Avoiding BlackBerry's Fate: How Apple Could End Up In a Similar Position (marco.org) 214
It's almost unbelievable today that BlackBerry ruled the smartphone market once. The Canadian company's handset, however, started to lose relevance when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. At the time, BlackBerry said that nobody would purchase an iPhone, as there's a battery trade-off. Wittingly or not, Apple could end up in a similar position to BlackBerry, argues Marco Arment. Arment -- who is best known for his Apple commentary, Overcast and Instapaper apps, and co-founding Tumblr -- says that Apple's strong stand on privacy is keeping it from being the frontrunner in the advanced AI, a category which has seen large investments from Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon in the recent years. He adds that privacy cannot be an excuse, as Apple could utilize public data like the web, mapping databases, and business directories. He writes: Today, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are placing large bets on advanced AI, ubiquitous assistants, and voice interfaces, hoping that these will become the next thing that our devices are for. If they're right -- and that's a big "if" -- I'm worried for Apple. Today, Apple's being led properly day-to-day and doing very well overall. But if the landscape shifts to prioritise those big-data AI services, Apple will find itself in a similar position as BlackBerry did almost a decade ago: what they're able to do, despite being very good at it, won't be enough anymore, and they won't be able to catch up. Where Apple suffers is big-data services and AI, such as search, relevance, classification, and complex natural-language queries. Apple can do rudimentary versions of all of those, but their competitors -- again, especially Google -- are far ahead of them, and the gap is only widening. And Apple is showing worryingly few signs of meaningful improvement or investment in these areas. Apple's apparent inaction shows that they're content with their services' quality, management, performance, advancement, and talent acquisition and retention. One company that is missing from Mr. Arment's column is Microsoft. The Cortana-maker has also placed large bets on AI. According to job postings on its portal, it appears, for instance, that Microsoft is also working on Google Home-like service.
Apple has an insane amount of money (Score:5, Insightful)
If AI becomes the next big thing, they will just buy their way into the game with acquisitions. Or they'll buy their way into a whole new market.
Blackberry never had anywhere close to the money Apple does, it's like comparing apples to prime rib.
Re:Apple has an insane amount of money (Score:5, Funny)
Odd. I thought the article is comparing Apples to Blackberries.
Re:Apple has an insane amount of money (Score:5, Funny)
Keep writing comments like that one and you're going to jam the thread.
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They will certainly try. It is not likely that any company they buy will have anything like Google's machine learning capabilities.
Then again, Google used to be a couple of guys with an algorithm better than anyone else and just look what happened. So..who know!
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Today you are right but not long ago many people would tell you that Apple didn't have a chance in the cellphone space compared to Motorola, Nokia, and RIM.
They were late to the game and didn't even support apps. Heck you could not even swap batteries.
IBM does not make PCs any longer.
DEC, Control Data, Data General are all gone.
In the microcomputer market Atari, Ti, Tandy, Commodore, Kaypro, Zenith/Heathkit, and Osborne are all gone.
Yes Apple could mess up and go the way of DEC and Commodore or they may not
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For a lot of people that is not a downside. The iPhone is simple. Wireless charging? Nice to have but it is not a must have.
As I said can Apple fail?
Yes.
Will Apple fail? I do not see it anytime soon.
Want to take a guess about the long term smartphone market?
Microsoft's one OS for phones and PC could mean that Phones become a lot of people's PCs. Plug in the USB 3.1 connector to a monitor and use the monitor, keyboard, and mouse to run desktop apps using your phone.
If Intel ever makes a good x86 mobile SOC y
Re:Apple has an insane amount of money (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the thing - Apple is kind of picky in many aspects.
They don't chase the new-shiny just because it is new and shiny, but only when/if it makes sense for the products (both present and planned).
Also, you mention wireless charging. Yeah, it's been around for awhile - if you actually like either lashing something on to make it bulky, or sacrificing performance/capacity/battery-life to it. After all, you gotta make room for it, which means something has to go to make that room.
In Apple's case, it's probably a demand to never compromise the bonuses your product has (e.g. insane battery life, etc) just to make room for a new-shiny. That's why it hadn't shown up in the iPhone yet (Mind, I say this as a guy who owns an Android phone.)
