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Apple Is Outdated, Says Chinese Conglomerate LeEco CEO (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on CNBC: Apple is "outdated" and losing momentum in China, billionaire entrepreneur Jia Yueting told CNBC in his first international television interview. "Apple only has individual apps. This was the right choice during the first generation of mobile net, when CPUs [central processing units] and the mobile network speeds were not fast enough," Jia said. "However now we're moving into the next era of mobile internet, these problems no longer exist. Moreover, having separate apps just means great obstacles in the user experience. We hope to break down these obstacles. One of the most important reasons [for slowing sales] is that Apple's innovation has become extremely slow," he said. "For example, a month ago Apple launched the iPhone SE. From an industry insider's perspective, this is a product with a very low level of technology... We think this is something they just shouldn't have done. [...] The Watch hasn't cut it. And they're looking at content on the services side, on the iTunes side. We'll see how that works out. But definitely they need something to drive the next leg of growth." In some other Apple news, the company is expected to announce its first quarterly year-over-year revenue decline since 2003 later today.
I wish that Apple released some new Mac products. I'd buy them if they were good. I have no use for tablets or phones or other hype trinkets like those. I need real computers with modern hardware running a real UNIX-style operating system.
Let me translate what he just said.
"The old model includes local native apps in which freedom of security of data at the device level is a threat to the ruling class and totalitarian regimes; specifically in China. The new way is centralized back-end app that are dynamically updated, monitored, and content is controlled. Imagine having a back-end proactive spellcheck that removes all references to 'Tiananmen square'. It's a value-added bonus of conveniences that keeps citizens from breaking the law. This is how we can keep a more harmonious society with government control content through advanced technological paradigms.
Mr. Yueting isn't wrong when he says "having separate apps just means great obstacles in the user experience" or when he writes says that "CPUs and the mobile network speeds" a sufficient for integrated systems. however, he is wrong when he implied that this design was only good for "the first generation of mobile net" because he has not mentioned perhaps the largest and most fundamental issue with third party software: security. right now, smartphone security is still arguably an oxymoron and unless you rectify the situation, you are going to have a fully integrated system of fully compromised software.
when it comes to "smart" technologies, currently, the only winning move is not to play.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The funny thing is I am getting used to hearing this special kind of rambling. It's an epidemic in dealing with nearly every IT or really any engineering resource in Southeast Asia, especially certain parts of China, all of India, and others. It appears to stem from two intellectual deficiencies. The first is big picture thinking. I've met plenty of engineers who were one trick ponies and couldn't even see how their expertise in X could be applied to Y, much less understood how their knowledge fit in the tapestry of technical architecture. The second is the need to fill time / space with words when they have nothing useful. A huge list of banal generalities spew out, either positive or negative based on what they think the audience wants to hear.
The outsourcing movement has a couple more decades of rubber band-like hysteresis. Most companies that send technical services out to Chennai or Bangalore save their short term cash for 2-4 years, pay the CEO and CIO their bonuses, and then bring them back to the US as soon as they can get out of the contracts they've signed.