Apple’s Phil Shiller has been trash-talking Android in the press these past few days – just as Samsung is about to launch its Galaxy S4. “Public, preemptive slamming of a competitor is far outside Apple’s PR wheelhouse; it’s a dramatic shift for a company used to making news rather than reacting to it. But why is it happening?” The Verge hits the nail on the head: “Cupertino’s behavior this week is yet another symptom of Samsung’s stratospheric rise in the smartphone market globally, a rise that challenges Apple and has outright stifled Android competitors like HTC and Sony.”
I’ve just read the whole article, while it alludes to some alleged trash talk, I can’t see a single quote containing said trash talk. Am I missing something here?
Check out the articles at http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/13/4100812/phil-schiller-calls-andro… and http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/14/4103034/phil-schiller-samsung-s-4…
The spreading of the false rumor that the Galaxy S 4 would ship with an old version of Android is a serious foul. Can the folks at Apple really be that desperate?
The only explanation I can think of is that the next iPhone which Apple has in the pipeline is underwhelming compared to the S 4.
To be fair to Schiller, the rumours had been that the S4 would come with Android 4.1 – that didn’t originate at Apple. I do agree though that it was scummy of Schiller to be parroting that.
Unfortunately IMHO there was every reason to think that rumour credible. Android 4.2 is 4 months old now but still has not yet been made officially available on any Samsung phone. Indeed right now the only phone one can buy that runs Android 4.2 is the Nexus 4. (That’s obviously excluding unofficial ROM builds like CyanogenMod.) It’s a lamentable state of affairs.
I don’t think it matters whether the rumors originally came from Apple or not. Their company representative repeated them and continued to talk in the indicative as if they were true.
There recently was an Interview with a HTC executive (in German) who explained why the One did not launch with Android 4.2. Anybody with insight in the mobile business would have been able to derive the earliest launch date of an Android 4.2 phone with that information.
http://heise.de/-1813395
I expected better from Apple. And I don’t mean that because I don’t expect dirty tactics; but because Apple are one of the best companies for manipulating the press yet they repeatedly fall into the trap of giving Samsung free publicity.
The biggest facepalm about this whole affair is that Apple are giving Samsung this free publicity right on the lead up to a big product launch – ie when Samsung want the publicity the most.
It’s the “No Steve” effect. Just speculating, but Apple probably had a lot of typical petty MBA types in upper management that Steve likely kept them in check. Apparently the new guy in charge at Apple isn’t following in Steve’s footprints and the petty crap is starting to show through. Apple either needs to change to fit the current market OR do what Steve used to do, change the market itself. Now they just want to legally bury the competition and freeze the market as it is.
Edited 2013-03-15 00:08 UTC
I think this is entirely Steve’s fault. Jobs was one of the most vocal about how little he thought of the competition and would frequently go on rants about them. It happened with IBM, then with Microsoft and now it’s happening all over again with Google and Samsung.
The stagnation also started while Jobs was in charge. Without wanting to start a debate about innovation vs evolution, it still takes years to put a new (to that company) paradigm through research, design, development and testing before it even hits production. Yet even when Jobs was CEO, there was release after release of the same iPhone.
However I can forgive Apple for stagnating as, if we’re really honest, no company can release a totally new product every couple of years. Not even Apple can.
Edited 2013-03-15 00:23 UTC
I agree, except with the word ‘stagnation’. If Apple haven’t released a new game changing product in four years time then it’ll be appropriate to worry about stagnation.
Exactly. Look at the following dates;
iMac 1998, iPod 2001, iPhone 2007, iPad 2010
Just how fast are they supposed to come up with these things?
The iMac was/is a success for Apple (meaning they make a nice profit from selling it), but it’s not a huge game changer/market dominator like the iPod, iPhone and iPad were/are.
Before the iMac they had a few successes (and misses), but nothing that flew out of the shops.
So it’s kind of strange people expect and demand Apple to come up with something on an almost yearly basis and if not they are doomed or lost their magic.
An Apple iWatch or iTV, should they surface from Loch Ness, aren’t products I suspect that will sell in masses.
For them to continue to do well I expect they’d bolster their ecosystem by making it better and adding do it, like an iWatch or iTV.
