Larry Ellison Believes Apple Is Doomed

Nerval's Lobster writes "Oracle CEO Larry Ellison thinks that Apple will collapse without Steve Jobs at the helm. In a televised interview with CBS News, scheduled to air August 13, Ellison called the deceased Jobs 'brilliant' and compared him to iconic creators such as Thomas Edison and Pablo Picasso. When asked about Apple's future now that Jobs is dead, Ellison didn't hold back: 'We already know, we saw — we conducted the experiment, it's been done.' Raising his hand above his head, presumably to indicate the rise of Apple's fortunes during Jobs' initial reign, Ellison said: 'We saw Apple with Steve Jobs.' Then he lowered his hand: "We saw Apple without Steve Jobs." In other words, the period following Jobs' ouster, when the company's revenues declined and it launched whole portfolios of consumer products that failed. 'We saw Apple with Steve Jobs,' Ellison continued, raising his hand above his head again — this time, to suggest that incandescent period following Jobs' return to the company, when it released the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and a variety of bestselling PCs. 'And now, we're going to see Apple without Steve Jobs,' he finished, and his hand fell."

Comments

CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoralize

[iggymanz]

later, a bear eats fish and takes a dump in the woods. Story at 10

CEOs are overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

When Jobs was ousted they went from a $1 billion a year revenue company to a $10 billion a year company a few years later. It was Sculley's ouster that doomed Apple ;)

Re:CEOs are overrated

[TWiTfan]

Hush, you fool! The hipsters might hear you!

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

Sculley, who bet the farm on the Newton, which bombed? Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models? Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of, including digital cameras, videogame consoles, CD players, speakers, television STBs, and even television/computer hybrids, every single one of which flopped?

Things didn't necessarily get much better after he was fired, but his lack of vision and direction are part of the reason that Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when Jobs took over and got the investment from Microsoft.

Say what you will about Jobs, he was very good at simplifying the product lineup and focusing on a vision. Still, I think that Apple ousting Steve jobs was the best thing that ever happened to both Jobs and Apple. For Jobs, particularly, the experience of the NeXT disaster was extremely educational.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Samantha Wright]

...which brings up another point: Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997. The iPhone didn't come out until 2007. Way to pass over a decade of history, SlashBI. Keep giving us reasons to regard you as the amnesiac, moronic little squirrel that you are.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ackthpt]

Sculley, who bet the farm on the Newton, which bombed? Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models? Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of, including digital cameras, videogame consoles, CD players, speakers, television STBs, and even television/computer hybrids, every single one of which flopped?

Things didn't necessarily get much better after he was fired, but his lack of vision and direction are part of the reason that Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when Jobs took over and got the investment from Microsoft.

Say what you will about Jobs, he was very good at simplifying the product lineup and focusing on a vision. Still, I think that Apple ousting Steve jobs was the best thing that ever happened to both Jobs and Apple. For Jobs, particularly, the experience of the NeXT disaster was extremely educational.

Steve knew something everyone else never quite got - there are people who will spend a lot of money on an image product. His first Macs were nothing special, performance-wise, but set a new style benchmark. PC clones were ugly, beige, cumbersome and suddenly there was this Bang & Olufsen sort of style which looked great on a desktop. Every product since was about materials and style.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[alen]

there was some demand at the time for stylish PC's. Alienware started in the 90's and some computer makers did release nice looking computers.

apple was able to sell a bundled computer/monitor/software where people were willing to buy it where a lot of computer makers would leave money on the table allowing people to buy another branded monitor

Re:CEOs are overrated

[dgatwood]

Sculley, who gave us the first color Mac, who resisted the Mac OS licensing that nearly killed Apple, etc. Yes, he screwed up when he introduced each configuration of the Performa as its own model, but most of the real damage happened after he left and Spindler took over.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[dgatwood]

Incidentally, although Newton was announced by Sculley, it was not released until three months into Spindler's term. Sculley just gave us the design. It was Spindler who gave us the failed execution and the farm betting.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs still did an excellent job even before the iPhone. From 1997 until 2007, Apple:

1. Stopped bleeding cash and made some immediate key decisions to allow the company the earn enough money to invest in R&D.
2. Finally got a pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system with OS X.
3. Dominated the portable music player industry with the iPod. The iPod has so thoroughly dominated the portable music player industry that the Sony's "Walkman" term to describe a portable music player has large fallen out of the vernacular.
4. Created iTunes and brokered a deal with the RIAA that's relatively fair to users to make a broad music library widely available.

It should also be considered that the iPhone didn't just magically appear. The design and implementation of all the hardware and software to create an iPhone probably took two years, meaning that Apple probably started working on iPhone in 2005.

Without Jobs, it's highly likely Apple would have sold itself off and returned the money, if there was any left, to the shareholders.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[aristotle-dude]

Steve knew something everyone else never quite got - there are people who will spend a lot of money on an image product. His first Macs were nothing special, performance-wise, but set a new style benchmark. PC clones were ugly, beige, cumbersome and suddenly there was this Bang & Olufsen sort of style which looked great on a desktop. Every product since was about materials and style.

Performance benchmarks are for nerds to masturbate to, being able to get stuff done is what normal people care about. If you were to compare the speed at which you could take one of those colorful CRT iMacs out of the box and be on the internet compared with unboxing a PC and connecting to the internet, the iMac would win by hours.

You can talk about how you think image was the only reason why people bought them but in reality regular people just wanted a machine that worked and let them get on the internet without having to consult a nerd. The CRT iMac was that machine which is why it put Apple back into the black again.

Getting on the internet on those iMac

Step 1: remove iMac, keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box.
Step 2: plug in power cable into back of iMac and wall socket.
Step 3. plug in keyboard and mouse.
Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of iMac and wall.
Step 5. Turn on iMac
Step 6. Launch AOL.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, we have the iMac, released in 1998, the iBook, released in 1999, and the iPod, released in 2001, which essentially created the market for portable music players. Jobs couldn't release the iPod immediately after his arrival because Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy, the technology wasn't available yet, and he needed some capital to invest in R&D. The iMac, iBook and revised PowerBook that didn't blow chunks allowed Apple to acquire the capital needed for their future R&D work.

For the past decade Apple has survived by introducing devices that have been market leaders, or in some cases even created markets were there were none previously (iPad/tablets). A rough version of their timeline is:
2001: iPod (portable music player)
2007: iPhone (smartphone)
2008: MacBook Air (including because it caused Intel/Microsoft to release the "Ultrabook" manifesto to ODMs)
2010: iPad (tablet)

Just as OP was lovingly bashing Sculley for his market failures, this will happen to Apple under Tim Cook unless they can invent a new market segment in the next few years. Looking back at Apple's history, they have never been wildly successful by incrementally improving product lines. Apple's explosive growth comes from creating products in new market categories and riding them until market saturation is reached, at which point they wash, rinse and repeat.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[buddhaunderthetree]

Let's see the iMac was 1998, OSX Server 1999, the iBook 1999, OSX Developer Preview 2000, iPod 2001, Win-compatiable iPod 2004, then of course the transition to intel. There are plenty of things to criticize Jobs over, his stewardship of Apple from 1997- isn't one of them.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ron_ivi]

I can out-hipster that.

I stopped buying Apple products when Wozniak left.

My Apple ][+ was awesome, though. Damn closed/locked-down macintosh.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[bkmoore]

....Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models? Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of...

Sculley left Apple in 1993. Most of what you are referring to such as fracturing the mac lineup and the Pippen occurred under Spindler's watch.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[war4peace]

So what? You think an iMac is wonderful because you save some minutes doing something that you usually do ONCE per every new computer?

You sir just won the Way to Go! Award...

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

Like your example below, the Mac II was started when Jobs was still involved in the company, although it was done behind his back :)

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Samantha Wright]

...I somewhat regret the comment at this point, and I wasn't criticising him, actually; I was annoyed that they didn't mention more of those products specifically because I thought they were deserving of more attention. But, hey, I completely misread it anyway, since I skipped over the half of the list. Yay, leaky memory.

Re: CEOs are overrated

[Samantha Wright]

No, I'm just being bad at reading. Go go gadget embarrassing reading comprehension failure. For some reason I thought the list missed the iPod and iMac.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[TCQuad]

He personally may not think that is an essential feature, but it was certainly a selling point of the iMac. Quick connectivity served as a proxy and reinforcement of their key selling point: a simple, aesthetically pleasing and efficient machine. "Look at it, it just works. Even getting on the internet for the first time only takes a couple of minutes. How long did it take the last time you tried to do that with a PCR?"

The /. crowd may not think that's a significant selling point, but for average consumers in the AOL era? That was an interesting thought and an effective marketing technique.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[jemenake]

...which brings up another point: Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997. The iPhone didn't come out until 2007. Way to pass over a decade of history

Well, during that time, he did pull Apple back from the cliff. He rolled out those candy-colored, all-in-one iMacs and simplified the product line.

And then he got super, super lucky. Because he's a design zealot, he insisted that the iPod have headphones which match the device: white. What he didn't foresee was that this would be the only thing visible on an iPod user (who was, at the start, a Mac user... which meant they were a young, hip, fashion-conscious millenial). So, imaging you're at a street corner, waiting to cross, and you look over and there's some really cool cat, grooving to his music, and dressed cooler than you ever could. And their earbuds are a color you hardly ever see: white. In fact, just about every time you see white earbuds, they're on some cool-looking person. What piece of musical awesomeness are they hiding in their coat?

Apple quickly figured this out, however, and told people the answer with those iconic commercials showing only silhouettes and white earbuds. Apple was saying "THIS is what's on the other end of those earbuds on the cool kids". It's a classic example of drawing attention to (or creating) a distinguishing trait to highlight "social proof". (Another great example is Toyota's Prius. The first Prius looked like any other sedan, so nobody thought that anybody drove hybrids. It wasn't until they came out with that iconic flat-back shape when people started noticing just how many hybrids there are out there, so people didn't feel like they'd be the risky early-adopters).

Without the gobs of money they made on iPods, they wouldn't have had the money to do the iPhone. So, in my book, the entirety of Apple's dominance, today, is due to Jobs' obsession (for aesthetic reasons at the time) with the white earbuds.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[nine-times]

Steve knew something else that no one else ever seemed to get: Clever little business strategies aren't a substitute for making products that people want. I think understanding that was a big component of what made Jobs successful. Yes, he had showmanship. He had a design sense. He had a knack for finding and hiring talented people. He had other talents and virtues, I'm sure. But a big part of his success, I think, is that he didn't act like a stereotypical 'businessman' out to make money from whatever crappy product he could.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[sa1lnr]

Now give us a detailed explanation of how/why it would take hours for a pre-installed Windows PC to get connected to the internet.

My fanboy bullshit meter is reading high.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[NJRoadfan]

Good Ol' Spindler. Apple really hit rock bottom with him and almost sold to Sun. Don't forget Gil Amelio, the guy Steve Jobs back stabbed to take over Apple again. http://lowendmac.com/2013/the-rise-and-fall-of-apples-gil-amelio/

Re:CEOs are overrated

[spire3661]

Its really hard to call NeXT a disaster considering it spawned OSX and was the first web server.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RepoOne]

Getting on the internet on a comparable store-bought PC from the era

Step 1: remove PC, keyboard, monitor, mouse and power cable from the box.
Step 2: plug in power cable into back of PC and wall socket.
Step 3: plug in power cable into back of monitor and wall socket.
Step 4. plug in keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Step 5. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of PC and wall.
Step 6. Turn on PC
Step 7. Launch AOL.

One extra step, $500 saved. Of course, if you bought a PowerMac, you would have to follow EXACTLY the same steps as for a PC.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[jonr]

Stop making sense you fool!

This is not my beautiful house!

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

there was some demand at the time for stylish PC's. Alienware started in the 90's and some computer makers did release nice looking computers.

See, this is why Apple makes money off of stylish. Companies like Sony and Alienware made very pretty computer cases, but inside was the same old rectangular box running Windows. Even all-in-ones were boring rectangular boxes. People buy Macs for MacOS, not just for the hardware. With brief historical exceptions, people don't like Windows.

But Windows helps sell the computer, because nobody buys a computer that can't run programs. Witness the $900 million write-off that Microsoft just did. Most companies can't afford to license MacOS, and Microsoft makes predatory licensing deals, so for a long time they were stuck with Windows.

Let's see how things go, now that Android is such a major operating system.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[stephenbooth]

It should also be noted that the 'iconic' white ear buds soon made the iPod users an identifiable target for muggers, pick pockets and other thieves who figured why mug someone for what may be a £20 MP3 player with zero trade in value when you can mug someone advertising that they have a £399 iPod that can be traded in for £120 at many high street and backstreet vendors of second hand electronics. As a result many iPod users switched from the 'iconic' white ear buds to more ubiquitous headphones.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[war4peace]

Fair enough. I have seen plenty retarded marketing phrases that caught on, so that must've been one of them :)

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Anubis IV]

To quote Jobs with regards to the Mac and why it still only had a small portion of the market by the 2000s:

The Mac user interface was a 10-year monopoly. Who ended up running the company? Sales guys. At the critical juncture in the late ’80s, when they should have gone for market share, they went for profits. They made obscene profits for several years. And their products became mediocre. And then their monopoly ended with Windows 95. They behaved like a monopoly, and it came back to bite them, which always happens.

Long story short, the market grew, as did their profits, but their products didn't, and consumers responded by jumping ship as soon as a viable alternative came along, which largely happened under Sculley. Interestingly, some parallels could be drawn to the current situation, though I think they're at least trying to avoid repeating history.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[AmiMoJo]

It was a good idea but let down by the choice of AOL as the ISP. At the time Internet Explorer was the Apple browser of choice too. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.

It was like many things Apple. Very easy, but ultimately you were getting screwed and would probably want to switch to something else once you realized it.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[amicusNYCL]

Step 1: remove iMac, keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box.
  Step 2: plug in power cable into back of iMac and wall socket.
  Step 3. plug in keyboard and mouse.
  Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of iMac and wall.
  Step 5. Turn on iMac
  Step 6. Launch AOL.

What's so different about setting up a Windows PC that requires "hours" more time? Individually plugging in the monitor and speakers isn't exactly a time sink. You have to spend a few minutes going through the Windows setup process, but I assume there was something similar on an iMac. Or was it just a single-user-account computer?

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

It was a disaster as a business up until it got bought out. They sold few computers when they were a computer vendor, and didn't do so well with the software either. It was an epic failure that was an extremely valuable learning experience for Jobs.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[wideBlueSkies]

Reason # 1 to not use stock apple earbuds : They make it look like you have an Ipod in your pocket.
Reason # 2 to not use stock apple earbuds : They sound like complete crap.

Yeah yeah I know we're talking about mp3's and that the iPod audio out isn't the highest quality sound wise. But I swear by old school, black, Walkman style headphones, they look non iPod like, and sound great. A decent pair of Sony's set you back $45, and last forever.

(FWIW, the headphones that came with the first couple of original Walkmans sounded like crap too..... )

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

The mac fracturing happened before 1993. The Performa was introduced in 1992, the Quadra in 1991, the LC in 1990... Pretty much all that fragmentation happened before Scully left. I'll give you that the Pippin was later, though.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ganjadude]

The thing is, all those items are just better marketed, none of them were the best, or the first.

I had an MP3 player in 99, which honestly was better (and other than storage) is still better than the ipod. It could handle more formats, and I could control everything about it.

the iphone - not the first touch screen phone. and if people remember it was lacking many options that phones have had for years (copy and paste anyone?? or did everyone forget that jobs said no one needs to copy and paste on a phone....)

macbook air - over priced under powered device for its time when it first came out. the only thing it had going for it was shiney and thin. not something i really care about in a laptop, but i will admit i am not the target for the air, i still like my 17 inch laptops)

ipad - not the first tablet, and not the best tablet even today. locked down to the app store, no expanded storage, etc. Ill take an android/windows/linux tab over the ipad anyday.

now i will give you the fact that these things have kept apple alive, but not because they are the best, but because people are stupid and fall for lame marketing

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ganjadude]

For the record, I was an apple fan right up until around 2004. It was about that time i started losing interest and saw the writing on the wall

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Belial6]

Historically, in absolute numbers, there are more people that like Windows than like MacOS. People loved Windows 3.1. People loved XP. People loved 2000. People love 7. There are a higher percentage of OSX users that love OSX than Windows users who love Windows, but that is because everyone who doesn't care, uses Windows, and corporations use Windows.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Belial6]

So, then why hasn't he been able to sell Macs to the vast majority of people?

Re:CEOs are overrated

[tha_toadman]

Hipsters? I thought they were called iSheep. Meh, whatever.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Tough Love]

Aging hipsters.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Tough Love]

Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of, including digital cameras, videogame consoles, CD players, speakers, television STBs, and even television/computer hybrids, every single one of which flopped?

Isn't Apple sending out buzz that it will save itself with TVs and watches now?

Re:CEOs are overrated

[betterprimate]

...I somewhat regret the comment at this point, and I wasn't criticising him, actually; I was annoyed that they didn't mention more of those products specifically because I thought they were deserving of more attention. But, hey, I completely misread it anyway, since I skipped over the half of the list. Yay, leaky memory.

You mean, kind of like an "amnesiac, moronic little squirrel"? ;)

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ackthpt]

Historically, in absolute numbers, there are more people that like Windows than like MacOS. People loved Windows 3.1. People loved XP. People loved 2000. People love 7. There are a higher percentage of OSX users that love OSX than Windows users who love Windows, but that is because everyone who doesn't care, uses Windows, and corporations use Windows.

People may have liked Win 3.1, but getting stuff to work in it was a nightmare.

This worked to Apple's advantage with the Mac.

Gates knew this and worked on copying Mac OS to create Windows 95. Small wonder Jobs was bitter over others copying his company's work and profiting from it.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[betterprimate]

He rolled out those candy-colored, all-in-one iMacs and simplified the product line.

If I remember correctly, another reason why these iMacs became so popular was the option to lease. Many college students and small businesses took advantage of this.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

Yes, although things are a bit different today than they were back then. Today, if they do go that way, it's part of the current trend of convergence. Back then, they took a Performa 520 all-in-one mac and slapped a TV tuner in it and called it "Macintosh TV". It had a 14" screen, and no integration between the Mac and TV side of things. That's a bit different between today's trends of streaming and apps on a TV, and it's something that Apple is already essentially doing today with the AppleTV.

Ditto for the watch, which would be more of an extension of the smartphone platform than the calculator watches of yore.

I'm not saying either of those things is a sure thing, only that an attempt to make such a product today would be radically different than twenty years ago.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[nine-times]

Who needs the majority? It seems like Apple is doing well enough as it is.

And this is part of my point. Jobs didn't go around following the standard businessman path of chasing dumb conventional wisdom. He didn't seek to dominate all markets, trying to make his products all things to all people. You look at the results of that decision and you think it's dumb, because he didn't sell Macs to the vast majority of people. Many people would point out, though, that they're the most valuable company in the world.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[u38cg]

Also they sounded like shit. I'm not sure the mugging argument really had a major effect.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Samantha Wright]

The irony is not lost on me!

Re:CEOs are overrated

[betterprimate]

It was a good laugh!

Re:CEOs are overrated

[betterprimate]

Ahem, are you referring to this guy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sforhbLiwLA

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

MAC OS isnt available to license, what are you talking about?

Well, the availability of the license is extremely limited.

Back in the 90's, Apple tried selling conventional licenses. Very few companies were willing to pay Apple for the license, and switch suppliers for their most expensive chips, unless they were already invested in the Macintosh ecosystem. Though, I wonder how much Microsoft and Intel's predatory licenses contributed to that reluctance.

These days, if you want to sell a different computer with a legal MacOS license, essentially you have to buy a Mac and mod it. That's what Modbook, Inc. does.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[dfghjk]

"Step 1: remove iMac, keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box.
Step 2: plug in power cable into back of iMac and wall socket.
Step 3. plug in keyboard and mouse.
Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of iMac and wall.
Step 5. Turn on iMac
Step 6. Launch AOL."

Just like PCs of the day.

Benchmarks are for "nerds to masturbate to" when Macs lose them. They were to proof of "first desktop supercomputer" in a more favorable context. No one deceived with benchmarks more than Apple and no one worked that angle more than them.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

People loved Windows 3.1.

I used Windows 3.1. It really felt like a program running on top of DOS, not an operating system on its own. Not to mention that IRQ and DMA allocations were so much fun. And the 8.3 file name limits were a blast from the past.

People loved 2000.

I thought it ran nicely, but nobody else had it. Too slow for games, you know. Better to run Windows 98SE.

People loved XP.

It's more than 10 years after XP was released. People got used to it. High school freshmen barely remember a world without Windows XP. But I remember when XP came out and people were decrying its resource usage and its "Fisher Price" themes. I never did bother learning which categories a random control panel belongs to.

People love 7.

See "brief historical exceptions." I think people were more sold on the concept of Windows 7 than the actual product of Windows 7, because of its visual break with Vista while being just a technical evolution of Vista.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Belial6]

For there to be more people in absolute numbers who like Windows than people who like MacOS/OSX, only 1 in 9 computer users have to like it.

The fact that you saw flaws in Windows OSes, doesn't mean that people didn't like them. Some people disliking an OS while others like it is not only possible, it is reality.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[greenbird]

If you were to compare the speed at which you could take one of those colorful CRT iMacs out of the box and be on the internet compared with unboxing a PC and connecting to the internet, the iMac would win by hours.

So what you're telling me is the type of people who would buy a Mac would take hours to figure out how to plug in the monitor? Other than that you have to plug both into your router to get on the internet.

Tells much more about the type of people who buy Macs than anything else.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[R3d M3rcury]

Sculley, who bet the farm on the Newton, which bombed?

I wouldn't say he bet the farm on the Newton. In fact, many of Apple's patents for the iPhone come from work done on Newton. But it did bomb--can't really argue that.

Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models?

No, that was Michael Spindler.

Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of, including digital cameras, videogame consoles, CD players, speakers, television STBs, and even television/computer hybrids, every single one of which flopped?

Again, Spindler.

How about Sculley, who made sure that every Mac had a CD drive long before Windows PCs. Sculley who brought QuickTime and Hypercartd to the world? I could go on about Apple innovations between 1985 and 1993, but you get the idea.

That said, comparisons with Sculley and Jobs are a bit off. Sculley wasn't a showman like Jobs was. That's what Jean-Louis Gassee was for. I remember seeing Sculley at WWDC back in 1991. Probably the most boring guy I've ever heard. Even Bill Gates was better!

