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Is Apple Still the Company That Leads the Way, Or is it Just Getting Better at Locking in Users To Its Own Increasingly Subpar Experiences? (theoutline.com)
Readers share a column: Apple is no longer the king of the smartphone camera, but that's just a small component of a company in (highly profitable) stagnation. It wasn't that long ago that anyone who cared about taking great photos on their phone was destined to buy an iPhone (whether they wanted it or not) just by sheer brilliance of its miniaturized camera tech. But something happened over the last 18 months that's changed the dynamic for consumers in the market: Samsung and especially Google have started producing handsets that equal or surpass Apple's devices with their picture-taking quality.
[...] But Google is not Facebook, and while I give up some of my data to the company, what I get in return has sizable value -- apps I use for hours every day, predictive services that actually work, photo processing that means I'm less likely to miss an important moment. To be clear: the stuff Google and Amazon are doing right now isn't just cool and doesn't solely serve their corporate interests -- it matters in very real ways to consumers, with touchpoints they encounter every day where Apple can't even get a word in edgewise.
[...] Coming in second in the camera space alone might not be that big of an issue, but Apple has also had significant problems with its hardware recently -- not just with quality control, but in pure design terms as well (who could have predicted that in 2018 people would be touting Microsoft as the industry leader in design?). Siri continues to be a running joke among most people I know -- tech enthusiasts and average users alike. Apple's iCloud efforts have amounted to little more than a "hard disk in the sky" (a famous Jobsian turn of phrase). And is it the best experience for consumers to be forced into Apple Mail, Apple Maps, iTunes, Apple Music, and Apple Photos at every turn? Can you honestly say they're the best at what they do?
[...] But Google is not Facebook, and while I give up some of my data to the company, what I get in return has sizable value -- apps I use for hours every day, predictive services that actually work, photo processing that means I'm less likely to miss an important moment. To be clear: the stuff Google and Amazon are doing right now isn't just cool and doesn't solely serve their corporate interests -- it matters in very real ways to consumers, with touchpoints they encounter every day where Apple can't even get a word in edgewise.
[...] Coming in second in the camera space alone might not be that big of an issue, but Apple has also had significant problems with its hardware recently -- not just with quality control, but in pure design terms as well (who could have predicted that in 2018 people would be touting Microsoft as the industry leader in design?). Siri continues to be a running joke among most people I know -- tech enthusiasts and average users alike. Apple's iCloud efforts have amounted to little more than a "hard disk in the sky" (a famous Jobsian turn of phrase). And is it the best experience for consumers to be forced into Apple Mail, Apple Maps, iTunes, Apple Music, and Apple Photos at every turn? Can you honestly say they're the best at what they do?
apple needs to not over think the mac pro or price it with to high of an starting point.
Or false choice, clickbait, flamebait?
Just Getting Better at Locking in Users To Its Own Increasingly Subpar Experiences.
And he thinks Apple is the bee's knees!
Is Slashdot still interesting, or does it just post stories that are blatant, pointless shit-storms?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Apple, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know the best thing is to get android or apple people posting crap to generate ad views, but this is just pathetic.
News for nerds, stuff that matters??
How sad to see this sort of article posted on what was once a great site for nerds.
I can speak only for myself, but to be fair to apple, iOS, android, windows phone, they are all horrible. There is very little I can do on a phone before I run back to my desktop in frustration. Until someone invents some miracle mobile platform, a smartphone will always be something I grudgingly use only when I am forced to.
Which combined HW/OS/SW platform vendor are we comparing them to? Oh right, nobody else does what they do exactly... that makes it harder to compare, doesn't it?
People have always been locked in - with the exception of PowerPC in the 90's.
When it comes to Apple and its products, a good chunk of fanfare is due to "media hype." To an unsuspecting reader, Apple can do no wrong. From "bend gate" to need for purchase of extra hardware if one needs fast charging for instance.
How about iphone USB cables that one cannot use on MacBooks?
How about a situation in which for example one clicks an internet link in an email message? For iOS, Safari opens up, even when one would prefer Chrome!
I just hate that company and glad they have never had a chance "eat" my cash.
Apple is still good, but the creative genius is (literally) dead.
Leading the way with useless "innovations". Let's see: No headphone jack. A notch in an otherwise good display. I'm sure there are more, but both of those are show-stoppers for me.
I am typing this on a MacBook Pro, and I use and iPhone 8.
What experience is sub par? Sure apple steers me towards their mail and photo apps but you certainly can install alternatives if you want to. Having evaluated other leading platforms before making my last round of purchases; I don't find the experience sub par.
I think its different; but certainly not worse. Personally I like it better; which is why I chose them. That said I think you can have as a good an experience on a higher end Android device; and certainly a surface is a nice laptop/tablet. My MacBook starts up faster though and does the things I need it to do; and OSX stays out of my way a lot better than Windows does; but comparatively speaking Windows and the Surface offer more 'features'.
As far as lock in goes - pulzee tell anyone who has been in the Android eco-system for a few years to just switch to something else, just like the iOS user they won't like it much. They will have apps they are attached to; work flows they are accustom too etc. Neither platform really 'locks' you in; its not like the days of old where you cant get your data out in a format others can read.
Now I think there is case to be made that Apple has 'slowed' some on the innovation front. I can't see why I need an iPhone X for example; at least not until my 8 gets damaged or worn out. There just isnt anything really compelling there. Than again what are the other leaders doing hmm Samsung is advertising a 1TB of storage in a mobile phone...Right I mean bigger is always better I guess but that does not strike me as innovative leadership.
