At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories – there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
First and foremost, I personally find Tim Cook to be a more pleasurable interviewee than Steve Jobs; his Texas demeanour is friendly and approachable, whereas I found Jobs to be intimidating and cold. It certainly does put a different face on the huge corporation that is Apple. I’m starting with this seemingly insignificant point, because it’s a nice contrast to one of the things Cook talked about – something that really stood out to me the most.
Tim Cook focussed entirely on the United States. Every figure he gave, every statistic he boasted was a figure covering the US population. The rest of the world barely got a mention – which seems odd, considering the rest of the world makes up 95% of the world population. In fact, his attitude felt condescending – the rest of the world doesn’t use smartphones in the same way “we” do, so they don’t really count. “Globally, I think there are a lot of ‘smartphones’ that we’d consider feature phones, and the users use them like feature phones,” Cook said.
It almost seemed as if Cook just conceded the rest of the world to its competitors. There are large parts of the world coming online today or in the coming years that will never be able to afford Apple’s phones or even the expensive Android phones we buy. No, this market will be served almost exclusively by cheap Android phones. There will be a huge wave of current feature phone owners that will move to smartphones – and they will become Android users. Not Windows users, not Apple users – but Google users.
Moving on, Cook mentioned a few things that I found incredibly surprising, and that could really change the way Apple approaches the industry in the future. Most importantly, Cook announced something that will greatly impact the future of iOS, and will be welcomed by many, many iOS users the world over: more openness.
Cook stated that Apple will open up more iOS APIs to third parties. Mossberg extolled the virtues of Android allowing third parties to improve core aspects of the operating system, such as keyboard technology, which now run circles around whatever Apple has to offer. Third parties will be allowed to change more core aspects of iOS, Cook stated, but obviously not to the point of Android. This is great news for iOS users, but it will really depend on just how extensive this new openness will be.
Another interesting point is that Tim Cook specifically – without being asked – brought up something very interesting: Apple may make Android applications in the future. Someone from the audience asked about Apple making iCloud technologies available to other platforms, and Cook switched the conversation to Android applications specifically.
This is interesting, because I honestly have no idea what Apple could have to offer Android users. The only thing, perhaps, is some form of iTunes support – every other Apple application, e.g. the iWork suite, would just dilute iOS’ value. Cook specifically brought this one up by choice, and I’m wondering why.
On the topic of Google Glass, Cook was obviously quite dismissive. “I think there are some positive points in the product,” Cook told Mossberg and Swisher, “I think it’s probably more likely to appeal to certain vertical markets. […] I think from a mainstream point of view [glasses as wearable computing devices] are difficult to see. I think the wrist is interesting. The wrist is natural.”
The interview ended on a high note, as the penultimate question came from The Verge’s patent expert Niley Patel. I’m not going to spoil this one for you – Patel did an excellent job of poking massive holes in Cook’s reasoning, and it’s fun to watch the CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations squirm. I strongly advise you to sit through the entire interview to see this specific part.
All in all, the interview had some interesting aspects, but in general, the similarity between Cook’s cookie-cutter responses and whatever the popular Apple fanblogs publish is incredibly uncanny. It made it all a bit boring and predictable.
I think the obvious thing for them to do would be to make the iTunes store available on Android. Not the apps, of course, but the music and movie library would directly compete with Google’s offerings. This would provide a pretty good revenue stream without the need to invest a great deal of effort.
I wonder if Apple could write apps for Android as well as they can write for Windows? /sarcasm
Edited 2013-05-29 21:00 UTC
You have no clue what apples business model is all about.
It seems to me that Apple’s business model is to perpetuate themselves as a premium hardware company by producing designer computing and mobile device products with less (read cheaper) hardware specifications than the competition, and while utilizing walled application gardens to enforce planned obsolescence in order to create a recurring revenue stream. Meanwhile, leveraging subsidized iPhones as a gateway device for the uncertain or for those that cannot afford their premium PC devices.
At least, that’s how it seems to me.
Apple is a hardware company. Everything else that Apple does is geared to selling Apple HW. If they make money on media or apps sales that is only icing on the cake.
Under their current model they would never (IMO) make iTunes available to Android. It would not sell any HW for Apple and it would lesson the user experience for the Apple (media) customer. Apple makes the most complete media consumption echo system and adding Android makes no sense. Apple is about selling a complete HW echo system.