Re:CEOs are overrated

[thegarbz]

Getting on the internet on those PCs

Step 1: remove PC, monitor keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box.
Step 2: plug in power cable into back of PC and monitor and wall socket.
Step 3. plug in keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of PC and wall.
Step 5. Turn on PC
Step 6. Launch AOL.

There we go. Looks like a whole one minute extra work to get a PC connected to the internet. Man I get tired just thinking about it. Just as well I only need to spend that 1 minute once every 5 years or so.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

The fact that you saw flaws in Windows OSes, doesn't mean that people didn't like them. Some people disliking an OS while others like it is not only possible, it is reality.

You're not a native speaker of English, are you? When someone uses a vague grouping term like "people," they generally mean, "Everybody who matters. Individuals who collectively form what I think of as normal people."

People also don't like being tied up with chains and whipped. A few people like it. Windows is BDSM.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[war4peace]

Oh yes, they value(d) 1h saved every few years, suuure.

With the insane amount of people watching retarded Tv shows for hours in a row, I kind of find your statement... stretched at best.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Guspaz]

The fragmentation got worse under Spindler, to be sure, but the confusion starts with the introduction of all the different product lines, all of which happened under Sculley:

SE series: 1987 - 1991
II series: 1987 - 1993
LC series: 1990 - 1995
Classic series: 1990 - 1995
Quadra series: 1991 - 1995
Performa series: 1992 - 1996
Centris series: 1993 - 1993
Workgroup Server series: 1993 - 1997

I'm not completely sure the last two were introduced before Sculley left, but they would definitely have been initiated before he did.

There's a great visualization here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Apple_Macintosh_models

You can see the huge mess just starting towards the last few years of Sculley's reign, then you can see Spindler going nuts, and then around 1998 you can see Jobs killing all the product lines.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[mjwx]

Step 1: remove iMac, keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box.
Step 2: plug in power cable into back of iMac and wall socket.
Step 3. plug in keyboard and mouse.
Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of iMac and wall.
Step 5. Turn on iMac
Step 6. Launch AOL.

Step 7: Find out AOL doesn't work in your area (or country).
Step 8: Try to find a modem that's compatible with OS X.
Step 10: buy a very expensive modem as the cheap ones only worked with Windows XP.
Step 11: Find out no production software runs on an iMac.
Step 12: Throw out iMac, buy a PC which you should have done in the first place if you wanted to get work done.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[roc97007]

Also they sounded like shit. I'm not sure the mugging argument really had a major effect.

God, that's funny. So let me summarize: You gotcher young, hip, fashion-conscious millenial, some really cool cat, grooving to his music, and dressed cooler than you ever could, and his music SOUNDS LIKE CRAP through his trendy white (a color you never see) earphones.

Says its all, really.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[roc97007]

I'm not sure "loved" is the right word. It's the love for a mob enforcer that talks to you calmly while he works you over a little, as opposed to the last one who screamed obscenities while he busted your kneecaps.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[JonBoy47]

The original Mac democratized computing in a way no one had yet achieved, and was actually priced aggressively, given its bill of materials. With continued innovation AND aggressive pricing, Apple could have blown the PC market wide open, dominated market-share, and been the ones being sued for anti-trust in the 90's instead of Microsoft. Unfortunately for them, Sculley had a different vision based on maximizing exclusivity (and thus per-unit profit) at the cost of market-share, if necessary. Unfortunately, unlike, say, BMW or Rolex, a computer company's fortunes are predicated on getting their product into as many hands as possible.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[JonBoy47]

The iPod was worlds better then any existing MP3 player in existence at the time of its introduction. Apple managed to secure virtually the entire output of 1.8" hard drives from Toshiba (the only manufacturer of such drives at the time). It was years before anyone else could make a competing player that was nearly as compact. Apple also solved the UI conundrum of managing hundred (or thousands) of songs in the device. Most competitors used a CD-player based UI that broke down horribly beyond 20 tracks or so.

The iPhone was the first capacitive touchscreen phone. The resistive touchscreens then in use on PalmOS and WinCE phones were completely unusable without their easily misplaced stylus. Apple also cracked the text input nut by abandoning flaky and/or user-hostile hand-writing recognition in favor of an on-screen keyboard that was (again) usable without a stylus.

The MacBook Air was the first thin and light laptop that was also simultaneously usable AND cheap. Everyone (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc) sold underpowered 2 lb. laptops in 2008. For three grand. Apple bettered these offerings, and at one third the asking price! The fact that it took a couple of years, and Intel handing the R&D to the OEM's on a silver platter (cough, Ultrabook) for serious competitors to emerge is very telling.

Similarly, the iPad was worlds lighter and thinner then any prior tablet computer, with triple the battery life, at a third the cost, and with a UI that was actually touch-optimized as opposed to keyboard/mouse optimized with touch grafted on as an afterthought. That no one undercut Apple's pricing until they cut the size of the screen (and battery) in half is very telling.

Apple isn't the first to market, and they often don't have the best specs, according to benchmark-running nerds, but they are designed with a simplicity that makes them actually usable to non-technophiles.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Belial6]

The point is that the Mac has never been a product that most people want. Apple has made money on the Mac, but a claim that it is a product "That people want" is over stating the product. Steve was able to sell expensive computers to a minority of people. I would say that Jobs almost entirely relied on 'clever little business strategies'. What most people want has been Windows boxes.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RespekMyAthorati]

The "writing on the wall" being that customers loved these products, but you didn't.
Like anybody cares. People like you represent a microscopic fraction of the market for music players, smart phones and tablets.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[risom]

Apple managed to secure virtually the entire output of 1.8" hard drives from Toshiba (the only manufacturer of such drives at the time).

Many players at that time already had 1" hard drives, so 1.8" doesn't sound very impressive (1.8" drives were introduced in 1993 BTW).

The iPhone was the first capacitive touchscreen phone.

No, the LG Prada was the first one. Look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Zontar The Mindless]

I'm a very native English-speaker, and I had no problems parsing the GP. You are attempting to pick nits where there are none.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Zontar The Mindless]

The task was *getting the machine online*. You might want to try again.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[amicusNYCL]

I might want to try again? I didn't try anything in the first place. I'm asking what is so different about the setup process of a Windows PC versus an iMac, to get the machine unboxed and booted to the desktop so that you can go online (or whatever arbitrary task you want to set as the goal once the thing is booted to the OS), where the PC requires "hours" more time.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[erp_consultant]

You make a good point but one other thing that Apple doesn't get enough credit for is OSX. UNIX and Linux have been around a long time and there are lots of UI's created for them but nobody - nobody - has done a good a job as Apple at creating a user friendly version of UNIX/Linux. For a lot of people they will never get beyond launching Apps from the Dock. Click once...App opens...easy-peasy. But for the technically inclined you've got a Terminal with all the command line UNIX magic you can shake a stick at. The beauty of it is that both types of users can coexist peacefully in the same OS. It's truly a one size fits all operating system.

Over the last couple of years I would estimate that about half of my tech colleagues have made the switch to a Mac and AFAIK, nobody has gone back to Windows. Don't get me wrong...nothing wrong with Windows. I just think that Jobs and Apple deserve a lot of credit for OSX. It's really quite brilliant.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Maury Markowitz]

> Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup

I'm not sure any of these were due to Scully, directly. I believe it's much more accurate to say that Scully didn't stop other people from launching these "great ideas". He was focussing his energies on "the company", marketing and distribution. These are fine things, but not the job of the CEO.

So you had every middle manager running around producing whatever pet project they were interested in. If someone thought it was a good idea to have multiple SKUs for different stores, presto! A game console? Sure, sounds great! Anything any magazine said was the next big thing? We're on it!

Ironically, in one history I read Scully was portrayed as the "no guy" because he nixed Star Trek.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Maury Markowitz]

> but because people are stupid and fall for lame marketing

I'm going to write this one down, so I can haunt you when you grow up.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ILongForDarkness]

Just goes to show you can't get head without Skulley.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[ILongForDarkness]

Well the iMac and OSX were pretty huge too at least for a company that had single digit market share. The iPod came out in 2001 and they gradually took over music. But yeah a lot of time between Jobs coming back and the truly huge successes. Part of that was just technological: I'm sure they would have liked to make the iPod an iPhone from the start of things but you just didn't have screens, wireless bandwidth etc to make it worthwhile. Sometimes ideas have to wait for supporting tech.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[bbsalem]

Jobs was not your run of the mill CEO, especially in that he was not initially a business student or MBA. He was a computer geek with a strong vision of what electronics could do for people. When he returned to Apple, who did he succeed? John Scully, a Marketing exec from Coca Cola, that the board of directors wanted over Jobs, to run Apple, and Scully almost drove Apple into the ground. When Jobs came back the stock price had plummeted and Wall Street was ignoring Apple, relatively speaking. Jobs was able to redirect Apple without Wall Street Analysts pressuring him. Analysts are a bunch of idiots, anyway, or their values are all whacked. I am not saying that Jobs has having different management tactics as his peers, including Ellison, or Scott McNealy, only that he was unusual in his vision, his keen eye for function and design of products. I am not excusing Apple for the elitism it creates around its products or their high price, but they seem to be more reliable than the competition.

Anyone who knows the story of Next is aware that the system was a failure in the market place, first for only supporting a monochrome display, but then that the wisdom of basing a later system on BSD and of using the GUI based on NextStep became a resounding business success. The success of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad are not only because they are innovative designs but their basis in Mac OS-X and open source, even though they are closed hardware platforms. There is genius in supporting open source applications while establishing the branding of a proprietary set of designs.

The comments about Apple declining might have also applied to the company after Jobs was forced out, and for the same reason. The average CEO lacks the special insights that Jobs brought. A big part of the reason is that management is now a professional role supported by business schools with an emphasis on finance and the investment markets. It is rare that people come up through the ranks of the industry even when the business is concentrated on one. I can understand that diversified companies might need a more financial orientation to business. In my opinion the financial, actually financialization, orientation of the leadershop of many large businesses, the boards of directors and management, is bad for business and the economy as a whole. I would like to see the discrediting of most business schools as sources of good advise to management and especially changes to the rules for short term investment and planning.

The idea of program trading, the milisecond trading done by large financial institutions based on computer technology and Big Data should be seen as dangerous to good market practices and severely regulated. If one wants to damn Larry Ellison, and also Scott McNealy, for anything it is their role in enabling this. It is the large memory models needed by Oralce and enabled on the large servers that Sun created and others, IBM, that allowed for this. At the time (2000) when I was at Sun, I didn't understand what the interest of the banks and financial corporations really was in the technology. The Crash of 2008 told us what it was and the sin here is speculation, not normal prudent market activity. The U.S. Congress has not done the right thing to remove the risk of market instabilities caused by the misuse of computers by speculators. The SEC could end this in an instant by making a 30 second latency mandatory on all trades including electronic trades. This is why the Congress has not repaired the financial system and it will fail again and possibly soon. Had I understood all this is 2000, I would have left Sun much sooner, and Ellison and Oracle had the dubious heritage of this now.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Kyusaku Natsume]

At the time as soon as you connected a Windows PC to the net you will be ending catching a virus. Those were the days of Windows 98 and the "Active desktop". The easy design and setup may appear overrated, but the fact that it was so easy to setup, used far less power than comparable PC's at the time, the small footprint and the fact that it didn't had fans made it perfect for bedrooms and classrooms, and, in case you needed to move it around the home, it was a easy and fast task. My first Apple product was a eMac, that lost the fanless aspect, but was extremely sturdy, almost kids proof, with good performance and a nice price, and a amazing built quality only found in expensive Sun equipment, and running Unix, what was not to like about it?

Re:CEOs are overrated

[HornWumpus]

My Apple ][+ still is awesome. So is my Amiga. I never throw anything away.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[aristotle-dude]

Step 1: remove iMac, keyboard, mouse and power cable from the box. Step 2: plug in power cable into back of iMac and wall socket. Step 3. plug in keyboard and mouse. Step 4. plug phone cord into phone socket in back of iMac and wall. Step 5. Turn on iMac Step 6. Launch AOL.

Step 7: Find out AOL doesn't work in your area (or country). Step 8: Try to find a modem that's compatible with OS X. Step 10: buy a very expensive modem as the cheap ones only worked with Windows XP. Step 11: Find out no production software runs on an iMac. Step 12: Throw out iMac, buy a PC which you should have done in the first place if you wanted to get work done.

A few problems with your rebuttal.

1. The iMac came with a builtin model.
2. The CRT iMac was released in 1998 so there was no OS X yet.
3. XP did not exist yet so you had to deal with either Windows 95c or Windows 98.
4. Microsoft Office for Mac did indeed exist.
5. PC's of that era where actually slower than macs running off the G3 processor for many tasks including Photoshop.

Maybe you need to read more slowly next time?

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Uberbah]

Yes yes, Apple only appeals to fashion victims, blah blah blah whargarrrrble. Don't you idiots ever get tired of these mindless memes which function only as easy answers to your cognitive dissonance about how something you hate could succeed?

It's trying to be somewhat polite and complimentary in order to completely deny Apple any kudos for their design or innovation. Hence, the original iPod was all about "fashion", not the microdrive or the clickwheel or the 400 Mpbs interface.

They never seem to get around to explaining why no other tech company has released or tried to release "fashionable" products, sending Apple back to being beleaguered. Then they usually mumble something about the Apple "cult", but also don't have an explanation why none of Apple's competitors have done the same, sending Apple back to being beleaguered....

Re:CEOs are overrated

[jp10558]

I don't think people hated Vista the UI or Vista the concept in the way they might hate Windows 8 the UI or "Tablet everywhere" the concept.

It's just that the implementation *sucked* in some obvious and user annoying ways - see the massively slow file copies vs XP on the same hardware at launch, and the UAC pop up on everything.

Windows 7 smoothed out a lot of that, or hardware advancements did. Win 7 "fixed" the file copy speed enough for users to not notice it being slower on newer hardware. UAC was toned down a bit, and everyone already had docs to *turn it off* if they really hated it. Windows 7 could have been Vista SE properly, and likely would have been fine except for the marketing issue with the Vista name. Same as Win 98SE being the one you wanted.

On XP, again, it was SP2 that really made it shine. No one remembers XP RTM and the slow horror it was vs 98SE on hardware of the time, nor how bad it was at security or how *f&#ked* up wireless control was. Of course, most anyone I know ran XP in "classic" because they didn't like the "Fisher Price" themes.

So yes, Microsoft has a trend of needing 2-3 releases to "get it right", and I think that's why so many people are still skipping Windows 8. There are enough apps to make the UI tolerable with classic shell etc. But it is still release 1 of the totally new UI paradigm (and one that I still don't think plays to their strength on the desktop/laptop market). There are some other show stoppers in there too, but maybe Windows 9 will clean it all up. Or maybe we'll all be using Android / ChromeOS by then, IDK.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Tablizer]

Step 6 is a little scary.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[Tablizer]

It would be missing some goofy DLL or the modem driver would conflict with the printer driver.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

Historically, in absolute numbers, there are more people that like Windows than like MacOS.

Oh. I see my mistake. I still stand by the statement that people don't like Windows, and that's why Apple makes money off stylish.

The small populations of people who truly like Windows are spread out over far more OEMs than the number of companies making Macs (just Apple). These people are actually bad for the stylish PC business, because people who like Windows have hideous taste. You must be familiar with gaming computers with tinted windows and garish lights. They're buying parts from weirdos, not PCs from OEMs.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

Actually, Vista SP1 fixed the file copy issue. It was a bit of a disconnect between theory and reality, when somebody was trying to get Windows Explorer to copy files without thrashing the disk cache. (Solution: Thrash the disk cache.) And the excessive UAC was due mostly to programmers being used to XP and everybody having Administrative rights.

I still find Vista more annoying than 7, but with service packs, I think it's definitely usable.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[RR]

Too slow for games, you know. Better to run Windows 98SE.

Win2k was too slow for games? Got a citation for this? XP was built on the same NT-kernel as W2k and had the same DirectX-support IIRC.

Come to think of it, mainly people didn't use Windows 2000 because it was expensive and PCs came with either Windows 98SE or Windows ME. Also, those were earlier days for DirectX. Windows XP had newer DirectX. I don't think Windows 2000 came with DirectX.

I've never been much of a gamer. Google gives me this reference for benchmarks where 98SE ran better than 2k. Apparently, the main problem was driver support, again.

Re:CEOs are overrated

[avatar139]

What's so different about setting up a Windows PC that requires "hours" more time? Individually plugging in the monitor and speakers isn't exactly a time sink. You have to spend a few minutes going through the Windows setup process, but I assume there was something similar on an iMac. Or was it just a single-user-account computer?

No, installing Windows without a slipstream disk generally takes at least a couple of hours. Remember, it's not just the painfully slow install process, it's also the fact that you have to attach your unpatched, insecure computer to the internet to download the latest security patches. :P

He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch. I can see it in my own family. My oldest boy remembers when having an Apple product was cool. My next son could care less - he picked up his first tablet for under $100 and hasn't thought about Apple since. My elementary-age daughter calls her tablet an "iPad", but it too is an Android device. All my family's phones are now Android phones. If I was ever going to buy another laptop, it would be a Chrome book. Etc, etc, etc.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyMartian]

I like my iPhone well enough, but I find the way it stores data, sandboxed into each app, absolutely painful, and having to use that hideous iTunes app is an even greater agony. I love my Nexus 7. I have Dropbox, Google Docs or a USB cable and can move files back and forth with ease. So while there are aspects of iOS I like (I like the calendar/scheduling app in iOS, just feels more complete), when I give my old iPhone to my kid, I'm looking at getting an unlocked Android phone.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[timeOday]

Apple's success now is not based on the iMac or iPod still being cool. If they are successful in the future, it will not be based on the iPhone or iPad still being cool. It would have to be "something else." Figuring out what that would be is the hard part.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[TWiTfan]

It used to be about the MUSIC, man!

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

OK, I'll bite. Without using brand names, please tell me what you can do (e.g., use cases) with an iOS device that you can't do with an Android device of equal or lessor price?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Ralph Wiggam]

That trend started while Jobs was still alive. But I don't know how involved Jobs was the last couple years of his life. For stock price reasons, he had to say that he was fine and it was business as usual. But he looked really sick.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyYar]

I'm the opposite... almost every time I have to open "ES Explorer", I die a little inside. I'm too cheap to buy an iPhone, though. I bought two on eBay just to use for a while, but currently I have a cheap Android. Both OSes have their strengths - I'd say that iOS is a bit more pain-free and Android is more fun to geek out with. My kids use my old iPhones as iPods, and we have a Kindle tablet - the iPad Mini was not out at the time and the full-sized iPad is way to rich for my blood.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I dislike the guy but things have been going that way for a while now. Apple under Jobs were innovative patent trolls, Apple without Jobs are no longer innovative.
All the same, assessing the company on what your kids think is of limited value. Android products are usually more 'affordable' and are being aimed at older (30-something) kids with money to burn.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[lactose99]

Sync directly with the bloatware and usability mess that is iTunes?

(note that some consider this a significant benefit)

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

OK, so that was an anecdote, which I admit is unusual for me.

Here's a story published this week about how Android is growing three times faster than iOS if you prefer statistics instead:
http://thediplomat.com/tech-biz/2013/08/08/apples-shrinking-market-share-android-broadens-mobile-device-lead/

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that AC, but there's fair amount of music software for iOS that isn't on Android. Android has never solved their terrible latency issues, either -- though I see a press release by a third party puts claims their own software has gotten it reduced to about 4x that of iOS, which is still pretty bad and generally considered acceptable by musicians.
 
So, yeah, playing/recording/performing music would be one use case.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> assessing the company on what your kids think is of limited value. Android products are usually more 'affordable' and are being aimed at older (30-something) kids with money to burn.

Well...that perception among multiple demographics that "the Android is the best value for us" is the big reason why I think Apple is in trouble. Kids want it because it does everything they want and it fits their budget. So do teens. College students. Fresh graduates. Family men. Except for boomers riding out this crappy economy, Android has quietly become the preferred solution for most people buying devices today, because most people would agree that they don't have money to burn, and that hurts Apple, who depends on people overpaying for functionality to sustain high profits.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Figuring out what that would be is the hard part. ...and that's Ellison's point. Without Jobs around, chances that Apple will figure out that next step (and then execute against it) are slim.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

And yet most Android manufacturers are taking a loss right now... so having a larger market share isn't working out too well for them... The one exception seems to be Samsung, but only because they borrowed a page from Apple's Marketing department and started making fun of the competition (from a conceptual point-of-view the Samsung ad's making fun of the lines for the latest iDevice aren't that different from the Mac vs PC ads). Samsung is even starting to follow Apple's device announcement/release schedule.

People keep saying Android is eating Apple's lunch, yet Apple had revenues of $35.6 Billion of which $6.9 Billion was profit... And that was during a down quarter when they had no new devices released and sales started to drop off as people wait for the next iDevice. $6.9 Billion... with a 'B'.... That's a lot of money. They're hardly in any financial pain over Android's growth.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> playing/recording/performing music would be one use case.

OK, I guess I could see that at the high end. I really only use (local) mp3s or free music services to play back music on my Android devices, so I never notice any performance issues. (I also don't use the devices to record sound or video - I have a separate camera and microphone setup for that; I edit footage on a desktop of course.)

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize:
- Under $100 tablet - razor thin profit margins
- Chrome book - accounts for only ~0.02% of web traffic
- Android - split up between many different vendors...if you want to compare profits you have to look at each individual vendor (and other than Samsung, it's not a pretty picture)

iOS may end up going downhill in the future, but your post is just anecdote. Sure, Android gets a bunch of sales but the profit margins are close to nothing (think about it; Apple not only charges more per sale and sells more units, but they also squeeze their vendors harder on pricing (I know because I work for a company who supplies parts to Apple. Apple gets priced lower than any other vendor and gets way better support, any failure analysis cases get routed through a special channel.)). Furthermore, their product range is more limited (more efficient operations, less spent on new product design). Basically, Samsung is the only Android vendor making profits anywhere near what Apple makes, and it's probably going to stay like that for a while.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> most Android manufacturers are taking a loss

To be expected. Remember how there were once thousands of PC manufacturers churning out hardware at low margins while Microsoft profited? Same model, different company; you need to compare Google to Apple if you want to, er, do an "apples to apples."

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> malware, crashing

Hasn't been a problem on the eight devices (4 OS's, five manufactures) I've had so far.

