koop

The phones are not 2017 "flagship" caliber. Yet they went up $50 on their base model. They have horrifically large bezels that I was complaining about last year. It's really uncomfortable on the Plus models. They've been rumored to go to OLED for years now, and yet couldn't get their supply chain ready in time, so we're back to LCD. There's just too many OLED phones on the market and most of them are incredible displays with super thin bezels. Their stupid obnoxious tween marketing for things like animojis and studio mode are not going to get people rushing in line for these things.

Apple still has the best OS on the market, the best CPU under the hood, and a lot of nifty hardware advantages like Taptic, 3D Touch. They've made some ridiculous hardware decisions over the past two years that have been costly to their customers, and maybe this is the year it will bite them in the ass.

MacPro said:

 No in depth rebuttal in defense of Google so far.  Gatorguy must have the night off.

To be honest AR is dull. I've seen the early stuff, and some of the popular games. I don't know why people and DED lose their minds over Google like this. We live in a duopoly, both companies are just gonna chug out massive earnings reports and Google's gonna put all its stuff on iPhone and the consumer gets to enjoy the rising prices of phones, encroachment of privacy and all these undercooked tech showcases. These guys barely compete with each other. They just need to match features and call it a day.

Sounds to me like Google and Apple are playing to their strengths. The interesting question is if Apple's hardware advantage continues to be meaningful in 5 years. That's not being antagonistic towards the iPhone, as I think iPhones right now are in the best place they've ever been when it comes to just straight up hardware prowess. The iPhone X will be an amazing showcase for Apple's design team.

As some people have said though, we're asking our phones questions more and more. Our phones are becoming less computers where our fingers are the mouse, and more A.I. that responds to needs as we ask them, or simply by gazing at the environment through passive noise, or cameras pointed at something. This is something that doesn't necessarily demand an A11 Bionic, or a Taptic system under the hood. All awesome hardware advantages now.

I love my iPhone 7, but I don't love Siri. This is becoming a bigger and bigger problem every year. I've used Google Assistant, and on Android it's becoming an increasing advantage. Apple claims Siri is getting better every year, but until she can tap into the huge database of information Google has, it's always going fumble in many questions I ask on a daily basis. How long Apple can fall behind in this category is a much bigger deal than the widening lead they have in CPU benchmarks.

pepe779 said:

hmurchison said:

pepe779 said:

I don't quite understand Apple's ambitions in this particular area, because these speakers/assistants clearly have very limited practical usage and are basically gimmicks that I don't believe anybody truly uses longer than maybe a few days and whatever Amazon is trying to achieve by adding a screen to it is just utter nonsense imho. This is not about innovation or solving real life problems anymore, this is about flooding the market with products that have no meaning and are just DOA. I seriously don't see why I would buy and use this instead of simply using my iPad for the very same purpose.

No this is incorrect.  I use my Google Home every single day.   It controls the lighting in my room, plays music genre on demand and if I was more steeped in the Google Universe would manage my Calendar, ToDo and more. 

When you say "I don't see ...."  the important part to realize is the "I" you are unique and bring your own set of values and perspective that will differ from others. 

Okay so since you're one of those users who see the added value here, please, explain how different or better it is compared to simply enabling "Hey Siri" on your iPad or iPhone, because somehow I still fail to understand that.

They have weak speakers and microphones being that they are battery powered devices. That's enough of a reason there. You'd have to experience the Echo's ability to pick up sounds and play music to know that it makes sense as a stationary voice assistant at that price point. Google Home often hits $99, and an iPad is $329 at its cheapest.

services like Flipboard, Apple News and Google News are addictive and I do use them, but they have contributed to the saturation and watering down of how we consume news. I don't claim to know the business aspects of this decision, but I do feel from my perspective that news organizations need to gain back their identity, and perhaps participating in these big news aggregators isn't the long term solution to that problem.