They do partner with media companies (Netflix,NHL,TV) But they don’t like partnering with HW manufactures that compete in the same niche as Apple HW. That is one reason why they are trying to get rid of Samsung in their supply chain as much as possible.
I have a feeling this will be bad for Samsung in the long run. Their profits from supplying Apple products is probably a significant part of their current record profits. Android profits are razor thin! and difficult to maintain.
I fail to see how it would change the media experience for the Apple customers with Apple devices, either in the negative or positive. Their software on Android is likely to be complete shit of course (look at iTunes for Windows), but they’ll do it if they think they’ll get enough money out of it. They could even use it to try to push Apple devices, e.g. don’t like the iTunes experience on Android? Get yourself an iPhone or iPad instead.
Were Jobs still running the show at Apple I’d have said you were absolutely right, and they’d never do it. I’m not sure that things will remain as they were with Cook and others in charge now, and things may change. Apple is a business with the goal of maximizing revinue as much as possible. Business models and philosophies evolve and change over time if those in charge of said business are smart and wish to continue to thrive in a changing market.
(emphasis mine) interesting typo…
Apple’s business model is to make money…
If the bean counters at Apple feel like making Android devices capable of participation in the iTunes economy ultimately makes them more money, well then Apple is going to do that.
I don’t see why they didn’t do this already to be honest – probably waiting to see if the Android market got big enough to bother. Regardless, this is a total no-brainer – I would almost guarantee that iTunes is what Cook was talking about…
What is so strange about this idea? iTunes is on Windows isn’t it… Why? Because it is too large a market to ignore.
Android = same thing
“Make money” is not a business model.
I was being facetious… The point is business models evolve. What makes sense today may not make sense tomorrow. Large publicly traded companies do not adhere religiously to business models if they want to stay large and publicly traded
You know, like Microsoft used to be a software company and Facebook used to be a website for college students… Things change.
I agree. I think more and more companies will drift towards more vertical integration which will have obvious consequences for their business models. Your services just work better when you integrate them at every step along the way.
I think the key is tight integration a long side data freedom and interoperability with competing platforms.
Users shouldn’t have to think about how they will keep their data if they want to move to a competing platform, so I think within reason that this should be a guideline.
I don’t think its outlandish to expect iTunes for Android, at least one day. Especially since Steve Job’s passing. Cook seems a lot more passive towards Android (patent litigation aside) and could conceivably view them as a legitimate platform (not a copycat knockoff) which would allow them to make Android apps.
You almost seem to imply that they would be making an Apple Android phone, and why not?? It would be a hoot, but too humiliating I’m afraid. Otherwise, they could..!
iTunes is on Windows because it sells Apple HW (iPods, aTV and iPhones!).
Putting iTunes on Android would not sell Apple HW so they would never do it (IMO)
That was then, this is now:
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/03/apples-making-money-on-itune…
Point being is that things change when the little operation you started and operated as a loss leader to help you halo hardware sales becomes profitable without you even trying…
Imagine what might happen if they actually tried to make money with iTunes… Like making it available on the platform that has close to 80% of the global market.
Its simple math.
Apple is not going to grow its global marketshare beyond 20% or so – it simply isn’t going to happen. The absolute best they can hope to do is maintain their 20% now (and to be honest even maintaining 20% is probably a pipe dream).
So why continue running iTunes for the halo effect when they have hit the ceiling with it? It doesn’t make ANY sense to do that, especially now that they have passed the break even point with it and it is a net revenue generator. Why on earth would you NOT try to grow it?
For every iPhone they sell right now there are 4 Android phones being sold. That gap is getting wider, not shrinking…
Again, its just math.
I think that there’s nothing stoping you from importing your DRM-free iTunes music (including iTunes Match) on your Droid. Regarding movies, the DRM is indeed Apple only, but there are applications that can remove that for you. I personally remove all DRM from my purchases immediately, in order to play (via UPnP) on my PS3 or directly on my TV. There is a nifty application called Playback from Yazsoft that exports your iTunes library over the network in UPnP.
Porting their DRM engine to Android would be difficult. They could do a port of the iPod app but that would be like shooting themselves in the foot, and it wouldn’t integrate with the other apps on the Droid. I don’t think Android has an API for an extensible DRM implementation right in the multi-media implementation that all apps could use.