Samsung is also starting to understand now that selling a product to a customer and then forgetting about it makes less money than getting people to join your ecosystem like Apple and Amazon do.
It also depends a lot on the country.
In Portugal, Macs have always been bloody expensive when compared to the PC offerings.
The first time I managed to touch one, it was on the student lab of the university, where a couple of LC’s were available.
They were a minority compared with the available PCs, only beating the amount of aging VT terminals and X Stations still available on the lab.
This was in the early 90’s.
They aren’t cheap, but they aren’t that expensive if you look at what you get.
That said, if you’re not sure what you are getting it’s a risky gamble financial wise. It kept me away from iMacs and iPods before I got an iMac G5 for free and even then I wasn’t blown away by Panther, but Tiger did make the experience a good one.
Most people can probably manage quite fine without a Mac and Apple seems contend with ruling the upper segment and isn’t interested in selling something cheap ‘n’ affordable for the masses.
At the time my post refers to, the minimum age was around 300€, a PC could be bought with a base price of 800€ and the macs base price was around 1500€.
Which type family would get a Mac?
A rich one I guess. And businesses.
But that’s why I mentioned that the iMac never was/is the success the iPod, iPhone and iPad were/are: for most people it was too expensive.
I could afford one in 1998, but I was in to Windows and Linux, not seeing a need for one and only tried it when I could get one for free.
For Apple, despite not selling loads, it was/is a success as they turn in a nice profit.
I had a similar setup.
But never managed to convince myself to buy one, despite being tempted with the idea several times, because of the price and the type of hardware you get for it.
Since I am into gaming, Macs were (are) always into the loosing end, because you cannot get the same type of hardware setup with them.
For example, my gaming laptop was 1000€ cheaper than the 17″ Apple offering which was the only model offering a similar graphics card/CPU combo.
Yes, if you’re in to gaming a Mac isn’t a very good choice.
I’m not in to modern games anyway and play on my iPhone, iPad, Amiga 1200, Commodore 64 and Atari 2600.
Well, if you create a pattern based on only 3 data points, they should have released “the next big thing” in 2012 at the latest (6 years from iPod to iPhone; 3 years to iPad; 1.5 years to ???), and “the next next big thing” in 2013:
🙂
Wait, when was the aTV released?
😀
Maybe the are on track to release “the next next big thing” this year.
I have no clue what their next big thing would be.
Personally I doubt a watch or tv set would be such a thing. The Google glasses are very interesting, but I think they’d be nerd/geek only for a long time.
If I was in charge at Apple I’d spend a lot of money on the current products and get rid of all the complaints people have.
And create the iDesk! A desk with an integrated touchpad, usb/firewire/lightning ports, iPhone dock, speakers, power outlets, WiFi, etc…
I wouldn’t exactly call the iPad an ‘innovative’ product. All it was, was a natural second path for the iPhone to take for people who wanted to run applications instead of talk. It was not much more than an iPhone with a bigger screen, typically no cellular radio, and otherwise slightly tweaked specifications.
It was an iOS-ified take on traditional portable systems of similar uses and form factors that were produced many years before Apple ever even decided to change their name and focus on non-general-purpose computers. Tablet computers have been around for a much longer time than the iPhone.
Fighting fire with fire.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the founding emperor issued a decree banning the education of all eunuchs working at court and any involvement in the political process, because previous dynasties had fallen to court intrigues from the eunuchs.
After he died, one of his sons usurped the throne and disregarded the policy, eventually allowing eunuchs to once again influence politics and infighting.
Basically, what I’m saying is that MBAs are eunuchs, and if they aren’t, should be made into some.
So what should we do with/to the lawyers?
Actually, Steve trashed the competition whenever he felt there was a threat (ie. Video on MP3 players)
is it realy?
jobs himselfe went on stage with made-up evidence that microsoft was copying apples glossy look with vista
but Steve didn’t rely on this as Apple’s business model.
Apple [continues to] heavily relies on playing the underdog as a business model.
Apple is really good at being misleading in a way that’s so simple that you’re compelled to believe its the truth.
Most people don’t bother to look up the nuances of their statements, and simply accept what they say as truth.
They are the ultimate FUD machine, or at least they used to be.
