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Comment by buran77 | Hacker News Reader

> "Apple's ultimate plan is to introduce the technologies on its iPhone, which is its key revenue source and has much bigger volume, to justify the investments over the years," said one of the sources who has seen samples of the company's microLED screen.

One thing I really appreciate when it comes to Apple is that despite all their shortcomings they don't "sleep on the job". Over the years they never hesitated to cannibalize their own product lines (iPod), or go through several tough technological transitions (68K/PPC/x86/ARM) if it meant building a better product. And bigger profits of course.

For example I'm sure Google would just rather stuff your phone to the gills with ads in order to drive revenue than actually bother with a coherent investment in a long term strategy to make a better product. And bigger profits of course.

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Hmm. Over in the browser space, I'd say Google's shown significant, long-term investment in Chrome/Blink, especially compared to Apple's relative disinterest in putting significant engineering resources on WebKit.

Perhaps instead of this being about Apple vs. Google (or others), it's about companies investing in their core competencies and areas where they have a business interest.

I think people underestimate Safari. IIRC "back in the day" they were the first to get 100% in supporting all of ES6. Conviently, they were first in supporting the things I care about - like backdrop-filter and css scroll snap. Safari/Webkit/JSC is faster at executing javascript as well.

Yes, as a user I prefer Safari to all be alternatives on macOS.

First to pass the Acid 3 CSS test suite too, IIRC.

You could swap “Safari” for IE6 and tell the same story. I don’t know what it is about OS dominance that drives such disinterest in upgrading browsers outside of wanting to push native apps for that App Store revenue.

You could also say that Chrome had a huge _interest_ in pushing for browser-alternatives to native Apps because of Chromebooks. Some of that died down once Android support was added. The position on many of these by other browser vendors were that they were harmful for the web. You will likely never see implementations of these non-standard API outside chromium-based browsers.

The other thing which they are very slow to support is new codecs on the video tag. Presumably this is because they want to keep their "video playback" power metrics. the WebKit team is incredibly metrics-driven, which is one reason for their performance and power-efficiency.

ARM Safari is an absurdly energy efficient browser as well.

They’ve definitely made some significant missteps over the last few years, mostly around breaking storage APIs and being slow to fix it due to being part of the macOS release cadence.

Battery life is the key in why Apple doesn't want third-party browser engines. On Mac, they have to babysit the user by saying "your battery is dying because <x> app is using too much energy" because otherwise the user will bring it into the apple store complaining about their battery life. Forcing all apps to use WebKit has likely saved many MWh across the iPhone's lifetime. The only downside for Apple when they'll be forced to allow other browser engines is that they might need to make a more active alert for "using the most energy: Chrome".

There are plenty of apps on iPhone that suck battery. Those that make use of the camera and depth sensors, for instance. Or games.

Apple doesn't want other browsers because they don't want runtimes. They don't want a way for someone else to build a marketplace on top of iPhone or to escape Apple's stringent review process and deploy on their own timelines.

A browser with features not broken by design? Scary.

If there are 1 billion iPhones running Safari for 2h/day, and the power efficiency saves 200mwh (just a random number), then Safari saves 400MWh/day, or ~150GWh/yr. This saves ~.1% of all the power used by the world.

First and foremost in my browser evaluation criteria is "can I run ublock origin or similar on it?"

Last time I tried, Safari was a no-go. The web without an ad blocker is incredibly bad.

You can run 1Blocker[0] on both Mac and iOS. You can also pair it with NextDNS[1] if you want even more blocking.

[0] https://1blocker.com/ [1] https://nextdns.io/

You see, that's the problem here. Why should I be paying for simple thing like adblocker?

There are lots of free ones too.

Do you find the piece of software useful?

If this thing is so simple to build perhaps you can build your own. That's free.

There’s a couple of things I don’t understand about your comment.

1) I don’t understand why it’s relevant. Parent commented about the lack of ad blocking and I simply shared a possible solution.

2) I don’t understand why complexity has to be factored in when it comes to pricing.

Should something be free just because it’s simple? Someone has to work and maintain that software.

NextDNS has free tiers.

on Android, Chrome doesn't allow adblockers and Firefox does, so I had to switch on my pc as well to Firefox to have sync

I did the same. Frankly Firefox is still a serviceable browser. It's not nearly as bad as HN hand-wringing would leave one to believe.

my only issue which can be big is that some websites have some actions which just don't work on ff like dropdowns or playing video

> IIRC "back in the day" they were the first to get 100% in supporting all of ES6.