I have little doubt there are some bold ideas being discussed deep inside Apple's doughnut^H^H^H^H^H office building. They are no doubt risky and it does not surprise me that they don't take risks while in the midst of printing money selling iPhones. When that actually slows down in terms of revenue then they will try stuff. They will have a lot of time to find something that sticks too because they have more cash than anyone can even imagine what to do with
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Samsung and especially Google have started producing handsets that equal or surpass Apple's devices
Well, Samsung and Google are still copying Apple's devices (remember the notch), so I don't see any competition for Apple as long as Android devices have this second-rate feel to them. Not to mention the fact that Apple's phones still have the greatest hardware specs on the market.
They're still good in some areas, in others not so much.
If the so-called low-cost MacBook Air replacement also has that fucking nightmare of a keyboard (butterfly mechanism) then I'll be forced to start looking at OpenBSD/FreeBSD or something.
Whoever at Apple thought that a keyboard with almost no travel was a good idea should have been fired immediately after the launch of the MacBook Pro that used that keyboard. Instead we're now at the third revision of this pile of crap. Admit it's a failure, go back to the old keyboard design and increase the thickness of the laptops by 2mm to compensate. It's not the end of the fucking world. As a bonus, you'll be able to increase the size of the battery.
#DeleteFacebook
The only creative genius Apple ever had was Woz.
No question Apple makes beautiful equipment and user experiences, but "leading the way" is a little excessive.
Just checked, Ives is Still Alive (as per the song).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sure Woz is still alive
Apple is simply about design, overprice which brings "status" for empty-minded people.
It's stupid and not necessary to buy Apple products. Unless you have money to waste, then it makes sense.
I had to download Mojave, and to my surprise I had to have a Apple ID.
I tried to create one with a legit email but used fake info. They wouldn't let me create the account after I input the email verification code.
Anyhow, I had to get a friend to download it for me.
So Apple is definitely trying to sandbox their users on all platforms. Not a fan but the locked in environments.
I can't speak to the quality of the Apple experience, since I refuse to put up with the censorship or vendor lock-in.
I use Android instead because I value freedom more than privacy or security, but really I'd prefer not to use that either.
Android also brings with it a number of issues that iOS doesn't have:
Android apps use Java, which means a machine language translation, thus a performance hit. iOS apps that use Objective-C run on the native bare metal without needing a translation layer.
Android is fragmented, with anyone from the phone maker to the provider able to insert in spyware. This has been the case many, many times, from Superfish to the apps sending diagnostics back.
Android has a lot of devices from China, with more than one privacy violating incident to talk about.
Android also has no secure way of doing backups. Either I root the device and use nandroid or Titanium Backup, or hope that the app can dump to Dropbox. Google's backups never have worked for me, and phone maker apps tend to have support pulled fairly quickly.
Increasingly expensive? Absolutely. Increasingly abandoning opinion leaders (us)? Yep.
Truth be told: Apple can afford to drag their heels on hardware updates and offer sub-optimal support and repairability. Apple is by now a full blown fashion brand. Being expensive is a value in itself for Apple customers. Is their stuff bad? No, absolutely not. Do they care about is developers anymore? Nope, not really. It's up to Google and Microsoft to pick up that ball now I suppose.
I've stopped buying Apple hardware which I've been doing since 2003 (12" iBook G4 - legendary!) and if they want to win me back they better start delivering a minimum base of good price performance products. Which they stopped doing a few years back.
Bottom line: Apple is doing just fine for people who can't calculate or judge hardware by it's specs. Which is 99% of all people. Other than that, I'm moving towards custom/special Linux hardware once again.
My two eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Apple has never made a product that would be able to stand on its own specs or merits. Their success is entirely due to marketing, bling and attracting enough zombies to follow them. Very similar to Nike or Mercedes-Benz, they are selling a name and logo for insecure people to flash around, nothing more.
"Apple, no longer leading the way, relies on locking in users to the apple only sub par experience"
FTFY
Where do I mod this story Troll ?
Actually, where can I flag this story as Inappropriate ?
Can we get msmash (4491995) banned ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Didn't know groups of friends sat around ripping on software... oh, wait.
But everyone else is increasingly doing the same thing.
WOZ wasn't behind their most successful products. He is for certain an engineering genius.
Apple has still the best ecosystem around. Perhaps some of their pieces are sub-par, but the giant can still only focus on so much for so long. Apple has back-burners their Macs for a while, and focused on making their phone utterly brilliant. It has faceID tech that no one has truly copied, it has the very best CPU, which no one can deny, and it's camera has gone in a strange direction. Can the Samsung Phones and Google Phones do the same AR workload an iPhone can?
They have gone to pour more into the "taking pictures" function of a camera, but Apple has made the camera have other uses. Try the Measure app, it's amazing, and accurate!
Apple will circle back and update their Mac computers, and their apps will have incremental updates that make them a good part of the ecosystem, though I will admit not the best.
No watch compares to the Apple Watch, in terms of fitting in, no TV device fits like the Apple TV device in terms of fitting in. Your apps automatically install on the TV and Watch, your content resumes where it left off, and it is by far the best content aggregator there is (their TV App). It did that in a short time period.
Apple has expanded its ecosystem so big that they can only focus on so much at once, that much is clear. And clearly there are trade offs for the privacy protection you get. Siri is still the only one that does most of the work on device when possible.
Given the alternatives: the walled garden is still the nicest real estate, by far.
When did Apple actually "lead the way"? Remember the old joke: "to see what is coming on the new iPhone, look at what was new on Android 2 years ago".
Apple has rarely been a technology leader.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Unless your time and certainty has no value, apple laptops are the lowest total ownership costs as far as I can tell. Even IBM agrees with that. So much time is spent screwing around with the dissappointment and incompatibilieis or learning experiences it takes with changing models year to year with other brands there's no point in spending that money whey you could just get an apple, know how much it's going to cost you right up front in time and effort and certainty it will work. The macs tend to last longer too.
