"... provide it's own default search engine ..." Agreed. Google lives on the mystique of search. But Google search is sophisticated to further its own purposes, not ours. Ninety percent of searches are abysmally simple and not rocket surgery.
Personally, I would never consider an Android phone even if it is a very nice phone, simply because I value the Apple ecosystem too much. I would not be willing to give up the integration between my iPad, iPhone, iMac, MBP, Apple TV, Mac Pro, iTunes, App store, iMessage, AirPlay, back to my Mac, etc. Even FaceTime and Find my iPhone, which I have yet to use still make a compelling case for sticking with Apple.
The ecosystem is definitely an issue, but I'm not going to give Apple a pass just because they've got me locked in. And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance, since as far as I know they can't easily be maintained across two phones. Dropbox fixes a lot of the data issues, and most of the apps that I use have now Android versions as well and are just account based. Certainly hiccups here and there, but not terrible.
Everything that can be digitised will be digitised, as the saying goes. And that's how to predict Apple's next market: the next logical thing that could be done by computer (and in that I include the iPhone) that is not currently.
I think going after non-pro cameras was a very deliberate and calculated move by Apple and not just an afterthought. I remember at each iPhone keynote, they lingered on the camera, and talked about the new lens made of polished sapphire, or the new intelligent image processing chip they had added, or some new software feature of the camera app. They knew cameras were the next logical thing to get absorbed in to computers. They even made a standalone digital camera in the 90s but it was too soon.
I never understood why Apple didn't use it's own servers to populate it's own installations. It probably would have helped cut down the cost by increasing volume, and would have given confidence to customers. I bet Dell uses it's own servers.
Also, all my friends went for the Nexus 4, and this includes die-hard Apple fanboys, which is seriously scary to me, given I've invested my career into Apple's iPhoe/iPad market (for now...)
The ecosystem is definitely an issue, but I'm not going to give Apple a pass just because they've got me locked in. And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance....
Really? No AppleTV, No iTunes, No iPhoto, no Airplay, no iTunes Match, no cross-product compatibility (e.g., keeping my music files synced perfectly between all my iPads, iPhones, iPods, Macs), no GarageBand, no FaceTime, no Find My iPhone...... you just glossed over all else that he mentioned?
I am guessing you probably were not much of an Apple user to begin with.
I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.
Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.
"realitycheck" for realitycheck:
It's an Editorial. It's *going* to be opinionated to some degree, and possibly controversial.
Apple rules customer satisfaction with an iron fist, ever since the first iPhone. In fact, Apple rules Customer Satisfaction across ALL of their major product lines, year after year. With only a few phone models they are able to split the mobile industry between themselves and Samsung. They are the #1 smartphone-manufacturer in the US (the Platinum market, where your product *must* do well in order to gain substantial traction elsewhere), and they rule smartphone industry profits.
I can't think of how your notion of a "blown lead" applies here. There is no way that Apple can (or intends to) compete with a whored-out, universally-licensed OS that any fly-by-night OEM that can slam together a box can use. I think Apple is perfectly happy to *not* be in a race for the bottom, and evidently, so is the Consumer.
iOS JUST WORKS. End of story. It's elegant, simple, proven, STABLE, and very well-supported by Apple. The apps are more polished, the headliner apps are better by an order of magnitude, and we don't even need to mention malware, because it's a non-issue on iOS.
And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance, since as far as I know they can't easily be maintained across two phones.
I don't understand which side of the argument this is taking. My unlocked iPhone 4, for international use and my iPhone 5 for the US keep the contacts synced just fine. Also one other major iPhone feature I forgot to mention earlier, which I use all the time, is Visual Voicemail. When I see one of my contacts in the list, versus some random phone number, you can bet I will listen to my contact's message first.
I hope that this year is a big turn around for Apple, because honestly, I've been a bit underwhelmed lately. I think that Apple still wins on the quality bar for their devices - even software aside, Apple makes the best laptops (although I think Lenovo does better keyboards, Lenovo does terrible displays), and tablets and phones.
The iPhone's getting kind of boring though - it's nice, solid hardware - but I've been switching back and forth between the iPhone 5 and a Galaxy Nexus, and honestly, I'm starting to prefer the Galaxy Nexus for its software. They're experimenting a bunch with UI, with data, and while I don't think that it's as refined as iOS, there's some very exciting stuff going on there, especially with the various Google apps such as Google Now.
You may want to actually look into what Apple's ecosystem can actually offer users...
