10 ms·

Why Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Huawei Can't Compete with Apple

29 points by williswee 11y ago

touristtam 11y ago
> Quick, picture an iPhone user. You’re probably picturing somebody young-ish, urban. Somebody who likes a simple user experience that doesn’t change much from model to model. Somebody who admires good industrial design, and who has the money to fit a $600-$800 phone into their budget. iPhone are so mainstream, so isn't so clear cut anymore.
- josteink 11y ago
  > Quick, picture an iPhone user. You’re probably picturing somebody young-ish, urban. Somebody who likes a simple user experience that doesn’t change much from model to model. Somebody who admires good industrial design, and who has the money to fit a $600-$800 phone into their budget. More like the author pictures that. Maybe because that's how he would like to be projected, through his own iPhone-ownership? I picture my grandma who would be confused by a more advanced and sophisticated interface and a device capable of true multitasking. Also my boss, who needs help setting up video-mirroring in the conference room, every single time. Basically, when I think iPhone-owner, I think unsophisticated and technically inept. But I'm willing to admit that this is my projection and I'm not going to be naive enough to assume this is how it's generally for everyone else. For instance every developer I know has Android, but again I'm not going to draw any general conclusion based on my limited data-sets.
  - Raed667 11y ago
    This. There is some sens of "entitlement" and superiority that comes with the turf of using an Apple product, I get that feeling every-time someone starts talking to me about their Apple device.
  - riotdash 11y ago
    It probably has nothing to do with technical capabilities, but more like productivity. For people who have lots of time and don't mind fighting around with problems, nonworking settings, slow/varying FPS, corrupted official OS updates, malware etc. Android might be a better choice but other than that it's really hard to image any rational person taking Android over iOS. Especially considering that the security level of iOS is on a completely another level when compared to Android. It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Because it's the only one that gets the job done without unnecessary and non billable issues and still has awesome software support.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      > Android might be a better choice but other than that it's really hard to image any rational person taking Android over iOS. Assuming you can afford it, not everyone lives with US salaries and subsidized phones.
    - vacri 11y ago
      > It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Patent nonsense. Most companies prefer Windows, and the bigger the company, the more likely it is to be a Windows shop - because Windows offers plenty of business-friendly options. OSX is far from "getting the job done" at an enterprise level. And on the server side, OSX is nowhere to be seen; it's all other unixes and windows. I'm not a fan of Windows, but it's absolutely ludicrous to say that companies prefer OSX. Small companies in certain fields do, but it's still a Windows market.
  - cbeach 11y ago
    Confused by true multitasking? I picture an iPhone user who's discerning enough to understand the engineering trade offs, and prefers multitasking to be tightly controlled and specialised as it is in iOS. I remember when Android users proudly touted Android's support for Flash. I think we've all since learnt why Apple made the decision to drop Flash. A mobile phone is a battery-constrained device. I want a device that's optimised for its constraints, even if that means developers get fewer toys to play with.
  - rahoulb 11y ago
    (I can't believe we're still having this conversation but...) My take on it is this: With Linux, Windows and Android, when something goes wrong, you may be able to fix it. For example, my wife's HTC One M8 received an OTA update that bricked it. I googled it, and started trying to fix it. 8 hours later it's still bricked, but I've found a couple more articles that I will try next. The same happens when I use a Linux box and it goes wrong. Or a Windows box and it goes wrong. When a Mac goes wrong, I generally spend no more than an hour trying to fix it. Either it works or I run out of options. When an iOS device goes wrong, I generally spend about ten minutes trying to fix it. Google a solution, it either works or it runs out of options. To some people, the Android situation is preferable - I can fix it myself and it's a problem I want to solve. So I'm happy to spend the time looking into it. Personally, I spend all my working day fixing technical problems. I don't want to spend any more time chasing solutions. I'm actually grateful to iOS for giving me a binary yes/no answer within minutes.
    - josteink 11y ago
      > (I can't believe we're still having this conversation but...) Like I finished my comment with: This is how I see things. But I'm not going to assume that applies to everyone everywhere, like the author of the linked article does. My comment was meant as a contrasting view just to illustrate how wrong broad generalizations like the author made can go. Anyway, bad generalizations are bad generalizations no matter who makes them and no matter what they are about. The plural of anecdote is not data. Etc etc. But if people instead wish to discuss how I see things and how those views are somewhat wrong... They should be free to do so, even though they're obviously also going to be doing the exact same "mistakes" they accuse me of.
