Apple is losing the war of words
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
Their hardware is still excellent if perhaps too conservative but I'm bearish on Apple mainly because I just don't see any evidence of the kind of software engineering discipline that's necessary to compete with Google.
> Just about everybody agrees that Android is now evolving
> faster than iOS
> Many of their recent app releases have been mediocre or downright bad,
> and they still haven't really figured out how to run robust and
> reliable cloud services
> Crucial new iOS APIs like AutoLayout are an absolute
> design-by-committee trainwreck
> but I'm bearish on Apple mainly because I just don't see any evidence
> of the kind of software engineering discipline that's necessary to compete with Google
In Google's Q4 2012:
Amazing: 8
Strong: 10
Thrilled: 1
Focused: 9
Great: 32
China: 6
"Sad Words"
Disappoint: 0
Weak: 0
Bad: 2 (in context, they said, "not bad")
Fail: 0
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1126031-google-s-ceo-discuss...
The entire point of an earning call is to reassure the shareholders and raise the markets confidence in a companies' potential.
It would be very strange if a company spent the majority of their earnings calls pointing out their failures and avoiding talking about their success.
If you think that's enough of a reason to constraint Apple, surely it should also be enough to constrain Google by the same logic.
If you read Gruber's blog it is very hard to dispel that this is mostly what he does.
MG Siegler on the hand...
The social economy of startup marketing is almost an exact parallel to that of independent music...
They have absolutely zero cool.
That and I don't appreciate locked in ecosystems. Plus iOS has been a daft, stale platform for the last 3 years or more.
If the argument is flawed, you have yet to provide a single example to show that.
I don't want to waste time addressing everything I think you're wrong about since you don't seem to be open to another viewpoint.
However, I would like to say that the frivolous lawsuits are literally ALL OVER THE INDUSTRY. Seriously, just take a look around. Do you think Amazon is a terrible company also, since they patented One-Click buying?
When you grow to be a company worth billions of dollars, you have the best legal team available at your disposal and as a BUSINESS you should use it to cover your ass wherever possible. They're not running a charity. Now I agree that being too aggressive without innovating or using such patents is what defines a patent troll, but Apple consistently innovates AND uses its own patents, so I'd say they're far from patent trolling. Aggressive? Certainly. Trolling? Hardly.
The issue remains to be solved by REGULATION by the government. It's not Apple's fault for taking advantage of a clearly broken system (since you know, they're a business and all). It's the government's job to prevent such things like that.
That was hardly true until Apple started requesting product-bans world wide. They broke the truce. They started the avalaunch. They get the bad karma. That's how it works.
They're not running a charity.
And so? That still doesn't prevent you from making extremely bad judgement calls.
Now I agree that being too aggressive without innovating or using such patents is what defines a patent troll
Trying to hijack the entire future of mobile computing by exploiting bad laws and preventing everyone else from entering market still makes you an asshole, a wanne-be monopolist and generally shows off your true identity.
You want everyone locked in to your solutions with no way out. In fact you dont want there to be any other ways at all.
Which by no means is illegal. It just means that you are showing off values which are completely orthogonal to everything I believe in: freedom.
You believe in zero freedom. You want to take mine away. I am free to hate you for that. Deal.
but Apple consistently innovates AND uses its own patents
Yes. They are using their rounded corners and want everyone else in the mobile industry to create devices made out of spikes.
Cry me a river. Design and trivial UI implementation details should not be patentable. Apple has bad karma for exploiting these laws.
The issue remains to be solved by REGULATION by the government.
Agreed.
It's not Apple's fault for taking advantage of a clearly broken system
Not agreed. I can hate both the player and the game. Gues what? I do.
In Apple's case they have shown that they are willing to take the game anywhere their products are facing competition.
There is nothing misguided or wrong about my point of view. Stop being appologetic for the actions of a mega-corp.
>That was hardly true until Apple started requesting product-bans world wide. They broke the truce. They started the avalaunch. They get the bad karma. That's how it works.
