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Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple
AcidAUS writes "The global chairman and CEO of home networking giant Netgear has launched into a scathing attack on Apple and its founder Steve Jobs, criticising Jobs's 'ego' and Apple's closed up products. At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple's success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google's Android."
Like a couple of decades ago, where Microsoft and IBM boomed into the market? Seems history does repeat itself.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
There's nothing like kicking a man when he's down is there. Seriously, why complain about his influence just when he's left to "focus on his health"?
I for one, welcome our new Android overlords, Apples are so last year.
As of now, there is really no way Apple can fail. They have a virtual monopoly on the MP3 player market. Smartphone makers are fighting to the death for the scraps the iPhone leaves behind. Tablet makers were struck off the books before the race even begun. Even desktop computing is swinging Apple's way with more people moving to Macs.
Just the Apple name is good enough to sell anything, reality distortion field or no.
So, regardless of Jobs, there is realistically no way Apple can ever fail as a company.
Same ol', same ol'.
Steve Jobs isn't even at Apple at the moment.
Apple's closed model attracts a highly profitable minority of the market. Open (read: cheaper) platforms will "dominate" the market, Apple will skim off the cream, the world will continue to turn, Slashdot will continue to try to apply a geek-centric perspective to it.
JOBS vision to create "cool" Macs instead of the old beige/bland Macs/MP3s, basically saved Apple from the same fate that hit Atari and Commodore. Plus he had the vision to create the sleek, easy-to-use iPod.
Else we'd all be talking about the bankrupt former company called Apple, instead of today's thriving near-number 1 company. Jobs is still leading the company in the right direction and giving it that cool factor which appeals to consumers.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
I've seen this one before. Move along.
without saying anything much.
Like anyone can even know that
Each time it is something else that kills them. In this case however the end may come as a conscious decision. When consumerism and convergence drive 'free' as the entry price for high value hardware (100% subsidized handsets/tablets), and as android matures, Apple will have a hard time keeping up even with the cash boon that is iTunes funding it all.
Also..
As Apple validates the market for VOD/AOD the studios are only getting more brave about their own ambitions and talk around town is that they are looking more internally for their future. The studios however need the market to help drive sales and at the end of the day it will be the brands that drive their business, in this case the brands currently are distribution entities like iTunes so it will be interesting to see how the studios move forward with DECE and traditional outlets like Best Buy, as well as direct sales, etc.
When was the last time that anyone made money by betting against Steve Jobs?
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Netgear's stock has increased in price by 100% since it went public. Apple's stock, over the same time period, has increased in price by over 3100%.
Now stock price isn't everything, but it is to these people...
Just because you're not the biggest player in a market doesn't mean you still can't be a significant (and profitable) player in that market.
I don't care much for Apple or it's products for exactly the reasons stated in TFA. The closed nature of the offerings usually locks me out of doing something I considered basic, that I wanted to do. Little or no reprieve from this is often offered. It's Apple's way, or the highway.
But the fact is, this attitude has been nothing but good for them from a business standpoint. Most consumers don't need or WANT options that they consider complex or confusing. Time and again it has been proven through sales that people want simple. People want 1 click, 1 button, no chance of screwing up. When people are more confident with their product right out of the box, they like it more. And Apple is great at giving people something they feel comfortable using the moment they turn it on.
Why would Apple change this? It feels like sour grapes to me. Developers have a hard time, but consumers are happy. In the end, Apple cares more about it's customers than it's partners, which is the right choice to make from a business standpoint. The only way Patrick Lo is going to be proven right, is if people stop buying Apple products. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
So long as rampant fanboyism lurks in the hearts of men, Steve Job's vision will never die.
(Seriously, look at how much people are willing to spend on iAnything.)
Yes, iOS-based devices will be overtaken (in terms of sales, and number of users) by Android. That seems pretty clear now, and the Android folks should be proud of their achievements.
But Apple will continue "succeeding", in terms of making bucketloads of money. Consider the computer segment - Apple occupy a small, significant niche in the market, and make a healthy profit from it. I think that's where their iOS devices are headed. People who want Apple products will always have them, and everyone else gets to choose their OS and hardware.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
In the practical sense, I don't see why Android is considered more "open" than iOS. I realize more of the OS components for Android are fully open source. However, developers are still subject to the rules of the Android store. The phone manufacturers are carriers still have the final say on which features of the OS are actually shipped intact. Users still have to jailbreak Android phones to side-step these artificial limitations. Maybe I'm missing some critical bit of information -- and if so, I'd love to be corrected -- but I don't see much of a difference between the "openness" of the two platforms when it comes to practical usage.