I worry that the big thing where Apple will lose is intelligent data.
So you are "concerned" for Apple? That's questionable right there.
Can Apple make a Maps app that's as good as Google's? Can they make a compelling intelligent service like Google Now? I don't know. I think that five years from now, as these services get more integrated, Google's expertise in data analysis and intelligence could very much beat out Apple's expertise in user experience. And I think right now, Google is getting better at UX faster than Apple is getting better at data.
None of that is true or accurate. Apple makes the best mapping app. They made the best mapping app with the original iPhone in 2007 and jumped even further ahead with the best mapping app in 2012 with Apple Maps on iOS 6.0.
What you're referring to are the back-end services that connect to the app but failed to comment on how Apple's lack of turn-by-turn and vector maps before iOS 6.0 was due to Google not allowing it for the iOS while they offered it up for Android.
So what were the options Apple had before them in 2012? Resign a multi-year contract that allows Google to offer better services to its platform as a means of screwing iOS or cut ties with Google Maps even to offer a better app and services even if there are some temporary hiccups and issues with Apple's own mapping backend? Seems to me Apple made the only wise choice afforded to them. You can say both options are poor but you can't realistically say Apple made the wrong choice.
It's not as if iOS users are lacking additional mapping options to chose from so it appears it's a win-win for Apple in the long run.
DED specifically cites and links to that report. And he adds to what is there. (Perhaps one quibble might be that he could also have made an attribution to the TOM/GRMN chart from that article, instead of creating a new one).
links and cites. indeed he does. the sign of a great journalist.
I don't understand which side of the argument this is taking. My unlocked iPhone 4, for international use and my iPhone 5 for the US keep the contacts synced just fine. Also one other major iPhone feature I forgot to mention earlier, which I use all the time, is Visual Voicemail. When I see one of my contacts in the list, versus some random phone number, you can bet I will listen to my contact's message first.
I mean, syncing contacts from an Android phone to an iOS phone and back again is not trivial.
The iPhone has lots of great features, don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic platform - I didn't intend to say otherwise. Not taking any side really, just sharing my experience switching back and forth between the iPhone 5 and Galaxy Nexus. At my heart, I'm a gadget lover - I love seeing new things, new paradigms, and so on . Although on the topic of voice mail, on Android there are apps which are pretty similar to visual voice mail and even convert voice mails to text (and they do a pretty good job) which is an awesome time saver. So like I said, Android's still a pretty clunky platform in a lot of ways, but a lot has been done to close the gap in recent years.
Yet as Apple's phone gets stronger and the competition loses ground, critics wail about it "not being able to keep up," pure flawgic.
I think the tech blogosphere and legacy tech journalists had this pent-up urge to write "Apple has fallen" stories. Just like they've written about once-great companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and yes, Apple in the late 90s. You've seen those stories. They start with shocking statistics, they jump back in time to the company's origin story and meteoric rise to greatness, they highlight the company's fatal flaw, then conclude with the grim details of the company's decline. In short, "Oh how the mighty have fallen. And aren't we clever and witty and relevant for writing such artful and irony-enhanced prose."
Well guess what happened. Apple didn't fail. The tech writers all expected Apple's nouveau empire, built on iMac, to fail after a few years. It didn't. Then they expected the iPod + iTunes juggernaut to saturate the market, cease to expand, and leave Apple's profits in a holding pattern. It happened, but not until Apple completely disrupted the cell phone industry (and the pocket-sized video camera industry, and the portable gaming industry, and the handheld GPS gadget industry among many others.) iPod sales didn't begin declining until iPhone revenue had become Apple's major revenue stream. And now Apple owns 75% of all revenue in the mobile telephone industry. All areas of the industry.
Even worse for the doom-and-gloom writer crowd, Apple is now pioneering the post-PC era. The press does get to write their "Oh how the mighty have fallen" essays, but not about Apple. They write them about other tech giants and their utter failure to either follow Apple (read: "copy Apple") or to blaze their own trails with differentiated products (read: "ship products designed by their legal team"). The press is already tired of writing about Palm's decline into HP's patent portfolio. And RIM's collapse and incompetent flailing. And Microsoft's repeated failures in mobile, from Windows Mobile to Tablet PC to Zune to KIN to Surface. Plenty of abject failure, loss, and decline into irrelevance to write about here. But not about Apple.
