Oracle has been successful in the high end data base market. Then they started buying up other software and hardware companies to augment their line of business so they can expand. They do back end work whereas Apple is a consumer personal computing company that gets a lot of media attention.
I didn't know this was a pissing contest to figure out who can piss the furthest.
Oracle is amongst the best at what they do. A CEO like Ellison has to figure out what other companies to buy in order to go after different markets and select which companies to buy and which markets to go after because it sometimes takes too long to develop in house what someone else has already done. He's been running the same company for a long time and it's a successful company that does quite a bit of business. Only what they do isn't as sexy to talk since most people don't understand what a data base let alone what the other aspects of their company does. Sure, a small section of the population that's in that world knows, but it's not something that people buy as a consumer product. Even though most people have interacted with Oracle software on one level or another almost daily, they may not know it, that's all.
I see Larry's company as being more derivative and evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't see him as a great visionary.
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
I see Larry's company as being more derivative and evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't see him as a great visionary.
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
What does that have to do with his ability to have his own opinions on how a company is run? Ellison has to recognize where the market is going and to either develop the technology in house or buy another company to accomplish the same thing. Ellison has probably spent more time with Jobs as a personal friend and someone that used to be on Apple's BofDirectors for many years. I think it's pretty safe to say that he knows a LOT more about how Apple is run than a lot of us. He can make his own opinons, whether or not he's right is a different story, but he's been with the same company since the beginning and he's one of most successful at what Oracle does. You don't get in that position by luck. He obviously was able to compete against the other big players like IBM and others in the same space.
I see Larry's company as being more derivative and evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't see him as a great visionary.
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
In order to be a successful person in the high tech industry running a company such as Oracle, you have to be a visionary in the space they are in and know how to steer the company. To do that successfully, you have to have a lot of different skill sets and one is seeing the vision for the company. He doesn't have to have the idea for a smartphone or tablet to be a visionary, he also doesn't have to be anything other than what he is and he can formulate his own opinions. I think his assessment of Apple w/o Jobs is going to happen, because Apple is not the same Apple today as it was back in the 80's when Jobs first left. Apple did well until WIndows 95 got released, but Jobs or Apple couldn't really do anything about that at that time. Even though WIndows has 90% market share in the desktop/laptop space, they certainly don't have it in the smartphone and tablet market space, so Apple's current "Microsoft" is the Android platform and even with Microsoft as the big competitor in the desktop/laptop world, and Android in the smartphone and tablet world, Apple still does quite well in terms of profits. They just need to execute a little faster, which they can't always control. If Apple had a great large screen iPhone and a cheaper version of the iPhone 5 last Sept and there were no product constraints Apple would be in a better position than they are now, but unfortunately, Apple didn't have everything they needed last year and so far, they haven't been announcing products each quarter like they normally do, they are pushing everything at the end of the year whether it's by choice or not.
I personally Ellison's opinion is wrong, but he is entitled to one and being who he is and his relationship with both Jobs and Apple gives him a different perspective than us normal folks. We don't have to agree with him. But at least recognize what he's accomplished because Steve could NEVER do what Ellison did. Steve doesn't know that end of the business. And i doubt Ellison could do what Jobs did.
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
4) Sorry, I'm not an apologizer and blind-lover like you, I've been using Apple since high school and in my 40's now but that doesn't blind me. Doesn't make me think they are without fail or too good for criticism. I'd hate to have a friend like you, no matter what your friends do you'll be their 'yes' man and think its all great. I guess if Apple released a new toaster that connects to your iPhone you'd think it was the greatest thing ever. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, without it - nothing and no one ever improves. Now, get your Apple binky and turn on your Apple night light and pull up your Apple sheets and have a good nap (see I can be a rude boy, too).
It would make him sort of OK if he also mentioned that Java ripping off NeXTSTEP and SUN breaking the OpenStep allegiance with NeXT in favor of its own OOP/OOL NeXTSTEP rip-off aka Java was evil, too. Not like he had anything to do with it then, but he happily continued the issue and grabbed SUN and its Java strategy for Oracle. To his defense, under Oracle, Java was more moved towards a backend/enterprise tool, and moved away from the desktop anti-Windows/anti-Mac positioning (which would have been OK had it been cooked up independently without the "inspiration" called NeXTSTEP).
It's pretty bizarre to claim that creating another programming language is evil especially since Objective-C clearly "rips off" much from Smalltalk. The history of computer languages is full of people forking languages and borrowing features, Apple themselves "ripped off" Sun's Self language for NewtonScript and Scheme/Common Lisp for Dylan. It's a fine tradition of people building new languages that are derivates of Forth, Lisp, ALGOL, et al, and mix and matching features. Java (originally Oak) was created to address issues that NeXTSTEP didn't: running in an embedded environment, portable (CPU architecture independent) code, secure sandboxing, multithreading, and garbage collection. Java was originally meant to run in set-top boxes which run on a bewildering array architectures. There was no LLVM bitcode back then, so I don't see a reasonable way NeXTSTEP/Objective-C could have address the concerns of running untrusted sandboxed code platform independently back in 1990. The only solutions in those days were stack machines/interpreters as many set-top embedded CPUs didn't even have memory protection/hypervisors back then.