Sure when I'm hunging for cheap like in servers or for secondary computers or ones for specific missions I always buy Linux machines. No argument there that they are way cheaper to buy. And as long as I know they will work for what I plan in a specific situation there's no reason to buy apple.
And if all you want is a machine to check your twitter account and do google docs then the machine with the absolute lowest chance of letting you down is a chromebook.
But if you want one computer that can do everything, take on new missions, and act just like your old one did with perfect continuity of operations, then an apple is it unless hourly rate of pay isn't very high. Ever waste a day screwing with a computer? your salary+benefits+lossed_sales == what it cost you that day.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hasn't it been going back and forth since... well the beginning of the smart phone revolution?
And not just compared to Microsoft and Google. Let's compare Apple to a 100% open sores linsux "experience":
Apple is faster (CPU optimization + exclusive A9/10 CPU's are now beating the top of the line Intel and AMD desktop chips, linsux wont be running on these leading edge platforms any time soon)
Apple is more secure (better response time to fixing problems, NOT having the problems in the first place, etc)
Apple is more private (Apple uses its size and power in the industry to SECURE its products in a way open sores can't, by facing down governments like CHina and Russia and USA)
Apple is easy to use (it JUST WORKS, compare that to trying to accomplish any work on linsux any time)
Apple has WAY more applications, everything that runs on Linux runs on Apple machines, but also millions of TOP OF THE LINE closed source applications for editing pictures, video, audio, coding, etc.
Apple is simple the best and has basically proven once and for all that CLOSED source is the best way to develop software. Period.
A shaky, but mostly accurate analogy for Apple would be the young, upstart politician, breaking rules, breaking new ground, etc. to get elected, only to ossify into the old, staid, politician who wants to get re-elected.
The Mac, iPad, iPhone, AppleWatch and iTunes, etc will be refined and refined and refined and thus become predictable and boring.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, we really need a new technology company to shake things up. The Apple/Amazon/Google/Facebook/Microsoft tech Oligopoly all seem to be in a race to copy each other's small product improvements, but none of them are really trying to do something genuinely innovative at the moment.
I am typing this on a MacBook Pro, and I use and iPhone 8. What experience is sub par?
The stack of dongles to plug everything in, the insanely high price, the keyboard's lack of movement, the lack of function keys, the lack of a decent GPU, the less-than-cutting-edge CPU, the lack of a pro desktop whose design is less than 5 years old, the inability for the power cord to magnetically disconnect...and that's just off the top of my head. I used to use Apple and dropped them when they dropped the ball on their macs. The mac mini now only has two cores - that's less than their laptops! - and until the new update comes out they are still trying to peddle a 5 year old Mac Pro at full price!
Their iOS devices have faired better but they have not only dropped the ball with their Mac line they no longer even remember where the ball is or what it looks like.
I always thought that even back when the iPhone was new Sony had that title with their CyberShot products. Apple, to my knowledge, has always had pretty substandard cameras, especially on the iPad. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to see examples.
As for walled gardens: you get what you get because everyone else uses what they're given and don't seem to know any better... or care enough to look for something better. Apple vs Android will always be interesting to watch, especially from the perspective of someone who doesn't have a horse in either race and just gets whatever phone happens to be the highest value that comes bundled with the telecoms package inclusions & price point I'm interested in. I've had an iPhone, I've currently got an Android. I use them both for the same things: calls and texts, occasionally photos. I'm a strange person when it comes to that.
Long time reader here but itâ(TM)s been years since I commented. Wanted to add my opinion to this one though. The biggest problems facing Apple today and many tech companies for that matter is the release of feature enhanced hardware and software without fully vetting them out through user testing and quality assurance.
I was an Apple user since OS X was released. It is by far one of the best desktop operating systems to be release from a UX and system foundation standpoint. But over the years it has become bloated and less stable.
From a hardware perspective Apple has lost its way. For many years they were releasing rock solid machines even if they were a little pricey. But in the past it was justified by the quality of craftsmanship.
Now we have products with keyboards that fail, lack of extensiblity and features that arenâ(TM)t useful and people didnâ(TM)t want (Touch Bar for instance). The âoetrash canâ Mac Pro was awful. The current Mac book pros are junk, and they havenâ(TM)t updated some of the other lines in ages.
I recently purchased a dell xps and it is equally poor quality. Iâ(TM)m of the opinion that manufactures today simply donâ(TM)t care about quality only about margin and volume.
If you don't want to think and need a leader, Apple will be happy to be that for you. If you have your own brain, you'll consider all options, including Apple. Occasionally, they'll have the best product, like maybe their camera was for a time. If you just throw in the towel and think the game is over and you don't need to think ever again, well, you'll most definitely get locked into an 'eco-system' that includes lots of inferior garbage.
What is dinner visual flair? like a sprig of parsley?
No. Just no.
At any given moment there are individual feature areas where they do not lead. But you can't beat the overall ecosystem. Everything is "good enough", works reasonable well together, and is not the cesspool of code behaving badly that others are.
This particular zombie is a 38+ year software architect/engineer that has seen it all. Nothing is perfect. I could probably think of thousands of things where Apple could do better. Windows and Linux are much worse.
I've been forced to use a macbook pro, and gladly went back to my Asus Zenbook running buntu as soon as I could. I do have family members that belong to the the church though, and trying to convince them to look at anything without an Apple logo on it is like talking to a rock.
I sent one family member a link to a file. His internet was out, so all he needed to do was download that link with his iphone, plug it into his macbook and transfer it over. After DAYS of trying he gave up on this simple task.
Another family member was given a video on a flash drive to watch on his Macbook. It was made with the H265 codec, so of course it would not play. I told him to download and install VLC media player and he'd be good. He has never been able to figure out how to do this.
Still another family member was given a portable hard drive to backup her documents from her Macbook Air. This went about the same way as the others - she has no clue how to copy a file on her Mac.
