Apple at Its Best
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
Many people seem to believe this meme of AI changing everything. I have trouble being excited. It seems like Google Translate has improved a bit over the past few years, but it can't be relied on more than before. Personal assistant fail to understand very simple queries (they're way beyond Wolfram Alpha, which is itself cool but far from awe-inspiring).
It seems that with neural networks and what not, you can get really impressive results from the get-go. But once the low-hanging fruits have been reaped, it's hard to make quantum leaps.
There is also a lot of conflation. Sure Google Maps and Waze really do change things. But that's not AI in the sense that is meant today.
Apple has recently been hiring aggressively as well; and I'm more optimistic about Apple than the article, simply because Apple has amazing amount of hardware experience. I hope that they leverage that to make better AI-enabled devices... the future is going to be VERY interesting.
Yes I know there's massive advancements in using ML to make things seem more advanced than they are. But at the end of the day consumer AI today is: Language recognition and translation and photo recognition and manipulation. Everything else is snake oil.
So pardon me if I don't start portending Apple's doom because they may have to spend a little more of their untold billions to buy an AI startup to make photo enhancements slightly more cool for the next version of IOS. I don't think there's a game-changing AI breakthrough waiting to happen that the big companies are all going to have to fight for market space with because I can't find any evidence of it anywhere.
I depend on Google Assistant on both iPhones. Siri is getting better and I sometimes use it, but I find it convenient enough to tap the Google Assistant icon on home screen as hit the hardware home button for Siri.
I expect Apple to continue to invest a ton of money in AI, AR, etc. But, Google has some advantages: when I asked for driving directions to the DMV yesterday Google Assistant immediately warned me they were closed. I worked at Google with the Knowledge Graph, and it with superior AI really is a great competitive advantage.
That said, I am never going back to Android phones; I like iPhones and the integration with my iPad and MacBook is useful.
Best of both worlds.
Advantages mainly coming from a far reaching disregard for privacy.
Google, on the other hand, has no qualms about merging user data in the cloud and can create better results that way. On the plus side, their assistant stuff is uncannily (even creepily) accurate. On the minus side, all your shit is in the Alphabet Database now.
Whether this bothers you or not is up to you. (The generic you, not the 'you' you)
That was what "one" was used for originally. "Whether this bothers one or not..." etc [1]
What's going on here. The following seems incorrect:
"Whether this bothers [one] or not is up to [one]"
I kid, but honestly, Google Maps is just so much better.
Who designs a phone that requires a restart to raise the volume?
What does worry me a bit about Apple of today vs Apple before Jobs passed away, is that they seem to be to quick to compromise design when they are face with difficult engineering problems.
For example the camera sticking out and the iPhone X screen notch.
Then there is the iPhone case with extra battery that looks absolutely hideous: https://i.imgur.com/VZM2SED.jpg
And not to mention the utter design flaw that the Mighty Mouse cannot be used during charging: https://i.redd.it/e5p6uoibkkkx.jpg
Why not change the design altogether when adding a charging port? The original design was known to be an ergonomic nightmare for years anyway.
Then there is the way the Apple Pen is supposed to be charged (and easily broken by accident): http://i.imgur.com/NjKqE2r.jpg
Why didn't they simply add a small cable accessory, or even better, a small 90° hinge like on an antenna? This is just such an awkward design decision.
The speaker grilles on the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar are also mostly merely cosmetics. Form follows form. What's next? Ornaments? http://i.imgur.com/aEz8pWN.jpg
I also thought the lack of indicators for buttons in iOS 7 was a really bad decision. Luckily, they are reversing that.
It’s clearly a problem.
Yes, this is not always possible, but in this case it is just an unnecessary inconvenience. And if I decide, that I want to have the "crappy experience" of using my mouse while it's on a charging cable, then I should be able to make that decision.
This is not "refining experience", it is just bad design.
I can't imagine ever using a mouse again. Such a miserable experience compared to a good trackpad.
Logitech and Razer's high-end wireless mice work in either wired or wireless mode. Their products are a pleasure to use in either configuration. Logitech have recently launched the PowerPlay system, which charges the mouse inductively through the mouse mat.