And the post-PC era could last for decades. Writers will have grown old and retired before iPad and its competitors are replaced by some future post-post-PC next-next-generation computing device. So, roughly a year ago, this particular train of thought ran through the mind of some editor-in-chief out there:
"All this Apple success is boring our readers. And our writers. And we need page hits. What to do? What to do?"
"F**k it. We'll run a piece about Apple's decline anyway. Just to see what happens. Yeah, that's the ticket."
So the first Apple is Doomed piece is published, it generates clicks, it gets tons of comments, it is linked to by all the blogs (including AppleInsider) and the publisher reaps the benefits of increased web traffic. So another such story is published to the same effect. And another. And those decades of Apple-Doom-Anticipation find a release. Floods of Apple-Doom stories hit the webs, whether or not they make any sense. Simply because they generate hits. Tech writers finally understand (or fall victim to, or are rampantly exploiting) the John Dvorak Syndrome. Relentless, mindless Apple-Doom stories, whether or not they contain any rational thoughts, generating hits for the sake of generating hits.
The media, even old-guard establishments once highly regarded for their journalistic integrity, have degenerated into the "nation of bloggers" that Steve Jobs lamented. Sophistry instead of critical thinking and accurate reporting. Double-check facts? Feh. That takes time, and taking time means you'll get scooped. And anyway, sensational fallacious arguments generate more page views. And page views are all that matter in online journalism.
2 - Android's other advantages are: Distribution - here, I don't see Apple catching up in markets like SE Asia where phones are sold in the majority by little tech shops in the malls. None of those little shops carry iPhones. Most never carried iPods either. Apple doesn't seem to have a good model to deal with those mom and pop operations. The effect is that in SE Asia for every iPhone on display, there are about 100 Android phones on display. That's got to have an effect on sales. iPhone success so far has been despite distribution issues.
They seem to be doing okay in India, where distribution is similar:
"After a slow start, Apple's iPhone has jumped to India's second largest smartphone supplier by pushing phones to Mom-and-Pop shops in the world's fastest growing smartphone market.
"Apple's success has been attributed to its ability to adapt to India's smartphone distribution market, where most electronics are sold through small, family-owned shops. Mobile phones in India are not subsidized by telecom operators, unlike other parts of the world."
Many Apple fans insist that Apple will not open up iOS to FB because Apple is a closed system. I think they need to think twice. Closed system may be ok for PCs because PCs are powerful and has a much bigger screen than a smartphone. User can easily found what they need on a PC. The smartphone has a very small screen this creates a problem. To be able to further customize the Home will give user tremendous usefulness.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Personally, I would never consider an Android phone even if it is a very nice phone, simply because I value the Apple ecosystem too much. I would not be willing to give up the integration between my iPad, iPhone, iMac, MBP, Apple TV, Mac Pro, iTunes, App store, iMessage, AirPlay, back to my Mac, etc. Even FaceTime and Find my iPhone, which I have yet to use still make a compelling case for sticking with Apple.
The ecosystem is definitely an issue, but I'm not going to give Apple a pass just because they've got me locked in. And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance, since as far as I know they can't easily be maintained across two phones. Dropbox fixes a lot of the data issues, and most of the apps that I use have now Android versions as well and are just account based. Certainly hiccups here and there, but not terrible.
Everything that can be digitised will be digitised, as the saying goes. And that's how to predict Apple's next market: the next logical thing that could be done by computer (and in that I include the iPhone) that is not currently.
I think going after non-pro cameras was a very deliberate and calculated move by Apple and not just an afterthought. I remember at each iPhone keynote, they lingered on the camera, and talked about the new lens made of polished sapphire, or the new intelligent image processing chip they had added, or some new software feature of the camera app. They knew cameras were the next logical thing to get absorbed in to computers. They even made a standalone digital camera in the 90s but it was too soon.
Also, all my friends went for the Nexus 4, and this includes die-hard Apple fanboys, which is seriously scary to me, given I've invested my career into Apple's iPhoe/iPad market (for now...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drealoth
The ecosystem is definitely an issue, but I'm not going to give Apple a pass just because they've got me locked in. And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance....
Really? No AppleTV, No iTunes, No iPhoto, no Airplay, no iTunes Match, no cross-product compatibility (e.g., keeping my music files synced perfectly between all my iPads, iPhones, iPods, Macs), no GarageBand, no FaceTime, no Find My iPhone...... you just glossed over all else that he mentioned?