Some Android devices do have DRM modules. Samsung and HTC handsets certainly do as some streaming services only work on DRM capable devices and list Samsung and HTC handsets. But it’s not something that’s present in all Android devices. What I don’t know is if the DRM is a hardware controller (ie a chip with DRM firmware loaded so if load a custom ROM on a Samsung SIII I’d still be able to play DRM content) or whether it’s purely a software thing (which means custom ROMs would break DRM playback).
Also, I know I’m nitpicking, but your streaming content via DLNA. The overall protocol is a Sony one and called DLNA (Digital [somthing] Network Alliance). But DNLA does use UPnP to handle some of it’s network chatter (eg for network discovery) which is why people often refer to DLNA streaming as UPnP (I used to make this mistake myself).
DRM is purely software in most cases. On some devices it uses the hardware crypto key embedded in the device to unlock the key store with the decryption keys for all your media, but not on Apple devices. The problem on Android is that every vendor that supports DRM implements it in it’s own way and you cannot extend it with another DRM scheme on that given device. If you have a Sony, Apple cannot programatically and in a supported way add FairPlay to it so that the whole platform can play iTunes content.
Fortunately, the music content bought from iTunes is DRM-free, but using it on a non-apple device means that you loose Genius, and depending on the iTunes integration, you might also loose playlist synchronization.
Yes, DLNA is a UPnP based protocol that is used for streaming. I have no philosophical problems using it and since my devices already support it, I saw no reason to purchase an Apple TV. The PS3, the XBox and most new generation TVs are quite decent for playing back movies, which invalidated my need for yet another device with another remote and other UI on my TV.
The something that you were looking for is Livingroom.
Edited 2013-05-30 09:29 UTC
No, but I doubt they would do so in any case. They’d probably just make an iTunes app that acts as store and player for your iTunes content. This is what other companies that need to implement custom DRM on Android generally do if they cannot, or don’t wish to use, a hardware DRM module.
Digital Living Network Alliance
The only one that worked recently that I know of is now abandonware and no longer works, unfortunately.
Not particularly. Apple’s DRM is a system of multiple keys and tokens, similar in basic terms to other DRMs used by companies such as Audible. They wouldn’t need to port that much of it; they’d just need to decide what data they’re going to use as your device identifier and change that part of the DRM validation routine.
Would love to see Apple open up their stuff a little bit more. I’ve been watching that platform for many years, and with each new iteration of iOS, they eliminate 1 or 2 things that keep me on Android. They don’t have to open it up as far as custom roms, since I pretty much stick with stock roms now days. Just a few tweaks here and there would do it for me.
But why even consider a switch to iOS in the first place? Because, as it is, many apps/games are still being developed for iOS first, and then Android later. There’s just a better ecosystem over there. Plus, I’m tired of Google’s utter contempt for Nexus users, treating us like unpaid beta testers and being stingy with accessories. It’s like they’re begging us to go out and buy one of the fake Android phones.
Of course, some Android apps (such as toggle widgets) simply are not possible on iOS sans a jailbreak because of the limited API, so I’ll stick with Android for the time being.
Edited 2013-05-29 17:55 UTC
On the patents issue, it simply looked like he was trying to NOT slash the Jobs position on the issue. Actually, he felt a LOT like a politican defending “america’s values”
Anyone actually use it? I tried it years ago on Mac OS, and was shocked that it was actually being used by people then. It was terrible. Spreadsheet was crap, Word processor was crap, Keynote was powerpoint with different animations. Is it any better on Mac OSx or ios these days? IE, if you had a choice between using libre office and iWork, would anyone choose iWork?
Edit: For the comparison I was thinking of use on a more traditional desktop. Libreoffice is working on an android version, but its pretty alpha and limited to just being a viewer. Which makes it fairly pointless.
Edited 2013-05-29 18:55 UTC
I have the most recent version of iWork on my Macbook. I find Keynote an excellent program, even better than Powerpoint in some aspects. Pages is not bad, but cannot compete with Word or even LibreOffice Writer. Numbers is a poor program, lacking major features.
