Uh yeah it does actually lol. The very fact that companies were putting out devices that consumers were responding positively to is enough to show things would naturally have progressed to where they are today.
It's not that far fetched that Apple saw where things were going, and formulated their gen 1 iphone around it.
It gets a little confusing because this argument always goes from "Apple did it first" to "Apple did it better, first" and in either case, people always try to convince me that without Apple, we would all be using RAZRs or something.
Let me just ask you this: Do you truly think the idea of a touch screen phone NEVER crossed the minds of the people over at Google as they poured money into R&D for Android? Your answer to this question will influence my opinion of you from here on out
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
It's easy to argue the inevitability of history in retrospect, which you have, but, such an argument is meaningless unless you can definitively show why is was inevitable, which you haven't. Simply throwing out a vague, "consumers were responding positively," does not lend your assertion much support at all..
However, looking at the dominant phones at time, and the fact that Google was heading down the same path as those, makes it entirely plausible that phones would not have been what they are today. It may also be plausible that they would have, but it certainly cannot be asserted with any certainty.
This is a fascinating topic, allowing for intelligent arguments on either side. It is also one likely to produce boorish ranting from either side. Thank you to those who have posted helpful or intelligent responses.
From my perspective i think there is right and wrong in both positions: Apple's and Google's. They could compliment each other perfectly but fear of the future ( by which i mean the need to keep business models profitable) has lead them to move tanks onto the lawns of the other. I don't know the reality of the situation (not being a board member of either company) and so am left with having to take a prejudiced view. As I am a fan of Apple and it's values and not of google and its values i am prejudiced to Apple.
You will note that my comments are neither helpful nor intelligent. I apologize but it is because i am not intelligent or tech savvy and so don't know how to be helpful.
I'm sure this is all a smoke screen to advert the DOJ from coming down on Google and Apple. Apple has repeatedly said that their niche in computers is no problem. Same with phones. Yet now we have the suposed battle even though Eric and Steve were seen on friendly terms. I don't buy that there's a war. I think they are collaborating on strategy to this day with their aim of subduing Microsoft.
I disagree. If you've lost money year after year while "selling" a consumer product, you're not really selling it very well. If you want to be good at selling a consumer product, you have to be able to sell it at a price that pays the bills.
Wow, do you have any concept of business? A product that sells at a loss is called a loss leader, and this practice is widely employed, intensionally, across many companies and many industries. The reasons are many, but since the topic has turned to discussing the XBox 360, lets discuss the PS3. Just imagine if Sony had sold the PS3 at a price that would have "paid it's bills," according to you. The sticker price would end up being much too high for consumers to swallow for a gaming system. So Sony took massive losses, at least initially. I believe it was publically noted this spring that Sony, after 2-3 years, finally broke even on each system it sells. Point is, loss leaders are a necessary way of doing business in industries. Microsoft isn't the only company that "loses money year after year" on its flagship products.
The quarterly numbers for the Xbox are in the black now, but they were deeply in the red for the first several years. The sunk costs on this project are fairly staggering. I'm not sure if they've reached the point yet where it has become net profitable. That's no way to run a railroad.
I am not sure because they do not disclose their accounting procedures, but for the last few years, they 'claim' to have made a significant profit on the 'project' not hardware alone. For the 'project', if they break even to 'their plan', in general, if they are 'reporting' profits, then its making money.
Actually, this is a very common accounting practice. Aircraft development for example. Development is amoritized out over dozen of years based on projected sales (thats one model).
But who knows... its accounting(no offense to accountants out there).
Wow, do you have any concept of business? A product that sells at a loss is called a loss leader, and this practice is widely employed, intensionally, across many companies and many industries. The reasons are many, but since the topic has turned to discussing the XBox 360, lets discuss the PS3. Just imagine if Sony had sold the PS3 at a price that would have "paid it's bills," according to you. The sticker price would end up being much too high for consumers to swallow for a gaming system. So Sony took massive losses, at least initially. I believe it was publically noted this spring that Sony, after 2-3 years, finally broke even on each system it sells. Point is, loss leaders are a necessary way of doing business in industries. Microsoft isn't the only company that "loses money year after year" on its flagship products.