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In Apple's case, it's probably a demand to never compromise the bonuses your product has (e.g. insane battery life, etc) just to make room for a new-shiny. That's why it hadn't shown up in the iPhone yet (Mind, I say this as a guy who owns an Android phone.)
I pretty much agree with you, with the exception of battery life. IPhone is known for insanely bad batter life. In the day, it was Blackberry which could run for days on a single charge -- and they could never fathom why people were flocking to the iPhone, even with its well-known bandwidth and battery performance problems.
It's a separate topic, but what Blackberry never got was how Apple turned a functional item to a fashion/fetish item, and the tech specs became largely irrelevant.
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"A thin, light version of something uses less raw materials than a bulky version of the same thing."
No a thin version will use more than a thicker phone with the same rigidity. Lighter will often use more expensive material than a slightly heaver version.
So an iPhone that is one mm thicker and uses a stainless steel frame instead of aluminum will be stronger and use less expensive materials and have room for a larger battery if needed and or slightly better optics for the camera.
So does Google and Microsoft (Score:2)
If AI becomes the next big thing, they will just buy their way into the game with acquisitions. Or they'll buy their way into a whole new market.
Not if Alphabet (Google) or Microsoft buy it first. Microsoft and Google have comparable amounts of cash to Apple. Facebook may become a player as well and they're pretty cash rich. Amazon's biggest problem will be that it doesn't have as big a war chest as the others but it's still not a competitor to overlook.
Blackberry never had anywhere close to the money Apple does, it's like comparing apples to prime rib.
True though back ten years ago when Blackberry dropped the ball, Apple didn't have anywhere close to the amount of cash it does today either.
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Apple cannot buy Google or Facebook, and they have a poor track record of poaching staff from both companies. They have money but they don't exactly lavish it on their staff. So if they can't hire the AI expertise and they can't buy it....
Bad conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't recall that Apple has ever pretended to care about people's privacy. They do when such actions happen to align with maximizing profits.
Don't get me wrong, I like Apple product. Always have. But, I have never understood peoples insistence to apologies and excuse them for everything. As if their own self worth is somehow tied up in Apple being thought of as a benevolent overlord. (not implying you think that) Apple fucks their customers all the time just like every other company.
They are just a maker
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With all due respect, no one cares what Apple fans think.
No, seriously. An Apple fan is someone who is going to back Apple regardless. It would be like asking a Patriots fan about the ongoing Tom Brady saga (yeah, that's still happening): no one cares what they think because they're going to back Tom Brady regardless, no matter how blatantly guilty he is.
But the average person? Apple came out of that looking hilariously incompetent. First they refused to help the FBI, then the plucky li'l FBI managed to unl
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Positioning their refusal to cooperate as having anything to do with privacy interests is a corporate PR stunt and ignores the Fourth Amendment protections afforded by our Constitution.
This man put into perspective pretty much exactly what is happening. It's always the punch you don't see coming that gets you. Apple has been very successful marketing the "good guy" image, but the truth is obviously far from that. Anyone in the tech industry worth their salary could have told you this decades ago. It's nice to see other professionals coming to the light.
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The suspect was dead at that point. Apple was neither protecting, nor violating, anyone's privacy.
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G+ (Score:4, Insightful)
G+ being a classic example of the privacy problem Google faces. Technically it was excellent, yet who wants to give Google yet more private information!
So Google's new messaging app will listen in on the conversation and suggest restaurants and nearby bars if you talk about meeting up etc. it will look at photos you send each other and interdict with recipes and themes connected to the content of those pictures....
WHO THE FOOK WANTS THIS? And to do this, they can't support end to end encryption because they'd be cutting themselves out of the conversation! GOOD! They were never invited INTO the conversation in the first place! Can you imagine talking about medical problems with a friend, knowing that Google is listening in? And by Google I mean people, because Google's engineer can access your data [ Quack for "David Barksdale" ].