If you take any group of 3 or more bored engineers in a company, eventually they're going to invent a new programming language. It's something good engineers find irresistable -- building your own tools.
No company has ever released a totally new product category every year. It's absurd to expect Apple to do that with or without Jobs. I still predict that 20 years from now, Apple is going to be a robotics company.
I agree with everything you said (mostly), but I still think they are (as of right now - today) not being as innovative. By no means do I think they should or even can release a new hardware product every year or even every two years, that's unrealistic. However, I do think 2014 will be a very telling year. TO ME if they don't introduce a new product by end of 2014 a lot of shareholders (of which I'm not), some fans, and the media in general will start to seriously question the direction of the company. Even if they release the long rumored Apple TV flat-screen in 2014, everyone knows Steve Jobs talked about that before his death, so even that would get attached to Jobs not Cook. To me, Cook needs a product in the next 12-18 months that was never rumored under Jobs, that Tim can get full credit for and calm the nerves of some.
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
4) Sorry, I'm not an apologizer and blind-lover like you, I've been using Apple since high school and in my 40's now but that doesn't blind me. Doesn't make me think they are without fail or too good for criticism. I'd hate to have a friend like you, no matter what your friends do you'll be their 'yes' man and think its all great. I guess if Apple released a new toaster that connects to your iPhone you'd think it was the greatest thing ever. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, without it - nothing and no one ever improves. Now, get your Apple binky and turn on your Apple night light and pull up your Apple sheets and have a good nap (see I can be a rude boy, too).
Um, it's that Apple has their plate full with product refreshes. What has ANYONE else done? Google Glass? I'm sorry but that's not officially released to the open market, it's still in early development stages and its already being banned in certain places.
All that the Android has is just different sized versions of a smartphone and tablet.
They haven't come up with some revolutionary product that's successful. Neither has Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
It's not every day or even year when a company can spit out a revolutionary product, so what's your problem?
Once the revolutionary product emerges, then they have to go through product redesigns as newer technology comes out and the market decides what they want in a final product.
I agree with everything you said (mostly), but I still think they are (as of right now - today) not being as innovative. By no means do I think they should or even can release a new hardware product every year or even every two years, that's unrealistic. However, I do think 2014 will be a very telling year. TO ME if they don't introduce a new product by end of 2014 a lot of shareholders (of which I'm not), some fans, and the media in general will start to seriously question the direction of the company. Even if they release the long rumored Apple TV flat-screen in 2014, everyone knows Steve Jobs talked about that before his death, so even that would get attached to Jobs not Cook. To me, Cook needs a product in the next 12-18 months that was never rumored under Jobs, that Tim can get full credit for and calm the nerves of some.
That's bullshit.
They can come out with a large screen smartphone with the right mix of technology and sell tons of it, and that would be enough to gain market share.
You guys think some magical product is going to revive Apple? It's more of just getting more versions of smartphones and tablets and then it's getting China Mobile and DOMOCO signed on and they'll increase market share, revenue and profits.
As far a new market? Sure, that's helpful, in order for Apple to go into the Smart TV market, they have to have a winner and they also have to have a long term strategy and always use the best panels and be able to not only gain market share, but to keep it and be profitable. The TV market is a tough market, even Sony has had a difficult time, as is Panasonic, Sharp and most of the others. It's a very tough market.
The AppleTV box has some promise, but they have to rely on signing deals with other companies that have content.
I think this whole putting the burden on Cook for coming out with something innovative is a little over hyped. What has Google come out with? NOTHING, just more evolutions of the same copy cat product. Microsoft hasn't been successful with anything revolutionary. What? WIndows 8? WIndows 8 sucks. 5% market share in 6 months? Hahahahahaha. It will take them 10 years to get 100% market share, as long as they don't come out with a major GUI change.
I think we're looking at the mobile market setting into a holding pattern just like the desktop in the 80s/90s/00s. The original personal computers, the 8-bit era starting with the Apple II, to Commodore 64, Atari, Spectrum, et al, were the breakthrough -- the first sets of home computers for regular people. Then there was a great consolidation in platforms, eventually ending up as PC, and to a lesser extent, Mac, for the next 20 years. Nothing much happened except for PC refinements. The market mostly saturated.
The Web was the next major innovation, making networking a must have, and again, for 20 years, Web browsers and Web apps got refined. The PC got half commodified as lots of stuff could now be done in the browser on any machine.
The iPhone dropped the other shoe to disrupt the PC, and suddenly, running software in the palm of your hand with touch was the next big thing. A bunch of players entered, but it looks like they are all going to die and everything is going to consolidate around two platforms iOS and Android. This will be the next great "hold pattern" for the next 20 years I bet (notice, Windows isn't in that future)
If Apple is to produce something as disruptive as the iPhone, it will have to disrupt the iPhone itself. A smart watch, or smart TV, or whatever might be successful and add revenue, but I'm going to guess that it will more or less be another iOS accessory, and not the next revolution.
These kinds of industry wide shifts don't happen very often, so expecting Apple to produce them on regularity is too much. Tablets were worked on for decades, Apple even had one, the Newton, just like Apple had its own digital camera, but really, the shift to tablets and away from film cameras couldn't happen until technology caught up. I remember those old, first digital cameras, the quality was horrendous, but slowly but surely, they got better, to the point that the prior kings, Kodak and Fuji are practically out of the film business.