I am not using iCloud on my MB because a cloud service makes only sense if all of my devices can be synchronised. So an Android app that offers iCloud integrationwould be logical step for Apple
agreed, Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint 2013 however the rest are mediocre and don’t really compare to Office or Libre
I use iWork on OSX pretty much every day. For my needs it’s the best one out there.
May not have all the features of the older ones, but it’s much quicker to work with when it comes to what I use it for.
Are you sure you were using iWork or the old AppleWorks?
Iwork 06 it was awful.
Iwork 06 it was awful.
I don’t know how that double posted. Maybe my phone screwed up?
Oh okay – when you said Mac OS I thought perhaps you meant OS 9.
The last version of iWork I used was ’08 so take that into consideration, but here’s my experience:
I found Numbers to be utterly useless, but when it comes to spreadsheets I’m somewhat of a power user. It tries way too hard to hold your hand in some ways, and it’s completely lacking support for keyboard navigation. Having to use the mouse to select every cell I wanted to edit was beyond frustrating. I gave up and installed OpenOffice on my Mac just to have a decent spreadsheet program.
Pages is much better, but it isn’t really a great writing platform. It’s more of a desktop publishing app than a word processor. There are some awesome templates available for it, but again they are pretty much all DTP oriented.
I’ve never had a need to use PowerPoint or other presentation software; I don’t think I’ve ever even opened Keynote on any Mac I’ve owned.
I watched the whole thing and seemed like it came down to two main points
1. Apple’s position has never been about market share but rather about offering a premium product (holding prices high) and not really competing with price or necessarily features.
2. The sense from the interviewers and audience that small changes to existing products are not that interesting, and they want the next big thing. Also since Cook has been CEO there has not been any market changing product. There seems to still be the perception that Apple might be lost without Steve Jobs.
While I very much appreciate your appreciation for ‘Texas demeanor’, I’m not so sure Tim Cook is from Texas. I believe he is from Alabama, just fyi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook
Tim Cook has a great track record and seems to run a tight ship at Apple but as a performer he doesn’t come close to Steve Jobs. A lot of the recent angst about Apple is, I suspect, the result of not having Steve Jobs pitching the Apple story. I think if Steve Jobs had been on stage and had essentially presented the same content as Cook did in his interview it would have had an entirely different impact. Jobs is a hard act to follow.
I have no idea whether Apple minus jobs will lose anything of substance, Jobs after all spent most of his last few years consciously shaping Apple to survive without him, but it has lost his ability to communicate. I also have no idea how important the communication gap left by the demise of Jobs will be will be, Apple is a brand company after all so communication is important, but it may be that being less than brilliant at communicating turns out to have a trivial impact.
I sure do miss the Steve Jobs show thought, it was most entertaining thing in the tech world by far.
Jobs was a very charismatic performer/presenter. He was gifted in that way and it came naturally to him (he also practiced A LOT); its pretty obvious in the first keynotes he gave when they first founded Apple.
I can’t wait for them to relax the restrictions on APIs. Would love to see system wide access of 1password, Siri or Google Now access across various applications etc.
Jobs wouldn’t even contemplate opening up anything if he were still around though.
I guess that’s why he decided not to make Webkit open source
I should add that what I liked about Jobs the most was the way he could, apparently with all sincerity, passionately argue one position (example: ‘nobody wants to watch video on a small screen’) and then pivot 180 degrees on the issue whilst making it look like nothing had shifted. So the whole ‘Jobs would block ——‘ thing is not really right. Jobs would block something until the time came to not block and then he would embrace it – as he did with Apps on the iPhone.
He didn’t decide to do that out of the goodness of his heart. Webkit was originally a fork of KHtml, which was and still is licensed under the lgpl. IANAL, but to my understanding, this means that while non-gpl programs can link to a library licensed this way, one cannot hold back source code modifications and still comply with the lgpl. This meant, simply, that in a country such as the US where licenses are enforceable, Apple had no choice but to continue Webkit as an open source project. To do otherwise would have been a violation of the lgpl.