Blackberry's big selling point was privacy, but as they bent over backwards to get their phone into third world markets like India and Pakistan, so it became clear they'd backdoored the encryption. Then there was the phones, an excellent keyboard messaging phone becomes an awful android copy with a backdoor.
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Re:Bad conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would Apple ever care about your privacy more than their profits?
Two reasons:
1. They really DO have a longstanding corporate culture of NOT selling-out their customer base. That is because they have always fancied themselves as a Hardware company (which they are), who's profits are based on sales of Hardware, not Customer-Data.
2. Because they have (rightly) sensed that they are getting a reputation for being one of the few (or maybe only) large tech companies that does value their Customers' privacy, and as a result, there is no disconnect between that stance and increased profits. In fact, the more the national (and international) mood swings against the Panopticon, the more attractive Apple looks to a lot of people.
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But it's the nature of a 'personal assistant' to tie it to a search engine. In Apple's case, these days, it's Bing, Do you think that's any more private than competing services - just because the searches originate from Apple?
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But it's the nature of a 'personal assistant' to tie it to a search engine. In Apple's case, these days, it's Bing, Do you think that's any more private than competing services - just because the searches originate from Apple?
I don't know if it's any more private; but I do know that any "personal identifying information" does not leave Apple; so, in that sense, maybe so.
But I don't remember this discussion specifically being about Siri, or "Digital Assistants". However, I do know that you can always ask Siri to "Search for [Search Term] on [Search Engine]", and it will, regardless of the Default. I wonder if the same works with "Hey, Google"...?
So, with that in mind, you actually can make searches "more private" with Apple's
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If Apple want to continue selling privacy as a premium product, then yes, their searches will be more private and they will strive to prove it in their marketing. The real question is whether or not you can sell privacy as a premium product, whether or not people will pay for privacy. Let's look around the home, hmm, curtains, people pay thousands for them, nah nothing to do with privacy, they just moronically like the look and opening and closing them. Restriction on nudity, nah, nothing to do with privac
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There's a lot wrong with your argument and I was about to write up something, until I saw who was posting it. Everyone above and below me just stop. This man/woman/shill can not be reasoned with. His username says it all.
Actually, if you can come up with an argument based on reason and facts instead of my username, I'm all eyes...
Anyone who has argued with me (other than ridiculous ACs) would tell you that I do, in fact, readily concede "defeat" when it is obvious that I have made a wrong assumption, or don't have the facts.
But, since you have dismissed me outright, rather than responding to the assertions in my OP, it is you that apparently "cannot be reasoned with". Or rather, choose not to be reasoned with.
Good job
Because.... (Score:2)
Apple is at hardware and services company first. Selling your data is not their primary business goal.
Google's business model depends on violating your privacy. They subsidize the development of hardware and software services to gain more access to more data.
um, that's not OK, Google... (Score:5, Funny)
So, I said to my Nexus 6p, "OK, Google: I need a f***ing laundromat."
I never imagined there was so much laundromat pr0n in the world...
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Pro-Tip....
Search for ANYTHING + Rule 34. There is porn of it.
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Pro-Tip....
Search for ANYTHING + Rule 34. There is porn of it.
OK Google: Find me pablo_max, Rule 34. ...OK Google: Find me that laundromat where Spywhere went. I need some bleach for my eyes.
Of course it will happen to them (Score:4, Insightful)
It happens to nearly all companies.
Once on top of the world, the next moment hanging on to survive.
Who have we got?
Motorola
RIM
Palm
braodcom
yahoo
AOL
Nokia
Sony. Remember when everyone wanted SONY gear?
Hell, it has even happened to Apple before.
People are fickle. If some hot new thing comes along with a better way of doing things, then people will generally follow the trend. If the old guard is too slow, then they get left in the dust, living off their cash reserves until eventually, the die. Apple is no exception. Innovate or die.
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It happens to nearly all companies.
Once on top of the world, the next moment hanging on to survive.
Who have we got?
Motorola
RIM
Palm
braodcom
yahoo
AOL
Nokia
Sony. Remember when everyone wanted SONY gear?
Hell, it has even happened to Apple before.
