Editorial: Apple's iOS is the new Windows

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  • Reply 41 of 225
    igrivigriv Posts: 1,177member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post


     


    Judging from the devices, I'm pretty sure that should be 1993, not 2003.


     


    --


     


    As for the comparison to Windows and DOS, my first thought always goes back to the way that PCs took over partly because they went with hardcoded graphic sizes at first... while other OSes were trying to be totally hardware and size independent.


     


    The hardcoded VGA/SVGA graphics looked much better at first than the resolution independent setups, even though the latter made more sense for the long haul.


     


    iOS reminds me of that aspect of PCs.



     


    Don't forget the big win of x86 assembly coding :(

  • Reply 42 of 225
    igrivigriv Posts: 1,177member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post





    Apple doesn't do cheap.

    Like how Android is winning?

    Heavens forbid Apple keep making lots of money. I thought the goal was market share even though that doesn't pay the bills.

    Ah. Good old projections. In 2009, net books were lredicted to rule the PC world. In 2006, windows mobile and blackberry were projected to dominate smart phones for the foreseeable future.

    Samsung is profitable. Android is not. No one else has made money selling androids.


     


    1. No one but Apple has made money selling iDevices.


     


    2. As for Android not being profitable, I didn't realize that charity was such a strong motivating factor for hardware companies. My opinion of human nature is increased.

  • Reply 43 of 225
    christopher126christopher126 Posts: 4,366member


    Really enjoyed the article...Thanks for the "weekend reading!" :)

  • Reply 44 of 225
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    igriv wrote: »
    1. No one but Apple has made money selling iDevices.

    2. As for Android not being profitable, I didn't realize that charity was such a strong motivating factor for hardware companies. My opinion of human nature is increased.

    You're all sorts of wrong on everything here. Android is not Samsung and Samsung is not Android. Google owns Android and is still many billion in debt for it. Samsung is the only vendor using Android that is well above breaking even.

    Foxconn sells iDevices. They sell them to Apple. The price they sell them to Apple is what is determines how much is paid to the holder of licenses for patents, specifically wireless patents.

    Oddly you want to call of Samsung's profits profits for Android but you don't want to call any of Apple's profits profits for Foxconn. Do you really not see how you're not understanding what companies control what brands?
  • Reply 45 of 225
    tommcintommcin Posts: 108member
    Fortunately, Apple is not charging outrageous prices for each new version of iOS. Now there is a place Android and Samsung could go.
  • Reply 46 of 225
    igrivigriv Posts: 1,177member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    You're all sorts of wrong on everything here. Android is not Samsung and Samsung is not Android. Google owns Android and is still many billion in debt for it. Samsung is the only vendor using Android that is well above breaking even.



    Foxconn sells iDevices. They sell them to Apple. The price they sell them to Apple is what is determines how much is paid to the holder of licenses for patents, specifically wireless patents.



    Oddly you want to call of Samsung's profits profits for Android but you don't want to call any of Apple's profits profits for Foxconn. Do you really not see how you're not understanding what companies control what brands?


     


    Yes, the Apple supply-side ecosystem profits from the iDevices, as does the Android supply-side ecosystem (which is, to a considerable extent the same as Apple's) profit from Android devices. Samsung is a vertically integrated company, so it is its own supplier, but other players in the market are not, and so their costs are other people's profits. So? As for your first paragraph, read my post. And again. You are allowed to read aloud, since you obviously have trouble understanding what I am saying.

  • Reply 47 of 225
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member

    Steve Jobs' observation about tech companies that attain monopolies (The Lost Interview, 24:20):


     


    "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like, oh, IBM and Xerox.


     


    "If you were a product person at IBM, or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer, so what? When you have a monopoly market share the company's not any more successful.


     


    "So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. Sort of the product sensibility - the product genius - that brought them to that monopolistic position - gets rotted out [...]"

  • Reply 48 of 225
    gwmacgwmac Posts: 1,807member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post





    Apple doesn't do cheap.