These are people who often tout how Apple is superior to everything else, while at the same time cannot figure out how to do very basic things with their Apple products. At what point will the almost total lack of easy functionality convince them to look to another platform? Do Apple products make people stupid? I just don't understand.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
After having an Android phone for almost a decade, I was recently forced to switch to an iphone. I hate it with a passion. I can't configure anything. All the notifications and controls pale in comparison to Android. A phone for the masses.
All the apps arrange themselves top down - you can't place apps toward the bottom of the screen unless you have a screen full of them - stupid.
You can't control apps running the background or turn anything off.
I can't even name the hotspot wifi network anything other than "First Name's Phone".
Is it faster to boot up? Yes
Does it take good pictures? I don't know, I don't use a phone to take a lot of pictures except of server racks and receipts. Probably not any better than my HTC10.
Could my Mother In law get used to using it in a week? Probably
Is it so uninteresting that I don't want to futz with it and have any enjoyment out of it? Most definitely.
After knowing what the other options of the smartphones of the world offer, I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate it.
Apple only leads the way in marketing. They're not innovative or creative. They create very few original ideas themselves and merely are good at gluing the work of others together. In many cases, this just results in Apple selling a polished turd.
...and while I give up some of my data to the company, what I get in return has sizable value...
Has the anti-apple vitriol really come to this? To arguing that trading your privacy away to Google is good as long as you get something nice in exchange because Tim Cook said it was bad? Really?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
To the blind followers, they dont see anything negative from Apple.
I just returned from jnuc 2018 and the people there would make that clear.
In their eyes, apple is perfect in every single point.
Really sad.
They keep people stupid.
The answer may surprise you!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Cameras, assistants that googles shit for you.. all irrelevant noise to me.
Apple is an annoying company because they prioritize crap nobody cares about like artistic monoculture designs, how much shit weighs and being a bunch of pricks (e.g. "courage") over usability, locking people into walled gardens and charges ridiculous prices for mediocre hardware.
The most amusing part of all of this is MOST people walk around with their expensive pretty little works of art iPhones in cheap bulky rubberized cases. Every time I see one ... can't help but smile at the absurdity of the whole dynamic.
Expecting Apple users to grow a brain is like expecting Trump supporters to grow a brain. Neither are likely yet both are an entertaining freak show to behold.
Who wrote this crap? An apple fanboy who hasn't looked further than their nose in the last 10 years?
Apple hasn't been a "leader" in a LONG time for anything. These days they are a trend setter, that's it, they aren't leading in anything else. Using an Apple products has been a subpar experience for anyone but the lowest denominator of users(facebook/instagram users) for a long time now.
They used to be leaders in the workstation world, but that changed when they decided that high end specs weren't needed anymore in their "workstation" desktop computers... or lately, that it was a good idea to put "high end specs" in a tiny form factor that cannot even cool itself properly without throttling.
The fact that these days, Apple fanboys will tell you that you're using a MacBook Pro "wrong", because you're editing videos on it and it's thermal throttling, goes to show how down the drain they went. Obviously a pro machine with that kind of hardware should only be used to browse facebook, totally cannot be used for actual work.
THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES KEN DOLL YOU BITCH PROPAGANDIST
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
I've just set up a Samsung A8 as my work phone, having used iphones for quite a few years now, and I have to say the interface is crap. What idiots think these things up? Not all screens let you go a step back to correct something when you're setting it up. If the keyboard is up you can't scroll down to fill in the next field, the screen gets locked as part of setup. There are so many rubbish settings and so much non-optional bullshit that it took half an hour to set up what on the iphone is a 5 minute job.
And then I had to install the apps. Did you know you can't run email without it knowing your wifi settings or your location? Samsung won't let you install it without permitting all access to everything. I know it's necessary because the gmail client is the same. The other Samsung apps are similarly constrained - to run they have to broadcast back to Samsung and Google every aspect of your device. Then you have to click the non-privacy policy, which means essentially giving everything away as and when they desire it. And this is a work phone which gets sensitive information and holds corporate data and customer data. All being given away to Samsung and Google for free.
The iphone is bad, I'll grant you that. But Android is so much worse that it makes the iphone look good by comparison.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
If Adobe Creative Suite ran on Ubuntu I'd be gone. Sorry but it's true.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Those new tech companies get bought out before they become a threat.
Windows and Linux are different. Not worse. I prefer Mac OS but a lot of what Apple does is steaming shit.
I bet Apple has a revolutionary UI for iOS sitting in their vault that they are afraid to introduce because all of the grandmas with iPhones couldn't handle the change.
Rows of icons, looks like the original Mac OS. There has to be something better.
Don't get distracted by a pissing contents about camera capabilities. Android and iOS are both worn out garbage. We need real change and real options. Even if you believe the hype of these articles, Android is not the answer.
I've made enough money on AAPL that the cost of iPhones is irrelevant.
It's a phone, it makes phone calls. I just want a bigger battery and for the FCC to allow another watt or two in the transmitter. There used to be a Bosch handheld analog cell phone that has the full 3 watts of a car phone. I just want a better LTE signal to run my laptop. I'm not waiting for the next killer app for the phone.
Wow. My dad got a MBP, and he some how finds sites trying to push him to install trojans and malware. I didn't think it was possible until I saw it. I guess regular folks need A/V and live scanners to protect them from themselves.
I can't argue against your experience but it is weird to hear. Maybe that is the iOS world where anything more coplex than dragging and dropping an icon is considered "hacking". What a world.