This guy from netgear talks but he should remember that this is Steve's invention let him do what he wants with it. So you have two choices, one that is closed and one that is open tell this guy to buy the one he wants to buy. I've thought about the smartphone market and I can't convince myself anyone else would have butchered the thing from the beginning. Mind you I realize Apple did not invent the smartphone or pioneer it but he did do a great job of it while most others had their heads up their asses. Something in my gut tells me without Jobs kick starting this market the way he did we would have been stuck with programs that wouldn't of even loaded, some nasty monochrome screen and a brutal 16MHz chip powering the whole thing. What Jobs did do is make a consumer expect something out of their device and their purchase, they expect the developer to be in some way responsible for their programming, they expect some sort of fluid UI, they expect the device to do what is claimed rather than reliving 3gp type video and brutal audio. He might not stay the king but he has made confidence in a product and now a market that did not exist before him and for that at least I have to say thanks for bringing us this far.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
From the article:
"Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far ... If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it."
Lo said the industry had "seen this movie play several times", pointing to the Betamax vs. VHS video format war, Mac vs. Windows and various proprietary networking protocols that at one stage tried to compete with the now dominant TCP/IP.
In each of the above cases, the more open platforms won more market share. However, Apple has bucked this trend so far with its closed ecosystems for the iPhone and iPad.
"Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they've been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs," said Lo.
"Eventually they've got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model."
The author is positing that the closed model you are so impressed with needs to change if they want to survive Android. Unfortunately, Jobs' ego will not allow this and they'll most likely end up in the same realm as Microsoft -- financially great but viewed as a 'has been' and opportunist by the community.
My work here is dung.
Lets take a look
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL
Market Cap: 309.64B
P/E (ttm): 18.75
EPS (ttm): 17.92
vs
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=NTGR
Market Cap: 1.22B
P/E (ttm): 26.91
EPS (ttm): 1.27
Mr jobs is obviously doing "SOMETHING" right ..
And by the looks of the numbers , mr netgear should worry about his own house , before he starts looking into others.
Heard the same thing about iPods vs. MP3 Players, Macs vs. PC's, and before that about Apple II's vs. CPM. There was a five year stretch where Apple wasn't doing so hot, but it turned out this was because they weren't being proprietary enough... once Steve brought out the iMac, nuked the clones and axed compatibility with obsolete or inefficient standards, they've been selling exceptionally well, and delivering a much thicker profit margin than competing profits.
That's not arrogance, that's good business sense.
It'll be the economy. The US is poised by end of year to have the same debt:GDP ratio that Greece had when catastrophe struck there. The US is teetering on the edge of another great depression because our debt levels have reached a point where they're choking both the public and private sectors.
Apple does not make products that will fare well in a very bad economy. The iPhone, for example, forces the user to pay a king's ransom for a new battery every two years or so or buy a new one. Apple doesn't make decent computers which can compete in the low end market (where many users will be forced to go by the economy); their idea of "low end" is a $900-$1000 laptop, not a $400-$600 laptop.
Apple won't be alone in this area. I think Oracle will end up getting hurt even worse as companies that used to throw expensive enterprise apps at every problem have to choose between payroll and expenses like using Oracle for a database that's barely more than a bit bucket. The US IT industry as a whole will get humbled.
Millions of consumers can accommodate Job's hubris. There is some truth in his words however. There is a good amount of people, including me, that are eager to support the Apple vision if only Jobs would compromise on flash.
Have you ever wondered why people are willing to spend that much on iAnything?
It might very well be because the competitors aren't making the things people want. Apple often doesn't have the most technologically advanced product in the market. And it's nearly always rather expensive compared to the competition. So, why do people choose Apple gear?
Because, and think a bit about this, the products can actually be used by ordinairy people! Yes, you are a techno-uber-nerd that likes to dig down in seven layers of settings and menus and things. But Joe and Joyette User just want to listen to their music and just want to check their mail.
That's not fanboyism. It's just that the competition has no clue whatsoever about what the people want. Blame them, not the users.
