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Apple Isn't the Next Microsoft (and That's a Good Thing)
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a new Gizmodo column, Andreas Goeldi calls it the 'frosted glass' effect: when a prominent tech company's latest upgrade to its flagship operating system features frosted-glass highlights as its primary innovation, you know that company is facing a period of severe stagnation. That's what happened to Microsoft around the time of Windows Vista, Goeldi wrote, and Apple's going down the same road with iOS 7. In light of what he views as Apple's sclerosis, it wasn't difficult for him to abandon his iPhone in favor of a Google Android ecosystem. But is Apple really becoming the next Microsoft? In short: no. Apple seems to recognize everything that seemed to elude Microsoft's corporate thinking six years ago: namely, that even the most successful companies need to keep breaking into new categories, and keep innovating, if they want to stay ahead of hungry rivals. Rumors have persisted for quite some time that Apple is prepping big pushes into wearable electronics and televisions, both of which could prove lucrative strategies if executed correctly. Goeldi faults iOS 7 for its frosted-glass effects, which he compares to those of Vista; but similar graphical elements aside, it's unlikely that iOS 7 will run into the same complaints over hardware requirements, compatibility, security, and so much more that greeted Vista upon its release. In fact, iOS 7 isn't even finished."
I take it this is all a suck-up smoke and mirrors after that iphone theft debacle?
It was easy for Apple to innovate a few years ago because they had no momentum in the space. They were agile and free to create. It's much harder to do that when you have a huge codebase that's a decade old, with hundreds of millions of users who have expectations of your product.
Nonetheless, I can't help but think if Jobs was still around, there would be more exciting stuff in the pipeline.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Of course Apple isn't the next Microsoft
Microsoft used shady business practices to destroy competitors and thereby screw the customer.
Apple cuts out the middle-man, and just screws the customer directly.
... Apple is the Next Apple without Steve Jobs, again.
MS has lost billions of $$$ on bing, x-box and other experiments funded by Windows and Office license sales which are now slowing and decreasing. microsoft has been innovating for years but not profitably. they had commercial tablets before apple, mobile devices and cloud services long before cloud became a buzz word.
apple on the other hand has a rule that every product must be profitable. even the apple tv turns a small profit.
There was a time back in 1999 in the good old days of slashdot and IT where I had a debate with someone over how evil MS and Bill Gates were.
Back then MS was unstoppable! If investors found out MS was going to compete agaisnt you then your stock would be shorted as no one could stop the all powerful Microsoft!
I mentioned if Steve Jobs won the world would be heaven. No more expensive crap. Free standards galore. No more DRM with .WMV and IE 5.5 dictating the future of computing. Apple was cheered as the good guys trying to stop the DRM madness of RealPlayer and Windows Media Player. Remember?Fastforward today and I think Steve Jobs is fucking a more greedy monster than Bill Gates ever was. True their products are better quality and more UI and consumer data is put into products before being released, but man they charge and lock you in.
What Changed?
Itunes gave Apple a financial incentive for DRM and lock in. Apple monopolized the mp3 market and almost the phone before Android did a quick rescue. Their Macs are falling behind as more effort is on consumer gadgets these days.
Would I want a Google only world? Fuck no equally
Chrome's webkit is not W3C compliant compared to IE and Firefox with its extensions and some sites that only work with Chrome when you turn on HTML 5. If they owned 93% of the market ala IE 6 from 2003, you can bet javascript would go bye bye for whateverthefuck script that they invented, sites would not render properly if you used advanced features, and Google would ignore W3C and put Google Store as the master of the e-commerce universe!
I would not want just Android phones either streaming ads from Google servers 100% of the time, nor would shop owners want to pay 300% more for ad revenue as they would ahve a monopoly on this.
Business and greed is evil. We are all greedy and evil ourselves with a shade of gray. It is our human nature sadly. Competition frees us, though I do have to say I am disappointed in all web browsers recently and kind of miss Firefox when is owned just 15% of the market but maybe that is because IE sucked so bad then it seemed like heaven?
http://saveie6.com/
Actually, the Apple TV turns a huge profit.
On 5/28/13 there were 13 million Apple TVs sold, at about $100 each. That's $1.3 billion of revenue. I'm being conservative and assuming those numbers don't include the Apple TV 1.
Given an ultra-low margin of 25%, that means Apple conservatively has made $325 million off of the ATV. And Apple's margins have historically been more than 25%.
And because you call iOS7 crippleware even before it's out.
-- Cheers!
If you think that the main innovation in Windows Vista was the frosted glass, or any other UI feature, you are retarded.
While I think Windows Vista was far from perfect (so far that I didn't buy it), Windows XP was 5 years old and showing it. It was not designed for 64 bit architecture, and could not address more than 4GB of memory. Yes I know there was 64-bit windows XP, but that opens up a whole new can of worms. All windows OSes up through windows XP had horrible security models that lead to rampant infections by viruses.
Windows XP was based on 1990's NT technology. Windows vista was a near complete rewrite of the OS to bring windows into the 21st century. It had lots of problems, but I'd sure as hell use it over XP if given a choice.
I am not a M$ fanboy either. I use both windows and linux both at work and at home. I'd probably own a mac too if I had more disposable income.
"Apple seems to recognize everything that seemed to elude Microsoft's corporate thinking six years ago: namely, that even the most successful companies need to keep breaking into new categories, and keep innovating, if they want to stay ahead of hungry rivals."
Microsoft was not unaware of that at all. They tried very hard for a long time, after all Windows Phone was worked on for many years before iPhone.
Microsoft's problem was that they weren't good at it. Vista was another example. The common problem is internal corporate politics, and the key to that problem is at the top.
The majority of UX (sic.) people don't understand BOTH the pros & cons to GUI compared to the Command Line. They both have DIFFERENT strengths and weaknesses that _complement_ one another.
Why is that comment in a thread about mobile phone interfaces? CLI is not a reasonable interface on a phone with no hardware qwerty keyboard. Not even as a complement. As a niche legacy app for people that want to telnet onto some nix machine, UI. But it doesn't and shouldn't have any relevance to the UI of the phone itself.
It does though tip me off that the nature of your UI taste is classic unix. And makes your opinion on phone UIs not particularly worthwhile.
Desaturating the icons it makes it harder for someone to focus on the signal -- everything is one big noise. FAIL.
Is about as useful as someone saying "3x3 pixel font? FAIL". As you showed yourself recently, it all depends on context. And "FAIL" is the mark of an ill-thought out comment.
What's really bad about all these iOS7 articles is how off they are about what has changing.
If the person writing claims iOS7 is "flat", they have totally missed the point.
iOS7 has gone DEEP, not flat. It's many layers where before there was just a flat tree. It's added a literal new dimension to UI and UIX design.
When you actually have it in hand you may understand better, but just know until then anyone who says iOS7 is "flat" has no idea what the heck they are talking about.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering"
This, followed by your signature "ignorance is choice".
The patent is for a user-selectable feature that allows cameras to be turned off if you enter a certain area. Which is a great feature if you work at a company handling confidential stuff where photography isn't allowed, and this feature, if implemented, could allow you to bring an iPhone with you and use it (because it's ability to take photos can be turned off), while other smartphones with camera would get confiscated.