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Talk of an Apple Search Engine To Thwart Google
Hugh Pickens writes "eWeek reports that the data Apple collects about users from its iPhone is so valuable that the company may build its own iPhone-centric search engine just to keep Google from gleaning insight from that data. 'The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years,' writes analyst Gene Munster. Google is currently the default search engine on the iPhone, but Google has increasingly encroached on Apple's mobile turf, offering the Android operating system and several mobile applications. As the search provider for the iPhone, Google sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones — a competitive advantage that has not gone unnoticed by Apple. Apple lacks the experience and engineering wherewithal to build a large, scalable search engine, but Munster says Apple could buy a search startup with a Web index, such as Cuil or Taptu, and use its index as the seed for its own search engine. 'Apple is in an inside position to tap into the current pent-up demand for better mobile search, and add a new competitive differentiation from other search providers and device makers,' adds IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds."
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No way is Apple going to be able to take on Google in search. Bing failed and Microsoft has a lot more power than Apple. People will just end up using the google website instead. Or, alternatively, they'll start saying it's a feature and that they don't need a good search engine anyway.
Bing was created mainly as an attack on Google and an attempt to get into the search business, not because Microsoft had something new to offer in search. This is being done in the same spirit, and it will also turn out bad, with many users going to google.com to search just because Google is that much better.
Apple isn't going to put together a search engine. Come on, people, pitting Apple against Google, Google against Microsoft, Microsoft against Apple ... it's all just a game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' depending on whose market you're playing in.
Just because Google is making real inroads into the mobile phone market doesn't mean that Apple is going to counter by trying to start a search engine. What's next, a rumor of Google's new Android based gPad?
I bet Yahoo would be more than happy to provide search technology to Apple (not the powered by Bing stuff, their own capable search). Yahoo's not going to make a competing phone anytime soon, and the cost of a Yahoo deal might well be worth it against the cost of Apple developing their own (the latter obviously being more expensive, but meaning Apple gets full control).
Just how much money would that take? $15?
I didn't think anyone used it aside from the first month when everyone was making fun of how they didn't rank for 'cuil' in their own engine and how all the pictures weren't lining up with the results.
It probably is possible to build a company that does many widely disparate things well -- and certainly, there are a few successful examples -- but it is very, very hard. Most of the time, when a company wanders outside of its core competencies, the venture crashes and burns, and sometimes takes the company down with it. Microsoft (and yes, I am using the term core "competency" very loosely here) has managed to get a lock on PC operating systems and office software, but its ventures elsewhere have not been very successful: IE is the dominant browser, but the goal of using it to dominate the internet was a failure, and the Xbox, while reasonably popular, is not profitable for Microsoft. Google's ventures outside search and advertising have been ignorable so far. Even IBM's foray into personal computing, historically important though it was, is history. Combine such an expedition with a challenge to a competitor whose dominance borders on monopoly, and the odds definitely don't get any better.
Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience in the entire underlying field of large-scale, massively parallel computing? And they think they're going to do this by buying an unknown and unproven startup?
Well, good luck with that. The odds of it going anywhere are not good, and if it pisses off enough iPhone owners, it might damage the core company as well. (I know, I know, if iPhones crapped every fifteen minutes like parrots, Apple enthusiasts would be the first to boast that Apple had crapping phones way ahead of everyone else, but Apple is no longer operating in a market where the majority of its customers are diehard fanboys.)
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Yet another nonsense rumour that will now be considered as "fact", and a whole list of reasons why Apple are so evil for doing this, or why they will surely fail when it's nothing but pure hot air.
The comments already here are acting like this is an Apple press release.
Isn't there enough fodder without having to make stuff up?
I'm an Apple user and long-time developer for their platforms, and this seems highly unlikely. No, no for fanboi-ish reasons, but because Apple aren't adept at multitasking. Most companies would be able to bring out a new product, such as the iPad, without having half their product line fall into obsolesence -- their PowerMacs are now over a year old, and MacBook Pros are 10 months old. And as for search engines, have you tried the iTunes/App Store? It pales in comparison to what Amazon had 10 years ago; it is the main reason why apps see sales drop-offs that are at the very extreme end of a common phenomena. (It's also why, even as an App developer, I shop at Amazon and only go to iTunes occasionally for a price check. I actually don't buy apps because the store is so painfully useless.)
Apple's scope is very limited, their expertise is definitely not in search engines, and they have so far shown little interest in data-mining their customers -- it would seem beneath them in its most common usage. In short, there's very little reason to believe Jobs has any interest in pursuing it, much less that they'd be able to spare their focus on other things to work on it. They might slap together something as an off-hand type of thing, sure.
Apple does well when they change the game, rather than simply trying to win a race on somebody else's terms. They also seem to have a good understanding of where their own strengths lie. I can't see them trying to compete head-on with Google but if they can find a way to make Google's strengths less relevant then I can see them doing that. That said, it's not like Apple doesn't have a few flops / vanity projects under its belt and it is sometimes seen as a company that would potentially set business decisions based on personal feeling. Their compass on business decisions is fairly good overall though, even though I'm not at all keen on the direction they want to take the industry.
Apple has already witnessed what happened to Bing. They know there's no success in creating a search engine simply to separate yourself. Sure Apple like to keep things closed but I doubt they'd go as far as trying to keep their users away from Google search.
An account posted on the Daring Fireball blog says the precise quote was "teams at Google want to kill us," specifically Google's Android team.
And yet most of the Google Android team folks probably use Macs. No, I'm not buying this. Perhaps they want to have their share of the big cellphone pie, but this was a clear exaggeration.
Ezekiel 23:20
So it's only Apple's "cult" that bought 54 Million iPods last year, 20.5 Million iPhones, and 25% of all music sold in the US?
Considering that Apple only sold around 13 million Macs last year, I find that unbelievable.
Besides that, why should Apple care about search engine market share? As the article stated, the prime goal would be to keep Google from being able to data mine information from iPhone/iPod Touch users.
This isn't about taking market share away from Google, or Bing, or whatever; it's keeping Google out of what Apple views as an increasingly important source of market research. Right now, every natural search performed on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad goes through Google - so Google can view that data and use it to refine/improve/develop their own competing smartphone OS. By further locking in users to their own search engine, Apple effectively closes the pipeline of free research to Google - unless users explicitly go to the webpage of their search engine, which will only be done by a small, small number of users.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
Apple relies entirely on their cult to fund its sales.
Well, decent products too. Not to mention killer marketing. Can any other company manage 8 stories on the front page of http://cnet.com/ as Apple has at the moment as well as front pages of CNN, BBC, New York Times etc etc, just because they released a tablet?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Bing hasn't 'failed'. Not taking the top spot is not 'failure'.
$6B and running to buy 12% market share that will disappear once they stop dumping money in. That's not failure? Then what is?
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Seems someone was smart enough to register isearch.com...
BUT there may be some others available...
yikes, even based on this short list I drew up from memory the isearch domain name is hot!
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I'd forgotten they even existed. I just gave 'em another try. I have a slightly obscure search I've had only indifferent results on with Google; about fifty hits, none quite the one I want. I gave Bing a try, and was gratified to find about the same number of hits but far from total overlap, and Bing gave me a few useful results Google hadn't given me.
Cuil? Zero hits, zip, none, nada.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
> the Xbox, while reasonably popular, is not profitable for Microsoft
Incorrect -- it's not incredibly lucrative but it more than breaks even. Microsoft's entertainment division would have been respectably profitable except Windows Mobile is for some reason also part of the division and the resounding flop that was WinMo 6.5 dragged it down.
