Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#221

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

nathas wrote: post #98

Certhas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. The talk that Microsoft is irrelevant is a bit hilarious, given that they beat google on revenue and income last year. They have morphed from a company that is front and center to one that provides the infrastructure for the digital side of non-tech business. Microsoft Office is absolutely pervasive, and i…

> Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. Source? Edit: Sorry, that was lazy of me. Googled: https://mspoweruser.com/cio-surey-finds-microsoft-azure-will... A bit of a biased source, "mspoweruser". Read a bit more.. We'll have to see how the offerings change or evolve in the next 5 years. Edit 2: https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/02/microsoft-…

It's all based on Morgan Stanley’s "2016 CIO Survey". It doesn't appear to be publicly available.

I've been the drone filling out surveys like this for CIOs in the past. Sometimes those surveys ask these sorts of things indirectly, especially if it's a paid survey. For example, they might assume that O365 utilization drives Azure adoption. (Behind the scenes O365 auth is an Azure service) Another example would be asking if your org has MSDN or an EA. In both cases, that provides some "free"/NFR Azure services.

A few years ago, Gartner pushed a survey like this where 40% of a group of drunken CIO types at some conference claimed that they wouldn't buy PCs or smartphones for employees after 2018. This stuff just isn't that meaningful.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#222

Post by Mathnerd314 » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #218

mikeryan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil. These are primarily iterations or extensions of existing products, not new products (in the blue ocean sense) as seem to be defined in the article. This is the complaint the article makes with "execution" executives. As products they're all mechanisms for increasing revenues on existing (re: stagnan…

Mac Pro, Apple Watch, Pencil, Apple Music were not iterations. There was nothing similar before them from Apple.

Pencil and Watch were projects in the pipeline around the time Steve Jobs died, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20150907064440/http://www.busine... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/watch/11452455/H...

Apple Music is a logical continuation of the Beats Music store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Music. Mac Pro was released in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro

It's not clear if there's anything new in development at Apple.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#223

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #200

Spooky23 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see. Sometimes it's a bunch of hype and horseshit too. Apple can provide most of the consumer services on the devices without external services. There's a risk that they cannot execute, but there's a real risk to the Google approach too -- swaths of the business can be wiped out by regulatory action.

> Sometimes it's a bunch of hype and horseshit too. Yes, I apologize if I wasn't clear. My point was that it's hard to see what is disruptive technology and what is nothing. Plenty of things labelled as disruptive end up as nothing. Plenty of things labelled as nothing end up as disruptive. I was just saying it's never easy to tell which is which.

We violently agree on that. :)

I'm a big fan of using machine learning to identify photos, etc. Google did it first on their cloud platform, and Apple is doing a pretty good job at it locally on iOS devices.

I'm not a big fan of folks like the Watson marketing team telling me that my IoT fridge is going to replace my doctor and order a gallon of milk for me when I need it. As the Amazon experience with the dash has aptly demonstrated with paper towels that cost 30% more than Costco, that's a way to spend more money on junk!

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#224

Post by Certhas » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

nathas wrote: post #98

Certhas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. The talk that Microsoft is irrelevant is a bit hilarious, given that they beat google on revenue and income last year. They have morphed from a company that is front and center to one that provides the infrastructure for the digital side of non-tech business. Microsoft Office is absolutely pervasive, and i…

> Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. Source? Edit: Sorry, that was lazy of me. Googled: https://mspoweruser.com/cio-surey-finds-microsoft-azure-will... A bit of a biased source, "mspoweruser". Read a bit more.. We'll have to see how the offerings change or evolve in the next 5 years. Edit 2: https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/02/microsoft-…

That was where I saw it. It seems the market is balancing, rather than AWS pulling away, with YoY growth better for Google than for Microsoft and both better than Amazon:

https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/amazon-leads-microsoft-...

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#225

Post by astrodust » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #220

alexpersian wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Pro and MacBook Pro are still very capable, solid, and focused machines. Go into any dev shop on the planet and you will see that's true. The only point your comment is right on is the Pro moniker being attached to an iPad.