You can also add quotes to "100%", as anything else in Safari, it was quite buggy and you had to use workarounds sometimes.

The issue with Safari is that too many features just don’t work 100% correctly. Like WebRTC mic support has a number of bugs. Calling captureStream on a canvas produces a media stream that cannot be played back in Safari. Playing a lot of audio tags produces an audible popping sound on play. And there any many other issues I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Disinterest?.. Apple initiated the investments in WebKit.

They both had to, f was dominant.

Disinterest?.. Apple initiated the investments in WebKit, and chrome was later on based on that.

Yeah...disinterest. Like you were once interested in something but not anymore is still disinterest.

They did indeed fork khtml because they needed a web browser for OSX and renamed it WebKit. I’m not sure I would call that initiating the investments but I guess if you squint hard enough you could call it that.

It's not that Apple is disinterested in WebKit now or just doesn't want to spend money on it. They intentionally want to keep it bad, so that Web apps won't be a viable alternative to native apps on iOS.

Chrome fits the long term and Better, but apart from Chrome, What else?

Not Android because it has a direct competition that is arguably doing much better ( More user switching to Apple than Android ) and is forced to improve in other to compete.

The other side of that coin is that apple navel gazes, shunning the rest of the world.

I think the most recent apple golden age was around 2007 when they switched to intel. This allowed folks to use apple hardware and macos, but also run windows on their systems. mac os was more open. The mac pro embraced the PC ecosystem, hard drives, pcie cards and more.

Nowadays the pendulum is swinging the other way and though it might be good for apple's bottom line, I don't think it's better for customers (or apple long term)

> though it might be good for apple's bottom line, I don't think it's better for customers

The M1 MacBook Pro is the best laptop I’ve ever used.

Yep, my M1 macbook pro is the best laptop I've ever owned too. And if asahi linux is anything to go by, its a surprisingly open system from a software perspective.

But I also think the abusive, controlling behaviour they exhibit when it comes to their hardware is shockingly bad. (See: any of Louis Rossman's videos).

I also think its awful how controlling Apple is over the software that runs on iPhones. For example, apparently the city of SF needs to pay Apple millions of dollars a year to allow iphones to be used as clipper tickets. Why is apple paid money for this? Users have already bought the NFC chips in their phones from Apple. Installing themselves as an unaccountable, monopolistic middleman is disgusting behaviour.

I genuinely don't understand how you can describe a company as abusive, controlling and disgusting and yet give them $1000+ dollars of your money for a computer. Why would you support a disgusting abuser?

Because the abuse is obviously not the whole story, The product is still the best laptop you can buy in spite of the abuse, control and disgusting behavior of Apple.

How can I buy their products? Unfortunately its the easiest thing in the world to drop a bunch of money on a beautiful product that I love to use. Of course I feel gross for doing so. If someone else made a product which was as nice to use but without compromising my ethics, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But that product doesn't exist.

Apple is the the only big tech company which at least nominally cares about user privacy. Google, culturally, doesn't really make any products which don't depend on their cloud services. Last time I owned an android phone, I tried saying no to most of the modals google throws up asking permission to upload my personal data. Some features broke in horrible ways - presumably the devs didn't actually test what happens when people refuse consent dialogs. And lots of features become flat out unavailable. For example, their AI assistant. Despite all that, they still ended up storing more data on me than I'm comfortable with. I think android is only a viable OS if you let google track everything you do. I don't want that, either.

On the computer side, the framework laptops look lovely. I've moved to linux for my desktop workstation and my next laptop might be a framework laptop. But there are absolutely compromises. Battery life isn't as good. Linux isn't as cohesive as macos - keyboard shortcuts are all over the place. I tried to configure linux to feel like macos but some apps won't let you use the meta key as a modifier key. Linux doesn't integrate with an iphone at all. Being able to copy+paste from laptop to phone is an absolutely killer feature. Or take a photo and airdrop it across. Or stop my phone alarm by talking to a siri smart speaker elsewhere in my house.

There are no options for everyday computing that I'm entirely happy with. For now, like it or not, Apple has my business.