>> FBI listening to you

You're new here, aren't you? ;)

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[CensorshipDonkey]

Coolness has been less of a factor for a while. The iPad was far and away an excellent piece of hardware. It was the first time I started to think we could really use the "third device", instead of thinking that the three-device paradigm was a corporate marketing scheme. There is a lot to be said for well executed tables for content consumption (different than those for productivity). The iPad was fantastic, and its hardware and OS excellence is what opened the consumer market. Advertising and coolness got more attention, but the product itself closed the deal. If they can continue to make the best hardware around, they have a sound business strategy.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

And that's mostly because Samsung owns most of their supply chain (reducing production costs) and has started to focus on the Galaxy S/Tab/Note lines for mobile devices (reducing design costs). Everyone else has a bunch of different product lines and release new models every few months (reducing consumer confidence in them).

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Here's a story published this week about how Android is growing three times faster than iOS if you prefer statistics instead:

No, no thanks, this is Slashdot; personal anecdotes (or even better, unfounded opinions) are preferred over "facts", which are subject to change.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[SQLGuru]

Work with all of those built-in connectors that so many devices (cars, radios, etc.) all seem to love. [And I think this a terrible thing......because I like my non-iOS devices.]

I'd like to see the dock connection get standardized in terms of placement and jack so that any device can dock with any other device. My car has a built in iPod port......that I'll never use. The salesman thought it was a selling point (it wasn't -- but I got the car for other reasons).

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[loufoque]

Why aren't you correcting your daughter? Do you want her to end up intellectually challenged?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Vanderhoth]

Actually I stream videos and music TV over my Galaxy Note II. I also don't know anyone that would use a phone to produce music, that sort of thing is really for PC/Mac

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[trparky]

There is something to be said when you produce only one product in a particular product line per year. That is, one Galaxy S Series and one Galaxy Note Series device. If you keep producing more than one device per year like HTC has been doing for some time now you dilute your market.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[aristotle-dude]

OK, I'll bite. Without using brand names, please tell me what you can do (e.g., use cases) with an iOS device that you can't do with an Android device of equal or lessor price?

1. Connect to all of the collaborative/meeting/remote access services large Fortune 500 companies use to host meetings or collaborate.

2. Access all of the games and apps only available on iOS.

3. Test iOS apps that earn you money from people who are willing to "pay" for them.

Android users are constantly asking "why" there is no Android version of "x" app. Besides the issue of fragmentation and a less complete framework than iOS, most Android users are too cheap to pay for apps and services. Developers simply do not want to reinvent the wheel for services that are provided for "free" with the Cocoa framework just to have feature parity on Android. Why should devs have to work harder for less money?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

A phone isn't the best interface for making music, but it's good for when you have inspiration away from instruments or a computer. On the other hand, a tablet is in many ways far better than using a desktop machine because of the large(ish) touch screen interface. I'd much rather do all of my performing and recording work on a tablet than a desktop+monitor+mouse. The main problem is that the software isn't up to the same standards, mostly because apps are written for too broad of a market -- so instead of a DAW, you get a half-assed instrument app plus a half-assed recording app -- or they're built too inefficiently. Fortunately, I have to reason to believe the situation is going to improve dramatically in the coming year.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[aristotle-dude]

>> playing/recording/performing music would be one use case.

OK, I guess I could see that at the high end. I really only use (local) mp3s or free music services to play back music on my Android devices, so I never notice any performance issues. (I also don't use the devices to record sound or video - I have a separate camera and microphone setup for that; I edit footage on a desktop of course.)

You are "consuming" media, musicians are "creating" media on their iPads whether it be recording in the studio or as part of an adhoc performance piece. In the realm of music and other performance art, Android devices are toys by comparison. Android lacks support for low latency audio among other things.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Charliemopps]

...and having to use that hideous iTunes app is an even greater agony.

and there you have it. iTunes is one of the most horrendous applications I've ever used. When I got my wife to switch to android she said "But how do I put music on it?!?!" so I clicked on the device and said "See that folder called music? Put it in there." all she said was "wow"

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Sable Drakon]

If you're having those problems, you're an idiot running the stock firmware the handset maker provides.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[thetoadwarrior]

Android is for people who don't care and just need something cheap. It'll be easily replaced overnight. That's why Android has low customer loyalty. Apple doesn't actually Apple isn't shrinking. They're just not growing as fast. That hasn't stopped them from out performing thesmelves compared to the previous quater despite the iphone 5 not really being anything terribly special.

Everything about Android is so broken people are just waiting for another cheap alternative to come along. Google should count themselves lucky that Microsoft is incompetent.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

How is Google profiting from Android? Maybe Google Play is profitable, but it's profits pale in comparison to the Apple App Store since most apps on Play are free and the one's that aren't don't see nearly the number of downloads they do from Apple.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[thetoadwarrior]

Get updates or not be under constant attack from malware.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[teg]

...and having to use that hideous iTunes app is an even greater agony.

and there you have it. iTunes is one of the most horrendous applications I've ever used. When I got my wife to switch to android she said "But how do I put music on it?!?!" so I clicked on the device and said "See that folder called music? Put it in there." all she said was "wow"

"See that folder music? Put it in there" is an absolutely horrible way to deal with music, unless all you have is one album. The overview and management of a tool like iTunes is indispensable when you have a large music library... I have 24 k items, mostly lossless audio, after all of my non-SACDs discs have been moved into the basement. Folders just don't cut it, and "put it in the music folder" don't scale at all.

The good thing about a folder interface is that someone else can recreate their vision of iTunes and use that to achieve the same thing. Not that you can do it yourself, that's masochism.

As a side note, spotify and others of that ilk are making this less and less necessary.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[lister king of smeg]

>> most Android manufacturers are taking a loss

To be expected. Remember how there were once thousands of PC manufacturers churning out hardware at low margins while Microsoft profited? Same model, different company; you need to compare Google to Apple if you want to, er, do an "apples to apples."

Even then it is a bad comparison as Google is giving away android source code and all for free as in speech and beer, they have a completely different business model. The i$product line is about selling devices first and about selling media second and selling apps third. Apple sell media so that people with low technical abillity can get their media on the devises - media is to get you to buy there devices, they sell apps so that you stay in their ecosystem. Google on the other hand sells ads and services first and foremost. Android is about keeping Google relevant, apps and media to google just another service they can sell.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[BarC0d3z]

Get updates with everyone else instead of having to wait a year until the manufacturer decides to release a patch - 6 months after the new models already have it.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[spire3661]

Why does the realization that you have to have a file manager ON A COMPUTER make you die inside? I die a little inside every time i have to do a full sync to load ONE mp3 on my iphone.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[BarC0d3z]

Avoid the daily reboots.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[spire3661]

What do you think itunes does with the files? It puts them in folders according to its internal logic. Sure it scales, but its inflexible. Itunes is just a shitty database.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[maccodemonkey]

I like my iPhone well enough, but I find the way it stores data, sandboxed into each app, absolutely painful, and having to use that hideous iTunes app is an even greater agony. I love my Nexus 7. I have Dropbox, Google Docs or a USB cable and can move files back and forth with ease. So while there are aspects of iOS I like (I like the calendar/scheduling app in iOS, just feels more complete), when I give my old iPhone to my kid, I'm looking at getting an unlocked Android phone.

The lack of an accessible file system is mostly due to Apple's priorities and focus (I know this may not please the Slashdot crowd) on moving files to the cloud.

iCloud's premise is that your local files and your cloud files co-exist in one big bucket transparently, and iOS's implementation is the realization of this. Whatever iOS device you get on, your files are there. You don't have to copy them to a USB key or find them on the file system or manage different versions. Each file has a "truth" version in the cloud. Having access to the file system as a end user function breaks this illusion. You're back to worrying about what's on disk, what folder everything is in, etc etc... And while that's more of a design choice, it also wouldn't surprise me if Apple starts really messing with iOS's file system on a technical data to make it even less friendly to traditional file browsing. I could see them going for a totally metadata based file system in the future.

OS X is a legacy OS, so it is much more of a reflection of the mess of having two user facing buckets. The iCloud implementation on OS X is just hands down awful compared to iOS. Separate file browsers, bad user experience, ugh... OS X Mavericks moves towards fixing this a bit by adding file browsing based on metadata based instead of file paths. Because both local and iCloud files can have metadata they're all back to living in the same bucket, and the user experience is much better.

So Apple's lack of a file browser isn't necessarily because they are paranoid and want to lock down the device, or because Steve Jobs didn't like it, it's because they're likely considering at some point totally abandoning a traditional file system, and they don't want to get users attached to a function they're probably going to take away.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[spire3661]

I do agree with you, to a point. I stopped calling using a videophone 'facetiming'. Its not a cell phone, it is a pocket computer. etc.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[mmcxii]

So you are confirming for the fanbois that Jobs was indeed the second coming of Christ? Otherwise, why would chances be slim that the next "innovator" won't be working for Apple? If there is innovation to be made it seems reasonable that it is just as likely to come from Apple as anywhere else.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MachineShedFred]

So much this.

Yes, there are flagship android devices which actually are something special.

However, the vast chunk of "OMG Android is wiping the floor with Apple" is free-with-subsidy devices that might as well be feature phones, because they aren't used as a smartphone at all. And those devices are either 12+ month old junk with equally old software that will never be updated, or bargain-basement components with bargain-basement performance.

For the most part, people that buy Apple stay with Apple. I can see Samsung buyers likely staying with Samsung for a lot of the same reasons - it's a quality product at a price that is reasonable. I just don't see there being a large ecosystem beyond those two at the top of the pyramid; and Apple isn't concerned with the free phone crowd (depending on what the iPhone 5C rumors digest into next month).

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[GonzoPhysicist]

I don't think Charlie was talking about organization, for that some software is nice. But it shouldn't be awe-inspiring to be able to drag and drop a file to transfer data.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[bryanbrunton]

You have a folder named Music, you have subfolders named A, B, C, D, ...

How exactly does that not scale?

I have many, many gigabytes of songs.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[g8oz]

Maybe for a power user like you. For many people though iTunes is a confusing file system abstraction.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dogtanian]

I have 24 k items, mostly lossless audio

You have "24 k" items? I guess you could say that your music collection was...

(puts on sunglasses)

...solid gold.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[AmiMoJo]

That's the beauty of the Android system: you don't need a management tool, it just builds your library up from metadata in the tags on the device itself. Throw the files in there, use directories if you like or not if you prefer. As long as they are on there the music player app will sort them out for you.

Every music file you buy will be tagged correctly. Most ripping software auto-tags. It's a solved problem.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[thetoadwarrior]

That's it, it's not Apple vs Android. It's Apple vs Samsung. Arguably it's Samsung against Android too.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[ganjadude]

bullshit. I have 3 @ TTB drives, FULL of music (DJ gig) and if i had to browse it using itunes id shoot myself in the face. There are numerous options out there (some baked in) that can pull album info directly. I simply pick the genre i need to DJ that night, (my folders are set up generally like this - decade - genre -artist (sometimes record label than artist) album - track. Makes it pretty easy to find anything i need for a show (wedding, birthday party for people aged 8-80). Itunes is fucking garbagge and has been from the start. Even when I had an ipod, i used a program called anapod explorer (dont know if they are still around) but it let me drag and drop onto the ipod.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Zenin]

The overview and management of a tool like iTunes is indispensable when you have a large music library... I have 24 k items

Except for the fact iTunes can't sanely handle large libraries.

When I had an iPhone I tried to scan my own collection into iTunes, some 30k+ tracks at the time. Two full days later it was still scanning, I shit you not.

WinAmp scans the same collection in about 5 minutes and is far superior in every possible way when trying to actually manage such huge, diverse collections sanely (WinAmp's Smart Filters are far better then iTunes's insanity). Windows Media Player scans about as fast, although the library management functionality isn't much better then iTunes (but it's still better).

And WinAmp manages any portable device. Well, except iDevices...because they're the only ones on the planet with that retarded proprietary syncing nonsense rather then "just copy it to a folder".

The only users I've ever heard praise iTunes were Mac users. I'm honestly not sure if that's because the Mac version of iTunes is wildly better (not hard to believe) or of Mac user's expectations in general are just lower (also, not hard to believe).

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[ganjadude]

on the high end if you are recording with an iphone and not something like a dedicated recorder like the xoom H2n or other dedicated hardware you are an idiot anyway.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[ganjadude]

wow, you still think IOS has no malware???? Rose glasses must be nice

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Zenin]

Sadly, it's probably a side effect of Android largely being rebranded Linux, which has never really solved its horrific sound system issues... :-(

But yep, I see Androids everywhere...except the music (eg, Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc) stores. Absolutely everything there is strictly iDevice if it's anything.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Zalbik]

I'm the opposite... almost every time I have to open "ES Explorer", I die a little inside

And every time I want to open "ES Explorer" on my kids iPod, and realize it has no file explorer, and the only way to move data on or off the device is through that atrocious closed POS iTunes, I die a little inside

I can't think of a time where I've needed the file explorer on Android. iOS devices cannot function fully without iTunes.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[clarkn0va]

If you're having those problems, you're an idiot for buying an android phone in the first place.

You're not aware that Apple was party to Carrier IQ and Prism, then? Recent events have taught us that no factory phone firmware is to be trusted.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[metrix007]

Why would you die a little from having to open a file explorer app? There is no need to, it's just a nice feature that Apple can't even provide.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Zalbik]

The overview and management of a tool like iTunes is indispensable when you have a large music library...

And that's why there are loads of different music management software packages for Android. Or you can just build your own folders and put music in them. Or you can write your own software and transfer files to your device using standard protocols.

Whereas for iOS, I've only ever found a handful of software packages for managing music collections. And many of them can't even connect to the iPod to transfer music.

And don't get me started on video management software for iOS....

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[metrix007]

Many people have loyalty to Android. It is for people who do care, as opposed to blindly follow fashions.

It's the only decent, free and customizable mobile OS with a decent app library.

Stop drinking the koolaid.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a collection of thousands of albums. All in one directory. The secret is:

Artist - Album Name - Year (well, year is optional)/Track Number - Track Name.format

Albums featuring multiple artists?

VA - Compilation Name - Year/Track Number - Artist - Track Name.format

Sure, that means there's duplicates. I don't care. Drive space is ridiculously cheap for audio. Heck, I have stuff that isn't even tagged, but it makes no difference, because directory/filename such an easy system to use. I still haven't figured out a purpose for iTunes yet, and I've been a music hound for decades. Each to their own.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[thetoadwarrior]

What you're saying is its their only option but you want to believe they're loyal? It's hard not to be loyal to the one and only choice.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dixie_Flatline]

I've got a 16GB iPhone. I have 50 or 60GB of music. But more to the point, it's not a very good system of music organisation to have the music as a giant monolithic block. I carry around about 3GB of music at any given time, but I do it in a way that guarantees that I'm not listening to the same stuff over and over again. I've got playlists that take into account the rating of the song, when the song was last played and whether it currently lives in any other playlists. The playlist is limited to a certain size, and it refreshes on the fly (when the song playcounts are updated when I plug the phone into my Mac). (I also have a few artists and albums that I consider indispensable, so I've got them synced at all times.)

iTunes is not great software on Windows, but it works pretty well on the Mac. It's a bit heavy for what I think most people need--Apple could possibly break it up into other applications--but doing that sort of sorting on my own would make me crazy. I'd listen to my music a lot less.

So while the simplicity of dragging your music over to your device is nice in one respect, it utterly misses the boat in other ways.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dixie_Flatline]

Citation, please.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[JaredOfEuropa]

Jobs knew what he wanted, had the clout to push his organisation to follow his vision, had good taste (in gadgets), and was uncompromising even when it affected project plans or retail prices. That is what made Apple products what they are, and it's a rare combination of traits to be found in a CEO. Even rarer when the CEO is not the company's founder.

There are a few similar "inventor" CEOs out there, but they are busy with their own companies and following their own vision.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[ganjadude]

i wasnt trying to say the h2n was the best, just it is better than an ipad/iphone/droid device, at least from my experience working a soundboard.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[metrix007]

How is it their only option. I have an android phone because I think it is the best mobile OS...I have a loyalty to it.

I considered Apple, Blackberry and Windows Mobile..none of which were better in my opinion. So it's hardly my, or anyone's only choice.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[ganjadude]

do your own work. a simple google of IOS virus will show you its not flawless

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[betterprimate]

I have 24 k items, mostly lossless audio

You have "24 k" items? I guess you could say that your music collection was...

(puts on sunglasses) ...solid gold.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

There isn't enough cocaine in the world to make me click on that link.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Charliemopps]

That's nice. These are the stats of the "Music" folder on my NAS:
Size: 195 GB
Contains: 29,774 Files, 2,931 Folders
File structure: Artist\Album\song.mp3\ogg\whatever

My wife, who can't even type, has no problem navigating the file structure, finding what she wants and putting it on her phone/mp3 player.
If she can't find something cntrl-f is amazingly handy.

I've tried dozens of music management systems and none of them could beat just having things stored neatly and moving the files myself.
Of all those I've tried, iTunes was THE WORST.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dogtanian]

There isn't enough cocaine in the world to make me click on that link.

Then you'll never know what it *actually* was (^_^)

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[LynnwoodRooster]

I just toss all my music into the same folder on my Galaxy Note II. The stock media player seems to have no problem identifying albums, tracks, and artists (and allowing me to browse all of them). Why should I even sort stuff, given that computers are really good at doing that for me?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[dfghjk]

Run software only available on iOS, of which there is plenty. Duh.

I attempted to convert to Android recently and the app quality was pretty grim and the pervasive advertising disgraceful. Anyone who pretends this isn't the case has an agenda.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[LynnwoodRooster]

DLNA is your friend. Better yet, many mid-to-high end TVs natively support it - no need for a separate computer to interface to the TV.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[betterprimate]

Clicked. Damn you. Now there isn't enough drugs in the world to make me forget.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyYar]

Because it screws up the experience a little. Android _almost_ abstracts you from the filesystem, so you have no idea where files are being saved most of the time. Then, once in a great moon, you need to track something down and it just kind of... sucks.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyYar]

I'd much rather drag a video into iTunes than have to guess which random directory contains videos on a FAT32 drive that pops up on my desktop/My Computer. Yeah, I know you can point MX Player to any directory - but I also know it's a pain in the ass compared to just having everything automatically appear.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyYar]

It's not a computer - it's my toy phone thing.

The sync can be cancelled, by the way. That's your phone backing itself up so that if you lose it you can be right back where you started without much fuss. MP3s can be loaded on individually if you choose manual mode.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[mjwx]

And yet most Android manufacturers are taking a loss right now.

Your evidence of this is?

Acer and Asus are making money. Same with ZTE and Huawei. In fact only HTC is reporting a loss and this wasn't until the last quarter.

People keep saying Android is eating Apple's lunch, yet Apple had revenues

Because companies have never gone from massive to dead in just a few years. I mean RIM is still a massive powerhouse who would never need to look for a buyer to stave off bankruptcy, that'll never change.

All of Apple's money doesn't count if people stop buying their products.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Zalbik]

And I'd much rather just drag a video into the "Videos" directory on my android than:
- Attempt to run iTunes.
- Find out it's an outdated version (I though I patched it yesterday!)
- Wait for the upgrade
- Attempt to have it recognize my device. Restart iTunes until it works
- Find out the PC is not one of my 5 "authorized PC's"
- Attempt to deauthorize a previous PC
- Need to enter a password...oh, I'll just ask for password recovery
- "In what city was your mothers first cousin's stepfather born?" WTF?!?
- Find out I can't get a password reset without knowing the answer to my security questions, and I can't reset my security questions without talking to apple support
- Schedule a call from apple support....2 days away
- Wait 2 days
- Take the call. Admittedly, the support guy was fantastic. He called exactly on time, and was very helpful and specific on what I needed to do.
- Get my password reset
- Deauthorize other PC
- Re-authorize new PC
- Drag video
- Find out iTunes can convert the source video format to iPod.

Or on android I can also just:
- browse to the video on my network
- stream it from various free applications (xbmc, plex, etc)
- Use a variety of video/audio file management packages that work with android and allow me to drag directly to the desktop app (sound kinda similar to iTunes?)

It's about choice. On Android I have lots. On iOS, not so much.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Voyager529]

You have a folder named Music, you have subfolders named A, B, C, D, ...

How exactly does that not scale?

Because the way you say it, you can only have 26 folders.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

Apple and Samsung had a combined Profit Share of 104% last quarter.... They have this impossible seeming share because most (read: not all) competitors are either making very little profit by comparison or are taking losses. In the case of LG, HTC, and Motorola, some of Samsung's "major" Android competitors, they're all skating on thin ice or have been taking losses for some time.

There is a reason Apple stopped focusing on Android in general when it comes to their Patent Litigation, and the same goes for Samsung.... They're focusing on each other and not the rest of the Android community. If it were Apple vs. Android in terms of Profit Share (Market Share is worth nothing if your Profit Share is shit), then Apple is winning.... If it were Apple vs. Samsung.... Then the battle is very close, and it is hard to determine a clear victor... and as a consumer and a software dev, I don't want there to be a clear winner. Competition is a GOOD thing. When will you jack-holes get that through your heads? Seriously. Android is all the better now BECAUSE of Apple, and the reverse is also true (iOS is better because competing with Android has forced it to be).

The problem with RIM was that their entire business was tied up in Mobile Devices. They were the "King of the Market" (meaning they had no real competition and could basically decide the market's direction at will) for a LONG time. Then, as if overnight, they weren't and they didn't know how do deal with that. They made a lot of bad moves. Apple has yet to go anywhere near that path. They know they aren't the "King of the Market", though they might like to be. The same goes for Samsung and Google... They know Android isn't the "King of the Market", but they want it to be. This is a good thing, as it forces both groups to innovate new software and hardware features.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[wasteofspace77]

I'll bite, I searched for ios virus on Google and Bing. Same results. Nothing really current (something from the ios 4 days) other than the malware infecting charger. So if you have citations, I would love to see them.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[MightyYar]

Could you have come up with a more convoluted workflow? You wouldn't let iTunes upgrade unless you were in no particular hurry. Authorized PCs have nothing to do with an unencumbered video, and if your video did have DRM, it isn't going to play on your Android without some kind of similar authorization setup. You want real trouble with passwords? Lose your Google credentials. "Customer support" is... non-existent.

Most people who want to play arbitrary video on iOS would install something like VLC rather than use the built-in player, just like most people on Android would install something like MX Player rather than depend on the gimped built-in player. VLC lets you transfer files over WiFi. My phone is Android, and my tablet is Android. We have an iPod and a few old iPhones that the kids play with. All I can tell you is that the Apple stuff is cleaner, but way too expensive for a toy. I can justify that cost on their laptops, where I'll actually use it for something productive - but I can't be bothered with $600 toys.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[CountBrass]

"How is their only option"?!?!

*You* said it was and I quote from your post just a few inches up:

"It's the only decent, free and customizable mobile OS with a decent app library."