I wouldn't blame Tim Cook for the lack of revolutionary new products. If Steve Jobs was still alive and CEO, I doubt he'd be able to produce revolutionary new products like clockwork either.
In the original iPhone announcement in 2007, he counted only three revolutionary products: The Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. I would have actually counted the Apple II, Mac, and iPhone, or iTunes Music, because frankly, I don't think the iPod hardware was all that revolutionary (it was bulkier/heavier and uglier than many MP3 players at the time, the real revolution was the music distribution model that came later -- striking the deals with record publishers)
I think this whole putting the burden on Cook for coming out with something innovative is a little over hyped. What has Google come out with? NOTHING, just more evolutions of the same copy cat product. Microsoft hasn't been successful with anything revolutionary. What? WIndows 8? WIndows 8 sucks. 5% market share in 6 months? Hahahahahaha. It will take them 10 years to get 100% market share, as long as they don't come out with a major GUI change.
To be fair with Google's track record:
Search: Entering a crowded market ("there are already search engines, who needs another. Lycos/Altavista/Infoseek/HotBot/Excite/et al"). Now with 60-90% marketshare depending on company. You don't overtake a market like that without innovation.
Chrome: Who needs another browser! We already have IE/Firefox/Safari. Very quickly, they became the #1 browser. Now 750+ million active users. They reignited browser competition and drove Javascript performance through the roof, introduced sandbox browser tabs, et al. You really think people switched to Chrome because it lacked any innovations? Apple really dropped the ball. They got the football rolling by forking KHTML and creating WebKit, but they did a piss poor job supporting the primary desktop platform (PC). Windows users needed a rescue from Internet Explorer, and Google delivered it.
Gmail: Another WebMail? We already have Yahoo Mail, HotMail. Gmail offered 5Gigabytes for free, workable search, and actual working spam detection, as well as one of the most advanced Web 2.0 apps. GMail now has over 700 million users. Yahoo at the time was charging like $10/yr for an extra 25mb of storage. I remember WebMail at that time, and spam was so bad on Yahoo/HotMail/et al that email was actually on the verge of breaking down as a platform for communication.
Maps: Google Maps was the first truly interactive Web 2.0 application, blew away competitors. Quickly became not only the most popular maps app on the web, but the most popular developer mashup API as well. Again, you can't explain how quickly they displaced Yahoo Maps or MapQuest without comparing the state of those apps to Google Maps when launched.
Google Docs: Web-based real-time collaborative office products, giving Microsoft enough of a worry that they're running ads against it. Google was the first company to deploy the Operational Transform algorithm to collaborative document editing on a wide scale.
Reader (;-): Became #1 RSS reader, which is why people were sad to see it go. It was social, unlike most other RSS readers and many people thought the interface was innovative.
Android: #1 or #2 mobile platform depending on geography.
Voice Search: Google built the most accurate voice recognition product in the world by running huge neural network models on masses of voice samples from the Google 411 product. Now the technology between Google Now.
Google Spanner: a revolutionary new large scale database algorithm, the first real advancement in databases in decades.
I get that people here like to cheer for their team, but acting like Google doesn't innovate I think is a pretty dangerous narrative. Both Google and Apples have had big splash products, followed by years of evolutionary refinements. I think we can cheer on Apple's accomplishments without pretending that others don't have any.
I think we're looking at the mobile market setting into a holding pattern just like the desktop in the 80s/90s/00s. The original personal computers, the 8-bit era starting with the Apple II, to Commodore 64, Atari, Spectrum, et al, were the breakthrough -- the first sets of home computers for regular people. Then there was a great consolidation in platforms, eventually ending up as PC, and to a lesser extent, Mac, for the next 20 years. Nothing much happened except for PC refinements. The market mostly saturated.
The Web was the next major innovation, making networking a must have, and again, for 20 years, Web browsers and Web apps got refined. The PC got half commodified as lots of stuff could now be done in the browser on any machine.
The iPhone dropped the other shoe to disrupt the PC, and suddenly, running software in the palm of your hand with touch was the next big thing. A bunch of players entered, but it looks like they are all going to die and everything is going to consolidate around two platforms iOS and Android. This will be the next great "hold pattern" for the next 20 years I bet (notice, Windows isn't in that future)
If Apple is to produce something as disruptive as the iPhone, it will have to disrupt the iPhone itself. A smart watch, or smart TV, or whatever might be successful and add revenue, but I'm going to guess that it will more or less be another iOS accessory, and not the next revolution.
These kinds of industry wide shifts don't happen very often, so expecting Apple to produce them on regularity is too much. Tablets were worked on for decades, Apple even had one, the Newton, just like Apple had its own digital camera, but really, the shift to tablets and away from film cameras couldn't happen until technology caught up. I remember those old, first digital cameras, the quality was horrendous, but slowly but surely, they got better, to the point that the prior kings, Kodak and Fuji are practically out of the film business.
I wouldn't blame Tim Cook for the lack of revolutionary new products. If Steve Jobs was still alive and CEO, I doubt he'd be able to produce revolutionary new products like clockwork either.