Yup.
All the more interesting that Microsoft killed KIN (no pun) so quickly. Some bright knob over there finally said 'hey, why don't we just make it a feature of phone7 software...' We'll duh!
If Apple stayed away from the iphone, definitely you wouldn't see as many contenders stepping up, but it's far fetched to think that phones wouldn't have naturally progressed to where they are today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
Actually it's not far fetched at all that phones would not be like they are today. Google obviously was not heading in that direction. The Blackberry was the wildly popular phone of the time. It's quite plausible that, if Apple had not released the iPhone at the time they did, phones might have evolved in an entirely different direction than they have and would be nothing like the phones that exist today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chronster
Let me just ask you this: Do you truly think the idea of a touch screen phone NEVER crossed the minds of the people over at Google as they poured money into R&D for Android? Your answer to this question will influence my opinion of you from here on out
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
Google's pre-iPhone Android prototype with a keyboard speaks volumes about what their engineers were thinking.
You're right, touch-screens were previously available. Palm had them. The first touch-screen smartphone I know of was the Palm-OS based Handspring Treo (before Palm bought Handspring.) It was not a market changer. People disliked the Graffiti interface and hated the on-screen keyboard even worse. Handspring (and then Palm) actually had to add keyboards to their devices, relegating the touch screen to little more than cursor-positioning and menu-selection.
You may also remember all the criticism from the press when the iPhone was first announced. Everybody insisted that the lack of the mechanical keyboard was doomed to failure, because nobody has ever been successful with one in the past.
It was only after iPhone sales went through the roof that the conventional wisdom changed and manufacturers started considering the possibility of a device with a touchscreen-only interface.
Ditto for multi-touch. The first most people ever heard of this tech was a video by Jeff Han in 2006. Nobody was talking about it, let alone shipping products before then. Then we saw some Apple patent filings for multi-touch input devices and everybody started talking about it.
So I agree with "anonymouse" when he says that a multuitouch-based Android phone was not inevitable. Without the presence of the iPhone, they could very easily have gone in a different direction, releasing a product completely different from what ended up shipping.
Apple has always been the innovator. Google is a one-trick pony that just adds features and increase specs but doesn't innovate.
Yeah, Apple has never copied any ideas from anyone. They're the only company that has never copied anyone else's ideas or seen a great idea and tried to improve upon it and offer it to consumers.
That's ridiculous. Companies often take existing ideas and try to improve upon them, or take them in slightly different directions. They ALL do it, or have done it in the past.
Jobs is not "rewriting history." Yes, Google was working on Android before they saw the iPhone. Everyone knows that already. However, Google obviously had little idea WTF they were doing until they saw Apple's iPhone. Google was busy copying BlackBerries, for crying out loud! Then, once they saw the iPhone, Boom! on went the lights and they started working to make Android a half-assed iPhone copy and, quite likely, infringed on Apple's patented intellectual property in the process (court cases are ongoing). This is the gist of what Jobs is saying, and his history is absolutely right.
Page is being quite disingenuous, probably out of acute embarrassment. Did you really found Google in order to be just another lame Apple copier, Larry? Or are you just going along with Eric T. Mole's so-called "strategy?" Either way, you and Sergey ought to be embarrassed.
Apple leads. The likes of Microsoft, Google, and many others follow poorly. As usual.
What's with DaSomething? I noticed he made a Segway with the comparison between a loss leader like the xbox and the apple tv. Perhaps he has the numbers to back his bullshit up. To compare those two is beyond the lowest boundaries of intelligence measurement. Xbox is apparently finally making enough profits, although I do not have any idea on how much of a loss they will sell Kinect, and if they do sell it with a loss, they're back to square one.