It is easy to exaggerate the shortcomings of the competition when your own offering is actually exceptionally good. That’s what has always made the RDF that much more convincing.
Well, now that Jobs has passed and that other guy (forgot his name, the one who thought he was the next Jobs) got fired, Apple needed someone like Shiller to fly the “you’re holding it wrong” flag for them, I suppose.
Don’t misunderstand me. I personally think Samsung (we all know Shiller aimed it at Samsung, even though he didn’t say their name) are the scummiest tech company out there and need to suffer an Enron style collapse for the good of the entire industry, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to “trash-talk” a competitor. Doing it right makes you look classy (or overconfident/arrogant, at the very least) and doing it wrong (like this) just makes you look desperate, even if you really aren’t.
Edited 2013-03-15 05:16 UTC
Why?
I think he confused Samsung with Sony, both starting with same letter and what not.
Nope. There’s a book out there called “Think Samsung” by Kim Yong Chul.
Trouble is, (afaik) it doesn’t have an official English version out. I personally had a Korean acquaintance translate most of it for me, but I suppose you can probably find unofficial English “scanlations” on the web these days.
[/off-topic]
From the articles written about that book, they seem to be saying the book is about the executives in that company and not the actions of the company itself. The executives stole from the company and cooked the books.
If that is so, then it’s scum running the company, but that doesn’t make the company scummy.
And like on the 80-90’s, Apple will eventually loose again.
Wonder what ever happend to the ipod. I have not seen a single apple mp3 player of almost two years i think, only other brands. Are they doing the same as they did with the mac there also?
Wise decision on apple’s part: They decided to cannibalize their own ipod market with smartphones before someone else could beat them to it. Contrast MS which crippled their own smartphones (winmo) and netbooks to protect their lucrative desktop share.
The transition to music on mobile phones was already well under way – I saw a study how in 2007 or 2008 ~20% of mobile phone users in Europe used them also for music consumption. That alone was already more than all iPods ever made (which generally had a slower start than most people think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg – and only in few atypical places, while most of the world was already transitioning to mobile phones)
After watching the S4 launch Samsung get’s it, it’s about the software. They spent a little bit at the begining talking about the bigger screen and some new hardware like the camera, then the rest of the presentation was about the software (perhaps a 70/30 split).
Hardware on mobile devices has peeked, we have reached a point where the processors are fast enough, 2GB RAM is good enough for multitasking, the camera quaility is generally very good on smart phones, the only thing in the hardware realm is to reduce power consumption.
Mobile phones will now be relying more and more on the software to distinguish themselves from each other and i think Samsung has done a good job and looking at current and future trends.
Current trends are that the vast majority are using their mobile phone as there point and shot camera, it’s convient as you always have your phone with you, so Samsung have spruced up the camera software offering interesting features and controls.
I loved the travel part, the translation etc.. i thought that was great.
The future trends are of wearable computing, we all know this is where it is heading, devices like the Nike + trainers and bands are popular, more and more people will be attaching more sensors to themselves and to their environment, the health part of the S4 is an acknowledgement that this is the future and i think it’s a really good idea. You carry your phone with your everywhere, having a device that can give you a kick to become healthier is a good thing, i can see how this will be evolved and allow people to become really smart about how they live and to control the environment they are in.
Of course this might not be for everyone, but i have a nike+ fuelband personally and i will admit it does give me motivation to do more, to become healthier. I can tell at a glance that i have been a bit of a slob and need to get active on particular days, i can record this information and see how this looks over weeks, months and eventually years. so far it’s working i am getting better, thus i can see this working for a lot of other people especially if it’s a built in feature of their phone.
I would love to see this extended, to help people with medical conditions such as diabetes, heart problems, a smart device helping and guiding people.
2GB RAM is currently a limitation of the 32-bit ARM architecture. Theoretically it can address more but practically that is infeasible. It likely won’t be 4GB until next year when we start seeing 64-bit ARM CPUs.
The CPU itself is not fast enough for certain functions. E.g. you can remove faces (photobombing) from pictures but not from videos.
thats true regarding removing items/people from video. However the majority i would say it’s powerful enough. I have a Galaxy Note2 and a Galaxy Note 10.1 (Phone and tablet) and each has 2GB RAM and with each ive never had a problem with performance.
