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Somewhat ironic, given the relationship between Apple and Samsung recently. "

Not really, good PR is good PR.

Business is business, life is life. The relationship between Samsung and Apple resembles a marriage about to break up.

Not really, the google and apple execs have known each other long before ios and android came to life.


I believe this gesture from google/samsung can make apple look bad. They can make it even worse by holding a silent minute at the nexsus event then, in the memory of Jobs, donate $10.000.000 to cancer research.

This, as Bruce Lee would put it, is "the art of fighting without fighting". Or maybe more correctly "the art of doing evil without being evil"

The cynic in me wants to say the delay is more to have clear tech headlines. I Hope its more genuine than that though.

Jobs was a Major influence in the industry for many years. Larry Page was barely a tot when Jobs was at his peak the first time round.
The tops of these companies all know one another personally as well as professionally.

You do realize that some google execs will attend jobs funeral? I mean, they cant be at the event and the funeral at the same time.

His funeral is scheduled for friday. The unveiling was supposed to be tuesday.

"Some guy"? "Shitty phone"? Either live on this planet or don't.

As much as I don't like the iPhone for its closed nature, I do respect Steve Jobs, and I admire all his ideas that made Apple a succesful company again.
That's the reason why I modded you up

Don't believe the bullshit press statement. This was held up by some kind of last-minute technical snag.

I don't know that setting up a website which helps increase visitor hits and page ranking based on links-in really punishes a website for posting content designed to increase page hit counts but all the power too you.

Of course it has to do with personal feelings. Not Google's and Samsung's, but yours, the consumer's. Apple has just released a phone to a giant collective MEH!. The Nexus Prime is almost certainly going to be a more exciting piece of hardware, and the software will most likely bring along some newsworthy features. Taking a jab at Apple by releasing it a week after the new iPhone might be cool, but with Jobs' passing, it's just not the right time. Bad taste. Bad PR.

Edited 2011-10-08 20:50 UTC

There is no 'meh' from consumers apparently where iPhone 4s preorders are beating all previous phones. Remember the consensus amongst the tech commentators was that the original iPad was going to be a flop. The iPhone 4s will replace the iPhone 4 as the world's top selling handset.

About that collective "meh": http://allthingsd.com/20111007/att-says-seen-200000-pre-orders-for-...

Most successful iPhone launch ever.

Watching Apple's event, the main difference between Jobs and Cook as presenter is that Jobs showed his enthusiasm. He dropped his trademark "awesome" and "insanely great" while he talked about a product. The so-called "reality distortion field", it turns out, was Steve Jobs telling clueless tech journalists how impressed they should be, because Lord knows they can't figure it out on their own.

Double the performance with better battery life, "4G" throughput without LTE hardware, massively upgraded photocell with optics to do it justice, and a "beta" voice assistant that blows anything short of IBM's Watson out of the water... but they didn't bump the number, and the average tech journalist is an idiot, so "meh."

It must have been hard on those presenters at the iPhone event knowing that Steve Jobs was literally at death's door, they did very well under the circumstances. Did you notice the 'reserved' empty chair where Jobs would have normally sat and the way the camera lingered over it a couple times?

Yes, tech journalists are generally idiots. This makes sense, since they work for large companies, and need to appease not only their parent company, but also their advertisers, and Apple itself, of course (to ensure an invitation to the next event).

All those large tech sites? Engadget? Ars Technica?

When it comes to Apple reviews, they are - by definition - not to be trusted. Sites like that MUST be nice and kind about Apple, because else Apple cuts them off. They are the IGN and GameSpot of the tech world [when it comes to reviews - otherwise they're relatively decent, esp. Ars].

If you want real reviews, go to the likes of AnandTech and Tom's Hardware. Those are the real tech journalists. Major exception to the rule is Siracusa, of course. He's a legend.

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As for myself - my response to the iPhone 4S is a big resounding meh exactly because I'm a nerd. I never said it wouldn't sell or wouldn't be a success - because at this point, Apple could slap a logo on a turd, call it the iPhone X, and sell 34 million of them by quarter's end.

Edited 2011-10-09 10:25 UTC

And we see evidence of this where?



Benchmark sites. Appealingly objective in their informational content, and informative provided your question is specific enough.



This is exactly what I'm talking about. You recuse yourself from human taste and understanding by calling yourself a nerd, tacitly claiming that your expectations are special without giving any hint as to what they might actually have been, and go on to insult the general public with a flippant remark that they're so uninformed and tasteless they'd buy Apple-branded feces, ignoring the fact that Apple's products have the highest customer satisfaction ratings while selling in the tens of millions, something no amount of loyalty or marketing could achieve. Whom could a journalist who believes such thinking is insightful ever hope to inform?