Still, I think that Xbox is a very good product. Kinect is perhaps the first amazing "vaporware" from MS that wasn't, in fact, "vapor", and that is astounding, to a good degree.
But XBox is, unfortunately for MS, an oasis surrounded by a big dry desert of ideas and execution. Just check its latest debacle, the "Kin". It's no "Apple TV", mind you, it was actually nuked a month after being put into marketplace. Their phone developments are apparently in shambles, with reports of people being sacked and the products going out of control... it does not bode well for an already outdated smartphone OS even before launch (the windows7phoneseries... who de fuck comes up with these names?!?!).
So all we have left is RIM, Apple and Android... WebOS is already attending its own funeral at HP...
RIM is very good with its core clients, the enterprise, but their OS is really outdated. If they are unable to change their OS architecture to a more modern one, I think they will slowly peak and then come down.
Apple, in turn, showed the world its own vision of a phone, a phone without buttons (heresy!! impossible!! no one will buy this shit!!), a phone with simple icons in its home page (simpletonic!! what no customizable homepage, how typical of apple!!!), a phone with an app store. And how did Android came to be? A photocopy of Apple's iPhone. And now Page tells us that Jobs is "rewriting history".
Well, that sucks. That really does. Because I don't mind people telling the story from their own perspective, and I always take it with a grain of salt, but I find that kind of story telling the most interesting. Of course that Jobs would tell a story like he wants it to be. But then to come this other guy and say "no no no no, he's lying to you people", that's serious business. That's fucking insulting, specially if we have all the evidence stating otherwise.
And then, after making this insult to Jobs and to our intelligence, he comes about and teaches us that it's all alright with Apple, which is a second blow to our intelligence. Oh seriously? So you tell us that the other CEO guy is a lying bitch and then state that everything's fine between you two?!? For fuck's sake.
I also agree with the analysis that Google is the new Microsoft. They are cheap, execute poorly and photocopy what Apple does. There are somethings different though. I still don't hate Google as I hate Microsoft, and they have a better taste than MS. I always viewed the austerity of their web pages and their browser very positively.
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
It's easy to argue the inevitability of history in retrospect, which you have, but, such an argument is meaningless unless you can definitively show why is was inevitable, which you haven't. Simply throwing out a vague, "consumers were responding positively," does not lend your assertion much support at all..
However, looking at the dominant phones at time, and the fact that Google was heading down the same path as those, makes it entirely plausible that phones would not have been what they are today. It may also be plausible that they would have, but it certainly cannot be asserted with any certainty.
Complete and utter bullshit. Sorry, but I actually am a geek who kept up with what was the latest and greatest before the iphone was ever out. A simple google search for what microsoft was doing in 1999 found this for cryin out loud: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...ricssonpr.mspx Everyone can crap on windows mobile all they want (even when they've never even worked with it for a second) but it's true: Apple pretty much copied MS in a LOT of ways, and if they hadn't come out with the iphone, phones would have still gone in the direction they're going today. Full screen PDA's with multimedia support, internet browsing, the list goes on. And if you think I'm full of shit, please tell me what Windows Mobile copied from Apple. You can't, because it was first.
I've been in this debate plenty of times. People who never paid any attention to PDA's until the iphone came out are absolutely confident in arguing with me over this.
The bottom line is, I'm not completely irrational in thinking Google would have made Android into what it is without the iphones existence. Someone hurry up and invent a way to look into alternate realities for f's sakes
Comments
Uh yeah it does actually lol. The very fact that companies were putting out devices that consumers were responding positively to is enough to show things would naturally have progressed to where they are today.
It's not that far fetched that Apple saw where things were going, and formulated their gen 1 iphone around it.
It gets a little confusing because this argument always goes from "Apple did it first" to "Apple did it better, first" and in either case, people always try to convince me that without Apple, we would all be using RAZRs or something.