What payments are you talking about? Apple doesn’t charge transaction fees for Apple Pay.

Apple doesn’t charge you transaction fees when you use Apple Pay. They absolutely charge your bank.

Systems using your NFC chip like clipper don’t work through Apple Pay. My understanding is organisations building apps using the iPhone nfc chip like that have to pay apple millions for the privilege. On android the equivalent api is free and open.

Are payments free Google Pay?

My understanding is whenever you make a payment a myriad of companies get paid. I would assume Google is one of those?

That doesn't change wether or not NFC is open of course.

They do use Apple Pay and say so on their own web site. Apple Pay is a payment network, just like the credit and debit card companies. They all charge fees, typically 0.2% for cards, and 0.15% for Apple Pay. But somehow the card systems are fine, but Apple Pay is extortionate? OK.

In the long run, though, it will be hard to repair and the parts generally aren't swappable or upgradeable. When Apple was a participant in the PC ecosystem you had more options for repairs and upgrades. So 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now.

> 5 years down the road people's feelings on the M1 may change, even if they're amazing machines now

I'm 3 years in and have never needed servicing. If I do, I'm fine having to go back to Apple. It's not a good fit for everyone. But it is for my niche. (Also, Apple stand out in having long first-party support runways for their products.)

Speaking as someone in tech, honestly I don’t care what happens to it in 5 years. It will be outdone by then by much better models and I’ll be upgrading, because $3k every three years for a device that I use everyday is pittance.

a valid strategy for sure.

otoh i hope to be burried with my m1 airbook (for home use) -- i hope never to buy another notebook class device, and just keep replacing the battery every 5 yrs.

It's an amazing machine, to be sure (I'm typing to you from one), but it's going to be so far behind in another 5-10 years. Its 8-16 GiB of RAM is already dwarfed by the 64 GiB options that Apple is selling today and the M1's speed just isn't going to be competitive to keep up with apps' demands in 2033. I do really like mine though. There's an X61 Thinkpad I felt the same way about that I still miss. Hm maybe I should dig that out of storage.

There is no long run in laptops. Ten years is already ancient, and there are lots of ten-year-old laptops still running.

Right, but if you want to keep it running, you probably need to replace the battery and may need to replace failing storage. I have an 8 year old laptop that still works but the battery is in terrible shape, and it's not an easy one to repair so it's not realistic to fix it. The machine otherwise is fit for purpose so it's a real waste.

Few people were repairing their Intel MacBooks, even if they were more serviceable. It's not really typical of Apple users to expect to have to open their devices (me included, and I've been using MacBooks since the PPC days)

It's not bad to want to pull apart and service your own laptop, but for me it's a tool to get a job done and if it breaks I'll send it to Apple to fix

My previous Intel Retina MBP lasted from 2012 to 2020, and now my dad uses it because it still works fine. My younger brother uses my ~2008 17" MacBook Pro (it only runs on wall power, though). Repairability has just never been much of a concern in my use of Apple stuff

My main device is Apple Intel from 2009. It’s taken a few repairs that are not possible today to keep it running to modern standards.

The 2013 Macbook pro 13" has been my longest running laptop for work, and swapped it for the M1 two years ago because of the reviews. One of my kids is still using it for school.

I never had a laptop for that long before. And just had to replace the battery once, by an after market one. The keys on the keyboard disappearing is the only notable aging symptom.

Maybe an outlier, but based on that, I'm confident the M1 may last long too.

I think the question whether it is a great laptop has already been answered; it is a great laptop given all the rave reviews. Speaking for myself, the issue is integration and the walled garden. Because beyond the performance, a big point of getting into the Apple ecosystem is seamless integration which means opting into multiple Apple devices (unfortunately Linux/Android are sadly not there yet when it comes to integration, it is ok but not amazing). Which brings the main concern - what if I get buyer's remorse? Now all my data is stuck inside, and based on my experience with iPhone 5S many years ago, getting data out of Apple devices is harder than pulling teeth. Linux/Android are miles ahead there so if I don't like a particular device, I can easily switch to another. For me, that is the biggest thing - I don't enjoy being a hostage (even though most people using Apple devices are happy willing hostages and I get why that is).

Another way to look at this is - if Apple is so confident that their setup is absolutely incredibly good - why not make exiting with the data super easy? After all, if it is so good, people just won't leave even with those options available, right?