    - cbeach 11y ago
      > When an iOS device goes wrong, I generally spend about ten minutes trying to fix it. Google a solution, it either works or it runs out of options. If my iPhone was bricked by a software update and I couldn't fix it, I'd simply take it to one of the many nearby Apple Stores, and (going by previous experience), they'd fix it or replace it without fuss. Try taking your HTC One M8 back to Carphone Warehouse if you ever get in trouble. I'd be interested to see how their service compares.
  - interpol_p 11y ago
    > For instance every developer I know has Android, but again I'm not going to draw any general conclusion based on my limited data-sets. I have the opposite experience. Every developer I know, and most people pursuing computer science, are big iOS / OS X users. The only developer I know who has chosen Android based his decision on the lower price. He says he prefers the technical underpinnings of iOS, but just doesn't want to spend so much on a phone. He owns an iPad and MBP. There's a lot of hidden tech stuff in iOS, little things like the fact that Emacs hotkeys work in iOS text fields. I generally regard the iOS SDKs (Core Graphics/Text/Audio/Image/Media, UIKit, and so on) as more capable than what's available on Android. Though Android seems to be getting better all the time, and I don't develop for it that much anymore so can't make a good comparison. I recall some developers being swayed by Apple's initial heavy contributions to LLVM way back, and more recently by Swift — a lot of the programming purists at my workplace felt that Apple had done something right with that language. Most of the technically inept people I know use iPhones; but most of the computer science academics and professional developers I know use them too. They just appreciate different things.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  > iPhone are so mainstream, so isn't so clear cut anymore. No on countries where 500 euros is around the average salary and consumers have to pay full price for their devices.
  - romankolpak 11y ago
    I live in Ukraine and I can confirm this. iPhone here is a thing of luxury and status. Funny how people here can spend their entire monthly income on a dated iPhone 6/5s because it's an item of status and they want it so badly. Chinese smartphones here are dominating the market though. They're pretty much everywhere these days.
  - touristtam 11y ago
    >No on countries where 500 euros is around the average salary and consumers have to pay full price for their devices. Point taken. I guess I am guilty of having another cultural bias; I assumed pretty much everyone is getting their mobile device through a 24 month+ contract with their network. At least this is how I got my first mobile phone, over 15 years ago.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Yeah, in some countries, pre-paid is the rule, not the exception. I pay $12/month for 500 minutes/SMSs plus 200MB, so the total after 24 months is less than $300 - kinda hard to bundle an iPhone with that amount :)
- flohofwoe 11y ago
  Exactly, at least here in Germany iPhone users are just as 'all over the place' as Android users, if you really want to stand out from the crowd you need to get a Windows Phone ;)
whyagaindavid 11y ago
>So yes, Chinese handset makers did quite well in 2015. But >can they climb that cliff? Could they actually beat out Apple? >No. At least not in the sense of eating into Apple’s >specific chunk of the market. >They may be able to boost their numbers by picking up more >users in developing regions, but none of the three is >likely poaching any of Apple’s market anytime soon. The author must change the title. why have it different to what is written in the article. None of these handset makers compete with Apple. @author Rolls-Royce, Aston martin do not compete with Fiesta. Thanks
- efes 11y ago
  I don't know what gives you that idea. Huawei is like a Ford of chinese phones. Just because they have a fiesta doesn't mean they don't also compete with rolls royce at their highest end. I think the article is giberish because of the marketing feel good about ourselves nonsense: Picture a person who wears a kravat, not sure what a kravat is? See! Apple wont lose their shirt by being unable to compete with the 4 times larger Android marketplace and whatever circuses it spins off. Those markets will be dominated by players like Huawei and will inevitably be putting compatibility pressure on Apple's 20% over time. Also, Rolls Royce is a little footnote in a more successful company with a larger demographic today which is itself not all that great. That Apple still will have fans is more likely to get them to jump in that shrinking hole of past prestige based pricing like they did for the 1990s.
  - oblio 11y ago
    Rolls Royce is now owned by BMW. If you're calling BMW "not all that great", I wonder what your standards are :)
    - efes 11y ago
      Market share.
      - sbuk 11y ago
        Meaningless. As proven by iOS.
diezge 11y ago
Simplicity is actually the opposite of unsophisticated. For example nearly every developer I know uses a Macbook Pro - they aren't "technically inept" (that's quite arrogant btw), they are just more interested in getting stuff done as opposed to spending 10 hours setting up a Linux distro no one has heard of just to make themselves feel l33t...
- vacri 11y ago
  What, every developer? You really live in a bubble - get out and meet more. > just to make themselves feel l33t. Yeah, because there's absolutely no status signalling with Apple products. Edit: parent comment has since been altered.