Of course, at that time it was in Apple’s best interest to be as open as possible. They were the under dog and, on top of that, trying to work their way up from being damn near dead. As far as general purpose computers go, they’re still the underdog and notice that OS X is still as open as it ever was. Contrast this with iOS, where Jobs showed just what he does when his company’s on top and allowed his control-freak nature to show. On one hand this kept product quality high, on the other hand it meant a number of artificial limitations. I’m glad to see a possible weakening of some of the more pointless controls, while at the same time I hope the high product quality continues. I want to be able to tweak my iDevices without jailbreaking (custom keyboards, change my default browser, etc), on the other hand I do still want apps to remain sandboxed so as not to corrupt system-wide libraries (saw that on Android once with a Google Maps update, took forever to trace what had happened and fix the entire location stack). Here’s hoping for a healthy balance, and I’ll raise a glass to that.
I think you are using a clumsy stereotype to try to simply thinking about complex stuff and a complex technology company. The real world is never so cut and dried.
Apple didn’t have to use KHtml or any open source solution for it’s web browser. It chose to because it suited them to go open source. Apple do not have an ideology of openness or closeness, they have an ideology of good design, maximising the quality of user experience and making profits doing so.
One of the most overwhelmingly negative features of the the PC for the vast mass of ordinary computers users was the terrible fear of malware, virus and security breaches. This was not an irrational fear. When the iOS model was first designed it was possible to start again from scratch and build a curated model where the stuff that people loaded on their devices was vetted and was thus safe to install. The result of the curated model was not the reduction of choice or freedom but an explosion of choice and freedom.
People were now free to buy cheap and safe software and know that they were almost certainly safe. The result was a vast explosion of software consumption and software production, an explosion of choice. It is almost certainly true that the average iOS device owner buys and uses far more software than they did in the old unregulated PC software markets.
Designing, setting up, managing a regulatory structure for what is now a vast software ecosystem is not easy and runs into problems and issues sometimes but who wants to return to the insecurity of the old PC ecosystem, and what would be the advantage to the end user of doing so?
Especially when you get stuff like thus:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/05/30/trojan.horse.attacks….
I didn’t imply anywhere that this was cut and dried. They didn’t have to use KHtml, but they did. When doing that, they must comply with the license or run the risk of legal consequences. That part, since they are a US company and in the US, is very much cut and dried.
More specifically, it suited them to use a web engine that had already been developed and that performed well, that was open source so they could tweak it. It saved them a lot of ground work, and meant they didn’t have to license a web engine from others (i.e. pay some money for one). I see nothing wrong with that personally, but the fact that they adopted an engine that had to be kept open source was purely incidental. Had Khtml been BSD licensed, Webkit most likely would not be open source today. It is that simple.
Jesus, how much do you get paid to market here? Apple does not have a philosophy in any case, the people who run it do. Jobs *did* very much have a philosophy of control, though not open or closed in the way you mean. He wished to control what you did, how you did it, and if he could have he’d have controlled when you did it and probably where as well. This is not healthy for the users, and can make things tedious to the point of insanity. Want to run a download in the background? Too bad. Do you like Atomic browser better than Safari? Well, too bad, you can’t change your default. If Apple were still only dealing with iPhones, I could understand this to an extent but they have repeatedly tried to push the iPad as a general purpose computer replacement. Getting files on and off the device is more tedious than it needs to be, and you can’t even back up your iTunes content without a computer (kind of funny that, considering the iPad’s supposed to be the average Joe’s computer replacement). This is why I’m hoping to see a relaxation of the controls without feeling that they need to be removed altogether. If it’s about the users, and about user experience, then let the users at least choose parts of it and make it easy for the users to get their documents where they need to go when they need to go there.
Quite the opposite, though I agree with your point in spirit. The problem is that the average users have *no* fear of viruses and malware until they get them, so they do not even attempt to be careful.
Tell that to the people who got this:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/first-ios-malware-found/
It does make the removal and detection of Malware easier, so long as the app reviewers remain honest and do their duty. However, it is not and will never be perfect, so trying to imply that it is is dishonest at best and downright lies at worst.
I do not believe we’re speaking the same language. Of course it results in a loss of choice and freedom. Whether it is a significant loss is a matter of perspective, but from an objective stance, every time there is a gate keeper of any kind, anywhere, choice is lost. That is, after all, the point of curating the ecosystem is it not?