I used to be "go for the open platform" guy, but now I own iPhone and I wouldn't change it to any other Android phone. Openness comes at the cost of diversity and incompatibility
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Michael Dell (10/6/1997): ""What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives. [http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html#ixzz1CccaByog]
And just because it is too easy, another one from the oracle of all that is IT, Dell. This time from CEO Kevin Rollins (1/17/2005):
"It is interesting: the iPod has been out for three years and it is only this past year [2004] it [has] become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one. Well you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy."
So, now the venerable Netgear, whose footsteps make all in the industry tremble, has announced the demise of Apple. Projecting just a tad, perhaps? :)
They have a virtual monopoly on the MP3 player market.
1) No they don't.
2) Lot's of computer companies have had "virtual monopolies" in the past: wordperfect, ashton tate, lotus, netscape, and novell; to name a few. Where are they now?
Smartphone makers are fighting to the death for the scraps the iPhone leaves behind
Hardly. Adroid sales are roughly equal to iPhone sales.
Just the Apple name is good enough to sell anything
Dead wrong. Apple has had lot's of failures in their history.
Even desktop computing is swinging Apple's way with more people moving to Macs.
Who are you kidding? Windows absolutely dominates desktop computing, and will do so for the foreseeable future.
..isn't the apple already bitten??
wtf is up with "Custer committed Siouxicide." at the bottom of the page. is that supposed to be funny?
"Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away,..."
That was entirely unnecessary.
but come on. Some lame ass CEO crying into his beer because his products have problems with AirPlay or somesuch? Not even his kids bothered to read it.
The cover image is great [If you can't see it, it's of the Netgear CEO holding a Netgear branded phone that I would guess was won in a claw-machine game.]
You actually can do well with closed environments iff you are willing to make sure that you can provide one stop shopping for the end user and create an ecosystem that works well. Apple had that until recently, but the cancellation of the Xserve with no real replacement destroyed the environment apple once had. If you cannot get rack mounted servers that just work with macs then there is no reason to get macs and less of a reason to get iPhones and iPads etc. Not pairing up with oracle or some other provider to give Xserve users a real choice was probably steves biggest mistake since coming back to apple IMO.....
Monstar L
Steve Lo wishes he had the industry influence (control) Steve Jobs has. He doesn't. Maybe this is why: 'Asked whether he was concerned about reports that the world would run out of internet address within weeks, Lo compared the issue to the shift from 2G networks to 3G networks and beyond. "It's disruptive, but we love it - everybody has to buy something new," he said.'
What cycle, exactly?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Lo said: "Steve Jobs doesn't give me a minute!"
Call the waaaaahmbulance.
"What's the reason for him to trash Flash? There's no reason other than ego," he said.
If he really can't understand the big deal with Flash -- which has been discussed to death -- I don't think he has either the technical background or business acumen to understand why Apple has made their decision.
Maybe instead of worrying about other companies he could focus on his own product support -- I own a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo and have found it underpowered... can't even stream multiple streams at once. Heaven help you if you try to use the included FireFly software while you're copying a large file to the NAS... it just can't handle it. It's best described as a NAS for a single computer... unless you actually want to do 2 things at once with it.
NetGear products are cheap to mid-range products and a bit more attention to detail would help differentiate them. Netgear needs someone to fixate on getting it right rather than getting it out the door.
...Whiners keep on pointing out the Mac vs. PC-situation as a failure of Apple, and they keep on talking about how Android is going to do the same with iPhone. Well, if we looked at the computer-business, we would see that Macs have something like 5-10% market-share, but they out-earn just about everyone else. HP is the company with biggest market-share in the PC-business, and Apple out-earns them in the computer-business. Reason being that HP sells lots of dirt-cheap computers at razor-thin margins, while Apple really competes only in the $1000+ market, where profits are fatter.
And it should be noted that Macs are outgrowing the PC-market, so not only are they laughing all the way to the bank, they are actually gaining market-share. Add to that the high customer-satisfaction-ratings.
If that is a "failure", I wonder what a "success" looks like....
iPhone has something like 15-20% market-share, and out-earns everyone else. So how exactly are they "doomed"? because Android is outshipping them? And that's a "failure" because.....? Why is it that people expect Apple to gain iPod-like market-domininace, if they get something less, it means they have failed? Do people think that there can only be one "success" in the market, while everyone else are "failures"? That either you utterly dominiate the market, or you are a failure? iPhones are selling like crazy, and Apple is earning big bucks from their phone-business. I'm honestly at a loss at trying to see the "failure" here....