I am guessing you probably were not much of an Apple user to begin with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by realitycheck69
I just read the entire article and I have to say that it is nothing more than clickbait/fanboism/wishful thinking.
Apple blew a huge lead in the phone industry and there's nothing to prevent the same thing happening to the tablet industry. iOS is so very very stagnant and locked down. In 2007/8 it was awesome. Now? Meh.
"realitycheck" for realitycheck:
It's an Editorial. It's *going* to be opinionated to some degree, and possibly controversial.
Apple rules customer satisfaction with an iron fist, ever since the first iPhone. In fact, Apple rules Customer Satisfaction across ALL of their major product lines, year after year. With only a few phone models they are able to split the mobile industry between themselves and Samsung. They are the #1 smartphone-manufacturer in the US (the Platinum market, where your product *must* do well in order to gain substantial traction elsewhere), and they rule smartphone industry profits.
I can't think of how your notion of a "blown lead" applies here. There is no way that Apple can (or intends to) compete with a whored-out, universally-licensed OS that any fly-by-night OEM that can slam together a box can use. I think Apple is perfectly happy to *not* be in a race for the bottom, and evidently, so is the Consumer.
iOS JUST WORKS. End of story. It's elegant, simple, proven, STABLE, and very well-supported by Apple. The apps are more polished, the headliner apps are better by an order of magnitude, and we don't even need to mention malware, because it's a non-issue on iOS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lightknight
DED piece, won't read. Knew by the title.
Also, all my friends went for the Nexus 4, and this includes die-hard Apple fanboys,
This is why anecdotes are cool. You can say "my friends", and assume it actually applies to the bulk of the market.
All you need to do is open your ass and pull.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadra 610
I think Apple is perfectly happy to *not* be in a race for the bottom
So having large profit margins and charging more for the same functionality makes Apple more prestigious? I don't quite understand your reasoning.
Maybe you are trying to defend this company because you own stock or something, I dunno.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drealoth
And honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Contacts in particular are a big annoyance, since as far as I know they can't easily be maintained across two phones.
I don't understand which side of the argument this is taking. My unlocked iPhone 4, for international use and my iPhone 5 for the US keep the contacts synced just fine. Also one other major iPhone feature I forgot to mention earlier, which I use all the time, is Visual Voicemail. When I see one of my contacts in the list, versus some random phone number, you can bet I will listen to my contact's message first.
Snark much? If Applemaps was released for the web it would be more potentially updatable by the public.
You may want to actually look into what Apple's ecosystem can actually offer users...
One login to find them
One login to bring them all
And in the iCloud bind them
So you are "concerned" for Apple? That's questionable right there.
None of that is true or accurate. Apple makes the best mapping app. They made the best mapping app with the original iPhone in 2007 and jumped even further ahead with the best mapping app in 2012 with Apple Maps on iOS 6.0.
What you're referring to are the back-end services that connect to the app but failed to comment on how Apple's lack of turn-by-turn and vector maps before iOS 6.0 was due to Google not allowing it for the iOS while they offered it up for Android.
So what were the options Apple had before them in 2012? Resign a multi-year contract that allows Google to offer better services to its platform as a means of screwing iOS or cut ties with Google Maps even to offer a better app and services even if there are some temporary hiccups and issues with Apple's own mapping backend? Seems to me Apple made the only wise choice afforded to them. You can say both options are poor but you can't realistically say Apple made the wrong choice.
It's not as if iOS users are lacking additional mapping options to chose from so it appears it's a win-win for Apple in the long run.
Edit: My fault. Wrong post about Safari issue. I had images turned off, sorry.
links and cites. indeed he does. the sign of a great journalist.
links and cites. indeed he does. the idea and at least half the content of this "editorial" is taken from the report.
and i would debate whether this is even an "editorial"; hell, it's not even a worthy "analysis". it's a regurgitation.
thus, in <a href="http://insideintercom.io/what-everyone-needs-to-know-about-disruption/">summary</a>.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I don't understand which side of the argument this is taking. My unlocked iPhone 4, for international use and my iPhone 5 for the US keep the contacts synced just fine. Also one other major iPhone feature I forgot to mention earlier, which I use all the time, is Visual Voicemail. When I see one of my contacts in the list, versus some random phone number, you can bet I will listen to my contact's message first.
I mean, syncing contacts from an Android phone to an iOS phone and back again is not trivial.