Let me just ask you this: Do you truly think the idea of a touch screen phone NEVER crossed the minds of the people over at Google as they poured money into R&D for Android? Your answer to this question will influence my opinion of you from here on out
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
It's easy to argue the inevitability of history in retrospect, which you have, but, such an argument is meaningless unless you can definitively show why is was inevitable, which you haven't. Simply throwing out a vague, "consumers were responding positively," does not lend your assertion much support at all..
However, looking at the dominant phones at time, and the fact that Google was heading down the same path as those, makes it entirely plausible that phones would not have been what they are today. It may also be plausible that they would have, but it certainly cannot be asserted with any certainty.
From my perspective i think there is right and wrong in both positions: Apple's and Google's. They could compliment each other perfectly but fear of the future ( by which i mean the need to keep business models profitable) has lead them to move tanks onto the lawns of the other. I don't know the reality of the situation (not being a board member of either company) and so am left with having to take a prejudiced view. As I am a fan of Apple and it's values and not of google and its values i am prejudiced to Apple.
You will note that my comments are neither helpful nor intelligent. I apologize but it is because i am not intelligent or tech savvy and so don't know how to be helpful.
I disagree. If you've lost money year after year while "selling" a consumer product, you're not really selling it very well. If you want to be good at selling a consumer product, you have to be able to sell it at a price that pays the bills.
Wow, do you have any concept of business? A product that sells at a loss is called a loss leader, and this practice is widely employed, intensionally, across many companies and many industries. The reasons are many, but since the topic has turned to discussing the XBox 360, lets discuss the PS3. Just imagine if Sony had sold the PS3 at a price that would have "paid it's bills," according to you. The sticker price would end up being much too high for consumers to swallow for a gaming system. So Sony took massive losses, at least initially. I believe it was publically noted this spring that Sony, after 2-3 years, finally broke even on each system it sells. Point is, loss leaders are a necessary way of doing business in industries. Microsoft isn't the only company that "loses money year after year" on its flagship products.
The quarterly numbers for the Xbox are in the black now, but they were deeply in the red for the first several years. The sunk costs on this project are fairly staggering. I'm not sure if they've reached the point yet where it has become net profitable. That's no way to run a railroad.
I am not sure because they do not disclose their accounting procedures, but for the last few years, they 'claim' to have made a significant profit on the 'project' not hardware alone. For the 'project', if they break even to 'their plan', in general, if they are 'reporting' profits, then its making money.
Actually, this is a very common accounting practice. Aircraft development for example. Development is amoritized out over dozen of years based on projected sales (thats one model).
But who knows... its accounting(no offense to accountants out there).
Wow, do you have any concept of business? A product that sells at a loss is called a loss leader, and this practice is widely employed, intensionally, across many companies and many industries. The reasons are many, but since the topic has turned to discussing the XBox 360, lets discuss the PS3. Just imagine if Sony had sold the PS3 at a price that would have "paid it's bills," according to you. The sticker price would end up being much too high for consumers to swallow for a gaming system. So Sony took massive losses, at least initially. I believe it was publically noted this spring that Sony, after 2-3 years, finally broke even on each system it sells. Point is, loss leaders are a necessary way of doing business in industries. Microsoft isn't the only company that "loses money year after year" on its flagship products.
Yup.
All the more interesting that Microsoft killed KIN (no pun) so quickly. Some bright knob over there finally said 'hey, why don't we just make it a feature of phone7 software...' We'll duh!
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/mark...buzz/index.htm
Steve can't control what Google does.
... and for that F A C T, the world is a far better place.
If Apple stayed away from the iphone, definitely you wouldn't see as many contenders stepping up, but it's far fetched to think that phones wouldn't have naturally progressed to where they are today.