Short term memory loss?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dixie_Flatline]

Oooh, ouch. Nothing to find, so nothing to cite, hmm?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't understand what that would get me. My music is sorted into folders on my Mac, but I almost never interact with it that way. Why would I need to do that on my iPhone--the abstraction layer of an application that understands the music is much more powerful. I can search manually in a lot of ways, or I can type various bits of remembered data into the search field and get to it like that.

When implemented properly (and we could argue about whether or not Apple did it properly--it's a fair question), the file-system method provides nearly no benefit at all.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[metrix007]

Not at all. Decent is subjective. Obviously there are alternatives to android, i.e. other options. It just requires compromising quality.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Soporific]

Apple lost me on iTunes. Either through the constant sync or corruption of the device on an upgrade, etc. It seemed that nothing I did would make my iTunes MP3's organize properly even after manually editing the tags. And now my iPad v1 crashes Safari on a daily basis and the blame is "complex web pages". I'm still into the iPhone, because it has been rock stable for me but I'd get an android tablet in the future.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Uberbah]

Many people have loyalty to Android. It is for people who do care, as opposed to blindly follow fashions.

Riiiight. For you it's "loyalty", for them it's "blind fashion".

Stop drinking the Hatorade, and try checking out this newfangled concept called Self Awareness.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Uberbah]

Who'd you learn to troll from, David Brooks?

Kids want it because it does everything they want and it fits their budget. So do teens. College students. Fresh graduates. Family men.

Androids comparable to an iPhone 5 cost just as much as an iPhone 5. If you want to compare cheaper Androids to the latest iPhone, then you need to also need to remember than you can buy the older (but still freshly made) 4S or 4 for less money.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Uberbah]

My wife, who can't even type, has no problem navigating the file structure, finding what she wants and putting it on her phone/mp3 player.
If she can't find something cntrl-f is amazingly handy.

Does she also like twiddling her thumbs for hours on end waiting for each track to finish transferring before she selects the next one? Or does she just cue up tracks until the system bogs down from dozens of concurrent copies and comes back the next day to see if it's done?

As opposed to, you know, music manager software that can queue up as many tracks as you want for transfer and process them sequentially in automated, rapid succession....

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Uberbah]

do your own work. a simple google of IOS virus will show you its not flawless

Actually, it's your work to prove your assertions. If you disagree, I'll just casually assert that you like to sleep with your mom, and it will be your job to prove otherwise.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[sosume]

Samsung has an iTunes clone called KIES. Same level of crapware.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[teg]

That's the beauty of the Android system: you don't need a management tool, it just builds your library up from metadata in the tags on the device itself. Throw the files in there, use directories if you like or not if you prefer. As long as they are on there the music player app will sort them out for you.

Every music file you buy will be tagged correctly. Most ripping software auto-tags. It's a solved problem.

Unless your Android is the primary storage mechanism - where you keep all your audio files, and everywhere else is just copies - no, it isn't. Because you need to get a selection of it there.

Building a library based on metadata in tags is just what iTunes does - and fairly well, in my experience on a Mac. This allows me control what I listen to and transfer based on things like genre, certain attributes (orchestra, director, composer), artists, playlists etc much easier than a purely file system based system.

Don't get me wrong, building such a database on the device - and making it easier/possible for such apps on the computer to synchronize with the phone - is good. I'm just questioning the "it is so much better to manually manage my music on the file system and transfer what I want to listen to via drag and drop"-statement.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[teg]

"See that folder music? Put it in there" is an absolutely horrible way to deal with music

I completely disagree. You can put the songs of each album in a separate folder with the name of that album. It's really the only sane way to maintain a serious music collection. Its structure does not depend on any application except the file system itself. The location of each file is static, well known and searchable with standard file searching tools. And as a side benefit the structure of the collection is independent of the device as well.

iTunes does this - it is stored as "Artist/Album/discid-trackid track name" on the file system. However, the user interface exposes many attributes that are not visible when basing yourself on the filesystem as the interface: Genre, playlists, composer/director/artist, bpm and more. It also makes it easier to find tracks by individual artists on compilation albums.

Of course, the files are still independent on the device even if itunes are used on top...

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[beefoot]

The reason why people keep saying Android is eating Apple's lunch is because Apple's market share in mobile phone and tablet market are shrinking. You can look at its revenue year over year, it is growing. But comparing it to the overall market, it is declining. It it happens 1-2 quarters, it is not a problem. But if it happens quarter after quarter, we know that there is only one way Apple could go -- down. I read an article from bloomsberg a few weeks ago saying that the sales of iphone drops 40% in China. That could be people are waiting for the next iphone or it could also mean that people are moving away from iphone. We can't tell until we have 1-2 quarters of data after the next iphone is released.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[spiralx]

Which is absolutely horrible for any album with tracks by multiple artists.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

Market Share != Profit Share.... Hell Market Share doesn't even imply Profit Share. The two things are completely unrelated. Sometimes (maybe even most of the time) there is a correlation, but so far that has not held true in this particular market. Apple has never had more than 20% of the "PC" market and yet they're the most profitable (and in my mind, most successful) "PC" Manufacturer on the market (and I'm using "PC" in the Generic and not the Microsoft-specific form). They've proven you don't need to have 80%+ Market Share to be a success or a hit or wildly profitable. Android has proven the opposite in that having 80% market share doesn't mean it's a gigantic party for all involved.

Samsung makes money hand-over-fist by almost literally copying Apple. They focused on a handful of models that they update annually (the Galaxy S/Note/Tab lines), just like Apple has with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. They started an Ad campaign poking fun at Apple, just like Apple did with the Mac vs PC ads back in the day. Samsung owns most of their own supply chain to minimize production costs, while Apple relies on bulk purchases and promises of future business to drive down prices in their supply chain (they both also use Foxconn for some of their manufacturing).

Everyone else in the smartphone and tablet market is struggling. Some are making money, but its pennies by comparison to Apple or Samsung.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[beefoot]

Collapsing market share is a prelude to a collapsing profitability. Mind you Apple is no where near collapsing market share. I truly believe that they will continue milking for the years to come. However, we won't ever see the explosive increase in revenue that's for sure unless they jump in another market or create a entirely new market. They had done that in the past but I just don't know the current leadership has the vision and focus to accomplish that. Hint: blackberry market share was collapsing while they ring in billions of record profits. It didn't take long, did it?

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Jerslan]

You claim that Apple's market-share is nowhere near collapsing while at the same time comparing them to RIM making money while their market share was collapsing. This seems like a faulty comparison to me. You shouldn't need to see explosive increases in revenue. Those are unsustainable over the long-term. Look at the raw numbers behind the percentages. Apple has grown significantly in terms of # of customers since the days when they had nearly 50% of the Smartphone and Tablet markets.

Comparing Apple (a single company) to all of Android (many Manufacturers) is faulty to start with. A fairer comparison would be Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola vs LG vs HTC vs ....... Lumping them all together and then using that to judge the health of Apple is misleading and dishonest.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[beefoot]

I'm not comparing Apple vs Samsung vs LG vs anyone else because I'm commenting on Apple's future. I'm not comparing one company vs the other. In fact, I think the smart phone market is doomed for a big correction -- the phones will go to the same way PC went -- commodity. I use RIM as an example of what could happen next for Apple if they don't take care of their customers and stops innovating. When momentum tip the other way, it could go faster than anyone would expect. Would I buy apple stock now? Hell no. Would I short it? I will wait and see after the next few quarters. Have I shorted it before? Yes, I did. I got the timing right the first time and didn't on the second time. I'm refining my strategy though :-) Honestly Apple is so huge in size that it will have an impact on NASDAQ if it goes up or down. I'd like to see it makes as much money (for me -- through ETF), I won't cry too much either if it is not going to. Cheers.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[xerandin]

^This. I was hoping someone would mention this. High-end artists have played with recording/mixing and such on iPads, but if you actually try to use it for recording or mastering something you're taking to the market, you're probably an idiot. Only a true iSheep would choose an iPad over a dedicated desktop/microphone array/dedicated equipment for these purposes. The fact that iPad does that stuff decently is really only so that we non-pro/unsigned/small-time indie artists have another reason to buy a technologically inferior product. (And yes, iOS does some things well, but Android is so much more USABLE for anyone with even a modicum of technical understanding).

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[metrix007]

Most Apple people don't bother to evaluate alternatives, they simply stick to Apple. Which is also loyalty, it just happens to come form blindly following.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[yoshi_mon]

I agree that using a file tree to manage a large music, or whatever, library is not the best way. Unless you are super organized on your own and like manually putting whatever meta-data you like along with your music it is just more work than is needed.

But iTunes sucks. Why does it suck? I don't know enough about it but I know that every time I have had the displeasure of using it I thought to myself man this is a really bad program. (That's right, I called it a program not an "app".)

And while I don't know enough to say exactly why it sucks so bad I have a few theories. 1. It was designed to "look cool" like all the other, modern, Apple stuff. (I personally grew up with a //e so I like to qualify the fact that Apple was not always the walled-garden hipster cult that it is now.) 2. Because it was required to look cool that was given priority over good code. 3. It also was designed to SELL stuff.

So rather than being a great tool for organization, which it does, that was way way way down on the list.

Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch

[Uberbah]

Most Apple people don't bother to evaluate alternatives, they simply stick to Apple. Which is also loyalty, it just happens to come form blindly following.

Or they're just buying whatever it is that does what they want without bitching about other people buying what they want. Shocking concept, I know, but you could give it a try sometime. See also: growing up.

Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[psergiu]

Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

Bringing you such commercial successes as The Network Computer.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[melonman]

Exactly. (For younger readers, Ellison was all over the media 20 years ago announcing that Network Computers would be the nemesis of Microsoft in the very near future. I don't think waiting for the Chromebook was part of the game plan at the time.)

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[sunderland56]

I wonder what Larry Ellison thinks will happen to Oracle when he steps down?

His probable opinion: Oracle will tank without his brilliant leadership.

Most likely actual outcome: Oracle shares will skyrocket once the company is rid of his ego.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[taiwanjohn]

All true, but in this case Ellison may have stumbled upon the truth. If there's anyone at Apple with Jobs's level of creativity and tyranny, we haven't heard about him/her yet. At the moment, the current "iteration" of Jobs seems to be Elon Musk, and he doesn't work for Apple.

I'm sure that Apple, the company, will continue to exist for many years. (After all, AOL still exists.) But the competition is catching up, and Apple is about due for the Next Big Thing[tm].

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[Holi]

Yeah what a crazy idea, wait wasn't that a description of what "the cloud" is now, that and the chromebook.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[ConceptJunkie]

To me, Oracle has achieved the same level of user/customer hostility that Microsoft has, but without the smart people. Yes, they have a good enterprise database product if you are willing to pay for it and deal with it, but in my experience, everything that comes out of Oracle is like a throwback to the 1970s in terms of usability. I found it totally appropriate that they should have ended up with Java.

They'll blunder along like Microsoft continues to do, and they will provide a good litmus test for any future job I might consider (not that I'm looking): If the company deals with Oracle products, I'll stay away. I value my sanity.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[lister king of smeg]

I wonder what Larry Ellison thinks will happen to Oracle when he steps down?

His probable opinion: Oracle will tank without his brilliant leadership.

Most likely actual outcome: Oracle shares will skyrocket once the company is rid of his ego.

I doubt it stockholders love border line sociopath egotistical and charismatic leaders even if they are driving the company in the wrong direction, they love Balmer, they loved Jobs (he could effectively lead his company at least) and they love Elison. Balmer has so much fail that I don't think I even need to mention it, Jobs thought that 7 inch tablets were a bad idea and know one would want one turns out they are the best selling form factor he also orignaly was against native apps on iProducts only wanting web apps only relenting after jailbreaking started, Elison thought network pc were going to be the next big thing, and then there was the whole android law suite that was groundless. If he steps away without leaving a equally or greater sociopath in his place it will drop.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[MachineShedFred]

Terminal > Network Computer > Thin Client > Cloud Computing

It's all the same idea, and it has been for 40 years. The whole world shines shit and declares it gold.

Re:Yeah, Larry Ellison's advice ...

[colinrichardday]

The Carly Fiorina Effect?

I really hate when Ellison is right

[intermodal]

but even moreso, I hate to see all that innovation being justifiably attributed to one man. Steve Jobs wasn't the idea man. Steve Jobs was the man who let the ideas happen. The results came from having people who could innovate being bolstered by someone who could actually see it through to market from a corporate and marketing level.

It's like a guitarist who tries to sound like Brian May or a singer who wants to sound like Freddie Mercury. They might get all the notes right, but it will never be the same. I share Larry's doubts as to whether the company can survive without it.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[TWiTfan]

Nonsense, Steve had a lot of ideas. Screwing over his friends for money, parking in handicapped spaces because he was rich, ending Apple's charitable giving programs--all Steve ideas!

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[sycodon]

He was also the reality check for the ideas.

Just look at how iTunes has spun out of control since his death. The versions released since then are disasters, with common tasks now obscured or seemingly not available anymore.

Steve would have torn the whole team new assholes and then fired them for the POS that is iTunes today.

When the marketing weenies take charge, the company is doomed. All they know is a stupid check list of what's supposed to be cool and competitor's features.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[intermodal]

I'll be fair and preface this by saying I've never liked iTunes. However, I think what it is now is far, far worse than it ever was under Jobs.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[cellocgw]

It's like a guitarist who tries to sound like Brian May or a singer who wants to sound like Freddie Mercury. They might get all the notes right, but it will never be the same. I share Larry's doubts as to whether the company can survive without it.

Awww, c'mon now. You can buy a carbon-copy Deacy Amp online easily enough. Then all you need is the PhD in AstroPhysics.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[intermodal]

Yes, but without all those great ideas, the company is doomed!

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[ConceptJunkie]

I felt that way about iTunes many years before Jobs was gone. I'm sorry to hear it's gotten worse.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[intermodal]

Yes, but you'd be hard-pressed to get the hair right!

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[Sable Drakon]

The part about that that makes me laugh a little is the fact that Steve Jobs was a marketing weenie.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[gnasher719]

Just look at how iTunes has spun out of control since his death. The versions released since then are disasters, with common tasks now obscured or seemingly not available anymore.

Forstall is gone now. He was responsible for iTunes 11.0.0, which was rubbish. Since then four minor releases have appeared, and each was a definite improvement.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[intermodal]

Actually, I think the no-license-plate thing was a stroke of genius at this point. due to the license-plate-tracking databases now in effect, I'm anti-license plate.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[MachineShedFred]

I've been using iTunes since it was called SoundJam.

The bastardization of the product happened long before Steve's tumors started growing.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[rahvin112]

Steve was a sociopath, just like Larry and almost any other successful CEO.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[sycodon]

Not really...Marketing Weenies are the ones doing surveys, focus groups, product placement studies, etc. It's all mechanics.

I don't know what you would call the discipline that combines creativity, function, form, leadership, inspiration, etc.

Re:I really hate when Ellison is right

[Sable Drakon]

Who knows. But you can't deny that Jobs was just another douchebag in marketing. Jobs' marketing is how Apple got off the ground in the first place, his lack of it and Scully's case of ADHD sunk it. When Jobs' brand of marketing came back, the company blossomed. Steve started NeXT while he was ousted from Apple, and it died. Why? Because Jobs wasn't in marketing for NeXT. Steve Jobs is a salesman. A good salesman, could probably sell garbage to the homeless and turn a profit from it... Then again, he was heavily marketing iPhones and iPads to yuppies.. Not much of a difference.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[ZorinLynx]

It feels like Apple has lost direction since Jobs passed. For example, look at iOS 7: It's a mishmash of awkward design language, with inconsistencies and a flat, boring look that likely never would have been approved by Steve. All that lovely texture that iOS had is gone. People are already complaining about it and I'm sure there will be an even bigger uproar once it goes public. They took inspiration from MICROSOFT for crying out loud!

Look at the rumored (but very likely) "low cost iPhone". It's made of cheap plastic, which Apple had been trying to get away from for years with Jobs at the helm. Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.

He was a perfectionist, and while I didn't agree with all his decisions, his absolute refusal to compromise and insist that everything be exactly right is what led to Apple becoming what it is. I already see things going downhill and it's not going to be pretty moving forward.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[93 Escort Wagon]

For example, look at iOS 7: It's a mishmash of awkward design language, with inconsistencies and a flat, boring look that likely never would have been approved by Steve. All that lovely texture that iOS had is gone. People are already complaining about it and I'm sure there will be an even bigger uproar once it goes public.

People complaining loudly about how Apple's next version of iOS or OS X is going to suck is not exactly a new thing. I've been a Mac user since 2003, and I have been watching this theater since... 2003.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Karlt1]

Look at the rumored (but very likely) "low cost iPhone". It's made of cheap plastic, which Apple had been trying to get away from for years with Jobs at the helm. Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.

You're right if only the guy who led the design of the iPhone and the logistics guy who made sure the components were well sourced hadn't left Apple when SJ died.,,,,

Oh wait, the design guy is a VP and the logistics guy is the CEO, never mind.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[pr0nbot]

I've generally loved Apple's hardware design, but I've never been convinced they had beautiful, consistent UIs since the transition to OS X. For example, they went brushed metal for iTunes, for no apparent reason. This started long before Jobs croaked.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh I still remember OS X 10.1.1 and 10.1.2 and how they would crash literally all the freaking time.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[rilister]

I think people are quick to fit the evidence to the theory, although I agree that some of the iOs 7 design is surprising. Personally, I like surprising, but I'm curious to see how well it works in practice.

On the more general point, the back of the iPhone 3G was plastic. The original iPod is made of plastic (for, like, a decade). As is the MacBook. and the original iMac was too, which essentially defined Jobs/Ive's design first approach. Jobs never had a problem with a plastic, properly applied. He had a problem with screws, but that's another story.

He also blessed precisely this route to diversification, cannibalising the heck out of the iPod (very expensive, and a huge money maker at the time) with the Nano and the Shuffle to spread downmarket and dominate the market. Worked pretty well that time around. I think they have to compete with the cheaper devices - they learned the lessons of the 90's. Owning the upmarket is fine, but you'll get squeezed year by year and people catch up with your quality (think Windows). Pay the same attention to detail for a cheaper product and you can outflank the cheaper providers by applying your brand halo.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[tlambert]

People complaining loudly about how Apple's next version of iOS or OS X is going to suck is not exactly a new thing. I've been a Mac user since 2003, and I have been watching this theater since... 2003.

It actually sucking is kind of new...

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[loufoque]

I don't understand.
Why is a luxury brand making a cheap product? Are they purposely trying to tarnish their image?

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Kjella]

I think the stock price will take a real beating since everyone seems to assume Apple will come up with the next must-have iDevice with huge margins. But they're by no means unprofitable and will probably transition into yet another faceless megacorporation, it's not like Sony or Microsoft is "cool" but they still sell PlayStations and Xboxes. Yes, we know Apple currently wants to sell to people who can afford a $1000 Mac Air, $650 iPhone and $500 iPad (ok so there's a mini for "only" $330) but people also buy $500 laptops, $325 phones and $250 tablets. Who is not to say Apple could transition into more of a "middle to upper class" company like Audi and BMW instead of Ferrari and Lamborghini. While they might not make as much per sale, they can make up for it in volume if only Apple wants to bet on it.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[93 Escort Wagon]

They finally - finally - caught up with where every other OS was years ago and unfucked dual monitor support.

"Every other OS" even includes pre-Lion versions of OS X! :-D

That was indeed a gigantic cock-up on their part...

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Woogiemonger]

Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.

He was a perfectionist, and while I didn't agree with all his decisions, his absolute refusal to compromise and insist that everything be exactly right is what led to Apple becoming what it is. I already see things going downhill and it's not going to be pretty moving forward.

I agree that Jobs has been responsible for a lot of good things, but he was accepting of imperfect products. If you thought otherwise, then you are an example of Steve's most valuable talent. His cult-like brainwashing of consumers has largely kept the demands of shareholders at bay. Going to follow that attack up with quick example other than Antennagate:

Remember when Macbook Airs lost their backlit keyboard? ... surely they didn't think this was something users wanted. Not even the most versatile touch typers are going to avoid looking at the keyboard SOMEtimes, at the very least to adjust their screen brightness. They put it back in a later model, but that decision just reeked of taking a beautiful product and trimming down the expenses, counting on reputation to facilitate user acceptance.

Back when Dell first came out, they were churning out beautiful products. When you opened up a Dell machine, you saw high-end. Let's talk keyboard again. Dell sold a $100 keyboard that was quiet, with keys firmly held in place. The letters were nicely printed on each key, beneath a smooth surface. It was getting old, so I looked forward to my next Dell, with a new keyboard. The new Dell arrived, and the keyboard was priced $50. The keys were shaky and slightly noisier. You could feel the printed letters on each key. It seemed so cheap that I frantically called Dell, asking if I could buy the previous model. They no longer sold it, thinking users were okay with a cheaper product, since they now just bought Dell based on its high-quality reputation. I think this strategy worked, but their reputation for quality is long gone. Michael Dell buying back Dell makes complete sense, because the company needs a major overhaul that shareholders are unlikely to be accepting of. I see Apple, without the brainwashing icon that is Steve Jobs, falling slowly but surely down the same path.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Colonel Korn]

Jobs also fought against apps on the iPhone, initially recruited John Sculley, and pushed the Lisa. He's not perfect.

Another thing is that Apple historically has used a lot of plastic (ex. those jolly rancher iMacs, iPods, basically everything before the iPhone).

iOS7 looks fine to me although I would agree that some of the icons look silly.

He also fought viciously against the idea of a computer display ever being able to display more than one color and against arrow keys on keyboards.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[HornWumpus]

Bad car analogy.

At best Apple is Acura. Same as a Honda, costs more, nicer paint.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[teg]

Look at the rumored (but very likely) "low cost iPhone". It's made of cheap plastic, which Apple had been trying to get away from for years with Jobs at the helm. Steve would have likely insisted that they find a way to build the iPhone out of its current materials but less expensively, and I'm sure the engineers would have lived up to the challenge.

He was a perfectionist, and while I didn't agree with all his decisions, his absolute refusal to compromise and insist that everything be exactly right is what led to Apple becoming what it is. I already see things going downhill and it's not going to be pretty moving forward.

