Two comments:-
1. Apple did NOT acquire NeXT. NeXT bought Apple - for minus-four-hundred-million dollars
2. "fully modern OS". Well, yeah. It was sitting on top of BSD. Which wasn't modern then any more than it is now. However it's very solid and reliable, even for something that started life just about the same time as Apple -- which was 1976.
And yet my Twitter feed is full of tech writers and Apple bloggers talking about how great I/O was and how Apple really has to bring it at WWDC. The last ATP podcast was all doom and gloom, and Marco even has a post up now comparing Apple to Blackberry. https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate
I wish there was some place we could get decent Apple reporting that wasn't either D&G silly panic or everything's great Apple's the best they make all the $$$ blah blah blah. If these AI pieces are meant to reassure I don't think they do. If everything was peaches and cream there would be no need to write these pieces in the first place.
Here's what worries me about Marco's piece: if he's right to suggest that big data AI analytics is the future of services, then Apple's not only not doing enough of what it takes to get there, it's almost set its vision against such a future. If all of your data has to be accessible only on your phone and completely inaccessible to Apple while in the cloud, that cripples Apple's ability to use user data to practice and improve machine learning. Google Now is already spooky good compared to Siri in a lot of ways, and Google's working on making it better at that, while Apple's decided to fly the flag of privacy. Privacy's great, but there are things that it precludes. I trust Apple to keep my data protected, and also to use it to make my services better. But Apple doesn't seem to trust itself to do so.
Oh come on.... don't give in to the dark side and be filled with hate... I own both android and iOS and there's exciting things happening everywhere!!!
Look at Project Soli... if they can get that shrunk down, even to a tablet or phone, it will be amazing!!! Of course, like the fingerprint reader, it's all in the implementation but still, it's pretty cool...
In what way is Google actually down? Serious question. Because if they are then I guess down is where to be. At least wall street and the tech community thinks so.
Three articles all noted the retarded adoption of Android 6 Marshmallow. That's a serious problem. Why are you blowing it off with handwaving?
Wall Street and the "tech community" also valued AOL and a variety of of other turds excessively.
Good article. But it seems to me that publishing it in "Apple Insider" is a bit like preaching to the choir. Just as have been the many prior articles critiquing the sad state that is Android land.
Uh, where you been dude? DED only preaches to the choir, lest we forget how awesome we are ;-D
3 Anti Google/Andriod/Samsung articles in 2 days. He's breaking his own record!
Its Google I/O week, and there have been 3 articles discussing what it means in relation to Apple. Because this is AppleInsider.
Project Ara may be a rubbish idea for a cellphone, I'm certainly on record as saying that in the past.
It doesn't mean it's rubbish idea entirely just that Google doesn't know where it would be a good idea or they are being coy about using where it would be a good idea. You'd have to give them the benefit of the past to say it's the later and Project Ara will morph in to a very interesting modular computing platform. Cars, IoTs even desktop and tablets could really use a system like this. Home automation based on Ara would be a very interesting prospect.
I think the article is just to keen to rubbish Google and fall in with that for someone to win everyone else most lose mentality that just isn't backed by reality.
Modularity makes sense in many places, including PCs and blade servers, and many other applications.
But Ara has nothing to do with modularity in general. It's an attempt to design a cell phone made of components. Which is a dumb idea.
Google doesn't deserve any ongoing pats on the head for pursuing a dumb idea just because there are non-dumb ideas that are tangentially, related if you're desperately looking to find some silver lining in the dumb cloud of Ara.
Google's mortal threat isn't Apple. It's actually Amazon that poses a far greater threat. With Amazon dominating e-commerce and continuing to gain marketshare, Google becomes ever more dependent on the online retailer. All it would take to decimate Google's ad revenues would be for Amazon to decide they no longer need Google search. Google is trouble anyhow as more and more Amazon's sales move to their own smartphone app anyhow. It is actually far more of a hassle to search the web for a product and then be directed to Amazon rather than going to the Amazon app in the first place. While other companies may beat Amazon on price, they don't offer free 2 day shipping as a member. They also don't offer Amazon's media library as a prime member and no one makes a voice assistant comparable to Alexa. And Google is making a half-hearted effort to copy it with Google Home. It's just far easier to just launch the Amazon app, find the product and press one click. Easy and done with the item on my doorstep in 2 days. There is no need for Google search.
Google needs to move smartphone users back to text entered web based search, but failing. And they are failing miserably, especially on iOS where much of the potential revenue base is.
Google's AI will fail as their search based Ad revenues dry up. Amazon doesn't need Google's AI algorithms to determine consumer preferences as they have their own hard numbers of the sales data. Google desperately needs someone, anyone to establish real competition for Amazon. Since Bezos is laser focused and continuing to win greater amounts of online sales, Google is in major trouble.
