Apple: undefeatable!?! (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

Yeah well I've got $400 worth of AAPL so I've got a ways to go on that one.

 

[Ted Todorov]

My take on it is: give it time. Nothing Apple does comes quickly and I still see great days ahead for them, they aren't just coasting.

Unlike practically every Apple opponent -- see for instance Google and their Glass -- Apple does not say *anything* about the unreleased stuff it is working on. Look for instance at Swift: literally nobody knew a thing about it until Apple released it at WWDC last year, and now, just a few months later, it is clearly a full on hit, that will make a huge difference for the future (while I'm at it, I should have included some of Google's going nowhere new programming languages as well).


Yes, there are the examples of iPhone and Apple Watch that get announced months before their release, but there is both a reason for it -- unlike Swift, their Asian development and government related data would have been leaked prior to their releases, thus Apple did have to do it farther ahead -- but we all know Apple means business with such new products.


Google with Glass? Not so much.

 

[DaveF]

Apple is in no danger of closing up shop anytime soon. But they are at risk, over the next several years, of losing their cachet and becoming just another tech vendor.

I believe the perception is growing that Apple products no longer have the "It Just Works" mojo. Not that they bad, or it's time to switch to Chromebooks. But they're losing some magic in the race to keep up with Google's and Samsung's update cycles.

And I believe there is some truth to the perception. I've got two simple thoughts on this:

1) Long-standing bugs remain for years, through major upgrades, and never get fixed.

2) the number of bugs really is increasing because the number of features is increasing. And their complexity of feature interaction is increasing. It's essentially a fact of nature: more code, more bugs. And users notice more bugs more..

3) New bugs appear, but of the type that Users are helpless to deal with. icloud bugs, syncing bugs. In the good old days, there were typical oddball ways for a user to overcome the impact of a bug. Itunes changes metadata, then run disk permissions, manually fix the data, or otherwise take some action and work around the bug. But now with cloud-bugs, it's just voodoo. There is nothing for a user to do. And that increases the feeling of helplessness which increases the feeling of Apple getting worse.

4) there are so many users, that the absolute number of people being annoyed is big enough to give a large voice to what might otherwise be small percentage of afflicted users.

5) Apple culture. They do not acknowledge bugs. They do not comment on future fixes in work. They appear to be in simple denial of user problems. An inferred "You're using it wrong" is terrible PR.

Old bugs longer. More new bugs appear. And the new ones make the user feel more helpless than they used to. Lots of people experience this. And Apple seems unaware and uninterested in user experience.

i don't know what Apple should do. They should stop work and only do bug fixes for the next two years. That would be disastrous. But barreling ahead with rapidly producing a multitude of small, buggy features isn't the best plan either.

 

[Sam Posten]

Regarding 'It just works', that's Apple Pay in a nutshell and that's what's scary about the other software issues.


If it continues on its growth path, Apple Pay could be a long term monster and a huge headache for those systems cut off from it (ie Google, WinMobile, etc)

http://mattrichman.net/post/109893250568/profitable-and-uncopyable

 

[Sam Posten]

This would surely be welcome if true:

http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/09/apples-ios-9-to-have-huge-stability-and-optimization-focus-after-years-of-feature-additions/

 

[Sam Posten]

"Don't laugh, I believe this stuff"



Via DF

 

[Mark Booth]

"Don't laugh, I believe this stuff"



Via DF

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Sam!


Mark

 

[Sam Posten]

Earnings tonight. Sammy Walrus is predicting Apple to soundly trounce the Wall Street Consensus:

http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2015/4/20/apple-2q15-earnings-preview-another-strong-quarter-driven-by-iphone-in-china

 

[Sam Posten]

Kaboom, beat most of Sammy's predictions.

http://www.imore.com/apple-announces-q2-2015-results-million-iphones-million-ipads-million-macs-billion-revenue

 

[Sam Posten]

You gotta admire his tenacity on this.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carl-icahn-on-apple-share-price-2015-5

 

[Carlo_M]

New 15" MBP and iMac Wednesday? Will I have a new faster computer with which to transfer weapons in Destiny?

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/18/15-macbook-pro-27-imac-expected/

 

[Sam Posten]

Yep I posted that in the WWDC thread =)

 

[Carlo_M]

Ugh...new MBP or Scuf One controller with four paddle buttons...decisions, decisions.

 

[Sam Posten]

New MBP is spec bumped Haswell, 2 year old tech. Skip.

 

[Carlo_M]

Looks like they'll be skipping Broadwell for Skylake. Okay Apple. $2.5k saved. Destiny Tuesday it is.


I guess to be somewhat fair they slapped a new discrete GPU on the top end model, because the old top end GPU was really long in the tooth. Haven't done the research to see how good the new dGPU is, but they're claiming it can do 5K output through Thunderbolt 2.


And they also added (Use The) Force Touch.


I do think that with the price of flash memory going down, for the $2.5K build which they're touting for top-end video and audio editing, they really should make the 1TB all flash memory standard, rather than a $500 upgrade. I can get a 1TB SSD (yes I know it's a true drive as opposed to Apple's faster form factor) for under $500 alone.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Sam!


Mark

I finally got around to watching it: great indeed, and all the people thinking that Apple Watch is a flop might want to have another look. Also yet another example of how women get ignored by the same bunch screaming "flop" - every other "smartwatch" is this humongous 46mm and up men's only thing, that no woman would touch. They don't get that Apple is rulling the world because they create for women as much men.


Look at the new MacBook: complaints left and right about how the CPU is too slow and there is only one port. Women see an incredible light machine with the best looking screen, that no one else makes. It will be (if it isn't already) a huge hit.