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iPod Engineer Tony Fadell On the Unique Nature of Apple's Design Process
An anonymous reader writes "Often referred to as the godfather of the iPod, former Apple executive and current Nest CEO Tony Fadell played an instrumental part in Apple's resurgence. Recently, Fadell opined on what makes Apple's design process different from the rest of the pack. Fadell explained that a key and yet often overlooked, difference between Apple and other tech companies is that Apple ships 99% of the products that pass certain internal milestones. By way of contrast, during Fadell's tenure at Philips — where he was charged with overseeing the company's audio strategy — the iPod guru noted that Philips would axe 9 projects out of 10, even if a particular product was about to ship."
AAPL is going dooowwwwnn !!
Control.
Steve Jobs (re)invented it.
Sounds like that internal milestone is a special bar. How many projects reach that milestone? Is it more than 1 out of 10?
Seems more likely that Philips is the one that's different from the pack.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Or even how long does it take for projects to reach that milestone, they might just keep reworking them.
Excuse me for asking, but... How is "products that pass certain internal milestones" (aka Steve Job's early scrutiny) in any way related or comparable to "9 products out of 10, even if a product was about to ship"?
Philips has warehouses in Tennessee full of products from the 90's and 00's that were ready for shipping to shelves, but were canceled at the last minute.
Philips would axe 9 projects out of 10, even if a particular product was about to ship.
I also know a few bad organisations which can't seem to follow through on projects. They seem to get dumped for no reason at all.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Exactly. It depends on which point you take a peek at the process or how you define a product.
1000 ideas -> 50 good ideas -> 10 preliminary projects -> 3 in-depth projects -> pick the 1 winner and develop it into a product
100% -> 5% -> 1% -> 0.3% -> 0.1%
Cue unrelated Apple Hate in 3... 2... 1...
It would be interesting to know exactly what that internal milestone is. Obviously, the ability to axe projects is core to Apple's business, as evidenced by the tiny number of SKUs they offer at any point in time compared to most electronics companies. And there have been rumors that Jobs could be particularly brutal when it came to shutting down projects that he didn't think were worthy.
The difference must be that while all companies axe projects, Apple makes cuts earlier than other companies and only lets the few chosen projects make any progress in the lifecycle. Whereas other companies take a 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' mentality, and only cut projects later when they aren't good enough. Sometimes they cut too late (e.g. MS Kin).
Modern business have degenerated from organizations to make and sell products/services to support systems for management employees, CEOs, and the financial/banking sector to whom they all report to. They are in the business of business for the sake of business. Modern companies honestly see making and selling products as a nuisance that gets in the way of their real goal, which is making sure management gets paid and the stock price stays inflated.
OP's remark about 9/10 products being axed on a whim smells of the terrifying bureaucracy and labyrinthine organization that company must be. Microsoft has been rumored to be organized like a medieval kingdom with lords defending their territory with force, politics, and guile.
Personally, I expect to see an enron-like collapse of any number of large companies in the near future. The cause? Routing loops. Eventually every last function and service will be subcontracted and outsourced. Nobody will be able to tell who makes what, and where anything comes from. Eventually someone will realize that they've attempted to subcontract a product to themselves.. Many times over, the trail going dead after too many iterative loops.
The Odyssey Command Center (Odyssey 3) video game console was axed by Philips just as it was about to ship. It wasn't the strongest offering at the time but it offered backwards compatibility with Odyssey 2 games and was to be expandable with a modem and BASIC.
I was saving my dollars and ready to buy but it was axed shortly after they promoted the hell out of it at the CES and Knoxville World's Fair. Jerks.
Regards, Lex
That internal milestone is when Steve Jobs gets on stage and talks about the product at WWDC.
What he's saying is that Apple has an actual functional interal milestone systems.
Other companies say they have a milestone system, but it's really bullshit lip service. What ships is up to the whim of whoever in charge, and failures are scraped under the rug because whoever in charge met the "milestone" and thus gets his bonus.
Judging how a company performs by how few projects it axes is laughable. Every company when growing heavily invests internally in everything. Every company when not growing heavily does not, and axes a lot of stuff.
This is simple stuff.
Really? what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac? Or a 1st gen iMac? Or a modern iMac? Or an original iPod?
or make it essentially two product company.
Number of products that Philips actually produces and ships: ~20,000+
Number of products that Apple actually produces and ships: ~50
Considering he shipped 18 iPods and 3 iPhones, it must be pretty good.
...Apple ships 99% of the products that pass certain internal milestones. By way of contrast ... Philips would axe 9 projects out of 10, even if a particular product was about to ship. ... "Nine times out of ten, or 99 times out of 100, they would kill the project, either at the beginning, the middle or right before the product was supposed to be shipped."
OK, I ready I read TFA - is this incomprehensible? Does it mean anything? Is there any useful data anywhere in this?
Three Squirrels
I think it's product category rather than 'form factor' per se. There isn't a single product category that Apple makes that Apple 'invented'. However, they only enter a category if they think they can make significant changes to the status quo of that category. Sometimes that change involves a new form factor (like the iPhone), sometimes it doesn't. It could be argued that the original Mac wasn't a new form factor. The TRS-80 came as an all-in-one several years before the Mac. The Mac's innovation came in turning the GUI (notably also not 'invented' by Apple) from a science experiment into something that people would want to buy.
The form factor precedent for the 1st gen iMac was all previous all-in-one computers before it. I don't know if the colorful cases constitute a new form factor, or just an iteration on the idea based on Jony Ive's asthetic. The modern iMac is just an iteration on the same idea that came naturally with the state of technology migrating from CRTs to LCDs. The original iPod was a new form factor, but also an existing idea. Portable mp3 players had been around for years, as evidenced by the now famous slashdot post dismissing it as nothing new when it was first introduced.
I see more to this "milestone" thing than a single hurdle. It's probably better to look at it as a "product development cycle" where there are several tiers a product has to pass through, with similar but higher requirements at each step.
1. throw some money at it
2. add featuers
3. remove / combine features / refine
4. in-house and user testing
5. decide if it's worth continuing
and then it repeats, with more money, fewer new features, more careful and thorough refining, and more thorough testing at each next stage. Go through that three or more times and you will probably have a few winners out of the hundreds you went in with at the start.