Complaining about the materials in an unannounced product that been rumoured for years, but never appeared - and is completely contrary to the Apple DNA ("we build premium products only, screw the rest of the market") - is a bit early.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the vision guy is dead. He was the ultimate decider. I suggest you read Jobs biography. You wouldn't make such asinine comments then.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[93 Escort Wagon]

My first real exposure was to 10.2.something - I'd contemplated the switch for a while, but held off because 10.0 and 10.1 were obviously works in progress. I thought 10.2 was decent, in any case.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[steelfood]

That may be. But for every idea Jobs approved of, I'm certain there are a ton of things that were flat out rejected. And Jobs had that attention to detail that is not so easy to come by, allowing him to polish the ideas that had potential. Not to mention that Apple's had their fair share of duds under Jobs, despite his brilliancce.

Whether Cook has the same ability to separate good ideas from bad ideas, to add finishing touches to ideas that are incomplete, has a vision for Apple's future, remains to be seen.

I'm not bearish about Cook, but there's certainly no information to make me bullish either.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm with him on the arrow keys thing.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Karlt1]

"Tim, what the hell are you doing? We do not trade with the enema!"

You mean the same Steve Jobs who came back and immediately made a deal with Microsoft and sold $250 million worth of stock to them?

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Dixie_Flatline]

Well, let's see what gets released before we judge it. From what I understand, the plastic is inexpensive compared to aluminum, but is still quite high quality (or at least used in a higher quality way). But that's all just hearsay at the moment.

iOS 7 isn't actually inconsistent, and I prefer the DIFFERENT sense of depth that it has. The depth is no longer in the icons, but in the layering of the UI. It's nice. I've been running the beta the whole time, and as of B4, I was at a point where iOS 6 on my iPad is feeling pretty clunky. Sure, that's an anecdote, but 'people are already complaining' is a) a tautology--someone is ALWAYS complaining; and b) meaningless. Which people? How many? Do they matter? Are they people that would complain anyway? Were they on the fence already? Who's 'people'?

Jobs was a perfectionist, but he had plenty of bad ideas. He's dead and it would be nice if he weren't, but in his famous Stanford commencement address, he goes out of his way to point out that this is how things go and it's GOOD. The revolution is in someone else's hands now. Maybe Apple won't see those great heights ever again, but maybe they will.

Steve Jobs was the only Steve Jobs, but Steve Jobs wasn't the only genius. Let's just see what happens.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Magius_AR]

I think the stock price will take a real beating since everyone seems to assume Apple will come up with the next must-have iDevice with huge margins.

Except that's not true. Current and future valuations of Apple (P/E and forward P/E) are both in the same range of 11-12, which is at or below the industry average. That means the market expects them to not grow at all in the next year. The stock price has already taken a huge beating -- that's why people are calling it oversold.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[painandgreed]

People complaining loudly about how Apple's next version of iOS or OS X is going to suck is not exactly a new thing. I've been a Mac user since 2003, and I have been watching this theater since... 2003.

Hell, I've been hearing it since Mac OS 7.5.

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[93 Escort Wagon]

If they'd move to Chrome OS, they could up that to every six weeks!

Re:Actually I wouldn't be surprised.

[Uberbah]

but he was accepting of imperfect products. If you thought otherwise, then you are an example of Steve's most valuable talent. His cult-like brainwashing

Translation: if you don't agree with me, you're crazy. And what are you going on about, "imperfect products"? If there is a company that makes "perfect products" year in and year out, why haven't they taken over the world? Where's Apple's billion-dollar boondoggles to match the Surface or the PlayStation 3?

Remember when Macbook Airs lost their backlit keyboard? ... surely they didn't think this was something users wanted. Not even the most versatile touch typers are going to avoid looking at the keyboard SOMEtimes, at the very least to adjust their screen brightness.

Oh, and here I thought Apple only held a gun to people's heads on user-replaceable batteries, but you're telling us they did that on keyboards as well? Or, could just grow up and buy whatever it is that does whatever you want.

Larry on the NSA Spying

[chill]

More to the point, Larry thinks the NSA program of collecting everything is "excellent" and "necessary".

Larry also is whining about Google adhering to the Sun Java license as it was written and intended. Larry would prefer they send him large amounts of money instead.

Larry can go to his private Hawaiian island fuck himself.

Re:Larry on the NSA Spying

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Just because he is an obnoxious (fit your adjective in here) does not mean he is wrong on this. As to your "More to the point", you are trying to obfusticate the message by vilifying the (insert same adjective here).

Re:Larry on the NSA Spying

[blue trane]

I think you mean noun, not adjective

Re:Larry on the NSA Spying

[fahrbot-bot]

Just because he is an obnoxious (fit your adjective in here) does not mean he is wrong on this. As to your "More to the point", you are trying to obfusticate the message by vilifying the (insert same adjective here).

I think you mean noun, not adjective.

I'm sure many, many people have thought about inserting something (noun or adjective) somewhere whenever Larry is around...

Re:Larry on the NSA Spying

[HexaByte]

More to the point, Larry thinks the NSA program of collecting everything is "excellent" and "necessary".

Of course! You can't do big data with out Oracle DB!

revisionists

[bloodhawk]

History revisionists love to gloss over all the Apple disaster products jobs also presided over. Jobs provided drive and some great marketing, he didn't design the products or come up with the technical brilliance to create them. Apple may indeed lack leadership without him but he is far from irreplaceable.

Re:revisionists

[MachineShedFred]

The thing is though, at least in the modern era of Apple, a lot of those disasters still provided great technical expertise they could recycle into hit products.

The Power Mac G4 Cube was widely panned as an expensive flop; but without the knowledge of how to shoehorn a energy-hungry G4 into that small enclosure without over-baking the whole mess we would have never had the PowerBook G4 that turned into the laptop that everyone emulates now, and Apple has iteratively improved into today's MacBook Pro. Or the Mac Mini, which only Lenovo comes close to replicating, and they have to use an external power brick.

Some products may be a flop, but the product itself isn't the only thing that is useful. The puck mouse from the original iMacs can die in a fire though. Absolutely nothing, other than hand cramps, came from that.

Jobs "brilliant"!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant as a salesman, yes. As a tweaker, and idea thief, yes,
As an inventor - "like Edison", an innovator?? HECK NO!!!
Jobs invented NOTHING, as far as technology.

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[TWiTfan]

Well, he invented the fictional Steve Jobs that hipsters thought was cool.

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[loufoque]

Too bad you don't know what innovation is.
Innovation is bringing ideas to market, which is exactly what he did.

No one claimed he ever invented those ideas.

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[Mister_Stoopid]

Actually I'd say the comparison of Jobs to Edison is pretty apt, if not for the reason Ellison intended. Both are famous as inventors and innovators, while in reality both were actually *much* better at marketing and business management, and left the actual invention/innovation to their employees.

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[steelfood]

Well, he inspired the fictional Steve Jobs that hipsters thought was cool.

FTFY.

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[HuguesT]

Interesting definition, I guess not quite what "innovation" meant when I was a wee lad. Then it only meant "a new idea".

Re:Jobs "brilliant"!?

[loufoque]

Innovation is the application of new solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulate needs, or existing market needs.

First sentence on Wikipedia.

What did Jobs create again?

[blue trane]

Besides a lot of tension and drama?

Edison = Jobs

[Major Ralph]

Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[Capt James McCarthy]

Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.

Is that you Mr. President?

Re:Edison = Jobs

[wiredlogic]

Jobs was a narcisistic asshole no doubt but he did have a knack for knowing what will sell without having to imitate.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[invid]

Edison saved us from the Martians!

Re:Edison = Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a fine difference between taking the credit and just be attributed with it. During his presentations about new products and features, it was always "we" that came up with it, not "I". And I don't think he meant that in the Royal sense.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[MightyYar]

The world needs dicks like Jobs and Edison. They get things done. Woz is definitely the more brilliant mind among the two, yet what grand mark did he leave us with after the Apple II? With Jobs you can point to the Mac (the first one and the reborn NeXT one), the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone (not to mention some really nice animated movies). You have to give him some credit towards legal, affordable, mainstream music downloads - eventually DRM free, no less. Sure, he was a colossal dick, and by all accounts a weird, picky, self-centered dude. But the man knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it. Things got done, and he changed several markets that he decided to enter into.

Edison is the same way. Yeah, he gambled and lost on DC power. Yeah, Tesla was by far the more brilliant man. But the world needs managers, too - and Edison was a master at managing large teams toward a goal... or at least he was far better at it than most other people at the time. The result? Tesla did a bunch of cool things, but his biggest contributions came when he was working for someone else. Edison, on the other hand, get's credited for a staggering number of inventions that his team cranked out - and which shaped the world of the time. Phonograph, carbon microphone, practical lightbulb, alkaline battery, and numerous electricity-related innovations...

I LIKE Woz better, and I think he's a better role model. Tesla is way cooler. But I'm glad Edison existed and I'm glad Jobs knew better than Xerox what the world would buy.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[vivek7006]

Couldn't agree more!

Re:Edison = Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything of Apple's was imitation. Their style imitated Braun and similar companies from decades before their time, their functionality imitated devices that failed several years earlier due to lack of marketing. Speaking of marketing, I'm sure that was imitating something, too. But it was certainly effective. Apple became popular because they knew how to make an accessible product and market it accordingly. That was their only "innovation."

Re:Edison = Jobs

[Tyler Durden]

Yeah, pretty much.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[bobstreo]

Woz was involved in a plane crash (which was in no way a hit by Jobs) which seems to have had some negative impact on his brain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak#Airplane_crash

Re:Edison = Jobs

[mozkill]

Edison was nothing compared to Tesla. Tesla invented the fricking remote control boat and the idea of the Television and "high frequency Electrotherapy", among many other things! Thomas edison may have created the light bulb but LED lights will render his invention useless after only about 115 years. The alkaline battery is another finite life invension. Teslas inventions will last forever, he was a much more forward thinker, not just looking for a shortcut.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[MightyYar]

Unfortunately, when you pick "freedom" you give up the ability to declare how others spend their money / heap their praise. Personally, I have a lot more respect for Tesla and Woz - something shared by most technically-inclined people IMHO. But the free market pays a good manager handsomely, and the free press celebrates people who make it big.

Re:Edison = Jobs

[MightyYar]

Yes, that is true - I'm unabashedly valuing Woz's attributes (nice guy, gifted engineer) over those of Jobs (dickhead, gifted manager).

Screw that

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs was never an Edison or a Picasso he was just a scruffy dirty bum who knew some stuff about computers to be hired at Atari in the early 70's and then later become even more of an asshole at Apple that most people didn't dare not be the "Yes man" or "Yes Woman" to incur his wrath. Jobs fired people on the spot along with screaming and Balmer at Microsoft just throws chairs while yelling DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS over and over again like some crazy chant!

Business 101

[DogDude]

That's Business 101: The company, large or small, that is dependent on a single person will usually fail when that person leaves. Whether or not Jobs built a company that will survive without him will be evident with time.

Re:Business 101

[ConceptJunkie]

Cults of personality rarely outlive the personality.

The key difference

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The main difference between Apple without Jobs the first time 'round and now is that The Apple Jobs left the first time wasn't shaped by him but by the people who ousted him. This Apple however has Jobs stamp all over it, it has the people he picked, he trusted and he trained. If you think Jobs was a genius, which Ellison does, then that has to count for something.

Re:The key difference

[SEE]

It doesn't matter. The Jobs-picked team doesn't have the Jobs aura.

That's the big problem. Apple did plenty of bombs under Jobs; the Cube, the early forms of Apple TV, et cetera. Before the iPod, Mac unit sales and Apple revenue had a surge-and-retreat structure under Jobs. But Jobs has the clout to prevent any board revolts that might have stampeded Apple into a stupid direction.

Tim Cook doesn't have that. Every failed product (and if you're trying new things, some will fail), every temporary ebb, every drop in stock price is a reason for the board to second-guess Cook, forcing him to make compromises with the clueless.

It means it doesn't matter how good Tim Cook is, or the rest of his team. They're no longer sheltered from Wall Street Stupid the way Jobs sheltered them.

Re:The key difference

[nickscalise]

This.

Jobs goal later in his life was not to build great products, but to build a great company.

He knew he was dying and wanted to create a lasting legacy.

What lasts longer, a shiny product or a top notch company that knows how to create more shiny products?

Re:The key difference

[steelfood]

You can be a genius at one thing, and fail spectacularly at something else. And I'm not talking about Jobs, but about the people he picked to work on their piece of the puzzle.

Re:The key difference

[SEE]

Just because you can't follow an argument does not mean the argument is rooted in bias.

There is a fundamental difference between chatter on the Street from analysts nobody with actual money ever listens to, and board members who own large blocksof stock pressuring the CEO in board and personal meetings. The first is meaningless. The second forces the CEO to compromise or lose his job.

There are always, on every board of directors that ever existed, going to be people on the board (in Apples' case, pretty much all representatives of Wall Street investment firms) who have stupid ideas. In order for a company to excel, these idiots need to be neutralized. At Apple, this was done by Jobs's reputation, first as the company savior, later as a genius who made a lot of money inventing product categories.

Tim Cook does not have the reputation of Jobs. This wouldn't be a problem if he was a major shareholder whose personal friends controlled the company. But he isn't. He's a hired hand of the Board, and they know it. They will tell him to do what they want, and these will often be stupid things. Jobs could make them back off by threatening to quit; Cook has a lot less heft behind such a threat. He will have to compromise with them to a greater degree than Jobs, or get replaced by someone who will.

Which means the Wall Street investment drones on/influencing the board will start having their ideas implemented by Apple. Which will make Apple more like any other consumer electronics/tech company, no matter who picked the management team.

The empirical question is exactly how powerful and how stupid these board members are. If Apple is lucky, they will be relatively weak and relatively smart, for investment firm drones. In that case, Apple will only be hurt a little. If they are powerful and extremely stupid, Apple is going to become the next HP.

Re:The key difference

[Uberbah]

Apple did plenty of bombs under Jobs; the Cube, the early forms of Apple TV, et cetera.

How are profitable products "bombs"? Lone Ranger was a bomb. Surface was a bomb. The Apple TV has made made a tidy profit (though small next to IOS) and the Cube was discontinued after a lack of consumer interest. But where are the Apple products that have cost the company the odd two or eight hundred million dollars?

Not a compelling argument

[kruach aum]

it sounds kind of hand wave-y to me.

"...he finished, and his hand fell."

[skaralic]

At Tanagra.
Wow, that is as dramatic of a story summary as I have ever seen on Slashdot. Made me tingle all over...

Re:"...he finished, and his hand fell."

[BrianSoCal]

Mod this up for the Star Trek reference - LOL!

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[cod3r_]

Apple hates java maybe?

A shocking statement

[digitalderbs]

No one would argue that Steve Jobs made important contributions to modern computing. However, it's hardly surprising that a CEO, such as Ellison, would have an inflated perception of the importance of one individual (i.e. the CEO) to the success of a company. If he didn't believe that, then it would be hard to justify the millions he pays himself every year.

Re:A shocking statement

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nobody says, "One Rich ANGEL Called Larry Ellison".

Re:A shocking statement

[LodCrappo]

"No one would argue that Steve Jobs made important contributions to modern computing"

I certainly wouldn't, though I think you meant the opposite? Lots of people do seem think that S. Jobs made some sort of contribution to computing, although I've never heard a convincing reason why.

Re:A shocking statement

[david_thornley]

User interface design. Jobs had a sense of what people wanted, a sense of what's possible, and was enough of an asshole to make people more technically talented implement his vision. The Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad had no capabilities other, comparable, things lacked, but they were far easier to use than the MS-DOS machines/MP3 players/smart phones/Windows tablets that preceded them. His ideas were copied and adapted from. MS Windows would not be what it is without Jobs.

The fact that many /.ers don't care about user interface doesn't mean that most of the general public doesn't.

Larry Ellison - World's biggest d-bag

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Larry cares about his legacy. Gates is going to be known as a philanthropist. Jobs a tech leader and innovator. Everyone is going to remember Ellison as a rich douche that raced yachts. For a little while at least. Then they'll forget him.

Re: Larry Ellison - World's biggest d-bag

[PingSpike]

As a yacht salesmen I must respectfully disagree.

Re: Larry Ellison - World's biggest d-bag

[colinrichardday]

What about this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[93 Escort Wagon]

Apple hates java maybe?

Apple can get in line behind the rest of us.

ya gotta love a guy...

[quonsar]

...who can clearly explain such complex issue.

Jobs' most important legacy

[sootman]

He showed that people WILL pay for well-designed, well-made things, even at a premium. Now that he has shown it can be done, it should be pretty easy for Apple to continue down that path. Think about it: there was nothing revolutionary about any of their recent hits: the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. They were just extremely well-made examples of each respective line. Some innovations were added, sure, but the main thing is Apple actually GAVE A SHIT about how well they worked for the user. All the innovations they added were in pursuit of making things BETTER, not just "more".

Re:Jobs' most important legacy

[blackest_k]

So how does the iPad mini fit into this?
Think your right Apple didn't go for making a crappier but cheaper iPhone for example even though it is technically possible, it generally seems to have been policy to only make better products, not cheaper ones

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[jaymz666]

Oracle hates java...

Obligatory

[aitikin]

Apple is dead, long live Apple.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Anonymous Coward]

If only a bear would eat Ellison, but unfortunately bears have too good a taste to eat sacks of shit.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[poetmatt]

Wha?

Apple loves Oracle, they even work with them (and MS) to try to crush google.

so umm, no.

The Myth of the Irreplaceable CEO

[MarkvW]

CEO's get paid obscene amounts of money. It's reasonable to expect them to justify such a lavish outlay by telling the public how "unique," "indispensable," and "valuable they are.
News at 11.

Re:The Myth of the Irreplaceable CEO

[gnasher719]

CEO's get paid obscene amounts of money. It's reasonable to expect them to justify such a lavish outlay by telling the public how "unique," "indispensable," and "valuable they are. News at 11.

Jobs got one dollar per year. He said "50 cent for showing up, and 50 cent for doing a good job".

Re:The Myth of the Irreplaceable CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs got one dollar per year. He said "50 cent for showing up, and 50 cent for doing a good job".

CEOs don't take salary, silly. Salaries are taxable.

Shameless hubris and crocodile tears

[Bearhouse]

For sure Dirty Larry would have fired Jobs even faster than Scully did.
Having said that, the road ahead for Apple looks rocky, with strong competition in the phone and tablet markets.
But they have plenty of cash, and smart people. Let's see what they will come up with next.
Hopefully it will be more innovative than just another screen size...

So, put Jobs body ...

[PPH]

... on a horse in front of the troops.

Come on Larry.

[Holi]

Larry when you learn not to cheat in the AC45 class maybe just maybe will listen to you.

Oracle Admits to cheating

Edison v. Jobs

[dreamstateseven]

Thomas Edison wasn't a creator as much as was a repackager of other people's ideas and whose litigious nature stalled progress in any number of areas. So I suppose Ellison's comparison of him to Steve Jobs is incredibly apropos.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[Ralph Wiggam]

Clearly you don't work with databases. They are the 900 pound gorilla of that market.

Yes, because comparisons with 1993 are so relevant

[sandbagger]

Apple, and the computing industry, was different in 1993. Apple wasn't making smartphones and iPods; Microsoft could kill small companies merely by issuing a press release implying that the features being developed by these small companies would be included in a new version of Windows NT ... 'soon'; Google didn't exist, on-line digital media didn't exist apart from binary groups on a certain use-able net that we're not allowed to mention.

Time for this fellow to update his examples.

Not sure that's guaranteed...

[ErichTheRed]

One of the issues with all the "media marketplaces" like iTunes, Google Play and yes, the MS Store, is that they're not going to disappear anytime soon. I'm not sure how many people are going to abandon an entire app platform once they've sunk a lot of money into it. Before the smartphone era, changing phone carriers meant that you would have to rebuy a few ringtones and other carrier specific stuff, but an Apple to Android or reverse switch means you have to rebuy a lot more. I've specifically avoided buying tons and tons of apps on any platform for that simple reason...it becomes much more expensive to switch later on. So even if the music is sort of DRM-free, either inertia or a very large collection of purchased software is going to keep a lot of people on one platform or another for a while. Since Apple charges premiums for new hardware to access this stuff, they're in good shape for a while.

With the new online store model, the store owner is guaranteed a very good chance of long term survival even if their market share drops over time. Microsoft and Adobe are taking it one step further and introducing stuff like Office 365 and Creative Cloud. Previously only large businesses signed month-to-month rental agreements with software companies, and now consumers are being dragged in as well. Guaranteed revenue stream vs. one-time perpetual license.

Yeah, and *BSD is dying.

[eggstasy]

Netcraft confirmed. Also, 2014 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.

Re:Yeah, and *BSD is dying.

[geek]

BSD isn't dying, it's dead.We've been waiting for the funeral for several years.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

So why hasn't Microsoft collapsed? (and for people saying it has....yeh uhm ok).

Microsoft aren't ever going to be the company that rolled out Windows XP and was threatened with anti-trust around the world ever again. Someone else, perhaps Google will end up in that boat, but Microsoft have their own future to sort out now that they are a follower, again.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

Wait, how is Apple a competitor to Oracle?

Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison both liked boats, big stinkin' boats.

Sounds legit...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Because Ellison is so credible.

Yea....

[jameshofo]

Because publicly traded companies breed and promote people who stay within the box, and apply the model that the investors, accountants, and whoever else are OK with. Bureaucracy and politics are self perpetuating cycles that assimilate good ideas to meet their wold view.

you forgot Topsy

[Thud457]

At least Jobs electrocuted fewer animals to death.
Other than that, the comparison fits.

Nobody believes Larry Ellison

[sl4shd0rk]

"...wealth isn't the same thing as intelligence." -Larry Ellison

I don't "do" Apple but hearing Larry Ellison postulate about the future is laughable. The guy got all his money through vendor lock-in and insane licensing models. If he was that bright, he'd be more innovative.

Re:Nobody believes Larry Ellison

[Uberbah]

The guy got all his money through vendor lock-in and insane licensing models. If he was that bright, he'd be more innovative.

That's what's so insufferable about so many of the rich: the notion that luck or being in the right place at the right time had anything to do with their fortunes is a foreign concept to them. If Ellison was all that he would have gotten Sun turned around and reclaiming server marketshare, not just piss money away on boats.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[mrclisdue]

Apple stands behind no one. It would cast a shadow on the shiny.

Because Oracle...

[BeCre8iv]

...Is the poster child for corporate success.

It's sad, but I agree.

[azav]

Here's why.

Disclosure: I've been using the Mac as my preferred platform wince 1985.

The recent releases of the Mac OS (post Snow Leopard) have been weird and much less useful. Everything is animated, you can't turn the animations off and often, you are forced to wait for the animations to finish.

This causes the UI to get in the way of productivity.