You're clearly very confused regarding the Apple desktop experience.

MacOS doesn't take your data hostage, you can exfilrate everything to anywhere you want .

Hell, all macs have a special boot mode that turn them into usb hard drives so you can access everything from another computer.

The iOS is a walled garden but you were misinformed if you think macos locks you into its app store or locks your data away.

Even if you feel like that might change one day, it doesn't justify lying about the present.

I am not confused at all. I can certainly just run MacOS and run everything else Android. BUT that takes away from one of the main value propositions of Apple ecosystem - integration. So to get the full benefit, I migrate my phone to iPhone and that is where it begins.

Also, don't call people liars without evidence. Read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your argument is basically "macOS doesn't lock up your data but it integrates so well with iOS which means I can't help buying an iPhone. And now I have buyer's remorse because iOS DOES lock up my data". You don't need to use these integrations and you don't need to buy an iphone if you don't like your data taken hostage.

Even though i think your tone was unfriendly, which is rare and frowned upon, you still had interesting points and got my upvote. Someone else might have the guidelines handy.

Assume a positve intent, was a valuable lesson for me.

I daily drive a 16" M1 MBP but I'm very much outside the Apple walled garden - I've never used an iPhone, no airpods or Siri or even the apps like Contacts or iMessage or iCloud.

I can still say, the new Apple Silicon Macs are one of the best computing devices I've ever used.

Apple users pay for the integration in the Apple ecosystem, lack of spyware, and quality of the physical device. They aren’t looking to run windows or Linux or anything like that.

If that's true, why did Apple release Boot Camp in the first place, and maintain it for so long? Why was it used so extensively?

I believe apple phones home quite a bit. The good thing is that on macos, you can launch a terminal and run "ps" to see what is going on, or use "ls" to see what apps and files exist (unlike ios).

Note that back when macos first launched, if a program crashed wanted to send information to apple, you would get a popup, see what would be sent and decide whether to send it or not. Nowadays all kinds of things are just sent, like every time you create an account, even a local one or one for work, it phones home.

The crash popup still asks if you would like to send a report, along with an optional comment. I have used it a number of times to describe the app state prior to the crash

> Apple users pay for the integration in the Apple ecosystem

> quality of the physical device

Agreed. I really like their hardware but I still want to be in control and running my own software on it.

> lack of spyware

Doubt.

> They aren’t looking to run windows or Linux or anything like that.

Asahi Linux compatibility will absolutely be a major factor in my willingness to purchase Apple hardware. I just purchased a phone because GrapheneOS recommended it. This stuff matters.

>> lack of spyware > Doubt.

Unlike Microsoft, it’s not been reported anywhere that Apple has spyware built in. Props to Apple’s PR team if they’re so competent they can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes for years.

> This stuff matters. Not at all, maybe as a rounding error.

> This stuff matters.

The number of people who want to sysadmin their phones is effectively zero.

Asahi Linux is an incredible undertaking.

I don't see myself running it for years, until it becomes the only way to get security updates to continue to use the hardware.

Apple has virtualization and paravirtualization built into the OS to run Linux and Windows as ARM VMs. They even have support to let ARM Linux use Rosetta 2 to run x86_64 ELF binaries.

I can already run Linux in a supported manner. I don't see a reason to run boot linux until my current hypervisor is no longer getting support.

I would rather leave the tech industry than ever use the macOS GUI for work again, to be honest.

While those early intel days were great (for example, being able to add more ram or install an ssd in 2009 macbook pro).

M1 is a big improvement over that even without the upgrade flexibility early intel years offered.

M1 can run windows in parallels and it works well enough for most cases

Is Google launching Bard a perfect example of displaying the willingness to cannibalize Search?

Google Brain was formed in 2011. If that's not coherent investment in a long term strategy I don't know what would qualify.

This is a bad example - bard just seems to halucinate and make up 50% of the answers.

The only thing Bard shows is that Google doesn't want OpenAI to eat into their Search. There's no indication it was ever planned to compete with Search or that they had a clear plan for it before OpenAI walked that path.

When you have all you need theoretically in house but your moves are rushed and come only as a reaction to the competition you are the very example I was trying to make, of milking your cash cow and waiting too long. Google had to change the strategy [0], reorganize [1], and struggle to launch your product in an emergency as a response to competition. This is the very definition of not having a well thought out long term strategy, isn't it?