I'm totally guilty here buying a new MBP. I built a PC and tried Windows 10. Hate them so much I'll spend another $2k + the apple premium. I have a hackingtosh running fine on it. I am considering Mint/Fedora on the PC just cause the Hackintosh isn't 100% solid. 12 years ago I was 100% linux. I've been on OSX a long long time. There's also something to be said for the comfort of ecosystem lock in. That upgrades and migrations are so brain dead simple I don't have to do crap. Then I can spend all day at work on windows and linux and appliances beating my head again the desk for 12 hrs straight wishing I was dead.
I'm not 100% sure Apple lets you do that. They do pretty trivally let you tether. But the iOS filesystem is pretty locked down.
Your family member couldn't figure out how to download a free app from the app store? for their phone or click the orange button ? That does not seem like Apple's fault.
This went about the same way as the others - she has no clue how to copy a file on her Mac.
You copy a file via drag and drop, the same as literally every other GUI based OS.
Most likely, they asked you for help, and you made it difficult because you hate apple products. Now, I'll say I don't use OSX voluntarily. And lots of things are slightly different and thus annoying. But when I do use it, it works just fine and in many ways like I'd expect.
Really, this is like the guy who told Visual Studio Code complaining it deleted all his files when he selected "delete unversioned files" Take some responsibility for using your tool.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
"subpar experience"? This is total BS, a figment of someone's imagination. What is a "par" experience? This article is so stupid that it is better evidence for the fact that either Russian or Google trolls are gaming the slashdot system than it is for any measure of the relative merits of technology manufacturers. Apple only cares about money. Very true. If you think Samsung, Facebook, Amazon and and Google care any less for money, you're more gullible than those who believe Trump tweets. I just sold a broken iPhone SE on Ebay for $50. How much would I get for a broken Samsung Galaxy S7? Apple is killing every phone manufacturer on margins AND taking a smaller hit on sales. The AppleWatch is the standard bearer for wearable devices. Clearly, nobody is paying the premium for Apple products because they like "subpar" experiences. This article is utter drivel. And, yes, I'm only half joking when I imply that Russia and Google both hate Apple. In reality, Russia, CIA, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft all hate Apple because Apple's emphasis on privacy makes it difficult for all of them to pry into the users' lives and to manipulate them. Defend Google and Facebook all you want, but in truth, you have no idea how they're using your data and how they're manipulating you. That is not a fair bargain. And exactly when did Google's garbage UI become an above par experience?
"...who search the reason of things
Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves." --Euripides, The Medea
I may be a grumpy old man, but now that we've come up with a truckload of technology to improve our lives a lot, can we please step back from this technology buzz and get back to regular old life?
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
>> Apple is no longer the king of the smartphone camera
That news is 5 years old, slashdot
aaaaaaa
Their creative genius *literally* died with the passing of Jobs, and they finished riding what were left of his coattails a few years ago. That said, no functionality will ever make serving myself on a silver platter to Google or Amazon 'worth it', the poster is either too young to know better or sneaking Kool-Aid on the side. Apple is pretty much the only company taking privacy seriously, in in an era when all tech is pretty underwhelming, that is likely where attention will be shifting. The days of the 'best camera' are over, that is relative, anyway.
WTF? Amazon, google, and Facebook are young.
Their search results are hit or miss. Voice to text is hit or miss. Some things get better, some get worse...
One consequence of these alleged lies is that you waste time and effort posting shit nobody will read. Wouldn't it be better spending that time on something else?
Apple will circle back and update their Mac computers
In fact, they already have:
We will all get to witness the result next Tuesday:
https://www.apple.com/apple-ev...
Protip: Try Refreshing that Page a few times...
So preemuch the exact same article he wrote on this topic a little while back, offering the same level of analysis and same lack of insight into what either design or experience consists of. But now with added blitheness about privacy too!
Unless your time and certainty has no value, apple laptops are the lowest total ownership costs as far as I can tell. Even IBM agrees with that. So much time is spent screwing around with the dissappointment and incompatibilieis or learning experiences it takes with changing models year to year with other brands there's no point in spending that money whey you could just get an apple, know how much it's going to cost you right up front in time and effort and certainty it will work. The macs tend to last longer too.
Sure when I'm hunging for cheap like in servers or for secondary computers or ones for specific missions I always buy Linux machines. No argument there that they are way cheaper to buy. And as long as I know they will work for what I plan in a specific situation there's no reason to buy apple.
And if all you want is a machine to check your twitter account and do google docs then the machine with the absolute lowest chance of letting you down is a chromebook.
But if you want one computer that can do everything, take on new missions, and act just like your old one did with perfect continuity of operations, then an apple is it unless hourly rate of pay isn't very high. Ever waste a day screwing with a computer? your salary+benefits+lossed_sales == what it cost you that day.
So true.
n/t
1- provide an algorithmic experience. That's difficult. The "fuzzy logic" machine learning systems everyone else is using exist because writing strict algorithms to surface all the relevant data is hard.
2- provide a crappy experience from their own AI engine trained on limited data.
3- provide a ??? experience by buying someone else's training dataset.
This isn't even an Apple-specific question. In a world where we're talking about data privacy, in MANY fields (calendar/email/browser data is only the tip of the iceberg - consider autonomous driving data for example, including everything every autonomous car captures with every one of its sensors on every drive) - where is the tradeoff between "we want this thing to look smart" vs "we don't want to feed the beast"?
If you want to be trapped in an ecosystem, the Apple one is pretty comfy.
The Mac, iPad, iPhone, AppleWatch and iTunes, etc will be refined and refined and refined and thus become predictable and boring.
That's already the case.
Nothing interesting has happened at Apple in years.
Is the circling clockwise or counter clockwise? It depends on which hemisphere the drain is located.
Take your issues offline, weird troll.
It's very hard for new companies to enter the market with China out there ready to copy product and erase profit margins. That the iPhone was successful at all is purely because it was lightyears ahead of its competition, and they bet their entire company on it. If they had biffed that, there would be no Apple right now. If you think about it, people who are in the position of having significant financial resources, but also have really good reason to take huge risks are pretty rare. By the same token, if the iPhone clones had become good enough, fast enough, Apple would also probably have failed.
It would be better if companies could sort of succeed in this market, without being immediately run down. In a way, China has become the new Microsoft, and many are afraid to innovate. That money would be better spent on other investments which may have lower upside, but also lower downside.
Everything is good enough and if you're the kind of person prone to being trapped in an ecosystem, heck, it might as well be Apple.
If you bought last years Macbook you are soon to discover that a 'will not be fixed' buggy keyboard badly affects the long term value of your mac. Who in their right mind would buy one of those and expect it to have any value at all in 5 years?
Longtime non-fanboy Apple customer here, I see the company failing to uphold its once revered leadership in quality. Their software is increasingly buggy, their products increasingly expensive and with lesser options to upgrade or repair, and are banking on fanboys instead of the market that made them successful. If things dont change it wont be long before someone can do what they abandoned doing, that is, making products people love.
Apple hatred all the time. Very tribal.
Apple is going to lead the game with AR video processing on the fly. Alongside the security of their ecosystem, they will remain relevant and a top maker for the foreseeable future due to this.
Great more boring apple crap to be lining landfills in a year.
When was apple EVER king of the smartphone cameras? sure at various stages they were near the top or as good as others, but it was always someone else that was king,
Call me crazy here, but when I want to have a camera I use a device that pre-dates cellphones by decades, known as "a camera". This functions perfectly well as a camera, for the simple reason that it is a camera, and it outperforms any cellphone camera, no matter how flashy. I don't buy a phone because it also works as a so-so camera, I buy it because it's a phone. So I really don't care whether Apple has the best phone-pretending-to-be-a-camera out there or not.
Totally worthless article and conjecture. Thankfully many of millions of people know the truth. I wen through a dozen top shelf but horrible android phones before I found the truth. I originally came to this truth with reservations, but no more. I hold my head proud as an Apple user.
Apple software peaked in utility around 2010-2012.
Since then, they've done a bad job of handling asynchronous communication over networks, leaving many of us with endless beachballs, or undistributed documents.
iTunes has turned from a simple Music/Vid player to a monster that want's to monopolize all your systems.
AppleScript and Finder have starved.
Writing, spreadsheet, drawing etc, have been simplified to the point that a kid with crayons can do as well on an iPad to an expert with Wacom on a big screen.
It's HARD to read non-apple books, and everything is sucked into Apple's cloud, if you're not very careful about it.
The file system is designed to lose copies of your work under certain rare circumstances, and Time Machine has gotten progressively iffier.
All the while hardware ages beyond reason before refresh.
I've owned probably 25 Apples since 1982, They had better amaze me, if the want me to EVER buy another one.
Debian is looking pretty good now days.
I've been forced to use a macbook pro, and gladly went back to my Asus Zenbook running buntu as soon as I could. I do have family members that belong to the the church though, and trying to convince them to look at anything without an Apple logo on it is like talking to a rock.
I sent one family member a link to a file. His internet was out, so all he needed to do was download that link with his iphone, plug it into his macbook and transfer it over. After DAYS of trying he gave up on this simple task.
Another family member was given a video on a flash drive to watch on his Macbook. It was made with the H265 codec, so of course it would not play. I told him to download and install VLC media player and he'd be good. He has never been able to figure out how to do this.
Still another family member was given a portable hard drive to backup her documents from her Macbook Air. This went about the same way as the others - she has no clue how to copy a file on her Mac.
These are people who often tout how Apple is superior to everything else, while at the same time cannot figure out how to do very basic things with their Apple products. At what point will the almost total lack of easy functionality convince them to look to another platform? Do Apple products make people stupid? I just don't understand.
You've got some DUMB relatives there, sorry!
Every one of those tasks are EASILY accomplished on a Mac. Same with your Iphone/Mac file-handoff.
Too bad you can't be arced to help your OBVIOUSLY technically inept family members accomplish what is, for them, an unfamiliar task.
Remember, YOU weren't BORN with the knowledge of how to do that stuff, either.
Ever waste a day screwing with a computer? your salary+benefits+lossed_sales == what it cost you that day.
Why would I waste a work day screwing with a computer? I do that on my free time.
It took Android years to catch up with Apple.
You think some Chinese company could just do that easily? It's not because the hardware is light years ahead. It's the attention to detail and usability and that is not easily copied. I would argue that if Android didn't exist the Chinese companies would still be years behind.
Dell Latitude is cheaper and lasts longer and if you don't try to be smart ass about customized images done by a monkey are also extremely stable. The 2017 MacBook pros are steaming pile of shit
+1
Also, the king of mobile cameras has always been Sony. Definitely not Apple, anything an iPhone can do a comparably priced Sony phone can do better in terms of camera photo quality.
you are just a fucking idiot
Seems like a writ for the circlejerkers.
I just replaced a Samsung GS6, that were no longer getting OS upgrades after 2-3 years, with an iPhone that will be supported for five minimum.
I was at first considering a Pixel3 for swifter upgrades than Samsung but I don't want to pay top $ for a phone AND get datamined/profiled on AND get only 3 years support.
It was expensive up front but if it lasts as long as my wife's iphone 5S it'll be cheap.
The iPhone runs the same 3rd party cloud services, mail, calendar, notes as my Samsung did. I don't use iCloud or iTunes, except for backup. I also use a third party email app called Canary Mail. I am no more locked into Apple than I was locked into Google.
I don't use voice assistants for much but have played with Google, Siri and Alexa - they all suck. The only thing I use Siri for is starting a Goodnight Shortcut that changes light and temperature in my place.
A friend just got a new LG phone and I congratulated him and helped him transfer stuff because it's a f-ing personal choice what f-ing phone people get and we should be f-ing happy for each other!