The Magic Mouse is absolutely awful IMO. The shape is an ergonomic disaster for palm and claw grippers, the sensor is poor and the multi-touch gestures are far less usable than a simple scroll wheel, let alone the dual scroll wheels on the Logitech MX Master. Like the old hockey puck mouse, it just isn't built to fit the human hand.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again - Apple are hugely successful, but they're playing a very risky long-term game. Their neglect of power users threatens to undermine the cultural cachet that their brand is built on. If you lose the influencers and the thought leaders, the rest of the market will eventually follow. The persistent neglect of the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini, the touch bar and the butterfly keys all send the message that Apple no longer cares about creative professionals.
Of the people I talk to, most continue to use Macs only under duress. They're dissatisfied with the hardware design choices, they're frustrated with the software quality and they feel that Apple is now a phone company with a legacy computer business. I was a Mac user from Jaguar to Mountain Lion, but I simply couldn't get the job done with Macs any more. I couldn't stomach paying a huge premium for a "pro workstation" that was anything but.
Apple’s dekstop offerings right now are just bad for me as a power user.
Yes, technically you could plausibly run it wired until
its charged enough but now there's the extra
inconvenience of managing a cable.
I can see defending it on aesthetic grounds, and maybe even from a condescending place of not wanting the user to feel what it's like to use it tethered (I like Apple but they do this "we know what you want better than you" dance a little too much). But the point I quoted is pretty silly.
It's not quite that simple. The Apple Pencil is provided with a Lightning connector adapter, so that you can connect it to a Lightning cable and charge it in the same way you'd charge your phone. Conveniently, you can also quickly plug it in to an iPad for a quick boost, but I've never needed to do that.
[1] http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/hockeypu...
I'd rather have a better camera with a small bump (though it could be improved) or a notch but bigger screen.
Note doing away with both of these items requires some compromise.
They could have had no notch but a smaller screen (like in any other phone), or have that section only be 'system usable'.
It's a choice and a compromise. It can look weird to some people but that's what compromises are.
Which most probably want to? Have to protect the expensive device somehow.
Now I have an ugly case and a spider-web criss-crossing the screen at the same time. This absolute need for a case with the 7 is a real major design flaw.
Now you have a badass rock styled iphone.
Win win (that's my actual config :) )
Also note that some of the first iPhones had plastic backs.
I for one miss plastic, it is a hell of a lot more durable and doesn't have any of the issues with interference. There are lots of ways of making plastic feel premium as well.
The 6S is unstable laying on its back, thanks to the camera. The unstableness removes a bit of the 'magic'. It feels bad using a wobbly product. You shouln't have to use a case. That's just bad design.
I would definitely buy a thicker phone though, especially if it gave me better battery life.
It's _terrible_ design IMO. Of course all of Apple's promotional photography show the beautiful hardware, sans case. But in reality, the phones have glass backs, and are not designed to withstand any sort of physical abuse. So there's dissonance between what Apple is creating vs. how it is actually used.
My only complaint about the X, is that I want it in the frame of an iPhone plus.
Whereas for me, coming from a 7, it looks like a huge phone even though it's near-identical in size.
2) at 1300$ they have margin to allow for expensive parts
3) the notch forces backpedaling in other places
4) this kind of backpedaling is contradictory to luxury flagship high tech device
5) still loss of screen space
6) would have put Apple as the master of hardware and material again
I don't say Apple scale makes things easy, I think it was too much of a compromise
Loss of screen space from what? The imaginary phone that doesn't have the notch? The X has got much more screen space than the 7 in the same form factor. Literally the opposite of a loss!
The customers don't seem to be cringing.
Of course people are perfectly welcome to their own opinions, but there’s a deeper design principle here to let an object be what it is.
If all you do with a phone is look at it and tap on it then a plain rectangle is very good.
But you also hold the phone up to your head to talk into it and hear the person on the other side. Orientation is important.
It’s also probably the best camera you’ve ever owned, which intrinticly have a lens and depth. Why try to pretend one of the most important aspects of the phone doesn’t exist? (There have been some truely great camera designs over the years... how many of those were featureless, symmetrical rectangles? But now we think that’s somehow the ideal design??)
And the phone looks back at you, listens to you, and senses your environment. All key features. So why try to sweep those important sensors under the rug? Orientation is important here too, so again you want an orientation, not a symmetric featureless slab.
Sorry to jump on you, but I think your examples aren’t good.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QNmG5af9rFs/R3ypiFV0XaI/AAAAAAAAAu...