I switch quite a bit between Camera, email, gmail, currents, chrome, gallery, twitter, evernote and SNote and never had a stutter, that also includes when im multitasking.
I see 2GB being a good amount for a good while yet,
Yes, but RAM also uses up the precious power budget. There is in fact no point in caching a whole application inside the RAM if you just need a background thread to do perform some simple, non-visual tasks such as downloading.
Well, it’s good that Samsung is putting more emphasis on the software side. The smartphone industry would become totally stagnant if all we see year-after-year are phones with slightly faster processors, slightly more RAM, and slightly larger screens (noting that our hands are not getting any larger). However, many reviewers have commented that the new features don’t feel like a coherent whole, that Samsung seems to be throwing features at the phone to see what sticks. I think it’s going to take a while before Samsung builds a coherent vision for its software platform that rivals Google’s and Apple’s.
Another point to be taken from the reviews is that while some of the new hardware input features on the S4 provide for some exciting possibilities, software not made by Samsung and shipped with the S4 probably won’t make use of them (It doesn’t help that Samsung is not pushing the feature to developers). If Apple had added something like the hovering feature to iPhone/iPad, you will start to see software taking advantage of this in a matter of weeks (I am thinking specifically of games).
On the other hand, Apple is currently not taking full advantage of their control of the full stack. They don’t allow enough hooks into the native applications and services, which makes collaboration between applications unnecessarily cumbersome. Hopefully, Apple will offer a full range of XPC services to 3rd party applications in iOS 7, which will allow them to pass information to and from native applications while staying secure (through the Sandbox mechanism)
Edited 2013-03-18 00:14 UTC
Great phone, distasteful apresentation…
Eh, its a great phone as in, the specs are better than any else around, yes. But its also not a great phone because its significantly better than what’s out there. Plus the touchwiz is as strong as ever.
Right now there is no question in my mind what I would do If my SIII died, I’d get a Nexus 4.
I think its about time that the other android manufactures dropped the pretense of adding crappy skins on android and started competing against Samsung with Raw android. They’d still be differentiated from Google Nexus by their hardware. Is it too much to ask each party in play to just do the part they do best? Google do software. Manufacturers do hardware. Carriers become dumb pipes. Thanks, signed everyone who uses smart phones.
And OEMs install crapware like on the PCs…
A good upgrade, considering the North American version of the S4 apparently will use the same SoC (Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro) as the Nexus4, although clocked slightly higher (1.9 GHz vs 1.5 GHz). The only real differences are the screen resolution (1080p AMOLED vs 720p LCD) and microSD support.
If you really want a 1080p screen (which I think is overkill for a 4-5″ screen), the LG Optimus G Pro (new big brother to the Nexus4/Optmimus G) has a faster Snapdragon 600 SoC, same 1080p resolution, non-AMOLED screen, and microSD support.
The Optimus G/Pro are also very hackable with a healthy mod/dev scene.
This pretty much sums it up:
“Samsung ads trash iPhone: great. Apple’s Schiller says Android users switch to iPhone in large numbers: defensive WSJ” – Gassée
Perhaps it’s because English isn’t my native tongue, but what does that mean? Can somebody explain, please?
I find Apple’s behavior of late laughable at best and destructive at worst. All one needs to do is look to what nearly became of Apple in the late nineties, before Steve Jobs saved it, to see the future. Apple has little in the way of innovation. Compare the tech specs of any Apple product to competitors to see why. Additionally, Apple has a proven track record of suing those who it perceives as threats. It can’t handle competition. Without Job’s vision or its throngs of waning fan boys who buy its products simply because they sport an Apple logo, Apple can’t survive. So while Apple’s saber rattling and high profile lawsuits might extend its relevance a few years, ultimately it will resume the downward spiral it was enveloped it in the nineties. This time, it won’t be saved by a visionary. I doubt Steve Wozniak is interested in stepping up to the helm. Goodbye Apple.
Yes, but suing was obviously Steve’s idea. Just look at how quickly Apple settled with HTC after Steve died. Most people here would probably regard anything Apple made after the first iPhone (and perhaps the Macbook Air) as evolutionary and non-innovative.
Edited 2013-03-17 23:51 UTC