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I'd position myself about halfway between the "average" consumer of Apple's products and the hardcore tech enthusiast. I've yet to have a problem conforming my Apple products to do exactly what I want them to do. If anything, there's too much choice. The only people who consider Apple's products 'closed' are those who probably shouldn't be buying them in the first place. By definition, then, Apple is a success without those who care about 'open' tech. I honestly don't see the problem, in a business sense.
A closed system might be ok right now. There are plenty of consumers who don't want to deal with extra options and functionality in their tech products...for now. But what about the coming decades, when a majority of consumers will have grown up in the digital age. I'd expect they would be more tech savvy and able to handle (and appreciate) more open systems like Android.
That article is so insightful it could have been written two years ago. Seriously, there's nothing new in the article (except I now know who Netgear's CEO is, which I suspect is the point). Jobs blah blah, Apple blah blah, Open blah blah Flash blah. He's just an attention whore using popular keywords to get free publicity. When I want a unique insight on technology trends, I have to admit Mr. Lo just ain't the first name I think of and this article doesn't change that.
bah.
Netgear market cap - $1.2 billion
Apple market cap - $309 billion
I think the wrong CEO may be giving advice here.
Give me an example of an mp3 player a typical user would purchase. I don't mean you, I don't mean your linux buddies, I mean a TYPICAL CONSUMER with expendable income that just wants their music player to work.
Show me.
Facebook says there are 75 000 people that have them and regularly upload content with them.
Patrick Lo could use some lessons in this area. While some of what he says may be judged to be relevant or possibly insightful, the way he says it is incredibly insensitive. When someone is suffering ill health, to say "Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform" is cruel.
That's funny. Netgear is the company whose XAV101 v1 model powerline adapter is incompatible with the v2 version of the same model (the configuration utility can't see both versions at the same time). Fix your own problems, Mr. Netgear, before you start on Apple's.
Yeah right... Consumers couldn't care less if anything is proprietary as long as, from their perspective, it just works. Windows and the iPhone are both proof of this.
And at this point, Jobs' ego is a selling point for Apple.
Yeah, I agree with him. Fire Jobs, save the company.
Apple: Market Cap $ 309 bn
Netgear: Market Cap $ 1 bn
(src: Yahoo Finance)
He's just jealous.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
I listen to "The Today in IOS" podcast every week when it comes out. The host does a segment called "How wrong were they?". I look forward to seeing this article mentioned there.
I don't believe it's Jobs' ego that will bite Apple--it's his absence. That's been proven to be the case once before. Hopefully, Apple will have learned from that example and is doing everything they can to avoid it (perhaps developing cloning technology?).
Jobs has already been gone for a while before, when he was out for a long time to get the liver transplant. Things proceeded smoothly.
At this point Jobs has totally baked in the culture at Apple to produce the products we have been seeing. Now possibly in ten or fifteen years, if the vision is weak or falters, you might see them start to list. But they have a huge base of success in many, many fields and it would take a while to really screw that up.
You can see this in the stock, it faltered some - but the first time Jobs left it took a huge dive instead of the small haircut we saw this time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't have a single Netgear item in my house that still functions, everything I've bought from them either fails to meet my expectations and is returned, or dies shortly after the warranty expires. I have many Apple products that went to the "still works great but I got a newer one" bin. You can complain about "closed" being a reason not to buy Apple products, but I think "It's a POS that will fail quickly" as the main reason I'm not buying Netgear.
What's the big deal with open?
Firstly Android development is not open, the code is developed in private and then published when done. Not open!
Secondly, you can't choose what language to develop in when creating Android, you have to use the Dalvik VM and use libraries for any native code. Not open!
Thirdly, if open source was so desirable we would all be using Linux now, OSX and Windows would be dead. The opposite is true.
I don't care much for Apple or it's products for exactly the reasons stated in TFA. The closed nature of the offerings usually locks me out of doing something I considered basic, that I wanted to do.
I don't see this point as correct.
For the Mac platform, it's certainly not correct. I bought an OS X system a while ago exactly because it did allow me to do more advanced things easily, because the UNIX core was built in. It also ships to this day with X11 support!!
For iOS, Apple ships by default in a way that is simpler for most people to understand and use. But there too you have plenty of choice for advanced options; when jailbroken, no platform is as hackable as iOS - primarily because of the easy injection of custom code into applications written in ObjectiveC. Android hasn't really appealed to me not because the development frameworks are not quite as advanced as OS X, but also because I can modify any application in the system rather than having to write an application from scratch to do something I want.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Each time? What killed them the first time around was the removal of Steve Jobs.
