating systems.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#196

Post by MBCook »

kerng wrote: post #121
MBCook wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not an incremental leap. It was MASSIVE. Yes, all the technology was there. We had smartphones and they would have continued without the iPhone. The value of the internet in your pocket is too big for the smart phone not to become a huge thing. Eventually. But Apple NAILED the UI. They made it so simple that 3 year olds can use the UI and are confused when other computers don’t work through such great touch co…

The success was massive, the innovation aspect just part of incremental (small) progress in the grand scheme of things I would say.

Why do you think the innovation was small?

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#197

Post by IncRnd »

bitwize wrote: post #155
IncRnd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first implementation of a smart phone was likely the LG Prada not the iPhone.

"Smartphone" was coined as a marketing term by Microsoft in the early 2000s to refer to PDAs with cell radios that ran Windows CE. These early smartphones were bricks -- not Zack Morris phones, but hand-sized bricks nonetheless -- and required a stylus to operate.

Yes. That was the point. However, you are forgetting that the first "smartphone" with a _touchscreen_ was Simon made in 1992 by IBM. Even so, Simon wasn't in the vein of the iPhone, which is really what this discussion is about, not marketing terms.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#198

Post by MBCook »

smitherfield wrote: post #161
MBCook wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it would have taken? Seriously? It took Google a few years to catch up having their massive resources and Apple as a guidepost. RIM had no incentive, they were trying to lock you into the BB server product and tried to get consumers on it to. The phone was a means to an end. MS wanted to push Windows. They’d been trying since CE first appeared and it still didn’t take off. As long as Balmer was…

>How long did it take the rest of the industry to catch up to the Mac from ‘84? The Amiga was '85. It did take a while for PC-compatibles, of course.

I knew the Amiga was pretty close, but in the grand scheme of things it’s somrthing of an also-ran (sadly). I didn’t know the exact years for the Amiga though.

I was thinking of MS world. Windows 3 wasn’t until 1990. You could argue it took until Windows 95 for most everyone to go GUI.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#199

Post by soared »

Kalium wrote: post #175
oflannabhra wrote: post #11

> ...this is a time when Amazon is pushing innovations that don’t solve any real-world problems but may create some: like smart speakers, with their threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase in convenience, or complex and expensive cashierless stores that won’t deliver much of an improvement to our shopping experience but may cost underprivileged people their jobs. This is a time whe…

> That is a really pointed indictment of our current industry. Wow. Is it? I read it as a series of attacks from someone who thought the status quo was just fine, and doesn't actually understand the value being delivered. Since they don't understand it, there must not be any. Since there isn't any value and it just hurts vulnerable people, it must just be callous evil. For example, Amazon's cashierless store sounds g…

It feels like it was written by an old man who doesn't understand how innovation in consumer technology works. Companies produce a bunch of seemingly pointless products, but some use of them sticks and is built upon until you get a product that sees widespread use. Ex. Tablets - everyone thought big phones were pointless, but now tablets are everywhere.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#200

Post by Retric »

IncRnd wrote: post #194
abritinthebay wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... if you're playing that kind of naive equivalency then the first "smartphones" were the early PDA/Phone hybrids like the HP OmniGo 700LX, the pdQ, or the Nokia 9000 Communicator. But that would be silly, because the modern "smartphone" era was absolutely started with the iPhone.

You misunderstand. My answer was to refute that the innovation in smartphones came about with the iPhone and not the LG Prada which was released the year prior, market penetration notwithstanding. I was talking about smartphones in the vein of the iPhone not of the technology that could be assembled to make a phone. HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and were like night and day…

Touchscreen was simple hardware it does not make a smartphone any more than a Camera or Internet connection does. There where 3 major gaps, gestures, native apps w/App Store, and a web browser capable enough to run 'Web 2.0' apps. And while not a direct phone feature an internet plan with useful bandwidth caps for regular browsing which also a major jump in how you used them.

Android, Windows phone, and iPhone all added these core features.

Post reply on HN