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Former Apple CEO Creates an iPhone Competitor
An anonymous reader links to Fast Company's profile of Obi Worldphone, one-time Apple CEO John Sculley's venture into smartphones. The company's first two products (both reasonably spec'd, moderately priced Android phones) are expected to launch in October. And though the phones are obviously running a different operating system than Apple's, Sculley says that Obi is a similarly design-obsessed company:
"The hardest part of the design was not coming up with cool-looking designs," Sculley says. "It was sweating the details over in the Chinese factories, who just were not accustomed to having this quality of finish, all of these little details that make a beautiful design. We had teams over in China, working for months on the floor every day. We intend to continue that process and have budgeted accordingly."
Obi is also trying to set itself apart from the low-price pack by cutting deals for premium parts. "Instead of going directly to the Chinese factories, we went to the key component vendors, because we know that ecosystem and have the relationships," Sculley says. "We went to Sony. It’s struggling and losing money on its smartphone business, but they make the best camera modules in the world."
Newton OS + smart phone = dumb phone
Only two rounded edges, maybe he hopes Apple will only half-sue him.
" quality of finish, all of these little details that make a beautiful design"
Yeah, that's nice and all, but what we really want is usability. Freedom from the advertising deluge. Control. Everybody and their brother can make a svelte 3D mockup that looks beautiful. But in the end it's going to come down to software. It's why Apple ruled the roost early on. A beautiful piece of garbage is still a piece of garbage. And, tbh, we have enough of that out here at the moment.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It looks like the SJ1.5 is 3g? Which frankly is plenty fast for any data I need to access on a 5" device, but the carries are not standing up the towers so.. I want my 4g.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yeah, you might want to think about how you word that.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
"Quality of finish" includes things like whether the seam between face and sides is smooth, if edges are nicely beveled, etc. Almost everyone cares about such things in the sense that you (at minimum subconsciously) evaluate those things when you see an object for the first time. Can you tell at a glance which swag t-shirt costs $5 versus $0.50? Guess what: quality of finish makes a difference to you.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I can see you do not own an iPhone either.
That being said, I think the Nexus 5 really was the best looking phone on the market when I bought one. Mostly because it did not have that goofy curved back that some Samsung phones have, nor that absurdly large bezel that Motorola has. I hope the Nexus 5mkII looks the same.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
clauses? You know, the same kind that Apple and, like, every other tech company in Silicon Valley feel obliged to lob at at new-hire programmers and such. Or do they not do that anymore?
I wonder if that's a result of Sony buying Konica-Minolta's camera operations.
Many DSLRs use Sony CMOS sensors. They are also the king of low-noise CCD sensors.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So you have to spend a bunch of effort to make a reasonable quality smartphone in China.. and buying the components from a supplier directly is better than asking the middle man to do it for you... um wow!! I'm shocked!!
Thanks but no thanks. Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. John Sculley. There are something that you should avoid at all costs.
Apple has nothing to worry about.
Have they tried some other country's factories? Like, to pick at random, the US? Just a thought...
How much more expensive would it make each unit, if they were made in a better place?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The article says they're not aiming at Apple. Instead they're actually jumping, feet first, into the commodity smartphone market. Which might seen suicidal, but, again as the article points out, that's where Scully actually excels (and probably why he didn't get as far with Apple, which was never commodity based, when he was at the helm.)
Essentially he's going to be selling nice, but not spectacular, Android phones, and using branding to differentiate the phones in the market. And he'll probably make a success of it because instead of having the overhead of a giant electronics company to contend with, unlike say Samsung, he's just having a third party put together a design, then outsourcing the manufacture of the thing, concentrating largely on quality (which affects brand) rather than features (which doesn't.)
It's not actually that exciting to nerds. The news is probably orgasm-worthy though if you work in marketing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Chances are, your smartphone uses a Sony sensor unless it's a Samsung phone. They hold the bulk of the image sensor market both in smartphones and standalone cameras, and have done for years.
I wonder if that's a result of Sony buying Konica-Minolta's camera operations.
