So Walt and everyone else who complains about the problems wth Mac software these days is wrong, thanks goodness for that, i thought it was Apple doing something less than perfectly.
"Federighi goes on to say that niche problems are quickly amplified as devices like iPhone become an integral part of users' daily lives."
Of course they are, because they're not really niche problems anymore because so many users experience the same problems, the same little buggy problems affects millions of users. The response is straight out of the Steve Ballmer playbook.
agree 100%. shareholders happy. users, meh... the slide into oblivion for OS X started with 10.7 and they still struggle to get it right. whatever happened to "form follows function" instead of "design trumps common sense"?
when SJ was there, buggy software would get you fired. there's something to be said for fear-driven development.
The numbers for iCloud users, consider most of my non techie users dont even use iCloud Backup i am rather surprised by its results.
I guess if you have Apple ID you are automatically an iCloud user?
I have little snitch blocking most of the iChatter between my mac and apple's servers, only use my ID to download / buy stuff, never use iCloud. but I guess I am a 'user' in their eyes.
11 million is an ok number. At $12.50 per account per month (some blend of individual and family memberships), it's $1.65B a year in revenue. That's a rounding error for a $250B in revenue company.
I had expected that, when the dust settled, it would be much higher, closer to, say, 50 million.
They are seemingly gaining about 1-2M a month, by year end they should be around 30M paying users (and passed Spotify I'm betting); I'm thinking that if they added more network effect stickiness, it could go faster than that. Say, you could get free months if you get a free extra month if someone else to sign on for the free trial and they actually use it (not just register and then not do anything with it).
Apple is usually loathe do to this kind of thing, but that's how all those social network apps get to hundreds of million users in less than 2 years.
Craig is great; and when he was asked about radar he was honest about its shortcomings as far as a tool for people outside of Apple. I didn't get the sense that Eddy was really honest about anything. Nice guy, interviews well but still seems pretty clueless. Craig and Phil seem much more on the ball.
I doubt Eddy Cue would have lasted 27 years at Apple if he didn't bring anything to the table. The thing that I like about the executive team is how they are committed to Apple. Other companies might have some executives that get better results in certain areas but then ditch the company after a couple of years when a better offer comes up. Every one of the current team has the finances to be able to just give it all up whenever they want. They don't have to walk into those offices and put up with complaints from people year in year out but they do. It's not as if their whole ecosystem is falling apart at the seams. If you put all the software and service complaints and bugs in a list, it wouldn't be a very long list nor would anything be all that major.
Eddy explained how to get any problems fixed, you just drop your computer off at Federighi's house. That must be the new radar system.
They could probably replace or enhance the radar system with an app system. There was supposed to be a Support app coming:
That could have all sorts of ways to communicate with customers and they'd be able to aggregate the messages to deal with the most important ones and do a batch reply with a message about an update that fixes it. There could be a Mac app too and for technical bugs it can be used with XCode. It might even be able to let an engineer patch into an app in real-time to see what was happening, obviously making sure that it didn't open any security holes. They'd need a security certificate on their end that only allowed them to access a computer and it would need user confirmation.
This app system wouldn't need anyone to login, they just throw a question out there and someone would answer it. Apple can have a dedicated support team that filters out basic repetitive questions and passes technical ones on to qualified staff.
When you think about how many people are using these systems concurrently, it's surprising they don't mess up every day. Their peak messages is about 30x more than twitter. They have about twice as many iCloud users as DropBox. It's important to remember that the reliability of the services isn't down to the one or two execs we see in public too, they have teams of experts in their fields maintaining the systems. Managers are rarely the most skilled people in organisations, an important quality for them is just being able to trust that they'll make the right decisions and that's true of all their current execs.
Cue said that Apple's 782 million iCloud users contribute to a crush of photo uploads, iMessage communications and iTunes and App Store purchases. At peak operating status, the company's cloud currently processes over 200,000 iMessages per second, a number that translates to more than 17 billion per day. In addition, combined iTunes and the App Store purchases clock in at more than 750 million per week
FoundationDB: 14.4 Million Write Transactions per Second
FoundationDB has released a new version of their database product, aimed at enabling a new generation of Internet of Things and device-driven interactive applications to be built that keeps a single view of a massive distributed database while allowing a constant stream of read and writes to the data. “One of the hardest things to scale is write transactions,” says Dave Rosenthal, CEO and Founder of FoundationDB, who has been working on version three of the database from for the past year. “Scaling transactions with lots of writes happening all at the same time is difficult: in the past, we have been able to manage 300-400,000 random writes to the database every second. That’s a pretty good number, but there have been some businesses pushing bigger numbers than that.” Rosenthal cites a recent Netflix post that last year stood out as the industry’s best practice. In the documented test, Netflix were able to run Cassandra at scale on a thousand core cluster that maintained 1.1 million writes per second. “That was one of the really cool benchmarks that caused a lot of people to stand up,” says Rosenthal. “It was about three times faster than our 2.0 product.” According to Rosenthal, many doubted FoundationDB’s ability to take on that level of transactional capacity, especially given FoundationDB’s architecture which is built on a single node.
With the announcement of Version Three, FoundationDB launched their new transactional processing engine: “Thas been a massive project for us. It is based on a totally new scalable design. The benchmark we are showing is running 14.4 million transactions per second, so that is an order of magnitude faster than the Netflix test.”
Craig is great; and when he was asked about radar he was honest about its shortcomings as far as a tool for people outside of Apple. I didn't get the sense that Eddy was really honest about anything. Nice guy, interviews well but still seems pretty clueless. Craig and Phil seem much more on the ball.
I doubt Eddy Cue would have lasted 27 years at Apple if he didn't bring anything to the table. The thing that I like about the executive team is how they are committed to Apple. Other companies might have some executives that get better results in certain areas but then ditch the company after a couple of years when a better offer comes up. Every one of the current team has the finances to be able to just give it all up whenever they want. They don't have to walk into those offices and put up with complaints from people year in year out but they do. It's not as if their whole ecosystem is falling apart at the seams. If you put all the software and service complaints and bugs in a list, it wouldn't be a very long list nor would anything be all that major.
Eddy explained how to get any problems fixed, you just drop your computer off at Federighi's house. That must be the new radar system.
They could probably replace or enhance the radar system with an app system. There was supposed to be a Support app coming:
That could have all sorts of ways to communicate with customers and they'd be able to aggregate the messages to deal with the most important ones and do a batch reply with a message about an update that fixes it. There could be a Mac app too and for technical bugs it can be used with XCode. It might even be able to let an engineer patch into an app in real-time to see what was happening, obviously making sure that it didn't open any security holes. They'd need a security certificate on their end that only allowed them to access a computer and it would need user confirmation.
This app system wouldn't need anyone to login, they just throw a question out there and someone would answer it. Apple can have a dedicated support team that filters out basic repetitive questions and passes technical ones on to qualified staff.
When you think about how many people are using these systems concurrently, it's surprising they don't mess up every day. Their peak messages is about 30x more than twitter. They have about twice as many iCloud users as DropBox. It's important to remember that the reliability of the services isn't down to the one or two execs we see in public too, they have teams of experts in their fields maintaining the systems. Managers are rarely the most skilled people in organisations, an important quality for them is just being able to trust that they'll make the right decisions and that's true of all their current execs.
Excellent thoughts.
The current Apple discussions group is long in the tooth for support purposes. There used to be a time when the product range was much simpler that I would go in there and pretty much find my fix. Not any more. There's a lot of repetition, lot of redundant (even speculative and sometimes plainly useless) posts, even a surprising amount of flaming. I sincerely wish Apple can find a way to make it more useful. A support app will be a GREAT start.
11 million is an ok number. At $12.50 per account per month (some blend of individual and family memberships), it's $1.65B a year in revenue. That's a rounding error for a $250B in revenue company.
I had expected that, when the dust settled, it would be much higher, closer to, say, 50 million.
They are seemingly gaining about 1-2M a month, by year end they should be around 30M paying users (and passed Spotify I'm betting); I'm thinking that if they added more network effect stickiness, it could go faster than that. Say, you could get free months if you get a free extra month if someone else to sign on for the free trial and they actually use it (not just register and then not do anything with it).
Apple is usually loathe do to this kind of thing, but that's how all those social network apps get to hundreds of million users in less than 2 years.
If Apple want 30m subscribers then they are going to have to diversify the music offering rather dramatically. The number complaint I've heard here is their music service is catering to very much an American market and I dare say more towards African-American music at that. Sure there is some great music there but I wouldn't be surprised if +10m of those users were in the USA even though the services has rolled out in many countries.
Not sure what Tent Reznor is roll is but it isn't making playlists.
I rarely listen to Music: random songs removed, Genres gone, repeatedly being begged to subscribe. I already paid for the music I want to listen to, and for the phone.
They are seemingly gaining about 1-2M a month, by year end they should be around 30M paying users (and passed Spotify I'm betting); I'm thinking that if they added more network effect stickiness, it could go faster than that. Say, you could get free months if you get a free extra month if someone else to sign on for the free trial and they actually use it (not just register and then not do anything with it).
Apple is usually loathe do to this kind of thing, but that's how all those social network apps get to hundreds of million users in less than 2 years.
