applemagic

Dracarys said:

applemagic said:

Dracarys said:

magman1979 said:

rogifan_new said:

Listen to Rene Ritchie’s recent Vector podcast with Bradley Chambers. Apple has work to do in the education sector. DED can spin all he wants but Chromebooks and Google’s G Suite are winning in the classroom. Probably one reason why Apple is having an education focused event. I actually don’t expect hardware to be announced at this event. My guess is it will be software focused.

I'd rather pull my kid out of school than allow the likes of Google to data mine them and turn them into products like they have almost all living people on the planet.

Enough of the hyperbole. You'd rather pull your kid from school than to have them educated? Also Google doesn't data mine education Chromebooks, maybe you should actually ready their privacy terms for the education market. So maybe you should do some research and stop listening to people like DED who will spin anything and everything to favour Apple no matter what.

Google doesn't data mine education Chromebooks? Seriously???

Well, the EFF has a somewhat different opinion and you might want to educate yourself on their complaint to the FTC and their detailed report last year:
https://www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy

Google only uses collected data to ensure that the usage is proper, but they don't use it to sell ads or anything. It's very clearly marked in their privacy terms. 

So you might want to educate yourself before you just automatically assume that your dislike of Google is the truth. Google never denied it does track data (Apple does too on it's products), the point is that Google doesn't use that data to sell ads, etc. It's only used for product improvement when it comes to the education market.

Did you actually take the time to read through EFF's report? If Google's only intention in mining all that data of school kids was benign, I doubt EFF would've made a formal complaint to the FTC or spent as much time as it did in conducting that survey and compiling that report to raise awareness about the issue.

Incidentally, the company I own is a reseller partner for GSuite, so it's not as if I have an obsessive hatred of all things Google. That doesn't stop me, though, from carefully evaluating what Google has to offer, especially the stuff it gives away for free or at low cost. GSuite being a paid, enterprise service is a different ball game from the free Google services.

And, for those who think the Chromebook is winning against the iPad or is better than the iPad, here's some food for thought from an Apple Distinguished Educator:
https://www.swiftteacher.org/swift-teacher/2017/4/24/uh-oh-chromebook-meet-the-new-ipad

Dracarys said:

magman1979 said:

rogifan_new said:

Listen to Rene Ritchie’s recent Vector podcast with Bradley Chambers. Apple has work to do in the education sector. DED can spin all he wants but Chromebooks and Google’s G Suite are winning in the classroom. Probably one reason why Apple is having an education focused event. I actually don’t expect hardware to be announced at this event. My guess is it will be software focused.

I'd rather pull my kid out of school than allow the likes of Google to data mine them and turn them into products like they have almost all living people on the planet.

Enough of the hyperbole. You'd rather pull your kid from school than to have them educated? Also Google doesn't data mine education Chromebooks, maybe you should actually ready their privacy terms for the education market. So maybe you should do some research and stop listening to people like DED who will spin anything and everything to favour Apple no matter what.

Google doesn't data mine education Chromebooks? Seriously???

Well, the EFF has a somewhat different opinion and you might want to educate yourself on their complaint to the FTC and their detailed report last year:
https://www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy

dick applebaum said:

What you are missing, or refuse to acknowledge, is that Amazon and Google are not selling smart speakers -- these are loss-leaders that enable the user to avail themselves (buy) the products they (and their advertisers) sell... That's where their profit is!

Your point about Amazon and Google using these speakers as loss leaders is something that finds an echo in Jean-Louis Gassee's recent article. To quote him:

"With Google, we don’t pay for the product, We Are The Product and we pay with our data. With Apple, we pay for the product and get to keep our data. Now, with Amazon, we pay for the product or content, and surrender our data".

His recent article on IoT and Amazon is as perceptive as always.

DED's article makes a lot of valid points, but even the Apple faithful are being somewhat critical on certain aspects of the HomePod.

Jason Snell's review of the HomePod called out the HomePod's touch controls as somewhat poorly designed and he seems to have a point; ditto, his observation about people being okay with music playback on a good enough device, which is now the Echo. His analogy is to AM radio:
https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/03/homepod-review/

And, then, there was Stephen Hackett's post on 512pixels.net about how his family gave up on using HomePod in the kitchen because of their frustrations with Siri and went back to the Echo, with the HomePod going into his studio/living room:
https://512pixels.net/2018/03/a-homepod-intervention/

Heck, even John Gruber seems to agree with Stephen Hackett and thinks that Apple miscalculated by focusing on audio quality rather than voice assistant smarts.

It will be interesting to know from Apple's next earnings report how the HomePod fared against Echo et al.