Not really. Only an explosion of choice in fields that Apple permits. I still can’t, say, design an application’s UI on my iDevice. I cannot write a web browser and include a better Javascript engine in it. On top of this, what do I as a developer get for this privilege? The requirement that I must pay $99 annually, even if my apps are scott free with no ads. Sure, I can pick which fart or flashlight app I want, but I can’t always find *any* app I want for a given task because Apple does not permit it. This is not an increase in choice by any definition of the English language. Perhaps you do not speak English natively, and that would explain some things.
Facts, not conjecture. Prove it or shut it. It’s likely true that the average iOS device owner uses and buys more apps than previous *smart phone* owners, but computers? You’re either a shill or completely insane to think that iOS in six years can match the amount and use of software that computers have had for going on three decades. Yes, the app store makes finding the statistics easy for you, but that only proves how much the app store is used. It proves nothing about the unregulated software markets precisely because they are unregulated, but I think it’s damn safe to say that computers have had more software, and such software has been used far more, over the decades as opposed to a few years.
Ah, a point on which we do agree. Problem is, end users aren’t the only people around and if Apple continues to suggest that devices like the iPad are computer replacements they’re going to have to come to that realization eventually. End users are fine but, you do realize, someone does have to design the software for those users to actually use. I think what we’re seeing now is the first step in that realization, and I welcome it.
Two can play the link game, see above.
Edited 2013-05-31 14:40 UTC
I guess I really poked a few of your buttons.
Of course average iOS device users install more software, which they do because it’s cheap and safe and they have a simple enormous library of apps to choose from. That’s freedom, that’s choice.
The average number of apps sold per iOS user is 89. Fifty billion iOS apps have been download. 750,000 apps in the App Store. 250,000 new apps added last year. This is Tsunami of apps, a cornucopia of choice. Talk about lack of freedom in this context is just silly and juvenile. Apple’s curated App store has been the biggest empowerment mechanism for users of computer devices and writers of software ever invented. And it’s growing at a phenomenal rate.
Some people don’t like the curated software model, and those people are free of course to choose an alternative uncurated platform, but what really ticks them off is that the model they don’t like hundreds of millions of people do like and it’s a raging success.
To add to this, there is a need to thoughtful when introducing new APIs.
Every API comes with an implied legacy which means baggage, and it can have far reaching consequences into the platform. If you read the OldNewThing blog, a seasoned Windows developer routinely talks about APIs they made that were used in weird (often malicious) manners.
So in this new age where devices are much more personal. It is *your* tablet, its in your bag, in your hand most of the day, it has your very personal information on it. We need to have better reliability guarantees.
Realiability goes hand in hand with the quality of the developer platform. Bad platforms breed bad apps. You can see the open nature of Android start to work against them in some ways. Its a gift and a curse to be that open.
I think in the D11 interview, Mr. Cook spoke to the fact that Apple users essentially pay Apple to make some important decisions for them.
This is often spun by users here as a negative, but I’m not so sure. Often users know what they want, just not how to go about getting it. They know they want apps to say what they do, but they don’t know that to achieve that goal you need a curated app store with very transparent capabilities.
They want all day battery, but don’t understand that having that service running in the background and polling a web server isn’t going to help that.
Samsung and others seem to have found an alternative strategy. Dump a whole bunch of features into a phone (barometer, dehumidifier, air gestures, coo coo clock) and hope that customers find them “good enough.”
Apple has a much more engaged audience (you can see this from the usage statistics of iOS vs others) because their products genuinely seem to delight users. You might be accused of spitting marketing BS, but the numbers certainly speak for themselves.
He said once “I write to defend Apple” …a bit scary, how one can be taken by some company like that.
As opposed to others who happen to enjoy the products of Google, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Jolla, Amazon, etc
I think he’s particularly disliked because he’s effective at getting his point across in ways that are difficult to argue against.
Not many put their bias on a pedestal like that, it’s more than enjoying… as he said himself, “he writes to defend Apple”, come on.
And only recently effective (I’d say half a year or so), for a long time he was just coming across as a fanboy, but he learned what will get him downvoted and mostly doesn’t write it any more.
Bull. It was their only realistic option for fixing an immediate, embarrassing problem: OS X needed a browser that wasn’t a pathetic joke when compared to mature browsers on other platforms (FFS even Linux had better browsers). Other than using KHtml or Gecko, what else were they going to do? License Trident? While that would have been truly hilarious, there’s no way that Job’s massive ego would have EVER allowed it.