You could call passing each iteration's part 5 a "milestone" I suppose. But most of the discussion above acts like it only hits this point once during development. And I suppose for some, that's true. But that's a bad way to do it. You can't consistently produce a lot of winners and very few bombs if your development tree has no depth to it.
I like how a previous comment discussed Phillips and their "throw a bunch of crap at the wall and see what sticks." That really suggests a 1 or 2 iteration development cycle, and it's going to perform poorly over the long run.
I don't see any idealogical difference between each of these "milestones". Either it's worth continuing on, or it's not. If your development wing is only supposed to bring one product to market, then it's a simple game of "survival". If you start with 250 ideas you can just say you're going to go to the next stage after removing 75% of the ideas, then it's just a simple comparison, and you still have enough "keepers" to carry forward that things that are still "a little iffy" can make the cut, at least once. Do that four times and you are down to ONE idea. No need to change milestone strategies at each stage.
If you've got low depth, say 2 levels, think of how you'd have to do it. Split it evenly, and you have to drop over 90% of your ideas both times. The first cut probably won't be hard, but then having to compare 16 items to come up with the one best, you could easily kill what would have been the best idea. Do a hard cut on the first round and you are down to having to pick so few to keep from amongst so many you may as well pick them by lotto. A deep cut on round 2 I hope everyone sees would be suicidal. Milestone depth is the only solution to this problem.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...yep... or the original iPhone or iPad as full screen multitouch devices, a SUCCESSFUL ultralight notebood w/ SSD...
And no, we don't need example of past failed devices that implemented some of those features. The key word is ESTABLISHED, and in most of the past decade Apple has been the establisher and others the jumpers.
And seriously AC - Philips and Sony haven't done anything new in consumer electronics in years. In fact Philips doesn't even make TVs any more, they just license their name to Funai. And Sony hasn't made most of the parts in their TVs for years, they just buy panels from Samsung and Sharp.
Sounds like that internal milestone is a special bar. How many projects reach that milestone? Is it more than 1 out of 10?
At Apple, the milestone was "Steve approved it." Everywhere else, it's decided by committee. That's why 9 out of 10 are yanked... just like anything else decided by committee.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
perhaps this whole interview is a red herring attempting to get apple competitors to go ahead and sink resources into lousy products.
Apple has what? 5-6 core products and 4-5 variations on the core products?
They must not have very many ideas.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
For phones, Apple is outselling Samsung 219 million units to 131 million. For tablets, apple has greater than 50% market share, compared with 18%. If you're going to spout falsehoods, try something you can't fact-check with a 10 second google query.
The difference was Jobs.
Still apple does nothing more than evolving "Jobs products"
Lets see how much different will apple be in a few years.
Apple might actually make cuts or finally commit at the same point as other companies, with the difference being that Apple then refines far longer before release.
of emulating the sony design process or German designers from the 50s
Apple ships 99% of its products because it makes so few... Phillips axes 9 in 10 because its trying to hit every thing and produces so much, even after axeing 9 in 10, it still would put out magnitudes more products than apple.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
yeah, it's a special bar..
https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts/gcSStkKxXTw
"CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday."
The MS Kin was a special case.
It wasn't so much that it was a loser that should have been culled; rather, it was destroyed by poor decisions from Microsoft middle-management.
Basically, MS bought a successful company, Danger. Danger's "Sidekick" was a feature-phone with a well-chosen feature mix. Kin was to be the next Sidekick, and it should have been the same success the Sidekick was. The most interesting feature: it was supposed to have a special low-cost data plan. Instead of being a full smartphone, it was going to be a "social media" phone; SMS, Twitter, and Facebook wouldn't put too much load on the data network, so Verizon agreed to offer a special low-cost data plan.
Well, a Microsoft middle manager forced the guys working on the Kin to scrap the old Danger code base, and rewrite everything to Windows CE. After all, Microsoft didn't want to have to support two code bases, right?
But the delay caused by the rewrite was fatal. The special low-cost data plan evaporated (Verizon was pissed at the delays), and instead of being a low-cost phone with a low-cost data plan, it became a phone that cost about the same as other phones, and had a data plan exactly as expensive as other phones, but wasn't a smartphone so the built-in apps couldn't be added to. That last was really stupid: since the Kin guys were forced to rewrite to Windows CE, it should have been possible to put a Windows Phone app store on the device, and the Kin team wanted to do it. They were denied, again a stupid decision by MS management (and I guess internal MS politics).
Had the Kin shipped 18 months earlier, even 12 months earlier, with the less-expensive data plan? It should have been a big hit like the Sidekick. Had it shipped as a smartphone with an app store, it might have had some sort of a chance. But as a featurephone that cost like a smartphone, it was instantly doomed.
So yeah I guess MS should have culled it rather than endured the embarrassment around the Kin disaster. But better still they should have had less broken decision-making by their own middle management.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/02/life-and-death-of-microsoft-kin-the-inside-story/
except he's been dead for well over a year. try again.
maybe not reworking but waiting for tech to catch up with the idea.... don't forget the iphone was born of the ipad.
i guess at the time, given current technology, Apple could't reach that milestone in a 10" formfactor, but they could in 4"
"I thought, 'My God we can build a phone out of this,"' Jobs said at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Apple must have had the ipad idea as early as ~2000.. (phone launched in 2007, assuming 5 years in the oven... the idea came to him in 2002.. so the ipad must have been researched/prototyped at least a year ot two before that before they decided 2002/3/4 technology wasn't going to work for an ipad)... 8-10 years or so before the ipad actually made it to shelves.
Or how many projects are even allowed to get past the first milestone.
Dunno if Sony still does this, but at one time it was not uncommon for them to have multiple teams working on the same concept without any knowledge of each other. Best one wins.
I worked on an outsourced project (insourced? From Japan to U.S.) that was similar to WebTV, though it was meant for the Japanese market. (Dig that - product for the Japanese market designed - or at least implemented - in the U.S.) This was more than 10 years ago.
Turns out there was a second team doing the same thing.
Then they licensed WebTV and canned both of the other projects.
Great fun watching Beavis and Butthead videos (Cornholio) at 2AM (on a Death March) with the "Sony spy", a junior engineer obstensively sent because he wrote the software for the front-panel processor.