  - diezge 11y ago
    > What, every developer? You really live in a bubble - get out and meet more. Not all of them run OS X, but yep - the devices are reliable, last for a very long time and do the job well. > Yeah, because there's absolutely no status signalling with Apple products. Most people I know with iPhones are just regular people. I used to be an Android user (and will never hate on it) but most Western tech people with them are like the poster above - smug with an unfounded sense of superiority.
    - vacri 11y ago
      Keep on changing your tune. Every developer you know uses a macbook pro because they don't want to set up a linux distro, but not all of those macbook pros are running OSX? What are the non-OSX macbook pros running? ^BSD? Just as much fiddling as linux. Windows? Now that is a rare creature. > most [broad demographic] are [negative attribute] Sure they are. At least the GP openly recognises that they might be projecting.
      - dagw 11y ago
        Windows? Now that is a rare creature. Not in my experience. At most .Net/Windows dev events I've been to Macbooks running windows are hardly uncommon.
bbayer 11y ago
I am using both iOS and Android phones. Both have good and bad points. I am a hacker and sometimes I need Android's customization features. Most of my colleagues prefer Android because of it is hacky nature like me. But the reality is my wife cannot use Android. She had to tweak lots options that she don't ever need. Even my 1.5 years old kid can use iOS more effective than Android because it is much more responsive and well designed. UI is much more consistent that 1.5 years old kid can figure out how to do slide to unlock. Apple producing hardware and software together and both of them equally important and should be complementary for success. I think that is why they cannot steal customers from Apple.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  The real problem with Android is security, it cannot just be tacked on as an afterthought.
- m0skit0 11y ago
  My baby has 11 months and can slide to unlock my wife's HTC Android phone. That point was useless, but yeah, Apple users are usually not hackish nor need all the customizations and power user options Android offers (without talking about rooting and custom ROMs world). This is probably similar to Windows/Mac vs Linux discussion, although still my wife has zero technological skills yet uses Ubuntu on her laptop with zero issues. I still think that Apple products are way overpriced but they still sell because of a perfect marketing hype campaign. It is true that Apple really excels at making the right product from existing ideas, but still overpriced, and IMHO highly overrated. It's just not worth the price. I would go for Android/Linux every time even if I didn't need the flexibility they offer.
  - sbuk 11y ago
    Why do you think they are "overpriced"? Is this generally or merely a personal opinion? What is it based on?
    - Yetanfou 11y ago
      On (drumroll....) the fact that the average price-to-own for an iOS device is about double that of an Android device? On the fact that 128GB of memory for an Android device costs (in local - Swedish - currency, but the importance here is the relation between the prices) 400 kr compared to the ~3000 kr price difference between a 16GB and 128GB iPhone 6s? That a 'flagship' Android device will cost anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the price of the current 'flagship' iOS device? That those Android devices come equipped with micro-USB ports so they can connect to the-world-and-its-brother while those iOS devices nowadays sport 'lightning' ports which require special (and, need I say, rather expensive) cables? That you can develop software for Android on whatever system you prefer, while developing for iOS means you need to buy into OSX and use Xcode? That apple only offers a limited spectrum of devices, none of which can be termed as 'affordable' compared to the plethora of Android devices?
cbeach 11y ago
I love when Android users project their inferiority complex in this way. Yours, Smug iPhone User
- Raed667 11y ago
  I don't get attached to "devices" they are tools, "means to an end", something most iPhone users forget
  - cbeach 11y ago
    "Most Apple users" always comes before a facepalm-inducing generalisation. Apple have always designed their hardware and software to fade into the background of what the user is trying to actually achieve. That's one of the reasons they're popular with creatives. Fiddling with the hardware and software becomes secondary to the task in hand.
    - finishingmove 11y ago
      You must be an artist. Are you posting this from Starbucks?
      - cbeach 11y ago
        I'm a polyglot developer currently working a Scala contract in Canary Wharf. But nice try.
        finishingmove 11y ago
        "Try"? I guess you're right. I was merely trying to point out how you were behaving as a bit of an asshat there. Since you continue to do so, I have obviously failed at that. Not everyone can be successful as you. But you already know that.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
est 11y ago
On a side note, apple got 17.0.0.0/8, only a handful of companies can compete with that.
- philippnagel 11y ago
  What makes Apple's Push Notification service special?