And was there another time after that?
The cycle where people spout off that apple is dying. Then apple goes off and has record breaking sales and growth.
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Patrick Lo should focus on his own company's prospects for success. Netgear is not in the same class as Apple on any financial level:
Netgear
Apple
I think the CEO has more important things to worry about in his own back yard. Apple would have a very far way to fall to be as paltry as Netgear.
Meanwhile, the arguments between iOS and Android platforms have all the hallmarks of a discussion of one fanatical religion over another. The points used are not as they are represented. In the end, neither camp is swayed by the other. Obviously the market is big enough for multiple platforms. I do think it's interesting how often Apple is touted as headed for spectacular failure. One would think, given the number of times that has proven to be inaccurate, there might be a little more skepticism at the predictions.
In the dot-com boom, the lie of Market Cap as being anything other than fakery was exposed by the crash.
Oddly enough, Netgear (as part of Nortel) were a major displayer of this fakery.
I would pay more attention, if Netgear was competent in their own area of expertise at least, and could create a wireless router half as good as Airport Extreme. It's freaking embarrassing when Apple sells the only decent option as far as dualband routers are concerned, and it's a side thing for them.
"Today the entire scenario seems to be playing out again in the mobile market."
Yes, and no.
Yes, the vast array of manufacturers producing Android phones will soon overcome Apple's iPhone. There is no doubt about that. However, the stakes aren't nearly the same as they were.
In the original PC wars, different platforms were fundamentally incompatible with each other. The stakes were all-in. Their applications had different data formats and their hardware read different media formats. Networking was rare, and somewhat cumbersome. There was no simple way of getting data between each of different platforms. I clearly remember the hoops I had to jump through to get a simple text file from a Windows 3.1 machine over to a Mac System 6 machine. If everyone you knew, in business or personally, went to one platform, there was great incentive for you to follow them to that platform. Otherwise, you were essentially a pariah.
Now everything important is interoperable. All of these devices work with the same internet technologies (Flash aside). All of your photos, videos (except for this WebM nonsense), and documents can be read and worked with on virtually any platform. If you can't easily transfer your files physically, you can easily send them over the net. Being on a different platform than your friend or business associate is not nearly the same roadblock it used to be, so there's plenty of room for alternative platforms, suited to different tastes and needs, to flourish.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Sure, we're anti-Microsoft. And a lot of people here are anti-Apple, anti-closed-source, anti-patent-troll, anti-evil. But a lot of people aren't one or more of those anti's, too. There is no overmind.
But, as for this article -- maybe we're "anti-piece-of-shit".
This is /Netgear/ we're talking about here, you know. Apple has plenty of faults, and plenty of problems -- but this guy's throwing stones in his glass house that's full of shit. Come on.
Apple is doing well now for the same reason they had die hard fans even in their worst days.
They make well integrated products.
This time round they had the aptitude to not price themselves out of the market, and have gain much market share and developer support.
Android is trying to repeat Windows success, but price wise they don't really have the advantage at the high end unlike in the PC vs Mac situation of the past.
The poor QC on some Android products is going to hurt them.
The stability of certain Android phones leave a lot to be desired. HTC is probably the only ones doing a decent job of it, and well Motorola.
Fortunately "Android" isn't a brand name like "Windows", most people probably don't even know they are running Android, and will judge a phone based on it's manufacturer.
But on the developer side, on the other hand...
The huge variety of hardware to test against seem to be giving developers a headache, along with extra work trying to get their apps to run decently.
Why they have so much problems I have no idea - things seem OK on Windows which hardware is almost as diverse.
Another issue I have with Android is the OS updates...
Anyhow, while many here may despise Apple's control freak tendencies, it is currently giving them the advantage when it comes to smoothness of user experience due to tight integration and control they have over their phones.
This will no doubt continue to help Apple's reputation.
Do you have any idea how many people Apple employs doing HW/SW R&D? care to compare that to other companies?
Do you think that the all those billion dollar products just fall from the frickin sky?
I don't see how Apple fanboi == anti-Microsoft any more. Microsoft still gets heat as the "evil empire," blah blah blah, but I don't see it as Apple's archrival any longer. Frankly they won their point on quality over quantity.