In the original iPhone announcement in 2007, he counted only three revolutionary products: The Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. I would have actually counted the Apple II, Mac, and iPhone, or iTunes Music, because frankly, I don't think the iPod hardware was all that revolutionary (it was bulkier/heavier and uglier than many MP3 players at the time, the real revolution was the music distribution model that came later -- striking the deals with record publishers)
The revolutionary products Apple has been working on takes time to develop due to the nature of the product. The AppleTV box is around and it sells to some people, but what they want to do with it takes time and it takes agreements with the content suppliers.
The HD TV, that's a bag of worms and I'm sure they could do well with it, but it's another product that has to have a lot of time in development before they can release it. Wearables? Again, it takes time to come up with something useful that will be a success. Apple in the car? Again, that doesn't happen over night.
I think Apple's doing just fine, but they could be doing better, but they could also be doing a lot worse. I think they are smart in a lot of ways, it's just executing and sometimes it's beyond their control.
Can you expound on this? First I heard Apple was already far along in the design process of the iMac before SJ.
Now I thought I had heard somewhere that the iMac basics had been designed and rejected before jobs returned. However it was not in the iMac chapter of his biography where I thought it was. Sorry about that. However that chapter did detail how it was designed and although Steve gave the overall concept it was jonny Ive that made them into a viable product rather like Steve waznic did with the Apple one. Imas long as apple keeps designers like that and does not restrain them through management with lack of vision, then Apple will do just fine. I think the Mac Pro is a testimony to that being the case. From what I've seen Tim is as focused as Steve was on something being fit for purpose before it leaves the Apple gates and if he isn't Jonny certainly is and was left with almost a free hand by Steve. Tim certainly knows who to keep if recent events are anything to go by.
Could be. I never liked blue that much anyway. Except for sky, I use that a bit in bird pictures.
Hey, they'll obviously fix that by the time there's a viable product. Same thing happened with OLED and look where that went.
How did we get here anyhow?
IGZO brought us here. IGZO brings us all together. There is only the IGZO.
Originally Posted by mesomorphicman
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
Isn't there a venn diagram for this? You can read without caring and care without reading.
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
Hey, thanks for trying to move the goalposts. When you want to go back to what you said originally, before you realize how stupid it obviously was to say, let us know.
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
And there goes the argument in favor of personal attacks. Later, skater.
…I've been using Apple since high school… …but…
Are you seriously going down my list? Just shut up! You were completely wrong, you know you were completely wrong, just chill and let it die instead of embarrassing yourself like this.
I agree with everything you said (mostly), but I still think they are (as of right now - today) not being as innovative. By no means do I think they should or even can release a new hardware product every year or even every two years, that's unrealistic. However, I do think 2014 will be a very telling year. TO ME if they don't introduce a new product by end of 2014 a lot of shareholders (of which I'm not), some fans, and the media in general will start to seriously question the direction of the company. Even if they release the long rumored Apple TV flat-screen in 2014, everyone knows Steve Jobs talked about that before his death, so even that would get attached to Jobs not Cook. To me, Cook needs a product in the next 12-18 months that was never rumored under Jobs, that Tim can get full credit for and calm the nerves of some.
I am a shareholder and all I care about is Apple making the best products and a lot money. Apple doesn't need a new product line. I'm not sold on an Apple HDTV.
Innovation isn't an item in a checklist. It takes time.
It can stop selling everything today and still run on its cash for 20 years.
So, who are the panel makers spitting out panels using this technology, currently?
Nobody will be "spitting out" these panels in the millions until the required billions are spent on production R&D, by either a Samsung or an Apple, and/or a Foxconn. I just mention the technology so these guys will do their homework before toying with IGZOism.
The point is, we are at a threshold point with displays, like that which existed right before CRTs would be obsolesced by LCDs. It was the LCD display combined with the touchscreen that gave Apple its impetus starting in the late 90s, and culminating in the iPhone and iPad only six and three years ago, respectively. Development of solid state memory also contributed, of course. You could say that mobile computing was first made both powerful and humane by Apple, based on the LCD touchscreen. Not by HP, or Palm, or Microsoft or Samsung, but by Apple, and they're still riding this wave, which is about to hit the beach.
The next wave is the deep LCD screen, and as a sideshow till it matures, the deep OLED screen. These will depend on the doubling (at least) of pixel density made possible by higher-energy substrates like IGZO. I'm way out of my element here, and so leave it for others to finish the thought. But I think I know a big wave when I see one forming out there, and I think Steve Jobs and Apple were on to this one years ago.
I would say that Larry Ellison is eyeing Apple like he does Malibu real estate.
It can stop selling everything today and still run on its cash for 20 years.
Apart that shareholder-thieves (like some we all know names of, from reading Ai) will demand that this cash is given to them. That suddenly makes it way less than 20 years.
Anyway, I never understood why, in America, companies go private when they get in trouble, instead of when they get the money to do so and operate fine. Seems that insulating yourself from the whims of the market is strategically essential, if I look at other big companies such as Yahoo...
Then again, I guess that Tim Cook knows what he's doing, so we can trust him ^^
If you take any group of 3 or more bored engineers in a company, eventually they're going to invent a new programming language. It's something good engineers find irresistable -- building your own tools.
