Apple looks kinda stifled at the moment. But in the end, it will probably keep growing.
It reminds me of Microsoft in the early 00s. A slow giant that has a hard time innovating. But nonetheless, Microsoft more than 10xed their value since then.
There is just too much good stuff constantly coming up in the world of software. Software constantly becomes more and more valuable. A computer still costs less than a car. But having a superhuman AI computer at your service will have so much more value to people that this might change.
Much tailwind ahead for computer makers.
And at the moment, there are only two mobile computer makers. Apple and Google.
Much tailwind ahead for these two companies.
Unless a company comes up with a new mobile computing solution which catches Apple and Google off guard. But I don't see that on the horizon yet.
Microsoft has to stop behaving like Microsoft to get where they are.
Instead of trying to run through show, Microsoft got ahead by behaving well & treating developers well. Making Windows a good enough place to develop from, making Azure a good enough cloud: none of these look like the old Microsoft.
Apple doesn't seem to a single play-nice-with-anyone bone in their body. They are fighting tooth & nail for every scrap of control they can keep, doing everything in their power to burn every bridge they can (ending opengl support, ignoring Vulkan).
Apple still will hold enormous power for the foreseeable, undoubtedly, but I don't see much parallel to Microsoft. I don't see any redemption ark in progress.
MS and Apple are fundamentally different companies. Apple is the king of consumer products, MS is the king of B2B. Consumer product companies need to fight for every scrap, B2B need relationships.
It depends on what we agree for the definition of mobile.
If by mobile you mean transportable, yes they are. But sometimes they are less convenient than some smaller desktop devices[1]
If by mobile you mean they can be used in anywhere, you can say more or less. Yes you can use them on your lap, or even very uncomfortably standing up with the laptop in your hand but you are unlikely to do so for more than a few seconds. Apart from students and business travelers, most laptops are just moved from the living room to the kitchen, a desk to a meeting room while powered on, and only transported from home to office.
If by mobile you mean you can comfortably use them anywhere on the go, without too much hassle, well they aren't as mobile as smartphones or even tablets. If you look at real estate agents, they mostly only carry their smartphones or a tablet if they want a bigger screen. Very rarely will they pull a macbook from a bag to show you something. When an executive in my company is joining a videocall while parked in his car, he usually use his mobile phone because they find it less convenient to open a laptop, trying to cram it somewhere on the dashboard and share their mobile connection.
[1] Even as "transportable" items laptops are sometimes not the best proposition. When I was still working in an office and commuting by bike, I asked my IT department if I could switch from my company issued laptop to a much smaller and less fragile mini barebones computer like the Gigabyte Brix or an intel NUC. They fit more easily in something as simple as a large handlebar bag and can be more easily protected from the elements.
As AI gets progressively more competent, I would assume that it will be much easier for smaller groups of people to come together and give entrenched industry giants a hard time with fierce new competition.
Why would otherwise Apple and co already choose lawfare and bad faith tactics to prevent anyone from competing with them on a level playing field?
>Bad faith tactics from tech companies aren't a new thing, and certainly aren't a response to AI.
I neither insinuated their bad faith tactics to be a response to AI nor did I state that they are new, I made a prediction as response to OP's prediction and I used their current behavior as an indicator for their future behavior.
> give entrenched industry giants a hard time with fierce new competition.
Once AI reaches that level, it won’t be a smaller group coming together. The big corps will be there first with more money to get the AIs to come up with a million plans per day and execute a bunch of them a lot faster than small groups can. Currently no one really knows what to do except cook up snake oil, but if indeed AI becomes more competent, the big corps will unfortunately own it and use it at scale.
That's definitely a plausible prediction, but since so many people are aware of this, my hope is that we can at least prevent some of their more nefarious lawfare & lobbying such that we make and keep open-source AI competitive.
That would imply a huge change to how big corporations work and also not clear that the reasons for forming large corporations remain valid in such a scenario.
> Why would otherwise Apple and co already choose lawfare and bad faith tactics to prevent anyone from competing with them on a level playing field?
Because every corporation when gets big enough will attempt that.
You have to remind yourself that corporations do not like nor want competition, competing is hard, it's expensive, it requires resources that would be otherwise paid back to investors/shareholders. No corporation wants competition and if there wasn't regulations against monopolies every single corporation would have as its goal to become a monopoly.
The thing with Microsoft is that they used their classic approach - going the second after the innovator with B2B flavor. Like AWS was the first, but Microsoft went second and used B2B injection. Same with AI - OpenAI was the first, but Microsoft went second and used B2B injection. Even with Office 365 it was basically the same - they injected cloud into B2B.
They still are notoriously bad with consumer market though. I think Windows 95 was a nice combo of consumer and B2B success.