     


     


    Silly of you to take my comment arguing for a more affordable iPhone as "cheap" as in low quality. You know exactly what I meant so why not rebut my actual point instead of debating a straw man that doesn't exist  Apple can make a more affordable iPhone without making a "cheap" low quality version and still make a nice profit. Better to make a slightly lower profit margin than lose the customer to another company completely.  Cheaper doesn't mean cheap and Apple are perfectly capable of making a high quality lower priced iPhone and still make a nice profit. Besides which the existence of products like the Mac Mini, Nano, and Shuffle prove your assertion is just factually wrong.

  • Reply 49 of 225
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,403member
    fredd wrote: »
    I agree.  Very silly article, when iPhone's market share worldwide is threatening to drop to single digits in Q3 and when Apple has dropped to less than 50% of the tablet market share (a market many pundits thought they would dominate forever) and clearly heading rapidly to 20%

    Yes, Apple's mobile business is clearly heading the same way as their Mac business did - niche devices with a small market share. By next year we are going to see apps debuting first on Android before iOS, and having better versions there, e.g Facebook Home. The downwards momentum is pretty strong for Apple at the minute.

    The only way Apple is like Microsoft is that they both make lots of money, but their share price will remain stagnant for the next 10 years.


    <img alt="" class="lightbox-enabled" data-id="24557" data-type="61" height="229" src="http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/24557/width/350/height/700/flags/LL" style="; width: 350px; height: 229px;" width="350">

    Lol. Which silly hole did you crawl out of!?

    Go away, now.
  • Reply 50 of 225
    Dan_DilgerDan_Dilger Posts: 1,583member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    "Fated to go the way of Windows"???


    "Apple has a roadmap of do's and don'ts to follow"???


     


    Ugh. The danger Apple faces isn't failing to defend the stickiness of their platform. That just doesn't work. Microsoft tries desperately during the 90s to make sure Windows remained sticky, and they identified two threats to that stickiness: the World Wide Web and Java. This was the era of "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics. Microsoft pushed "Best Viewed in IE4" badges on Web sites, and tried to add Windows-only libraries to Java until Sun won a lawsuit against Microsoft that ground that to a halt.


     


    Defending stickiness is NOT a long-term growth strategy. It's a short-term time-buying strategy. If you have to actively defend it, then market trends are making your platform irrelevant. The forces that make it irrelevant will reward (new) players who adapt, and wipe out those that try to oppose it. The forces that finally felled Windows are: fast ubiquitous 3G/4G Internet, touch screen phones and tablets (iPads, for the most part), and consumer appetite for using technology to access web services such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Instagram and Pandora, more than to run Windows-specific applications. Ironically, one of Microsoft's technologies, XHR, helped make this possible (Microsoft may have originally wanted XHR to be Windows-specific, but they didn't stop anyone else from implementing it, thus seeding Windows' future doom). The shift to using technology to access Web services (from anywhere) with connected, always-on portable devices is what will decimate Windows and PCs in consumer markets. PCs will still be relevant on the content creation side for the foreseeable future.


     


    For Apple, the threats to "iDevice" stickiness will be streaming media. The iPod (and later iPad) owes much of its popularity to the popularity of iTunes sourced content (which have grown from just songs to movies, TV, and books). If Spotify or Netflix (or Google Play or Amazon Instant MP3/Video) start to eat into that, that will be an early warning sign that Apple had better get on the winning side of that trend. Inflection points for new technology can flip perceptions and consumer market share in as little as two Christmases. If Apple is smart, they'll offer the best streaming music and/or video service before anyone else does. If you think about it, on demand streaming music (personal radio) is something that would even make iCloud irrelevant for media storage, because your music is already on a server. Higher wireless data caps and/or even better music compression could be a tipping point for this.


     


    There might be other trends that'll make smartphones passé. Wearable computing is one of them (smart watch or Google Glass). Advanced natural language human interfaces (talking to your device as fluently as talking to another person), are all longer-term bets about the next big thing that'll replace the smartphone/tablet as the trending way to access data and services.


     


    Apple shouldn't follow Microsoft's do's and don'ts, and I don't think they will. It's not in their DNA. Apple has to do two core thing right to stay on top:


    1. See where maturing technologies are coming together in the future to form great new products and services


    2. Don't be afraid to cannibalize your own markets.



     


    You should read the article, not just glance over the subheads. There's no suggestion that Apple need "to defend the stickiness" of the platform, or needs to follow the decisions Microsoft made. The last section mentions avoiding problems Microsoft ran into, especially ignoring security (as Google is doing with Android) and letting years go by while ignoring your platform (Vista, just like Google's lost year of 2011 focused on tablets, a failure inside of a failure). 