As for hypocrisy, well, the Netgear hype sounds like wishful thinking. As the commenters here point out, you can't just say open platforms rule when Apple has so thoroughly proven that in some cases closed does very, very well. I don't like the iPhone/iPad monopoly on philosophical grounds, but I don't for a second doubt it can be successful if handled well. The iPod provides a very profitable example.
Apple's record speaks for itself; TFA is selectively ignoring it.
but for millions of people out there the difference is night and day.
Do you even read what you write? People buy Apple products because they are, frankly, pretty awesome. If they continue to be awesome post-Jobs then people will keep buying them. If not, then they won't.
How's DD-WRT working out for your business, Netgear?
Wait, so this jackhole is telling us that a company using one mans ego and personal prejudices to make technology decisions, instead of examining and evaluating the market on its own merit, will lead to poor marketplace performance?
He sure has a unique insight. Someone should give him a blog.
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its restating the obvious. what happened with PC ? how was the computer scene before ibm started allowing liberal use of their PC format ? what happened after that ?
mo different with mobile.
Read radical news here
I know little of Steve Jobs and nothing of Netgear's Patrick Lo, but what I do know is both companies' products. While Ive had several hardware problems with apple devices I've purchased, Apple has been prompt to repair or replace them with little argument.
Netgear on the other hand puts out shitty product (especially their wifi access points), ignores support requests, and hires moderators to cover up for their problems in support forums. After buying a wifi router that did not work for ANYONE that purchased it (at least according to the support forums), and Netgear never providing a FW update and denying the problem, I swore off of ever purchasing anything from them again.
This guy is just a blowhard. Ignore him.
Steve Jobs has taken Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to being the tech company with the highest market capitalisation, so in this instance - closed and proprietary systems work very nicely (as they have done for Microsoft & Oracle too).
Sounds like sour grapes to me!
There's a whole lot of engineering effort and industrial design that goes into making a great product--and it is incredibly expensive, which was the point of the original post. Apple spends a lot of money on development and other companies try to piggyback off of that. Some moron responded that Apple doesn't (in fact) spend any money on R&D--they just polish other peoples work and do intense marketing--which is so outrageously stupid I can't believe I even bothered responding to it.
And then you responded saying something equally stupid about garbage collectors--all caught up now?
Jobhova should never be written out fully, lest one blaspheme. The proper form is J*bh*v*
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
From TFA:
"Asked whether he was concerned about reports that the world would run out of internet address within weeks, Lo compared the issue to the shift from 2G networks to 3G networks and beyond.
"It's disruptive, but we love it - everybody has to buy something new," he said."
And people call JOBS evil?!?
Someone needs to enlighten him with a computer history lesson. Apple has never had an open platform ... and I'd say it has served them well! They ARE (as of this writing) one of the most market valued companies in the world! Sure, Android will become more commonplace than iOS, just as Windows is more common than OS X ... but does that mean Apple will not make profits? Does that mean Apple's products aren't better integrated? This guy needs to look outside his OWN self interests and not be so short sighted.
Well there are some dual-band routers that work well with DD-WRT, but that's one step away from the "it's open if you jailbreak it" argument...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
__thread is not part of any C/C++ standard.
On Mac OS X, gcc supports the POSIX standard way of doing the same thing:
pthread_setspecific
Or, you can use the Intel C/C++ compiler and linker on Mac OS X instead of gcc.
Or, since all of the relevant code is open source, add support for non-standard extensions like __thread yourself.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
http://www.macosforge.org/
http://osx86.boeaja.info/tag/xnu/
Yes of course, the only thing more hackable than jailbroken iOS would be, like, an open source mobile OS that didn't need jailbreaking at all!
You are missing the point. How could I add one button into an existing Android application to do something specific, or to add a small bit of custom code that slightly changes the behaviour of one aspect of one application?
I can do this easily on a Jailbroken iPhone, but there's no amount of unrooting that lets you do this so easily on an Android system.
That's why I am saying the iPhone is better for actual hacking even though it's less open by default. And being less open by default means it's also a better system for users that would never want to hack the device.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know why this guy is even talking about Apple anymore. Surely iPhone was destroyed by Android in 2009 as originally scheduled, same as Linux destroyed the Mac during The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, which if I remember correctly was around the time the iPod came out, which of course itself was immediately made obsolete due to its lack of Ogg Vorbis support and the fact that it had no wireless.
The other day I mentioned iPhone to a friend and he was like, "that is so 2008!" Good times, good times.