It is. I have a Sony a65, which is an awesome camera. But, yeah, its lineage is Konica-Minolta.
Do you have ESP?
Can you tell at a glance which swag t-shirt costs $5 versus $0.50?
Trick question. They're all about 50 cents cost when you outsource overseas.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Both my Canon S95 camera and my Apple iPhone 6 use Sony camera sensors, so... they do, pretty much.
A company that made a serious concerted effort to do Android correctly could plow Apple under.
It would have to be a service oriented company intent on maintaining a secure and up to date Android distribution for users of it's phones. The app base is there waiting for somebody to roll out the right platform for it to run on.
All Scully has to do is come out with an average-plus phone that runs Android and offers a robust security and upgrade service. The company that manages to do this could own the Android platform.
Yes, I do. I don't use a case, so I want the phone to be nice and hold up well in my pocket.
However, I also want it to be cheap and sometimes this wins out over nice.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I call BS. The people running Chinese factories understand quality far better than most of the world. They are constantly concerned with it and have a mandate to move up the quality and technology chain, else lose their shirts when Vietnam or Bangladesh or some other poor Asian country hits the power curve part of the contract manufacturing business.
This guy must have picked the cheapest of cheap desperate Chinese manufacturers and then decided to ride them like hell on details. Apple, LG, Samsung and so many others build the top-quality devices in China. Anyone credible over there knows what they're doing.
Sure, the guy ran Pepsico for a while.
But his business management was so damn pedestrian that he took Apple from a growing company with a complete lock on the education and AV markets to an also-ran that became so afraid of innovation (mostly because Jobs had gone wild, running after any and everything, before that) that the company stagnated nearly to death.
He was okay as a brand manager. But absolute shit at actually LEADING the company and bringing forth new products.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why does the interface look like an ipod? Oh right...
...is what I thought when I saw the name.
Sony's been in the camera business a long, long time, with everything from CCTV to studio cameras. Their sensors are behind lots of lenses.
That they might make the best compact modularized camera is a concept that I'll take with the appropriate quantity of salt, but I would not be surprised at all if the claim were true.
Kid-proof tablet..
Not just many DSLRs, but some of the best performing DSLRs with some of the best specs in the market. Canon used to give Nikon a lot of flack for using 3rd party sensors in their cameras when they design their own. Yet here we are and they have yet to release a product capable of matching the dynamic range and SNR of the D800 4 years after its release. The sensor in the D800, It's a Sony IMX094AQP
CMOS and CCD sensors are now the only time I will use the words "It's a Sony" out of praise rather than disgust.
Yes, cool looking is good, cost effective high-quality production helps, but if the underlying functioning of the device is bad or mediocre, no cool looks will help! Under his CEO-ship Apple was run down to just barely surviving by his strategy & decisions.
I can see you do not own an iPhone either.
That being said, I think the Nexus 5 really was the best looking phone on the market when I bought one. Mostly because it did not have that goofy curved back that some Samsung phones have, nor that absurdly large bezel that Motorola has. I hope the Nexus 5mkII looks the same.
When I showed my Nexus 5 to my car detailer, he was shocked at how good it was simply to hold compared to his Iphone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S 5.
This is a car detailer, so he really didn't know much, nor care about the technical details. He was just impressed by how easy it is to hold for such a large phone (IMHO, its due to the type of plastic used for the backing). These are the kinds of things that non-phone people find important. His first question was about how good the camera is, which is pretty damn good on the Nexus 5. The problem is, the Nexus 5 is no longer for sale.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But wasn't Jobs the one who gave Sculley the job? So the pre-iMac Jobs was just as guilty as Sculley of nearly running Apple to the ground?
Scully increased Apple's revenue ten fold during his tenure as CEO. It was the idiots who followed him that tanked the company.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2469542,00.asp
Sculley was the guy who wanted to be a cultural superstar. In the process, he saw Steve Jobs getting in the way (turns out Jobs really wanted to run the company, although he was perfectly happy to leave the CEO title to Sculley) so Sculley pushed him aside.