I'd like to argue that those types of lawsuits weren't widely publicized until Apple's whole situation since everything Apple does is high-profile. I think to an extent they were right in wanting to ban blantantly similar looking devices, as they take their original designs very seriously, design is at the core of Apple. Samsung has a history of blatantly ripping off Apple design, and as such deserved the outcome of the lawsuits. You might accuse me of being an Apple fanboy, but the one thing that tipped me in Apple's favor is this Samsung cable connector: (http://johncblandii.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/samsung30...). Now be honest, does it not piss you off that a company would be so committed to copying another company's design to the extent that they would rip of a completely proprietary connector that Apple have been using for 10 years (since the OG iPod)?
>Trying to hijack the entire future of mobile computing by exploiting bad laws and preventing everyone else from entering market still makes you an asshole, a wanne-be monopolist and generally shows off your true identity.
I think hijack is a strong word that should be reserved for Microsoft and IE6. I agree that they were very aggressive and certainly not very "open" as a company, and maybe you don't like that, which I can completely understand. But this is the way Apple has always been. They were never about being open. They had their entire proprietary stack of hardware and software and that's what makes Apple..Apple and consumers seem to love that ecosystem, as well as developers. Not defending them at all here, but just saying that they never claimed to be a company committed to "openness". Also, to be fair, the iPhone and iPad completely revolutionized the future of mobile computing. Android is certainly pushing the boundaries today, I agree (Google is a software powerhouse), but you may forget that back in 2007, the iPhone was an absolute revolution and magical in every sense of the word. The iPad wasn't nearly as magical when it came out, but it's widespread adoption set the tone for the tablet market as we know it today. I don't think you'll disagree with me here. Does this give them the excuse to be so aggressive? Maybe not, but that's the way they've been, and you should give credit where credit is due, regardless.
>You want everyone locked in to your solutions with no way out. In fact you dont want there to be any other ways at all. Which by no means is illegal. It just means that you are showing off values which are completely orthogonal to everything I believe in: freedom.You believe in zero freedom. You want to take mine away. I am free to hate you for that. Deal.
I don't know how Apple is taking away your freedoms. Can you explain a little more on how you think they're contributing to that? You're free not to buy into Apple's proprietary stack, just like you're free not to buy into Facebook's proprietary stack, or Google's increasingly proprietary stack (killing off Reader and CalDAV was for a reason), or Microsoft's proprietary technologies. Apple is kinda known for being extremely proprietary but lets not forget the other elephants in the room either. How do you think these companies are taking away your freedoms? What freedoms did you have before that you miss now because of what Apple did?
>Yes. They are using their rounded corners and want everyone else in the mobile industry to create devices made out of spikes. Cry me a river. Design and trivial UI implementation details should not be patentable. Apple has bad karma for exploiting these laws.
I really hate the "rounded corners" argument. I know the patent may say "rounded corners" but if you read deeper into such patents you being to realize that its a much more specific patent than the phrases suggest. Patents are usually given to a very specific implementation. You can't judge a patent based on it's name or one little excerpt that you read. Now, we both agree that patents needs reform. How that reform plays out and how it will deal with such patents remains to be seen.
Let's ASSUME that Apple did have a patent for just "rounded corners" and it really was as straightforward as that. Why the hell was Apple awarded a patent for rounded corners? Who the hell was in charge of giving Apple that patent? That's the real issue. If I was a company and I had tons of money laying around, I would for-sure try to enforce any patents I had (again, remember I'd be a business). The problem would be giving me patents like "rounded corners" which gives me more ammunition against my competitors. But remember, this is all assuming that "rounded corners" is really as simple as the phrase suggests, which I can assure you isn't. However this doesn't mean there is an excuse for Apple being allowed to hold such a patent either.
>Not agreed. I can hate both the player and the game. Gues what? I do. In Apple's case they have shown that they are willing to take the game anywhere their products are facing competition.
This is your opinion and I gladly respect it. I don't think you're wrong for holding this opinion as its completely valid. I can understand your hatred of companies that are aggressive and use such tactics.