The iPhone is disappointing because it is, but people will buy anything because they will, and that's journalism. Who's the one trying to sell shit?

Do you have any evidence to support the notion that if attendees at Apple event write a critical review of a product that they will be disinvited to the next event? Any evidence at all?

What strikes me about tech reviewers and Apple products is how often they underestimate the potential of Apple products by a quite staggering degree. The way the iPad was greeted is a very good example of that. The way the iPhone 4s was greeted is another example in the same league I think. Leaving aside the fact that by this time next month the iPhone 4s will be the world's top selling handset the way that the tech press, by and large, has utterly failed to understand the significance or potential of Siri is astonishing. What was demoed seems to be a functional AI system, in a phone, that actually works in the real world and does useful stuff. And it's not even at version 1 yet. The potential of this is enormous.

You say 'because at this point, Apple could slap a logo on a turd' but the point it's not that Apple could sell a turd the point is that the buying public knows from long experience that Apple won't sell them a turd. What was the last Apple product of any significance that could be described as turd? Premium brands are partially made by advertising and market positioning but only partially. If a premium brand is actually crap the brand reputation will sooner or later (usually sooner) collapse. And the fact is what Apple sells is a premium brand product experience at not premium prices. The buying public knows this but tech commentators often miss the point because they obsess about specs and stuff that often doesn't matter that much and the stuff that does matter a lot is often invisible to them. Hence Apple's baffling, from their point of view, success.

Raise your hand if you have extensive experience dealing with Apple's PR dpt.

*raises hand*

Can't say more.



I think you're confusing things. Very few tech reviewers underestimate Apple. In fact, they overestimate them. The comparisons between Jobs and people like Edison and Einstein are proof of that. The superlatives about how Apple invents this and Apple invents that, even though Apple hasn't actually invented anything new in close to 20 years - Apple doesn't invent, Apple perfects and polishes, and they do it very well. However, that's not inventing. They take existing functionality, and polish it. Heck, even Siri wasn't developed in-house. Apple bought it.

Only a few so-called "analysts" underestimate Apple because it brings them pageviews. Those are the people you are referring to, and those people are idiots.

I am a nerd, and hence, that's how I look at Apple's products. Just look at my reaction to when the iPad was unveiled - I wrote something along the lines of that I personally didn't see the point, but that Apple would most likely sell boatloads of them. I never conflate my nerdiness with Apple's ability to sell stuff.



BAM. This is exactly what I mean when I state tech reviews and the press vastly overestimate Apple. What I, as a nerd, saw was this: a voice recognition system with a few more commands in its database than other systems - which might as well become a horrible problem (many times, simplicity > complexity).

The voice recognition system in, say , Windows Phone 7 works very well exactly because it's simple - "open Facebook", "text Renate", "check mail". Everybody can come up with those commands, since they make sense. Siri's system works exactly the same, it just has a few more commands to do the same thing. This could actually become very, very confusing.

In other words, unlike you or just about everyone in the technology press, I don't blindly believe a controlled Apple demo and proclaim halleluja - I want to test it out myself, see how well it works, and compare it to simpler (and therefore, possibly easier to use) systems. I don't just take Apple's word for it like you and the tech press do, easily impressed by a shiny object on a screen - I want to test it myself.

In other words, those "analysts" who write click-whoring pieces about supposed Apple failures are idiots, most of the technology press are gullible idiots who will believe whatever Apple shoves down their eyeballs, and I am a sceptic who refuses to believe anything until I've seen/used it myself.

The iPad was a good example - I didn't see the point when it was launched, but did say they'd most likely sell lots of them. When I got one myself, I finally got it, and admitted it easily in the review.

A reverse example: most of the tech press just parrot the Apple nonsense about "post-PC" and iOS being post-PC - even though iOS just a desktop interface with enlarged buttons crammed onto a mobile screen (and not a very good one at that).

I guess that means you don't have any evidence.

It's painful to watch people who claim to be interested in technology not get Siri. To use the term 'voice recognition system' in relation to Siri just underlines how deeply you have missed the point. Voice recognition is not trivial but it's not new. Siri is not a voice recognition system it's an AI system.

Eventually you will catch on and then when it changes everything you can start writing article about how Apple didn't event it

I'm sorry, more than my word I cannot offer. It's pretty much a given though - you can't critisize Apple and still get early access to their stuff for reviews, or press invites. That's how Apple keeps a tight grip on the press, and ensures all early reviews are positive. I have dealt with Apple about this a lot, but of course, it's all confidential. I can undersrand you won't believe me, that's fine.