There is absolutely nothing here to suggest Apple is considering building its own search engine. There isn't even any discussion being made here from anyone who is in any way affiliated with Apple. Nor is there any compelling argument being made that Apple should bother. As mentioned in the summary Apple doesn't have the expertise in the field to build a mobile search engine from scratch, so any attempt to enter in the market would require a very significant amount of initial investment. Furthermore, if Apple did bother with such idiocy it would quickly find itself completely incapable of competing with Google as a niche search engine simply cannot hold a candle to the vast amount of data that Google would have available to tailor search results. Finally, what's this "pent-up demand for better mobile search" nonsense? Are the browsing habits made on a smartphone really that different from what people do on their home computers? If anything the differences between a smartphone and a desktop computer are shrinking as time moves forward.
This article is nothing but wild speculation, and the headline here is very misleading.
I think you'll find that it's some "analyst" who is saying there is a "70% chance" that Apple will do this. Apple themselves have said nothing of the sort, and probably quite rightly have determined that search engines are non of their concern.
Apple don't want to do anything - some analyst desperate to validate his existence and paycheck decided to make up a wild claim that he cannot possibly prove. What is he basing his 70% figure on? It's not like he has any prior history of a computer maker being suddenly successful with a phone and then deciding to release a search engine. It's just nonsense.
The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years
Why must it become an increasing priority for Apple? Because it's a high priority for other popular companies, and Apple needs to catch up to Google and Microsoft if it wants to remain trendy? Because raking in cash hand over fist from the sale of shiny new hardware isn't adequate; they need to start datamining too?
Traditionally, Apple has entered markets where the existing offerings sucked ass. When Apple introduced the Macintosh, WYSIWYG text editing was unheard of. When Apple introduced iTunes, nobody had a single app that could "Rip, Mix, Burn." When Apple introduced the iPod, existing portable MP3 players were difficult to use. When Apple introduced the iTunes Store, existing online music stores used cumbersome and intrusive DRM that wasn't Mac-compatible. When Apple introduced the iPhone, most people didn't browse the web on their cell phone, not because it was impossible, but because it was so awkward that it wasn't worth the effort. When Apple introduced Safari, it's because the best browser for the Mac at that point was Internet Explorer, which was already at the end of its life. When Apple introduced Keynote, it's because the visual presentations that Steve Jobs likes to do just can't be done in PowerPoint.
If Apple thinks they can do something that's so far above and beyond the capabilities of Google Search and Google Maps, they'll do it. If Apple thinks they can do something that sort of approaches the usability of Google's offerings and might be an adequate alternative, but isn't really mind-blowing and revolutionary, there's no way in hell.
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"Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience "
Like, say, when they launched the first iPod and iTunes and all that, the way they hand no experience in the field of music?
Yeah, I'd say they have a good shot at this then.
I wish Apple would open a hamburger stand.
I sure could use an insanely great cheeseburger right now.
USER - search "{any song}"
RESPONSE - "You don't really want to search for that. It' hasn't been approved in iTunes. Here's what you want : {results}"
That's a testament to their marketing powers, not to their products. I'm of the opinion that Apple could market human waste, and we'd all hail it as revolutionary. That said, their products are fairly decent, just not as awesome as they are made out to be.
SSC
The problem Apple has with the iphone is they just farmed out too much. There's not enough Apple controlled stuff in the iphone for Apple to maintain control. Apple controls email, but that's not hard. Apple doesn't control the voice or data circuits, but those are commodities, so not a problem. Apple farmed out maps. That's more of a problem; only MS and Google do maps reasonably well. Apple farmed out search. That's a problem.
Apple controls the browser, but that's more of a bug than a feature because the browser is so feature-limited that most functions that could be done by websites on a full-featured browser (for example, IMDB or shopping at Lands End) need a dedicated app on the iphone. Apple is rightly afraid of an infection vector thru the browser, but the result is thousands of 'apps' that simply substitute for websites on a fully functional browser.
The upshot is the features of the iphone are too easy to duplicate on other machines. Websites do the job of most apps, and maps and search are already controlled by google. What's left?
Actually there is one thing left, but it's also the kind of hard job that Apple doesn't handle well. Right now we pick phones based on how easy it is to enter data without a keyboard. That's pretty ludicrous when you think about it. If we could input data to a phone by speaking into it how amazing would that be? Yeah, I know, voice rec is hard, but when it comes along it's going to be the only kind of smartphone worth owning. And Apple isn't even working on it.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Before we all set our collective hair on fire, if this does actually turn out to be the case and it's not a complete dud, then the value of consumer information as a commodity is going to increase and finally be recognised.
IMHO, this will only lead to:
1. better return for the information that's gleaned from our consumer habits
2. better protection for our individual privacy
Me thinks Apple is getting a bit greedy with their ever-closing grip on their users. What's next? An Apple version of the Internet for their jailed iphone users? I suppose another search option is not a bad thing, as long as it really is just an option...
I suspect that it will succeed in becoming the preeminent search engine for those looking for the filthiest of homosexual pornography. Only the Apple crowd would be able to properly process and catalog all that content.
. Search engines unlike hardware sales require large numbers of customers
Why would that be exactly?
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NO but it is the cult members who attack anyone who doesn't worship Jobs and Apple. Much like you just did.
They've actually made money on "Entertainment" (which includes stuff like Zune) the last 2 years.
I don't think they have made money overall on the XBox and friends, but they aren't continuing to lose money.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I don't see how this would be useful - an Apple search engine would only return ONE result.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'm of the opinion that Apple could market human waste, and we'd all hail it as revolutionary.
And I think that's the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Apple could, but they wouldn't. Microsoft can and does, and everyone hates it, but somehow finds themselves buying round after round their fecus.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Jobs is a vegetarian, so it's unlikely. It's also the reason that Apple doesn't make any leather cases or bags for their products.
This is the same guy who says Apple is going to put out an HDTV, too.
He's like a stopped clock that tweets two times a day -- everyone should stop paying any attention to him. Just don't look!
Sounds like the wrong reason to build a search engine "hey this is valuable data lets make our own proprietary system so we can profit and to keep the data away from google"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Talk is cheap.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Just the fact that you can't disprove a percentage with a one-time event. Apple does it? He predicted it. Apple doesn't? He predicted they might not.
It's like David Cross's character in Waiting for Guffman: The amazing thing about this field is that the weather never changes. There is always - ALWAYS - a 72% chance of rain.
I think you've got it. But I'll distill it down a little further:
Apple is very good at screen-centric user interfaces. They are the king of visual interaction. But they have very, very little expertise outside of that arena. Of course, this has served them well because we are primarily visual creatures.
But speech and sound, and language (in the abstract sense, not the text sense) are also very important interaction mechanisms. And Apple is weak in this area. And its competitors, Microsoft and Google, are quite good at it. And these are fields MS and Google have been investing billions into for many years. When I say they're good, I don't just mean better than Apple... they're better than everybody. There's no revolutionary startup Apple can buy to catapult them into the lead, like they usually do.
a.k.a. CompuServ 2.0 ?
The guys at Apple undoubtedly know that they could just buy this information all neatly sorted and packaged from Google for much, much less than it'd cost to capture it themselves.
Any talk of "competitive advantage" from being able to see what smartphone users search for is overrated. This is a market where things change quickly; look at your cell carrier's current crop of offerings and you'll see phones with capabilities that weren't common or even available a year or two ago. Most important: this information by it's nature is a measurement of where things were in the past.