Well, while you're thinking of the numbers, let's look at the product lineups. Philips has bajillions of products from light bulbs to shavers to stereos to all kinds of miscellany whatnot. So how many products were killed in development if this anecdote is anywhere near correct? Apple has the iPx mobile things, a handful of laptops and desktops, a server or two, and accessories for all the aforementioned. Do they have even 1,000 current products?
Whatever the exact number, the real point is that It sounds like everything at Apple is really tightly driven with a focus on only even bothering to start products that have a place in the lineup whereas Philips has a shotgun approach.
A friend of mine has worked at google and before that nokia since completing his software engineering degree 5 years ago.
So far, nothing he has ever worked on has shipped. Every single project was cancelled... except for the one he's working on now, which hasn't shipped yet either and might not.
Apple had the Newton in the 90's...way before anyone.
Apple's superpower = Making the most money. Isn't that why companies are in business?
CEOs should care about details
CEOs should care about details that are important to customers and the company's long-term success. There are lots and lots of details a CEO should NOT care about.
For example, I have worked at smaller companies where the CEO wanted to review each travel request to see if they could find a lower airfare - and the usual result was that by the time they checked it, the airfare cost had gone up. So if your CEO asks you "what is the customer experience for this product, end to end, and are we delivering on everything we are promising?" then you have a good detail-oriented CEO. If your CEO wants to reorganize your company's office parking spaces with the highest titles closest to the front door, you have a bad detail-oriented CEO.
From what I understand, Steve Jobs was both - but he was lauded because his accomplishments as the former outweighed his annoying tendencies as the latter.
"95% of all Slashdot
The big difference between Philips and Apple isn't whether projects are killed earlier or later.
The difference is how the projects come to be and reach these milestones.
Philips uses a "technology platform" system, or at least did during the time Tony was there. I don't know what they use now. That means someone in a technology division at the company develops a technology. Then they develop some platforms that use the technology. They then produce reference platforms or designs that use the technology. Then they take those reference designs around the company and try to find a product group in the company that wishes to ship a product like that.
The problem with this is that it is pushing a rope. You frequently will make up products that show off a technology but that few people would want to use let alone buy. This system was commonplace with companies at the time. You can still see this system if you look at something like dealextreme or meritline. You will see many companies (barely more than entrepreneurs in these cases) who make products simply because the technology lends itself to them, regardless of whether anyone would want to use it.
The big difference in how Apple did it, and still does it, is that Apple identifies a product people would want to use and doesn't currently exist or at least doesn't broadly exist in an easily usable form. Then Apple goes out and buys, develops or partners with a company to develop technologies that make that product work or work better. The company then evaluates the product before shipping it, deciding if the product is really something people would use. Rarely does the company have a change of heart about the basic product, but sometimes products get killed because the result doesn't really work in a way the customer would like it. For example, if a product doesn't work smoothly, it may be delayed until faster processors come along. The G5 MacBook Pro was fully developed and then killed because (among some other issues) the battery life was so short no one would find it useful.
And that's why Apple products usually ship, because they were designed to ship from day 0. Philips products started out being made simply because they could be, and so many of them died on the vine when it was realized no one wanted them or even if they just can't convince any product division they would like to ship that product.
Sources: I know people who worked at Philips. I have worked at Apple. And I've talked to these Philips people and Tony Fadell specifically about these particular differences between Philips and Apple.
Sounds like that internal milestone is a special bar. How many projects reach that milestone? Is it more than 1 out of 10?
Apple decides to not even start on projects, or cancels them EARLY, if they won't reach that milestone. Compare that with companies that devote time and thought and energy to products that get killed or suck at launch because they're not good enough.
Jobs in 1997:
Well, Dell ships more computers than Apple, as well. Samsung ships tons more phones, yes, but not many of them are their flagship ones. Every Samsung smartphone is called a Galaxy something, and they range from the completely free crap phones with crappy screens, to the S-III. Heck, Samsung just introduced their S-II something with a huge screen but... 800x480 screen.
So yes, Samsung better ship more phones, because they have probably over 50 smartphones in their entire product line, including ones that run Windows Phone, amongst others. Apple only had 3 models, 2 of which are laughable just to have a price point. Of course, Dell has a similar situation - they probably have hundreds of PCs, while Apple has what, 7 different ones?
These days, Apple's not about marketshare. Just the part of the market they want to make money on. (It helps that that part of the market is willing to spend money as well, because it's why iOS App Store is #2 in developer money (#1 is Blackberry, believe it or not), followed by Amazon App Store at #3 (about 50% of the Apple App Store). Distant last is Google Play - under 50% of what the Amazon app store brings.)
Even if it is, it means projects get axed well before those responsible have put their heart and soul into it.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
1960's Braun products by Dieter Rams:
http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
What Jobs brought to the table was unquestionable authority, which is what Bill Gates had during MS's heyday. He gave the marching orders, and people under him performed.
Tim Cook is doing quite a good job, but he is a CEO. He may have the authority to hire/fire, but he doesn't have the "mandate" that made Apple under Jobs a cohesive entity. There is no RDF anymore.
Ultimately, Apple is going to need to find new markets if they are going to grow, as opposed to just stay still and try go squeeze more out of existing markets. There are still plenty of niches out there that would become rules by iDevices.
One idea would be a home audio "head" that would essentially be an iPod on steroids, designed to offer pro-level/audiophile-level audio. It would not just do what an iPod does, but because of the larger form factor, offer recording, playback, streaming of radio stations, high quality digital audio out (AES/EBU, S/PDIF), equalizing, and more DSP controls that could be packed in an iPod form factor. If Apple promised that it would not change dimensions or docking connectors for 10 or so years, third parties would be falling over themselves to make home audio systems that would accept the Apple "brains". It might even be useful in studios, provided it had a Thunderbolt connector for low-latency tracking/sequencing/recording.
Another would be car audio. Apple makes a 1-2 DIN "head", with some decent security features [1], have it do all the functions of an iPod Touch except with streaming, and Apple would have that market in a heartbeat.
[1]: Apple has always made devices where if they are locked, there is a method of resetting them, although it might cause the contents to be lost. With an audio deck, Apple would have to find a way of being able to have them lock when removed, and do it in such a way that there is no easy way to reset them. Even then, there is always just parting out the unit and selling the components. One ideal might be to have the unit come with not just a passcode that is typed in if the battery power goes out, but perhaps some type of physical key similar to how some Blaupunkt decks used to work.