The Mac Pro is pretty ancient at this point. If you see them in dev shops, it's because they simply don't have any other choice: if you want a powerful desktop Mac, then you buy the Mac Pro, even though it's three years old. And even that is not necessarily true anymore. The iMac tends to beat it on many tasks now. At this point, people buy it because they really want to bring their own monitor, or they just can't im…

That's the bind Apple's in. The market for the Mac Pro is very small, and it's also extremely demanding, they're never happy.

The iMac has a much broader appeal, the market is demanding but not to the same extreme. Many designers use these machines because they've got great screens and acceptable levels of performance.

I'm not sure Apple can win in the Mac Pro space without losing a ton of money. HP and Dell make high-end workstations, but it's a very tiny market compared to their general desktop and server sales.

Apple likes to focus on products it can sell millions of, not tens of thousands.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#226

Post by Certhas » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

chocolatebunny wrote: post #113

Certhas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. The talk that Microsoft is irrelevant is a bit hilarious, given that they beat google on revenue and income last year. They have morphed from a company that is front and center to one that provides the infrastructure for the digital side of non-tech business. Microsoft Office is absolutely pervasive, and i…

Who's saying Azure will over take AWS? Last I heard AWS was an order of magnitude larger than its nearest competitors.

Factor 3 according to this with more YoY growth:

https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/amazon-leads-microsoft-...

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#227

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #218

mikeryan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil. These are primarily iterations or extensions of existing products, not new products (in the blue ocean sense) as seem to be defined in the article. This is the complaint the article makes with "execution" executives. As products they're all mechanisms for increasing revenues on existing (re: stagnan…

Mac Pro, Apple Watch, Pencil, Apple Music were not iterations. There was nothing similar before them from Apple.

[deleted]

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#228

Post by astrodust » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

bischofs wrote: post #10

Tim Cook is a "Bozo" - He has moved the focus away from computers and the companies core professional users and turned Apple into a fashionable health services company. They will coast for a while on their dominant mobile market share but eventually the stagnation and lack of new products will catch up to them. He built a watch, which was a "me too" product and answered a question that no one asked. Jobs would never…

> He has moved the focus away from computers...

The market moved away from computers, not Tim. PC sales are imploding, that whole market is a shell of what it used to be.

A desktop computer is not an essential piece of kit any more, and even a laptop is a luxury. Many people survive almost exclusively on their phone or tablet, they have little to no need for an actual computer.

IBM divested itself of desktop computers, HP's flirted with the idea for over a decade, and Dell had to undergo a huge restructuring just to survive. Every single PC manufacturer is getting pounded by dwindling sales.

So yeah, he's a bozo.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#229

Post by strictnein » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #218

mikeryan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil. These are primarily iterations or extensions of existing products, not new products (in the blue ocean sense) as seem to be defined in the article. This is the complaint the article makes with "execution" executives. As products they're all mechanisms for increasing revenues on existing (re: stagnan…

Mac Pro, Apple Watch, Pencil, Apple Music were not iterations. There was nothing similar before them from Apple.

The Mac Pro is an overpriced fancy computer case, nothing more.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#230

Post by astrodust » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

alexland wrote: post #171

audunw wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the hate for this mouse design. Have you ever used it? Actually - have you ever used a wireless mouse in general? You know how rarely you need to change batteries or charge them right? To design a wireless mouse around the idea of using it while being wired would be a massive design fail. It would compromise the design of the common use case in order to improve the extremely rare use case.

The design fail is not taking the obvious and consistent (albeit spaced out) need to charge the mouse into account. It's not like some people don't have to charge this mouse; everyone will charge the mouse at some point, and they will do so consistently over the years. With this design, I get a first class experience using it when the batteries aren't empty, but I literally cannot use the mouse when I need to charge…

Once a month I need to flip the thing and plug it in. The amount of hassle is almost zero. It charges quickly enough that on a few minutes of charging it can limp along for another hour or so.

I've had other cordless mice that needed to be charged in a special cradle, which is basically the same thing, and I never heard anyone bitching about "hilariously backwards" design. Most people reviewing the product thought that was convenient.