Yeah. It's also quite irritating as their leadership, because they don't need to be bored to still make their own tools.
"It's much more efficient", "There is no better way", "I can't learn every API in the world so I need my own library/language".
Comments
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bobrk
I see Larry's company as being more derivative and evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't see him as a great visionary.
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
What does that have to do with his ability to have his own opinions on how a company is run? Ellison has to recognize where the market is going and to either develop the technology in house or buy another company to accomplish the same thing. Ellison has probably spent more time with Jobs as a personal friend and someone that used to be on Apple's BofDirectors for many years. I think it's pretty safe to say that he knows a LOT more about how Apple is run than a lot of us. He can make his own opinons, whether or not he's right is a different story, but he's been with the same company since the beginning and he's one of most successful at what Oracle does. You don't get in that position by luck. He obviously was able to compete against the other big players like IBM and others in the same space.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bobrk
I see Larry's company as being more derivative and evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't see him as a great visionary.
And I also think his credentials are fair game in this discussion.
In order to be a successful person in the high tech industry running a company such as Oracle, you have to be a visionary in the space they are in and know how to steer the company. To do that successfully, you have to have a lot of different skill sets and one is seeing the vision for the company. He doesn't have to have the idea for a smartphone or tablet to be a visionary, he also doesn't have to be anything other than what he is and he can formulate his own opinions. I think his assessment of Apple w/o Jobs is going to happen, because Apple is not the same Apple today as it was back in the 80's when Jobs first left. Apple did well until WIndows 95 got released, but Jobs or Apple couldn't really do anything about that at that time. Even though WIndows has 90% market share in the desktop/laptop space, they certainly don't have it in the smartphone and tablet market space, so Apple's current "Microsoft" is the Android platform and even with Microsoft as the big competitor in the desktop/laptop world, and Android in the smartphone and tablet world, Apple still does quite well in terms of profits. They just need to execute a little faster, which they can't always control. If Apple had a great large screen iPhone and a cheaper version of the iPhone 5 last Sept and there were no product constraints Apple would be in a better position than they are now, but unfortunately, Apple didn't have everything they needed last year and so far, they haven't been announcing products each quarter like they normally do, they are pushing everything at the end of the year whether it's by choice or not.
I personally Ellison's opinion is wrong, but he is entitled to one and being who he is and his relationship with both Jobs and Apple gives him a different perspective than us normal folks. We don't have to agree with him. But at least recognize what he's accomplished because Steve could NEVER do what Ellison did. Steve doesn't know that end of the business. And i doubt Ellison could do what Jobs did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Stopped caring.
How stupid a statement can a person make?
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
4) Sorry, I'm not an apologizer and blind-lover like you, I've been using Apple since high school and in my 40's now but that doesn't blind me. Doesn't make me think they are without fail or too good for criticism. I'd hate to have a friend like you, no matter what your friends do you'll be their 'yes' man and think its all great. I guess if Apple released a new toaster that connects to your iPhone you'd think it was the greatest thing ever. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, without it - nothing and no one ever improves. Now, get your Apple binky and turn on your Apple night light and pull up your Apple sheets and have a good nap (see I can be a rude boy, too).
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
It would make him sort of OK if he also mentioned that Java ripping off NeXTSTEP and SUN breaking the OpenStep allegiance with NeXT in favor of its own OOP/OOL NeXTSTEP rip-off aka Java was evil, too. Not like he had anything to do with it then, but he happily continued the issue and grabbed SUN and its Java strategy for Oracle. To his defense, under Oracle, Java was more moved towards a backend/enterprise tool, and moved away from the desktop anti-Windows/anti-Mac positioning (which would have been OK had it been cooked up independently without the "inspiration" called NeXTSTEP).
It's pretty bizarre to claim that creating another programming language is evil especially since Objective-C clearly "rips off" much from Smalltalk. The history of computer languages is full of people forking languages and borrowing features, Apple themselves "ripped off" Sun's Self language for NewtonScript and Scheme/Common Lisp for Dylan. It's a fine tradition of people building new languages that are derivates of Forth, Lisp, ALGOL, et al, and mix and matching features. Java (originally Oak) was created to address issues that NeXTSTEP didn't: running in an embedded environment, portable (CPU architecture independent) code, secure sandboxing, multithreading, and garbage collection. Java was originally meant to run in set-top boxes which run on a bewildering array architectures. There was no LLVM bitcode back then, so I don't see a reasonable way NeXTSTEP/Objective-C could have address the concerns of running untrusted sandboxed code platform independently back in 1990. The only solutions in those days were stack machines/interpreters as many set-top embedded CPUs didn't even have memory protection/hypervisors back then.
If you take any group of 3 or more bored engineers in a company, eventually they're going to invent a new programming language. It's something good engineers find irresistable -- building your own tools.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoetmb
No company has ever released a totally new product category every year. It's absurd to expect Apple to do that with or without Jobs. I still predict that 20 years from now, Apple is going to be a robotics company.