Many times the animations are distracting. Small, darty animations distract many and make them uneasy, since these are the same motions of a mouse or roach. These reactions are felt way before the human mind has a thought formed on what they have seen. It's a more innate reaction. The more you use the system, the more uncomfortable you get with it. And you can't turn them off.

Also, there has been this push to push UI metaphors from iOS on to the desktop. THIS IS TERRIBLE. On my 17" Macbook, in Lion, my scroll bars became the width of a quarter. How is this better than the previous OS? It isn't. Also, auto termination of apps, where the app isn't really auto terminated, but just the UI is? All to save 5 MB of RAM? I don't know about you, but I actually use my File: Open menu to open docs and when I can't tab to an app because it quit behind my back without my permission, I hate this.

iOS 7. OMG. Where to start? Simply by looking at the publicly released images, the design inspires "weak and feeble", with overly saturated (painful) colors against too much white. The functional gears Settings icon of the past has been replaced with a weak looking non functional design that can't work. It doesn't do anything. It's not connected to anything. It's thin and weak.

On this front, the initial releases looked terrible and were panned by many. Even the creator of the font that they used (Helvetica Neue) stated so. One terrible thing is that many elements that were buttons or tappable, used to have a button treatment that made the UI instantly more understandable since a button LOOKED like a button. Now, text is simply blue. Unless it's in another application and then it might be purple, or yellow. This is bad. This is a step back. This forces the user to guess more as to what is a clickable/tappable element and makes the elements harder to see. This isn't helping make an easier to use UI.

Sandboxing. This is the WRONG way to do security. I don't know what the right way is, but this is a royal PITA.

Devices. Gluing the contents to the case? So you can't even update your own machine? Even with the 2011 models, it's not rosy. Simply to replace the keyboard on my 17" MacBook will cost me 500 dollars. 500 damn dollars on a two year old Machine. Sweet mother of suck.

iTunes 11 shipped with a really easy to find data loss bug that cost me 6000 archived podcasts.

There may be some great engineering going on under the hood, but all I've seen coming out of Apple since Snow Leopard have been substandard OS releases that are slower than Snow Leopard, with questionable features that do not make the Mac easier to use. Even the look of the new software is not what it once was. Look at iTunes 11 (fugly) vs. iTunes 10 (crisp).

And no more 17" MBP? Look. We're all getting older and cramming more pixels into a smaller space isn't going to make the screen easier to read.

Airdrop? Who cares! Give me a FAST UI that doesn't burn my eyeballs off.

I'm really upset with the direction Apple's taking. Snow Leopard was the last release that I could use to get work done and from the publicly released photos of iOS 7, I'm sadly counting my days as a Mac user.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actaully, cramming more pixels into a smaller display DOES make it easier to read, that's the whole point.

The difference was a huge jump in density was needed so that system-wide ui scaling was feasible while still looking crisp.

With the density on the new retina MacBook Pro's, this is very evident... You run at "scaled" resolutions of 1440x900 or 1920x1200 etc, and the result is a much much much crisper looking display then a native 1440x900 or 1920x1200 display.

Now having moved to one of these displays myself, it actually hurts my eyes to go back to any other screen... It's amazing how much easier on your eyes it is by simply cramming more pixels into the same size display.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[ameline]

I have to agree with the parent poster in every respect (another 17" macbook pro user here)

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[NJRoadfan]

Funny Apple would kill the 17" MBP... its a category of laptops they invented! Meanwhile, many people are sticking with Snow Leopard on their old machines for more reasons than the fact that it still has PPC app support.... it just works.... kinda like Windows XP.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[RR]

I call shenanigans.

The recent releases of the Mac OS (post Snow Leopard) have been weird and much less useful. Everything is animated, you can't turn the animations off and often, you are forced to wait for the animations to finish.

I think that's all releases of MacOS X.

Also, there has been this push to push UI metaphors from iOS on to the desktop. THIS IS TERRIBLE. On my 17" Macbook, in Lion, my scroll bars became the width of a quarter.

I don't know what quarters are like where you come from, but my peeve with Lion is that the scroll bars have become only slightly wider than the letter "I." And if you're on a "touch" device, like a MacBook Pro or an iMac with a Magic Trackpad, then the scroll bars disappear entirely. This was especially annoying when I was diagnosing somebody's Mail.app, looking at error messages and then accidentally discovered: Hey! There are more error messages. The scroll bar was just invisible!

Also, auto termination of apps, where the app isn't really auto terminated, but just the UI is? All to save 5 MB of RAM?

Yeah, this is bad. Maybe there is a way to turn it off. I'm not being facetious; I actually want to see if it works.

Sandboxing. This is the WRONG way to do security. I don't know what the right way is, but this is a royal PITA.

To me, sandboxing sounds like a great idea. It's defense in depth. The trick is seeing if they can execute it well.

Look at iTunes 11 (fugly) vs. iTunes 10 (crisp).

I think all iTunes releases have been ugly and bloated.

And no more 17" MBP? Look. We're all getting older and cramming more pixels into a smaller space isn't going to make the screen easier to read.

We're not all getting older. You're getting older, and a new generation is growing up around you. Besides, have you seen a Retina MacBook Pro? That's how I want all laptops in the future to be.

I guess the 17" MBP was a casualty of product line simplification. Apple can't source enough 17" 3840x2400 screens to make it affordable for them, and they didn't want a high-end 17" laptop with a lower resolution than the high-end 15" laptop.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[Savage-Rabbit]

Also, there has been this push to push UI metaphors from iOS on to the desktop. THIS IS TERRIBLE. On my 17" Macbook, in Lion, my scroll bars became the width of a quarter.

Who actually uses the mouse to click a scrollbar when you can simply put to fingers on the trackpad and slide, or use a mouse scroller?

I don't know about you, but I actually use my File: Open menu to open docs

I use spotlight to open docs and apps.

... and when I can't tab to an app because it quit behind my back without my permission, I hate this.

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

iOS 7. OMG. Where to start? Simply by looking at the publicly released images, the design inspires "weak and feeble", with overly saturated (painful) colors against too much white. The functional gears Settings icon of the past has been replaced with a weak looking non functional design that can't work. It doesn't do anything. It's not connected to anything. It's thin and weak.

On this front, the initial releases looked terrible and were panned by many. Even the creator of the font that they used (Helvetica Neue) stated so. One terrible thing is that many elements that were buttons or tappable, used to have a button treatment that made the UI instantly more understandable since a button LOOKED like a button. Now, text is simply blue. Unless it's in another application and then it might be purple, or yellow. This is bad. This is a step back. This forces the user to guess more as to what is a clickable/tappable element and makes the elements harder to see. This isn't helping make an easier to use UI.

Can't help you there, I don't really care much about how things look, I am generally more concerned with how they work...

Gluing the contents to the case? So you can't even update your own machine? Even with the 2011 models, it's not rosy. Simply to replace the keyboard on my 17" MacBook will cost me 500 dollars. 500 damn dollars on a two year old Machine. Sweet mother of suck.

If you want super compact laptops you will have to put up with compromises. If you want super upgradable laptops buy one of those clunky plastic Dell laptops they use in corporate machine pools. Just don't expect compactness and stylish design (you seem to care more about looks than functionality). You are correct in pointing out that MacBooks are hard to disassemble but you get that to various degrees with most other laptops too and the more compact something is the less user upgradable it tends to be. Not that the MacBooks are a complete loss, they are upgradable up to a point. You can for example upgrade the SSD, I have done that myself. That brings me to another point. What are you doing posting on a forum for nerds if you are scared to crack open your laptop swap out the keyboard yourself?

iTunes 11 shipped with a really easy to find data loss bug that cost me 6000 archived podcasts.

iTunes is crap, always has been. Try this:

1) Buy a Samsung phone.
2) Try using Samsung Kies for a couple of months.
3) Realise that there is actually something that sucks way worse than iTunes.

There may be some great engineering going on under the hood, but all I've seen coming out of Apple since Snow Leopard have been substandard OS releases that are slower than Snow Leopard, with questionable features that do not make the Mac easier to use. Even the look of the new software is not what it once was. Look at iTunes 11 (fugly) vs. iTunes 10 (crisp).

And no more 17" MBP? Look. We're all getting older and cramming more pixels into a smaller space isn't going to make the screen easier to read.

Airdrop? Who cares! Give me a FAST UI that doesn't burn my eyeballs off.

I'm really upset with the direction Apple's taking. Snow Leopard was the last release that

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[longk]

Which animations can't you turn off? I think I have them all turned off, at least all the noticeable ones.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[konohitowa]

He's talking about a quarter on edge, not across the front.

Re:It's sad, but I agree.

[konohitowa]

Who actually uses the mouse to click a scrollbar when you can simply put to fingers on the trackpad and slide, or use a mouse scroller?

People that need to scroll hundreds of pages at once.

Too much credit and too much blame

[sjbe]

Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.

CEOs like NFL quarterbacks always get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they go badly. It's the nature of the position. Jobs didn't usually take personal credit for much of what happened while he was in charge. His speeches seldom revolved around his own contributions. Rather he got credit for it from outsiders whether he deserved it or not. Apple has a LOT of very talented people working there and while Steve Jobs clearly was a very effective CEO, he could not possibly have been responsible for everything that happened. Business is a team sport and even if you have a standout player they can't do it all on their own.

You tell 'em, Larry!

[macbeth66]

Ha!

What a blowhard. A tool. A shameless self-promoter.

Oh, and so right about Apple.

God, I almost choked on that. Larry being right? About anything?

Re:You tell 'em, Larry!

[bearinboots]

Indeed his argument is full of logical fallacy. It could just as well be said that "We saw Apple under Sculley, and we saw Apple without Sculley". Jobs was a visionary; will Apple be different without him? Almost certainly. But that's a far cry from "doomed".

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[amorsen]

Steve Jobs's love for boats did not, as far as I know, kill anyone.

Apple *is* dying

[msobkow]

Apple is dying, but not because Steve Jobs left the helm. It's because of greed and poorly designed devices.

As a recent example, my friend's iPad battery recently went belly up. She *loves* her iPad. But they want $289 to replace the battery, so she bought a $700 touch-screen all-in-one computer from Sony and is pleased as punch.

How can you expect to retain market share when replacing a freaking BATTERY costs half the price of a device?

And how many *entire* Android devices can be had for $300?

Re:Apple *is* dying

[Princeofcups]

As a recent example, my friend's iPad battery recently went belly up. She *loves* her iPad. But they want $289 to replace the battery, so she bought a $700 touch-screen all-in-one computer from Sony and is pleased as punch.

Fascinating, but you may want to check your facts. Oh sorry, Apple haters rarely do.

----------
Out-of-Warranty Service
If you own an iPad that is ineligible for warranty service but is eligible for Out-of-Warranty (OOW) Service, Apple will replace your iPad with an iPad that is new or equivalent to new in both performance and reliability for the Out-of-Warranty Service fee listed below.

iPad model Out-of-Warranty Service Fee
iPad mini $219
iPad 3rd, 4th generation $299
iPad 2, iPad $249
--------

That's a replacement iPad, not replacement battery, for $219-$299.
Although the replacement battery is $99 plus labor, that's still not exactly cheap.

Re:Apple *is* dying

[msobkow]

This is in Canada. And my friend was just quoted $289 last week.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but facts are facts.

Re:Apple *is* dying

[steelfood]

How can you expect to retain market share when replacing a freaking BATTERY costs half the price of a device?

Jobs was able to do exactly that. It's part of what made him a genius.

Re:Apple *is* dying

[Zalbik]

Or are you calling my friend a liar?

Wow, overreact much? Not very Canadian of you :-)

I also live in Canada & I just went through this for my son's iPod....

Here is Apple's battery replacement policy from the Canadian portion of their website:
http://www.apple.com/ca/batteries/replacements.html
It indicates $99 + $10.77 shipping

However, the Canadian battery service site here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=Canada&product=ipad
(Click Battery Replacement on the left, then "How much does iPad Battery Replacement Service cost?")
indicates $109 + $10.77 shipping, so it looks like prices are in flux a bit right now.

I am not calling your friend a liar, I am saying she is mistaken. She should be able to replace the battery for at most $120, and sell the iPad on Kijiji for a profit....

Hope the above helps!

Re:Apple *is* dying

[Uberbah]

Or are you calling my friend a liar?

You're either liars or incompetent boobs.

Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[runeghost]

Oracle man, Oracle man

Oracle man hates Java man
They have a fight, Oracle wins
Oracle man

Re:Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[OakDragon]

And that's why they only found a few of Java Man's bones, under the earth.

Re:Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[xevioso]

The triangle fight was better.

Re:Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[Immerial]

Is he a platform? Is he an app?
When there's a 0-day, does he get patched?
Or does the DB get hacked instead?
Nobody knows, Oracle Man.

Re:Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[cayenne8]

Why did Constantinople get the works?

That's nobody's business but the turks....

Re:Now I have TMBG stuck in my head

[corando]

Just awesome, thank you for that. Although, I feel like Java is treated more like person man around here ;)

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[crashcy]

You fail horribly at reply direction.

Ellison & Jobs

[jonyen]

Don't know why people are bashing on Larry Ellison so much. Larry Ellison & Steve Jobs were close friends (Steve was even the photographer at Larry Ellison's wedding). So of course Ellison knows what he's talking about when he says that Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs.

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[sunsurfandsand]

I can't think of any Oracle product that competes with Apple.

Oracle 12 and MySQL 5 compete with Apple's Filemaker.

Apple is dieing

[plopez]

Larry Ellison confirms it.

Doomed

[rossdee]

We are all doomed.
In a billion years or so the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our galaxy.
A few billion after that the sun will run out of Hydrogen and Helium and turn into a red giant.
Theres also a risk of a major meteor impact wiping out 90% of all life on this planet.
And global warming etc.

We Can Learn From This

[SnappyTech]

Larry's comment parallels those that rant that Microsoft is doomed because Apple will eat its lunch. Or those that laugh at Apple and Microsoft saying they are both doomed because cheap Android devices will be their end. Those are extreme comments. Apple, Google, and Microsoft will both continue making record profits that will just increase. For a company, profit is the only true measure of success. They're all adapting. I think the only true change that has come about is that now coders like myself have to be knowledgeable of cross-platform methods so they can hit all the markets, both present and future. Peace out.

I can't see ether failing.

[nbritton]

Honestly I can't see ether one failing. Oracle has corned the enterprise market, while Apple has corned the consumer market. Both of them are so large at this point that they can limp along like Microsoft ad infinitum. They will out live me, I know that much.

Re:A watch?

[jakimfett]

...ok, I'll bite. I bought my android phone because it has a physical keyboard, a better processor, the same amount of RAM, and the same amount of storage as an iphone, while being cheaper and giving me more control over the software than Apple does.

Does this make me a "fandroid"? Dunno, you tell me. All I care about is that my mobile device needs are met. Apple can't do that for me.

curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[swschrad]

resentment over the sky-high support fees, snaky sales pitches, bait-and-switch product lineup, and failure to patch Java holes has never been (climbs on ladder, out window, up fire escape, stands on chimney, raises hand) higher...

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Are you talking about Oracle or Apple?

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[Tharkkun]

resentment over the sky-high support fees, snaky sales pitches, bait-and-switch product lineup, and failure to patch Java holes has never been (climbs on ladder, out window, up fire escape, stands on chimney, raises hand) higher...

You mean Sun Microsystems Java that Oracle inherited? I wouldn't be surprised if these holes existed for years but were only exposed when it was in people's interest to bad mouth Oracle.

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[oreiasecaman]

both!

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[msmonroe]

Yeah Ellison is a piece of work. Even a broken clock is right twice a day! Oracle is a good product but really overpriced.

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[hot soldering iron]

Yes.

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[BadPirate]

Are you talking about Oracle or Apple?

1. "sky-high support fees" -- 9 straight wins in JD Powers customer satisfaction surveys, free support
2. "snaky sales pitches" -- Apple doesn't hard sell? Not really appropriate.
3. "bait-and-switch" -- Bought iPhone... got iPhone? (?)
4. "Failure to patch Java Holes" -- Well, they have stopped including Java with OSX because of the security holes, so I guess that counts as "Patching"

Re:curious, as Oracle has its challenges growing

[StewBaby2005]

Here's a good one. We had to write a sudo rule to allow a SUN/Oracle identity management tool to read the /etc/group file. what's up with that?

Not like Thomas Edison

[Tmann72]

I'm starting to get tired of this Thomas Edison comparison that I read from time to time. Thomas Edison's inventions inventions fundamentally changed the human condition. Specifically the light bulb. Suddenly the entire human race can get a lot done inside larger indoor spaces and at night where previously limited lighting prevented many activities. The iPhone did not in anyway change the human condition on these scales. Combined with Edison's other inventions Jobs looks even less important. He made a few good devices using existing technology. He did not reinvent the light bulb.

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[geek]

and at night where previously limited lighting prevented many activities.

My iPhone has a brightness setting. At max I can light up a bedroom and get "work" done.

J/K of course.

But honestly, people aren't comparing the level of their achievements, they are comparing their personalities and legacy. You could make a case for the iPhone being at this level however. While the iPhones features weren't unique they were the first time they all came together in a single device. With the iPhone you had the entire internet at your finger tips anywhere you went. This is like have the worlds greatest library with you at all times. This can not be understated as an achievement at the level of having light in your room at all times. In addition to that the built in GPS gave everyone the ability to know where they are get where they are going using nothing more than a device they would normally have in their pocket anyway.

Like I said, it's not that Apple invented all that tech, they just put it altogether in a way that it was useful and the world has changed as a result. It's a big deal. It would have happened eventually anyway just as Edisons achievements would have, but since Jobs and Edison got their first, they get the credit.

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[Anonymous Coward]

Edison didn't invent the light bulb, but he did improve it.

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1330.htm

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[Beorytis]

Yes: lightbulb. Also: Phonograph (or proto-iPod if you prefer)!

The comparison to Apple in the summary also breaks down when you consider the fact that some of the companies started by Thom Edison are still in existence in some form (GE, various Edison power companies, etc.) Not a good example for "lose the visionary and the company will fail."

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Thomas Edison's inventions inventions fundamentally changed the human condition.

You might want to read up on the history of Edison's "inventions" some time. The Jobs-Edison comparison is actually very apt.

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[LodCrappo]

Totally agree that putting GPS and the internet into a phone is pretty great. However... the iPhone wasn't the first device to do this, not even close to the first device that did this. I had multiple Windows Mobile devices, a Nokia, and an HP/Compaq device that *all* did all those things long before the iPhone was released, as in years before. Hell, the original iPhone didn't even have apps, yet I was installing my own programs on my WinMobile phone long before the iPhone came out.

You can argue that the devices prior to the year the iPhone came out kind of sucked at doing all those things, and I would absolutely agree. But they did exist and they did perform all of the functions the iPhone could and more. To give Jobs so much credit for simply improving on those things some seems pretty wrong (and most of the improvement attributed to the iPhone was actually made possible due to *other companies* improvements in technologies like mobile CPUs and batteries that occurred that same year, which is the real reason why "after the iPhone came out everybody made similar phones").

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[baKanale]

I think it's an apt comparison. They were both jerks, they both got more credit than they deserved for things they didn't actually create, and they were both obsessed with destroying a competing product in a far-too-personal manner.

Re:Not like Thomas Edison

[timere969]

He absolutely reinvented the light bulb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Woodward_(inventor) The only invention of note that he actually did himself was the phonograph, which admittedly had its' own impact. Edison took existing inventions from a staff , like Nikola Tesla, who worked under him and commercialized them. He was a good, even visionary, business man, like Jobs, not an amazing inventor like George Washington Carver or Nikola Tesla.

Re:Yes, because comparisons with 1993 are so relev

[itsdapead]

Apple, and the computing industry, was different in 1993.

Yes - back then, Apple's once industry-defining proprietary platform was facing mounting competition from multiple vendors selling a wide diversity of hardware but sharing a common, de-facto industry standard, operating system licensed from a near-monopolist.

Whereas now...

now THAT is damn funny

[swschrad]

mod up to 11

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[nine-times]

And Apples massively successful database server is ...?

Filemaker...?

I mean, they're still not direct competitors, but that's the answer to your question.

Fickle Karma

[ThatsNotPudding]

Whilst Jobs may have been a Class M asshole, Larry Ellison is the largest red giant asshole in the universe. That he hasn't been 'pancreased' by now, proves Karma can be sadly capricious.

Apple is about Fashion, and that's never doomed...

[Qbertino]

Apple is about fashion. iPhones are still selling like hot cakes, and people don't give a damn wether some Android device is more powerful. iStuff is hip, looks flashy, has a ton of accessories available and never will stop being hip, cool and well designed. It's like the Zippo Lighter or the Vespa Scooter.

To detail the Vespa example and why it comes to my mind: I just went looking at Scooters these days - Piaggios Vespa sells at least 700 Euros more expensive than the rest of the lot ... and that's with bargain deals. There are Scooters of simular quality from the far east, yet at my dealer of choice, of all 50ccm Scooters on display 25% of them were Vespas. Not Piaggio, but the actuall Vespa, in all colors and variants. They even got a new luxury model that sells for 7500$(!!), the Vespa 946. A friggin' 50ccm Scooter for 7500+$!!

And I tell you what: if I had the money, I'd probably buy one. You know why? I don't want to think about Scooters. I want mine to look cool and timeless and be fun to ride. Most people are like that when it comes to Smartphones and computing devices - I'm not, but then again, I'm an expert. With Scooters I'm not. I'm like "Oh, this one looks cool, rides nice and also comes in black & chrome and real metal. And you can get flashy jackets and gear with the same logo. I'm sold." There was a mechanical engineer there today with her 9 year old son. She didn't even look at the quality Taiwan models. It had to be a brown metallic touring Vespa with original Vespa topcase, 3500 Euros vs. 2000 Euros be damned. And I bet she has an iPhone for the same reason. It's like Levis vs. cheapo, Coka Cola vs. no-name Coke. People by the "original", no matter the price.

No, Apple isn't doomed by a long shot.

Apple has turned owning an iDevice into a fashion statement - an advantage that Oracle, MS and quite a few other companies would kill for. Unless Apple really screws up and breaks their *very* sophisticated product development pipeline - which I don't see happening - Apple will to just fine. Especially with gross margins still well north of 30%. Margins and mindshare even Oracle probably can only dream of, btw.

My 2 cents.

A study on self serving

[avandesande]

I am sure Larry promotes data capture of any sort, as it very likely stored with one of his products. And buying into the cult of the 'Super CEO'? Most likely a wink to his own narcissism....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[ogdenk]

BS. Filemaker is more of a competitor to MS Access.

Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL also all run fine on OSX.