Any competent businessman knows that when you're trying to hit a moving target you need to aim for where it's going to be, not where it is now. And Apple is a very good example of this kind of thinking - they've made a lot of money defining new markets and even now have things cooking in their labs that will define more markets in the future. Consider the iPod; many here blew it off as a useless also-ran. How about the iPhone? These pages were full of people saying that it was a failure. Now it's the iPad that's getting described as a failure - the early sales figures seem to say otherwise and we'll just have to wait and see. I wouldn't bet against Apple knowing what the market wants.
The couple times I've tried Bing, the results weren't poor... different than Google, yes, but certainly not bad results.
You're right! People have to be more forward thinking than that. It could take a few more decades at several billion dollars a year for Microsoft's Internet strategy to break even, but then these naysayers will be really sorry. Stick with the company that's not afraid to put in the investment and stick with a long term strategy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This may be what some people want in their search services, but most people don't. Most people will want the good the bad and the ugly; not just what Apple approves of.
Search engines to function on their own require large numbers of customers. However, a search engine built specifically for apple mobile products, such as the iPhone, iPad, etc. wouldn't require any customers outside the apple "cult". The point isn't to make money off of the search engine, it's to make the iPhone, iPad, etc. a wholly independent and completely functional platform, which Apple owns (and profits from) inside and out.
My page.
Not going into all the rest, but IBM's "foray"? Just off the top of my head, IBM more or less invented the "Personal Computer" as such, as the smaller version of mainframes and minicomputers (hence the term "microcomputer". Note: Altair, Apple IIe, etc. were "hobbyist/home computers" in their day). Microsoft originally supplied exclusively to IBM, and Intel was a spin-off, too. And this is consistent with IBM's strategy throughout the last decades: as soon as something looks as if it's heading in the direction of becoming a commodity, they drop it. Hard disks, for example. And they always do it early. IBM drops PCs - enter Dell; IBM drops hard disks - enter SSDs; always quite a few years down the line. IBM appears not the be interested in playing the margin game with n different competitors.
OK, now back to the rest: bullshit. Disregarding core competencies is a necessary part of progress. The Newton was closer to Apple's core competence that the iPod, when they came out, and we know which failed and which succeeded. Or the iPhone - damn, was that a saturated market when they started out, never having built a phone before.
yes, we have no bananas
when we start hearing that Apple created search too.
Apple stores so they can be the first to buy Apple's iSearch product.
That'll build market share and ad revenues. Until you stop paying people to pretend to use your search engine to find stuff to buy. Then they abandon you and you'll find you've flushed a bunch of cash for absolutely nothing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The iPod is a music player and iTunes an online music store. Apple still doesn't have any experience in the field of music.
iPod is basically a mini computer, which fits rather neatly with their decades-old business of making computer hardware (Macs/Macbooks/Newton etc.)
iTunes (in it's original incarnation as a media player programme) is software relating to audio-visual stuff- an area Apple have been operating in to great success for a long time (Macs have aways had the reputation as "the computer to have" for people who need audio or visual editing software, etc.).
iTunes Store (the music store) is a music selling sight, launched after two years of great success in the media player market with the iPod. Not only that, but it's just a website with a payment section and a file server- things which no major electronics company would struggle with.
A search engine is a hugely complex system of search algorithms, web spiders, data handling and massive parallel computing with huge-scale server farms. It's just not the sort of thing Apple has done before.
I'm not saying they couldn't do it, and couldn't be amazing at it. It just stands pointing out that it is about as far from what Apple usually does as is possible while still being in the computing field. The odds of them doing well at it seems slim at first glance.
That's all.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
So it's only Apple's "cult" that bought 54 Million iPods last year, 20.5 Million iPhones, and 25% of all music sold in the US?
Considering that Apple only sold around 13 million Macs last year, I find that unbelievable.
Yeah it should apply to be recognised as an organised religion.
Besides that, why should Apple care about search engine market share? As the article stated, the prime goal would be to keep Google from being able to data mine information from iPhone/iPod Touch users.
I hope Apple don't. Apple has proven more than willing of censoring app content without explanation. I don't want them doing the same to search results.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
iSoma.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
SearchMe is up for sale. Very Apple like. Great for a smaller interface. Combine this with some other licensed technology and you have an Apple home run. Let someone else like Yahoo do all the optimizations and algorithms and Apple can fine tune the interface. Wow, in a month they can be in the search game.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
But because of that marketing, they actually SELL. Perhaps that is a concept that proponents of competing platforms should look into? Selling their devices? Arguing how open Android is (*) or whatever Nokia's latest attempt is called nowadays?
*) provided you root your phone to install a version not crippled by the phone company, losing quite a few preloaded apps in the process, and then try and get someone to write apps for it when there is hardly any money to be made.
Search is also incompatible with Apple's closed-box approach. I can't see Steve Jobs avoiding the temptation to cook the results in some petty way, even if not directly against those who have crossed him. Look at how closed his app markets are. His ego is too big to let a search engine escape his control.
People who think Google might drive a company out of business by biasing the search results against them should consider who would be more likely to do that -- Apple or Microsoft or Google?
Infuriate left and right
Apple has to keep a little ahead of everyone else. At first it was a relatively open computer that did what no one else could at a good price. Then it was an expensive closed computer that could do what no other computer could. Then it was desktop publishing. Then it was making movies. Now it is integration.
Apple is no longer more than 18 months ahead of Windows, and does not provide general system support above Linux. There was a time when the lead was 3 to 5 years, due to hardware costs and the lack of sophistication in MS Windows. Soon the lead may be measured in months.
Apple may not be in computers, at least as we know them, in 5 years. What is will be in is integrating various devices across the network. Search will be part of this. The hardware will be whatever is useful.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
By "break even" it.. sort of does. It had its first quarterly profits a couple years ago. And then a couple quarters later, it had losses again. Since then, I don't know what the Xbox group has done financially. But it had 20 some consecutive quarters of losses totalling over $5 billion. So, the GP is correct. The xbox is not profitable.
What restrictions would apple use? Must be a yuppy with the latest apple products and bow to their wim? Can BRICK your appliance if you search for Microsoft or Google! .99 cents a search that can only be used once! ... Apple and the Australian Communications Minister - perfect combo.. Restricted, limited, expensive information for the few . ..
What DRM would they use, because you could give ANY information without the strongest DRM available to annoy your uses, and limit media value!
How much per search?
As with most Apple products, never deliver a full working package, leave out some essentials like copy, paste, flash etc., maybe don't have a search button, or limit results to APPLE APPROVED and CERTIFIED content only. Nothing nasty like searching for BEACH or Holiday because beaches might show women in bikinis or other immoral and NON-APPLE approved content - AAaarrrghh!
Conroy in Australia would love Steve Jobs to have a search engine - They could restrict and limit access to information happily together
Actually Android, at least on the Nexus One, has integrated speech recognition. It's done server side and the quality seems to have improved a lot lately. If you use it for phrase-at-a-time speech it can be remarkably accurate. It doesn't work so well in very noisy environments or if you string together several phrases with pauses to imply commas, etc. At least not yet.
More or less. The cult + those who are woefully uninformed about competing products. Half the people who are buying "ipods" dont even know there are alternatives. Much like most religions there are those who are the true believers and those who simply do not know anything else.