Google owned Brain and DeepMind as rival divisions since before OpenAI existed. They didn't cooperate, didn't launch any revolutionary product, and didn't compete in any way with Google's main offering. They were left to their own devices like side projects until the competition dashed in front and hit Google's most sensitive area and dictated their strategy.

I don't know if Bard is a good or bad product. But we may have different definitions of a coherent investment in a long term strategy to make a better product. None of the above shouts "coherent", "long term strategy", or even necessarily "better product".

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/feari...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/googles-ai-panic-for...

> There's no indication it was ever planned to compete with Search or that they had a clear plan for it before OpenAI walked that path.

Google Voice Search cannibalized search since forever, without being monetizable. Google realized the importance of ML/AI early, and has had a coherent AI strategy that predates most AI companies - I would argue Google's strategy precipitated the existence of those companies by performing and publishing foundational research in the field.

Pixel phones are a masterclass of applied ML in a very humane way one might expect from Apple- e.g. call screening with realtime transcription.

lol, don't be naive

bart is only being made public because openai did a thing

It might've been if its release wasn't such a direct response to ChatGPT

It seems too reactive to be like that. They had the ability to do what OpenAI is already did well before OpenAI had a product.

Google didn’t cannibalize search with Bard. Bing/openai forced google to act.

This is exactly the opposite of what was meant

> cannibalize their own product lines (iPod)

I disagree on this. The iPhone was a potential iPod replacement when it launched, but the choice was selling $200 iPods or $500 iPhones. The iPhone felt like a leap of several generations, but the hardware and business model were still similar.

Where Apple actually cannibalized something was Apple Music and the iTunes store, but they drug their feet on it.

> but the choice was selling $200 iPods or $500 iPhones

I don't think we are in disagreement. But the fact is very few companies do this regardless. When it comes to the product that's their bread and butter they tend to put it on a pedestal never to be touched until it falls into irrelevance.

Apple didn't launch an improved iPod and retire the old. They didn't try to sell a phone and a music player by artificially differentiating them, or by sabotaging one of them. They didn't try to make $250 off the iPod and another $250 from a phone that "shouldn't compete too well". They launched 2 product lines made by different parts of the company, knowing that the iPhone may undermine the iPod userbase and then still fail, possibly souring those customers.

They wouldn't necessarily do this today. iDevices now are clearly (and artificially) differentiated from the Macs: different OS, no options to use them in a way they truly compete despite having such similar hardware theoretical capabilities.

Again to give the Google example, when they tried to have competing lines (Google/Nest) they managed to fail at both and lose the customers completely.

I disagree somewhat with the characterization of the differences as artificial. I think Apple genuinely believes that, despite their excellent touchpads, a cursor-driven interface is not the same as a touch interface.

They’re gradually bridging them (Catalyst, and adding cursor support to iPadOS), and speaking as a fan of both product lines I’m glad they’re trying to make them each more powerful without just slapping them into a single UI.

Could they do a better job of supporting external devices on iPad? I imagine so, but there’s such a long road from the extremely-protective/simplistic/sandboxed iOS 1.0 to a full-fledged workstation operating system I have to think it’s not all that easy.

I think this had more to due with negotiations with the record labels[0]. All the major record labels have investments in Spotify[1] which I imagine lends more credence to Spotify being able to negotiate good deals with the labels, since they can act more like partners

[0]: https://www.cultofmac.com/325034/apples-music-streaming-nego...

[1]: https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/spotify-at-days-close-what...

How are they “good deals” for Spotify when Spotify is losing money?

For starters, Spotify exists

One of the classic examples I've heard was how Apple cannibalized their iPod (classic) with the iPod Mini and the iPod nano. These were smaller and cheaper due to the flash storage, but did not replace their more expensive cousin.

The iPod Classic got relatively little updates toward the end of the iPod line because while it had a dedicated fan base due to its ability to store truly massive music libraries, it just wasn't selling much.

This was also the first time we really saw the scale Tim Cook could push for - competitors had difficulty going up against Apple because they hadn't just bought out all the available flash in the channel - they had funded building new factories for building denser/cheaper flash, in return for their entire initial production.

You're acting like Android isn't staying competitive. If Apple is moving forward how can you say Google isn't?