As for Siri - you just proved my point. You haven't used it, have no idea how it works, yet you automatically believe it's perfect and will change the world. You're a believer in the church of Apple.

I'm not. I'm a sceptic, with everything (except Fiona Apple). I want to actually use it first in a real-world environment. Then I'll judge.

And you're right, Apple did not invent Siri. They bought it.

"Siri is not à voice recognition system it's an AI system"

(Disclaimer : Although I believe I have the required knowledge of physics, signal theory, and programming, I have never worked directly on a voice recognition system. So anyone who has, please correct me if you detect some bullshit in the upcoming post)

So you believe that it is possible to make a decent voice recognition system without AI ? I don't think so, and am going to explain why.

What is voice recognition ? Basically speech to text translation. Basic theory is that you take an audio file or stream of someone saying something, you isolate words and detect punctuation based on the pauses and intonations of the talk, then you take each word separately and try to slice it into phonemes, which are pretty close to syllables but not quite the same thing. From phonemes, you can get the textual word. (to be continued, stupid 1000 char phone browser limit)

Edited 2011-10-10 16:47 UTC

Now, what are the problems which explain why computers took so much time to get this speech to test translation relatively right ?

First, there is the [word sliced in phonemes]->[written word] translation. It is not as simple as it looks, because many European languages have this "feature" that there are several ways to write a given phoneme. If you go in Asia, things are even worse : words are not commonly spelled using syllables, but using more complex characters which are often also words in their own right.

For all these reasons, voice recognition systems need an internal dictionary to associate a bunch of phonemes with a written word.

As a starting point, someone who wants to create such a dictionary can use a regular dictionary, take the phonetic expression of each written word, and create a phonetic-to-written dictionary from that. But if you stop at this stage, you'll miss all the everyday familiar vocabulary that is not officially recognized by national dictionaries, such as weasel words. These words, along with other things which are not found in dictionaries (such as the names of numbers, letters, and mathematical symbols) must be added manually.

Manually adding words that are not in the dictionary takes a lot of time and effort, and developers cannot think of everything, so some words will always end up missing. Especially taking into account that our vocabulary is in constant evolution. For this reason, good voice recognition systems must be able to learn new words. Which is a first form of AI.

Edited 2011-10-10 17:05 UTC

Second, there are homophones. Two different words which are pronounced in the same way. These are very frequent in the basic French vocabulary, I don't know what the situation is in English.

How does a voice recognition system discriminate between both ? It can use two tools : the frequency at which a word is used (when in doubt, the most frequently used word is the safest bet), and structural analysis of the sentence to check which word it is most likely to be.

As an example of the second form of discrimination, in French we have "a", which is the present form of the "avoir" (to have) verb, and "à", which is used to introduce location complements in a sentence. Both are extremely common. To discriminate between both, the voice recognition system could check the sentence for the presence of a verb. If there is none, then we are most likely talking about "a".

I hope that it is obvious that both word frequency analysis and sentence analysis are operations that are best adapted to each individual user, who has a different way to speak. So we need learning, so we need AI here too.

So far, I have assumed that there is a unique way to pronounce a given word across all countries which speak a given language. This is, of course, perfectly false. Regional differences are strong, to the point where even humans sometimes have a hard time understanding each other.

As an example, having mostly learned British and American English, I have a hard time communicating with Indian people. I know the words, just not the pronunciation. In French, some people pronounce "é"s the way I pronounce "è"s, some people pronounce letters which I don't pronounce in words, and vice-versa. Words have a different meaning and are used in different contexts. In fact, even the way punctuation is introduced in a spoken sentence can subtly vary.

A voice recognition system must adapt itself to this. Since we generally only specify what is the language we're speaking, and not the regional variant, it has guess which regional variant we are using, and remember that. If it doesn't know about our regional variant, it must also get used to it. Again, our voice recognition system learns, so that's AI.

What about individual differences in pronunciation ? Even in a given region, people talk in a different way, depending on the life they have lived. Some people speak slowly, other go very fast. Some people use a very formal vocabulary, when other are very familiar in their everyday speak. The voice recognition system must adapt itself to these different behaviors if it wants to have optimal performance.

Then even for a single individual, pronunciation varies depending on the circumstances. You speak differently when you're tired, when you're running, when you're in a meeting, when you're troubled, when you're in shock... Again, a voice recognition system must adapt itself to that. Thus, more AI.

I could go on and on about detecting phonemes in a noisy environments, people who "eat" phonemes when they speak too quickly, neologisms, context sensitivity and the languages that are heavily based on that such as Japanese, and so on, but I hope that at this stage you see my point.