Or, to be a bit less flippant about it:
* flip phones
* phones with slideout keyboards
* blackberries
* palm pilot stylus
So I also understand the ambivalence toward deviating from the featureless slab.
There's a functional aspect going together with the novelty factor in introducing a new, touchable screen that does not require physical buttons to be controlled - but it is just a matter of driving the wave of what is fashionable today (or well, tomorrow).
The lack of detail _can_ be aesthetic, but it does not mean that something with a huge amount of detail could not be as aesthetic.
Depending on when and where you're introducing your product:
- single-button switch supporting voice control for your lights? Works for me.
- voice-controlled power drill? Not so much (unless it's actually a hired human handling the power drill with his own hands and listening to my commands).Yes, that's why my initial comment indicated I agree with jmull.
If you take it to its extreme conclusion, the best environment to live in from an aesthetic perspective would be a big white box with each side being made up of a material that changes its hardness based on what you want to do (lie down to sleep and becomes soft, walk on it, becomes hard, sit on a corner and becomes slightly soft on the floor with very soft walls) and all your communication and entertainment is done via floating images that materialize at a comfortable distance from your face so you can talk with your peers, watch videos, holograms and whatever else. Getting outside would have a part of the wall disintegrate (we'd call that a door, for historical reasons), although "outside" would now just be an aesthetically pleasing sea of white featureless cubes.
For some, aesthetic is certainly greeblies[0], but I think minimalism is widely accepted as one aesthetic ideal. Why? Why does anyone prefer anything? I'm not sure we exactly know yet, from an art/design/aesthetic perspective.
Edit: OTOH, I am pretty sure my dad's mother preferred a mass of junk and clutter and mess in her house, to make it feel alive.
[0]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=greeblies
As an example, I have a digital photo frame. It has a large bezel that's silver/grey with black trim. It does not fit well on my desk. I have a minimalist style in my home. Removing that bezel would allow the object to sit on my desk and actually look like it belonged.
On the other hand, my girlfriend's home has a beach/Caribbean thing going on. Most of her photos and art are in wood frames (with an unfinished look). The bezel on this digital frame makes putting it inside a wooden frame of that sort difficult (it would need to be too large, or strategically positioned so you didn't realize it was just a façade).
Reducing the bezel, for her, would allow the frame to be placed inside of a wooden frame that fit her styling much better. The object would not stand out, it would blend into the environment.
My view: A minimalist aesthetic for objects is not desirable because the minimalist aesthetic is desirable. It is desirable because objects of this form are more easily placed inside any environment. An object with an opinionated appearance will stand out unless it fits the rest of your possessions. This may or may not be desirable. But it should be up to the owner of the object whether attention is drawn to it, not up to the creators of the object.
EDIT: Fixed a word or two. This was my 3rd write-up of this because they kept disappearing so I wrote it rather hastily.
The point is not minimalism for the sake of minimalism, and not always to be aesthetically pleasing (although with cell phones, it is). The point is to find where form meets function, to make something with no superfluous elements.
With regards to the X, +, and other phones, its not the form factor that was important, it was how you gained access. I think Apple emphasized the edge to edge screen too much when it was evident the notch was in violation, and should have wholly focused on what face id would give us. I do not understand why they cannot move some gestures only on X to other devices though.
- Apple Watch
- AirPods
- Apple Pencil
- Apple Music
- HomePod
- ARKit
I agree with you that an Apple without Tim Cook would be in trouble indeed. However, I think that Cook's record indicates that he is truly leading the company in the same way Jobs did: a focus on truly personal, well-designed products.
I hope the "Cook is Ballmer" trope will quickly die.
But I agree, lately I don't like what they do. My favorite is still the iPhone 5.
Look at the Made for iPhone badge [1]; the bezels of the older devices are prominently displayed; they + the home button are what enable someone to look at that picture and immediately know its an iPhone. How would that badge look if all they showed was a generic rectangle [2]?
Today, both the bezels and the home button are gone. Yet, take one look at this [3] and tell me it isn't just as distinctive.
Apple made the decision to rotate the camera apparatus on the back of the device by 90 degrees [4] relative to the original device. Is there a functional reason for this? Probably not. Its a visual choice; it differentiates the upper-end device as an almost status symbol. Think on that for a second; you want them to hide the cameras by making them flush, but they picked a completely opposite approach. They accentuated the cameras by making them a status symbol. Flush, hidden cameras could never do this.