Samsung will usurp Android. It's inevitable as Amazon eviscerates Google. It's only a matter of time now.
It didn't have to end this way. Google was too afraid to turn to the direct sales model of actually charging for Android, maps, etc. They saw everything through the prism of selling advertisements to their user base. They never saw anyone swooping in and capturing that user base directly and with direct access to the userbase, Google as the "middleman" is literally being cut out of the deal.
Amazon has captured the userbase that conducts most of the online purchases. The terrifying aspect for Google is that Amazon no longer needs to pay for search ads. It's actually been some time since I made an Amazon purchase through Google search.
That's a serious problem for Google going forward.
Getting their spyware installed on iOS won't change the situation they're in. And if they haven't figured that one out, their best and brightest are failing spectacularly, far more so than would appear to the public and many of the Google apologists who regularly visit this forum.
It's really now only a matter of time before the company fails in substantial fashion. They have only a single major revenue stream and unable to diversify. Things are looking dire. They are rapidly running out of time.
And yet my Twitter feed is full of tech writers and Apple bloggers talking about how great I/O was and how Apple really has to bring it at WWDC. The last ATP podcast was all doom and gloom, and Marco even has a post up now comparing Apple to Blackberry. https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate
I wish there was some place we could get decent Apple reporting that wasn't either D&G silly panic or everything's great Apple's the best they make all the $$$ blah blah blah. If these AI pieces are meant to reassure I don't think they do. If everything was peaches and cream there would be no need to write these pieces in the first place.
Thanks for the link. Marco has become the number one hand-wringing Chicken Little, and he's affecting — infecting — Siracusa, Gruber and who knows how many of the rest of the pack of chihuahuas that these bloggers have become.
They're wrong. They don't see that Apple is expanding its AI efforts outside of Cupertino, like the hundreds of millions they'll be spending in India — because until they get their new campus done, they are essentially a root-bound potted plant in Cupertino. It's not about how much money they have, but how many bodies they won't be able to torture into the crowded offices they can cobble together.
it's also not "worrisome" — favorite Chicken word — that Google's far ahead and accelerating in AI. It's their main business, just like hardware/OS is Apple's main and uncatchable business. It will be far easier for Apple to reach competence in AI than Google or anyone else can reach Apple's level in hardware and OS.
These bloggers have been out of control ever since Apple started giving them attention. Well, actually, giving Gruber attention.
I agree, Project Ara is one of the dumbest things in all techdom.
First, let's just use common sense. If modularity in mobile devices is such a great idea, where are all the modular laptops? They've been around longer, and with less dense componentry, surely it's easier to design and manufacture a modular laptop than a modular phone, yeh? How come no laptop manufacturer tried to offer one if it's such a sure winner with users?
Second, let's look at the trend in technology, the one that's been going on at least since the transistor was invented: miniaturization and component integration. Or what is the same thing, the solid state movement. Devices are moving into ever denser components with ever smaller number of parts, even as functionality and power grows exponentially. This points to a natural endpoint (it may never get there, but that's where it's pointing to) where the phone becomes a single, solid block of battery, circuitry, and screen that like its great grandmother, the integrated circuit, is never repaired, just replaced when the time comes. A modular phone goes completely against this trend, bringing along major disadvantages of wasted space and problems of compatibility between components as they get upgraded at different rates.
Third, and this goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph, is the economics of the miniaturization/integration trend. To put it succinctly, if miniaturization/integration was not the most cost-efficient technological path, it would not have prevailed no matter how technologically dazzling it may be. The confluence of production scale, the state of technology or more precisely, the complexity thereof, and the cost of labor vs capital in advanced industrial countries has led us to a situation where repairability has become a costly feature, cubic millimeters (in device volume) have become ever more valuable, and designing component modules to be compatible with more than one generation of devices becomes ever more complex.
I think Ara is a dead ender. It's a nice engineering challenge but that's all it is. Google might actually release one just to save face and prove that the idea was no folly. After all, Howard's Spruce Goose did actually fly. Once only. But it was enough to prove Hughes right, right?
Good article. But it seems to me that publishing it in "Apple Insider" is a bit like preaching to the choir. Just as have been the many prior articles critiquing the sad state that is Android land.
Uh, where you been dude? DED only preaches to the choir, lest we forget how awesome we are ;-D
3 Anti Google/Andriod/Samsung articles in 2 days. He's breaking his own record!
The Google I/O Keynote was so laughable/miserable that it deserved three articles. Seriously. It was either Google trying to poorly copy Apple with terrible features that will probably need to be removed at some point due to child pornography lawsuits, or it was nebulous promises of what "might happen in the future". There were no firm timeframes (except for the iOS copyware, of course) only empty promises on new projects and seemingly abandonment with old projects. It seems more and more that Google is trying to do everything, but actually not actually able to execute anything.