For Apple to not stagnate, they will have to expand their market, and as a devicemaker with a good amount of cash, this probably can be done fairly easily.
Of course, there is always the enterprise. Apple historically has not been an "enterprise" vendor, but they can easily make inroads in the market given some thought.
Is that supposed to be a good metric considering what Tony Fadell just said? How many projects did Philips then axe? I have no problem with projects being axed, but do it according to a plan, not on a whim. That is what Fadell said differed between the different companies he has worked with.
Marketshare is not the goal of a all businesses. Apple is a niche market business, it's not in their goal to take the marketshare of general-purpose companies.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
1. Take existing product from competitor
2. Put in shiny box
3. Remove functionality until usable by two-year old
End of process.
Probably the same amount of people that buy it...
(ducks)
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The iPhone was released a little bit too early I think, and Apple has been paying for it ever since. For example, due to lack of processing/GPU power and a desire to make apps look slick they decided to go with a fixed resolution and mono-tasking. Now they are stuck with making every new screen a multiple of the original iPhone or iPad resolution, and suffering from black borders when they wanted to go widescreen. They can't easily introduce multitasking either, just a kind of bodge for a few select applications.
In the medium term it has worked for them, but in the longer term they built a platform with many of the limitations that desktop operating systems suffered from in the 80s. Many never overcame those limits, and when they did it was often with a horror show like Windows 95.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac?
It was a smaller version of any number of workstation computers available at the time.
Or a 1st gen iMac?
Small televisions, obviously. The shape was largely determined by the shape of the CRT tube. Making the corners more rounded and using bondi blue plastic is not innovation, it's just decoration.
Or a modern iMac?
Hardly the first computer to be built into the form factor of an LCD monitor. Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun product.
Or an original iPod?
It looked like many other music players, only with the wheel which wasn't invented by Apple (it was Synaptics for trackpad fame). They couldn't patent the design because it was functional anyway - how else would you arrange the screen and buttons in a usable way?
Plus it looks exactly like an old Braun radio.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
LG produced a full multitouch phone before Apple did, they just didn't have the vast marketing resources and superstar CEO to push it was much as the iPhone. Apple only established that market because they realized others were about to (Android had already been announced too) so got in first with the hype machine.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This comment is the most interesting/informative thing I've read all week. I'd just add that, as I recall, the marketing campaign that accompanied the Kin was abysmal. Not only was it trying too hard to be 'hip,' but it came across instead as creepy, focusing on a guy stalking his ex-girlfriend or something ridiculous like that. How can an organization stuffed with so many 'professional managers' come up with an advertizing campaign that hits so far off the mark? (yeah, I know, I know).
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Can't see why this is modded down. I'd say it's spot on. Apple tend to come late to every party but learn the lessons from those that came before. Before all the fanboys jump in with the hate, yes, Apple do sometimes get nearer the front if not actually at the fron of the pack but usually, those products fail.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Really? what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac?
Vectrex
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
just about every other company takes the monkey approach to design. They throw shit on a wall and see what sticks.
Takes smart TV's how many companies producing smart TV will provide software support for those TV's until the end of life of said TV's?
There are days when i believe most businesses succeed not by being good at what they do but just by not being shitty at it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Now there's an idea for apple.
Build a car dock, and a custom icarpad for it. The car dock could replace the stereo, etc. focus on navigation, music, etc. but the icarpad is removable for both security and upgradability
need a new one just replace it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Dear Apple,
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
i guess at the time, given current technology, Apple could't reach that milestone in a 10" formfactor, but they could in 4"
Yes, that's the regular progress of science. Things getting bigger and bigger. With a bit of luck, we'll be up to 1m cpu's by the end of the century.
</sarcasm>
what was the form factor precedent for an original Mac?
You never heard of the quite popular Commodore PET?
The key isn't the number it is how it's done. Where I work we have 4 major milestones.
First is the pitch to get the project approved in the first place.
Then the first design review is just an overall layout and functional requirements. This represents about 10% of the work. This is where a project should get cut. It should be clear what is and isn't possible based on cost and schedule.
The second design review is where all of the parts are identified and roughly designed. This is about 30% of the work This gives the analysts something to work with. If there are any big show stoppers it's a good point to cancel or re-evaluate. When this gets approved the rest of the work is finishing all of the detailed work which is about the remaining 60% of the effort.
The final review is pre-production. All of the design work is as done as it's going to get before manufacturing starts. When a project is killed here it is very detrimental to moral because the detailed work is tedious. You don't mind doing it if you know a project is going to ship but if it's canceled it is usually due to poor management and planning.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Oh come on. You're saying Tony Fadell doesn't know what he's talking about from his personal experience between working at Apple and working at Philips? He's not saying it's universally true that Apple is better. Yes, Apple doesn't walk on water, but let them have credit where it's due.
Apple has always been aggressive about keeping their product line very specialized. There's never 15 different versions of the same product. There's always far less... 3 or 4 at the most.
And to the person saying maybe the internal milestones are a really high bar? Yes, true, but again... are you saying that Tony Fadell doesn't realize this? He must see some sort of imbalance or why would he say what he said? Internal milestones are something that you can try to obtain... strive to win. This "kill the project if the numbers don't work out perfectly" external review doesn't give you that opportunity as a product designer to do anything about it. I can see how this would be very demoralizing.
I think this is going to be the undoing of the iPhone as well. Some of the new droid handhelds can do split screen.
I saw a co-worked demo watching a video while texting, and actually though "I kinda want that.."
If you are watching a video on a long bus ride, it sucks to have someone text you the iPhone.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What he's saying is that Apple has an actual functional interal milestone systems
Exactly. Look, Apple designers have to come up with just as many bad ideas ad the Philips designers, but at Apple, they get killed of early. At Philips, they spend resources pulling those bad ideas along until they're almost ready to ship, and then decide which will die. It means most of the development cycle is a farce, and if the engineers/designers know there's a 90% chance that the thing they're working on will never be manufactured, it means you're not going to get their best, most serious effort.
If you find managers who can actually identify the best ideas when they're in an unfinished, formative state, then you can focus a lot more of your 'make this the best possible widget' energy on the good ideas and waste less time putting round corners on internet-connected razor blades.