Want to bet that the iPhone X won't be their best selling iPhone they've ever made? I doubt it. You know it will be.
Let's talk Pixel. Specifically, the glass part of the back [5]. Its there for a functional reason; improving radio connectivity by avoiding metal. But it could be much less distinctive and accomplish the same purpose. Apple did something similar by running less visible plastic trim around the device with the 6/6S/7/8. Pixel's way is a unique, differentiating design element.
You can try to make a perfectly functional device. No design elements, flush cameras, a beige rectangle. Perfectly functional. Now, you've lost something qualitative; distinction.
[1] https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...
[2] https://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/file...
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/technology/2017/07/31...
[4] http://assets.hardwarezone.com/img/2017/09/DSC_1461.jpg
[5] https://www.theandroidsoul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/go...
How can anyone make such an assertion? Because Google or Amazon’s AI efforts are more visible? Has someone totaled up all the AI innovation (secret and not) at these companies and scored them? Are we talking PhD head count? What is the measure?
This reminds me of when I was fighting in Baghdad in ‘04 and everyone back home was arguing about a war happening on Mars or somewhere. They sure as hell weren’t arguing about Iraq because nothing they were talking about seemed to have anything to do with the facts on the ground. Facts that were nearly impossible for them to obtain.
This is a narrative not an analysis.
> Consider Google’s Pixel 2 phone: Driven by AI-based technology, it offers unprecedented photo-enhancement features and deeper hardware-software integration, such as real-time language translation when used with Google’s special headphones…The shifting vector of differentiation to AI and agents does not bode well for Apple…
Basically, Pixel's camera is praised for the same capabilities for which it is dismissed on the iPhone. This will never cease to amaze me
I'm curious why Dell/HP and some others aren't chasing the $1000+ smartphone segment.
Could you clarify? I thought hardware was where Apple had the largest lead over it's competitors.
Most face recognition systems i've seen are from movies.
So to an end user, it works in the dark, can’t be fooled by a photograph or a wax model, can see through veils and most sunglasses, and works really quickly. You also don’t have to see the selfie UI every time you unlock your phone.
The fact that iOS devices also have a Secure Enclave to store biometric information in a tamper-resistant area is nice too.
Oh yes? So where can I download the open-source Alpha Go Zero?
Based on the Alpha Go Zero paper and these open source repositories, people are quickly approximating AGZ (without Google's proprietary weights):
In which case, the whole FaceId thing feels a bit of downer. The explanation - "you see how the notification is closed when the screen is off and opens up when you look at it", is at best a nifty trick for people who are more technically oriented. Others might not be able to tell the difference at all.
And on the point of:
" The most attractive customers to Google’s advertisers are on the iPhone — just look at how much Google is willing to pay to acquire them — and while Google could in theory convince them to switch by keeping its superior services exclusive, in reality such an approach is untenable."
Isn't this more to do with demographics of an average iPhone user rather than iPhone as a platform? One might argue that both are related but using this as a reason seems kind of superfluous.
Of course they are related. Why does the iPhone have this specific demographic, if not for the platform?
Google screwed the pooch by not having paid apps on huge parts of the world for years. People got so used to side-loading their apps that getting them to pay is an ordeal.
I'll probably wait two iteration of the X. And in the meantime if my phone breaks, i'll take the opportunity to experiment with other brands and OS.
PS : anyone knows if ubuntu or sailfish or any other mobile OS is any good ?
I just got back from Shenzhen where no one is complaining about this. I am certain I laid eyes on over a million (each) battery packs, replacement screens, screen protectors, protective cases, and bluetooth earphones.
So it leaves me with a simple desire for a refreshed iPhone SE with wireless charging and a much better Siri.
One last thing, I picked up a new flip phone for my Dad while I was there. He can’t find a decent one at the store anymore, but there are still many new models of candy bar style and flip phones being made and sold so there must still be a lot of people buying them...
Got credible sources for that?
> yet another fragile phone with a battery life that is too short?
My X has been off charge for 6 hours, with reasonable amounts of use, and I'm only down at 50% battery - that's with nothing turned off and at least 3 background GPS tracking things running, btw.