Apple has no dog in that fight. Filemaker is NOT going to do well as a massive enterprise database and has never claimed to be able to.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[smooth wombat]

Zero-point-six-eight seconds, sir. For an android, that is nearly an eternity.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[bberens]

It's not just the database, the offer an entire suite of business products on top of it for things like inventory management, HR, accounts billable/payable, etc.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[bmimatt]

Java hates everyone, but is loved in India.

After buying iPad, how do you afford a PC?

[tepples]

There is a lot to be said for well executed tables for content consumption (different than those for productivity).

"Content consumption" sounds like someone who's happy to have tuberculosis.

But seriously, the problem with an iPad as a viewer for works created by others is that it's so expensive. People will buy an iPad (or give an iPad as a gift) and not have enough money to buy a device for creating. Eventually, someone (likely a child) will end up with an access to only an iPad and no easy access to a more versatile device to do the things that need it.

Re:After buying iPad, how do you afford a PC?

[mmcxii]

The vast majority of the world doesn't care about "a device for creating." In your case this is saying "coding" but you felt the need to skirt the term for an unknown reason.

Most people who "create" content with their computers aren't coding with them. They're working on writings, videos, photos and music. Tablets are doing this today. This will continue to be the case.

even if it weren't true? Yes, the vast majority of those who own tablets today are very happy simply consuming content.

Re:After buying iPad, how do you afford a PC?

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Your points make sense, but a consumer device is a consumer device, and it does not need to apologize for it. Just like the VCR, DVD players, and Palm Pilot in their respective heydays. As for the price point, a decent computer for creating content is one-fourth of the price it was when I was a kid, and dropping.

Re:After buying iPad, how do you afford a PC?

[tepples]

The vast majority of the world doesn't care about "a device for creating." In your case this is saying "coding"

More general than that. I was referring to what the author of the Post-PC FAQ calls "work", or focused activity. This can include homework or anything else that's not compatible with the all-maximized-all-the-time window management paradigm of iOS or stock Android.

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[bberens]

*whoosh*

Steve Jobs didn't make Apple cool or compelling...

[FellowConspirator]

... Johnny Ive and the rest of the folks working for him did. Jobs did three things: he specifically insisted on being a premium brand and quality to justify it, he hired people that could execute on that, and as the voice of the company he sold the brand and it's products very well.

The same people are there and I don't suspect that they are being asked to do much different. I think that a lower-cost iPhone is not a bad idea -- BUT, it better adhere to the overall quality mantra and still be a premium device in the price-point or that will be deleterious to Apple.

However, Tim Cook, bright as he may be, seems utterly dispassionate about Apple and Apple products. When he gives a keynote address, it's as though he's selling the proverbial widget; he doesn't communicate that he's devoted to the product or that he is earnestly striving towards some grand vision. When Cook talks, you know he's there to sell you widgets - no vision, no excitement, just a product that he feigns a vague interest in so that he can sell them. Cook needs to be replaced - if not as CEO, then as the public face of Apple.

Apple's got a pretty nice tech stack going for it. There's a lot of possibilities there, and while the future of Apple is still in play, it's on pretty good footing. What it really needs to do, though, is pick up the pace on development of it's products. Jobs had a habit of making sure that there was always something new to keep the press coming back to report on the latest and greatest from Cupertino. Whether intentionally or not, Cook is not following that pattern. Jobs would rather suffice for a small but important upgrade than wait unknown periods of time for a show-stopper, and he'd always have product lined up to go when it was announced (again, Cook is behaving more like HP/Dell/Microsoft/Sony in not keeping with that tradition).

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

Steve Jobs's love for boats did not, as far as I know, kill anyone.

He didn't get a chance to take it into the SF Bay, it was finished after he was.

Wow, Larry's full of it today.

[jcr]

What we saw before was Apple being run by Sculley, Spindler and Amelio, none of whom can hold a candle to Tim Cook. What Apple has today is an executive team who were pretty much all hand-picked by Steve. Sculley was Steve's great recruitment screw-up, and he was far more careful after that.

-jcr

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[danceswithtrees]

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

Truncated header sounds a bit kinky. But I won't judge.

I'm not a huge Apple fan but I miss Jobs

[JoeyRox]

I feel a puzzling sense of loss without him walking the planet and coming up with new and better ideas. The tech industry is staid and boring without him.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

Nothing was mentioned about Bill Gates being as key to the structure and operation of Microsoft as Steve Jobs seemed to be in Apple. Just because they are both prominent founders of similar companies does not mean, in any way, that the occupy the same role or function in each company, both having completely different cultures and structures.

Bill never saw the internet coming. If he hadn't dropped out of college he might have got into telnet, gopher or archie servers and seen some potential. That he saw Java as a major threat to Microsoft says something about how myopic he could be. Ellison must have enjoyed quite a few laughs will watching Bill and Steve Ballmer thrash around at Microsoft. Is it any wonder Oracle haven't come out with a video game console, such as an O-Box?

In other news, water is wet

[bjoswald]

Since Jobs' death, they've been riding on the coattails of his work. Once his ideas run out, they'll be done-for. Unless Woz can pull magic out of his pocket and take over the reigns at Apple, that is.

Re:In other news, water is wet

[Miamicanes]

> Unless Woz can pull magic out of his pocket and take over the reigns at Apple, that is.

They'd never, EVER let Woz be in charge, if only because his first signature product would be an iPad with an unlockable bootloader that can be jailbroken using iTunes & triple-boot IOS, Android, and Ubuntu.

His second major product launch would be the iPhone Max, with 6" display, microSD, real camera button, and 6,000mAH battery. Also bootloader-unlockable, able to be jailbroken from within iTunes, and easily capable of triple-booting IOS, Android, and Ubuntu.

He'd launch into his keynote speech at Apple's annual conference and show a cool app he found on Cydia.

A few minutes later, he'd show off the new MaxMac Pro... a Mac with the form factor of an airline-acceptable ~5" thick 22" carry-on suitcase with 2560x1600 display flanked by a pair of displays that fold over it like the shutters over a window, the fastest i7 Intel has available, and a buckling-spring keyboard with both Trackpoint and touchpad.

Then... Jonathan Ive wakes up, bed soaked with sweat, screaming "No! NO! NOOOOOOO!" ...

Four use cases, expressed without brand names

[tepples]

Without using brand names, please tell me what you can do (e.g., use cases) with an iOS device that you can't do with an Android device of equal or lessor price?

Play iOS-exclusive video games. Buy music by bands who have chosen to release on the iOS music store but not the two major Android music stores. Get free 2-day shipping with a year's subscription to a video streaming service that's compatible with a phone. Use Bluetooth input devices without them breaking after a system software update. I'd give citations, but you told me no brand names.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[BarC0d3z]

If only a bear would eat Ellison, but unfortunately bears have too good a taste to eat sacks of shit.

Damn! I wish I had a mod point. Made me spit out my soda.

Credit to the current leadership

[gwstuff]

I generally sympathize with predictions of gloom for Apple's long-term outlook. But they are based on changes in the market that Apple has been unsuccessful in adapting to. And to some extent, this difficulty started when Jobs was still around. Specifically: - Android eating into their market share on Tablets and handhelds - Changing business models. Less and less people are buying paid apps, making advertising the main source of revenue for app developers. Admob (Google) controls 90% of the market. What this boils down to is that Google gets a significant cut of revenue on the Apple App Store. This fraction is increasing and Apple's attempts at competing in the space (iAd) have failed dramatically. Having admitted a negative outlook, it is impressive to see that the current leadership is trying to define their own vision, rather than trying to guess "what Steve would have done." Making iOS 7 non-skeumorphic, i.e., not using physical analogies in the user interface was a complete departure from Jobs' vision of a "beautiful, immersive user interface that you already know how to use." Apple's leadership is trying to redefine Apple as a company and trying to evolve its ideas to the world today. I disagree with some of the comments that the iOS 7 UI sucks. The home screen is kind of ugly when you look at the 80's style icons, but I've been using it for a few months I significantly prefer it to the old interface. You have to use it for a while to feel the difference. When you look at a 3d beveled button with a shadow, you subject your brain to a lot more information than you do when you look at a simple rounded rectangle. Your brain has to exert itself just a tiny little bit more. It's hard to explain because it happens at the subconscious level. This bit of saving adds up over time, making the interface easier and more pleasant to use. The decision to ditch arguably one of the iPhone's biggest assets - its skeumorphic interface - and start from scratch must have taken a humongous amount of courage, especially for a company Apple's size. With the way things are headed (Android, Ads, competition from Amazon, Google) it's clear that they cannot do without this kind of courage and determination. I wonder, though, if it would have been possible at all under Steve's reign....

Re:A watch?

[teg]

...ok, I'll bite. I bought my android phone because it has a physical keyboard, a better processor, the same amount of RAM, and the same amount of storage as an iphone, while being cheaper and giving me more control over the software than Apple does. Does this make me a "fandroid"? Dunno, you tell me. All I care about is that my mobile device needs are met. Apple can't do that for me.

Comparing memory and CPU of an Android phone with an Apple phone makes little sense - from the reviews I read, phones with similar or equal specs to Apple's then top of the line often run sluggishly. Android needs more memory to run. Personally, I think being able to use Java and using more memory is a trade off well worth taking - but it means you don't compare oranges to oranges in this area.

Android's great strength is it's flexibility - you want a phone that's way too big to be practical? Check. Got a small, nice one that fits in your pocket? Check. Got a rugged, water tight phone? Check. Want a really cheap phone that's basically a feature phone? Check. Apple has decided on what is the best form factor - and I'm inclined to agree that it's the best single one. But Android has that, and every other base covered....

And now the brand names

[tepples]

To make it easier for users other than xxxJonBoyxxx to verify my assertions, I'll state the brand names in this post:

An example of an iOS-exclusive game is Tiny Wings. An example of a song on iTunes but not Amazon MP3 or Google Play Music is "Bück dich" by Rammstein. The video streaming service that offers free shipping is Amazon Prime; it's compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Kindle Fire, but not Android phones or other Android tablets. The Bluetooth devices that broke after an upgrade are the Wii Remote, which stopped working in 4.2, and the ZAGGkeys Flex keyboard, which stopped working in 4.3.

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[tysonedwards]

To say that Oracle 12 or MySQL 5 compete with FileMaker is to say that a laser guided cruise missile competes with a termite.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[MiniMike]

later, a bear eats fish and takes a dump in the woods. Story at 10

What kind of bear? What kind of fish? How was the fish caught? How big was the dump and what are the coords (for geocachers)? 10 PM or AM? Which timezone?

Come on manz, this is Slashdot and we expect details!

Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[goombah99]

Sheesh, people try to measure apple in dollars or think of it as a bauhaus design center of shiny curved minimalist objects just don't understand what the vision always has been. Once you understand what Job's vision was, you can then decide if apple has it still or not. I'm undecided because on fiscal year of change is not the way to measure this.

When I think about the Jobs trajectory from apple through Next to the iphone I used to see it as a story about early adoption of technologies that let software replace hardware. e.g. the apple had refreshing of dynamic memory backsided on the video, and soft sectored disks, and replacing of parallel ports and UARTs with software system.

But when the iphone came out I finally realized that his vision was really fulfilling the Eberharts vision of the future in the mother of all demos. He was the translator of high concept computer science into consumer products. The iphone was the first truly practical ubiquitous reconfigurable hardware widget. It instantly transformed itself from one single purpose specialized appliance to another at the press of a single button. Each concrete form was single purpose and specialize not some do-it all device making it easy to on the user.

I think that is what jobs was shooting for all along. He always wanted to change the world and while we might have seen each brilliant little improvement as changing things (e.g early adoption of Postscript and WIMP interfaces) the real change that's never going to go away is this universal pocket device. He gave us something that even star trek didn't have. But when you watch Eberharts video you realize he was grasping in his crude way at simple universal interfaces to.

So I think Jobs actually completed the primary aspect of his journey.

Where would he have gone next with it? I think there's three things left to complete. First, Eberhart also enuniciated the cloud future of colloborative remote interaction on data sets that could be represent themselves in different ways depending on what viewing device each user was applying. (early model view controller, but for concrete devices). So number one is the iphone's becoming the physical manifestation that connects the clouds to points in the environment. It's going that way already as iphones control our cars and become networked games and video phones. Jobs just would have come up with some magical version of that which would delighted and surprised us with its simplicity. Perhaps that's where siri was going. The other thing that's not done more coupling between the cloud and the device. You shouldn't have to care where the computation is happening. And the third is enrichment of the devices ability to sense and interact.

All of those but the last one are obvious and thus incremental now. What does it mean for devices to interact? In the time of eberhart computer scientist thought that machines would learn to reason and thus learn to communicate on their own. So machines would be able to make requests to each other that exceeded some pre-defined "API". You would be able to communicate with them to, more along the lines of stating what you wanted and less along the lines of stating how to achieve it. That's the one thing there doesn't seem to be any progress in.

So where should apple go now? Well fulfilling the cloud dream of ubiquitous sensing and computing occuring transparently to enable handheld devices to become super powered tools has a long road ahead. Perhaps its a pre-requisite to the next step of interaction based on goals not defining process.

THe one thing I'm on the fence on is the current counter reaction against Jobs skewmorphic interfaces. I'm of the opinion that these contain powerful intuition and tap subconscious mental models we don't appreciate. I'd like to see machines adapt to our biases not try to make us like their natural interfaces.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[goombah99]

I think it's fair to say that when we look at eberharts mother of all demos now we see it's brilliance only because we can now appreciate it. In other words we see eberhart as brilliant mainly because steve jobs wrought the lens that lats us see it for what it was. Jobs reduction of computer science to consumer devices was his brilliance.

If you never saw the Mother of all Demos then you have missed the most important thing in your computer science education.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY : Engelbart

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[AmiMoJo]

Thing is Jobs didn't invent stuff. He took what was available and polished it. When the iPhone came out there were other smartphones that did everything it did, just not with Apple's slick interface and marketing behind them. Cameras, apps, touch interfaces, slide to unlock, whatever you can think of. So Jobs was a genius, just not at inventing stuff.

At this point speculation about Apple's future is pointless. The iPhone 5s is due soon and that will be when we can figure out where Apple is going. Since Jobs died Apple hasn't had any really impressive announcements, nothing really new and exciting. In fact the biggest announcement was Apple Maps, and that didn't turn out so well for them. They have to come back with the 5s, because the iPhone 5 is looking pretty old and low end these days. If they don't then even the hipster crowd will move on I think.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[jodosh]

Just a fun link between your primary idea and your statement:

Jobs just would have come up with some magical version of that which would delighted and surprised us with its simplicity. Perhaps that's where siri was going.

Apple purchased siri from SRI International, which is who Eberhart worked for.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

"the cloud dream of ubiquitous sensing and computing" - - seriously?

They make shit. I use the vulgar, derogatory term because in no way does your life really depend on anything they make.

They want - need - you to buy their shit. So they can make money. Money money money money money money money! That's what it's all about! Simon says! Because they're a publicly traded company.

And that's it. No pie in the cloudy sky dreams fulfilled, unless that's part of their marketing shpiel designed for the sole purpose of making more money.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[azav]

> Eberharts vision of the future
> Eberharts video

You mean, "Eberhart's vision of the future" and "Eberhart's video"

        Eberharts = more than one Eberhart

Let's not forget that the apostrophe makes those words possessive. If you leave it out, they are just plural.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[azav]

Jobs simply took the skeuomorphic interfaces a little too far. It's not a bad concept, but he pushed it to the bad area.

We need a sense of realism so we can relate to the item, but you can take the concept too far so that it's gratuitous and ends up taking away from the overall design.

That's what happened with the leather stitching and leather.

On the other hand, when the pendulum swings way too far the other way and then off on a diagonal, you have this ugly beast that is iOS 7.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Glock27]

Since Jobs died Apple hasn't had any really impressive announcements, nothing really new and exciting.

That's actually not true, the new Mac Pro is a pretty bold move in the workstation space.

It shows one trademark of Apple, taking some getting used to before deciding if it's a good idea. I'm actually excited about it and look forward to getting my hands on one. It certainly shows a good deal of design brilliance and intent.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Flamerule]

Needless to say, Goombah99, it's troubling that you've replied to your own comment, and that they've both been modded up, when you've repeatedly referred to Douglas Engelbart as "Eberhart". Additionally....

In other words we see eberhart as brilliant mainly because steve jobs wrought the lens that lats us see it for what it was. Jobs reduction of computer science to consumer devices was his brilliance.

This is overwrought, to put it mildly. What do Jobs' consumer products have to do w/ the technology demonstrated by Engelbart? That is, "computer [mice] as well as of video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor."

I'll agree that the original Mac popularized the mouse, and possibly WYSIWYG word processing, but none of the other topics owe their popularity to (for example) the iPod, iPhone, etc.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Anonymous Coward]

At least get the guys fucking name right: Doug Engelbart. Sheesh.....

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[AmiMoJo]

Eh... The Mac Pro is an interesting form factor but not all that interesting otherwise. Cheap upgrades are a major issue. I don't think you can claim that it has seen anything like the level of buzz we saw with previous iPhone announcements.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Glock27]

Cheap upgrades are a major issue.

Not really, Thunderbolt offers a ton of expansion at nominal expense. The RAM will also be user-upgradable. Third parties will undoubtedly offer SSD upgrades.

The two items that will probably involve Apple to upgrade are the processor and GPUs, but most folk don't upgrade those over the life of a typical system.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[smash]

Interesting point regarding MVC for hardware. I agree, hence the different interfaces for different devices. Microsoft don't get it. Windows UI everywhere - i.e., the view is not abstracted properly.

Re: Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[madprof]

You are the funniest troll seen today. You win the internet, albeit briefly.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Zontar The Mindless]

I used to think of myself as a Grammar Nazi, but these days I'm jusr grateful to make it through an entire thread without hitting at least one "must of". When we see /. users with 16-digit IDs, you'll likely feel the same.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[CountBrass]

"... I'm jusr grateful..."

Hand in your badge and gun, old timer.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[CountBrass]

I heard you're idea's and their definately good.

Re: Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[jodosh]

In what way was I trolling? It is a fact that Doug Engelbart worked for SRI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#SRI_and_the_Augmentation_Research_Center ) and that Siri was originally created by SRI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software) ) I don't necessarily agree with the original comment, but it was interesting to see his connection between Jobs and 2 things that came from SRI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International ).

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[IndieVoter]

Sometimes difficult to believe for Slashdot readers, but Computer Science or any other science is static until someone figures out how to actually build a business around it. Lots of snarky Apple haters out there, but it doesn't matter. The company continues to turn out innovative products that people want. Reminds me of a consumer trade show, where a Phillips 'marketing' person was answering complaints regarding a Smart remote control product they was trying to sell. "My mother may buy this" I said. How would she make it work with her off-brand TV? "Well, you would need to install a piece of code we have. Just tell her to fire up Visual Basic.....". That conversation pretty much sums up the entire consumer electronics problem before Apple.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Maury Markowitz]

> Thing is Jobs didn't invent stuff. He took what was available and polished it.

Not polished, put together. Like when you put a gas engine on a carriage and now you have a car. The sum is greater than the parts.

This is the definition of invention. If you don't believe that, go watch Connections. The original series.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[jbolden]

When the iPhone came out there were other smartphones that did everything it did,

Not quite. When the iPhone came out there were other smartphones that in the aggregate did everything it did. That's a very very different statement.

a) fluid web interactions
b) capacitive touchscreen
c) animations used in interface

was a unique combination.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[multimediavt]

First of all, awesome write up. Some odd syntactical-grammatical things in it, but wow. You missed the Knowledge Navigator concept from 1986. That is where the iDevice landscape--I believe--is heading. Now, some other things have happened along the way that will change the Big Picture of that concept (cloud computing being one of them), but I still see that as a driving force behind the iDevices and Siri.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[multimediavt]

Thing is Jobs didn't invent stuff.

Seriously?!?! contrary to some popular opinion, the man was a prolific inventor. A quick USPTO search will cure that notion.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[smash]

The thing is that many here don't seem to accept (maybe it's a nerd thing) - polish is not everything, but for mass adoption it is incredibily important. And not just by luddites, old codgers like me (36) have an increasingly low tolerance for un-necessary bullshit as we grow older and become increasinly time-poor (and possibly/hopefully financially richer).

No one cared about smart phones and tablets before the iPolish, because they were either awkward to use or otherwise flawed and annoying to deal with.

The average person doesn't care about hardware spec, they care about the end result: what can i do with the hardware and how much does it piss me off to use. If the phone is responsive, smooth, does what I want, etc with lower end hardware, I don't actually care what the internal hardware spec of the device is. It's not my problem and doesn't affect me.

Conversely, I don't care if the phone has 128 cores and a terabyte of memory - if it pisses me off to use or doesn't work well it's kinda irrelevant to me. The hardware spec might be "cool", but that doesn't help me make use of it.

Re:Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[Zontar The Mindless]

In this era of teeny touchscreen keyboards, the occasional typo is inevitable. I try to overlook such things, and expect others to do likewise.

People who insist on writing grammatical horrors such as "You should of been more careful" or "Obvious typos are obvious to you and I" are not making typos, Grasshopper.

Re: Jobs vision was Eberharts vision

[font9a]

Not to mention the greatest piece of magic he ever wrought: bending the carriers to his will. Apple continues to do this better than anyone.

Somebody should check....

[Dcnjoe60]

Somebody should check whether or not he short sold Apple stock prior to the interview. Not a bad strategy, sell stock at today's price, bad mouth Apple, predict the end is near, when the price falls, purchase the shares to settle the sales. Works great, unless you get caught, that is.

Seriously, though, of course Apple is doomed. Every company that is at the top is dislodged eventually. In the tech world, at one time it was IBM, then they were doomed, then it was Microsoft, then they were dislodged. Then Apple seized the crown and eventually they will be dislodged, too. Whether that is today or down the road, only time will tell, but it is inevitable.

What is important is what you do after you are dislodged. People forget that back in the late 70s and early 80s Apple was at the top of the heap and was knocked off of it. They had the education market locked up. It wasn't IBM and the PC that dislodged them, it was Microsoft and Windows. Now whether it was because Jobs had left or because of Microsoft making a number of key alliances with business partners, people can argue all day long.

The important thing is that Apple, like many before them, was knocked off the top of the heap, and reinvented themself with a new product line and a new OS and a bunch of new consumer goods that just worked. When Apple switched to OS X, the pundits all cried out what a terrible mistake it was. They were wrong. Just like Larry Ellison is wrong. Apple isn't doomed. They are destined to be replaced as the number one tech company, nobody can hold that position indefinitely. But, as their shareholders laugh all the way to the bank, not being number one is a far cry from being doomed.

