Marco and his friends also stress that apple can no longer write software that they like using. They don't like photos, music, etc. They are VERY down on apple
This unfortunately doesn't mean a lot as it the opinion of the majority of the users that matters. Besides one bad product, ITunes for example doesn't damn the entire platform. ITunes is a completely correctable platform, they just need to realize that too much is going on in the app.
In 2006, there were a broad array of profitable smartphone makers; building smartphones was considered to basically be picking money off trees. Today, most of the smartphone makers are losing money.
This is a false statement. Back in 2006, only Nokia and Blackberry were making any significant profit from smartphones. Motorola and Samsung hadn't backed a horse yet and Sony Ericsson were on the brink of collapse (as they always were).
Selling a million smartphones doesn't generate a whole lot of profit (just ask Microsoft). The R&D and marketing costs were considerable back in 2006. The high sticker price of smartphones couldn't balance that out at such low volumes. Only Blackberry had the back-end subscription model to make that level of sales profitable.
Another big if to consider, if one were to postulate that the Amazon/Google/Facebook (AGF) groups were to "perfect" voice-based AI, is that they destroy Apple only if they can generate some insurmountable lead with that technology: that people will flock to the new AGF voice-based products in a way that Apple can't manage to replicate.
As Daniel points out, Apple usually is NOT the first to a new technology. So it's possible that AGF will beat them to practical voice-based computing.
But what really matters is what Apple Labs has cooking that none of us (NONE of us) know about. If Apple is buying key tech, integrating it into product, and then -- in about two years after AGF has their products about -- comes out with some new voice-based computing, home, and mobile products that have the usual Apple sauce (style, convenience, integration, cool factor), what then?
Apple grows bigger, and AGF begins to look a lot like Nokia, Microsoft and Blackberry, that's what.
I don't think Apple is stupid. They know voice-based computing is a big idea. They've been working on and improving Siri. Apple may be getting big enough, with 110,000 employees, that it can't move quickly, but they're NOT an in-fighting, narcissistic Microsoft, a flighty, hummingbird-focus Google, or a one-trick pony Facebook. Steve Jobs always understood that the different between an artist and a business is that the latter delivered a product. I think Apple will deliver.
Destroy Apple?? Yeah right. Why is there a constant chorus of voices saying this company or that company is trying to destroy Apple. Is Apple trying to destroy all other companies? Heck no, they're out to make big profits. If anyone goes out of business because of it, then it's simply collateral damage and not the intent.
But there is a constant buzz from Siracusa Marco etc that Apple is a company on the way down. They are relentless in podcasts in all the ways Apple fails them
Probably looking for a payoff from Apple to shut up. Seriously some of the stuff I see in blogs just boggles the mind. It is why I put little trust into places like Ars and some of the others. It is pretty obvious that there are efforts at work to discredit Apple and frankly I don't know why.
Interestingly in some aspects the article is right, Apple needs to get with the program as far a AI like features go. I say "AI like" because natural language processing isn't AI in my mind. In any event AI is what will drive hardware forward into the next decade. Note "hardware" there, I don't really see AI succeeding until there is on the device AI and that will require hardware to support.
As it is right now we are seeing what amounts to a simulation of AI. Even after leaving the device for processing on Googles or Apples servers at best you have a voice driven look up system these days.
Apple was far ahead of the competition a few years ago. Maybe iOS is technologically superior to android. But today's middle rate android phonespecs are far outpacing Apples. You can even get a skin so it works and looks like iOS. Only if you're a diehard Applefan you'll chose IPhone over others. It's far less compelling this year then 2015. And they should react. I have very high expectations for WWDC.
Same for the MacBook. Look what Azus brought to market with the specs and prize. Apple has to a) out innovate competitors b) produce at least with the same specs a bit higher prized (not that much as it does today). If it isn't be able to do so they will notice big sales drops in their whole product range.
Apple performed always the best when they were in an underdog position. I hope they remain that mentality.
