Tag Archives: apple inc

Underwhelming Announcements from #Apple (Along with serious misrepresentations, too)

Posted on 2011/10/04 03:22 pm by thepete
From my Tumblr:

“For another metric, we measure adoption. If you look at Windows 7, it took them about 20 weeks to reach 10% of their base. It took Lion 2 weeks. – Tim Cook”

Six million copies of Lion downloaded so far — 80 percent more than Snow Leopard – The Next Web (via thenextweb)

Sorry, kids, this was one of the many misrepresentations (lies, even) presented in today’s underwhelming Apple event.  Comparing Apple’s success to Microsoft’s is pretty much identical to comparing apples to oranges.  Why are the numbers above no significant? Because Apple charged a pitance for their single-versioned OS which was downloadable.  If Microsoft had such a system and chose to sell a single OS at $30/per, they’d reach higher saturation, too.  Instead, Apple did something entirely different and blamed Microsoft for not doing as well.“Yes, with the new ‘wheel’ from Apple, you can do so much more than you could with that old fashioned plank you drag around.  The guys who designed that thing were morons.”

Sure, it’s an improvement, and Apple’s system does move more product, but it’s hardly fair to compare.

But they pulled this crap all over the place.  It’s like they were trying desperately to cover for the fact that they weren’t announcing an iPhone 5.  Most of the numbers they presented were just utter bullshit, like those above.  At one point, they compared PC market growth to Mac market growth as though that meant something at all.  PCs are still everywhere.  It makes sense that their market growth is a paltry 4% since they’re already owned by everyone.  Yes, Mac market share jumped 23% and that’s nice, mildly impressive even, but the comparison to the PC market is just not a logical one.

They called the iPod Touch the number one handheld gaming system.  But that’s a total fallacy.  The iPod Touch isn’t a gaming system at all.  It’s a convergence device.  It’s like the Swiss Army Knife people claiming their knives are comparable to the butter knives in your silverware drawer.  And newsflash, I have yet to see Super Mario games show up on iOS.  When they do, maybe I’ll think about retiring my DSi XL.

Is any of this type of behavior new? No.  But this time around it seems worse than usual to me.  Basically nothing in today’s event made me want anything Apple is offering right now.  I couldn’t care less about their entire line.  Well, I’d like an iPad 2, but only because iPlayer isn’t available for Android.  But that had nothing to do with today’s announcements and I’m not about to drop $400 just so I can use one app.

What really scares me is that there is so little actual innovation going on these days.  People will point to “Siri,” Apple’s new voice-recognition/command system available only on the iPhone 4S, but since when does anyone like to use voice commands?  Android has had similar features (not as built-up, obviously) for a while and I’ve never used it once.  Sure, some folks might like literally telling their phone what to do but I like the tactile experience.  I don’t want to broadcast to everyone around me what I’m doing and I feel like speech requires more thought than just pressing buttons or touching icons.  I can be thinking about what I’m going to do while my fingers tap the icons on the screen, rather thing thinking of the right words to say to get the right app or info to pop up.

So, basically, Apple’s “innovation” is something I don’t think people really want.  It may seem like a cool bell/whistle, but really, it’s nothing that innovative.  It’s just another layer of interface.  Plus, who wants their requested information on that tiny screen?  I don’t care how crystal clear the screen is, I still feel like I’m looking through a hole at the words I want to read.

Anyway, it’s just more “fun” from the Apple Reality Distortion Field.

I still have three more questions for Apple:

1) Why does the iPhone 4S not support 4G networks?

2) Why no iPhone 5?

3) Why no plans to put out a midsized device, like a 7in tablet? (I already have a 10in netbook and you already sell a 10in Macbook Air, don’t you?  Won’t people who own those not want an iPad?).

Apple continues to make me shake my head.

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Apple Inc.: A prominent new reason we need a pro-Net Neutrality Law

Posted on 2010/12/07 01:07 pm by thepete

I posted this over on website666 and thought it would fit here, too.

website666com:

I noticed this over the past few weeks as I read various coverage of iPhone apps that Apple was and was not letting get through.  Check out these headlines:

Radio Station Apps: No Longer Welcome in the App Store

Apple Bans Android Magazine From The App Store

Why Does Apple Make Donation Apps So Hard?