The iPhone has lots of great features, don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic platform - I didn't intend to say otherwise. Not taking any side really, just sharing my experience switching back and forth between the iPhone 5 and Galaxy Nexus. At my heart, I'm a gadget lover - I love seeing new things, new paradigms, and so on
Yet as Apple's phone gets stronger and the competition loses ground, critics wail about it "not being able to keep up," pure flawgic.
I think the tech blogosphere and legacy tech journalists had this pent-up urge to write "Apple has fallen" stories. Just like they've written about once-great companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and yes, Apple in the late 90s. You've seen those stories. They start with shocking statistics, they jump back in time to the company's origin story and meteoric rise to greatness, they highlight the company's fatal flaw, then conclude with the grim details of the company's decline. In short, "Oh how the mighty have fallen. And aren't we clever and witty and relevant for writing such artful and irony-enhanced prose."
Well guess what happened. Apple didn't fail. The tech writers all expected Apple's nouveau empire, built on iMac, to fail after a few years. It didn't. Then they expected the iPod + iTunes juggernaut to saturate the market, cease to expand, and leave Apple's profits in a holding pattern. It happened, but not until Apple completely disrupted the cell phone industry (and the pocket-sized video camera industry, and the portable gaming industry, and the handheld GPS gadget industry among many others.) iPod sales didn't begin declining until iPhone revenue had become Apple's major revenue stream. And now Apple owns 75% of all revenue in the mobile telephone industry. All areas of the industry.
Even worse for the doom-and-gloom writer crowd, Apple is now pioneering the post-PC era. The press does get to write their "Oh how the mighty have fallen" essays, but not about Apple. They write them about other tech giants and their utter failure to either follow Apple (read: "copy Apple") or to blaze their own trails with differentiated products (read: "ship products designed by their legal team"). The press is already tired of writing about Palm's decline into HP's patent portfolio. And RIM's collapse and incompetent flailing. And Microsoft's repeated failures in mobile, from Windows Mobile to Tablet PC to Zune to KIN to Surface. Plenty of abject failure, loss, and decline into irrelevance to write about here. But not about Apple.
And the post-PC era could last for decades. Writers will have grown old and retired before iPad and its competitors are replaced by some future post-post-PC next-next-generation computing device. So, roughly a year ago, this particular train of thought ran through the mind of some editor-in-chief out there:
"All this Apple success is boring our readers. And our writers. And we need page hits. What to do? What to do?"
"F**k it. We'll run a piece about Apple's decline anyway. Just to see what happens. Yeah, that's the ticket."
So the first Apple is Doomed piece is published, it generates clicks, it gets tons of comments, it is linked to by all the blogs (including AppleInsider) and the publisher reaps the benefits of increased web traffic. So another such story is published to the same effect. And another. And those decades of Apple-Doom-Anticipation find a release. Floods of Apple-Doom stories hit the webs, whether or not they make any sense. Simply because they generate hits. Tech writers finally understand (or fall victim to, or are rampantly exploiting) the John Dvorak Syndrome. Relentless, mindless Apple-Doom stories, whether or not they contain any rational thoughts, generating hits for the sake of generating hits.
The media, even old-guard establishments once highly regarded for their journalistic integrity, have degenerated into the "nation of bloggers" that Steve Jobs lamented. Sophistry instead of critical thinking and accurate reporting. Double-check facts? Feh. That takes time, and taking time means you'll get scooped. And anyway, sensational fallacious arguments generate more page views. And page views are all that matter in online journalism.
It loads fine for me with ML 10.8.3 Build 12D78 and Safari 6.0.3 (8536.28.10).
Quote:
Originally Posted by orthorim
2 - Android's other advantages are: Distribution - here, I don't see Apple catching up in markets like SE Asia where phones are sold in the majority by little tech shops in the malls. None of those little shops carry iPhones. Most never carried iPods either. Apple doesn't seem to have a good model to deal with those mom and pop operations. The effect is that in SE Asia for every iPhone on display, there are about 100 Android phones on display. That's got to have an effect on sales. iPhone success so far has been despite distribution issues.
They seem to be doing okay in India, where distribution is similar:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/13/business/india-apple-cracks-smartphone/
"After a slow start, Apple's iPhone has jumped to India's second largest smartphone supplier by pushing phones to Mom-and-Pop shops in the world's fastest growing smartphone market.
"Apple's success has been attributed to its ability to adapt to India's smartphone distribution market, where most electronics are sold through small, family-owned shops. Mobile phones in India are not subsidized by telecom operators, unlike other parts of the world."