Id wager the ipod is the best example of this. Personaly Id say there are people who stand to benefit from Macs in one way shape or form (I do not know how many but there are certain advantages so its not black and white)
However the ipod is just shit. Its highly proprietary and DRMed out the ass. I pods are more expensive their their equal quality competitors. iTunes is just a bastard of a bit of software. It causes massive stabability issues and is a complete and utter resource hog. Ipods are known to be fragile and scratch prone.
So ya apple relies on brand warship not on actual quality.
Secondly even if that would be apple's goal I would suggest they do not do. As a brand name company releasing a shitty product (a half cocked search engine) would only damage the brand name which is too valuable for the firm. This is also why i think the ipad was a horrible idea. Its shown to many normal individuals that apple users are cult esq.
Unless Apple charges $99/year for the privilege to use their search engine. The Apple cult would pay it.
I'm tired of Google's 10 obfuscated links per query. You have to do a lot of mental calculation to determine if that's the link you want in many cases. It's actually really opaque. Apple would create a search engine for consumers and make it a much better experience. Guaranteed they would come in with some kind of twist that make Google Search look like a hand-cranked antique. They would likely also leverage their very extensive video knowledge (not just selling in iTunes, but also QuickTime, which is like the Unix of video creation) so that you could find video effectively. They might even promote it as being for users who want to find video.
Apple's Spotlight client search is much better than what you find on other platforms, so it isn't like they're starting from scratch. And iTunes has its own built-in search engine. A Web index is really just expanding their search.
Google's weakness is that they're all Ph.D computer nerds and most consumers are not. That's why you see that Android is used overwhelmingly by computer nerds. Google has almost no designers and artists. Ask yourself why the 10 results don't show me a little thumbnail of the page, even if that comes in after the results, that would be much more helpful in a lot of cases. Why isn't there an option at least to turn that on? Apple's search would likely be very, very graphical.
If you remember the flap recently where people were trying to login to Facebook from a page that was not Facebook but was the #1 Google result for "Facebook login" then realize that is a Google Fail right there. That is people just typing words in and taking the first result. They're not even pressing "I'm feeling lucky" which would take them right there, they're going to the 10 results and just picking the top one without reading. I've seen this behavior again and again when training users. That's how most people "use" Google. They barely scratch the surface. Apple doesn't have to compete with the whole thing, just that surface 0.01% that most users are using.
Google is vulnerable on privacy with Eric Schmidt recently saying you don't have any, and with them turning on Buzz the way they did. In the same way that Apple doesn't have to make very much money on iTunes Store (because it sells devices that they make money on) they don't have to make very much money in search and ads. They can out-privacy Google easily.
Google is vulnerable on copyright, where they recently pissed off every book author in the world, just as Apple is opening a bookstore.
AdWords is great but it's a lot of work for the advertiser. Apple's customers are a very desirable demographic. If they can make an ad platform that lets you reach Apple users for less work and less money than AdWords, many people would be very interested in that. Only 1 in 10 PC's is a Mac, but 9 out of 10 high-end PC's is a Mac. What if there was some link to Apple's credit card database, so that if a user comes in to your site via an ad on Apple's search engine, they can pay with their iTunes account?
Google is obviously just searching the Web. Apple can offer the iTunes Store, their native app platforms, for example, enabling you to find something in the print/iPad edition of TIME. They could even do some kind of peer-to-peer from their client platforms, where you find what you're looking for in the public folder of somebody else's Mac. Which every Mac already has. The Web is the common space of the digital world, not the whole digital world.
And Apple has a higher market cap and more money in the bank than Google. You can't dismiss it when any company that is bigger than you comes into your space. When that company is on such a roll that people who want to knock them point to the Power Mac G4 Cube as their awesome failure, that is really something to be concerned with. The Cube predates the iPod that is so long ago, and it was a profitable product (although not very) and it enjoyed a very loyal and even cult following even years after they stopped making it. Many companies would love to
So, the point of this "article" is to advertise 2 unknown search engines?
Thanks Slashdot, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't read this.
For phones and even MobileMe, Apple can get away with that because they really don't need the volume. For delivering good search results, they need a huge search volume and an army of Ph.D.'s and search quality experts, and they have none of those.
Apple should worry more about bringing iPhone OS up to snuff, because it is already getting long in the tooth and falling more and more behind Android.
this is what it is. the breakpoint. if, in all their arrogance, apple lock down their users to a search engine less capable than google, it will wake up its users. gone will be the 'hip'.
Read radical news here
So what is this going to be? You pay Apple $5 to have your site listed, if it is "objectionable" or competes with Apple's own sites you get rejected?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So what are all of these "better" alternatives -- especially to the Touch or the Nano? Every company but Apple has basically abandoned the high capacity market (except for Archos). So what's the alternative to the Classic?
iTunes hasn't sold DRM'd music (or music videos) in over a year and where can you get DRM free video from any store -- either physical or electronic? The iPod plays bog standard MP3, WAV, AAC audio and H.264 and MPeg video. So where are all these cheaper better alternatives to the Touch, Nano, and Classic?
Do you have a source for your claims of fragility and a comparison of the reliability of the iPod compared to other music players?
it is a grand failure, if you have set out to become #1, put in a lot of resources and effort into it. and even more so if your main business is not online search.
i would like to see that engine apple would do and be good enough. noone has been able to do it, or go near it yet. rather telling though, since you dont judge bing as a failure, your standards are not high.
Read radical news here
1. People (and by people I mean the mass market average person) know "Google". Google is synonymous with "finding stuff" to them. So for Apple to get rid of Google search and maps on their devices would be extremely stupid. It's a brand that is a big advantage to have on their device.
2. Apple are not stupid, their lawyers are not stupid... If they don't want Google having access to search data and "learning from it" then that goes into the contract. In fact it's likely already there. The guy who wrote TFA is just playing guess-man and not thinking about reality.
Why would Apple produce another search engine as a slow follower? We need something more such as a transaction engine: search a question and a transaction engine places the information from multiple sources into a coherent answer - like a self forming Wikipedia. Imagine - you have a legal question and you can place your question into a Transaction Engine so that it could ask you questions, and form say an agreement, essay, advice, ... from multiple sources of information.
Consequently, the tool also acts as a learning teaching device. Our website at http://1place.com.au/ has a question/answer expert system; however, if we had a tool to draw from the masses of information on the net then it would be different and worthwhile.
This kind of nonsense redefining of terms is how something like the success of the PC clone becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Wozniak invented the "personal computer". IBM just threw something together in a hurry to keep Apple from getting ahead. It was very comparable to what Microsoft did with Mosaic.
It's like saying Ford invented the automobile.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
so the apple user can expect to go without flash, usb, a decent search engine, 3d performance, software compatibility and at the same time gets to lose any masculinity or dignity that they might have had before they bought into the whole lifestyle choice thing.
paying a premium for this kind of treatment is really rubbing their noses in it. where will it end? a free visit from ms whiplash with each 'computer?'
as a disabled user living with speech recognition full-time are high-powered PC, I can tell you, nobody does it right. All (nuance, Microsoft) suppliers fail big time. Replicating their work is a 5 to 10 year process and since corporate management rarely thinks on that long a time frame, speech recognition is not easy and all of the Sphinx systems are just toys to keep grads students busy.
One could purchase, or more accurately, rent, recognition engines from nuance and Microsoft but the problem is, there are so many annoying little bugs inhibiting usability that you will still spend a year plus making it ready for real people and then, need to reapply all your bug fixes in the next release comes out.
Speech recognition is a dream for some and a nightmare for those who live with it (especially for those of us who try to use it with open source applications). On the other hand, I would be living off of Social Security disability if I didn't have speech recognition even in its current crappy state.