I agree with everything you said (mostly), but I still think they are (as of right now - today) not being as innovative. By no means do I think they should or even can release a new hardware product every year or even every two years, that's unrealistic. However, I do think 2014 will be a very telling year. TO ME if they don't introduce a new product by end of 2014 a lot of shareholders (of which I'm not), some fans, and the media in general will start to seriously question the direction of the company. Even if they release the long rumored Apple TV flat-screen in 2014, everyone knows Steve Jobs talked about that before his death, so even that would get attached to Jobs not Cook. To me, Cook needs a product in the next 12-18 months that was never rumored under Jobs, that Tim can get full credit for and calm the nerves of some.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mesomorphicman
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
4) Sorry, I'm not an apologizer and blind-lover like you, I've been using Apple since high school and in my 40's now but that doesn't blind me. Doesn't make me think they are without fail or too good for criticism. I'd hate to have a friend like you, no matter what your friends do you'll be their 'yes' man and think its all great. I guess if Apple released a new toaster that connects to your iPhone you'd think it was the greatest thing ever. Nothing wrong with constructive criticism, without it - nothing and no one ever improves. Now, get your Apple binky and turn on your Apple night light and pull up your Apple sheets and have a good nap (see I can be a rude boy, too).
Um, it's that Apple has their plate full with product refreshes. What has ANYONE else done? Google Glass? I'm sorry but that's not officially released to the open market, it's still in early development stages and its already being banned in certain places.
All that the Android has is just different sized versions of a smartphone and tablet.
They haven't come up with some revolutionary product that's successful. Neither has Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
It's not every day or even year when a company can spit out a revolutionary product, so what's your problem?
Once the revolutionary product emerges, then they have to go through product redesigns as newer technology comes out and the market decides what they want in a final product.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mesomorphicman
I agree with everything you said (mostly), but I still think they are (as of right now - today) not being as innovative. By no means do I think they should or even can release a new hardware product every year or even every two years, that's unrealistic. However, I do think 2014 will be a very telling year. TO ME if they don't introduce a new product by end of 2014 a lot of shareholders (of which I'm not), some fans, and the media in general will start to seriously question the direction of the company. Even if they release the long rumored Apple TV flat-screen in 2014, everyone knows Steve Jobs talked about that before his death, so even that would get attached to Jobs not Cook. To me, Cook needs a product in the next 12-18 months that was never rumored under Jobs, that Tim can get full credit for and calm the nerves of some.
That's bullshit.
They can come out with a large screen smartphone with the right mix of technology and sell tons of it, and that would be enough to gain market share.
You guys think some magical product is going to revive Apple? It's more of just getting more versions of smartphones and tablets and then it's getting China Mobile and DOMOCO signed on and they'll increase market share, revenue and profits.
As far a new market? Sure, that's helpful, in order for Apple to go into the Smart TV market, they have to have a winner and they also have to have a long term strategy and always use the best panels and be able to not only gain market share, but to keep it and be profitable. The TV market is a tough market, even Sony has had a difficult time, as is Panasonic, Sharp and most of the others. It's a very tough market.
The AppleTV box has some promise, but they have to rely on signing deals with other companies that have content.
I think this whole putting the burden on Cook for coming out with something innovative is a little over hyped. What has Google come out with? NOTHING, just more evolutions of the same copy cat product. Microsoft hasn't been successful with anything revolutionary. What? WIndows 8? WIndows 8 sucks. 5% market share in 6 months? Hahahahahaha. It will take them 10 years to get 100% market share, as long as they don't come out with a major GUI change.
I think we're looking at the mobile market setting into a holding pattern just like the desktop in the 80s/90s/00s. The original personal computers, the 8-bit era starting with the Apple II, to Commodore 64, Atari, Spectrum, et al, were the breakthrough -- the first sets of home computers for regular people. Then there was a great consolidation in platforms, eventually ending up as PC, and to a lesser extent, Mac, for the next 20 years. Nothing much happened except for PC refinements. The market mostly saturated.
The Web was the next major innovation, making networking a must have, and again, for 20 years, Web browsers and Web apps got refined. The PC got half commodified as lots of stuff could now be done in the browser on any machine.
The iPhone dropped the other shoe to disrupt the PC, and suddenly, running software in the palm of your hand with touch was the next big thing. A bunch of players entered, but it looks like they are all going to die and everything is going to consolidate around two platforms iOS and Android. This will be the next great "hold pattern" for the next 20 years I bet (notice, Windows isn't in that future)
If Apple is to produce something as disruptive as the iPhone, it will have to disrupt the iPhone itself. A smart watch, or smart TV, or whatever might be successful and add revenue, but I'm going to guess that it will more or less be another iOS accessory, and not the next revolution.
These kinds of industry wide shifts don't happen very often, so expecting Apple to produce them on regularity is too much. Tablets were worked on for decades, Apple even had one, the Newton, just like Apple had its own digital camera, but really, the shift to tablets and away from film cameras couldn't happen until technology caught up. I remember those old, first digital cameras, the quality was horrendous, but slowly but surely, they got better, to the point that the prior kings, Kodak and Fuji are practically out of the film business.
I wouldn't blame Tim Cook for the lack of revolutionary new products. If Steve Jobs was still alive and CEO, I doubt he'd be able to produce revolutionary new products like clockwork either.