I read SMH regularly but it's articles like this that have me looking elsewhere. Some days it's like reading the Sensationalism Morning Herald. How "scathing" is this attack?
Oooo, bitter. Nope, it's another beat-up of a minor event.
The rest of the article (Apple is doomed, closed never works, blah, blah), is vacuous, unoriginal dribble. And yet this article gets published, and then to my shock, gets posted on /.!
* Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool *
Same as the original Windows vs Mac battle. Windows won with Lotus Notes. Who knows what Android will win with.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Mac unit sales have increased almost every quarter year over year since Jobs return
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#1990_to_1998:_Growth_and_decline
A sample
Whole year of 2000 1,377,000 systems including over 700,000 iMac consumer desktops and 235,000 iBook consumer portables
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/jan/17q1results.html 659 thousand Macintosh units during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/jan/16results.html 746 thousand Macintosh® units during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/jan/15results.html 743 thousand Macintosh® units during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/14results.html 829 thousand Macintosh® units during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jan/12results.html 1.05 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/jan/18results.html 1.25 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/17results.html 1.61 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/01/22results.html 2.32 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/21results.html 2.52 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html 3.36 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html 4.13 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter
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I don't know crap about this, having been a serial entrepreneur of several successful companies, which I sold and then retired. Apple is on very shaky ground at this point, and though I might not like Mr Jobs or idolize him -- He's serious business as a human, and I hope he gets better ASAP, like I would anybody. It's no fun being sick and being faced with one's own mortality, as I know from personal experience, and less fun yet when you realize that a lot of people truly depend on you being around to make their lives go as well.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
What the hell does Netgear have to do with Apple? Why is Netgear voicing an opinion on the CEO of a company they aren't even competing with? It's like the President of Uruguay coming out of left field with a scathing criticism of the Prime Minister of Thailand. What's going on here? What do you possibly gain by this apart from making Steve's list of people he doesn't like very much?
What is the difference between the owner of an Android powered phone who thinks his phone is "just as good as an iPhone", and a real iPhone owner? The iPhone owner knows the Android user is wrong. Yeah, Android is "open" (as if you can upgrade the software on the typical Android phone without serious difficulties - its not like you can just put Android 2.3 on your Samsung Galaxy S). The iPhone has better hardware, and a smoother user experience. I'm willing to pay a bit more for that, really.
I also think it could be a big problem for Apple if Steve Jobs isn't able to lead anymore, but not because he lends some sort of cool hipster vibe to the product line. His cool hipster vibe isn't the reason that the iPhone is an incredibly easy to use, reliable and polished piece of hardware--it's because he has an unbending focus on making incredibly easy to use, reliable, and polished pieces of hardware and software.
Netwho? I had literally forgotten about this brand because they do not exist here in Japan. These days in Tokyo it is pretty much impossible to forget who Apple is due to the popularity of the iPhone and Apple's portable computers. Not to mention that Apple's retail stores in just about every important shopping district in the country. After looking at netgear's website to refresh my memory they seem to be just another manufacturer of generic stuff that does nothing interesting, does not look nice is probably only differentiated from the generic Chinese stuff by the branding sticker. Now that I know that Patrick Lo is ill mannered enough to do this little routine against someone who is absent for health reasons, I have even less reason to ever be interested in netgear.
so when apple was on the verge of dying what were people saying then?
Netgear CEO Says Jobs's Ego Will Bite Apple
There's no place like
I had to ditch my netgear wlan router after a year because it all but melted down. The interface when it worked was a study in how not to write a UI. I found quickly that Netgear was not my friend as a user, so I find it more than mildly amusing that the founder is complaining about Apple. Apple's wlan router interface has issues, but for plane jane uses, it's superb by comparison. Apple's focus on 'closed' began as a focus on 'easy to use' which it was and always has been. The fact that it's also /lucrative/ is due to the failure of Apple's competitors to offer an acceptably simple 'open' alternative.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
What does the average consumer require? He needs a celphone, an address book, a music player, a notepad, email, sms, and the ability to key in responses or initiate a message. Above that are dodads, (toys that raise the cost of the device from a value of $200 to $800. What do you get for 600 extra dollars? Certainly not the ability to change batteries when the built-in one fades away. The IPOD, and family are an example of American Waste..
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Having been a consumer of both flavors of Koolaid (M$ & APL) in the past, I am happy to say that I am in recovery and looking forward to Android 3.0, but not until the dust settles and it's a reality.