Advance Siri. Decrease our reliance on outdated web search engines. Cut off a large chunk of Goog's profits.
not sure what's taking Apple so long.
If you see how badly the search function function in the App Store app works, Apple has a long way to go in the search business. Would it be better that Apple puts its efforts in improving its products (MBP with Skylake processors is lagging months behind the Dell XPS13), iso fighting Google on a technology that is for Apple too difficult to compete. Remember the complete failure of iAds.
I thought Cook and Jeff Williams were masters of the supply chain. How can this phone be out of stock? And if it's that popular how did Apple miss demand so badly?
Camera module shortage from post-earthquake Japan. I happen to know that Poseidon is miffed at Jeff Williams.
So SE is sold out everywhere and AT&T is doing BOGO on the 6S. So either people want the smaller size or they want the cheaper price or perhaps both.
But there is a constant buzz from Siracusa Marco etc that Apple is a company on the way down. They are relentless in podcasts in all the ways Apple fails them
First, thanks to Daniel for taking on these guys. Siracusa, Arment, Gruber have become like the Tea Party wing in the Apple blogosphere. Their new favorite word is "worrisome," along with "concerning." Dalrymple even. Stop worrying. It's contageous. Or at least stop talking about it.
Those people are just individuals with individual opinions. Their worrying shouldn't be contageous unless they articulate something to worry about that resonates with people, which I don't think any of them have. They each probably experienced key problems that affected them personally. Dalrymple lost some music; Arment was involved with Tumblr so maybe cloud services and AI are important to him; Siracusa has spoken about Apple's UI decisions and software quality - he's a web developer so iCloud issues and syncing will likely affect him most. Some people have an ingrained idea of how things are supposed to be designed and how they should work and when something moves away from that, it feels wrong to them. Apple's modern UI designs are better than they've ever been for the most part. Any UI or software problems Apple has had are still nothing compared to the mess you experience on other platforms, those users are just accustomed to it.
When it comes to AI, the goal would be to have a way of communicating with a machine on a human level but imagine having an actual human being. What would you really need them for on a regular basis? It's nice to be able to look things up quickly and accurately but most of the time people spend with devices isn't searching for things, it's social networking, games, movies, music, shopping, productivity. The whole point of talking to other human beings in a social way is that they're real people with real experiences. A robot will never have an individualistic life experience, they will have a programmed, artificial identity. Intelligence in the cloud is important for finding things so it's of far more importance to search engines. Apple doesn't run a search engine, Siri uses 3rd party search engines to answer questions.
Devices are extensions of people. People produce, consume, communicate and play. The role of a device is to improve those things. That's why Blackberry failed because the iPhone's design vastly improved people's ability to do those things in a mobile context. The iPhone won't fail unless something else can significantly improve this experience.
We're supposed to believe an idea of Apple's failure from Marco Ament? The guy who sold Tumblr to Yahoo? A company that is very possibly on its deathbed? If he's not smart enough to see that one happening how could he ever be smart enough to see Apple fail?
Huh? He probably wouldn't have had a say in who the buyer was, and even if he did, why should he care? He wasn't operationally involved with Tumblr any more and earned a tidy payday from the sale.
Seems pretty smart to me, unless you know of some other deal that could've been had that would enrich him more?
We're supposed to believe an idea of Apple's failure from Marco Ament? The guy who sold Tumblr to Yahoo? A company that is very possibly on its deathbed? If he's not smart enough to see that one happening how could he ever be smart enough to see Apple fail?
Even if Marco was involved with the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, why not? Work hard, build a thing people use then sell it. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But the facts are that Marco left Tumblr September 2010.
The Tumblr sale to Yahoo closed June 20, 2013 after being announced a month prior.
While I am sure Marco made money with the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo (he likely had shares), I don't think he had any direct involvement with it. He hadn't been with Tumblr for 2.75 years by then. Long enough for him to develop Instapaper and sell it to Betaworks, as well as develop The Magazine and sell it to Glenn Fleishman. Build a thing people use, sell it, wash, rinse, repeat.
Marco gets a good deal of hate, especially around these parts. But those are the facts and he is no dummy. He's a successful one-person developer and he's done quite well for himself. I think what rubs people the wrong way about Marco, other than he comes across as arrogant, is that he sometimes does or says things that fans don't want to see or hear. That doesn't necessarily make him wrong or not smart.
Anyone who's followed Marco and his career sees that he loves Apple dearly. It seems to me that what he really wants is what is best for Apple, it's customers and developers.
I think killer point of the article is Blackberry didn't have the best phones nor was it the "king of smartphones." Nokia was the king of the cell phones. Apple suppressed Nokia's success both financially and number of units sold.
I thought Cook and Jeff Williams were masters of the supply chain. How can this phone be out of stock? And if it's that popular how did Apple miss demand so badly?
Camera module shortage from post-earthquake Japan. I happen to know that Poseidon is miffed at Jeff Williams.
The Apple Store employee said there are plenty of iPhone 6Ss.
Advance Siri. Decrease our reliance on outdated web search engines. Cut off a large chunk of Goog's profits.
not sure what's taking Apple so long.
---
We saw some movement on this at last year's WWDC. I expect the other foot to fall this year. Apple will, bit by bit, squeeze Google's iOS revenue and profit streams.
How refreshing to see a piece that talks about the facts about how Apple is doing amazingly well and that down quarter still brought in 50 Billion dollars. There's something those clickbait writers would never talk about either. There are so many holes in those clickbait writers stories it is laughable. Great piece that destroys everything about what they wrote trying to compare Blackberries demise to Apple. Which by the way is kind of silly when you think Apple still has over 300 billion dollars sitting in a bank collecting interest. Apple is also working on its infrastructure buying all of its buildings and using clean energy to power them saving millions of dollars all over the world too.
Apple operates in secret which leads people to speculate wildly about the future. People say Siri sucks, Google Now is amazing, Hound is incredible, Alexa is the future. You know what? They all kind of suck, but in different ways.
Who are all these people that will be yacking to their phones and watches and everything else? Most of that kind of thing drives me nuts. I really see it as pretty limited. Att he same time VR is a limited market that's out of the price range for most people. How exactly these things are Apple killer? Late to the game?!?!?!
You can even get a skin so it works and looks like iOS.
Have you used iPhone ever? Can you download the millions of apps from App Store with an Android phone?
Have to help you out here last estimation has the play store .2 million more apps then iPhone. Had you gone with more polished apps that would have been virtually true. As it sits the real difference in apps is negligible. Having used both OSs I will say apps have pros and cons on each OS. Apple the dev works by harder to make the app perform better (also easier for them) on Android at least in my experience Android some apps compared to their Apple counterparts have more features due to androids more intergrated notifications and app hooks.
First, thanks to Daniel for taking on these guys. Siracusa, Arment, Gruber have become like the Tea Party wing in the Apple blogosphere. Their new favorite word is "worrisome," along with "concerning." Dalrymple even. Stop worrying. It's contageous. Or at least stop talking about it.
Those people are just individuals with individual opinions. Their worrying shouldn't be contageous unless they articulate something to worry about that resonates with people, which I don't think any of them have. They each probably experienced key problems that affected them personally. Dalrymple lost some music; Arment was involved with Tumblr so maybe cloud services and AI are important to him; Siracusa has spoken about Apple's UI decisions and software quality - he's a web developer so iCloud issues and syncing will likely affect him most. Some people have an ingrained idea of how things are supposed to be designed and how they should work and when something moves away from that, it feels wrong to them. Apple's modern UI designs are better than they've ever been for the most part. Any UI or software problems Apple has had are still nothing compared to the mess you experience on other platforms, those users are just accustomed to it.