Apple are nothing like Philips. Philips, like Sony, try to come up with new products and formats, and hope to license the idea. Apple wait until a form-factor is established, and then jump on board.
Yes, the tablet (nee tablet PC) market was something that they jumped on board. And yes, Sony is a company one would want to emulate: just look at their success of MiniDisc and Memory Stick. Should one emulate to the point of also creating a (life) insurance subsidiary?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Life /sarcasm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Financial_Holdings_Inc.
Creating new things is important. But taking the new things and actually making them not suck, and bringing them to the mainstream, is also important.
Sony (and Samsung) also have a history of jumping on a form-factor: take a look at their "ultrabooks", which are just clones of Apple's deisgns. The entire class of machines of "ultrabooks" is just a rehash of Apple's line of "Air" notebooks. Everyone and their dog was talking about netbooks (and how Apple needed to make one if it wanted to compete). Then the iPad came out, and suddenly a raft of similar looking devices were announced by others.
Let's not forget that the original PC was the Apple ][ (and the very first killer app, Visical (the very first spreadsheet), ran on it). While Xerox PARC (and Douglas Engelbart before them) may have created the GUI, it was Apple that licensed (!) the idea and brought it to the masses at a more reasonable price.
It's called a stereo?
Well, a Microsoft middle manager forced the guys working on the Kin to scrap the old Danger code base, and rewrite everything to Windows CE. After all, Microsoft didn't want to have to support two code bases, right?
Not exactly. Danger used Java which would never be allowed for a MS product.
But the delay caused by the rewrite was fatal. The special low-cost data plan evaporated (Verizon was pissed at the delays), and instead of being a low-cost phone with a low-cost data plan, it became a phone that cost about the same as other phones, and had a data plan exactly as expensive as other phones, but wasn't a smartphone so the built-in apps couldn't be added to. That last was really stupid: since the Kin guys were forced to rewrite to Windows CE, it should have been possible to put a Windows Phone app store on the device, and the Kin team wanted to do it. They were denied, again a stupid decision by MS management (and I guess internal MS politics).
I've seen many people blame Verizon for the Kin but in fairness to Verizon, MS was 12 months late in a market where new generations come like every six months or so.
Had the Kin shipped 18 months earlier, even 12 months earlier, with the less-expensive data plan? It should have been a big hit like the Sidekick. Had it shipped as a smartphone with an app store, it might have had some sort of a chance. But as a featurephone that cost like a smartphone, it was instantly doomed.
Also lost is this was the Kin was unstable and buggy when launched. After MS gave up, Verizon re-launched it. Many of the smartphone features were stripped and the bugs were ironed out.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple's "original" design process ended with the first iphone. They had a unique design, a super smooth UI, great marketing, great skew management. Everything that has come after is quite a natural progression (albeit better than some other cell phone manufacturing companies), like basic hardware upgrades that could be outsourced to Chinese manufacturing companies that can do things of that nature at a reasonable price.
I don't think IMHO is required when my comment is OBVIOUSLY subjective.
No trees were killed to send this message, but a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
Apple must have had the ipad idea as early as ~2000
In 1997 Gil Amelio was ousted from the Board of Directors of Apple. In 1998 the iMac was launched. Just sayin'.
It is definitely possible Apple was sticking to its project for longer than competition. Jobs was bull headed that way. He once re-laid the assembly line of NeXT computer so that the product will move from left to right, as seen from his office. When you have that level of dominance over how the company is run, once Jobs approves the project, it goes on, nobody would stop it. Jobs would never admit that project was a mistake to begin with. So they would end up throwing resources in it and and end up shipping a product out of it. The only feed back loop was the free market. Free market killed NeXT, Newton etc. Phillips probably would have nixed them earlier and saved some money.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So, my answer was correct (Samsung outsells Apple by a healthy margin), but because Apple makes more money (i.e.: harvests more cash from the customers), it's all good. Got it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Marketshare is the goal of computing devices where the largest ecosystem wins.
"Profitability" is a red herring for fanbois.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I agree that they launched a little bit too early. But the symptom of that was the unavailability of a native SDK at launch, and the associated nonsense about web apps being the platform. Also the original lack or cut'n'paste.
But not these...
For example, due to lack of processing/GPU power and a desire to make apps look slick they decided to go with a fixed resolution and mono-tasking. Now they are stuck with making every new screen a multiple of the original iPhone or iPad resolution, and suffering from black borders when they wanted to go widescreen. They can't easily introduce multitasking either, just a kind of bodge for a few select applications.
Neither of those are true.
Fixed resolution has nothing to do with limited CPU/GPU power. It's a positive design decision. That on a small screen apps need to be specifically designed for a particular screen, not be resizable.
And of course Apple could quite easily introduce traditional multitasking. It's intrinsic to the unix that underlies the OS. And all the levels above that were already created with multitasking ability, as they were adapted from OSX. And the CPU was certainly enough to support it. The iPhone CPU from the start was far more powerful than the original Mac CPUs that OSX ran on. The very easiest thing to do would be to introduce traditional multitasking.
They didn't for two reasons.
a) Battery life. You see it on Android very often that some crappily written app that's still running in the background takes hours off the battery life. That doesn't happen on iOS.
b) Simplicity of the UI for users. Phones are supposed to be simple devices, with app interactions typically being seconds rather than minutes or hours. Nor do Phones don't have overlapping windows, nor screen real estate for permanent docks/task bars - the indicators of multiple apps running on desktop OSs. So some other form of app switcher/manager is required for multitasking. The original concept was that this was too heavyweight for a phone.
The fixed screen size decision is a good one that has stood the test of time. iPhone apps ARE better for being specifically designed for the size of screen. And doubling is the perfect answer to higher resolution technology being available.
The longer screen size is fine, as in practice, the tricky dimension is the width. Most apps are list based, so having more of a list shown doesn't change the app design. Whereas changing the width would mean different text limits/layout of list items.
The initial design decision of no multitasking didn't last. But it's no bad thing to start with a very simple UI design, then add more complicated features later. And they did keep the battery conservation plan by only allowing system services at actually run in the background.
in the longer term they built a platform with many of the limitations that desktop operating systems suffered from in the 80s. Many never overcame those limits, and when they did it was often with a horror show like Windows 95.
