I'm a huge Apple fanboy but they really need to get their shit together on the web services front. Siri still sucks almost unbelievably bad. It never works. Maps still leads me to random streets and goes in circles.
As we move towards smaller and smaller devices one has to assume more of the work is going to be happening in the data center. Not good news for Apple unless they start making some real strategic acquisitions stat. (They've started at least.)
Funny how Google is continuing to corner the data market via acquisitions like Nest. Almost feels...anti-competitive, no? I wonder how long until we start talking about Google the way we still talk about 1990s Microsoft.
Is it plausible that a new company, starting from scratch in the Maps/Search/Personal Assistant/etc. field could actually compete with Google? Or would they just get crushed under the personalizing power of Google's raw data and computational advantage?
Well Microsoft, easily, if they had the will. I guess the pieces are actually all there, but they aren't as direct with posing it as a "personal assistant" or whatever.
If you consider the products separately: there are several major mapping companies, though there have been a ton of confusing mergers and splits in the last 5 years, not to mention OSM. As for Siri, it was a tiny team at Siri, Inc that created the foundations of Siri. Apple has done a ton with it (though I was hoping for more by now), but you can easily imagine a next-gen Siri coming out of a startup.
> Funny how Google is continuing to corner the data market via acquisitions like Nest. Almost feels...anti-competitive, no?
This becomes a little farcical, honestly. First, you can get far more information from a phone, and there are like 3 orders of magnitude more Android phones out there than there are Nest devices.
But more importantly, if we're going to talk about the "data market" -- as if that's some sort of thing -- virtually any acquisition that has customers would help them corner it. But that also means any other company with customers also has a stake in that "market", in which case, no, it does not feel anti-competitive.
And while I certainly am looking into the future when I talk about cornering the market, I think it's an interesting question to ask how you compete against a company like Google that starts with this much user context. How can you build better experiences when they have the advantage in data, ML expertise, and the raw computational power? The incremental acquisitions of data and companies are not the issue...it's the web of connections that is valuable. And Google is not only trouncing Apple, their only meaningful competitor, in that race...Google is pulling even further ahead.
To your initial question that if there is any company which could have built Maps or Siri, Microsoft is more than a good answer. You can try to get really nitpicky on this but it is what it is.
From a competition point of view, antitrust isn't concerned about where you are, but rather how you got there. As Sherman put it:
"[a person] who merely by superior skill and intelligence...got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist"
As far as we know, Google is doing nothing to prevent other companies, like Apple or Microsoft from making similar acquisitions and/or capitalising on the acquisitions they have made.
Microsoft told OEMs that if they sold more than X computers without Windows, their licensing cost would go up by Y. There's also their embrace, extend and extinguish (their own words) which describes their strategy to adopt a standard (Java), add custom behavior (J/Direct) and thus breaking the standard and weakening the product. And this isn't all of it, and they also did some stupid stuff in court (submitting faked videos and getting caught).
As long as Google's behavior doesn't hurt consumers nor does it unfairly disadvantage competition (and being too good and too big isn't enough, they need to actively undermine them), the comparison is absolutely and totally flawed.
This sounds very strange to me given the fact that by definition a monopoly is the control of a market by one entity, it doesn't have anything to do with how it gets there.
Well that depends on the country. In some countries monopolies are illegal and the government is the only one that can perform ones.
Also, questionable practices are not necessarily illegal. For instance, no that long ago (well 20 years or so is not that long for me), having privileged information on wall street wasn't illegal, but questionable.
For me, Maps gives me eerily accurate drivetime estimates whereas Google's times are utterly useless. And I consider the UI patently inferior. I feel like a need two hands and a full minute to do things that require a few quick taps in iOS. Google seems to need to ping their server to get my search history or home address, whereas iOS calls it up in milliseconds. I would also kill to have navigation on the lockscreen as in iOS - it always requires a janky series of button presses and swipes on my Android phone.
Fascinating. Apple Maps is always wrong for me, with the estimated time of arrival constantly changing as I drive, while Google (and Waze) are spot on.
I won't debate the accuracy of either case since it can only be an anecdotal and unproductive conversation. You were disputing the value changing over time, not it being inaccurate. Google does seem to give more optimistic estimates in general.
Not trying to argue - it's just interesting how much variation there is for different people (for both Siri and Android apparently).
Just initiating the voice commands is a pretty telling comparison.
iPhone: hold down ergonomically placed home button until it beeps, say what you want (eg "directions home"). Siri waits a well-timed beat and launches maps.
Android: press unlock button (semi-awkwardly placed on upper right corner), do weird home button motion only used to launch Google now (drag the soft "home" button up). Say "OK Google" to initiate voice detection, say what you want. Then there's a poorly calibrated lag to make sure Now is doing what you want, a hair over 5 seconds maybe.
Then there are weird fit/finish issues. Android seems to do weird things when headphones w/ a mic are connected, so it takes several seconds longer to be able to say "OK Google" after launching. If you use headphones a lot, it's basically a dealbreaker. And I find a lot of fit and finish issues when Google actually performs the action.
I'd be curious to try the Moto X to see if its "always listening" mode mitigates some of these issues.
tl;dr Now is great as a morning homepage, but an abysmal failure as a Siri-like assistant
The more concerning thing to me, is Apple's apparent usability weakness when it comes to iCloud, syncing and its devices. I've worked it out now, more or less, but the potential for confusion is tremendous. If I turn on syncing, I expect syncing. If I turn off syncing, I expect syncing to stop, I do not expect warnings about documents being deleted from various devices.
Similar with calendars. Turn on iCloud and suddenly you have calendars 'On My Mac' and in iCloud. All the calendars are duplicated. Horribly confusing behaviour for someone who is new to it.
This has been a problem with iTunes syncing as well. Constantly warning me about deleting apps and photos when I check or uncheck a box. Does anyone ever want to say yes to any of those questions? Very user hostile behavior.
There's still no easy way to randomly get photos from a computer onto my ipad. I have to use some 3rd party app or frickin mail them to myself. The photo syncing feature is useless.
maps has notoriously bad data.
Google and Apple must use the same mapping data, because I see the same errors in both apps. Of course with Google, after I report the error it gets fixed. I can’t say the same for Apple. And Navteq* has more detailed and accurate data than either of them.
What Google has is superb place data. Apple has… Yelp.
*Assuming you have recent Navteq data. Not the nav system in your car that hasn’t been updated in 2 years.
He's a known quantity at Apple and he's doing hardware that would expand their market. I know they don't do a lot of acquisitions but this would seem to be a no-brainer for them.
I'm guessing that to them, it's all or nothing: either they invent and market the product, or they're not interested.
Unsustainable hubris, if you ask me.
So you're saying that they've become a 'not invented here' kind of company?
Or the opposite of hubris. They want to stay focused on their product line. They're happy to put connected home products in their stores, as they've done with nest; but they recognize they are already spread thin, so they do not actually want to make products in that space. Apple's acquisitions tend to be targeted improving their existing product line, not rapid expansions into new products.
I would bet Apple could make a good washer and dryer, but no one is claiming Apple is not out there courting the best washer/dryer company due to hubris.
Nest is neat. I don't have one but my neighbor does and it's a fine product. I'm as "gadgety" as the next guy here, but even after playing with Nest and being impressed I still wasn't compelled to buy one. I dunno, maybe one day.
Feels like Google has a lock on the talent that could help Apple build out their capability here.
They'd need to take services seriously as well, for starters.
Sadly, no. I doubt even Jobs would have made that shift were he still alive, but I'm certain Tim Cook won't.