It also worked with Teams, the software itself is hot trash and not up to the competitors... but it's pushed in the enterprise offering so it worked. The enterprise side of Microsoft is a wonderful selling machine.
And since Teams' launch the competitors have also gone full trash, so it all works out for MS. Maybe Hey/Basecamp's new idea ends up being something, but for now it's all kinda clunky Electron apps.
Slack's experience is far, far away from perfect and it manages, at the same time, to be far, far better than whatever Teams offers.
Teams is an absolute heap of burning shit, the whole experience is so terrible that what impresses me the most is that it's a sellable product. It's a prime example of how having a good product is not necessary for sales when your sales strategy is a well-oiled machine with deep penetration in the enterprise market.
Teams provided extremely good video conferences which was crucial in COVID world and was something that allowed Zoom to go to the moon. Slack was behind in that regard and even now their video offerings are not good or convenient to use at all.
> Teams provided extremely good video conferences which was crucial in COVID
Company policies forced us to use Teams during COVID. "Absolute heap of burning shit" would seem like a clam, reasoned rational response if the company policy wasn't to force us to use WebEx before that. The problem isn't that those words are wrong, but they to be reserved for the most egregious case. And sadly Teams isn't it.
WebEx was (remains?) far worse than Teams. It's exactly what you would expect if a company decided to spend no more on development and let the head of the dev team go (he went onto found Zoom), and recoup the money spent by doing a big marketing push. Teams did at least get it's bugs fixed, the issue was more that they created so many new bugs on the way. The stench from WebEx never changed. It was always the same "absolute heap of burning shit".
> And at the moment, there are only two mobile computer makers. Apple and Google.
Who both heavily depend on Asian manufacturers that are also producing phones without either Apple's or Google's software bundled for their domestic market. E.g. Huawei is doing pretty well lately and they are no longer getting their software from Google.
The operating system moat that Apple and Google enjoy is a lot weaker than the current market suggests. Just because things haven't changed for a while doesn't mean they won't eventually change. A little nudging from judges might force this market to be more open.
This is not happening to Apple. Apple does it to themselves. They have every opportunity not to make it as painful for them as it is.
Android already allows alternative browsers and app stores. It might not be quite up to DMA but it hasn’t ruined Google/Android. It won’t ruin Apple either. They could’ve spun it as a big win same that did with the switch to USB-C. They could’ve complied quietly and it would disappear from news in a week. They make it a drama worth updating on every other day.
As far as I can tell DMA doesn’t strictly require alternative app stores. It only requires that there were ways to get apps on your phone without having to go through Apple’s App Store. And it seems no app store is a compliant option as Apple just today announced direct app downloads from the web. So this whole comlex process with alternate app store rules, applications, APIs is another mess Apple made for themselves.
At least when it comes to phones Samsung phones are actually better. Better screens, better camera. But Apple has the branding and other options are frowned upon. At least in the US, outside Android is the leader.
As an Android user, yes Samsung has the superior HW like display and stuff, but Apple leads on SW, simplicity and ecosystem. If you already own a Mac computer then the choice is a slam dunk in favor of buying an Apple phone as well. There's no 1:1 equivalent ecosystem for PC/Android even though apps that replicate certain functions of the ecosystem exist: KDE Connect, Microsoft PhoneLink, Samsung whatever, they can never match what Apple does since neither of them owns the full SW & HW stack across phones and laptops plus the adjacent services like Music, video streaming, etc. Then there's the network lock-in effect of iMessage, in the US at least.
Samsung's HW and Android implementation and skin, is in many ways superior to Google's Pixel but the overall packaged is hammered thanks to their bloat trying to replace Google's apps with their own offers to replicate Apple's ecosystem but with Samsung apps instead of Google and it ends up with a confusing duplicate mess. Observe:
Google Chrome and Samsung Browser, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, Google Keep and Samsung Notes, Google Drive and Samsung Cloud, Gmail and Samsung Mail, Google Photos and Samsung Gallery, etc.
Oh, and the "best" part is, the functionality of certain Samsung apps like Pay is region locked for some reason, so in some EU countries like Germany you can end up with Pay refusing to work if you didn't buy it locally(even though this is the EU so region shouldn't matter). So if you buy your Samsung phone online from some small retailer running a sale you need to make sure the retailer is selling the right SKU for your region otherwise you can end up with Pay refusing to work with some obscure error. Thanks Samsung, great UX. The EU should look into this and maybe fine them as well.
Customers don't care who has a better CPU or GPU. They care that the phone does what they want and gives them a good experience. Not saying the GPU or GPU doesn't affect that, but I think we're to the point where phone performance (at least at the higher end, where both Samsung and Apple live) isn't much of an issue anymore.
Having a better screen and camera, like GP points out? Yeah, that's something actually important to customers.
Usually you don't know what is the experience before buying. Most people buy expensive things primarily out of network effect and or influence by marketing and person of relevance.
And I don't mean this as to diminish iphones usage experience or capabilities. It is the same for people buying one of those über expensive Samsung folding phones, cars, clothing or the latest Thermomix.
It is a whole package that creates a different experience. And customers are not one thing. There are different stuff that different groups may prioritise, and not all care about "better screen". For example, people may go for lower resolution screens because they prioritise batteries. And cameras nowadays are much more than purely hardware. Having better processing hardware and OS results in a phone that can last better and longer for instance, and this is a strength of iphones.
I can't stand Android compared to iOS. I buy Apple stuff despite their corporate shenanigans. But Google and Microsoft are just worse. I also use Linux a lot in embedded and server roles, but in daily interaction, for now, a MacBook and an iPhone it is.
There might be more people thinking like you than other way around... in America. But I bet in Europe it's the opposite: More people can't stand iOS compared to Android. (I'm one of those.)
Raw specs mean nothing. You can throw 16GB RAM at an Android, and for some reason it can still be perceived to be slower than a 4GB RAM iPhone. Likewise, MKBHD has given iPhone the best overall camera system award many times now, simply because the results are so much more consistent as well as being the best in taking videos.
Really. At least they're not the clear favorite. It's not like 2010 when the best phone and laptop hardware was clearly, indisputably Apple.
Samsung phone hardware is better, vanilla Android is better than iOS (ex: recent HN threads raging about iOS not even having schedule-to-send for SMS), many laptops are better than MacBooks or are at least very competitive.
M3 chips are be the best laptop silicon available, but I don't think the average consumer knows/cares much about that.
Yes. By not regulating it, existing regulation defines the current behavior as acceptable competition.
The EU is in progress of updating these terms, no longer accepting the practice of "silos" which hinder consumers from moving freely as acceptable competition, which is the root of all this drama.
In that sense any discussion of a "better laptop" is nonsensical if it's only matters of preference and no agreed upon objective metrics to be based on :)
They do if you dare to use your laptop in a brightly lit room or ... shudder ... on a balcony/porch outside. Even if it's shaded.
The problem is you have to run Windows, and while Apple is starting to go nuts with their OS, Microsoft is still outdoing them in the insanity department.
I'm just setting up a new win 10 install for development... takes longer to disable the spam and upsells than to set up the actual project.
heise.de in the past did some tests and measured the contrast ratio on a glossy screen at the point of reflection and, if my memory serves me well, they measured a 10:1 contrast ratio. That is by all standards not good.
IOW are you arguing that it is a preference that you can guarantee you never have a working environment with reflecting lights in your screen?
For those who aren't aware, Heise Verlag is a German publisher with several top computer magazines, notably biweekly c’t with a circulation of 270.000 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/C't
You’re being downvoted because no one has a valid answer other than their opinion. Manufactures have spent years trying to copy Apple enough to build a better laptop and so far have failed.
It depends on individual requirements. Most Apple laptops have better battery life than all of my laptops, but current ones have less memory available to run virtual machines unless I pay a huge premium which raise would raise the price 7 x over what I paid for my current Thinkpad E580. Also the later has a matte screen which I can't have on a Macbook nor can they fold like my Lenovo Yoga to be used as a tablet and drawing board.
If I was travelling a lot and spending a lot of time outside home I guess the battery life would trump any other factor and it would be a better option. In my case this is not a deciding factor as my laptops spend most of their time at home and as long as battery last a couple a few hours they will be plugged before it gets empty. I still benefit from the laptop form factor as I can still move them from one room to another easily or use them outdoor.
Besides premium price + sustained higher price in the second hand market make it so that at an average of around 350€ the cumulative price of all the computers (5) in my household is lower than the asking price of a single Macbook Pro with only 8GB of memory and a single 1TB hard drive.
It depends on individual requirements. Most Apple laptops have better battery life than all of my laptops, but current ones have less memory available to run virtual machines unless I pay a huge premium which raise would raise the price 7 x over what I paid for my current Thinkpad E580. Also the later has a matte screen which I can't have on a Macbook nor can they fold like my Lenovo Yoga to be used as a tablet and drawing board.
It's quite a requirement that to be considered overall best, a product must be best at every conceivable niche. You wouldn't disqualify Lionel Messi from consideration of being the world's best football player by saying that he is (probably) not a very good goalkeeper? Not to say that a MacBook is the Lionel Messi of laptops, but just that a laptop can overall best, while also being a bad fit for a particular role.
I also think price while obviously relevant when it comes to a purchasing decision, is irrelevant when talking about which product is better. To determine which tool is best for hammering nails, it's irrelevant that a rock is cheaper than a hammer. The only relevant criteria is which you would pick if you were free to choose. And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.
My personal opinion is that Apple has been killing it with their laptops since the introduction of the first M1 MacBook Air. This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community. I'm aware of no product in the PC space that seem so universally acclaimed, let alone could plausibly serve as basis for a claim that Apple is somehow behind in this category.
> I also think price while obviously relevant when it comes to a purchasing decision, is irrelevant when talking about which product is better.
Well, a brazing toch is certainly a better and more precise tool to apply a flame and heat stuff, but this is not the device you would choose primarily to lit a cigarette.
> And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.
It happens in a lot of domains.
> This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community.
Well, it would be stupid to buy and continue using something you don't like no?
A Macbook air or Macbook Pro surely fill a lot of checkboxes for a majority of the population. Having said that, the very fact that the macbook is offered in 3 different forms factor shows that you cannot really define any clear winner anyway. A Microsoft Surface is probably (haven't tested personnally) both an inferior tablet and an inferior laptop to the iPad and macbook air respectively, but it might still be a much better option for someone who fit the need for a 2-in-1. There are other better options for people who want to have a gaming laptop and don't want to rely on a cloud gaming subscription. And in my opinion, and until Asahi linux experience is more polished, running a MacOS desktop immediately dismiss any macbook at being the best laptop.
> Well, a brazing toch is certainly a better and more precise tool to apply a flame and heat stuff, but this is not the device you would choose primarily to lit a cigarette.
Yeah well, saw that often enough when I was young... ;-)
When the brazing torch is the tool you already have in your hand and is already lit, it's definitely the best tool to light your cigarette, too.
It is a hive of individual people with ambitious KPIs and personal goals, forming an echo chamber of self-confirmation.
Increasing commercial success moves the boundary of what's feasible/acceptable, increases the confirmation bias and feeling of entitlement.
To be honest, I feel vastly indifferent towards the current whole DMA conflict on who is gonna get what profits from microtransactions out of addicting games (often targeting minors), and I think it is nothing alike the issues the monopolistic position of microsoft was causing in the 90s-00s.
But otherwise yeah, this is how any corporation this size behaves always.
Microsoft was in monopolistic position and yes it was a serious issue, but at least it was on standard computers. It was a de facto monopoly but you were mostly free to escape by removing Microsoft from your computer (which basically meant installing Linux).
Nowadays, our platforms are heavily locked, which gives Google and Apple an unprecedented power over all the computers of the world.
For sure, if you aren’t satisfied anymore with your phone / tablet because your OS vendor changes the rules months or years after your purchase, you are "free" to switch … as long as you are ok to lose all your investment in the platform, as long as you have hundred of dollars to throw into another phone for the the same usage, and as long as you are confident that the only other OS vendor will not make another stupid decision for the years to come.
The world is trapped between two aggressive monopolies and everyone acts like the market offers enough competition to fulfill everyone’s needs.
The state of affairs is bad enough that the most probable new competitor could have only been Microsoft.
In hindsight, I think Microsoft was stopped from taking ownership of the internet back then (by bundling the Internet Explorer and taking control over the whole experience, evolution of standards, etc.). It was already (very!) close back then, it still took a decade to reverse that.
Now we are dealing (among others) with the same topic, but are already much deeper in the swamp:
Several companies are actively working to replace the internet with a walled abstraction they own and monetize, for more than a decade now, trying to argue "it's not the internet, it's an app!" or "it's not the internet, it's a profile-page on our portal!"
IMO we're deeper in it now, because of how much better these arguments seem to work now among tech-people I talk to (compared to how futile Microsoft's arguments were for tech-people back then)
Imo phones where never used or intended to be used as computers. This is not just about monopolies; a touch interface offers a completely different UX than a keyboard and affords very different relationships with the hardware. I am not even sure if any alternative to this user experience and relationship exists (and I am not talking about geeks and hackers who are gonna make anything out of anything).
And you are not even free to switch really except between android and ios. I do not know what others here used their phones as, but for me it is a lot about essential and quasi-essential apps ranging from banking, mobile paying, 2fas, chats, and several service-related apps. A lot of these are almost essential in everyday life and not replaceable by something else. I do not want to risk to get some custom OS that offers some interoperability and discover one day that app X that I need cannot work there. I do not really use my phone as something that replaces my computer.
I am locked into platforms, completely at mercy of corporations that can completely fuck me over (see for example when Google decided that you violated some ToS and locks your account), and that happens for a device that that had "essential and quasi-essential apps". Hell, right now I wouldn't even be able to pay for electricity if Google looked at me the wrong way.
It's precisely on that device that I want interoperability, open platforms, etc.
> I think it is nothing alike the issues the monopolistic position of microsoft was causing in the 90s-00s
If you look into it with a "fresh eye", you may find that this is about several companies competing to replace _the internet_ with an abstracted platform they own and monetize exclusively.
We're just so deep into that journey already that it's not that obvious anymore, not noticing how some of those companies actively limit their contributions to open standards in favor of having proprietary advantages in this competition for "the next internet".
All this behavior is not sufficiently regulated (because 20 years ago it wasn't necessary as tech companies HAD TO collaborate across industries to make big things happen), but I'd argue that it should be.
yea, could we please sanction the v4 internet of the last two decades as un world heritage or something and make the gold diggers leave for some unregulated ar/ai-mine elsewhere.
This comparison comes up a lot, but in my recollection the 90s were not nearly as bizarre as what we are seening now, especially with Apple.
It would have been completely unimaginable for Microsoft to dictate what software people were allowed to install on Windows, how to pay for it, and then take a revenue cut.
It would have been unimaginable for Bill Gates to issue whiny statements about developers feeling entitled to a free ride on his platform because they refused to give him a cut.
The 1990s controversies were all about preinstalling and bundling stuff. To a lesser degree it was also about access to undocumented APIs and the right to implement proprietary Microsoft network protocols.
Granted, Microsoft had an even tighter OS monopoly than anyone does today. But the control it gave them was nothing compared to what today's oligopolists have.
Nintendo, Sega, Sony etc took a cut of each program sale at the time.
It was not really unfeasible technically, but socially. Like selling "hats" or lootboxes to gamers were not unfeasable, but they refused to pay even the tiniest amount.
> Microsoft had an even tighter OS monopoly than anyone does today.
But Microsoft has a much tighter grip of the software market today than they ever had. They are in almost every vertical and they are number 1 or 2 in each. That's probably worse than a near monopoly in only one of the verticals.
Microsoft also did try to push their closed platform with the windows store (win7 days I think). It is the whole reason Steam OS and Steam Deck exists today. It just didn't catch on.
Nintendo/Sega/Sony did essentially do the same thing in the 90s that Apple does today with cartridges and CDs in their consoles. I guess Microsoft just didn't have enough leverage to push a closed platform (considering previous non-IBM PC platforms were also open) in the 90s (licensed boxed software) or in the 2010s (windows store).
> And Microsoft and Google both stopped their extortionate egress fees thanks to EU
Do you have a source? I only read articles about them stopping these egress fees if you terminate your account shortly afterwards. That kind of big-bang migration is difficult to pull off.
And doesn't address the main problem with extortionate egress fees, that you can't use different providers for different services while transferring large amounts of data between them.
I wonder if the difference in behavior is because of the companies execs have a different self-image. It's not like Google's and Microsoft's like the EU regulations, they will try to undermine them and lobby against them, but they think of themselves as pragmatic players of a game of profit, so when the rules are in place they adapt and see what angles they can play and what advantages they can extract from the new setup. My idea here is that Apple's execs have drunk the Kool-aid and actually think that they are benevolent overlords who only does what's best for their users, and the profit nothing but their just reward. And when they meet an even more powerful entity that tells them what to do, they hate it but all they can do is lash out in petty ways.
I also haven't seen Google/Microsoft "weaponizing" their customers against regulation in such an aggressive way as Apple does.
But then again, I also haven't seen so many citizens willingly stepping up to defend a trillion dollar company against mere investigations to ensure fair competition...
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadIt reminds me of Microsoft in the early 00s. A slow giant that has a hard time innovating. But nonetheless, Microsoft more than 10xed their value since then.
There is just too much good stuff constantly coming up in the world of software. Software constantly becomes more and more valuable. A computer still costs less than a car. But having a superhuman AI computer at your service will have so much more value to people that this might change.
Much tailwind ahead for computer makers.
And at the moment, there are only two mobile computer makers. Apple and Google.
Much tailwind ahead for these two companies.
Unless a company comes up with a new mobile computing solution which catches Apple and Google off guard. But I don't see that on the horizon yet.
Instead of trying to run through show, Microsoft got ahead by behaving well & treating developers well. Making Windows a good enough place to develop from, making Azure a good enough cloud: none of these look like the old Microsoft.
Apple doesn't seem to a single play-nice-with-anyone bone in their body. They are fighting tooth & nail for every scrap of control they can keep, doing everything in their power to burn every bridge they can (ending opengl support, ignoring Vulkan).
Apple still will hold enormous power for the foreseeable, undoubtedly, but I don't see much parallel to Microsoft. I don't see any redemption ark in progress.
If by mobile you mean transportable, yes they are. But sometimes they are less convenient than some smaller desktop devices[1]
If by mobile you mean they can be used in anywhere, you can say more or less. Yes you can use them on your lap, or even very uncomfortably standing up with the laptop in your hand but you are unlikely to do so for more than a few seconds. Apart from students and business travelers, most laptops are just moved from the living room to the kitchen, a desk to a meeting room while powered on, and only transported from home to office.
If by mobile you mean you can comfortably use them anywhere on the go, without too much hassle, well they aren't as mobile as smartphones or even tablets. If you look at real estate agents, they mostly only carry their smartphones or a tablet if they want a bigger screen. Very rarely will they pull a macbook from a bag to show you something. When an executive in my company is joining a videocall while parked in his car, he usually use his mobile phone because they find it less convenient to open a laptop, trying to cram it somewhere on the dashboard and share their mobile connection.
[1] Even as "transportable" items laptops are sometimes not the best proposition. When I was still working in an office and commuting by bike, I asked my IT department if I could switch from my company issued laptop to a much smaller and less fragile mini barebones computer like the Gigabyte Brix or an intel NUC. They fit more easily in something as simple as a large handlebar bag and can be more easily protected from the elements.
Why would otherwise Apple and co already choose lawfare and bad faith tactics to prevent anyone from competing with them on a level playing field?
Bad faith tactics from tech companies aren't a new thing, and certainly aren't a response to AI.
There a re plenty of examples for Apple here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_I.... And if you look at Microsoft there's stuff going back to the 80s.
I neither insinuated their bad faith tactics to be a response to AI nor did I state that they are new, I made a prediction as response to OP's prediction and I used their current behavior as an indicator for their future behavior.
Once AI reaches that level, it won’t be a smaller group coming together. The big corps will be there first with more money to get the AIs to come up with a million plans per day and execute a bunch of them a lot faster than small groups can. Currently no one really knows what to do except cook up snake oil, but if indeed AI becomes more competent, the big corps will unfortunately own it and use it at scale.
Because every corporation when gets big enough will attempt that.
You have to remind yourself that corporations do not like nor want competition, competing is hard, it's expensive, it requires resources that would be otherwise paid back to investors/shareholders. No corporation wants competition and if there wasn't regulations against monopolies every single corporation would have as its goal to become a monopoly.
They still are notoriously bad with consumer market though. I think Windows 95 was a nice combo of consumer and B2B success.
Teams is an absolute heap of burning shit, the whole experience is so terrible that what impresses me the most is that it's a sellable product. It's a prime example of how having a good product is not necessary for sales when your sales strategy is a well-oiled machine with deep penetration in the enterprise market.
Company policies forced us to use Teams during COVID. "Absolute heap of burning shit" would seem like a clam, reasoned rational response if the company policy wasn't to force us to use WebEx before that. The problem isn't that those words are wrong, but they to be reserved for the most egregious case. And sadly Teams isn't it.
WebEx was (remains?) far worse than Teams. It's exactly what you would expect if a company decided to spend no more on development and let the head of the dev team go (he went onto found Zoom), and recoup the money spent by doing a big marketing push. Teams did at least get it's bugs fixed, the issue was more that they created so many new bugs on the way. The stench from WebEx never changed. It was always the same "absolute heap of burning shit".
Who both heavily depend on Asian manufacturers that are also producing phones without either Apple's or Google's software bundled for their domestic market. E.g. Huawei is doing pretty well lately and they are no longer getting their software from Google.
The operating system moat that Apple and Google enjoy is a lot weaker than the current market suggests. Just because things haven't changed for a while doesn't mean they won't eventually change. A little nudging from judges might force this market to be more open.
What do the Huawei phones use for maps and search?
I wonder where they license their maps ...
Do you know what they use for search?
Looks like they did something in house for that as well.
Amazon would have the same issues with the Kindle Fire. I think they license Here maps. Not sure if they use Google or Bing.
This concept is confusing. I guess the headwind will be behind them, too.
Wait, so they've completely reversed direction? This begins to sound good.
"Ahead" means the wind will blow from behind somewhere in front of you, where you are going.
Myself as a tech enthusiast: this is good
- Property owner: can house prices just go up and rise my equity
- Prospect house buyer: can house prices just stay sane until I buy again
Android already allows alternative browsers and app stores. It might not be quite up to DMA but it hasn’t ruined Google/Android. It won’t ruin Apple either. They could’ve spun it as a big win same that did with the switch to USB-C. They could’ve complied quietly and it would disappear from news in a week. They make it a drama worth updating on every other day.
Don't think so because you can sideload. Alternative app stores are a solution looking for a problem.
There's no need to demand. It has always been possible to install alternative app stores on Android.
Apple isn't the best in any category anymore, so they have to cheat.
Samsung's HW and Android implementation and skin, is in many ways superior to Google's Pixel but the overall packaged is hammered thanks to their bloat trying to replace Google's apps with their own offers to replicate Apple's ecosystem but with Samsung apps instead of Google and it ends up with a confusing duplicate mess. Observe:
Google Chrome and Samsung Browser, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, Google Keep and Samsung Notes, Google Drive and Samsung Cloud, Gmail and Samsung Mail, Google Photos and Samsung Gallery, etc.
Oh, and the "best" part is, the functionality of certain Samsung apps like Pay is region locked for some reason, so in some EU countries like Germany you can end up with Pay refusing to work if you didn't buy it locally(even though this is the EU so region shouldn't matter). So if you buy your Samsung phone online from some small retailer running a sale you need to make sure the retailer is selling the right SKU for your region otherwise you can end up with Pay refusing to work with some obscure error. Thanks Samsung, great UX. The EU should look into this and maybe fine them as well.
Having a better screen and camera, like GP points out? Yeah, that's something actually important to customers.
So they don’t pick apple because it has a better CPU or GPU. They pick it because it gives them a superior experience and does what they want.
And I don't mean this as to diminish iphones usage experience or capabilities. It is the same for people buying one of those über expensive Samsung folding phones, cars, clothing or the latest Thermomix.
Really. At least they're not the clear favorite. It's not like 2010 when the best phone and laptop hardware was clearly, indisputably Apple.
Samsung phone hardware is better, vanilla Android is better than iOS (ex: recent HN threads raging about iOS not even having schedule-to-send for SMS), many laptops are better than MacBooks or are at least very competitive.
M3 chips are be the best laptop silicon available, but I don't think the average consumer knows/cares much about that.
> Do you have any evidence for this?
It's an opinion, so no.
Without regulation on what defines acceptable competition, everything is acceptable competition.
The EU is in progress of updating these terms, no longer accepting the practice of "silos" which hinder consumers from moving freely as acceptable competition, which is the root of all this drama.
The whole package is just a sum of what fits anyone's requirements / preferences.
The problem is you have to run Windows, and while Apple is starting to go nuts with their OS, Microsoft is still outdoing them in the insanity department.
I'm just setting up a new win 10 install for development... takes longer to disable the spam and upsells than to set up the actual project.
B) Use ShutUp10 to automate the cleansing process.
IOW are you arguing that it is a preference that you can guarantee you never have a working environment with reflecting lights in your screen?
For those who aren't aware, Heise Verlag is a German publisher with several top computer magazines, notably biweekly c’t with a circulation of 270.000 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/C't
If I was travelling a lot and spending a lot of time outside home I guess the battery life would trump any other factor and it would be a better option. In my case this is not a deciding factor as my laptops spend most of their time at home and as long as battery last a couple a few hours they will be plugged before it gets empty. I still benefit from the laptop form factor as I can still move them from one room to another easily or use them outdoor.
Besides premium price + sustained higher price in the second hand market make it so that at an average of around 350€ the cumulative price of all the computers (5) in my household is lower than the asking price of a single Macbook Pro with only 8GB of memory and a single 1TB hard drive.
It's quite a requirement that to be considered overall best, a product must be best at every conceivable niche. You wouldn't disqualify Lionel Messi from consideration of being the world's best football player by saying that he is (probably) not a very good goalkeeper? Not to say that a MacBook is the Lionel Messi of laptops, but just that a laptop can overall best, while also being a bad fit for a particular role.
I also think price while obviously relevant when it comes to a purchasing decision, is irrelevant when talking about which product is better. To determine which tool is best for hammering nails, it's irrelevant that a rock is cheaper than a hammer. The only relevant criteria is which you would pick if you were free to choose. And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.
My personal opinion is that Apple has been killing it with their laptops since the introduction of the first M1 MacBook Air. This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community. I'm aware of no product in the PC space that seem so universally acclaimed, let alone could plausibly serve as basis for a claim that Apple is somehow behind in this category.
Well, a brazing toch is certainly a better and more precise tool to apply a flame and heat stuff, but this is not the device you would choose primarily to lit a cigarette.
> And, it would frankly be strange if the better product weren't also the more expensive product.
It happens in a lot of domains.
> This seems to also be the universal sentiment in the Apple community.
Well, it would be stupid to buy and continue using something you don't like no?
A Macbook air or Macbook Pro surely fill a lot of checkboxes for a majority of the population. Having said that, the very fact that the macbook is offered in 3 different forms factor shows that you cannot really define any clear winner anyway. A Microsoft Surface is probably (haven't tested personnally) both an inferior tablet and an inferior laptop to the iPad and macbook air respectively, but it might still be a much better option for someone who fit the need for a 2-in-1. There are other better options for people who want to have a gaming laptop and don't want to rely on a cloud gaming subscription. And in my opinion, and until Asahi linux experience is more polished, running a MacOS desktop immediately dismiss any macbook at being the best laptop.
Yeah well, saw that often enough when I was young... ;-)
When the brazing torch is the tool you already have in your hand and is already lit, it's definitely the best tool to light your cigarette, too.
It is a hive of individual people with ambitious KPIs and personal goals, forming an echo chamber of self-confirmation. Increasing commercial success moves the boundary of what's feasible/acceptable, increases the confirmation bias and feeling of entitlement.
But otherwise yeah, this is how any corporation this size behaves always.
Microsoft was in monopolistic position and yes it was a serious issue, but at least it was on standard computers. It was a de facto monopoly but you were mostly free to escape by removing Microsoft from your computer (which basically meant installing Linux).
Nowadays, our platforms are heavily locked, which gives Google and Apple an unprecedented power over all the computers of the world.
For sure, if you aren’t satisfied anymore with your phone / tablet because your OS vendor changes the rules months or years after your purchase, you are "free" to switch … as long as you are ok to lose all your investment in the platform, as long as you have hundred of dollars to throw into another phone for the the same usage, and as long as you are confident that the only other OS vendor will not make another stupid decision for the years to come.
The world is trapped between two aggressive monopolies and everyone acts like the market offers enough competition to fulfill everyone’s needs.
The state of affairs is bad enough that the most probable new competitor could have only been Microsoft.
Now we are dealing (among others) with the same topic, but are already much deeper in the swamp:
Several companies are actively working to replace the internet with a walled abstraction they own and monetize, for more than a decade now, trying to argue "it's not the internet, it's an app!" or "it's not the internet, it's a profile-page on our portal!"
IMO we're deeper in it now, because of how much better these arguments seem to work now among tech-people I talk to (compared to how futile Microsoft's arguments were for tech-people back then)
And you are not even free to switch really except between android and ios. I do not know what others here used their phones as, but for me it is a lot about essential and quasi-essential apps ranging from banking, mobile paying, 2fas, chats, and several service-related apps. A lot of these are almost essential in everyday life and not replaceable by something else. I do not want to risk to get some custom OS that offers some interoperability and discover one day that app X that I need cannot work there. I do not really use my phone as something that replaces my computer.
I am locked into platforms, completely at mercy of corporations that can completely fuck me over (see for example when Google decided that you violated some ToS and locks your account), and that happens for a device that that had "essential and quasi-essential apps". Hell, right now I wouldn't even be able to pay for electricity if Google looked at me the wrong way.
It's precisely on that device that I want interoperability, open platforms, etc.
If you look into it with a "fresh eye", you may find that this is about several companies competing to replace _the internet_ with an abstracted platform they own and monetize exclusively.
We're just so deep into that journey already that it's not that obvious anymore, not noticing how some of those companies actively limit their contributions to open standards in favor of having proprietary advantages in this competition for "the next internet".
All this behavior is not sufficiently regulated (because 20 years ago it wasn't necessary as tech companies HAD TO collaborate across industries to make big things happen), but I'd argue that it should be.
They didn't. They truly deeply believe that they are behaving differently to the evil 90's Microsoft.
It is possible to have an 120 IQ and still be dumb, especially from the comfort of your private jet.
It would have been completely unimaginable for Microsoft to dictate what software people were allowed to install on Windows, how to pay for it, and then take a revenue cut.
It would have been unimaginable for Bill Gates to issue whiny statements about developers feeling entitled to a free ride on his platform because they refused to give him a cut.
The 1990s controversies were all about preinstalling and bundling stuff. To a lesser degree it was also about access to undocumented APIs and the right to implement proprietary Microsoft network protocols.
Granted, Microsoft had an even tighter OS monopoly than anyone does today. But the control it gave them was nothing compared to what today's oligopolists have.
It was not really unfeasible technically, but socially. Like selling "hats" or lootboxes to gamers were not unfeasable, but they refused to pay even the tiniest amount.
But Microsoft has a much tighter grip of the software market today than they ever had. They are in almost every vertical and they are number 1 or 2 in each. That's probably worse than a near monopoly in only one of the verticals.
Nintendo/Sega/Sony did essentially do the same thing in the 90s that Apple does today with cartridges and CDs in their consoles. I guess Microsoft just didn't have enough leverage to push a closed platform (considering previous non-IBM PC platforms were also open) in the 90s (licensed boxed software) or in the 2010s (windows store).
Has Apple not heard the expression "You can't fight City Hall"?
Turns out one does not need to let big tech do whatever they want at others expense after all
Do you have a source? I only read articles about them stopping these egress fees if you terminate your account shortly afterwards. That kind of big-bang migration is difficult to pull off.
And doesn't address the main problem with extortionate egress fees, that you can't use different providers for different services while transferring large amounts of data between them.
But then again, I also haven't seen so many citizens willingly stepping up to defend a trillion dollar company against mere investigations to ensure fair competition...