In the original iPhone announcement in 2007, he counted only three revolutionary products: The Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. I would have actually counted the Apple II, Mac, and iPhone, or iTunes Music, because frankly, I don't think the iPod hardware was all that revolutionary (it was bulkier/heavier and uglier than many MP3 players at the time, the real revolution was the music distribution model that came later -- striking the deals with record publishers)
Quote:
Originally Posted by drblank
I think this whole putting the burden on Cook for coming out with something innovative is a little over hyped. What has Google come out with? NOTHING, just more evolutions of the same copy cat product. Microsoft hasn't been successful with anything revolutionary. What? WIndows 8? WIndows 8 sucks. 5% market share in 6 months? Hahahahahaha. It will take them 10 years to get 100% market share, as long as they don't come out with a major GUI change.
To be fair with Google's track record:
Search: Entering a crowded market ("there are already search engines, who needs another. Lycos/Altavista/Infoseek/HotBot/Excite/et al"). Now with 60-90% marketshare depending on company. You don't overtake a market like that without innovation.
Chrome: Who needs another browser! We already have IE/Firefox/Safari. Very quickly, they became the #1 browser. Now 750+ million active users. They reignited browser competition and drove Javascript performance through the roof, introduced sandbox browser tabs, et al. You really think people switched to Chrome because it lacked any innovations? Apple really dropped the ball. They got the football rolling by forking KHTML and creating WebKit, but they did a piss poor job supporting the primary desktop platform (PC). Windows users needed a rescue from Internet Explorer, and Google delivered it.
Gmail: Another WebMail? We already have Yahoo Mail, HotMail. Gmail offered 5Gigabytes for free, workable search, and actual working spam detection, as well as one of the most advanced Web 2.0 apps. GMail now has over 700 million users. Yahoo at the time was charging like $10/yr for an extra 25mb of storage. I remember WebMail at that time, and spam was so bad on Yahoo/HotMail/et al that email was actually on the verge of breaking down as a platform for communication.
Maps: Google Maps was the first truly interactive Web 2.0 application, blew away competitors. Quickly became not only the most popular maps app on the web, but the most popular developer mashup API as well. Again, you can't explain how quickly they displaced Yahoo Maps or MapQuest without comparing the state of those apps to Google Maps when launched.
Google Docs: Web-based real-time collaborative office products, giving Microsoft enough of a worry that they're running ads against it. Google was the first company to deploy the Operational Transform algorithm to collaborative document editing on a wide scale.
Reader (;-): Became #1 RSS reader, which is why people were sad to see it go. It was social, unlike most other RSS readers and many people thought the interface was innovative.
Android: #1 or #2 mobile platform depending on geography.
Voice Search: Google built the most accurate voice recognition product in the world by running huge neural network models on masses of voice samples from the Google 411 product. Now the technology between Google Now.
Google Spanner: a revolutionary new large scale database algorithm, the first real advancement in databases in decades.
I get that people here like to cheer for their team, but acting like Google doesn't innovate I think is a pretty dangerous narrative. Both Google and Apples have had big splash products, followed by years of evolutionary refinements. I think we can cheer on Apple's accomplishments without pretending that others don't have any.
Quote:
Originally Posted by closure
I think we're looking at the mobile market setting into a holding pattern just like the desktop in the 80s/90s/00s. The original personal computers, the 8-bit era starting with the Apple II, to Commodore 64, Atari, Spectrum, et al, were the breakthrough -- the first sets of home computers for regular people. Then there was a great consolidation in platforms, eventually ending up as PC, and to a lesser extent, Mac, for the next 20 years. Nothing much happened except for PC refinements. The market mostly saturated.
The Web was the next major innovation, making networking a must have, and again, for 20 years, Web browsers and Web apps got refined. The PC got half commodified as lots of stuff could now be done in the browser on any machine.
The iPhone dropped the other shoe to disrupt the PC, and suddenly, running software in the palm of your hand with touch was the next big thing. A bunch of players entered, but it looks like they are all going to die and everything is going to consolidate around two platforms iOS and Android. This will be the next great "hold pattern" for the next 20 years I bet (notice, Windows isn't in that future)
If Apple is to produce something as disruptive as the iPhone, it will have to disrupt the iPhone itself. A smart watch, or smart TV, or whatever might be successful and add revenue, but I'm going to guess that it will more or less be another iOS accessory, and not the next revolution.
These kinds of industry wide shifts don't happen very often, so expecting Apple to produce them on regularity is too much. Tablets were worked on for decades, Apple even had one, the Newton, just like Apple had its own digital camera, but really, the shift to tablets and away from film cameras couldn't happen until technology caught up. I remember those old, first digital cameras, the quality was horrendous, but slowly but surely, they got better, to the point that the prior kings, Kodak and Fuji are practically out of the film business.
I wouldn't blame Tim Cook for the lack of revolutionary new products. If Steve Jobs was still alive and CEO, I doubt he'd be able to produce revolutionary new products like clockwork either.