Haven't a clue what you're talking about here. Presumably it's something about the lack of pre-emptive multitasking on early OSs. But the iPhone HAS pre-emptive multitasking. It just doesn't allow multiple apps to run arbitrary code at the same time. That's not the same thing.
Some of the new droid handhelds can do split screen.
Good grief. Yes, split-screen apps really was an advantage for HP WebOS wasn't it. So successful.
If you are watching a video on a long bus ride, it sucks to have someone text you the iPhone.
Either you want to stick with the movie, or you want to read/reply to the message, and go back to the movie later. You can try and do both, but in reality you'll just lose track of what's happening in the movie.
The ability to do both on a phone is a novelty.
You have an iPhone, don't you?
When things are developed right through to ready to ship, and then are cancelled, that's a huge waste of money. Your comment doesn't reflect that fact.
Nor have you taken on board the morale issues that Fadell raises.
It isn't nearly as simple as you think.
Your unreferenced claim is, in fact, incorrect - Apple has sold more iPhones (all models) than Samsung GALAXY phones. Not all Samsung smartphones.
How many Bada OS and Windows Phone devices do you imagine they sell?
Plural
Like anyone can even know that
Either you want to stick with the movie, or you want to read/reply to the message, and go back to the movie later. You can try and do both, but in reality you'll just lose track of what's happening in the movie.
Ooooohhhh, so not being able to do that is really a feature on the iPhone.
You are inconsistent. Why do you care that Samsung has greater worldwide market share than Apple, but not care that Apple makes more profit from phones.
As a consumer, it makes no difference which one is slightly ahead in market share.
As a shareholder, profit matters more than market share.
For example, due to lack of processing/GPU power and a desire to make apps look slick they decided to go with a fixed resolution and mono-tasking. Now they are stuck with making every new screen a multiple of the original iPhone or iPad resolution, and suffering from black borders when they wanted to go widescreen.
The reason is not technical limitations; the reason is visual fidelity. That is why the "Retina" MacBooks, which have all the GPU and CPU power of a premium consumer laptop, still use an even 2x scale. (OS X has had arbitrary scaling ratio support available through the developer tools since 10.4.x in 2005. Apple was never happy with the way it looked and never enabled it for end users.)
Marketshare is the goal of computing devices where the largest ecosystem wins.
And yet Apple is winning. It's the biggest company, and makes the most profit.
So clearly you are mistaken. You're mistaken because your android fanboyism overrules logic for you.
"Profitability" is a red herring for fanbois.
Moron. Profitability is vital for companies and shareholders. If you're not profitable, no amount of marketshare will save you.
Steve never reorganised the parking spaces. He just dumped his car in a disabled space. They're always by the door.
LG produced a full multitouch phone before Apple did,
Which one would that be? The LG Prada? That didn't get multi-touch until the LG Prada II, over a year later. Which also added a slider keyboard, because neither had a good on-screen keyboard.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
For an ecosystem to thrive and survive, it needs marketshare (enough to sustain it), but it also needs money.
If you take the situation like on PCs where Windows became the dominant OS, you see the problems. Remember stuff like shareware which was extremely popular? It pretty much died out because Windows users became cheap and stopped paying for it, leading to demoware/crapware and these days, adware. However, the concept didn't die out - Mac users, all 10 of them practically, still have a flourishing ecosystem because they were more apt to opening their wallets and paying for it.
Of course, the final nail would've been open-source, but I digress.
For mobile, we have healthy competition. We have Android at the top with over 60%, iOS with 35%, and Windows Phone 8, Blackberry, etc. with the leftovers. You would think as a developer that Android would be the best platform to write for, after all it has the most. But most of those users bought cheap smartphones - the $0-for-10 type deals in the end where the carriers are literally throwing phones at people. The end result is that Google Play doesn't really make much money - the only way to make money thorugh Google Play is to put in ads, lots of ads, and submit your contacts and other personal information to be spammed and such. (After all, developer money made through Google Play is basically a joke).
It's why the Amazon App Store, the bane of developers for being too Apple-like in its approvals process, and too bullyish for having the free app a day thing (like Amazon is to distributors) ends up making devs much more money, despite being a much smaller proportion of the market.
iOS makes devs a lot of money - turns out those same people who give Apple the profit tend to have a bit of spending money in their pockets and end up spending a lot more money in the ecosystem.
Blackberry is just an anomaly, but it surpassed the Apple App Store sometime in the past couple of years.
The other thing is - what is the biggest ecosystem? Android, for having the most devices, or as console people like to say, also most likely the worst attach rate? Or iOS, which has less devices, but higher attach rate? Or how it seems gaming has moved to consoles, which have way smaller markets than PC gamers (close to a billion on PC vs. couple hundred million tops for console), but the latter being far more profitable?
Or to consider it another way - while PC makers were all busy running themselves into the ground (see IBM, which exited the market, and HP, now in trouble, and Dell, who can see the writing on the wall). Hell, while they were all killing themselves over netbooks ($300 PCs seem to be the limit of profitability - everyone was trying to make more profitable $400+ netbooks), Apple released the iPad, which cost WAY more than any netbook (and you could probably buy two netbooks for what the iPad cost), but now PC makers were scrambling and tripping over themselves to release tablets.
In the end, the platform that makes money wins. Being biggest helps, like we saw with Windows and having 90% marketshare and everyone was forced to develop for it because to do otherwise was foolhardy (though, if you're a small developer, going for the niches like Mac would prove lucrative, like Blackberry is right now).
Of course, with Android being so big, the advantage is the apps being ported from iOS has increased significanty. Though that's usually after tapping out the iOS market first.
Cleverly photographed from just the right angle. If you google for "Braun T3" you'll find this image http://www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog/9674 and the similarity to the iPod disappears. Or the Braun LE1 speakers at http://www.quad-musik.de/html/braun_le1___le2.html which _really_ don't look like an iMac unless you photograph both form a very specific angle.
Sturegeon's metric: 90% of everything is crap.
As a consumer and developer, it's nice to know the platform I'm using will be well-supported and targeted - and that comes predominantly from being a ubiquitous, high-market-share platform. How's it going with the N900? Niche products end up hurting the consumer.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm pretty sure sculptures and other 3 dimensional art is intended to be looked at from different angles.
in order to make them rounded.