If Apple want 30m subscribers then they are going to have to diversify the music offering rather dramatically. The number complaint I've heard here is their music service is catering to very much an American market and I dare say more towards African-American music at that. Sure there is some great music there but I wouldn't be surprised if +10m of those users were in the USA even though the services has rolled out in many countries.
Not sure what Tent Reznor is roll is but it isn't making playlists.
I gather you haven't been in the US or Canada in the long time... "african american" (sic) music and electro pop is what plays now, just look at the top of billboard right now. Also, if you look at world wide billboard charts (that reflect music played in other countries, or even the Euro charts), it still mostly reflects what's in the US charts with some local variances. That's been the case for quite some time.
You're tastes may not be catered, but they cater to the broadest tastes in most western developed countries. - Even if you listen to western indie pop, or indie rock, most of the top performers there are also there.
They're weak in African, Middle eastern and Asian music. But, until recently they had few clients in those regions. To offer those regional contents they'll have to sign deals with local labels, many are small; they'll get there. Apple music only came to China in October 2015.
Cue said that Apple's 782 million iCloud users contribute to a crush of photo uploads, iMessage communications and iTunes and App Store purchases. At peak operating status, the company's cloud currently processes over 200,000 iMessages per second, a number that translates to more than 17 billion per day. In addition, combined iTunes and the App Store purchases clock in at more than 750 million per week
It appears that Apple has the where-with-all to scale iCloud capacity, nicely!
I've read comments from many on AI to the effect that Apple is so far behindthat they can never catch up with Google or AWS in Cloud services. I agree with you that Apple is very able to scale its transactions as well as media streaming and downloads and will almost certainly begin increasing user storage, both free tiers and paid. I would be quite surprised if Apple did not have an ARM server processor either under development or under evaluation for its server farms that would be optimized for Swift, running Apache or other open source software. Server Farm build outs appear to be a continuing high priority capital expense at Apple.
As for John Gruber's "The Talk Show" episode with Craig and Eddie, I thought it was very enlightening, albeit short on details for the future, an Apple constant.
Apple should simplify iTunes UI. I listen to it everyday and I don't have any problem with it, but I can see that it might confuse people. They could done better, keep it simple and tuck in all the other features as option. However iTunes is by all means very fast. So there I compliment the efficient coding. They just need to review the UI and make it simple to use.
Cue said that Apple's 782 million iCloud users contribute to a crush of photo uploads, iMessage communications and iTunes and App Store purchases. At peak operating status, the company's cloud currently processes over 200,000 iMessages per second, a number that translates to more than 17 billion per day. In addition, combined iTunes and the App Store purchases clock in at more than 750 million per week
It appears that Apple has the where-with-all to scale iCloud capacity, nicely!
I've read comments from many on AI to the effect that Apple is so far behindthat they can never catch up with Google or AWS in Cloud services. I agree with you that Apple is very able to scale its transactions as well as media streaming and downloads and will almost certainly begin increasing user storage, both free tiers and paid. I would be quite surprised if Apple did not have an ARM server processor either under development or under evaluation for its server farms that would be optimized for Swift, running Apache or other open source software. Server Farm build outs appear to be a continuing high priority capital expense at Apple.
As for John Gruber's "The Talk Show" episode with Craig and Eddie, I thought it was very enlightening, albeit short on details for the future, an Apple constant.
FoundationDB, Swift, ARM Server ... Bingo, bingo, bingo!
As to Apple being so far behind -- Apple doesn't play Catch-up ... Apple plays Leapfrog!
They came across as defensive, not offensive. Same as Cook on the earnings call
We know you are at world-wide scale. Embrace it and make it an advantage. Act like you are setting the world on fire, which you are. Don't be so damn understated
I listened through the whole podcast as well and got the impression that they were really good at sidestepping the issues. Especially concerning iTunes. I stand with Walt Mossberg.
If Apple want 30m subscribers then they are going to have to diversify the music offering rather dramatically. The number complaint I've heard here is their music service is catering to very much an American market and I dare say more towards African-American music at that. Sure there is some great music there but I wouldn't be surprised if +10m of those users were in the USA even though the services has rolled out in many countries.
Not sure what Tent Reznor is roll is but it isn't making playlists.
I gather you haven't been in the US or Canada in the long time... "african american" (sic) music and electro pop is what plays now, just look at the top of billboard right now. Also, if you look at world wide billboard charts (that reflect music played in other countries, or even the Euro charts), it still mostly reflects what's in the US charts with some local variances. That's been the case for quite some time.
You're tastes may not be catered, but they cater to the broadest tastes in most western developed countries. - Even if you listen to western indie pop, or indie rock, most of the top performers there are also there.
They're weak in African, Middle eastern and Asian music. But, until recently they had few clients in those regions. To offer those regional contents they'll have to sign deals with local labels, many are small; they'll get there. Apple music only came to China in October 2015.
No haven't been to America for a couple of years and I'm old so I didn't really think Apple was going to cater to me. What was surprising in the young people I've come to rely on for music discovery these days all say the same thing. Overseas people coming to work in our office, another good source of new music, are saying the same thing too. Why pay money for full access when the hard part is finding music that you like and the service just doesn't offer value if you already have a collection.
It's not even a regional content problem. Starting playlists with alternative songs as the seed still after a few tracks made their way back to pop before and endless stream of disposable tracks. Start with a Australian or British artist and very quickly playlists hit American artist saturation. Given Apple proximity to one of the great alternative music scenes I just expected better.
That said my impressions are all from early in the launch maybe it's gotten better since but it just seemed clear it not targeted at people who like music.
Comments
when SJ was there, buggy software would get you fired. there's something to be said for fear-driven development.
I have little snitch blocking most of the iChatter between my mac and apple's servers, only use my ID to download / buy stuff, never use iCloud. but I guess I am a 'user' in their eyes.
marketing, the world's second oldest profession
Apple is usually loathe do to this kind of thing, but that's how all those social network apps get to hundreds of million users in less than 2 years.
Eddy explained how to get any problems fixed, you just drop your computer off at Federighi's house. That must be the new radar system.
They could probably replace or enhance the radar system with an app system. There was supposed to be a Support app coming:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/21/9775504/apple-support-ios-app-leaked
That could have all sorts of ways to communicate with customers and they'd be able to aggregate the messages to deal with the most important ones and do a batch reply with a message about an update that fixes it. There could be a Mac app too and for technical bugs it can be used with XCode. It might even be able to let an engineer patch into an app in real-time to see what was happening, obviously making sure that it didn't open any security holes. They'd need a security certificate on their end that only allowed them to access a computer and it would need user confirmation.
This app system wouldn't need anyone to login, they just throw a question out there and someone would answer it. Apple can have a dedicated support team that filters out basic repetitive questions and passes technical ones on to qualified staff.
When you think about how many people are using these systems concurrently, it's surprising they don't mess up every day. Their peak messages is about 30x more than twitter. They have about twice as many iCloud users as DropBox. It's important to remember that the reliability of the services isn't down to the one or two execs we see in public too, they have teams of experts in their fields maintaining the systems. Managers are rarely the most skilled people in organisations, an important quality for them is just being able to trust that they'll make the right decisions and that's true of all their current execs.
It appears that Apple has the where-with-all to scale iCloud capacity, nicely!
The current Apple discussions group is long in the tooth for support purposes. There used to be a time when the product range was much simpler that I would go in there and pretty much find my fix. Not any more. There's a lot of repetition, lot of redundant (even speculative and sometimes plainly useless) posts, even a surprising amount of flaming. I sincerely wish Apple can find a way to make it more useful. A support app will be a GREAT start.
Third, actually ...
The world's oldest profession was a carpenter -- Eve made Adam's banana stand!
... Sorry, I just had to post this very old joke.
The number complaint I've heard here is their music service is catering to very much an American market and I dare say more towards African-American music at that. Sure there is some great music there but I wouldn't be surprised if +10m of those users were in the USA even though the services has rolled out in many countries.
Not sure what Tent Reznor is roll is but it isn't making playlists.
Also, if you look at world wide billboard charts (that reflect music played in other countries, or even the Euro charts), it still mostly reflects what's in the US charts with some local variances. That's been the case for quite some time.
You're tastes may not be catered, but they cater to the broadest tastes in most western developed countries.
- Even if you listen to western indie pop, or indie rock, most of the top performers there are also there.
They're weak in African, Middle eastern and Asian music. But, until recently they had few clients in those regions.
To offer those regional contents they'll have to sign deals with local labels, many are small; they'll get there.
Apple music only came to China in October 2015.
As for John Gruber's "The Talk Show" episode with Craig and Eddie, I thought it was very enlightening, albeit short on details for the future, an Apple constant.
FoundationDB, Swift, ARM Server ... Bingo, bingo, bingo!
As to Apple being so far behind -- Apple doesn't play Catch-up ... Apple plays Leapfrog!
>:x
It's not even a regional content problem. Starting playlists with alternative songs as the seed still after a few tracks made their way back to pop before and endless stream of disposable tracks. Start with a Australian or British artist and very quickly playlists hit American artist saturation. Given Apple proximity to one of the great alternative music scenes I just expected better.
That said my impressions are all from early in the launch maybe it's gotten better since but it just seemed clear it not targeted at people who like music.
Here's some Swift Web Server...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/23/ibm_releases_kitura_a_swift_web_server_framework_for_linux/