People are fickle. If some hot new thing comes along with a better way of doing things, then people will generally follow the trend. If the old guard is too slow, then they get left in the dust, living off their cash reserves until eventually, the die. Apple is no exception. Innovate or die.
At this point, nothing will dislodge Apple - and that's simply because of the ginormous pile of cash they have.
Let's see Microsoft for example, who has a similarly ginormous pile of cash: they bought Nokia, played with it a bit, broke it, then they threw it away. And they didn't even notice the hit on their cash mountain.
Apple could do the same many, many times over, and eventually strike gold.
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Re:Of course it will happen to them (Score:4, Informative)
What I'm frankly shocked about is that no company has created a worthy macbook competitor (size/screen/weight/etc.).
What I'm frankly rolling my eyes about is that you aren't familiar with Fujitsu Ultrabooks. They've been making laptops like that literally since the 486. Where have you been? Clearly not familiarizing yourself with the PC market.
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You missed a relevant criterion: cost.
Should say "(size/screen/weight/cost/etc.)"
At the cost of a macbook, I buy multiple other computers that make me happy. I guess Apple make good hardware, but, at the cost I won't even look at it.
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Given the abuse I deal out to most laptops, I actually saved money by buying a MacBook Pro back in 2013... most other high-end laptops I buy tend to burn-out or break before the 18-month mark, so even as $1k/each, I would have spent $3k-$4k by now compared to the $2k I purchased the MBP with three years ago. :/
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Re:Of course it will happen to them (Score:4, Interesting)
The higher resolution screens aren't as necessary PC laptops because Windows uses subpixel rendering [grc.com] (MS calls it ClearType) to effectively triple the horizontal resolution of the screen. Many decades ago, Apple made the choice not to go down that route. Subpixel rendering aliases fonts to align with the subpixel grid - it shifts the letters slightly left or right to line them up with the subpixels. Since one of Apple's core demographics was page layout graphics artists, Apple decided to eschew subpixel rendering in order to prioritize accuracy. A Mac will display a page render with the fonts positioned more accurately, even if it is blurrier (their rendering engine, a great great grandson of Postscript, will anti-alias the font's pixels for any exact location on the screen). If you've still got one of those old 1024x768 LCDs around, try connecting it to a Windows PC, then to a Mac. The fonts on the Mac will look like blurry crap compared to the PC. Consequently, the only way for the Macbooks to improve the appearance of fonts was by cranking up screen resolution, while higher resolution is less important for Windows PCs.
As for the Macbook chassis, nobody else designs theirs that way because it's a stupid design. There are no vent holes on the bottom. Airflow comes in through a few vent holes along the sides, runs across the mainboard, and is vented out by the fan. This means the air gets heated up by other components before it reaches the hottest components, reducing heat transfer rate. On PC laptops, there are vent holes placed underneath the hottest parts, so fresh cool air contacts those parts first maximizing heat transfer to the air (heat transfer rate is proportional to temperature differential). Also, if you spill liquid into the laptop, it'll drain out of most PC laptops through those vent holes (although not all are designed to channel water away from vital components). The bottom half of a Macbook OTOH makes a nice bathtub unless it's tilted so water can drain out those side vents. The Macbook chassis is the epitome of prioritizing form over function. If you've ever wondered why Apple won't put a decent GPU into their 15" MBP, this is why - they can't because it would overheat.
Stuck in the past (Score:3)
The higher resolution screens aren't as necessary PC laptops because Windows uses subpixel rendering (MS calls it ClearType) to effectively triple the horizontal resolution of the screen.
While a nice technology modern screens render text much better using Apple's technique than most PC's with poor screens do. To quote yourself, most PC laptop text looks like "blurry crap" compared to Apple laptop screens. Even with ClearType...
On PC laptops, there are vent holes placed underneath the hottest parts, so fre
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Draining down past the keyboard membrane takes time, if you spill anything on a Macbook keyboard and turn the laptop upside down quickly usually nothing will get in.
But they do (Score:2)
Go to any Best Buy, you can see that in fact MOST PC screens are poorer today, even when they have somewhat high resolution.