Sure, Apple's revenues were high because Sculley milked the Mac as a cash cow even while Windows was taking off. By the time Sculley was thrown out, the game was lost. Microsoft and Windows had won, Mac OS and OS/2 had lost.
Oh, BTW Sculley stole the idea of Newton in a classic fashion. Jerry Kaplan, founder of Go Corp, hired Steve Sakoman from Apple for his pen-computing tablet startup. Turns out Sakoman had some second thoughts, though, and Sculley convinced him to stay by giving him leadership of a brand new project, that Sculley just thought of, that happened to involve a pen computing tablet. Suffice to say, Sculley is a serial Weasel. The details (and a similar story involving Bill Gates) are in Kaplan's book, "Startup".
I believe one of the things John Sculley was best known for is the "Pepsi Challenger" where people were given unmarked cups of Pepsi and Coke to drink and decide which tastes better. So it seems only natural to expect John Sculley's new company will eventually run advertisements where people have to stick an iPhone and an Obi Worldphone in their mouth and then state which was better.
I thought large bezels were absurd until I actually started using an assortment of portable devices. Now I realize that having a place for my fingers to wrap around to on a phone, or just a place to hold the thing between thumb and forefinger for a tablet, is actually a feature and not a problem. Having the screen right out to the edge means accidental touches on the side of the display, at least, for my fat fingers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Scully increased Apple's revenue ten fold during his tenure as CEO. It was the idiots who followed him that tanked the company.
No, Scully allowed Apple to become unmanageable, Spindler nearly died trying to get a lid on it, and then Amelio made the decision that saved the company from oblivion, by picking NeXT over Be.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Apple had no shortage of new products during Sculley's time. What the company lacked was any focus.
When SJ returned, the company drastically streamlined the product offerings into pro and consumer desktops and portables.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ha ha
Don't quit your day job.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
well he tries to sell them as upmarket.
they're not. pirate copies of samsung phones are more upmarket(no shit really, they have better specs, despite being pirate clones! 100 bucks for octacore nowadays. and yes they put octacore socs in phones they try to make look like samsungs! the business logic is baffling but thats what they do).
also the guy does not understand dual sim. he thinks it will help people call internationally to home. that's really baffling.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I have a high-end Sony astronomy cooled CCD camera with the icx814 sensor. The thing is unbelievable. 3.69m pixels, 10 minute dark exposures (that is, exposures with the lens cap on for calibration purposes), and not a single pixel gets illuminated. I have never seen another camera perform this well.
Even a lot of Nikon designed sensors are manufactured by Sony. They are just that good at it.
I think I will wait for the a7sII to come out then pick up a used/refurbished a7s. I would rather have a D800s, but it is too damn expensive.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
There is a new version of the Nexus 5 coming out this fall. I plan on getting one.
You can also get a brand new Nexus 5 on ebay for about 200 bucks. The new version will probably be 350 or so.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I have never had problems with it on the N5. As Steve Jobs would say... maybe you are holding the phone wrong. :)
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I have never had problems with it on the N5. As Steve Jobs would say... maybe you are holding the phone wrong. :)
Sadly, there's nothing to be done about it, I'm a gigantic mutant living in a world controlled by tiny people. I have phablet fingers and PDA pockets.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sony should just stick to sensors and get out of the consumer product business. When they make a full product to sell to consumers, it's always sub-par, and usually has something in there to screw over the user somehow.
"Quality of finish" includes things like whether the seam between face and sides is smooth, if edges are nicely beveled, etc. Almost everyone cares about such things
I can't see any of those details after I put the device in an Otterbox case.
Honestly, I'd rather see someone make a semi-ruggedized phone that has a bigger battery and an Otterbox-like case built in (not an add-on). They'd have a better-performing product and save space by not needing the regular case which just gets covered up by the rubberized one.