When it comes to AI, the goal would be to have a way of communicating with a machine on a human level but imagine having an actual human being. What would you really need them for on a regular basis? It's nice to be able to look things up quickly and accurately but most of the time people spend with devices isn't searching for things, it's social networking, games, movies, music, shopping, productivity. The whole point of talking to other human beings in a social way is that they're real people with real experiences. A robot will never have an individualistic life experience, they will have a programmed, artificial identity. Intelligence in the cloud is important for finding things so it's of far more importance to search engines. Apple doesn't run a search engine, Siri uses 3rd party search engines to answer questions.
Devices are extensions of people. People produce, consume, communicate and play. The role of a device is to improve those things. That's why Blackberry failed because the iPhone's design vastly improved people's ability to do those things in a mobile context. The iPhone won't fail unless something else can significantly improve this experience.
You are using reason there in your first sentences above. It's not entirely Marco's or John Siracusa's reasons that produce the negative effect in the sphere of public perception.
it's the fact that they're jumping ship, breaking ranks, becoming loose cannons and allowing themselves to be paraded around like hostages by the anti-Apple tech "press" militia.
Siracusa, Arment, Gruber et al., are like Tea Party traitors because they've become emotional. Publicly. They're disappointed, "worried," by trends they see increasingly plague Apple. Their unspoken lofty assumption is that they see problems Apple doesn't and know of fixes Apple hasn't thought of. This perspective they've recently arrogantly adopted comes, I believe, from the new attention they're getting from Apple execs and PR, plus the natural headiness that comes from becoming podcast stars with a Twitter following. Quite natural.
But they should shut themselves up. Every whiney complaint they post gets picked up and amplified hundreds-fold by the Forbes, CNBC, Cnet, Business Insider Apple-baiters. The Arments et al. are poisoning the general discourse, appearing to be educating Apple and thus sending the message that Apple has "lost it."
I think they're rattling Apple, at least the susceptibles like Tim Cook or Phil Schiller, who care about fixing the compnay but would be much hampered and distracted by being put on the defense. This was clear in the case of Tim Cook's recent uncomfortable interview with Jim Cramer.
Have you used iPhone ever? Can you download the millions of apps from App Store with an Android phone?
Have to help you out here last estimation has the play store .2 million more apps then iPhone. Had you gone with more polished apps that would have been virtually true. As it sits the real difference in apps is negligible. Having used both OSs I will say apps have pros and cons on each OS. Apple the dev works by harder to make the app perform better (also easier for them) on Android at least in my experience Android some apps compared to their Apple counterparts have more features due to androids more intergrated notifications and app hooks.
He said with a skin an Android phone can look and work an iPhone. My other question is with a skin can Android phone use the Apple EarPods with the ability to scan through music lists and ask Siri questions without touching the Android phone?
Have you used iPhone ever? Can you download the millions of apps from App Store with an Android phone?
Have to help you out here last estimation has the play store .2 million more apps then iPhone. Had you gone with more polished apps that would have been virtually true. As it sits the real difference in apps is negligible. Having used both OSs I will say apps have pros and cons on each OS. Apple the dev works by harder to make the app perform better (also easier for them) on Android at least in my experience Android some apps compared to their Apple counterparts have more features due to androids more intergrated notifications and app hooks.
He said with a skin an Android phone can look and work an iPhone. My other question is with a skin can Android phone use the Apple EarPods with the ability to scan through music lists and ask Siri questions without touching the Android phone?
No, you'd have to use Google Now for that. Apple hasn't yet ported Siri to Android.
Comments
Selling a million smartphones doesn't generate a whole lot of profit (just ask Microsoft). The R&D and marketing costs were considerable back in 2006. The high sticker price of smartphones couldn't balance that out at such low volumes. Only Blackberry had the back-end subscription model to make that level of sales profitable.
Interestingly in some aspects the article is right, Apple needs to get with the program as far a AI like features go. I say "AI like" because natural language processing isn't AI in my mind. In any event AI is what will drive hardware forward into the next decade. Note "hardware" there, I don't really see AI succeeding until there is on the device AI and that will require hardware to support.
