Apples and PCs: Who innovates more, Apple or HP? | Hacker News Reader

Apples and PCs: Who innovates more, Apple or HP?

economist.com

11 pointsdavidw22 comments

I think we need a better definition of innovation, how many releases of systems per period doesn't really cut it. Is a slightly faster clock cycle innovative?

You might be surprised to see how much innovation goes into getting a slightly faster clock cycle.

But how much value is there to the user?

I think Apple's biggest innovation is right there - that the checkbox mentality of marketing computers was in its heyday when Computer Shopper was 1500 pages every month, and has long passed.

Now people value

- quality of the experience

- having everything work the same

- user-centric software

- standards-driven software

I have 3 macs, but I also have 2 windows machines, and I much prefer the mac experience. I like that I have unix, and a apt-like package manager, rather than some windows "innovation." I like that I can print PDFs out of the box, rather than having to deal with some shareware. I basically feel like windows has now managed to require more "sysadmin-ing" than unix, somehow.

I keep the PCs for games. And that's about it.

> the checkbox mentality of marketing computers was in its heyday when Computer Shopper was 1500 pages every month

That's not true ... I see lots of people still thinking about the best configuration for them, asking friends, searching on google, doing comparisons.

Companies like HP / Dell are still using checkboxes because it is a marketing strategy that still works for more than 90% of consumers.

And BTW ... Apple does not emphasize on experience, but rather on fashion.

> I like that I have unix, and a apt-like package manager

Yeah, that's pretty cool, but MacPorts is a far cry from being apt-like.

Actually, there's a whole lot of value to the user, but it's not necessarily something that most users know about. The innovations in the semiconductor industry that allow you to get faster clock cycle frequently allow you to do many other things you couldn't before. Devices like iPhone wouldn't exist without that kind of innovation.

Everyone seems to be dismissing the article because it talks about hardware instead of software. But with Apple you can't really separate hardware from software, because their brand is about bundling them together. If you allow Apple to monopolize the market, then they have a lot bigger say when it comes to deciding the future of hardware, which could have serious impact on innovation in hardware.

Oh, no question. Does hp make chips though? Apple's got the A4, i'm sure they struggled getting that up to 1G. It's probably not fair to expand the scope beyond laptops though.

It seems like apple got intel to dust off the atom chip for the air, and they pushed that ssd stuff for a while. maybe HP did some of that stuff first.

* I'm kind of a fan boy. much less enamored of apple due to the ios programming language restrictions.

Do a little bit of research into Superdome.

HP doesn't make main processors any longer, since they transitioned to Itanium, PA-RISC is gone, and HP sold off its CPU design and fabrication to Intel.

Don't forget all of the other technology that makes the computers work, like the busses (e.g. PCI Express, USB, SATA/eSata), the host of technology behind the graphics processors, Immersion Lithography (immersing the lasers in fluid allows better control over the diffraction pattern, which allows finer artifacts on the silicon die... AMD developed a really clever way to do this in a high-volume fab -- I call that a pretty serious innovation), virtualization (which isn't anything new, but Intel brought to mainstream hardware and AMD followed suit)...

What it comes down to is that Apple isn't a technology company. Neither is Dell. Apple does cool stuff with other company's innovations. (Dell just does stuff with other company's innovations -- usually aimed at lowering the price instead of being cool or trendy.)

I'm not surprised -- I used to read all of Hannibal's reviews -- but it is innovation on the chip maker's part. Apple and HP are doing little more than plugging it into a socket.

Except Apple purchased PA Semiconductor and designed the A8 chip in-house. Samsung fabricates it.

You mean A4, not A8. Cortex A8 was not designed by PA.

Even A4 "designed by Apple" SoC contains many blocks from Samsung catalogue and PowerVR SGX GPU from Imagination Technologies. They built a lego set, they didn't start on green grass field.

All SoC design comes from a fabricator's toolkit. When you do VLSI Design or Verilog layout, you always feed the compiler a "technology file" which describes -- gasp -- building blocks of what is possible to synthesize from the builder's fab.

So yeah, apple didn't start out by implementing digital circuits with vacuum tubes. Thank you for that insightful comment.

This article is not comparing Intel with IBM and AMD though.

I haven't heard of AMD and Intel making computers to sell to the average Joe on the street. Here's a thought experiment for you: if AMD and Intel had only one really big customer to which to sell their chips, what impact would that have on innovation they do?

"Free exchange" is their economics "blog". The actual paper they link to is a bit more specific:

> We study the effect of market structure on a personal computer manufacturer’s decision to adopt new technology. This industry is unusual because there exist two horizontally segmented retail markets with different degrees of competition: the IBM-compatible (or PC) platform and the Apple platform. We first document that, relative to Apple, producers of PCs typically have more frequent technology adoption, shorter product cycles, and steeper price declines over the product cycle. We then develop a parsimonious vintage- capital model that matches the prices and sales of PC and Apple products. The model predicts that competition is the key driver of the rate at which technology is adopted.

Ah, this is a whole different matter. It's not about innovation but about "adoption of technology".

I think it makes sense. If you and your competitors are sharing all the supplies, then you can compete only by lowering prices and adopting new technologies faster than your opponent. Hence why they need to discount older products, and why 90% of the stock is sold in a month.

The same situation happens in the Android world too. Every couple of months a new mobile becomes the "leader" of the Android OS, the hardware to have.

Also PC manufacturers only adopt quickly those technologies that are obvious upgrades: a faster processor, more resolution, more memory, etc... But they are worried of adopting some more disruptive technology too quickly for fear that users may decide they prefer the old tech and hence they avoid their new models.

Not surprisingly then Apple is slow to update its lineup, but it's one of the fastest to adopt really new technologies: 3" floppy drive, USB, DisplayPort, trackpad, Wi-fi, etc...

Yeah, offhand, I think that Apple likely does 'innovate' a bit more, but that the PC companies are definitely better at getting newer, faster, better 'evolved' components in front of people faster and for less money.

It's not even HP innovating, it's Intel, who supplies for both parties.

Right from the top, the article is all about the reporter. "Hey, remember those ads on TV? Not that I watch it or anything, I'm too busy using (parentheses)."

And what a strange concept of "innovation": whether the maker ships each Intel CPU.

See my other comment: it's not actually 'innovation', but who ships quicker and cheaper with newer, fancier gear.

This article had nothing to do with actually USING either a Mac or PC and at the points where to glance at user experience the statements are speculative at best. Their definition of innovation is numbers on the back of a box.

And this is why I canceled my subscription to the economist.

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