Then again, maybe we should listen to Mr. Ellison, he seems to have first hand experience on how to run a company that was top in its field straight into the ground.

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[MiniMike]

Just leaked yesterday- next month Oracle will be releasing the innovative, new, and definitely not copies of any previous products, called the oPod, oPhone, and oPad.

Their primary innovative feature will be rounded corners.

The Wheel iIs Still Spinning

[rssrss]

Apple is a human organization run by humans. It is subject to the same laws that all things human are subject to. One of those laws is the wheel of fortune. Sometimes fortune smiles on you and you will be up. Later fortune will frown on you, and you will be down. But the wheel is always spinning.

âoeA prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. Youâ(TM)ll ask me why. Itâ(TM)s because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.â

Nikos Kazantzakis "The Last Temptation of Christ"

George C. Scott as Patton: "For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

Google adhering to the Sun Java license?

[Medievalist]

Larry also is whining about Google adhering to the Sun Java license as it was written and intended

Sun licensing was always intended to prevent a free Java implementation on a mobile phone.

Dalvik is Google's free Java implementation for mobile phones, is it not?

So Google might've complied with the terms as written (the US courts seem to think so) but they certainly took an end run around Sun's intentions.

All that being said, the sooner people stop wasting their money on Oracle products the better.

Ah Edison Comparisons

[yoshi_mon]

If I ever were to be mentioned in the same breath as Edison I would likely be rather upset.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD0Q5FeF_wU

It's too soon to tell

[alispguru]

1998 - iMac
1999 - iBook
2001 - iPod
2005 - iPod shuffle/mini/nano
2007 - iPhone
2008 - MacBook Air
2010 - iPad

When Apple releases a category killer, typically it takes a year or two before it is recognized as such (the iPad is the exception above), then they turn the crank and improve it year over year, making serious money for a decade or so total.

Note that they only have to do that about every three to four years - note the 2001 - 2005 gap (which could be extended to 2007 if you lump all the iPods together).

We should worry if Apple hasn't had a New Shiny Thing by, say, 2015, giving them some slack due to Steve's departure.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Hatta]

Microsoft aren't ever going to be the company that rolled out Windows XP and was threatened with anti-trust around the world ever again

Right, because they learned their lesson and grease the right palms now. You can violate anti-trust all you want if you pay the right bribes.

No so much mission failure as mission loss.

[bknack]

On the one hand, Ellison saying this sort of thing is completely consistent. So... not news.

On the other hand...
I think he may be right. Apple's mapping app. Need I say more?

Jobs may have been a been a dick, but with him Apple had a mission. Now, it seems like any other company. Dedicated to $$$ above all else and run by 'managers'.

Almost did once before...

[aklinux]

Microsoft bailed it out in fear of Linux. I don't think Microsoft is in a position to do this again. Not at the moment anyway.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Anubis IV]

Competitor? Nah. Ellison and Jobs were actually close friends, based on comments both of them made over the years. If anything, this is a case of one person thinking that their friend's life work simply can't exist without the friend. And, despite being an Apple fanboy, I have to admit that he's likely right.

I'm not with the doom-and-gloom naysayers thinking it'll happen immediately, but I do think that, as many other companies before them (e.g. Sony), Apple has had its day and will generally be going down from here (whether they've already peaked or are nearing it, I don't know, since they're expected to have some big announcements this autumn), and it's only a question of how steep the descent will be and when/if it will stabilize eventually (quick note: I'm not talking about the stock market when I talk about descent, so much as the distinguishing characteristics that separate Apple from an average company). I think that Jobs did a good job of getting the right people into leadership and inculcating a culture of excellence in the company that he left behind, so that should ensure that the descent will be a gradual one, rather than a rapid one, but eventually they'll start hiring bozos (to borrow Jobs' term) who will drag the company down.

When Tim Cook hired Browett as their Senior VP for retail, a lot of us assumed that Apple had already begun that process, since the guy looked like he was completely the wrong fit for the company, even though he may have managed to do decently well at the place where he was before. Kudos to them for canning him a few months later after he engaged in a series of highly-publicized screw-ups, but the fact that they hired him in the first place is actually one of the most worrying developments to comes out of the post-Jobs Apple, since their die-hard fans read it as an indication that the soul of the company is fragile and in danger of disappearing sooner than expected.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[xevioso]

mySQL?

When describing himself at the helm of Oracle...

[MrSavage]

Larry took off down the hall screaming with hands raised a la "Kermit the Frog".

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[amorsen]

What I was trying to say is that Larry Ellison's love for boats did get someone killed.

I'm with Larry on this one

[jjohn]

I have seen Apple tank without Jobs before. It looks like they are doing it again.

Jobs was a superior product guy and a despot with unchecked power.

There is simply no one at Apple to take his place.

So it may take 5-10 years for Apple to diminish to irrelevance again.

Larry is right: we have already seen this movie before.

FWIW, my wife and I are slowly switching post Jobs

[Marble68]

We are sick of Windows. I think there are still people (like us) who haven't yet moved over completely just because they can't afford it yet.

Apple's recent popularity leveled the software suite playing field, and with that there are plenty of reasons to abandon the crapware that is Windows.
I'll have windows as an afterthought at home now. I used to always say "People don't buy windows for windows, they use windows for Office or some other tool and because its the OS that came on their cheap PC."

Apple (w/ Jobs) so dominated the market that Microsoft has taken a dump on usability to try and be different. There's different like cool and hip different, then there's "microsoft" different which is more like "lock the car doors" different.

In my wife's words: "If people have to learn to use a new operating system, the pain of switching to a mac looks is less painful and all my tools are there now. Plus, it works with my ipad."

Me, I'll probably just virtualize Windows 7 until they stop patching it. By then, I'll be full Linux / OSX anyway.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[JonJ]

Apple has more or less thrown in the towel in the server space with the retirement of the Xserve. Not that they had a huge presence anyway.

Are you nuts?

[emil]

Below is a DVD of my classical rips, arranged as folders. This is hardly unmanagable.

12/25/2007 10:31 AM Aaron_Copland
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Albinoni-Pachelbel
12/24/2007 09:47 AM Antonio_Vivaldi-6_Flute_Concertos,Op._10-Trevor_Pinnock
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Beethoven_Symphonies_5,6_Karajan
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Chabrier
12/29/2007 12:15 PM Debussy
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Erik_Satie
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Felix_Mendelsohn
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Gabriel_Faure
12/29/2007 01:42 PM Gershwin
12/29/2007 08:32 AM Gershwin-Piano_concerto_in_F
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Glazunov
12/24/2007 11:03 AM Gould,_Glen
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Grieg-Piano_Concerto-Peer_Gynt
12/24/2007 09:03 AM Grofe-Grand_Canyon_Suite
12/24/2007 09:03 AM Handel_Water_Music
12/24/2007 09:50 AM Hubert_Laws-The_Rite_Of_Spring
12/24/2007 09:04 AM J._S._Bach-Brandenburg_Concertos_Nos._1,2,3
12/24/2007 09:04 AM J._S._Bach-Brandenburg_Concertos_Nos._4,5,6
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Jean_Sibelius
12/27/2007 08:31 PM John_Williams-The_Seville_Concert
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Mahler,_Gustav-(1860-1911)-Ljubljana-Symphony_No._1
12/29/2007 08:17 AM Mozart
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Mozart-Concerto_For_Flute&Harp_C_major
12/29/2007 08:33 AM Mussorgsky-Pictures_at_an_Exhibition
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Prokofiev-Classical_Symphony-Ormandy-Philadelphia
12/27/2007 06:35 PM Puccini
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Rachmaninoff
12/31/2007 11:35 AM Ravel
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Rimsky-Korsakov_Capricco_Espagnol_Op.34
12/24/2007 09:05 AM Rimsky-Korsakov_Scheherazade
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Rodrigo-Concierto_de_Aranjuez
12/27/2007 07:53 PM Saint-Saens-Symphony_No._3_Organ
12/24/2007 09:05 AM Schubert_Trout_Quintet
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Tangos
12/24/2007 10:36 AM Tchaikovsky-Symphony_No._5_in_E_Minor_Opus_64
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Trevor_Jones-Richard_III_Soundtrack
12/24/2007 11:02 AM Various-Sorcerer
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Various-The_Glory_of_Gershwin
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Vivaldi-8_Concerti
12/25/2007 10:35 AM Vivaldi-The_Four_Seasons
12/24/2007 10:33 AM X-Bruckner,_Anton-Symphonie_#_4_Es-Dur_Romantische
12/24/2007 10:33 AM Yo-Yo_Ma-Classic_Yo-Yo

If you are storing your music on flash media, you are not likely walking around with a terabyte. What is so unmanagable about a folder interface?

Translation...

[Tough Love]

"Just imagine Oracle without Larry Ellison!"

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[lxs]

I died a little inside when I saw the hideous Jobs Tub. Does that count?

Its hard to read posts when the subject has the...

[Zalbik]

...first sentence.

So please stop it.

It's annoying, and breaks the conventions of what a subject is for vs. the body.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[Tough Love]

Do tell. With arguably the most user hostile interfaces ever created for anything. Who buys that crap? There is a special place in hell for both the buyer and seller.

Oracle - CIA

[emil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database

The name Oracle comes from the code-name of a CIA-funded project Ellison had worked on while previously employed by Ampex.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Jerslan]

I can hate a product without hating the parent company that creates/owns the product.

Basic logic... Try it sometime.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[SolitaryMan]

... That he saw Java as a major threat to Microsoft says something about how myopic he could be.

Remember, Microsoft's initial business idea was to sell BASIC interpreters to Atari. That is, programming language design was Bill's thing, so it is not him being myopic, it is more of him seeing somebody else riding his horse.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Glock27]

I tend to disagree, but we'll have to see.

I think during Job's second period with Apple he instilled an enduring vision for the company, loosely summed up as "spare no expense in making elegant products that are easy to use". Genius, ground-breaking products get extra credit, but if Apple can just continue to make great products that make people's lives easier it'll do fine. Apple can certainly afford to get top talent to make that vision happen.

It actually amazes me how poorly Apple's competition does with ease of use.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

What products did Microsoft invent on their own, that didn't come before them?

Windows 95 -- to create a graphical environment and rich user experience on top of a massively vulnerable operating system, years after mainframe operating system architects hammered out network security, that took some real ingenuity.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[ackthpt]

... That he saw Java as a major threat to Microsoft says something about how myopic he could be.

Remember, Microsoft's initial business idea was to sell BASIC interpreters to Atari. That is, programming language design was Bill's thing, so it is not him being myopic, it is more of him seeing somebody else riding his horse.

The irony of this is ROM BASIC was something he bought or licensed from someone else and tweaked. I remember working in a Cassette BASIC on something or other at one time. Seems to me he left a pretty ugly string garbage collecting bug in most versions of it.

MS-DOS even began as 86-DOS, someone else's work. Gates was effectively the middle man in the deal to create PC-DOS for IBM.

Not finished

[nurb432]

But will suffer greatly and slowly fade back into a tiny market.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[findoutmoretoday]

We tried and the result was impressive, and very cheap. But i agree you can't sell it as a solution.

Re:Apple is about Fashion, and that's never doomed

[ThatAblaze]

Apple is about fashion. iPhones are still selling like hot cakes, and people don't give a damn whether some Android device is more powerful. iStuff is hip, looks flashy, has a ton of accessories available

Ok, following you so far.

and never will stop being hip, cool and well designed. It's like the Zippo Lighter or the Vespa Scooter.

Sorry, no. The intrinsic nature of style is that things go out of style. When Steve Jobs was there Apple was refreshing it's style continuously. This is no longer true.

Nostalgia

[pragone]

Apple is dead!! Boy I missed the old days

Depends on how much free time you have

[sjbe]

You have a folder named Music, you have subfolders named A, B, C, D, ... How exactly does that not scale?

Depends on how much time you care to spend/waste organizing your music collection. I've done it that way in the past but it's modestly time consuming to set up and depending on what you are doing can be a pain to maintain. Personally I prefer to spend as little time on it as possible messing around with organizing my music and would rather have a database handle it even if the database is not perfect. It just isn't my thing. Itunes sucks in a number of ways but it is generally good enough for those like myself who just don't really care that much and would rather have some software handle the details.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[fotbr]

Larry Ellison doesn't love boats, he loves buying trophies, including the Americas Cup.

Salary versus compensation

[sjbe]

Jobs got one dollar per year.

He took a *salary* of one dollar. He got paid far more than that. Huge difference. I'd happily take a salary of $1/year in exchange for 5 million shares of Apple stock and a private jet.

What Steve Jobs really did

[jd.schmidt]

The brilliance of Steve Jobs, was this. He always brought only fully working and desirable products to market and did so first, in his later years anyway. It was not about the coolest new tech, or the shiniest design. His products had those elements, but before the consumer got the product, it was functional and desirable in all ways, well given the technology of the time. So yes another product might be faster, another might be shinier or another have a cooler feature, but Apples products were always winners in all categories (except price of course).

He also got why the product really was desirable in the first place, how people would want and need to use it. This helped him immensely in making good products.

That is why Apple controlled itsproducts so tightly, they did not want you to look behind the curtain see what all it could not do, they only wanted you see what it did do. So if you had the money, you always knew you could buy an Apple product and walk away happy with the latest gadget.

Also that is why he focused on so few products. Building one great product is costly, another leader might not be able to have the same discipline and vision. If they can't find the right person, Apple will have to chance.

FYI, I am not a fanboy and have not bought Apple products after my fist Mac years ago. But I always understood why they were desirable to people, I just never wanted to pay first adopter premiums.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[R3d M3rcury]

Rubbish. Apple did that in 1989.

So, the answer is obvious:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Make Another Jobs. He has to be super smart, he has to have a vision, and he has to have total charisma. He doesn't have to exist. You just MAKE SOMEONE like that. They will have to come from outside Apple - some crazy genius they find and hire to do some important, but not uber task. Then they are declared genius, and this person (essentially an actor) bloviates the planet. It would work for quite a while.

Proof? Reagan.

No iOS 7 on iPod touch 4

[tepples]

In September of 2012, Apple was still selling fourth-generation iPod touch devices. Those won't get iOS 7 and thus won't get, say, gamepad support.

Re:No iOS 7 on iPod touch 4

[Uberbah]

Not really a response to his point, though. When IOS 7 comes out you can install it on any device that supports it. You aren't going to be able to install it immediately on an iPhone 5 but have to wait five months to install it on an iPad 2.

No iOS 7 on iPT 4

[tepples]

I can get manufacturer supported software updates for at least two years after I buy the device.

Not always. Say you bought a fourth-generation iPod touch in September 2012, about a month before the fifth-generation iPod touch came out. Because this device won't get iOS 7, you don't have a guaranteed two years of updates.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[roc97007]

Competitor? Nah. Ellison and Jobs were actually close friends, based on comments both of them made over the years. If anything, this is a case of one person thinking that their friend's life work simply can't exist without the friend. And, despite being an Apple fanboy, I have to admit that he's likely right.

You're not an Apple fanboy, you're perhaps a Jobs fanboi.

I don't think you have to be a Jobs fanboi to say that. I don't consider myself either an Apple fanboi or a Jobs fanboi. (I don't carry an iphone and my ipod is an old firewire touchwheel that remains in the truck for legacy reasons, even though I've had stereo bluetooth and music on my phone since way back in the Blackberry days.) But even if you didn't like the products he created, you can still appreciate the impact he had on society (even while believing that impact wasn't entirely positive). He was a complex individual who got a few things wrong but got many things amazingly right. I agree with OP that it's likely that Apple will suffer without him, and submit that this opinion is entirely pragmatic, not a product of hero worship.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[Zontar The Mindless]

They've managed not to grease the right palms in the mobile space so far, or so it would seem.

Re:Oracle is not a competitor.

[aethelrick]

I'm fairly certain that was the poster's point... to rephrase using your example... Oracle's laser guided missle is no more effective than a Apple's termite... that is to say he does not like Oracle's laser guided missle. I'm also fairly certain that was what all the *whooshing* was as well. All in all, explaining it is sucking the humour out of it and making me want to weep so I'm going to stop now.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[aurizon]

Apple was off to a good start with the Apple II, it then went into fail mode until they went into desk top publishing, and that carried them for a few years, and then they were near death at ~~$2 per share when the iPhone and iPad came along at just the right time and Blackberry(who was run by Canadian idiots who ignored it for 5 years). If Blackberry had responded instantly with a catch up, we would see an entirely different phone/tablet ecosystem. Microsoft also had high placed idiots.

Now however, Apple seems out of new ideas, it can only try a cheaper iPhone, which will cost more than dozens of Android variants. So Ellison may be right, the sun is setting on the Apple empire - still, $150 billion or so will allow Apple to live on for a while, unless they do something incredible stupid - like buying their own stock = simple cash combustion, I see they actually burned some cash last quarter - what did it get them? Nothing is what it got them.

Same old Line

[Summitlake]

We've heard it all before. Yes, Jobs was brilliant. Yes, he was great pals with Ellison. But it's still the tired old "There will never be another Harry Truman" line. "England has gone to hell in a hand-basket since the passing of Sir Winston."

But isn't he an expert at this?

[doccus]

If anyone should know about collapsing companies and such, surely it's Ellison.... He's right about Apple, of course.. just like what happened with Sun.. except in Apple's case it was the *loss* of a leader, in Sun's case it was the *aquirement* of a manager..

Just curious

[NewYork]

Will Oracle be doomed if Larry dies tomorrow?

I agree

[ReneLazo]

I believe that Apple needs to bring something new to the table. I honestly got bored with my iphone and replaced it with android. sames with all my friend and people in my company. they need to give up their proprietary way and introduce SD. And it would be nice if i can just drop my mp3s in there, itunes sucks im glad i dont have to deal with it any more.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[DickBreath]

> Wait, how is Apple a competitor to Oracle?

There is only so much money in the world. Oracle wants it all. Apple wants it all. Ergo, competitors.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[jbolden]

In the last year

iOS7 complete redesign of the OS.
New version of OSX
New form factor for workstation
entirely new manufacturing process for phones
Just slightly over a year ago the invention of retina laptops

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[bbsalem]

Yeah, Ellison is a hell of a one to talk. The only thing he seems creatively capable of is sicking lawyers on his competition and driving creative forces out of his organization, but then again you don't expect more from a narcissist. Besides, the only capital he got from buying Sun Microsystems was the Big Data Financial application and that should be ruled illegal anyway. His handling of Solaris, Java and MySQL has forced people to take their creative energy elsewhere. Fork Larry Ellison!

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[aurizon]

Invention of retina laptops - what invention, they are fabrications.
The rest is normal progress in machine and OS

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[bbsalem]

I worked for Sun long before Oracle acquired it, and I hate Java, hated it before I left Sun. I hate it for two reasons:first is that Sun messed up the design of the class libraries, and two Java is a bloated C, a strongly typed language. What makes C usable is its small size the small size of the standard library. C++ suffers from the same bloat as Java and for the same reason, but at least you can still use pointers and references without obscure syntactic candy. Modern languages that delay typing to compile time have a generality that is superior to all the administrivia in Java and C++. These days I am liking Python and even Javascript with its namespace lambda construct better than Java.

I'm glad I left Sun long before Oracle took it over. I would have hated to work for Ellison,

Re:Steve Jobs didn't make Apple cool or compelling

[Uberbah]

I think that a lower-cost iPhone is not a bad idea

But that lower-cost iPhone has been around for half a decade, it's just called Last Year's iPhone. And an even cheaper option is available, the iPhone From Two Years Ago. Right now, an iPhone 5 is $200, a 4S is $100, and the 4 is free (with contract).

So what the Pointed Haired Analysts have been clamoring for has been with us almost from the beginning. Unless, of course, they mean an iPhone that wont be subjected to the monthly smartphone tax from the major carriers...

Is your Hatorade berry or banana flavored?

[Uberbah]

Edison was a dick who took credit for work that his underlings did. Jobs is of the same cut.

Really, do tell us where Jobs personally took credit for designing the iPod or the iPad, etc.

Fandroid.

[Uberbah]

He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch.

You mean, it's eating the rest of the market. Android's expansion has come at the expense of Nokia, RIM, and now feature phone manufacturers, not Apple.

I can see it in my own family.

Oooo, anecdotes. Good night, Reagan.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[R3d M3rcury]

Oh, please. You don't remember nVIR and it's variants? Or MDEF?

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[AnnaZed]

If only a bear would eat Ellison, but unfortunately bears have too good a taste to eat sacks of shit.

Really my first thought, what an asshole.

Re:CEO badmouths competitor & tries to demoral

[hazydave]

I kind of agree, and here's why.

Apple folks I've spoke with, even interviewed with once, would say the same thing: there was one ego at Apple, SJ. He could come up with a product, see it through his way -- whatever idea he had, that's what you'd get. And it didn't always work, but often enough to have made Apple the most valuable tech company on Earth.

Without Steve, I don' t believe there will or even can be anyone else driving products like that. It simply doesn't happen in big companies, ever... only startups. And Steve was the Apple guy from the beginning of the company. From now on, it's committees like some big companies, more about doing what's safe and more like what they did last year. Or what Google or someone else did last year... there's evidence of both of these things in Apple's more recent producte.

Worse yet, you get someone in the driver's seat without that real vision, as seems to be plaguing Microsoft lately... leading without the right understanding of the market.

Neither of these means Apple's doomed. After all, General Electric survived Edison's demise. But they're certain to be a very different company -- I doubt they have the drive or the right kind of people to be "the old Apple" ever again.

key difference:

[milkmage]

last time Jobs left, he didn't know he was leaving.
in 2011.. he did.

Re:Steve Jobs didn't make Apple cool or compelling

[Shadowmist]

I suspect we're looking at Tim Cook as being relatively unenthuiastic or lukewarm, because he's getting an unfair comparison to Steve Jobs. It would be extremely hard to flat out impossible to replicate Apple's co-founder, and Cook is wise enough not to try. The thing is, Apple is more than Steve Jobs, it's also the apparatus that he put together. The bulk of those people are still doing what they did under Jobs. The Prophent/Messiah may have moved on, but the disciples are more than capable. It may well be that Jobs may have lived just long enough to put Apple on the course it needs to be. The crew should be able to manage keeping the ship properly steered. And for at least now, it's a good course. In fact without Jobs' manic obsession on destroying Google, there's a chance that some of Apple's biggest problems, like this unneccessary jihad might work themselves out over time.

Re: Oracle is not a competitor.

[Gorbag]

Clearly you don't work with databases. They are the 900 pound gorilla of that market.

More like the 1800 pound gorilla. It needs to go on a serious diet.