Actually it's not far fetched at all that phones would not be like they are today. Google obviously was not heading in that direction. The Blackberry was the wildly popular phone of the time. It's quite plausible that, if Apple had not released the iPhone at the time they did, phones might have evolved in an entirely different direction than they have and would be nothing like the phones that exist today.
Let me just ask you this: Do you truly think the idea of a touch screen phone NEVER crossed the minds of the people over at Google as they poured money into R&D for Android? Your answer to this question will influence my opinion of you from here on out
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
Google's pre-iPhone Android prototype with a keyboard speaks volumes about what their engineers were thinking.
You're right, touch-screens were previously available. Palm had them. The first touch-screen smartphone I know of was the Palm-OS based Handspring Treo (before Palm bought Handspring.) It was not a market changer. People disliked the Graffiti interface and hated the on-screen keyboard even worse. Handspring (and then Palm) actually had to add keyboards to their devices, relegating the touch screen to little more than cursor-positioning and menu-selection.
You may also remember all the criticism from the press when the iPhone was first announced. Everybody insisted that the lack of the mechanical keyboard was doomed to failure, because nobody has ever been successful with one in the past.
It was only after iPhone sales went through the roof that the conventional wisdom changed and manufacturers started considering the possibility of a device with a touchscreen-only interface.
Ditto for multi-touch. The first most people ever heard of this tech was a video by Jeff Han in 2006. Nobody was talking about it, let alone shipping products before then. Then we saw some Apple patent filings for multi-touch input devices and everybody started talking about it.
So I agree with "anonymouse" when he says that a multuitouch-based Android phone was not inevitable. Without the presence of the iPhone, they could very easily have gone in a different direction, releasing a product completely different from what ended up shipping.
... and for that F A C T, the world is a far better place.
Actually in some ways Apple is controlling what Google does with Android.
btw how is your Microsoft Courier coming along.
Apple has always been the innovator. Google is a one-trick pony that just adds features and increase specs but doesn't innovate.
Yeah, Apple has never copied any ideas from anyone. They're the only company that has never copied anyone else's ideas or seen a great idea and tried to improve upon it and offer it to consumers.
That's ridiculous. Companies often take existing ideas and try to improve upon them, or take them in slightly different directions. They ALL do it, or have done it in the past.
Actually in some ways Apple is controlling what Google does with Android.
btw how is your Microsoft Courier coming along.
The same as your attempts at humor... NOT!
Do yourselves a favor, buy some stock in both companies and throw in some stock in Microsoft as well. You can then be at peace.
Jobs is not "rewriting history." Yes, Google was working on Android before they saw the iPhone. Everyone knows that already. However, Google obviously had little idea WTF they were doing until they saw Apple's iPhone. Google was busy copying BlackBerries, for crying out loud! Then, once they saw the iPhone, Boom! on went the lights and they started working to make Android a half-assed iPhone copy and, quite likely, infringed on Apple's patented intellectual property in the process (court cases are ongoing). This is the gist of what Jobs is saying, and his history is absolutely right.
Page is being quite disingenuous, probably out of acute embarrassment. Did you really found Google in order to be just another lame Apple copier, Larry? Or are you just going along with Eric T. Mole's so-called "strategy?" Either way, you and Sergey ought to be embarrassed.
Apple leads. The likes of Microsoft, Google, and many others follow poorly. As usual.
Still, I think that Xbox is a very good product. Kinect is perhaps the first amazing "vaporware" from MS that wasn't, in fact, "vapor", and that is astounding, to a good degree.
But XBox is, unfortunately for MS, an oasis surrounded by a big dry desert of ideas and execution. Just check its latest debacle, the "Kin". It's no "Apple TV", mind you, it was actually nuked a month after being put into marketplace. Their phone developments are apparently in shambles, with reports of people being sacked and the products going out of control... it does not bode well for an already outdated smartphone OS even before launch (the windows7phoneseries... who de fuck comes up with these names?!?!).
So all we have left is RIM, Apple and Android... WebOS is already attending its own funeral at HP...