Fandroid. A) it doesn't matter whether Google or Apple is on top, so long as both have decent market share to foster their own ecosystems. Those are the two competitors we should be talking about. B) Samsung hasn't reported phone *sales* since mid 2011. They report units shipped. The two are different. References? (http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/57565-samsung-will-no-longer-report-phone-sales-numbers). They're very secretive now about what's sitting in the channel vs in consumer hands. The Apple v Samsung case is pretty illustrative of why. (http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/08/10/apple-samsung-us-sales-numbers/ and http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/10/samsungs-basis-of-competition/). Apples growth likely has already peaked, at least in the western markets. However, to say that Samsung is wiping the floor with them is disingenuous at best.
Did you even READ my comment? LG Prada = "past failed device".
And it wasn't multitouch anyway, which was the key innovation that enabled apps like Google Maps, Safari for iOS, etc, and many of the popular iOS games. Probably more importantly, it couldn't even support those "killer" apps, since the *software* sucked ass based on Flash Lite, with no usable web browser or reasonable SDK for developing apps. And big surprise - no mobile platform will succeed from now on without a great developer kit and app store.
And "first with hype machine"? The first Android device wasn't released until about a *year and a half* after the iPhone, which had already exploded in sales by then.
"Vast marketing resources" is just a cop out excuse. Microsoft has vast marketing resources and how has that worked out for them lately?
They can't easily introduce multitasking either, just a kind of bodge for a few select applications.
multitasking on android is not general purpose multitasking either. it's not like you can just press the "&" button and send any app to the background. a mobile OS can't really work like that either, unless you have a very large battery.
Samsung hasn't reported phone *sales* since mid 2011. They report units shipped. The two are different.
and this is especially relevant since we all know that samsung is secretly burying all those extra shipped but not sold units in the desert somewhere. makes sense.
Great post, thanks!
Pressing the home button on my Galaxy S II moves the application to the background and lets me use other applications meanwhile. And they certainly run in the background, otherwise my ssh connection would terminate a lot. I don't know if this is the default behaviour or if the developer has to enable it, but it certainly works.
As a consumer and developer, it's nice to know the platform I'm using will be well-supported and targeted - and that comes predominantly from being a ubiquitous, high-market-share platform.
And somehow you've got it into your head that that's Samsung and not Apple.
Doh!
Oh dear god. If you don't know the concept of channel stuffing, don't even get involved in the grown ups conversation.
The idea came a lot earlier than the execution. Sometime around 1980, my wife described an iPad to me, fairly accurately as to its general capabilities, and said that's what she wanted. I thought a bit, and said it would be neat but it couldn't be done with available technology.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There is a lot that the icarpad (good name for it) would be able to do. Not just car audio, but perhaps interface with the climate controls, and maybe the burglar alarm functions, so one could use a phone with NFC communication as a proximity key similar to how Nissans do things. Plus, there are always niceties like being able to have the car start and be ready at a certain time in the morning, or be able to turn on and off cameras (internal and external) to document bad drivers on the road, as well as what is going on inside and out, so one can catch on HD the guy who decides to do an impromptu pinstripe job.
Of course, the one thing I hope is that it is kept well away from the core CANBUS that the ECM/TCM and other critical modules are on (some vehicles are completely drive by wire where there are zero mechanical connections between the brakes/steering/accelerator and the actual components, and most new cars have at least the acceleration completely electronic.) Someone's "icarpod" goes out and leaves them without a radio or perhaps no A/C, fine. However, it would be nice to offer the driver a chance of not wrecking.
it's not like you can just press the "&" button and send any app to the background.
That's exactly what it's like. Hold the home button to switch apps, sending one of the foreground ones to the background.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
you have a profound misunderstanding of how your device works. android does a decent job of acting like a desktop OS in that regard but the reality is quite different.
when you put an app in the "background" on android, it stops. it sticks around in memory, not running, so it can be loaded faster next time ... but only until the OS needs the memory. the OS can destroy the process of any background app at any time if it needs the memory. as a side note, there's no swap on android.
even if the OS destroys the app's process, it gives it an opportunity to persist some state variables. when it's brought into the foreground next time, those state variables can be used to give the user the impression that the app was sitting in the background waiting for them. it of course was not.
High-market share. Yeah, high market share of a whole bunch of fragmented phones that you CANNOT EVEN UPGRADE THE OS ON, and they shipped with a very old version of the OS.. and the features of the phones are SO different you can't just go to the Android phone software store and know that the apps will ALL work on your particular phone.
That's not insightful. Maybe it's funny but not insightful. Concentration will suffer, period. However there are use cases, where you wan quick context lookups while doing something in another app. Like writing this, while having the Wikipedia page on human multi tasking abilities open.
Don't have an iPhone btw and never will.
Obviously this is from a biased source, but it's interesting nonetheless.
http://mac360.com/2013/01/how-apple-is-destroying-android-from-the-inside-out-and-why-its-difficult-to-see
Judging how a company performs by how few projects it axes is laughable.
That's probably why nobody did.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
So, my answer was correct (Samsung outsells Apple by a healthy margin), but because Samsung needs 20 times as many products to do so, most of which sell so little they lose money, it's all good. Got it.
FTFY
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
AND... The Fanbois and Apple faithful come out in force with nary a fact between them. But boy, do they get riled up!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
For example, due to lack of processing/GPU power and a desire to make apps look slick they decided to go with a fixed resolution and mono-tasking. Now they are stuck with making every new screen a multiple of the original iPhone or iPad resolution, and suffering from black borders when they wanted to go widescreen. They can't easily introduce multitasking either, just a kind of bodge for a few select applications.
Um, dude? When Apple first announced the iPhone to the world, they didn't even call its operating system iOS. They called it OS X. iOS is literally the mobile version of OS X; it took a while for Apple to figure out they wanted to use a separate marketing name for it.
That means iOS fully supports resolution independence (baked into Quartz 2D drawing APIs from day 1 of OS X) and multitasking (it's a BSD UNIX, of course it supports that), just like the desktop OS it shares so much of its code with. All of these things you complain of are restrictions (or conventions, in the case of UI design) built on top of OS X. If Apple should ever desire to permit unrestricted multitasking in iOS, it'll be the easiest thing in the world -- they'd just need to remove some unique-to-the-iOS-branch code which forbids it from happening. The kernel and the apps in the field are already capable of it.