In short, Apple seems to be using it’s position to stop certain information from getting onto it’s devices.  Want to listen to your favorite local radio station now that you live in a different city? Sorry, you won’t be able to on your iPhone.  That’s a shame since it’s just a little station with a tiny budget and not much ability to reach a national audience. Now, thanks to Apple, a great (and inexpensive) channel for reaching a national audience is gone.

Then, we’ve got Apple deciding whether or not you can read about competitors to Apple on Apple devices.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t like Apple telling me what I can and can’t read on my iDevice.  Sure, I can always pull up that Android magazine’s website in Safari, but then, what’s the difference between Safari and an app?

Finally, that last article I link to above talks about how Apple has stopped accepting apps that allow in-app donations to charity orgs (or anyone else).  Why is this? It sure seems like it’s because it means money passes through Apple’s infrastructure without them getting a cut.

Over all, I feel that it’s this kind of “walled garden” mentality that makes us less free as consumers.  When we start accepting limits on what content we are allowed to consume and how we consume that content, I think we become less free as a people, too.

You don’t really appreciate how important Net Neutrality is until you don’t have it anymore.

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OSX Lion, oh… and other Apple (un)impressions

Posted on 2010/10/20 06:27 pm by thepete

Wow.

Well, I’ve glanced over the headlines and read a bit about iLife ‘11, FaceTime for Mac, the new small(er) MacBook Air, and OSX Lion and as is often the case with Apple’s announcements, it’s kind of a big meh for me.

iLife ‘11

iLife ‘11 sounds like it might have some nice features in it—though, I can do with out big-brothery software recognizing faces in iMovie videos (I already have to tell iPhoto to stop scanning my photos for faces) and I can also do without a feature in Garageband that tells me if I’m off tempo (I have a wife for that). However, like an Engadget post on iLife noted, there’s an “effortless movie trailer maker” in iMovie that sounds somewhat intriguing.  However, if it makes trailers like Hollywood makes, they might have just called it “monkey makes a movie trailer software.”

But I digress.

Another nice touch for iMovie is the ability to output to 24fps. However, a SERIOUS flaw in iMovie—still no (apparent) support for AVCHD. Bastards.  What’s wrong with you, Apple?

In the end, I don’t think it’s worth the $50 to upgrade. I do think it’s lame that they’re not letting those of us who bought new Macs in the past 6 months get the upgrade for free, but, again, I digress.

FaceTime for Mac

FaceTime for Mac is basically useless if, like me, you don’t have any friends iPhone 4s whom you want to video-chat with.  Sure, I guess it might work with friends who have Macs, but who cares when you’ve got Skype, Gchat and Yahoo to video conf with your close comrades? Why even bother downloading the beta that’s available.

The new, don’t you dare call it a netbook, 11.6 inch MacBook Air

Well, for starters, it’s too expensive to call it a netbook, coming in at $1000.  Second, it’s specs are too advanced to call it a netbook.  Third, the screen is 1.6 inches too big, assuming the general cut off size for netbooks is 10 (or so) inches.  Hell, 11.6 inches makes the new small(er) MacBook Air just slightly smaller than my old 12-inch aluminum PowerBook from 2004.  Of course, the PB is way thicker than the MBA, but at least with my PB, I wasn’t worried about the thing snapping in two inside my bag.

The nutshell is: the new 11.6 inch MacBook Air is too big/expensive/fast to be/treat like a netbook (though only JUST too big) and too small to take full advantage of it’s performance specs.  In the end, it’s a big “no, thanks”—I’d sooner buy an iPad (not that I’d ever buy an iPad).

OSX Lion, oh… oh really? Is that what it’s going to be?  You’re Lion—I mean—lyin!

So, this was surprising.  I recently read some opinion piece on a tech site make the claim that Apple is at it’s most innovative right now.  Well, Lion proves who ever said that wrong.  Why? Because Apple is “taking what they’ve learned from iOS” and are updating OSX with new/old features from their underpowered, underfeatured iDevices.

That, to me, sounds like the exact opposite of innovation.  Though somebody over at Gizmodo had a bit of a o-face for OSX Lion, I personally don’t get it.  They’re making it look and behave more like iOS.  As in, full-screen apps, the screen splitting open to show you folder contents and more.  Windows will (apparently) still be around, but… um, I’m not honestly sure why full-screen apps is a big deal since apps on actual Macs can be full-screen if you or the software maker wants.  The Gizmodo post I link to above makes a HUGE deal out of this—they call it “modal computing.”  I’m not even entirely sure what the word “modal” means but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t represent a big change from how most of us work already. I’ve recently started organizing my tasks using Spaces (a feature available for years with 3rd party apps or built-in on Linux).  One Space for browsing, another for Final Cut and another for running Windows in Parallels.  Like that.  Apparently, we need a “whole new (fake) paradigm” and go “modal” or use ONLY “full screen apps.”  Whatever.

Plus the idea of “full screen apps” sounds an awful lot like what M$ Windows has done forever.  So I’m not seeing the whizbangedness here.

The other thing that makes Lion more like iOS is the “Launchpad”.  It’s basically like Dashboard only with all of your application icons.  What’s bizarre about this “new” feature is that it’s already available on current Macs.  It’s called: putting application shortcuts in a folder/directory you stick in your dock.

W.T.F. Steve?

Then folders will work like they do on iOS—aka stupidly for a full-powered machine.  For an under-powered device with a small display, the way they work makes perfect sense. But having a full screen split open so you can view what’s inside?  That just feels cumbersome and ugly to me.

Then there’s the new App Store for Mac—ooooo, something Linux has had for years, basically, is now coming to Mac with the same absurd restrictions and profit-sharing model as the App Store for iDevices.  It’s like Apple’s own protection racket.

“Hey, you wanna sell more stuff? You woik wit us—we take care of yooz. But we get a take. I mean, shur you could sell the app on your own website, but, whooz gonna see it there, huh kid?”

Forget that we already have sites like Download.com that are effectively web-based app stores already.  No, Apple wants their own walled garden (again).

OCD, Apple or what?

What’s surprising is that this is a serious retooling of how OSX’s user interface functions on a fairly core level.  It’s such a drastic change, I’m surprised they’re not going to ditch the “X” and just call this “OS11” since they’re releasing it next summer, anyway.

There’s more stuff in Lion that I found kind of unnerving (an always visible dock? WHY?) but I need to stop typing now.

Suffice it to say that this is the first time I’ve seen upcoming changes to an OS I (love to) use every day and thought to myself: “Uhm, yeah, I don’t need to upgrade to that.”

In fact, I’d even say that I’d hesitate to by another Mac if 10.7 came with it.  It just seems that nonsensical to go backwards like Apple is doing.

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Were AT&T’s overtures to current iPhone users a precursor to a Verizon iPhone?

Posted on 2010/07/01 12:44 pm by thepete

newsweek:

“The truth is, Apple needs to get on Verizon, and fast, or it risks losing customers to Android. If Verizon gets the iPhone, I’d expect a huge exodus from AT&T. Which probably explains some of AT&T’s recent behavior. With the release of iPhone 4, AT&T made an unusual offer to current owners of iPhones, telling them that even if their contracts weren’t close to being over, they could still push up their expiration date and upgrade to the iPhone 4—as long as they signed a new two-year contract. Many people jumped on that offer, and some even viewed it as a case of AT&T being generous. Um, not likely. More likely it’s that AT&T knows its exclusive lock on iPhone is coming to an end, and so it sought to lock in as many iPhone users before the deal with Verizon happens. To those folks who waited in line for hours and hours to take advantage of AT&T’s “generous” offer, I can only offer my condolences and point out that, given AT&T’s past behavior, you should have known better.”

—

Lyons, on the latest Verizon iPhone rumors

Oooor they might just want to stay with a carrier (and a phone) that they can use on other SIM-based networks.  When I heard the Verizon rumor, I thought: “Do I want to switch to Verizon? And get stuck with Verizon forever? Not really…”

Just my ¥2, of course.

via life.thepete.com

Meant to post this here first, but Tumblr was tweaking on the bookmarklet. Ah well.

Personally, I’m getting sick of this contract shit. It’s just a con-game. I’m sick of letting myself become a slave to a wireless plan. Just let me pay as I go—some months I don’t need wireless, some months I do. We’re all being taken advantage of by a bunch of white guys in suits.

Why do we put up with this crap? It’s like we’re only worthy of experiencing innovation if we’re rich enough.  I’m fine with paying for things, but it seems to me that the profit margin is so crazy high. I get that they should make money, don’t get me wrong.  The thing is, the whole system could be a lot more fair than it is.  The big communication companies could be making a less money per person from way more people if they’d give people more the freedom to choose who they want to be with.  I want to ask each big telecom one question: Do you want the industry to be healthy? Or just YOU?