     


    The main problem Microsoft had was running the company as a series of fiefdoms, often at cross purposes. Apple runs itself like an army, shifting resources to whatever task the executive team plans out. I'm pretty sure any other tech company is run like that. 


     


    Also, the more you know about how Apple analyzes business opportunities and technologies, the less impress you are by startups and rival companies that pop up for a minute with a good idea and then fall apart before they can implement it.

  • Reply 51 of 225
    ronstarkronstark Posts: 81member
    Fantastic analysis. Such analytics are necessary to the survival of the IOS prlatform in general and Apple specifically. I believe and know the key is CONSISTENCY. Apple has now learned this too with Maps. I have said this before, Apple, like Disney, (which Steve Jobs didn't want to have happen) has lost its lightening rod leader. Tim Cook is a fantastic manager, good internal man, but not a lightening rod. I suppose he could be and is trying to be. But even now Disney sufferes, as Apple, with no lightening rod. The public and stock prices, rely on this signular person more than anything else in many ways. Perhaps this should have been part of the analysis of the brand.
  • Reply 52 of 225
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,403member
    igriv wrote: »

    .... as does the Android supply-side ecosystem (which is, to a considerable extent the same as Apple's) profit from Android devices. Samsung is a vertically integrated company, so it is its own supplier, but other players in the market are not, and so their costs are other people's profits.

    Other than the some of the semiconductors, what are the other significant components of Samsung's supply-side ecosystem? Where does it get its core operating software? Its glass? Plastic? Who does its assembly?

    Also, given that Samsung mostly sells low-end stuff (look at its sad ASP), it needs to keep costs down as much as possible.
  • Reply 53 of 225
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    solipsismx wrote: »
    Ah, the old Android expression is back once again: Soon. Soooooon. Sooooooooooooon Android will be profitable. Sooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will not be fragmented. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooon Android will be the bestest in all the land.

    Very much akin to the old sports adage "we'll get them next year"
  • Reply 54 of 225
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Other than the some of the semiconductors, what are the other significant components of Samsung's supply-side ecosystem? Where does it get its core operating software? Its glass? Plastic? Who does its assembly?

    Also, given that Samsung mostly sells low-end stuff (look at their sad ASP), it needs to keep costs down as much as possible.

    And how much is Google profiting from Android that would make the igriv state that Android has been profitable against the $13 billion plus investment from Google?
  • Reply 55 of 225
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    Very much akin to the old sports adage "we'll get them next year"

    I always think of Waiting for Godot.
  • Reply 56 of 225
    anantksundaramanantksundaram Posts: 20,403member
    fredd wrote: »
    Recent research shows the Android platform already has more download potential for developers and revenue is I think less but also catching up. The revenue element is obviously most important, but that will very likely exceed the iOS platform by next year.

    Eric Schmidt already said that. Last year. And the year before that.

    Recall his laughable boast about Google and TVs?
  • Reply 57 of 225
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Recall his laughable boast about Google and TVs?

    Weren't half of all TVs sold suppose to include GoogleTV a year ago? How is that going?¡
  • Reply 58 of 225
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post

    Weren't half of all TVs sold suppose to include GoogleTV a year ago? How is that going?¡


     


    And this gem, from just two days ago:


     


    YouTube has displaced TV.

  • Reply 59 of 225
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    And this gem, from just two days ago:

    YouTube has displaced TV.

    I'm not sure what to make of that. I can see how YouTube has more eyeballs and more total eyeball time than conventional TV viewing but I'm quite sure I agree with his "talks back" comment. There are a comments section and it's easier for the content owner to judge how the viewer reacts but I think his comment is still pretty weak.
  • Reply 60 of 225
    bushman4bushman4 Posts: 858member
    iOS has been the new Windows without question. Sad to see how Microsoft dropped the ball.
    Ios capabilities are endless and its good to see that people are finally realizing the reality
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