I have to disagree here. OS X lacks any kind of consistent UI and HIG. Or maybe they do have one but every single app seems to have its own interface. And sadly, it is the applications that come with OS X that are the worst offenders. They also seem very poor at placing "suicide" buttons like delete far away from the regular use buttons.
Or an insanely great apple.
article thats a little older. Note i know this is talking about one particular batch. But this is one particular batch that was so bad apple had to admit was defective. Another more recent example (not ipods) was the iMacs "yellowing" which was within the last year..
In other words despite apples perception of high quality...they have been having on and off major quality issues.
If it's anything like search on apple.com, then forget it.
Just the other day, I went to www.apple.com/downloads and tried to search for a software update that I knew existed. I couldn't find it even when I searched for it's exact name. Their search is absolutely useless. I eventually found the download by doing a google search.
Here's an example. I want to find the recently released (as in the past week) download for the combo installer for the Mac OS X 10.6.3 update.
Here are the search results from Apple for a search for "10.6.3 combo". Fail.
and here are the results from Google - the first result returned is the one I want. Done.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
They presumably did not have any expertise with building online services when they started building their infrastructure for iTunes... Yet now they have a all division for Music store, App Store, Book Store, MobileMe, etc...
They presumably did not have any expertise dealing with cell phone technology, yet we all know what happened to iPhone...
I think people assume that Apple is only good at UI stuff because Apple does not really advertise the core technologies that they have behind the eye candy...
They have a very good core OS technology behind their computers and other devices, but really not something that anybody cares about... It think it would be naive to believe that Apple cannot gain or acquire the expertise and technology needed for a search engine if they wanted too...
The better question would be, would they really want to, and for what purpose ?
Please remove the rosy glasses and look at the "other" Apple products, while making a step out of the reality distortion field.
Apple were also the guys behind product such as :
- The newton (failed until Palm proved they could do better PDAs)
- The Apple/Bandai Pinpin (tanked completely, classic video-game manufacturer produced better consoles, and Microsoft was the first not to fail epically a computer-to-console market expansion).
- The Apple III (was a catastrophe)
they are also criticized sometime for the analog part of their audio products
they also create wonderfully over priced products such as the 25th anniversary mac.
Shall I go on ?
Apple do indeed think often that they have something far above and beyond what exist, any company which tries to enter a new market does (otherwise, no company would risk entering a new market with some product that they know is lower grade and won't succeed*). Except that, just like any other company, Apple can be wrong and fail.
---
*: Well except when the company is Microsoft and they don't plan to succeed due to inherent qualities of the product, only by leveraging a monopoly.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And I will unload their shares if they go for it. Search business is an EXPENSIVE one to run well, and Apple, as of yet, has not demonstrated they can build an online service worth a damn. And that's fine, as long as they don't bet the farm on something that's clearly not their strength. Microsoft lost billions on search (and counting), and so will Apple if they're stupid enough to get in the game.
But they aren't stupid, which is why I don't believe this rumor. Apple is about doing few things well, not about being everything to everybody.
That's the brown Zune you're thinking of. Let's you squirt at people.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Apple might do a Maps application based on data from something it purchased or an open data source, but search would be a silly thing for Apple to try to do. The costs would be massive and the marginal benefit over less drastic alternatives would be mediocre at best given that both Google and Microsoft have their own mobile platform with significant numbers of users that will allow them access to mobile search statistics irrespective of whether they are the default on iPhones or not. Sure, iPhone users are a bit stupider / richer on average, but precisely how stupider/richer is not the kind of information that is strategically useful to either company!
Apple will most likely just stick an intermediate layer between Google and the iPhone to cache searches, or partner up with Bing and do the same, or brand the results ala Yahoo!.
A 5 year old article -- yes that is a first gen iPod introduced in 2005. That effected "fewer than a tenth of 1% of all Nanos shipped".
But where are all of these cheaper better alternatives to the iPod? Especially the Touch?
Waitresses in turtlenecks? No thanks.
Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience in the entire underlying field of large-scale, massively parallel computing?
Like Opencl?
"OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia. Apple submitted this initial proposal to the Khronos Group. On June 16, 2008 the Khronos Compute Working Group was formed[1] with representatives from CPU, GPU, embedded-processor, and software companies."
Well, it's either going to be a new hardware thingie just to access it, ala the iSearch, or it's going to be an add-on for iTunes Or at least they won't let you install it without iTunes or Quicktime. Or require to use Safari.
I just can't see it happening.
Bryan
In the mid-90s Apple wasn't doing well despite the fact their cult was still around. It wasn't until Steve Jobs came back that things turned around. Do you think it is just because he improved Apple's marketing?
in Google.
I heard they had $50B in the bank, correct? They just need 10%, that $18B currently, would have been substantially cheaper over a year ago, but oh well.
They don't need to control google, just have influence over it. And 10% can certainly be a tail that wags the dog from time to time.
(I'm not hoping for this, but from a strategic perspective, google is a good partner).
Search is hard work and takes massive data crunching.
Yeah. No, seriously. How many tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions, of servers does Google own? In how many data centers, connected by how much fiber, pulling down how much bandwith, with how much spidering, requiring how much infrastructure, and expecting how little downtime yearly?
Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple doesn't do more than a bit of any one of those things. If they tried to half-ass a search engine, it would fail horribly, what with downtime, poor performance, poor results, lag, etc. Microsoft at least has server experience, and has from the start, and Bing still isn't the killer they were looking for. Even if they do buy an existing engine, nothing they have any experience with is going to help in improving that search engine to the point where it's competitive.
Either this article is beyond bogus or Apple is out of its fucking mind.
as a disabled user living with speech recognition full-time are high-powered PC, I can tell you, nobody does it right.
One of my best friends is disabled, and depends upon PC-based speech recognition. And you're right: it works reasonably well but is hardly conversational, and has enough quirks that it continually pisses him off.
However, this is where Google's ability to deploy applications on a truly large scale will come into play. The apps you mention are limited to the computing power that exists on a single PC. Yes, that's orders of magnitude more than we had a few decades ago, but it can't possibly compete with a network-based recognition engine that might run across hundreds or thousands of processors. As the GP pointed out, Google is already doing this and is continually refining it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
hooked up to the most convenient "search" box. I apple just puts in a mildly similar looking set of search results, and a colorful 'apppppple' logo above the page numbers, most people won't give it a second thought. Sure, slashdotters would notice, but Ma and Pa and the 90 percent of the population that is not the least bit techy could care less. They're just interested in the stuff they find in the sites that are found, not in who provides the search. I think it is kind of silly for Apple to go on giving all of that money away to Google every year. They could be making a fortune off of the advertising in their own search instead of giving it away to Google. Getting back to "most people", I think they will also continue to call it "googling" eventhough they are typing their search into an Apple search box. (just like we used to say "go make a xerox of this on the Kodak machine" when I worked at Kodak a million years ago -- though that was just for fun -- come to think of it, does Kodak still make copiers?)
*) provided you root your phone to install a version not crippled by the phone company, losing quite a few preloaded apps in the process, and then try and get someone to write apps for it when there is hardly any money to be made.