As it is right now we are seeing what amounts to a simulation of AI. Even after leaving the device for processing on Googles or Apples servers at best you have a voice driven look up system these days.
Same for the MacBook. Look what Azus brought to market with the specs and prize.
Apple has to a) out innovate competitors b) produce at least with the same specs a bit higher prized (not that much as it does today). If it isn't be able to do so they will notice big sales drops in their whole product range.
Apple performed always the best when they were in an underdog position. I hope they remain that mentality.
When it comes to AI, the goal would be to have a way of communicating with a machine on a human level but imagine having an actual human being. What would you really need them for on a regular basis? It's nice to be able to look things up quickly and accurately but most of the time people spend with devices isn't searching for things, it's social networking, games, movies, music, shopping, productivity. The whole point of talking to other human beings in a social way is that they're real people with real experiences. A robot will never have an individualistic life experience, they will have a programmed, artificial identity. Intelligence in the cloud is important for finding things so it's of far more importance to search engines. Apple doesn't run a search engine, Siri uses 3rd party search engines to answer questions.
Devices are extensions of people. People produce, consume, communicate and play. The role of a device is to improve those things. That's why Blackberry failed because the iPhone's design vastly improved people's ability to do those things in a mobile context. The iPhone won't fail unless something else can significantly improve this experience.
Seems pretty smart to me, unless you know of some other deal that could've been had that would enrich him more?
But the facts are that Marco left Tumblr September 2010.
The Tumblr sale to Yahoo closed June 20, 2013 after being announced a month prior.
While I am sure Marco made money with the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo (he likely had shares), I don't think he had any direct involvement with it. He hadn't been with Tumblr for 2.75 years by then. Long enough for him to develop Instapaper and sell it to Betaworks, as well as develop The Magazine and sell it to Glenn Fleishman. Build a thing people use, sell it, wash, rinse, repeat.
Marco gets a good deal of hate, especially around these parts. But those are the facts and he is no dummy. He's a successful one-person developer and he's done quite well for himself. I think what rubs people the wrong way about Marco, other than he comes across as arrogant, is that he sometimes does or says things that fans don't want to see or hear. That doesn't necessarily make him wrong or not smart.
Anyone who's followed Marco and his career sees that he loves Apple dearly. It seems to me that what he really wants is what is best for Apple, it's customers and developers.
Nokia was the king of the cell phones. Apple suppressed Nokia's success both financially and number of units sold.
Have you used iPhone ever? Can you download the millions of apps from App Store with an Android phone?
Advance Siri.
Decrease our reliance on outdated web search engines.
Cut off a large chunk of Goog's profits.
not sure what's taking Apple so long.
---
We saw some movement on this at last year's WWDC. I expect the other foot to fall this year. Apple will, bit by bit, squeeze Google's iOS revenue and profit streams.
She gave me Friday closing price on NYSE.
it's the fact that they're jumping ship, breaking ranks, becoming loose cannons and allowing themselves to be paraded around like hostages by the anti-Apple tech "press" militia.
Siracusa, Arment, Gruber et al., are like Tea Party traitors because they've become emotional. Publicly. They're disappointed, "worried," by trends they see increasingly plague Apple. Their unspoken lofty assumption is that they see problems Apple doesn't and know of fixes Apple hasn't thought of. This perspective they've recently arrogantly adopted comes, I believe, from the new attention they're getting from Apple execs and PR, plus the natural headiness that comes from becoming podcast stars with a Twitter following. Quite natural.
But they should shut themselves up. Every whiney complaint they post gets picked up and amplified hundreds-fold by the Forbes, CNBC, Cnet, Business Insider Apple-baiters. The Arments et al. are poisoning the general discourse, appearing to be educating Apple and thus sending the message that Apple has "lost it."
I think they're rattling Apple, at least the susceptibles like Tim Cook or Phil Schiller, who care about fixing the compnay but would be much hampered and distracted by being put on the defense. This was clear in the case of Tim Cook's recent uncomfortable interview with Jim Cramer.
Loose lips sink ships.