I think their point was, would Google move forward if they weren’t forced by Apple?

Google News took over and they gave up. Gmail got huge and they stopped doing much other than adding ads. Maps slowed down, other than adding ads. Google search keeps getting worse, they can’t seem to fix the SEO/spam problem. But they can add more ads.

Left to their own devices, Google seems happy to collect rent.

Apple, historically, makes their money by selling new hardware, and that requires improving things enough people want to buy it.

You compare services to products here. The market doesn't appreciate disruptive changes to services, hence all improvements done in services of both Apple and Google are iterative and subtle, additive not disruptive.

Such changes are usually also not newsworthy, unless one has to do leaps to catch up with a competitor (looking at you, Apple Maps)...

Google only has a few consumer products, but they made quite a few leaps in the past years for similar reasons (Pixel Phone has to catch up with Samsung, Pixel Watch has to catch up with Apple Watch), while Google/Nest Home is competing mainly with Amazon in an ecosystem war I'd say.

One could argue that the iPhone is not moving forward much in user-experience for a few years now, it's mainly iterating to achieve further cost-reduction/profit and enhance additional revenue streams of Apple.

- Apple Watch is mainly getting enhanced to create additional (healthcare/insurance/services) business for Apple.

- The iPad is under no stress to evolve other than cost-reduction in HW/SW development by harmonization with the iPhone, main strategy seems to be to push customers towards more expensive variants.

- The Macbook was indeed revolutionized, by applying the same supply-chain practice of the iPhone. Lots of leaps forward here in terms of tech, something only Apple could do. But Apple was also not leading this segment and is under strong competition, so they were forced to do something or dissolve into oblivion.

- The Desktop-Mac trajectory seems to be to become a MacBook without battery.

There's an easy explanation for that UX stagnation in iOS: iOS-products are actually not classical "products" anymore, but equipment for consuming services. The devices come bundled with a few free services from Apple and encouage you to consume other services from affiliates. Apple's main incentive is then not to sell new hardware, but to rollout new enabler-HW for selling additional services.

And they are in an increasing struggle to keep consumers "entertained" to pay for new enabler-HW, so apart from keeping control over their supply-chain they now need to become more exclusive in HW-components to lock-out competitors. Of course that can all be beneficial to the consumer, but would Apple move forward if they weren't forced by their business model?

Well, it seems they are a "mature" enterprise satisfied with their margins.

I like the advice Steve Jobs gave the Harvard graduates: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

> Over the years they never hesitated to cannibalize their own product lines (iPod)

The iPod was subsumed by the iPhone, not cannibalised. Parents were obligated to buy their kids a device with tracking/communication capabilities, so iPods became irrelevant. Now everyone buys the 2x more expensive device.

Now, if Apple were to merge the iPad and Macbook, I would agree with you readily.

There's no replacement for the Nano. iPhone doesn't cover that use case.

but that doesn't represent cannibalization, they didn't introduce a product that competes in that niche you're talking about

but if you're going to carry a phone anyway, like digital handheld cameras, you don't need an extra device on top of your phone

For the ones that used later gen Nanos (same form factor as early Shuffles) as music devices during running/jogging, the Watch supplanted that role with the added benefit of combining the Nano and fitness bands (GPS, heart rate).

I agree, a full phone was annoying large and hard to carry (tried forearm straps at one point) and often ran without one. Though I know people who still ran with a phone anyways.

I bought specific athletic shorts or shirts (cycling jerseys with back pockets did great) so that I could run with my phone. Stopped working so well when the iPhone 6 Plus came out.

The cellular Apple Watch.

The Nano doesn't drain its battery every 18 hours.

Which has more ads in the settings menu, an iPhone or a Pixel?

No undismissable ads as notification bubbles on a Pixel either.

>actually bother with a coherent investment in a long term strategy to make a better product.

Pretty much every company on planet earth other than Apple. There are actually Three key points here, long term, correct strategy and better. Most company would do pretty well if they even have just one of the three.

One could argue Intel didn't have any of the three for about 5 - 8 years.

> Over the years they never hesitated to cannibalize their own product lines (iPod), or go through several tough technological transitions (68K/PPC/x86/ARM) if it meant building a better product. And bigger profits of course.