My point was that many many companies use such tactics and you shouldn't single out Apple just because the media loves to single them out for page-hits. You should take a look at the lawsuits Amazon have started for their one-click patent (which I'm sure we can both agree sounds just as frivolous as "rounded corners"), or any of the other numerous patents. We can take the argument one step further and criticize Twitter and Facebook for heavily regulating their API (which we can draw parallels with patents since both are proprietary), but at the end of the day I still like the technology that they build and I can respect their business decisions even though I may not agree with them. Twitter needs to make money, as does Facebook and they're trying to stop the commoditization of their data in exchange for perhaps a less free and open API. Does this mean they're hijacking the future? I wouldn't say so, but you might feel different and like I said, I can respect that.
What I hate is "walled-garden" arguments.
Can't speak for Phil, but I did come here simply to point out that the article comes off a little strange with JLG trying to sound like an outsider while talking about a company he worked at for over a decade, and in an executive capacity. It was twenty years ago, and by bringing it up I don't mean to imply a problem with what he's saying (I agree with it), I just wonder if he is a household name and this is considered common knowledge, or if anyone else thought it was an interesting omission.
Well no. In fact they're opposites.
Scorning criticism because "they, of all people..." is textbook ad-hominem. Maybe there's irony there too, but they doesn't seem at first glance what philwelch intended.
In case you didn't know, Jean-Louis Gassée was, along with John Sculley, one of the principal figures who ran Apple into the ground after Jobs left. I find this adds an interesting subtext to his commentary on Apple now. He may very well be right, but it's amusing that he writes publicly about the subject at all.
A good comparison is this letter from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan about his handling of the Iran-Contra scandal: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/09/let-stillborn-midget-re... Nixon was probably right, but it's amusing that he of all people chose to give unsolicited advice about handling presidential scandals.
It looks like Tim Cook isn't repeating that mistake - he forced out Scott Forstall to remove a potential challenger (or loose cannon, depending on who you ask). I see the current blandness by Apple as both a consequence of that (necessary, IMO) action, as well as having a missing visionary.
Your defense of your first ad hominem is an ad hominem against the HN poster who called you out for it?
sigh...
Ad hominems all the way...
I found the article to be a quite interesting look at the way that these companies are doing business with and against each other, and how the media makes narratives out of it. There seems to be a lot of truth in it. What JLG uses to good effect in the article is insider anecdotes.
I'm not that close to Apple or JLG that I have strong feelings about either one's point of view, I'm more interested in how the same driving forces will affect everyone.
Do you agree or disagree with the substance here? Try engaging with that.
Bingo. Just because someone maybe didn't mean to imply something doesn't mean they didn't imply it.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/09/let-stillborn-midget-re...
I didn't know I could find something stated so seriously to also be funny and insightful. Thanks for mentioning it, and here's to Tricky Dick.
I do know who JLG is, and that's exactly why I pay attention to what he says. There are few people with his experience that can actually talk about this stuff openly. So it's not funny, or ironic, that he offers his opinion. It's awesome.
More likely freudian slip than inspired coinage, but it's a word English could use.
A 2006 paper out of the St. Louis Fed investigated "whether managers use[d] optimistic and pessimistic language in earnings press releases" between 1988 and 2003 "and whether the market respond[ed] to" this variation [1]. It found an optimistic bias, with optimistic words appearing nearly three times as frequently as pessimistic words.
Given that "levels of optimistic and pessimistic language used by managers in earnings press releases reliably predict future firm performance" and the "significant market response" to this variation, investors believe "that managers credibly communicate information to investors via optimistic and pessimistic language usage". But the market is Bayesian; "managers have reputations" that investors use as their baseline.
I think the "You'll love the iPhone..." campaign Apple just launched is a little tacky, and un-Apple-like. It reads like one of their Valentine's Day or Back to School ads... except there's no holiday or event to back it up.
Except, of course, it coincides with the S4 reveal. Even if unintentional, it's poorly timed.