I think you just described the iPhone there. Apple's cellular products are crippled right out of the box ... you don't have to root your Android device to do many of the things that require jailbreaking on an iPhone. Tethering and multitasking for instance (although the latest generation of iPhones are supposed to do that I hear. Whatever ... live by the Jobs, die by the Jobs.) Calling an Android handset "crippled" in comparison just because it's not rooted is disingenuous at best. There are certain apps that require rooting (overclocking for one, although that's not something your ordinary Android user would even think about) and flashing third-party ROMs. Matter of fact, that's a major plus for me: there are a number of quality ROMs out there, customized/optimized versions of Android that are readily available. My personal favorite is Cyanogenmod, but there are others.
... not sure where you got that.
You also don't "lose" your apps if you root
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That's the brown Zune you're thinking of. Let's you squirt at people.
Thanks, I needed that image. No, really, I did.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Unless Apple charges $99/year for the privilege to use their search engine. The Apple cult would pay it.
That's not flamebait, folks (although, obviously some mod-point-wielding cult member was loose on the moderation system this evening.)
The truth is, many Apple people would pay for search because Apple would package it up very, very nicely and would make those users feel extremely special. That is, if nothing else, Job's stock-in-trade.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually there is one thing left, but it's also the kind of hard job that Apple doesn't handle well. Right now we pick phones based on how easy it is to enter data without a keyboard. That's pretty ludicrous when you think about it. If we could input data to a phone by speaking into it how amazing would that be? Yeah, I know, voice rec is hard, but when it comes along it's going to be the only kind of smartphone worth owning. And Apple isn't even working on it.
My old G1 did voice recognition really bad. My G2 does voice recognition much better (speaking German names in their English version is pretty funny). So as it looks, Google is trying hard to get voice recognition into Gx phones. Now Google has some brilliant voice recognition folks working for them, who really LOVE spoken words. (hi R., best wishes from Munich ;) Therefore, when the time comes that the spoken word is handling your phone, it might be a Google phone.
I agree Apple farmed out too much of it, and it will be hard for them to maintain control. The Google Voice incident shows they understand the dynamic very well.
The trend is that a lot of the functionality is migrating off the device and into the cloud (so to speak): Maps, turn-by-turn navigation, voice recognition, etc. Apple has shown they can do content distribution online (iTMS), but they have never done a really hard-to-build online service like search or voice recognition. These are problems that take sustained R&D over years and lots of smart CS types, and I don't believe it's in Apple's DNA to do them well. They don't have enough CS types in positions of leadership, and Apple's culture of extreme secrecy is generally a turnoff to the brightest engineers.
Regarding TFA, it's easy to lowball how difficult it is to build a Google-class search engine. Yes, Google looks simple, and given a few engineers you can get a basic search engine running. But to really compete with Google you'll have to address all the same problems of ranking, spam, relevance, user intent, freshness, and so on -- hard problems with no shortcuts, where the only approach is years of sustained effort. Interestingly even ex-Google people (cf Cuil) can be deceived into thinking it's easier than it really is.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16855158052&cm_re=mp3-_-55-158-052-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16855101193
that took o about 2 min to look up. Sony is as much a respectable maker as apple and guess what? there is a 50% price premium for the apple over even sony.
I found one article. There are more and more out there. YOU LOOK IT UP.
By no means am i going to sit here and find articles about each and every problem each every apple product has. My point which i feel which has been more or less been validated is that. Apple is a normal manufacturer who targets the middle to upper quality segments of the markets they are in.
While they do this they have similar quality controls issues as any other firm in their position. I just pulled out a few concrete examples.
Firms with similar company profiles (sony) for example charges around 2/3 the price apple dose for a similar products.
In a situation where customers were truly informed the prices apple would be charging would be ~= to the prices of sony or philips etc.
Even if you think apple is slightly better, its crazy talk to say 50% price premium better.
Thus is follows current apple consumers are not making informed purchasing decisions.
This makes more sense than Bing. ATT is overloaded with iPhone data, and shifting from Google is not unimaginable.
They presumably did not have any expertise with building online services when they started building their infrastructure for iTunes... Yet now they have a all division for Music store, App Store, Book Store, MobileMe, etc...i
This came from the fact that they did a massive ad campaign for the iPod (at the height of the campaign, where couldn't you find an iPod being mentioned? So electric rail stations I rode had had iPod ads taking over the whole station) and made sure to pack and make mandatory iTunes. Apple is good for marketing. Look at any of it's products and see the huge marketing campaign behind them. Apple knows that marketing is what sells something, not a good product. Look at every fad that has come and gone. Apple didn't make the mp3 player or the online store, they got the idea from looking at others and then made a huge marketing campaign to make it seem like it's their unique thing. Look at the iPad, it's a tablet pc like everyone else from the past 10 years with a huge marketing campaign. The only Apple product I can think of that didn't have a huge campaign to it was the Apple TV, and it's not selling well even though its built by Apple (they want to down play it as a 'hobby' since the numbers are low on it).
They presumably did not have any expertise dealing with cell phone technology, yet we all know what happened to iPhone...
It had the huge marketing campaign and just copied the concept of the Palm PDA (which the Palm cell phones predate the iPhone, not to mention Blackberry). There isn't really anything different in using it then I was using in PDA's ten years before beyond the phone function and updated parts(and I have used an iPhone). Again, nothing new from Apple just someone else technology with the Apple marketing campaign.
I think people assume that Apple is only good at UI stuff because Apple does not really advertise the core technologies that they have behind the eye candy...
They have a very good core OS technology behind their computers and other devices, but really not something that anybody cares about... It think it would be naive to believe that Apple cannot gain or acquire the expertise and technology needed for a search engine if they wanted too...
I don't think Apple really advertises the core technologies that are beyond the eye candy because it's not theirs, it's just technology they 'borrowed' and farmed out really. OSX at it's heart is running UNIX/FreeBSD mixed with NeXTSTEP which is made from the Mach kernal. Apple didn't make UNIX, FreeBSD or the Mach kernal, other people did. Apple just changed it a little and now people think it's their technology. Thing is, it isn't. In the end, Apple doesn't make anything new, they make ads for product idea's they borrowed and rehashed from others.
The better question would be, would they really want to, and for what purpose ?
Don't know if they will, considering there is already talk that Apple talking to Microsoft about making Bing the iPhone's default search engine.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
So let's see where to start with your "informed comparison" with the Sony Walkman ($99) and the iPod Touch ($199)
--a lower resolution (240x320) compared to the Touch (480x320)
--No Wifi
--No 3rd party apps
--No support for lossless
--No Bluetooth
So you think if people were "truly informed" they would by a Sony instead of Touch even though the Sony has no WIFI and no 3rd party app support?
But even if you're comparing it to the Nano....
The Sony has no support for lossless, no video out, and can I control it from the head unit of my car?
http://www.mp3-music-player.com/news/06_08/Apple_IPod_Integration.html
This is not the kind of problem Apple does well on. Apple is brilliant at honing user interfaces. Search is hard work and takes massive data crunching. It's the kind of work Apple traditionally farms out.
Hold on. What do you mean that Apple doesn't do well on these problems? They've never worked on them. They've never even farmed that work out because they haven't done analytical research. EVER! You're trying to sound like an expert, but there's no content here. It's like saying "Brain surgery isn't something Elwinc traditionally does well." It's a meaningless statement since it's predicated on a track record that doesn't exist.
Could Apple do well in this? There's a lot of smart people in The Valley, and with Yahoo Search getting kneecapped by the Yahoo-Microsoft deal, there's a lot of expertise to be had at reasonable prices.
The real innovation in search isn't now in relevancy scores and the like. It's in HCIR, which is all about building good search interfaces for humans. It's in desktop and enterprise search. (Which is MUCH harder than web search.) It's about making people's lives easier and better, and that exactly what Apple does best.