Nonsense, now ill admit i never owned a apple laptop and have minimal experience with my friends one, but my dell latitide e7xxx series lasts me since 2014 to 2018, no problems.
(i do operations for a company)
Of 3 of em in my office, one developed screen tearing. Also that idiot doesn't keep the laptop well.
And i just got a Lenovo 120s (N3350, 4gb, 128gb, win10home) for usd263 each last month. Granted id prefer win8.1, but it works well.
(given to my sales staff)
I dont see how a apple laptop will give better value than these 2.
I totally agree and I am surprised at the amount of clueless non-technical Apple iSheep on an otherwise tech heavy site like slashdot
Those guys left some time ago; the "isheep" are still around, waiting for Apple or /. to come around
They are great followers where others have lead the way 5-10 years back. They are however, or used to be, excellent at finding the sweetspot marketable solution to the others' failures and short comings. They also excel at creating margin-heavy business models.
Yeah, we really need a new technology company to shake things up. The Apple/Amazon/Google/Facebook/Microsoft tech Oligopoly all seem to be in a race to copy each other's small product improvements, but none of them are really trying to do something genuinely innovative at the moment.
You seemed to have overlooked the fact that these same mega-corps also like to play another capitalistic game called Fill The Patent War Chest.
You want new technology? You want innovation? Then fight for patent reform, because that's about the only way you're going to get any new technology that doesn't ultimately end up stifled or mired in legal battles.
AR is pretty fukn cool
No there not. Im 12. Theyâ(TM)ve LITERLLY existed all my life.
More of what Windows and Linux does is steaming shit.
If you want perfection then you better get your 100's of billions of dollars and several decades of your life to lead the development of something that isn't steaming shit. Seriously. And after you're done with that I'm 100% certain that many people will be able to point to much of what you've done and say its steaming shit.
Nobody is more frustrated than I am at the stench of some of Apples stuff. Especially since they have the resources to greatly improve it and won't.
You have restated the obvious that was all I was saying... people have to choose the least bad option overall. And you have.
If you're the kind of person who can't see the value in an ecosystem then you're a fool. Hatred of an ideology is just blindness.
My household is MOSTLY Apple, not all Apple. Nothing trapped here. No Windows. Tiny bit of Linux and FreeBSD on embedded stuff. Solaris on our household server. Through all of it - best tool for the job. Period.
Its just as easy to say all the open source fanatics are trapped in an ecosystem (ideology really). If all you need is the basics provided by open source solutions then I'm not the person who is going to tell you that you're wrong. But surely you're not blind enough to think that every solution people might need exists in that ecosystem because it doesn't.
These wars are pointless. My entire career (38+ years) they are still going on. Just the names and players have changed. Its always the newest fad that is nirvana for the masses - the stupid sheep.
Sweet child, you've just been blinded for so long
Literally nothing you said is true
While I still have "a camera" that I use when I know I want to take pictures (eg: vacation), I still like having a good "so-so camera" on my phone. Cellphone cameras have improved tremendously over the years. "The Best Camera Is The One You Have With You", making it great if I want to capture something that I see while I'm out and about on a regular day, and very easy if I want to capture something to share with friends or family.
I have a note8 and a iPhone 8 plus. Both were purchased direct and unlocked, and both are used on the same carrier. The note8 routinely drops calls, crashes, freezes, and has all sorts of app issues. The iPhone sometimes has app crashes, but this is rare.
Nope.
I've been using an android phone while traveling overseas for about 3 weeks now, and even after screwing around with digging through settings to find this and that, and downloading apps to do basic functions like mute the phone without either having to hold down the volume rocker for a year or drag into menus and scroll about looking for do-not-disturb, I just don't like it.
Why can't I get rid of the big fucking Google bar on the home screen I never use?
Why do I have to reboot it daily to keep it responsive?
Why does the external storage thing crash constantly, but only in this latest version of Android, and apparently Google could give a shit?
FYI this is the Android One experience, so I can't even blame some shitty OEM skin.
I can't wait to get home and pop my SIM back into my 2-year old iPhone that just works the way I like. And you know what, if people prefer Android and want to use that, good on them. I'm not an arrogant prick that tells people what they should like, unlike the parent post.
Not having Windows 10 updates that Fuck your computer up and waste your time restoring backups? You do have backups, yes?
The latest shake-up in personal computing has been the Chromebook. Not perfect for everyone - but perfect for the use case where it's perfect ;-)
Seriously, though. The concepts behind the Chromebook that make it great are ease of management. Always up-to-date software. And, while not the cheapest, perhaps the best bang for the buck hardware-wise. Microsoft is attempting to compete with that by, duh, shoehorning a version of Windows into a similar device category. That seems destined to fail - and unless the hardware can be repurposed to run Linux or Android, I sure hope it does... I wonder if Apple could come up with something truly creative in that device space. Cheap, high volume isn't Apple's forte, but reinvention is.
The main problem with Chromebooks is Google's use of them to suck up all your data. Maybe Apple's hardware-based business model could reinvent the category without having to rely on spying. I wonder if the creativity to come up with something truly new still exists at Apple, though...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Mute? Swipe down the Quick Settings menu, press the volume icon once to go to "vibrate only" mode, and twice for complete silence.
Google menu bar? Press and hold the bar, then drag to the trash can at the top.
Reboot? You don't - you're making that one up (unless you installed some cheap Chinese SW that is constantly storing more and more real-time data - that sucks, but that's not the OS, it will happen on any device).
External storage? What device are you using? Oreo and Pie both work fine with OTG and USB sticks, or when just plugged into a computer and you allow external access.
You sound like a clueless iPhone lover who doesn't WANT to get out of the prison, you love being shackled to the shiny fruit...
Not all screens let you go a step back to correct something when you're setting it up.