Oh the mighty power ipad with M2 chip and 5G modem but a crippling ipadOS that prevents one from making good use of the CPU power would like a word to argue with you :-)

I cannot think of any reason for Apple to not allow ipadOS to get proper multi-tasking than "oh this will start eating into our profits from the MacBook Air/Macbook Pro lines". I'm not advocating for MacOS on a touchscreen mode. I would have chosen the ipad Pro in a heatbeat if it could have real multi-tasking with a keyboard and a touchpad plugged in. I mean the chip is already there twiddling its thumbs..

I think they know this and may already be working on it, but if not, it’s likely they’ve done the math that the engineering investment to flesh out the iPad experience wouldn’t be worth the potential payout - people can always get a MacBook, as you rightly point out.

I'm not sure that's true overall. Consider their strange design decisions with iPhone screens:

- They waited years longer than the competition to switch to larger screens. They only really got to it with the iPhone 6.

- They completely slept on OLED and stuck to LCD until the iPhone X, when all mid to high range Android phones had already used OLED for years. Their iPads still use LCDs for apparently no good reason (lower price presumably), around ten years after Samsung sold their first OLED tablets.

- They slept on the screen-to-body ratio. They were years behind their Android competition when they finally changed their course with the iPhone X.

It’s just a different set of values. If you want the latest tech specs, like OLED or whatever else, then you’ll find that in other brand.

But if you prefer a system that just gets out of your way so you don’t need to think about it, and just use it as a tool to do something else then Apple is nearly unbeatable.

And I say this as a recent Apple convert. I reluctantly started using their tech a few years ago when a Macbook was the laptop given to me at a new job. But since embracing the idea of “meh I’ll just use the defaults and let the system get out of my way”, I feel like I get to spend more time on things where I add value.

I switched to an iPhone for the first time in 2020 with the SE, and it is still running fine today with no problems, on the latest software update. I don’t care about the screen-to-body ratio, I just want it to work well as a tool

I'm not denying they are great at other aspects, but that's a point which is independent of the points I made. Them using outdated design approaches in the past didn't make their products more reliable.

Fair, I guess I forgot to mention my point, so sorry about that haha

The point that I was trying to make is that a general Apple consumer doesn’t really care about those things, but does like consistency. So Apple waits until they are pretty sure that something is actually valuable to customers, before releasing it.

LCD is still superior for durability and max brightness. I'd still prefer LCD for expensive tablets because it will be used over 6 years, unlike phones. Early OLED phones were bad for burn in. I heard that iPhone X OLED has more chance to get burned in compared to later models.

Burn in for smartphone OLEDs has long ceased to be a problem. It certainly wasn't a problem anymore for the iPhone X, even if later models are even more durable.

Regarding of tablets: I have a 2017 Galaxy Tab S3, very heavily used. The screen is still basically flawless. Physical wear is only visible when the whole screen shows a very dark grey uniform image, which happens approximately never.

The brightness isn't an issue either, in my experience. LCD does use less power on average, particularly on websites (which are typically bright) or PDFs, but smartphones have rather small screens anyway and tablets have a quite large battery.

I can’t speak to screen sizes. I’m still not sure what the deal was there.

There was a reason for OLED. The first Android phones with OLED looked hideous. The saturation was all wrong and they used pentile subpixel arrangements. Further more I remember seeing pictures of burn-in on some (cheaper/off brand?) OLED phones.

Apple has their priorities. And display quality is one of them. Look at professional reviews of their monitors and other displays like the iPhones and iPads. Whatever people think of the cost/features they tend to be be impressed with the display accuracy out of the box.

They waited until they could get enough OLED screens to handle their demand. But they also wanted certain levels of color accuracy, I assume non-pentile, and something that could handle avoiding burn in for the expected lifetime of the phone.

That must have taken time.

Screen to body: I suspect they knew they were getting close on the iPhone X design and wanted it to really stand out, so they stuck with the forehead/chin longer than others. Total guess though.

> They waited years longer than the competition to switch to larger screens. They only really got to it with the iPhone 6.

There's a lot of people upset they switched to larger screens! I suspect that Steve Jobs really wanted the phone to continue to fit in his jeans watch pocket.

Android phones generally had to be larger for engineering reasons. But larger phones sell well.

> They completely slept on OLED and stuck to LCD until the iPhone X, when all mid to high range Android phones had already used OLED for years.