Except search and email. They are super good at that.
Root of the failure is android is java based. Rather than building from scratch a solid OS, Google took a quick ride on java, which is painfully sloww, development and keeping up to date is a nightmare, performance will never match iOS apps even with higher specs hardware. Java is dead, so will Android.
In what way is Google actually down? Serious question. Because if they are then I guess down is where to be. At least wall street and the tech community thinks so.
That's because Wall Street likes to hear about all the cool things a company might do some day. Wall Street has a VERY short memory and have NO idea how technology works. They look at VR and ooogle all over it since they envision the masses of the world as mindless consumers. They love that Google sees people the same way.
The problem with Apple is that they are realists. They tell it like it is and don't make dumb promises on ideas that have no commercial viability. They keep things secret so Google, Microsoft and others are left floundering. When they do release, they will promptly make these companies look like buffoons.
For proof, I present you Exhibit A (iPhone release) and Exhibit B (iPad release). Remember only a few days before the iPad was announced, Steve Balmer was jumping around a stage holding a Dell tablet and extolling how Microsoft is all about tablets? I can't even remember what that thing was called (and it vanished in a few months). The iPad came out at an insanely low price and the rest is history. Remember after the iPhone was announced and Microsoft claimed that income from it would be a "rounding error" for Microsoft? Well, they must have calculated that on a batch of faulty Pentium chips because Apple blew their doors in.
Apple has been REALLY quiet this year. Too quiet. I presume that something big is coming and it will take the tech world by surprise. Again. The Google I/O Keynote basically set the tone that Google has no big strategy and is playing defense. These announcement they made are simply a guess at Apple's next move to try to appear relevant. I bet that Apple will announce some things in line with Google's guesses (similar to Steve Balmer's tablet monkey dance), but will probably announce something bigger that Google couldn't predict.
And yet my Twitter feed is full of tech writers and Apple bloggers talking about how great I/O was and how Apple really has to bring it at WWDC. The last ATP podcast was all doom and gloom, and Marco even has a post up now comparing Apple to Blackberry. https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate
I wish there was some place we could get decent Apple reporting that wasn't either D&G silly panic or everything's great Apple's the best they make all the $$$ blah blah blah. If these AI pieces are meant to reassure I don't think they do. If everything was peaches and cream there would be no need to write these pieces in the first place.
And this is what I really appreciate about Dan's perspective - he analyses I/O in an historical context, while Twits are in-the-moment reactions to new/shiny. Goog really is looking flaky and desperate - where are the initiatives announced last year, even? By looking at repeating situations - announce wow, announce new wow, never mention old wow, silently delete old wow, announce new wow - ms and now goog are building a smoke-screen of bs that never results in a new product or service. Even Facebook has done better than them!
I'm really disappointed that few, if any, people - bloggers or otherwise - connect the dots of past behaviours to adjust future expectations. Goog has consistently failed, despite changing management, to develop any initiatives brought over the past ten years that have gained any tractionl apart from gmail and maps on the consumer end. On the business end, it has certainly improved upon its invasive anti-security and anti-privacy initiatives. This does not bode well.
And yet my Twitter feed is full of tech writers and Apple bloggers talking about how great I/O was and how Apple really has to bring it at WWDC. The last ATP podcast was all doom and gloom, and Marco even has a post up now comparing Apple to Blackberry. https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate
I wish there was some place we could get decent Apple reporting that wasn't either D&G silly panic or everything's great Apple's the best they make all the $$$ blah blah blah. If these AI pieces are meant to reassure I don't think they do. If everything was peaches and cream there would be no need to write these pieces in the first place.
I may be wrong and I believe Horace Dediu of Asymco is right how are those tech companies going to monetise whatever AI they are into.
Money out must be equalled by more money in.
Comments
Look at Project Soli... if they can get that shrunk down, even to a tablet or phone, it will be amazing!!! Of course, like the fingerprint reader, it's all in the implementation but still, it's pretty cool...
Wall Street and the "tech community" also valued AOL and a variety of of other turds excessively.
Its Google I/O week, and there have been 3 articles discussing what it means in relation to Apple. Because this is AppleInsider.
But Ara has nothing to do with modularity in general. It's an attempt to design a cell phone made of components. Which is a dumb idea.
Google doesn't deserve any ongoing pats on the head for pursuing a dumb idea just because there are non-dumb ideas that are tangentially, related if you're desperately looking to find some silver lining in the dumb cloud of Ara.
Google needs to move smartphone users back to text entered web based search, but failing. And they are failing miserably, especially on iOS where much of the potential revenue base is.