Name one that doesn't.
If the keyboard is up you can't scroll down to fill in the next field,
Yes, of course you can. You drag like normal.
the screen gets locked as part of setup.
Oh noes!111!!!1!
And then I had to install the apps. Did you know you can't run email without it knowing your wifi settings or your location? Samsung won't let you install it without permitting all access to everything. I know it's necessary because the gmail client is the same.
Knowing your wifi status is useful because it can tell you when to poll. However, you are lying about gmail. It only asks for Calendar, Contacts, and Storage permissions, and it still works if you turn all of these off. Don't lie, liar.
Then you have to click the non-privacy policy, which means essentially giving everything away as and when they desire it.
Apple's EULA for the iPhone gives them the right to retrieve any and all of your data from your device.
The iphone is bad, I'll grant you that. But Android is so much worse that it makes the iphone look good by comparison.
Sadly, you haven't actually identified any ways in which Android is worse than the iPhone except a spurious screen lock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even IBM agrees with that.
says 9to5mac.com.
Because the alternative is a Google phone, and turns out I hate Google even more.
God damn Woz worshippers.
If there's anything I hate more than Apple fanboys ..... it's Woz worshippers.
Yes jobs screwed Woz and Gates screwed Paul Allen.....
I'm also sure you're in the Nikola Tesla supporter camp rather than Einstein.
You think that shit give you nerd creds? Fucking dumb asses. The moment you pick sides for such sit it makes you a dumb ass.
The classic example of Apple being total dicks to their users was when they throttled down user's older iphone CPUs without telling them, in an effort to "improve the user experience" due to battery degradation. How much better would it be for their "user's experience" if they actually addressed the problem head on and instead of gluing batteries into the device, make the batteries easier to replace? It's not like they don't know that the batteries are going to degrade over time and require replacement. Instead their solution was to slow down the device, which almost certainly would send some of those customers off to purchase new iphones rather than just replace the one part that's making their iphone unpleasant to use. It's bad for the environment, bad for their customer's bank account and a greed driven strategy that just reeks of contempt for their own users who hang on to devices longer than Apple would like them to. Fuck Apple.
IBM, Ex-NeXT developer calling this troll.
Jobs died leaving a legacy of code, culture and product that even without Cook et. al. doing anything Apple Inc. would last 10 years. Cook hasnâ(TM)t violated that edict.
Cook has done a superb job guiding Apple Inc. and Jobs legacy. Cookâ(TM)s success stands on broad shoulders of SteveJobs but is carving his own legacy in privacy. Kudos!
Trolling success that secures privacy, affords network essentials and enables a mobilization of economies of scale that have changed the world for better is worse than product, humble brag and subscription based system it has evolved.
Thatâ(TM)s the measure between what Apple, Jobs and Cook have accomplished and you? Then Iâ(TM)ll continue to support the people making the world better one upgrade at a time.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, that is not exactly true. The cellphone cameras have become very very good, especially in their automatic functions.
Furthermore, there is an old saw among photographers that the best camera is the camera you have with you when you want to take a picture. Today, that is the camera on the cellphone.
I've been with them forever. What was great for a while was customer service. You could go into the store and get quality help. Many times they would repair or replace my stuff with little or no discussion - just took care of it. I don't think they were ever about the top hardware; they were always about the hardware/software integration and therefore the best customer experience. Same when they started their own stores. And FWIW, I do believe Cook when he says Apple is not about data mining on it's customers to sell it off.
To be a leader again Apple, get back to customer service par excellence.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Apple has been around for since 1976. That's 42 years, 30 years longer that the current tech tweens.
It wasn't that long ago that anyone who cared...
Later he puts it at 18 months. That is extremely generous towards Apple. I would have put it closer to 5 years since Android flagship devices started eclipsing Apple ones. Or does the USA not get the top end phones that the rest of us get? Although that would explain the irrationally high % of Apple devices in the US figures. It even explains why old iPhones sell so well there.
Nowadays, a mid-market Samsung device outperforms an iThing that costs far more and it has a far better interface. Why does Apple still sell anything to, supposedly intelligent, people?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Meh, these patent concerns have been around for many decades and that didnâ(TM)t stop companies from coming up with new technologies and innovation, like, for example, the iPhone!
â"â"â"-
You want new technology? You want innovation? Then fight for patent reform,
That's like saying Nintendo is 130 years old. Which it actually is. Except the Nintendo that everyone knows (the video game company) really only goes back to the 80's. The Apple of today really only goes back to 2007 when they decided to be a mobile phone company. You'll note that they also changed their name in 2007 from Apple Computers, Inc. to Apple, Inc.
The best way to get rid of the Google bar is to download another launcher that doesn't have it. Yes, you can install a completely different home screen in Android and completely change the look and feel. No hacking or anything required, just go to the Play Store and download one. Even Microsoft makes one, and it's actually pretty decent. I'm not a fan of Android, but the fact you can easily modify it to suit your needs (you can also download replacements for pretty much all the other components in Android like messaging, camera, etc.) makes it way better than the iPhone where it's Apple's way or the highway.
Though even if you could do that on the iPhone, you'd still be stuck with the stupid UI decision to have just the "home" button. I'm forever forgetting - now I need to do this... do I tap the button 2 times? 3 times? tap and then hold? hold and then tap? What a stupid design.
You call lasting four measly years longevity? My last mid 2011 pre retina MacBook Pro is still running great, I only replaced the HD with an SSD for better performance. Yes I got myself one of the first touchbar MacBook Pros, but my son is still playing Borderlands 2, Tomb Raider and ESO on my old machine, albeit on low settings.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Apple never really led the way. They've always mostly been busy demonstrating that it's much faster and easier to create a closed ecosystem than an open one. Good for them.
0x or or snor perron?!
It hasn't lead the way for years now.