My wife has one of those Xperias too (not sure about the sub-model). I'm not impressed. Hers has an intermittent problem where she has to use a headset or it won't work (can't talk and can't hear); it seems pretty obvious it's a malfunctioning headphone jack that thinks a headset is plugged in all the time (when this problem happens; it comes and goes). However when she's taken it to repair places to get it fixed, they take one look at those stupid "liar dots" as you call them and just tell her it has water damage and can't be fixed. WTF? Do you want to get paid or not???
I just picked up a used Samsung Galaxy S4 and this thing is great, as far as I can tell. I'm just waiting on a SIM card to come in from Ting so I can activate it. I would have liked the S5 better (since it's water-resistant and has an excellent reputation), but it was a little too expensive for me; maybe I'll upgrade to that in a year or two when the price has come down. Even though the S5 is already "obsolete" (replaced by the less-capable S6), it has a ridiculously high resale value.
Regular OS updates to the whole install base. Affordable hardware. An app firewall of sorts that makes it easier for users to be aware of and in more control of the Android apps on their device.
Also a "for the rest of us" ethos that signals to the preening salescritters in the Apple Stores that they're just modern day diamond sellers.
QHY23 or QSI 690?
I'm a QHY10 man myself. Still in the one shot colour world. Though I do have the occasional dead pixel with 10min subs I'm sure I could eliminate it by running my cooler harder. I only image at -20C at I can probably easily go down to -35C if I actually gave my cooler a bit of workout.
I'm about to switch to a mono camera due to moving to a more light polluted part of the world.
When they make a full product to sell to consumers, it's always sub-par, and usually has something in there to screw over the user somehow.
I figure that is one of the consequences of being both a media company and a hardware company. The media side of things can't help but keep trying to screw over the consumer.
There are a lot of IP68 rated phones out there.
They're not going to survive getting dropped onto a pile of rocks without getting scratched up at the very least. IIRC, IP68 is just about weatherproofing. That's great, it won't get ruined if it gets a little wet, or maybe even dropped in the pool. But getting dropped onto concrete is a different matter. An Otterbox case handles that stuff.
Also, IP68 doesn't help you with battery life. There's been way too much of a trend lately towards super-slim phones. Everyone except the Apple cultists is screaming for bigger batteries, not a slimmer phone. I don't give a shit if my phone weighs 1 gram more, I want more battery life.
Many of the IP68 models have rugged housings and extremely large batteries.
Strange, I've never seen one of these in a store anywhere. If it's some special model that costs $5000, that really isn't a fair comparison. Even worse if it's some shitty thing with a slow CPU and a 0.5MP camera.
They are often not the absolute latest and greatest, but they tend to be close, and they do often cost a bit more than a non-ruggedized phone, but they are sub-$1000 and run fairly current versions of Android. Google for IP67 or IP68 Android. Some of them also include things like programmable 2-way radios and so forth. https://www.google.com/search?...
Atik 490ex mono, which is very similar to the QHY in size. You will love shooting mono, I just did my first narrowband last month and it was fantastic. I still need to figure out how to get the focus perfect, though. With so little light coming through on the narrowband filters, it is a bit harder to get the focus exact. One of these days I will get an autofocus motor.
I don't image at -20C in the summer though, its too damn warm out here and the cooler cant get it that low without killing the battery. But even at 0C I have never had a stuck pixel.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
One of these days I will get an autofocus motor.
Oh yes do. Even with a short refractor I can graph my focus getting worse as the temperature changes during a night of imaging. Before switching to autofocus I would stop and manually re-focus using a bahtinov mask every 2degC change. That was annoying as it involved slewing to a bright star. Autofocus is a godsend.
And I don't have any experience with Atik at all. I'll look them up.
I mostly chose Atik because their cameras are the smallest diameter compared to cameras with the same chip. Notably from QHY and StarlightXpress (I think those are the only 3 companies that make a small form factor icx814 camera). This is because I use Hyperstar on a C8, where the camera is in front of the corrector plate. It was also why I got an icx814 camera, to get the highest pixel density to match the aperture.