Or maybe Apple could have taken several years and spent millions of dollars to develop their own rendering engine from scratch? Because that approach worked out SO well for them with Taligent…
In other words, Apple are the masters of using slick presentation to convince people to pay more money for less utility. Can’t argue with you there.
I can’t believe apple are doing so badly at the services side, at this point it’s pretty embarrassing. They will need to either pump a lot more money/effort (perhaps buy some more companies) or just throw in the towel and integrate with Google.
I think the big first step will open up the api to allow hardware developers to do more with the iPhone, i know a lot say the lack of low level api’s stop a lot more hardware to be integrated with iOS.
Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about. The iOS hardware integration APIs are incredibly comprehensive and far beyond anything Android had for years and years. The huge accessory market for apple products is proof of that (I also have access to this program and it is amazing what an accessory can do, basically you can completely control the device). Just recently Android added a proper accessory interface. I’m not sure how it matches up though.
How? I can’t even connect any of my Bluetooth GPSs to any iOS device. Nor an ELM327 vehicle interface. Android just works. iOS needs some Steve Job’s Ashes magic pixel dust sprinkled somewhere. Or jailbreaking.
If Apple lets you? And sign your soul away? And after that they still approve it? Apple is worse than the IRS.
They have serial ports they won’t let you use.
They could have re-enabled the firewire ports for charging with better voltage (so it wouldn’t take overnight).
Maybe you are in some kind of privileged position. But can any ordinary user do anything of the sort?
I’m curious. Why would you want to do that? From the reviews of these kinds of apps it seems like it’s only useful if your phone has crappy GPS reception. I geocache extensively, and so far my iPhone is always more accurate and faster than dedicated GPS units that other people have.
I’ve got a device like this (kiwi), works just fine with the iPhone. Newer devices like the Automatic do the same thing over BT as well for iPhone.
Anyway this isn’t the hardware integration I’m talking about. I’m talking about making a device that can completely control an i-Device. I can make an accessory that can access and control tons of functionality on the i-device, including simulating touch and sensor events, launching associated apps, TTS, etc etc. There is tons of functionality there.
?
?? Doesn’t take overnight, and I’m pretty sure it’s not firewire….
My guess is he never owned an iPhone, which isn’t unusual for people complaining about how iPhones work.
It’s impossible that you’ve ever compared the iphone gps with a dedicated gps. The difference is huge. But not the way you think it to be.
Just FYI, answering someone’s question with “why would you want to do that” doesn’t look good for your part of the debate. To answer though, the iPhone (and all other smartphones besides) use cel triangulation to assist the internal GPS receiver. The internal receiver on most smartphones (iPhone included) is actually pretty bad. Low accuracy, small antenna. They can make up for it by triangulating your position through your cel or data towers, and even Wi-Fi fingerprints if that area has been surveyed. If you’re in an area where you don’t have much reception, or there are just too many towers and Wi-Fi fingerprints to accurately find you, however, you’ll notice a drastic drop in the accuracy of the internal gps receiver.
However, that being said, I have the Bad-Elf GPS Pro receiver. Connects to my iPhone over Bluetooth just fine, where as on Android I have to run a background app to pass Bluetooth gps coordinates as a mock location to Google’s location APIs. There are Bluetooth GPS receivers that work with iOS, just not all of them.
I don’t know about other people but when I think of “hardware support” I think of Hardware directly connected to the device. If you have the financial backing and patience, Apple will let you connect almost anything to them. They just get a royalty payment.
So if you have some new hardware that you’ve developed and want to sell that works on a wide swath of devices without question, Apple is the way to go.
Bluetooth seems more like a software issue (lack of full bluetooth support for devices) than a hardware support issue ( iphone/ipads have Bluetooth communication capabilities).
It is. Specifically, iOS doesn’t implement Bluetooth serial for GPS, but has its own protocol.
There’s a huge market for Geely automobiles in China because they are cheap and they still perform the basic function of driving places. Do you think it’s a good idea for Toyota to therefore produce an equally cut-rate product to compete on price?
Mind boggling why people continue to think a manufacturer that has always targeted the mid to high range of the market should suddenly completely reverse direction and target the bottom of the barrel. Complete lack of business logic there.