RIM is very good with its core clients, the enterprise, but their OS is really outdated. If they are unable to change their OS architecture to a more modern one, I think they will slowly peak and then come down.
Apple, in turn, showed the world its own vision of a phone, a phone without buttons (heresy!! impossible!! no one will buy this shit!!), a phone with simple icons in its home page (simpletonic!! what no customizable homepage, how typical of apple!!!), a phone with an app store. And how did Android came to be? A photocopy of Apple's iPhone. And now Page tells us that Jobs is "rewriting history".
Well, that sucks. That really does. Because I don't mind people telling the story from their own perspective, and I always take it with a grain of salt, but I find that kind of story telling the most interesting. Of course that Jobs would tell a story like he wants it to be. But then to come this other guy and say "no no no no, he's lying to you people", that's serious business. That's fucking insulting, specially if we have all the evidence stating otherwise.
And then, after making this insult to Jobs and to our intelligence, he comes about and teaches us that it's all alright with Apple, which is a second blow to our intelligence. Oh seriously? So you tell us that the other CEO guy is a lying bitch and then state that everything's fine between you two?!? For fuck's sake.
I also agree with the analysis that Google is the new Microsoft. They are cheap, execute poorly and photocopy what Apple does. There are somethings different though. I still don't hate Google as I hate Microsoft, and they have a better taste than MS. I always viewed the austerity of their web pages and their browser very positively.
That has nothing to do with the initial claim that, "Microsoft has no history of being able to sell any consumer products."... Nothing.
The X-Box 360 is clear evidence that Microsoft can successfully sell a consumer product, all other arguments are moot/irrelevant to this statement.
You can hardly call it "successfully selling" a consumer product.
Yes, they have sold tons of them, but even now, the margins are so low, it can hardly be called successful.
To the best of my knowledge, there isn't any halo effect either.
The answer to that question is irrelevant to your argument. Google was obviously going in a very different direction before Android. And the touchscreen phones of the time were not generating enormous buzz. Given the popularity of the Blackberry at the time, and Google's obvious initial decision to copy it, a large segment of the smartphone industry, would have looked very different for some time. Touchscreen phones might have eventually become the prevailing design, or they might not have, or they might at least not have by now.
It's easy to argue the inevitability of history in retrospect, which you have, but, such an argument is meaningless unless you can definitively show why is was inevitable, which you haven't. Simply throwing out a vague, "consumers were responding positively," does not lend your assertion much support at all..
However, looking at the dominant phones at time, and the fact that Google was heading down the same path as those, makes it entirely plausible that phones would not have been what they are today. It may also be plausible that they would have, but it certainly cannot be asserted with any certainty.
Complete and utter bullshit. Sorry, but I actually am a geek who kept up with what was the latest and greatest before the iphone was ever out. A simple google search for what microsoft was doing in 1999 found this for cryin out loud: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...ricssonpr.mspx Everyone can crap on windows mobile all they want (even when they've never even worked with it for a second) but it's true: Apple pretty much copied MS in a LOT of ways, and if they hadn't come out with the iphone, phones would have still gone in the direction they're going today. Full screen PDA's with multimedia support, internet browsing, the list goes on. And if you think I'm full of shit, please tell me what Windows Mobile copied from Apple. You can't, because it was first.
I've been in this debate plenty of times. People who never paid any attention to PDA's until the iphone came out are absolutely confident in arguing with me over this.
The bottom line is, I'm not completely irrational in thinking Google would have made Android into what it is without the iphones existence. Someone hurry up and invent a way to look into alternate realities for f's sakes
The same could be said for some of Apple's offering (Apple TV immediately comes to mind)...
Three things:
1) I'm not at all certain that AppleTV doesn't turn a profit.
2) AppleTV is a product under development. That's why they call it a hobby.
3) Apple has a very stellar history of successfully selling consumer products.