It looks odd, but works great. Even at my dark site I usually don't do longer than 5 minute exposures because Hyperstar will blow out the image with too much light.
The EdgeHD 8 has mirror locks, and they really don't help much. Tightening the locks can knock it out of focus, and they only help when the scope is slewing. I usually do only one target a night, so when the temperature changes, the locks do not help with shifting focus.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Do you get a flat field with the hyperstar? I have an older C8 with the Fastar lens and I used it once or twice and while it was great being able to shoot at ludicrous apertures and short exposures ultimately I was never able to get a flat field. I eventually gave up and bought an ED80 for wider angle imaging. The EdgeHD has an in built corrector at the back of the telescope, which wouldn't be in use if you use a hyperstar, hence my question.
No, vignetting is fairly major with Hyperstar and f/2.1. Hyperstar and Fastar are really the same thing, Celestron sold the technology to Starizona. However the later incarnations of Hyperstar (I have the latest version 3), add things like easy to use rotator and collimation bolts
However, taking flat field images cancels it out very nicely. You would want to do this to deal with blemishes since the corrector is a dust-magnet anyhow. I haven't found an easy way to use a flat field box, but doing twilight flats is pretty easy. I have been thinking of using a box that fits all the way over the hyperstar+camera attachment. Early on I have had success without flats, and with the Sony sensor I don't ever bother with dark frames. Even with a 10 minute dark exposure, usually not a single pixel is illuminated.
I also bought specifically designed f/2 Baader narrowband filters, since I hear that regular narrowband filters do poorly on hyperstar. So far the results on Ha have been fantastic. It did end up being such a pile of money that I wonder if I was better off with a different setup. Not being able to use a filter wheel is a serious pain in the rear. At least hyperstar lets you use the much cheaper 1.25" filters.
Early on I did not know how to take or process flats, and had good results anyhow. Pixinsight has some very good tools for dealing with background gradients, either vignetting or light pollution. But the flats do a better job easier on vignetting.
If I was not going to ever use the scope for visual, I probably would have saved myself a hundred or two dollars and gotten a regular C8. However the thing is a dream for visual as well. I think C8 scopes are the best bang for your buck on aperture for a mixed imaging/visual scope. Eventually I plan on getting the .7x reducer, and if I ever get a really nice mount, maybe image at f/10. Having looked through both Edge and regular C8s before purchasing, I think the Edge falttener makes a big difference for visual. Especially if you like those fancy 82 degree fov eyepeices. Eventually I will be getting a 2" diagonal. (sadly it only ships with a 1.25", which wastes some of the scope's potential.)
Though if you really want a Hyperstar-only scope, there is the Rowe-Ackermann. It was out of my budget anyhow, since it requires a beefier mount. Its about the same price as the Edge11, but you don't have to buy the $800 or so Hyperstar lens.
The only complaint I would have is that dew control is a serious pain in the rear if you live someplace cold. But that is the case for every SCT. At least a C8 is small enough that the dew heaters are pretty effective.
I actually just got home from a trip to a dark site and have a pile of data from hyperstar to process. Was my first time with a focus motor, which makes a pretty big difference, since as you know the focus with fastar/hyperstar is really really touchy.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I think you misunderstood what I meant, I didn't mean flat field as in vignetting, I meant flat field as in the field of focus. I could never get edge to edge sharpness with my hyperstar. This likely had a lot to do with trying to achieve accurate backfocus which I don't think I was ever able to do because the focus plane was so incredibly thin.
Mind you shooting through an old C8 with a field flattener I was never able to get a 100% perfectly flat focus field either, but I did get it flat enough to be useful at at f/6.
Oh oh, right. It is reasonably flat, t though the sensor I have is pretty small and is only using the middle of the field. A much larger sensor like the kodak ones might not perform so well. Also, the focus and collimation is really really touchy.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Oh which reminds me... no collimation screws on the old Farstar.... effectively there's nothing I could do about mirror tilt. Yeah there's a reason why I didn't use it :-)
Yeah, from what I could tell the old versions of it were not very good.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust