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Comment by etherael | Hacker News Reader

but the fact that AAPL now has a larger market cap than MSFT, twelve years after Jobs' return to Apple, has to give one pause.

This just reads to me that Microsoft has been failing hard since the great succession and Apple is capitalising on the void more than Apple's excellent strategy would've won the game against Microsoft back in the day.

My take is that Apple will lose, and yes, history is repeating himself. They'll lose in the mobile/tablet space to Android handset/tablets, and they'll maybe lose in the "real computer" space (eventually) to Ubuntu/Chrome OS or a revitalized Microsoft. I'm more confident of the former than the latter though, have heard "year of the linux desktop" just too many damned times.

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By the same token, Microsoft capitalised on the void left by Sculley-era Apple. While Apple was charging thousands of dollars for underpowered Macs with 9" screens, Windows PCs could leap into the bottom end.

They weren't really good: users actually wanted Macs, but couldn't afford them at home, and businesses wouldn't pay the premium at work, except where absolutely necessary (publishing and design, mostly).

Software and "closedness" had nothing to do with it. The Mac had much better software -- Word and Excel were born on the Mac, as was Photoshop, Quark, Postscript, Hypercard.

The question isn't "is Jobs making the same mistake?" it is "is Jobs making Sculley's mistakes?". And the answer is "no". The iPhone and iPad are aggressively priced, ensuring they go just low enough to put them in reach of people who want them, and success doesn't depend on penny-pinching CYA CIOs.

Windows succeeded because it was good enough, just as Android is. Apple is trying hard to sure you don't have to settle for "good enough", you can actually have good, this time.

I don't buy it, Apple products still attract a significant premium just for the brand. You don't see linux users purchasing Apple hardware to install linux on generally, which would actually be a good measure of if the hardware was worth the cost.

They're just trying to tie the software to the hardware and push the benefits of the software to the average user in a way that it can't be separated from the hardware (via their DRM etc in the chips).

Nothing Apple has ever made has been compelling to me in any way, shape or form. So from my perspective, they generally make worse products than the alternatives, this includes OS9, OSX, and definitely OSX touch.

The Mac still attracts a premium, because that's its market now, for better or worse. When it was conceived, the target price was $999, which it didn't actually hit until the underpowered Mac Classic arrived.

The other products -- iPod, iPhone, iPad -- have definitely been priced to sell, even if they don't appeal to you.

As for compelling, we're talking 1980s here. If the choice was DOS vs System 6, or later Win 3.1 vs System 7, the only thing in Microsoft's favour was price.

My progression was TI-84 -> C64 -> Amiga OS -> Linux. I never had to choose between whatever microsoft or apple were trying to pedal at any given point in time, they both always struck me as bad choices by comparison.

Do you actually have any real experience (on the order of months) using the other systems, or is this an ideological position?

I've spent multiple months, never more than one at a time, on windows due to having to have access to some locked in infrastructure at an employer or somesuch and virtualisation not being practical at the time but I eventually got so frustrated with it I just ended up working around it.

OS X forced myself to use for one month, hated it more than windows.

> forced myself to use . . .

Sounds like your mind was already made up. Whatever works for you I guess.

On the contrary, I forced myself to use it because I am well aware that even now, linux is not perfect. and back when I forced myself to try out OS X it was a fair bit less perfect still, Case in point, it was not a flawless install on this notebook I am currently using it on, I had to fiddle and experiment and google to get the video settings just right because the internal hardware is by no means standard (two video cards, one for high power low battery life, one the other way around).

Things like that I frankly don't want to have to deal with and if I could have the power of Linux with someone else handling setup for me so it all "just works" as Apple afficionados are so found of saying; I'd be all over it.

I was even prepared to sacrifice some of that power so I wouldn't have to deal with it. But at the end of the day it simply did not cut the mustard.

Mouse acceleration curve was infuriatingly bad, the interface was bland and ugly to the point of distraction, I hated the iconoclastic keyboard layout seemingly designed just to show the rest of the world how smart Apple is for putting the control key near the space bar. There was at the time no way to get the functionality offered by the compiz grid plugin, nor GL zoom, nor the multitude of plugins I make use of in various linux programs all the time, and the spaces implementation was clunky by comparison to the compiz based version of the same.

And all to boot I was ticked off at having to pay Apple to cripple me in all of the above fashions and accept an inferior CPU/memory/hdd to boot.

Yes, people who buy Macs place enormous value on having a flat, nondescript image of a piece of fruit on their computers. We are all massive brand whores, and there has never been anything compelling about the design of Macs. Also, Linux users, and you especially, are extremely representative of the market for computers.

touche and a riposte, I'm well aware I'm not representative of the market for computers, but if you're here this probably applies to you also. So whilst you and the audience of mac users here may not be a massive brandwhore, that doesn't invalidate the point that a significant amount of the mac userbase actually are.

And when you have a company that is selling fundamentally the same product with a different label on it and marking it up 40%, yes, that does tend to be the difference. Maybe back in the Power PC days you had a point, but what's inside the magnesium case is now pretty much the same as what's inside the black plastic one.

Ignoring the fact that the hardware design is widely lauded as outpacing the competition, your argument is sort of like saying that two books are fundamentally the same if they're made of the same materials. Most users could care less if the computer's running on an x86 or PowerPC chip: everything is ultimately subordinate to user experience, cost, availability of desirable software, and interoperability. (At least two of those are highly contingent on the individual user: cost and availability of desirable software. If you're a heavy PC gamer, a Windows PC remains much more desirable than a Mac overall.)

Historically, Macs have owned user experience, but lost on everything else. These days, cost is still relatively high (although historically lower, given the drop in component prices), but the other things have gotten better. Growth of the web, cross-platform file formats, ability to run Windows on Mac hardware, shift in gaming from PCs to consoles, etc. have done a lot to mitigate the disadvantages of Macs.

This, by the way, is coming from someone who'd been using DOS and Windows up until a few years ago.

The hardware design component I just can't bring myself to care about, a fork is for picking up food, a computer is for computing, I don't care about the sheen on the stainless steel on one or the other, and it puzzles the hell out of me why people do. But I guess that's just human nature or something.

My "user experience" on a mac is utterly abysmal due to the lack of the customisations I use on linux and have been bound to inexorably over the years by muscle memory.

I can respect that. I've found it difficult to embrace Linux myself, because the "affordances should be visible!" part of my brain keeps recoiling against the command line interface, which is where the action is. But I can see how it can become extraordinarily powerful after you've reached a certain level of competence.

You found the OS X UI "bland and ugly" but caring similarly about the aesthetics of hardware is so inconceivable that it "puzzles the hell" out of you? I think you're getting your party lines crossed.

The actual software part that you interface with and concentrate on, yes, that part is definitely the part that I'm paying attention to when I'm using a computer.

The black or white or magnesium bezel around it? Not so much, keyboards and mice once again yes, but I hate apple keyboards / mice too (not because of build quality, but because of layout / design)

> You don't see linux users purchasing Apple hardware to install linux on generally

Linus Torvalds does this, and has for a decade (he had several Powerbooks before the Intel transition). A lot of the other kernel developers do too. They have money, want to get shit done, and don't have ideological hangups about these things.

If you spend your $2k for a non-shit laptop on a Thinkpad instead, you're just buying into a different high-margin premium brand, and at this point one that's been on the decline for years.

There isn't really DRM in the chips, you know. It's just in the software, and it's very easy to get around, because Apple doesn't really care. They don't even normally bother with serial numbers, much less product activation.

I know you can hackintosh, but the thing is I actually dislike OS X, I dislike the missing features of linux etc etc, so that means nothing to me. At the moment I use an Asus UL80vt, it took some tooling around to get it perfect, but it is that from my perspective now, and it only cost me 1k AUD.

Interesting point about the Linus thing, I was specifically talking about everyone I know that actually uses Linux, they'd look at me like I was crazy if I suggested they buy a mac for the hardware (cause it would necessarily subtract from the grunt margin on the box they could get, instead, and also mac hardware is always significantly behind the performance curve at their cutting edge compared to what's available outside apple's walled garden.)

exactly. the ipod touch is cheap. so is the ipad. the iphone is expensive mainly because of cellular service, not the hardware.

Apple will make a run for more that the premium market. with an expanded vertical strategy. i.e. great combo of hard/soft/os/arm a4 chip.

Well, the iPhone is expensive because Apple can collect fat pure profits in rent from the cellular carriers.

Unsubsidized, the iPhone costs $800 when the iPod touch costs $200. The cell modem that differentiates them costs a tenth of the difference in price.

Your last sentence struck me as really summarizing the difference in the product/market strategy of Apple vs Microsoft:

great vs good enough

aka

premium experience vs lowest price

Wholeheartedly agree with this one, one can only speculate at what home computing would look like now if Jobs had stayed at the helm of Apple.

Fact of the matter is computing is having the revolution it should have had 10 years ago in terms of usability. Microsoft? Complacent since Windows 95. I honestly hope the personal computer dies the horrible death it should have had 10 years ago. There's nothing personal about windows 7, it's just not as bad as Vista.

Linux and Android, I laugh in your face. Fantastic for the minority of people like us. Shit for most people. If you even doubt how crap open source is get some non-techie friends to use gimp vs photoshop, word vs whatever crap they're peddling these days as star office, iPhone vs Android, visual studio vs eclipse. Even MSSql vs MySql, the MySql workbench is pathetic, and that's saying something as SQL Server Management Studio was a step backwards from Query Analyser in terms of usability. Chrome vs Firefox. God I hate Firefox having now used a decent browser.

Open source is designed by programmers, for programmers. And we are weird. Android is slightly aberrant to this, but made the mistake of trying to be an 'every device' piece of software, falling into the same trap that Windows fell in so many years ago. Which makes it practically crap. A swiss army knife when what you really need is a fork.

The only reason Android phones are even selling is because they're a cheap iPhone. Cheap being the operative word in usability too. It's just not very good. Doesn't help that handset hardware manufacturers have been generally totally pathetic at software. The number of crap UI's nokia's pushed out over the years almost beggars belief that they sold any phones.

While as a programmer/hacker kind of person I love being able to extend my own device I definitely do NOT believe that most normal people enjoy dealing with poorly designed technology. It's been this way since VCRs made their way into living rooms. Hell Sky boxes, freeview boxes, even remote controls. Put them next to an iPod and you realise just how bad their designs are. Actually not just bad, shocking. Most hardware manufacturers just do not spend any time or effort designing the UI.

And for the last 15 years every computer hardware manufacturer has been using the cure-all, satisfy no-one, band-aid that is Windows.

Apple have already proved usability massively triumphs extensibility with the iPod & iPhone. They've totally cornered the profitable high end computer market. But where are the other computing visionaries? The Kindle? Please. The Sony reader. Ugh. The JooJoo? Oh dear. If only there were more.

Hell I don't care about the downvotes I'm going to get for this, wake up and smell the revolution of computing people.

Usable technology.

You do make a salient point here. People have used computing devices for years, but their usability has sucked for anyone who isn't into computers. Most people loathe their computers, or at least barely tolerate them. They are at best a means to an end (work, web surfing, etc). Only Apple has succeeded in making computing products that people actually like and think are 'cool'.

There's a really big disconnect between the HN userbase and most users. While we take up arms against Apple's closed platforms (perhaps rightfully so), Apple is raking in more cash than ever.

That said, I think the parent is underestimating Android. While usability isn't Google's strong suit, there's enough momentum behind the platform that I think it will eventually be on par, usability wise, with iPhone. And if not, well, there's still a pretty big market for us hackers who want a platform that's extensible.

> Open source is designed by programmers, for programmers. And we are weird.

As a programmer, I like programs like this, because I am weird.

But Ubuntu and Firefox and Android are not actually designed for programmers, and that's why they suck for us too. They're designed by programmers, but condescendingly for hypothetical users, with decisions steered by ideological freetard wankery.

This kind of software suck if you're a programmer, and they suck if you just want to use them. They only end up being good for what I pejoratively call 'power users', the asshats with an inflated confidence in their abilities to mouse around clicking through wizards, tweaking for its own sake. They're the ones that install themes, participate in user communities, and make everything suck.

On marketshare, Apple is still losing the PC space to Windows. And on marketshare, they may yet lose the mobile space to Android. But in terms of profitability, it remains to be seen. And Apple just might go and attack another product category yet.

True, you can survive a long time on a small slice of the pie if you're charging like a wounded bull.

How many analogies was that?

three?

Metaphors, not analogies.

APPL focuses on the high ROI clients. By definition, there's a limited supply of such clients, so they have to go into new markets.

Android is still immature but if Google continues to improve it then maybe it will be on par with Apple (or much better)...someday...who knows maybe just like the Yahoo vs Google search way back.

The Droid Incredible seems to be comparable to the iPhone. The ecosystem needs to catch up. I'd wager that the phone service is better.

Is there anywhere in the country where AT&T's network is actually better than Verizon? As much as I love my smartphone (incredible) its best feature is a reliable network with great coverage. Forgive me if I sound like an ad but I live in the heart of the city of San Diego and my friends on AT&T have spotty coverage right here in the heart of a metropolis.

My girlfriend knows someone who worked at an AT&T store, who refused the free phone perk because she didn't want to deal with their service.

The "Android is immature" thing hasn't been true for awhile now. Lets stop pretending.

Does Apple want to win? They are not trying to go to cover the complete market and filling everybody's wants. In other markets doesn't one company covers the complete market. For example Ferrari is not going for the same market like Toyota, but are they failing because of that?

What makes you think they'll lose in the mobile space? Isn't there something to be said for the difficulty of developing on a fragmented platform?

From yesterday: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/23/2313245/Fragmentatio...

The same reason that they lost in the computing space originally, which was the point of the article. I also don't buy that android is fragmented, I've read that story as well as the stories where people were whispering about fragmentation before the first devices were even released.

Saying that android is vulnerable to fragmentation because of varying hardware features and screen resolutions of devices which use it is quite similar to positions stating the same about windows imho.

Also, Apple are being so relentlessly bad strategically on OS X Touch I think it would take a lot less than a technically superior implementation on technically superior hardware to beat them.

But hey, I could be wrong, personally I am a very happy Linux user, this would be good prima facie evidence that I am "out of touch with the market" ;)

No Microsoft achieved dominance in the PC space because it was the "safe" choice. IBM PCs were not cheap back in the day, but neither were Selectrics and in the business world, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Once Windows came along, businesses had the choice of keeping compatibility with their existing PC software and hardware or starting over with Macintosh. Most made the easy choice. And consumers who used PCs at work typically bought the same platform for home so they could install pirate copies of Wordperfect or Lotus 123 or Microsoft Word/Excel from the office.

Unlike then, in the mobile space, and now the tablet space, Apple has won the huge market share position. Microsoft, Palm, and others have been working for years on the platforms but never quite got it right for the mass consumer market. Apple did. Will Android beat them? Remains to be seen but I don't see this as history repeating itself at all.

Android is less fragmented than Windows PC's ever have been and look how that worked out.

The Windows features that succeeded most (loosely coupled applications with root access) don't overlap at all with what Android is trying to do.

Android is trying to do tightly-coupled sandboxed applications that invoke and include one another. The Windows features in this area (like COM) all failed pretty miserably.

Yet that has nothing to do with fragmentation. If Android's applications to fail to invoke and include one another, at worst, that's just the same as the iPhone.

iPhone apps can only invoke one another via registered URL handlers, which can't be overridden — the one-way loose coupling of a modern hyperlink.

Android apps can one effectively link with one another with Intents and transclude one another freely — DLL hell.

Fragmentation works into it because app transclusion via Intents is the official API for many system functions, but so many users are stuck on ancient versions of Android, many of which have been fucked with by HTC or the carrier. If Android's apps fail to invoke and include one another, they don't just devolve into the iPhone single-tasking model, they throw exceptions and crash.

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