Many people, in which I believe you are included, think that voice recognition is simple. This feeling comes from the fact that we do it everyday, in a relatively painless fashion, only asking people to repeat what they just said infrequently. The truth is, it is not, and there is a reason why children take so much time to get a rich vocabulary.

Voice recognition is a fantastically complex problem, whose complexity probably borders that of translating one language to another. It is not only a problem of processing power, but also of gathering the required knowledge in a way that is accessible to a computer program. AI gathers knowledge from where it is most useful, the user, and makes use of it to improve the recognition quality, so it obviously a vital part and has been there for ages. In academia, I am ready to bet that voice recognition is mostly studied in AI labs, in the same kind of team that works on automated translation.

Saying that "Siri is different from voice recognition because it is an AI" is thus deeply, totally wrong. Voice recognition IS AI. Slapping stuff after it which processes the extracted text, like a WolframAlpha backend that can find answers to an oral question, is certainly a nice touch, could qualify as an interesting integration effort, but is by no means the revolution you want to make it be.

Edited 2011-10-10 17:42 UTC

Define what you call AI in this post. I can think of two definitions right now. One has an official status among the field, but is very broad (computer program with an ability to learn), and every phone with an annoying T9 feature qualifies. The other is Hollywood's view of things, which you may argue best fits the average guy's expectations : to look, behave, etc... like a human being. I believe current phones, and computers as a whole, remain stupidly far from this : can iOS 5 understand metaphors and sarcasm now ? Write music ? Do poetry ? Drive a car ? Code its next release ? Or even, to pick something which some modern computers can actually do, win a TV game without an internet connection ?

Not to like rub it in Thom but you gleefully put down other journalists and trump your platform of choice using totally random metrics and standards and you also tend to flip flop as and when it suits you.

I am not sure that really makes you a better tech journalist.

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Platform of choice? And what would that be? Looking around my living room room, I see 4 different platforms I use every day (Linux, Windows, iOS, and WP7; my first Android device will be delivered tomorrow)....

I am just saying you certainly have a platforms 'bias' and you rail about how everyone who has a different 'bias' is an idiot.

You made a big deal of the fact that the Galaxy II S was better/newer then the iPhone 4S because of the CPU and the screen yet AnandTech is showing that it beats the pants of a 1.5 GHz Galaxy II S and will almost certainly do the same with a Nexus Prime (since it's basically the same CPU).

You complain about how the screen is too small where you used to rail about how the screen was too big for your thumbs.

To some you sound like an 'idiot' sometimes. Recognize that and be mature enough not to vilify everyone because they disagree with you.

I'm not denying it will be the next #1 selling phone on the market, it just doesn't bring anything interesting to the table. The last one at least had an exceptional screen and promised a great camera (which it failed to deliver on, and will fail to deliver on yet again), this one has nothing. Or a "voice assistant that blows anything short of IBM's Watson out of the water" if you will (RDF much?). So meh. It's just an upgrade on last year's fashion accessory.

Never head of product code names?

Windows 7: "Blackcomb/Vienna".
Firefox 4: "Tumucumaque"
MacOS X 10.6: "Snow Leopard"
Adobe Photoshop CS5: "White Rabbit"
Ubuntu 12.04: "Precise Pangolin"

It's not uncommon, and most have themes (Apple uses big cats, Microsoft uses locations near Redmond). Google just chose desserts for theirs.

Edited 2011-10-09 02:52 UTC

Would you have preferred "Candy String" ? I'm sure this cake-based naming scheme has some perversion potential...

Outdated information. We're already a few generations ahead. Even the Galaxy SII - released in APril - no longer uses that system.

good to know !

I'm getting my Galaxy SII Wednesday. I'm open to questions .

i got mine last week. thats why i was wondering if i shouldn't have waited and gotten either the nexus prime or the galaxy note. then again, who knows when the galaxy note will come to US, considering we just got the s2.

the s2 is pretty nice. i've been using an original first gen iphone for the past 4 years. i find android to be a little unintuitive at times, but the customizability is insane. it was overwhelming at first and made android seem overly complicated in comparison to ios, but now that i have everything setup the way i want its great!

AnandTech just posted some performance comparisons and guess what, the iPhone 4S beats the Galaxy II S in browser performance by a wide margin (it's twice as fast).

In fact, the iPhone 4 with iOS 5 is only marginally slower then the Galaxy II S.

Admittedly, if your into the 'bigger is better' the II S screen will make you happy.

Just goes to show that comparing CPU speeds on phones is sort of a bit dumb.