No kidding that data is valuable. I mean iphone users have proven that they are easily led bandwagon jumpers with plenty of money to spend on crap they don't need. Advertisers are jizzing all over themselves to get at that data.
So what are all of these "better" alternatives -- especially to the Touch or the Nano? Every company but Apple has basically abandoned the high capacity market (except for Archos). So what's the alternative to the Classic?
I used to own an iPod (2 in fact, both broke within a year...) and after that I bought a COWON S9. Beats the crap out of the iPod in every way. Doesn't crash once a day like both iPods did (got to learn real well the restart command of an iPod), the sound is so much better (same files and headphones from the iPod), battery life rocks (55 hours'ish, no joke. I had to recharge the iPod daily, once ever few days for the S9), doesn't randomly freeze when I'm playing new songs, no 'special' software needed, the computer reads it like a USB drive and I just drag and drop. Beats the iPod in every way. As for the Nano, the SanDisk Clip+ is better.
iTunes hasn't sold DRM'd music (or music videos) in over a year and where can you get DRM free video from any store -- either physical or electronic. The iPod plays bog standard MP3, WAV, AAC audio and H.264 and MPeg video. So where are all these cheaper better alternatives to the Touch, Nano, and Classic?
The DRM is in the hardware. Try to take any song/video on an iPod and put it back on the computer. You can't due to the iPod's DRM. As for the alternatives, look at the players on http://www.anythingbutipod.com/ which is for mp3 players, and you'll find many that are better.
Do you have a source for your claims of fragility and a comparison of the reliability of the iPod compared to other music players?
I've given you the links and shown you better ones. Just because you only know iPods, doesn't mean they are the only ones out there.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
In the mid-90s Apple wasn't doing well despite the fact their cult was still around. It wasn't until Steve Jobs came back that things turned around. Do you think it is just because he improved Apple's marketing?
No, it's because he dropped all of Apples work and took UNIX/FreeBSD, mixed in the Mach kernal and labeled it OSX. Not hard to stand on the shoulders of someone else's work.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
That's a testament to their marketing powers, not to their products.
A nod towards the humble Pet Rock.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
The difference is that they don't have any competitors that manage to put out fairly decent products. That makes theirs look revolutionary.
XBox Profits up, sales down. If they get a long tail they may break even - and for Microsoft that's doing well. What does it say for a company that they hope to get out what they put in over a decade, inflation notwithstanding? And what about the failure rate? Is putting out products that fail half the time harming their brand? That's a reasonable expectation. If Boeing planes failed to stay airborne, or Toyota cars failed to operate safely less than 99.99% of the time, we'd have a serious issue with that. Somehow though Microsoft is getting away with quality control that nets 0.5 9's. How is that even possible?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Thanks you for posting this. I felt slightly dumber just as a result of reading the gp.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Well, but just by being a minority shareholder, would the board allow them to affect the basic strategy of the company?
If so, could Google just de-evilize Microsoft just by buying 10% of the Borg?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
There's lots of fear that Google will turn evil, and lots of folks (however biased) who would say they already have.
I tell Google what I want to know. That I want to know something about a certain topic is a datapoint. They take note of that, and who I am. They use click-through metrics to discover whether I found their results interesting. When I buy a product from an advertiser, they trace it back to my original search and use that to optimize the advertising to me to be the products I'm most interested in. Among other things they use that info to improve their search, to target their advertising, to gauge interest in topics and products across areas, regions, nations and the world.
This is no different than Walmart using their sales register metrics to discover that ice cream sells better after a hurricane.
In practice it's like having your own Concierge striving to anticipate your every desire. Don't ask what's available - say what you want. Anything can be had for ready cash, from a glass of Pinot Grigio to the robes of a senator with the senator still inside. (Apologies to RAH).
Does this aggressive quality of service erode my privacy? Well, yes it would, if I expected privacy on an Internet connection that maps to my home address and billing information. I haven't ever been that dumb. If I want to do something personal and private on the Internet I use my BSD box and my neighbor's open wireless access point to VPN to the offshore RDP account I paid for with eGold that I bought online using a disposable credit card I paid cash for, like anybody else who wants real privacy. You don't get privacy - you take it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What, are they chopped liver already? Have you no respect for the awesomeness that is PocketExcel?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I dislike the Xbox360 (and the PS3)* but it's hardly a failure. The Xbox division at MS is currently running in the black, which is more then can be said for the PlayStation 3. Microsoft has the second largest console install base.
* I dislike the Xbox360 and PS3 because they are trying to be gaming PC's and at that, they are failing. The Nintendo Wii is trying to be a console and making money hand over fist for it. Consoles are for cheap, fun, casual games.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No other search engine can beat Google. As Google is the best. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/automated-forex-trading-system-does-automated-forex-trading-work.html
Tethering and multitasking for instance
Tethering you get "un-jailbroken" if your phone company allows it (mine does). If you use tethering in violation of the contract you signed with the phone company, that is your gamble.
Multitasking has so far been restricted to Apple's own apps (i.e. playing iPod.app music in the background, the whole "push notification" framework etc.) because they know that inexperienced developers live in their little bubbles and do not consider that the device's 512 MiB RAM is a limited resource. Apple would get the blame if a user experienced slowdowns because some app was using memory in the background.
You also don't "lose" your apps if you root
You mean you keep the custom apps from the phone company's distribution if you use a different one?
and the Xbox, while reasonably popular, is not profitable for Microsoft.
FALSE. You are two years behind the times.
Google's ventures outside search and advertising have been ignorable so far.
Yeah, nobody gives a shit about Android. Er, wait.
Even IBM's foray into personal computing, historically important though it was, is history.
You miss the point completely. The big money now is not in PCs, it's in services. Margins on commodity PCs are razor-thin. IBM is going where the money is, and for that matter, where the future is. Devices change. Back-ends persist.
Now Apple wants to enter a field in which they not only have no experience, but also lack experience in the entire underlying field of large-scale, massively parallel computing? And they think they're going to do this by buying an unknown and unproven startup?
Google was once an unknown and unproven startup. Useful web search was invented by Inktomi, which was nobodytomi (or you, or anyone else) before that. If you don't know what you're doing, hiring someone who does (or in this case, buying a company and getting employees and IP) is a reasonable way to enter a market.
The odds of it going anywhere are not good, and if it pisses off enough iPhone owners, it might damage the core company as well.
The iPhone would have to crawl out of your pocket and rape your baby to make the average Apple phone discard it in disgust.
ObDisclaimer: I am a recovered former Mac user who doesn't think Apple will even try to get into search.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is not the kind of problem Apple does well on. Apple is brilliant at honing user interfaces
Are they really? OSX is a big step backwards in usability from NeXTStep, notably the Dock changes and the three GUI libraries that Apple is using which makes different apps look different, however slightly. I think Apple is brilliant at maintaining control. If you think about it for two seconds, all of Apple's advantages stem from controlling their platform. They make the hardware, the OS and many of the most important applications. That's bound to improve reliability and the "just works" factor. But over time I've seen plenty of evidence that they know as little about UI design as anyone else. Still forcing me to resize windows from the lower-right corner after all these years, or to use ugly hacks to alter this behavior? Come on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
[quote]Actually there is one thing left, but it's also the kind of hard job that Apple doesn't handle well. Right now we pick phones based on how easy it is to enter data without a keyboard. That's pretty ludicrous when you think about it. If we could input data to a phone by speaking into it how amazing would that be? Yeah, I know, voice rec is hard, but when it comes along it's going to be the only kind of smartphone worth owning. And Apple isn't even working on it.[quote]
If Apple isnt working on voice recognition; why did it buy a voice recognition company?