And they can’t answer “just me” since that is anti-American, anti-competition and flies in the face of basic concepts that we built our economy on (that competition fuels innovation).  If anything tells us that innovation isn’t being fueled, it’s Apple’s mobile industry business plan.

Let’s release a phone with 10x the design of most other phones, but with 1/5th the features.  The phone is capable of doing the same things [as hackers have proven] but we’ll make sure the software won’t allow it.  This way, we can offer a better phone a year later that will cost us next to nothing to develop but we’ll get rich giving people what pure innovation would have allowed us to give them in the first place.

Aka: release a hobbled phone, then partially unhobble it and pretend it’s a whole new product, then repeat!

It took four iterations of the iPhone for Apple to actually give us something we can’t get anywhere else—their new retina display thingy.  Of course, the iPhone 4 is NOT a 4G phone.  So, it’s still a hobbled phone. Where can you get a 4G phone? Sprint—or any number of countries that aren’t in America.

OK, I could keep this rant going for a while, so I’ll just stop it there on the assumption you get my point.

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Steve Jobs doesn’t know how to hold it…

Posted on 2010/06/27 12:53 pm by thepete

From underpaidgenius:

Steve – you’re holding it wrong.

(via john, iphonehold)

Magical!

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Apple starting to exhibit symptoms of CCS (Cocky Company Syndrome)?

Posted on 2010/05/21 10:30 am by thepete

The most telling thing to me was Google’s tone toward Apple at the event. Instead of pretending to still be an Apple ally, Google today basically threw down the gantlet and admitted that it’s engaged in total war with Apple.

And unlike other Apple rivals, like Adobe, Google execs weren’t huffing and puffing and wringing their hands about Apple’s bad behavior. No, instead, Google was mocking Apple. Making fun of it. Laughing at it.

The Android OS is already outselling iPhone OS in the United States. Now it’s blowing past Apple in terms of the technology it’s delivering.

Yes, Apple still has a larger installed base. I was a little shocked recently when an Apple spokesbot responded to the news of Android’s outselling iPhone OS by reciting the old chestnut about Apple’s having more phones out there.

I was shocked because it’s a familiar line, one that I’ve heard countless times in my 20-plus years covering technology. But I’ve only ever heard it from companies that are doomed, and in total denial about it.

Lyons, on why he’s switching to Android

via newsweek.tumblr.com

Yeah, I gotta be honest. I love Macs, but I hate my iPhone. Oh, sure, I love a lot of the things it does, but I hate what it makes me do. Mainly, it makes me use iTunes, it forces me to put up with the “closed garden” and it makes me deal with some seriously odd GUI choices (no custom wallpaper?), in short, everything that makes the iPhone a uniquely Apple device is what I hate about it.

There’s also the weak-ass battery (the real reason Apple won’t let it support Flash, I suspect) as well as being chained to AT&T, no tethering (at least in the US), no… well, you get the picture. If I had more time in my day, I’d make up a list of things wrong with the iPhone.

Sure, I’ve hacked my iPhone, but you know what? I shouldn’t have to.

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"The iPad, a gorgeous device for displaying content, has become something of a metaphor for the hermetic kingdom of Apple. A seamless device that can’t be opened, it has no apertures for input and is animated mostly by purchases from Apple."

Posted on 2010/05/03 10:24 am by thepete

“The iPad, a gorgeous device for displaying content, has become something of a metaphor for the hermetic kingdom of Apple. A seamless device that can’t be opened, it has no apertures for input and is animated mostly by purchases from Apple.”

newsweek:

gillianmae:

jennydeluxe:

As usual, @carr2n nails it.

Thing is, this isn’t just a metaphor for Apple. This is how most media companies view their ecosystem, as a closed space in which they create content and people pay to consume it. Of course, that’s not how the Web works, and while closed systems can work in the short term, or in niche applications, the long-term trend is toward openness and interaction as the place where the big audiences (and, hopefully, big profits) happen.

Meh, it’s already been Jailbroken—*now* it’s open! ;)

Still, a touchscreen netbook running Win7 with a mifi or a 3G USB stick is a more logical, economical choice for the same money.  That’s what I’m going to buy (as soon as I have the money).

UPDATE 20110823: Earlier this year I picked up myself an Asus T101MT.  It’s great, I love it and only started considering an iPad 2, recently, after learning the BBC’s iPlayer was going to be available for the iPad–for free.

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