If you have enough pixel density ClearType does nothing for you. That's why if you search for "Apple Clear Type" the first results are from 2012 and earlier, because no-one cared after that. It is interesting for historical context but he was trying to present it as if it mattered today, which it does not.
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People Buy Apple for the Ecosystem (Score:2)
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> I'd love to get a thinkpad that's built like a 2016 macbook
Oh, that's easy. Just goto a used computer store and find a pre-2005 (Lenovo takeover) Thinkpad. They didn't used to be the trash that they are now. Back when they were built by IBM, they were solid as a tank, and easily equal to a MacBook (Or were they still PowerBooks then?) in quality and reliability, if not aesthetics. You should be able to find plenty that are still in working order.
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Late 70s to early 90s they made some fucking amazing products. It's the reason they got hammered so hard for all their mistakes since because a lot of us remember them very fondly.
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Well, that and the fact that the VAIO series was massively expensive, even when compared to MBPs - and yet they never lasted nearly as long.
(I used to own a VAIO years ago... it held up for two years before I had to start replacing parts, starting with the screen.)
Since when did Apple "rule" smartphones? (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Apple's outlandish profit margins were largely possible because the US carrier subsidisation model, which is now ending. A huge market wasn't really exposed to the true cost of the hardware. Android's market share over iOS has been massive in most markets around the world where phones were not heavily subsidised, and now the US is coming into line with international norms it seems like Apple will either bleed marketshare or have to lower its margins significantly.
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Re:Since when did Apple "rule" smartphones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you count all the out of date crap. I dont count ANY phone not running Android 6 as ...
It doesn't much matter how you count. For example, here's a graph of new phone shipments [google.com]. Android phones are more than 80% at the end there, and climbing. Here's one for actual sales [statista.com]. The best you can say for Apple here is that they are bouncing around under 25% (with Android over 75%). This has been going on for 5 years now, so installed base graphs should (and do) show almost the same picture.
On the plus side, since this has been going on for 5 years now, there's no good reason to believe Apple's 20-25% of the market is suddenly going to go away. There's also, of course, no good reason to believe it will enlarge.
Posited: Big Data AI Convergence on Handset (Score:2)
Sure seems plausible, but decades in this business have taught me it's all about timing. And I would assert that having watched Apple over the decades its biggest advantage other than design is ... timing. At least timing getting into any particular game. When to get out of a game? That's even tougher.
Tablet computing was always perfectly plausible. Microsoft got into the game early back in 2000 with it's Microsoft Tablet PC. Almost nobody remembers it now because it was way too early. By the time the
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Tablet computing was always perfectly plausible.
I guess it further illustrates your point that tablet sales and use are way down. They seem to be going away. I am not too sad to be honest.
Nowadays, laptops are so thin and light there is no reason to use a crippled product when you could have a real computer with all its extra use cases.
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Well may be one of those areas where the needs of the producers don't immediately align with the needs of the consumer.
Early converged devices were pretty terrible -- I know because I developed for various pre-iPhone mobile platforms. The problem is that as manufacturers got better at making PDAs, the price kept dropping. This presented device-makers with a bind: either try to compete in a commodity market with razor thin margins, or add complications to their platform to differentiate it.
Now as someone
Android has the biggest possibility of that fate. (Score:5, Interesting)
Android is so fragented it is frustrating for everyone. Carriers and Manufactureres are allowed to screw it up and Google does not care.
Pure android is awesome, the Crap that HTC and Samsung does to it makes it suck, then the carriers add on their crap to make it suck more.
Google needs to say, "NO" you ship a clean android and your add on crap is in the application world that CAN BE UNINSTALLED by the end user. They also need to demand that at least all updates to the OS be pushed to phones within 30 days of release, none of this bullshit like AT&T pulls with security updates showing 6-12 months later.
Please google Force these companies to stop making android a steaming turd.
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Google needs to say, "NO" you ship a clean android and your add on crap is in the application world that CAN BE UNINSTALLED by the end user. They also need to demand that at least all updates to the OS be pushed to phones within 30 days of release, none of this bullshit like AT&T pulls with security updates showing 6-12 months later.
I'm pretty obviously no Google fanboi; but I've been saying this for several years now.
But the FOSSies keep saying that "Android is Open Sores! Google CAN'T Control it!"
Bullshit. You can put ANYTHING into an OEM Contract you want, and believe me, those handset makers and Carriers will sign-off on it; because the alternative is that they actually have to MAINTAIN a Fork of Android THEMSELVES, and not even Slamdung wants THAT headache!
So, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Android is the steaming p
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We are impressed that you know so much about Android and can lend your wise and impartial opinion to this discussion.
Funny that you didn't bitch about the GP. Why's that?
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Having owned both an iPhone and Android, I have to agree. iPhone "experience" is just overall cleaner and has better-coordinated common tools/apps.
If Apple is cautious in order to reduce breaches, it may just well benefit them. A couple of high-profile Android breach(es) will send customers back to Apple.
Perhaps Windows versus Mac is a better comparison than Blackberry vers
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Actually, the opposite is happening: Chinese (and others, like Amazon) companies are just forking Open-Source Android and slapping their own apps, app-stores etc. on top of it.
Support? Updates? Who cares, right?
You vastly overestimate the amount of influence Google has on what people do with Android. They have some influence on the source-code, of course - but once it's published, everybody can do with it whatever he wishes. And that's exactly what is happening now.
Also, as Google seems to come up with a ne
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One of the biggest innovations of the iPhone was to strong-arm the carriers to allow an app store outside their control. This was so bad in Canada that it took nearly a year before any carrier would agree to sell them. http://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-coming-to-canada/#! [cnet.com]
Before the iPhone, the *customer* was the carrier. The *features* were being able to lock people out of their phones and make them pay to download their photos, upload ringtones, tether, etc, etc. The more you could lock out and frustr
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They also need to demand that at least all updates to the OS be pushed to phones within 30 days of release
I'd argue two things:
1.) The update debacle is just as much Google's fault as the carriers, because the updates aren't properly modular. A whole lot of people are losing their s!!t right now because their Windows 7 or Windows 8 machines became Windows 10 machines this past weekend. The general Slashdot consensus is that Microsoft is wrong for updating computers without meaningful consent, and rightly so...but like clockwork, Samsung/HTC/Motorola/AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile are terrible for *not* rolling out O
Privacy and AI are not mutually exclusive (Score:2)
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Just because Apple isn't rolling out more advanced features doesn't mean they aren't spending on R&D privately.
Heck, they're not even being "private" about it [time.com]. The SEC takes care of that...
Apple would love to be in BB's shoes (Score:2)
Blackberry's or formerly RIM's QNX operating system is going to rule the world, very quietly, underneath everyone.
Au Contraire (Score:5, Insightful)
One could also argue a major decline in BlackBerry's brand started in ~2008 with the Indian government encryption key debacle.
Privacy matters. I will continue to buy iPhones even for no other reason than the principled stand that Tim Cook took against the FBI.
I suspect I am not alone.
Cash money (Score:2)
Apple has $305 billion in cash assets. There is no way to blow $300 billion.I mean they could fuck up more than few times and take big risks until they hit a payoff.
They could send their whole executive team on a roundtrip to Mars and still have more money left over than Microsoft.
As long as they have iMessage (Score:2)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
So Apples competitors are investing in AI, and Apple is going to lose because it too is spending in AI?
Apple vs Blackberry (Score:2)
IMHO the reason Blackberry failed, was that they tried to monetize the whole Blackberry ecosystem, from their Server Platform to each device, while at the same time, not providing enough improvements to their products that they quickly became 2nd tier phone manufacturer when Apple iPhone was released. This lead to people ditching the more expensive, less functional Blackberrys for iPhone and when Android finally took off, nailed the coffin shut.
FWIW, I owned a Blackberry, and my biggest complaint was that t
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To answer the question: Apple needs to NOT forget who breads its butter. You don't need to nickle and dime your customers to death to survive. Looking at the lifespan of "smart phones", from the time of Palm Pilots and feature phones, I saw what a "Smart Phone" could have been. I carried both, and wish they were one device long before the Treo and iPhone came out. There are synergies that are clear, and when they are apparent, work on making them functional. Right now, there are synergies that can be made,
Wasn't Apple that did in RIM (Score:4, Interesting)
The big losers in the early smartphone days were Nokia (Symbian was dated and badly needed an overhaul, which never happened) and Microsoft (who started off with a good lead from Windows Mobile on PDAs, but squandered it).
As for privacy, Apple has shown they're more than happy to violate their users' privacy when it's in their self-interest. When Apple ditched Google Maps, they didn't have their own database of SSID locations, so they couldn't locate you if you had the GPS turned off. The first year they paid for a wifi database from Skyhook. The next year, they used their own database. How did they mysteriously generate this database without sending around Apple street view cars to record the SSID and location of every hotspot on Earth like Google did? By secretly logging iPhone owners' locations and nearby SSIDs [f-secure.com], and having the phones send the info back to them. Essentially, Apple turned all iPhone owners into unpaid contractors who scoured the Earth recording the locations of every SSID, and used a chunk of their data plan to transmit this data back to themselves.
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"Essentially, Apple turned all iPhone owners into unpaid contractors who scoured the Earth recording the locations of every SSID, and used a chunk of their data plan to transmit this data back to themselves."
If you think that's bad, you should read on how Google Traffic works...
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That "location data is better with wifi on" is them telling you. It's not advertised, but neither is it secret either. it's anonymized. And in response to consumer complaints, they scrub the DB regularly. And it's sent back when you sync your phone, meaning it's on your home Internet, not on your dataplan.
Apple takes your Apple Maps mapping request and splits it in half. So you don't get associated with a path. They also severely kneecapped iAds by not selling out your data. They do take data seriousl
No really news, if you think about it. (Score:2)
I've been saying this ever since Google Apps and watching a Google IO a few years back and seriously thinking of doing a career change once again, because if it weren't for 20 year old historically grown LAMP stack technology that needs hands on fiddling to this very day I'd long be out of a job.
Among all Megacorps it's Google whos strategy is the most future safe.
There's a good reason Apple started offering subscription plans for iPhones a few months back. Google and its serious focus on the web is an ongo
idiots, idiots everywhere (Score:2)
Another fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Apple is a hardware company, a media company. It's not a software company or an Internet company. It has little incentive to invest in AI research. It can happily sit this one out and simply buy whatever startup comes up with something promising.
Re:WTF Is the Submitter Smoking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, sure. That's why, to this day, Siri returning the correct answer is met with "holy crap it worked!"
Have you ever tried any of the competing services mentioned in the summary?
Plus, I remember one of the big things about Siri people would talk about is how she would "remember context" and base her answers on that. Except she doesn't. It's clearly based off key-words that trigger responses. Say something she interprets as a weather-phrase? Get the weather report. Say something she interprets as a business-phrase? Get a business search. Say anything she doesn't recognize? Get a Bing search.
That's not AI, that's a series of regular expressions.
Re: WTF Is the Submitter Smoking? (Score:4)
I played with it a little when I got my new iPhone, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly.
I kind of look at it the same way I do those damned phone answering 'robots' when you call any company now, that require you to speak and talk to them, rather than just press a number through the directory.
I freakin' hate that...especially while in a crowded office, or maybe during the day while out and about. I'd rather just press a number, to pick what I want on the directory.
So, much I feel for talking to my phone....I'd rather not intrude on people around me, while I talk into my phone to "find xyz", or look up something. I just tend to type in my search strings silently while not interrupting those that may be around me....
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Real AI hasn't been invented yet
I don't think there is a consensus on a repeatable and measurable way to determine what is "real AI". Some people believe that the Turing Test has been passed, and some don't, and some say it doesn't matter because intelligence isn't defined by the ability to communicate on a human level.
Regardless, no, everyone's AI isn't just regular expressions. Example: math. A regular language cannot return the answer to arbitrary math questions like "What is 2 plus 3?" or "What is 38.5 times 96.7?", but Turing comp
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Re:WTF Is the Submitter Smoking? (Score:5, Interesting)
You think so?