In the original iPhone announcement in 2007, he counted only three revolutionary products: The Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. I would have actually counted the Apple II, Mac, and iPhone, or iTunes Music, because frankly, I don't think the iPod hardware was all that revolutionary (it was bulkier/heavier and uglier than many MP3 players at the time, the real revolution was the music distribution model that came later -- striking the deals with record publishers)
The revolutionary products Apple has been working on takes time to develop due to the nature of the product. The AppleTV box is around and it sells to some people, but what they want to do with it takes time and it takes agreements with the content suppliers.
The HD TV, that's a bag of worms and I'm sure they could do well with it, but it's another product that has to have a lot of time in development before they can release it. Wearables? Again, it takes time to come up with something useful that will be a success. Apple in the car? Again, that doesn't happen over night.
I think Apple's doing just fine, but they could be doing better, but they could also be doing a lot worse. I think they are smart in a lot of ways, it's just executing and sometimes it's beyond their control.
Now I thought I had heard somewhere that the iMac basics had been designed and rejected before jobs returned. However it was not in the iMac chapter of his biography where I thought it was. Sorry about that. However that chapter did detail how it was designed and although Steve gave the overall concept it was jonny Ive that made them into a viable product rather like Steve waznic did with the Apple one. Imas long as apple keeps designers like that and does not restrain them through management with lack of vision, then Apple will do just fine. I think the Mac Pro is a testimony to that being the case. From what I've seen Tim is as focused as Steve was on something being fit for purpose before it leaves the Apple gates and if he isn't Jonny certainly is and was left with almost a free hand by Steve. Tim certainly knows who to keep if recent events are anything to go by.
Originally Posted by Flaneur
Could be. I never liked blue that much anyway. Except for sky, I use that a bit in bird pictures.
Hey, they'll obviously fix that by the time there's a viable product. Same thing happened with OLED and look where that went.
How did we get here anyhow?
IGZO brought us here. IGZO brings us all together. There is only the IGZO.
Originally Posted by mesomorphicman
1) If you stopped caring then why did you read on?
Isn't there a venn diagram for this? You can read without caring and care without reading.
2) Name one... one... new product (not redesign, not an upgrade, not new software) but a new piece of hardware that Apple has released since Jobs' passing (and one of significance, not some tiny new product that .5% of the population knows about?
Hey, thanks for trying to move the goalposts. When you want to go back to what you said originally, before you realize how stupid it obviously was to say, let us know.
3) Is this what you do all day everyday, take shots at people comments and thoughts as if only yours is the only one of relevance and importance?
And there goes the argument in favor of personal attacks. Later, skater.
…I've been using Apple since high school… …but…
Are you seriously going down my list? Just shut up! You were completely wrong, you know you were completely wrong, just chill and let it die instead of embarrassing yourself like this.
IGZO FTW! 8-)
I am a shareholder and all I care about is Apple making the best products and a lot money. Apple doesn't need a new product line. I'm not sold on an Apple HDTV.
Innovation isn't an item in a checklist. It takes time.
It can stop selling everything today and still run on its cash for 20 years.
"The" IGZO? It's never "the" IGZO, like with "the Pope." There are many popes.
There is only one IGZO, so it's just "IGZO." Like with "God." You never say "the" God.
Nobody will be "spitting out" these panels in the millions until the required billions are spent on production R&D, by either a Samsung or an Apple, and/or a Foxconn. I just mention the technology so these guys will do their homework before toying with IGZOism.
The point is, we are at a threshold point with displays, like that which existed right before CRTs would be obsolesced by LCDs. It was the LCD display combined with the touchscreen that gave Apple its impetus starting in the late 90s, and culminating in the iPhone and iPad only six and three years ago, respectively. Development of solid state memory also contributed, of course. You could say that mobile computing was first made both powerful and humane by Apple, based on the LCD touchscreen. Not by HP, or Palm, or Microsoft or Samsung, but by Apple, and they're still riding this wave, which is about to hit the beach.
The next wave is the deep LCD screen, and as a sideshow till it matures, the deep OLED screen. These will depend on the doubling (at least) of pixel density made possible by higher-energy substrates like IGZO. I'm way out of my element here, and so leave it for others to finish the thought. But I think I know a big wave when I see one forming out there, and I think Steve Jobs and Apple were on to this one years ago.
I would say that Larry Ellison is eyeing Apple like he does Malibu real estate.
They should be implemented PDQ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneur
There is only one IGZO, so it's just "IGZO." Like with "God." You never say "the" God.
The God you're referring to is a very bad example.
Not like he's the only God around, after all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
It can stop selling everything today and still run on its cash for 20 years.
Apart that shareholder-thieves (like some we all know names of, from reading Ai) will demand that this cash is given to them. That suddenly makes it way less than 20 years.
Anyway, I never understood why, in America, companies go private when they get in trouble, instead of when they get the money to do so and operate fine. Seems that insulating yourself from the whims of the market is strategically essential, if I look at other big companies such as Yahoo...
Then again, I guess that Tim Cook knows what he's doing, so we can trust him ^^
Quote:
Originally Posted by closure
If you take any group of 3 or more bored engineers in a company, eventually they're going to invent a new programming language. It's something good engineers find irresistable -- building your own tools.
Yeah. It's also quite irritating as their leadership, because they don't need to be bored to still make their own tools.
"It's much more efficient", "There is no better way", "I can't learn every API in the world so I need my own library/language".
Then again, there are worse situations. Artists.