Same on the Motorola Droid. Or other 2.0.1+ enabled devices. The algorithm appears to be server-side, like you said, but also seems to be hueristic. Meaning - the more people that use it, the better it gets.
I think you'll find that it's some "analyst" who is saying there is a "70% chance" that Apple will do this. Apple themselves have said nothing of the sort, and probably quite rightly have determined that search engines are non of their concern. Apple don't want to do anything - some analyst desperate to validate his existence and paycheck decided to make up a wild claim that he cannot possibly prove. What is he basing his 70% figure on? It's not like he has any prior history of a computer maker being suddenly successful with a phone and then deciding to release a search engine. It's just nonsense.
You're absolutely right; but memory tells me that Apple habitually denies everything right up to the point where they do it. If Apple had decided to pursue this, events from our perspective would look exactly the same as they do now.
How do you kill that which has no life?
You should try voice search on Android. It is awesome to be sitting in a car and say "navigate to _blank_" and 90%+ of the time it comes up with the right stuff.
Now it could use improvement, but its definitely preferable to a keyboard in a lot of situations right now. General voice input isn't even close to there yet, but after using voice search on vacation in the car I would not want to give it up.
Wow, me too. There must be a huge "pent-up demand" for better cheeseburgers! Come on Apple, I want my iBurger!
Actually it is because of their "cult" that I have a new laptop. 6 months ago a 'fanboi' bought a fully loaded laptop that was the best they had to offer and a month later they released the same laptop with a glossy mouse pad so he sold the computer for 1k and bought a new one to have the glossy pad despite the hardware being otherwise identical.
The phones and iPads are selling to many non-fans, but apple is guaranteed to sell 1 million just due to marketing and followers who will buy it because it was released. Then after getting that much traction it is a somewhat self sustaining marketing effort. I have used products with equivalent polish that did not have the same mindshare despite being better in many ways.
I also know of at least one iPad that was bought by someone who is unlikely to turn it on again after a month. It wasn't needed, it was a new apple product to add to their netbook, laptop, desktop, iPhone, and iPod. (netbook was not an apple)
And "it just works' is a clever rephrasing of "we only got it working one way and other implementation are not supported.
There is a world of complexity between consumer device (turn on, turn off, and play) and enterprise (remote locking, device tracking, central administration, etc) Apple went for the simple tight set of features that lets them sell to the largest market. This is smart, but if you need it to do more there is just nothing to build upon. You quickly realize it is ONLY a consumer device.
The "one apple way" conceals the fact that there just isn't flexibility to do things other ways. It is like they do not have the bandwidth to make a robust system so they make a limited set of features then polish the hell out of them. And that works for consumers. But I don't think they CAN move from where they are to enterprise support as too much is missing and too much under the hood was compromised to improve consumer experience.
If you need better security or to customize something for enterprise usage you find that documented features may not work properly or have serious flaws due to scary kludges in the apple implementation.
You can not DO enterprise apps on iPhone and you can NOT do enterprise support on iMacs without a bit of footwork. The IT staff spends as much time supporting 10 macs as they do a hundred PCs (linux and windows). And what is manageable is because the Linux tools worked for mac. But differences are never documented so it is a lot of trial and error to find what does work.
They make great consumer devices, but supporting them is a headache for IT, enterprise developers, and techies.
If you step out of the walled garden you really have to do a LOT of deep hacking to get basic things to work properly. "It just works" when approached from the right angle but from any other you realize that was a horrible horrible kludge of appalling grandeur. I expect this thin veneer is why so few things update at a time if you go outside what is currently supported they really have to write everything from the ground up.
But with that said if you are needing to make a simple application that fits within the APIs and tools they do have these have good support. iPhone libraries were much better than Blackberry and Windows mobile in many ways. The database was a joy to use, the interface widgets are very polished and the tools are well developed. But any quirks you hit after leaving the beaten path are going to be covered by a random external blog post and not apple. And they usually start with "After losing several days setting up centralized authentication for macs this is what ACTUALLY works and how it is different from what is suggested by apple." I have lived and died by these posts on EVERY apple device I have worked with.
I thought back in 8.6 or so they replaced find with sherlock and it was hyped as the next big search thing and even let you search the web. There were even plugins for it. That idea failed and failed big time. Who ever wrote this story lives in some fantasy world.
I don't know what Apple you are talking about, but having a green plus symbol shrink a window is not the kind of thing I would say was designed by someone "brilliant at honing user interfaces". The Mac I have sitting here, works just fine as a computer, but it is noticeably behind MS and Linux in UI.
More likely, just like they have done with the green + shrinking windows, they will just convince a small chunk of the population that crappy search is good, and that the people who don't see it are just not part of the elite. As long as that chunk is big enough to make a profit, they will do just fine.
Most importantly Google's revenue are based on advertising only. Problem for Apple : they cannot sell advertising to themselves. Or more accurately they could and they would if they engaged into Websearch but it's not going to pay for the investment. One could think : "hey great idea ! Apple has big smartphone marketshare and uses more advertising than all the other companies in the world combined (that's taking into account all the money they give to engadget). They should be able to drag a fair amount of iPhone users, and they could get free advertising." All this is correct but, why advertising about the iPhone to an iPhone user ? I mean He already bought the thing and chances are he will buy the next one anyway so... Meanwhile you cannot reach all the other consumers.
The IT staff spends as much time supporting 10 macs as they do a hundred PCs (linux and windows).
Aaaaand another wall of text people can safely ignore.
Just because you don't like the truth, does not make it false.
They presumably did not have any expertise with building online services when they started building their infrastructure for iTunes... Yet now they have a all division for Music store, App Store, Book Store, MobileMe, etc...i
This came from the fact that they did a massive ad campaign for the iPod
Wait, you tell me that putting stylish iPod poster everywhere made the iTunes server work?
They presumably did not have any expertise dealing with cell phone technology, yet we all know what happened to iPhone...
It had the huge marketing campaign and just copied the concept of the Palm PDA (...). Again, nothing new from Apple just someone else technology with the Apple marketing campaign.
Wait, you are telling me that you just need a Concept and an Ad campaing the sell a few millions phone ?
I think people assume that Apple is only good at UI stuff because Apple does not really advertise the core technologies that they have behind the eye candy...
They have a very good core OS technology behind their computers and other devices, but really not something that anybody cares about... It think it would be naive to believe that Apple cannot gain or acquire the expertise and technology needed for a search engine if they wanted too...
I don't think Apple really advertises the core technologies that are beyond the eye candy because it's not theirs, it's just technology they 'borrowed' and farmed out really. (...) In the end, Apple doesn't make anything new, they make ads for product idea's they borrowed and rehashed from others.
Okay so thanks for proving my point which is:
Apple can ACQUIRE the technology they need and HIRE the expertise they need to do what they want to do, and Market it better than anyone else.
So if you apply this to a search engine, there is no reason that Apple could not steal/acquire the concepts and technology required to create a somewhat competitive search engine.... Then you would put their marketing machine (or Steve's RDF) to work and voila... iSearch...
I believe Apple is a Product company rather than a Technology company. They dont develop Technology for the sake of it. They develop Products. But they will develop or acquire the technology they need in the process, and integrate it into products with usually great results...
Great... the battle of the evil empires. Isn't there supposed to be a white hat somewhere? Maybe I'll apply for the movie rights...