I should point out of course, that Siri is NOT an Apple invention. They bought it. I agree though, it does work reasonably well.
I personally find the "OK Google" more useful as it more fits the way that I use my phone day to day. Especially when in the car.
My head unit supports Carplay and Android Auto. Honestly, Apple's current state of Carplay is why I switched back to Android. After doing so is when I discovered that "OK Goggle" is pretty damn good in the car.
Then again, machine learning is a core competence of Google. It would be silly to think that Apple would be able to roll out a product of similar polish.
Re:WTF Is the Submitter Smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
". . . machine learning is a core competence of Google."
And monetizing consumer data is their core business model.
I will admit that Google's results are often better. However, my privacy has value to me as well, and the cost/benefit doesn't work out in my head. I'll stay with the company that's not trying to build a model of me to sell to advertisers as long as I the service is available. I'm not confident it will be long, since the large population of users that haven't consciously considered the long-term ramifications of so much of their personal data being harvested have established a standard that doesn't weight privacy very highly.
I'll enjoy the availability of alternatives while I can, though.
Re:WTF Is the Submitter Smoking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since 1984 (Score:5, Informative)
I've been reading how Apple won't survive, it will go out of business, no one will buy their products, etc. Of course now, over 30 years later, it just recently was the highest valued company on the planet and they are still in the top ten.
Every time there is some hiccup in their earnings or some other business launches to compete against them, out come all the doomsayers with the same old crap.
Give it a fucking rest. Apple is just as viable as any other big technology company. The Fan Boys you speak of are they ones who pine for Apple's failure day after day and for some reason feel slighted by its success.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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They really did have one foot over the edge for a few years. If not for the bet-the-company iTunes and the iPod, Apple would have joined Wang, Dec, Sun, and Compaq in the brand graveyard.
At this point Apple has more money than God, so it's hard to see them actually going out of business, but they may become irrelevant in the smartphone market.
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That depends, really...
Unlike Blackberry, Apple is actually reaching out into other fields, taking on new competencies, and making new products (or finding promising products and buying them, cleaning them to the Apple ecosystem and UX, bring up the hardware to snuff, then selling the result.)
I think it's this never-ending search for new markets and products that will keep Apple a going concern for a very, very long time - barring any massive strings of bad luck, naturally.
Blackberry's problems are self-cau
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You seem to be skipping over a fairly important detail in that heartwarming story - Apple nearly DID die, in the 1990s, and its turnaround was so incredible it's been studied in microscopic detail by business types the world over. Steve Jobs has movies made about him, this is such a rare and unlikely feat.
Blowing off any criticism or concern about Apple's direction on the grounds that "they didn't die last time" seems to overlook the fact that Jobs is dead and what he did is insanely hard to replicate.
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Um, in 1979 they were riding high on the PDP-11 and VAX. 1998 is when they were on a permanent slide, and sold out to Compaq.
I mean, in the 1980s and 90s were DECnet, the VT-100 and successors, the Rainbow, VAXclusters, the Alpha, and DLT.
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As other have noted, DEC was doing just fine in 1979. They didn't start to have problems until a decade later and never went bankrupt (they were eaten by Compaq who was eaten by HP).
Never wed to one tech supplier because they all die? Well, they don't all die. IBM is still around. Or, they continue on in companies that ate them. Burroughs and Sperry-UNIVAC hardware live on in Unisys ClearPath Libra and Dorado systems.
Re:Sigh...Another "If I Ran Apple" Douchebag (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue Apples big claim to fame is not just the iPhone, but it's integration into one Apple ecosystem. The idea of Apple components playing nicely together without the need for endless tinkering is huge in the realm of people that don't have the desire/capability to cobble together everything their house needs. If anything, Apple hasn't invested enough in the desktop PC/video game market. If the Apple TV were a bit more powerful (and they removed that Apple remote requirement), they could handle some streaming akin to the nVidia shield. Instead, they've got Macs running 3 year old hardware, with crappy video drivers (or so I've read), with next to no support for games.
i fail to see how Apple, as a hardware company, is really going to lose by not having Googles capability to integrate web searches with advertising.
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