Google's AI will fail as their search based Ad revenues dry up. Amazon doesn't need Google's AI algorithms to determine consumer preferences as they have their own hard numbers of the sales data. Google desperately needs someone, anyone to establish real competition for Amazon. Since Bezos is laser focused and continuing to win greater amounts of online sales, Google is in major trouble.
Samsung will usurp Android. It's inevitable as Amazon eviscerates Google. It's only a matter of time now.
It didn't have to end this way. Google was too afraid to turn to the direct sales model of actually charging for Android, maps, etc. They saw everything through the prism of selling advertisements to their user base. They never saw anyone swooping in and capturing that user base directly and with direct access to the userbase, Google as the "middleman" is literally being cut out of the deal.
Amazon has captured the userbase that conducts most of the online purchases. The terrifying aspect for Google is that Amazon no longer needs to pay for search ads. It's actually been some time since I made an Amazon purchase through Google search.
That's a serious problem for Google going forward.
Getting their spyware installed on iOS won't change the situation they're in. And if they haven't figured that one out, their best and brightest are failing spectacularly, far more so than would appear to the public and many of the Google apologists who regularly visit this forum.
It's really now only a matter of time before the company fails in substantial fashion. They have only a single major revenue stream and unable to diversify. Things are looking dire. They are rapidly running out of time.
They're wrong. They don't see that Apple is expanding its AI efforts outside of Cupertino, like the hundreds of millions they'll be spending in India — because until they get their new campus done, they are essentially a root-bound potted plant in Cupertino. It's not about how much money they have, but how many bodies they won't be able to torture into the crowded offices they can cobble together.
it's also not "worrisome" — favorite Chicken word — that Google's far ahead and accelerating in AI. It's their main business, just like hardware/OS is Apple's main and uncatchable business. It will be far easier for Apple to reach competence in AI than Google or anyone else can reach Apple's level in hardware and OS.
These bloggers have been out of control ever since Apple started giving them attention. Well, actually, giving Gruber attention.
First, let's just use common sense. If modularity in mobile devices is such a great idea, where are all the modular laptops? They've been around longer, and with less dense componentry, surely it's easier to design and manufacture a modular laptop than a modular phone, yeh? How come no laptop manufacturer tried to offer one if it's such a sure winner with users?
Second, let's look at the trend in technology, the one that's been going on at least since the transistor was invented: miniaturization and component integration. Or what is the same thing, the solid state movement. Devices are moving into ever denser components with ever smaller number of parts, even as functionality and power grows exponentially. This points to a natural endpoint (it may never get there, but that's where it's pointing to) where the phone becomes a single, solid block of battery, circuitry, and screen that like its great grandmother, the integrated circuit, is never repaired, just replaced when the time comes. A modular phone goes completely against this trend, bringing along major disadvantages of wasted space and problems of compatibility between components as they get upgraded at different rates.
Third, and this goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph, is the economics of the miniaturization/integration trend. To put it succinctly, if miniaturization/integration was not the most cost-efficient technological path, it would not have prevailed no matter how technologically dazzling it may be. The confluence of production scale, the state of technology or more precisely, the complexity thereof, and the cost of labor vs capital in advanced industrial countries has led us to a situation where repairability has become a costly feature, cubic millimeters (in device volume) have become ever more valuable, and designing component modules to be compatible with more than one generation of devices becomes ever more complex.
I think Ara is a dead ender. It's a nice engineering challenge but that's all it is. Google might actually release one just to save face and prove that the idea was no folly. After all, Howard's Spruce Goose did actually fly. Once only. But it was enough to prove Hughes right, right?
Except search and email. They are super good at that.
That's because Wall Street likes to hear about all the cool things a company might do some day. Wall Street has a VERY short memory and have NO idea how technology works. They look at VR and ooogle all over it since they envision the masses of the world as mindless consumers. They love that Google sees people the same way.
The problem with Apple is that they are realists. They tell it like it is and don't make dumb promises on ideas that have no commercial viability. They keep things secret so Google, Microsoft and others are left floundering. When they do release, they will promptly make these companies look like buffoons.
Apple has been REALLY quiet this year. Too quiet. I presume that something big is coming and it will take the tech world by surprise. Again. The Google I/O Keynote basically set the tone that Google has no big strategy and is playing defense. These announcement they made are simply a guess at Apple's next move to try to appear relevant. I bet that Apple will announce some things in line with Google's guesses (similar to Steve Balmer's tablet monkey dance), but will probably announce something bigger that Google couldn't predict.
We shall see...
Was anything mentioned about Project Brillo and Project Weave? What has the adoption rate been for them? What products in the IoT category use them?
And Samsung with GearVR and support for Daydream seems like cross-purposes.