This is a heck of an assumption. Some will, some won’t. It’s not that hard to switch platforms. As long as Apple and Windows provides a value proposition then people will still buy them. Cheap phones can also make a bad impression of a platform, causing people to look elsewhere when they can afford to upgrade.
The hype about keyboards seems to have passed. Not once have I ever seen anyone use a non-standard keyboard in android, unless they were playing around.
I think both ideas are pretty limited. Glasses are too intrusive, and a watch doesn’t have enough advantages over the phone itself.
Edited 2013-05-29 22:07 UTC
You obviously know nothing about the real world of business.
Apple has been a mass market brand for at least a decade (school kids buy them). Apple buyers merely confuse excessive prices with prestige. Apple has none of the characteristics of a genuine luxury brand (scarcity, exotic material etc).
Most high end fashion houses sell inexpensive entry level items such as sunglasses, hosiery and scarves. These are usually made under licence in Asian factories.
Audi, Mercedes and BMW have all moved to a high volume manufacturing model. They all produce affordable entry level models. [Most Audis are simply Skoda/VW models with a different body style.]
LOTS of people use SwiftKey on Android.
Is this a trick question? Yes. It’s called market segmentation.
Edited 2013-06-01 22:04 UTC
…what a typical Apple wanker…
(sorry, couldn’t help it)
But seriously, that wrist, the corner of the eye, in-view or full-frontal AR all offer different opportunities and are natural places for (Think)different kinds of information.!
The one thing I want of apple (they’re by far the worst for it) ..telling us was they think we want! or more realistically, spoofing the gullible into going along for the ride and thinking.. “Yes, Apple really are insightful, when I truly think about it, they’re probably right..”(the wrist is where it’s at!)
No, not for any ‘critical’ real-time information it’s not..
The wrist is for telling the time, occasional and less intrusive consumption. Right, In, Your, Face is for the right here and f&cking now.
doubt they’ve got any of google’s back end magic going on, but visually I much prefer the idea of these guys: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/10/augmented-reality-…
edited for typo.
Edited 2013-05-29 22:07 UTC
Of course it’s easily possible to put information on your wrist, like watches. But it seems to be losing out these days. If I mime “looking what time it is” (by looking at the back of my wrist) to my kids, they have no clue what that means. If I mime getting something out of my pants pocket and looking at that, they know..!
Cook/Apple have been talking up all things USA lately, including increased manufacturing here. I don’t know, but at least some of it may have to do with deflecting attention away from the recent hoopla about Apple’s off shore tax shelters.
Jobs may have seemed cold as an interviewee – he certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly. However, he had a great knack of cutting right to the point with extreme clarity. Jobs didn’t bullshit or beat around the bush. I may not have always agreed with his point of view, but his insights were always worthwhile and I knew that he actually meant and believed in what he said.
Jobs always championed the end user, something that I believe us geeks and makers of things need reminding of. He’s sorely missed.
I kinda liked how he said exactly what he thought. I regularly like ribbing the designers when I am asking “why” something is like that and then pick apart their reasoning, after pouting for a day or two I usually change their minds.
Edited 2013-05-30 16:52 UTC
My favourite Steve Jobs story was about the development work on the original iPod when he was driving the engineers relentlessly to make the thing smaller. Eventually the engineering team leaders gave a presentation to Jobs showing a prototype of the smallest iPod they could make.
After they had finished explaining how it couldn’t get any smaller Jobs picked up the prototype walked over to the aquarium and dropped it in. As it sank to the bottom bubbles leaked out.
Jobs said “There are bubbles. That means there are spaces inside. Make it smaller”.
They did.
My favorite Steve Jobs story was about his death.
Edited 2013-05-31 18:35 UTC
I think you will find that story originated when Sony were designing the Walkman. Chairman Akio Morita asked his engineers if bubbles would form if he dropped the dropped the Walkman into water.
This is my favourite Steve Jobs story:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Handicapped.txt
Wait, no – my REAL favourite Steve Jobs story is the one about how he colluded with a number of e-book publishers to establish an illegal, anticompetive price-fixing cartel. Hi-LARIOUS! But I’m sure it was a very elegant, well-designed cartel…
How are we on iOS 6 and we still can’t do Bluetooth printing?
If iOS permitted BT printing, my company would own 500+ of these devices right now. Instead, we use Windows Mobile Intermecs and are looking at Android.
So dumb.