The iPhone has always had great screens. A lot of the early OLED screens were simply not good enough, cheap enough, and/or available at high enough production.

The iPhone X was more expensive and meant to be a smaller run compared to the main consumer line. It needed a screen with a concave cutout. It makes a lot of sense that this was their first OLED iPhone screen.

IIRC correctly, the iPhone X had much higher demand than Apple anticipated, and there were shortages due to the OLED screen.

Generally, android phones compare favorably because people will pick and choose the winning premium features and the lowest price from a set of Android phones, to compare against the single flagship iPhone. It's rigged.

Eventually people will be talking about how late Apple was to get into folding phones, when nearly all Android phones sold are still non-folding phones today, years after the first folder launched - and folders typically sell at over $1k premium.

> They slept on the screen-to-body ratio. They were years behind their Android competition when they finally changed their course with the iPhone X.

Is replacing hardware buttons with an always-displayed button bar really changing the screen-to-body ratio?

Isn’t it the scale they need to supply it in. It’s next level. I mean they don’t need to just implement a new tech but implement it in 200million devices every year.

It helps when you have so much power over suppliers they can't complain or cut you out when you overtly threaten to replace them with vertical integration.

I keep wondering what would happen if Apple were to license iOS. I know that's a sore spot (Jobs is dead though), but could they actually fuck over Android if they did?

A whitebox iOS could be downgraded enough that they could still service the snob market, but maybe undercut Google completely. I mean, how much does it even have to cost per unit when each sold drives traffic to their own app store?

It would be a nightmare for iOS devs, now swamped by tons of device formats and missing capabilities depending on the model, like it is for Android.

Now I kinda want to see how badly Apple would reinvent androidx libraries. NSPermissionCompat would be a beauty to behold in 2045 when they finally decide to do it. Unless they don't and leave it up to the iOS community to (badly) do it.

> A whitebox iOS could be downgraded enough[…]

And that’s a huge part of the problem. Any move like that would tarnish iOS in everyone’s eyes. Apple wants you to buy a real iPhone, even if it’s the model from 2 years ago, instead.

If BMW started selling a ton of $18,000 cars do you think that would help or hurt sales of the M3 and the 5 Series?

That bit then with the clones. The competition undercut them. You know what that high Apple price does? Help pay to develop iOS.

They would have to charge enough to make up for the money they would lose on the list phone sales. And seriously risk their reputation in the process.

Apple has been through a lot in their 40 years. They have an atavistic reaction at this point against anything that prevents them from controlling their own destiny. It’s hurt them too many times.

I suspect that’s why they’re doing this. They don’t want to be beholden to Samsung, LG, or anyone else for displays.

What good is iOS on commodity hardware? The entire value proposition of any of Apple’s products are the right integration of hardware and software.

> I keep wondering what would happen if Apple were to license iOS.

Much the same thing as happened to Apple when they licensed their OS in the 90s, I imagine.

I use Apple devices despite iOS, not because of it.

Despite what you're sure of, it's Apple that's stuffing your phone with more ads, and it won't let you use alternative apps without those ads on "your" phone.

Can you elaborate what adds I have on my iPhone?

Apple News, which you cannot disable or uninstall. App Store ads, personalized using your app install history, which you cannot hide. Ads in phone settings (https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/07/apple-advertises-...). This will continue to grow: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddoty/2023/02/08/apple-the-...

The main difference between iOS and Android is that you have no choice but to use many of these first-party adware apps on iOS.

>Google would just rather stuff your phone to the gills with ads

I see literally more ads on my iphone than I see on my Google Pixel, and it is one of Apple's fastest growing sources of revenue.

Ads don’t matter unless they are intrusive. Most part Apple does well, but Apple News is the worst

You ran out of space on your iCloud account! Now your phone won't be backed up and your data will be in danger! <spooky sounds>

What part of that isn't a legitimate and valid warning?

I've had multiple relatives with broken/stolen phones who lost very important photos because they were no longer being backed up.

You can always turn iCloud backup off if you think notices that the feature is failing are annoying, but the notices themselves are hardly misleading.

I'm sure the CTA to pay for upgraded storage included in that warning is just a convenient coincidence, eh. I don't like the dark-patterness of it - it feels like blackmail.

lmao is this the newest excuse? Ads don't matter because it's Apple who runs them?

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