The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#21

Post by wnevets » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #18

wnevets wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more like $pple, am I rite?

App£e. or Appl€. Ideally you could use the $ symbol but there's no s in Apple. Sure, you can just throw in whatever character you want, but !nevets doesn't make a lot of sense. what you're shooting for here is a pun. You want something that looks like a regular character, so @pple is kind of cute, but there are two obvious problems. One, it kind of looks like a direct message to pple, which falls apart. &pple isn't b…

yeah I was going to do that but apple is an american company and it doesnt make sense to use the euro. Using $pple is just as lazy as using m$ to call microsoft greedy.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#22

Post by cptskippy » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 8:59 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #8

I was thinking recently how Bill Gates often said the biggest competitor to Windows was the previous version of Windows. Alternate OSes didn't have enough market share or compatible software to really be a threat, but customers always had the option of just not upgrading. iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge…

> Apple's biggest challenge seems to be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all.

That's not much of a challenge for Apple. There is always a laundry list of features that people want but that aren't necessarily mature (e.g. Wireless Charging, NFC, waterproofing) and Apple keeps those in it's back pocket incubating. Occasionally it pulls one out and slaps it on one of their devices to boost sales.

They also drive sales by adding or removing features from their devices (e.g. Firewire 400/800, USB-C/MagSafe, Lightning) or dropping support for legacy systems.

Mechanical failure is also a common reason to upgrade but Apple seems to be cannibalizing this revenue stream by replacing mechanical devices (e.g. switches, buttons, touchpads) with solid state ones that use haptic feedback. I'm curious how that will play out, will Apple's Taptic engine be the point of failure?

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#23

Post by threeseed » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

CuGi wrote: post #5

I feel like Apple is trying to force innovation with their latest offerings. I'm not against change, but change for the sake of change is annoying. The idea well must be running pretty dry at Cupertino

20 years Apple released the iMac which did away with SCSI, ADB, RJ232 etc in favour of USB.

What they have done now with the MacBook Pro is exactly the same thing. They are trying to establish USB-C as the one port to rule them all just like they successful did with USB-A.

Yes change can be hard and some people like yourself clearly struggle more than others. But change is needed sometimes to push the industry forward.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#24

Post by threeseed » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

> Apple doesn't have anything to stand out anymore

They have execution and commitment.

When I buy a MacBook Pro I can expect to get many years of use out of it. The hardware execution is almost always exemplary and they will continue to support it on the software side during that tenure. Buying a Windows or Android product feels like you're only going to be supported for a year or two and that's it.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#25

Post by erichocean » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #22

jimbokun wrote: post #8

I was thinking recently how Bill Gates often said the biggest competitor to Windows was the previous version of Windows. Alternate OSes didn't have enough market share or compatible software to really be a threat, but customers always had the option of just not upgrading. iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge…

> Apple's biggest challenge seems to be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all. That's not much of a challenge for Apple. There is always a laundry list of features that people want but that aren't necessarily mature (e.g. Wireless Charging, NFC, waterproofing) and Apple keeps those in it's back pocket incubating. Occasionally it pulls one out and slaps it on one of their devices to boost sal…

Pretty sure iPhones today have NFC, it's just not available for anything other than Apple Pay.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#26

Post by TelmoMenezes » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #11

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hacker" as in "Hacker News" is from an even more distant past. The word just got appropriately decaffeinated, so as to be acceptable within our current iteration of group think.

Is the groupthink in this case laughing at the anachronistic usage of M$?

No. The groupthink is what causes the usage of M$ to be anachronistic now, and also what made it fashionable at some point in the past. Treating subjective opinions as objective facts and laughing at members of the out-group are symptoms of being engaged in groupthink.

Nothing wrong (or right) with any of that. I'm just observing.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#27

Post by GVIrish » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #23

CuGi wrote: post #5

I feel like Apple is trying to force innovation with their latest offerings. I'm not against change, but change for the sake of change is annoying. The idea well must be running pretty dry at Cupertino

20 years Apple released the iMac which did away with SCSI, ADB, RJ232 etc in favour of USB. What they have done now with the MacBook Pro is exactly the same thing. They are trying to establish USB-C as the one port to rule them all just like they successful did with USB-A. Yes change can be hard and some people like yourself clearly struggle more than others. But change is needed sometimes to push the industry forwar…

Unifying to one standard port is kind of cool, except for the fact that not even Apple's other devices use that type of connection and users will have to buy dongles for almost everything. That represents a concrete step backwards in user experience.

There is a time to be bold and throw your weight behind a better standard, but there's also a time when doing so makes things inconvenient with little to no benefit.

That wouldn't be so bad if the Macbook were significantly more powerful but here we have a machine with the same max RAM as the Macbook they sold 4 years ago while PC laptops are shipping with 4 times as much.

It just seems like Apple is focusing on making a sleek and visually pleasing device, rather than a device that will be most useful to those who want to work on MacOS.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#28

Post by doodpants » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

"A day later, Apple ended the long wait for laptop users yearning for an upgrade by unveiling a new line of MacBook Pros."

Meanwhile, they did nothing to end the long wait for desktop users yearning for an upgrade. I was expecting at least a cursory spec bump for their Mac Mini and iMac lines. I was hoping to replace my 6-year old Mac Mini sometime soon, but I don't want to do so with a 1-2 year old product.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#29

Post by pyrophane » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #10

BipolarElsa wrote: post #2

When M$FT profits are double Apple's then we'll talk about "role reversal"...

Obligatory Penny Arcade - https://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2002/07/22

Yea, things have changed... a lot. Back in the anti-trust days of bundling IE, bullying OEMs and undermining standards, MS was the evil empire of the day.

Now you've got Google backtracking on privacy and siphoning up user data to create ads that know you a little too well, Amazon as more threatening Walmart of the digital age, and Facebook trying to make sure that the only way you can experience the online world is through the censored lens of Facebook itself.

It makes all of the once-held fear of Microsoft dominance seem quaint.

At least Apple is still building pretty gear and killing useful ports, just like back in the day.

Re: The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft

#30

Post by jusben1369 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

> Just check out its striking video for the Surface Studio — it is so influenced by Apple’s playbook that I’m surprised there’s no Jony Ive narration. What's happened is that other companies have figured out how to emulate Steve Jobs's playbook that's now several decades old and there's nobody at Apple to write new plays. Jobs always talked about how Microsoft didn't have taste and when you look at MS products up unt…

One thing you're missing is how the market came to them, partly through their own making. Laptops and PC's looked "corporate" Apple products (blue, pink, green computers anyone?) looked decidedly uncorporate. The iPhone looked so not like a Blackberry (with it's accompanying belt holster!) However, the "consumerization" of IT meant sleek personal design was preferred to corporate design. The iPhone helped breakdown that wall and now MSFT and others went out the side door and are reentering as consumer looking devices.