Would that be a smart idea? No. That's why they wrote that extra code in the first place. Apple wanted to design a computing appliance, something which minimizes the need for users to sysadmin it. Asking the user to be aware of the possibility that their phone's slowing down and eating battery because a background process is running amok? Or that the reason they can't run something is that they've run out of RAM? Unacceptable. So at first they only permitted Apple-written processes (ones they could exercise total quality control over) to run in the background, and restricted 3rd party apps to run one-at-a-time, foreground only. By adding that restriction, they were able to simplify the user experience and make hard guarantees about the amount of RAM available to a 3rd party app.
Later they introduced new APIs to enable backgrounding of 3rd party processes, with significant restrictions. For example, to be permitted to background, your background thread must listen to a class of events announcing significant state changes imposed by the OS, e.g. "Save state and exit gracefully NOW or in a few milliseconds the system is going to kill your ass to make room for the foreground process". It's all still designed so the user should never have to think about managing processes.
In the medium term it has worked for them, but in the longer term they built a platform with many of the limitations that desktop operating systems suffered from in the 80s.
Ironically, OS X/iOS actually is descended from a desktop operating system born in the 1980s: NeXTStep. But it never had these limitations you claim it does.
Apple makes cuts earlier than other companies and only lets the few chosen projects make any progress in the lifecycle. Whereas other companies take a 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' mentality...
A "mentality" that seems to work fine for Samsung as evidenced by Apple lagging far behind in market share. And what was Apple's special superpower again?
Oh right, I forgot, Apple's special superpower is sending in the astroturfer spinmods.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So, my answer was correct (Samsung outsells Apple by a healthy margin), but because Apple makes more money (i.e.: harvests more cash from the customers), it's all good. Got it.
Very much looking forward to earnings reports next Wednesday. Because if Apple execs lie then they go to jail. Therefore pretty much the only time they don't lie.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
AND... The Fanbois and Apple faithful come out in force with nary a fact between them. But boy, do they get riled up!
It's pretty entertaining actually, in a fascination with the macabre sort of way.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Apple's superpower = Making the most money. Isn't that why companies are in business?
Apple has the rather dubious distinction of having lost 300 $billion of its shareholder's money in the three months since iPhone 5 was introduced. That $100 billion of hard earned money, pissed into the wind by Apple. So many shareholders would be richer today if Apple had just disolved itself three months ago.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It looks like you have never done any Android programming. The OS doesn't forcibly halt your app when it loses focus, and the programmer is free to do background processing. As an example large downloads of in-app content are often completed as background tasks while the user is free to do something else.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Are you kidding me? Lost 300 billion of its shareholder's money? Based on what? Speculations made at the lunch of the iPhone 5?
Excuse me, $200 billion. And if you do not understand that that is real money, which flew out of Apple shareholder's pockets over the last three months into the great land of never never, then I have a bridge to sell you. In short, this ranks among the biggest corporate losses of value in history. Read the figures and weep, Apple fanboi. And Apple deserves to lose more, much more.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Depends on what you're watching. Older shows can easily be dropped in on every once in a while and still be followed, and even newer shows can afford to have you look away for a bit or even miss a snatch of dialogue occasionally (actually, you can follow most of a show with only the audio and no video - try it sometime). Most of us have grown so used to TV now that we could almost watch two shows simultaneously, though TV has upped its pacing to try and keep us interested (try watching something older like MacGuyver and note how ponderous it seems now). Most people I know would be able to text and watch without losing much on either (seeing as texting has low temporal priority - you don't have things that you need to get to with any immediacy like you would on a phonecall).
No, your brain will be on one thing or the other. You can TRY and keep your mind on both, but what you'll actually be doing is just switching your attention back and forth between the two. And as the video doesn't stop, you will miss stuff. That's exactly what happens when people have TV on whilst they do something else. The TV is on in the background. Often people don't even realise when the show they were originally watching is finished.
For sure, it maybe that the TV show is so ponderous or dumbed down it doesn't matter whether you miss chunks of it. But you will be missing those chunks.
As I say, the idea of watching a vid and doing something else as well on a phone is silly.
All I see is that year on year Apple had a gain and the real value is around 450. The 700 was never real money, yes for a few thousand shares probably... but after that is down hill.
Holy shit! There's someone on the internet who actually gets it.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Maybe I worked in a television station Transmission room too long... I start topping out at about three standard video feeds (four if absolutely no other distractions, two if I'm doing something useful but reasonably mundane - like making up the next day's playlist). :-)
I guess the other thing I probably developed working at the TV station was being good at prioritising data from TV and filling in the gaps (which can be annoying as most of the time I predict what's going to happen... except in really well-written stuff, which is kinda rare).
And, as I said, because texting has low temporal demand, you do it in the gaps (establishing shots, slightly less cerebral scenes, etc). And, if I do miss something, I skip back and re-watch it. :-)
Just a quick glance at the Apple Store gave different results. Just in the PC section alone there are 5 distinct products.
- MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mini, iMac and Mac Pro (5)
- iPod touch, nano, shuffle and classic (4)
- iPhone 5, 4S and 4 are available now (1-3)
- iPad, iPad 2 and iPad Mini (1-3)
- Apple TVs
- Apple Airport (Wifi), Extreme and Express,
- Time Capsule (storage)
- Apple mouse, touchpad, keyboards etc
- they offered server(s) in the past
How do you want to count them? 5 PCs + 4 iPods + 2 iPads + 1 iPhone + Apple TV + Airport + Time Capsule? That's 15 current products, no accessories included.
Don't forget that Apple has produced any number of very different iPods over the last decade(s); from the tiny, screenless to the iPod Touch. I'm not talking about different colors, but significantly different products.
I don't answer emails, browse the web, or instant message while watching a video on my computer, so why would I want to do that on a phone? It's one thing to see a small alert and totally another to try and compose a reply.
You will find by focusing on one thing, or a very small number of things, you accomplish more than trying to do a bunch of things at once. We just aren't wired that way, and while you may think you're doing more, the science behind it shows that you're not.
These heads already exist, and I have one. There are a number of stereos that support AirPlay and let you play content from your iTunes libraries. Mine also supports internet radio.
As Basilbrush points out, they're stuffing the channel to make their quarterly numbers - so yes, they could very well end up sending phones to the landfill (or heavily discounting them) in 2-4 quarters when the retails can't unload them on the public. Many electronics firms do this.