- mkj 11y ago
  Is there actually anything interesting they do with that address range that they couldn't do with say 65k of IPs (like other companies might get)?
contingencies 11y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the first mobile device manufacturer to commit to making ad-hoc and mesh networking fully available to developers in a functionally secure fashion will profit immensely. It will certainly herald a major shift in mobile. Why the hell can't your phone talk to your TV talk to your computer talk to your wife's phone within an app? "Send this music to friend", "Play this game with whoever's on the smart-TV", "auto-share my RSS reads with family and friends", etc. Now, I'm no lawyer and I'm not interested in digging through Google's Android licensing fortress, but even if there are issues there, if there's a place in the world where a company can make the requisite API extensions happen and have them reach a mass-market product regardless of legality, it's China. That company will win the developing world low end smartphone segment, because cellular data simply doesn't exist in an affordable, user friendly and decent performance manner for most of the developing world's population. It will bring a return of SMTP/UUCP-style store and forward. It may be the apple in the developing world's eye. Closest thing out there right now seems to be http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php
- kbart 11y ago
  Such devices would be great from the user point of view, but not so great if you want to make money from them. Apple have proven that walled gardens will make you tons of money, while a lot of manufacturers, that provide more open solutions, struggle to survive. It's not so much of a technological problem as that ad-hoc and general purpose computing/networking is notoriously hard to monetize.
- signal11 11y ago
  > the first mobile device manufacturer to commit to making ad-hoc and mesh networking fully available to developers in a functionally secure fashion will profit immensely Ironically, Apple did this in iOS 7, and this resulted in chat apps that could work even in the absence of a phone signal (e.g. FireChat, which now works on Android too). I think a big blocker from getting these to work on TVs is that TVs had non-standard OSes. With more TVs running Android, and Apple pushing SDKs for tvOS, I'll be surprised if these apps don't become more popular.
- 11y ago

29 points by williswee 11y ago

> Quick, picture an iPhone user. You’re probably picturing somebody young-ish, urban. Somebody who likes a simple user experience that doesn’t change much from model to model. Somebody who admires good industrial design, and who has the money to fit a $600-$800 phone into their budget. iPhone are so mainstream, so isn't so clear cut anymore.

josteink 11y ago
> Quick, picture an iPhone user. You’re probably picturing somebody young-ish, urban. Somebody who likes a simple user experience that doesn’t change much from model to model. Somebody who admires good industrial design, and who has the money to fit a $600-$800 phone into their budget. More like the author pictures that. Maybe because that's how he would like to be projected, through his own iPhone-ownership? I picture my grandma who would be confused by a more advanced and sophisticated interface and a device capable of true multitasking. Also my boss, who needs help setting up video-mirroring in the conference room, every single time. Basically, when I think iPhone-owner, I think unsophisticated and technically inept. But I'm willing to admit that this is my projection and I'm not going to be naive enough to assume this is how it's generally for everyone else. For instance every developer I know has Android, but again I'm not going to draw any general conclusion based on my limited data-sets.
- Raed667 11y ago
  This. There is some sens of "entitlement" and superiority that comes with the turf of using an Apple product, I get that feeling every-time someone starts talking to me about their Apple device.
- riotdash 11y ago
  It probably has nothing to do with technical capabilities, but more like productivity. For people who have lots of time and don't mind fighting around with problems, nonworking settings, slow/varying FPS, corrupted official OS updates, malware etc. Android might be a better choice but other than that it's really hard to image any rational person taking Android over iOS. Especially considering that the security level of iOS is on a completely another level when compared to Android. It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Because it's the only one that gets the job done without unnecessary and non billable issues and still has awesome software support.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    > Android might be a better choice but other than that it's really hard to image any rational person taking Android over iOS. Assuming you can afford it, not everyone lives with US salaries and subsidized phones.
  - vacri 11y ago
    > It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Patent nonsense. Most companies prefer Windows, and the bigger the company, the more likely it is to be a Windows shop - because Windows offers plenty of business-friendly options. OSX is far from "getting the job done" at an enterprise level. And on the server side, OSX is nowhere to be seen; it's all other unixes and windows. I'm not a fan of Windows, but it's absolutely ludicrous to say that companies prefer OSX. Small companies in certain fields do, but it's still a Windows market.
- cbeach 11y ago
  Confused by true multitasking? I picture an iPhone user who's discerning enough to understand the engineering trade offs, and prefers multitasking to be tightly controlled and specialised as it is in iOS. I remember when Android users proudly touted Android's support for Flash. I think we've all since learnt why Apple made the decision to drop Flash. A mobile phone is a battery-constrained device. I want a device that's optimised for its constraints, even if that means developers get fewer toys to play with.
- rahoulb 11y ago
  (I can't believe we're still having this conversation but...) My take on it is this: With Linux, Windows and Android, when something goes wrong, you may be able to fix it. For example, my wife's HTC One M8 received an OTA update that bricked it. I googled it, and started trying to fix it. 8 hours later it's still bricked, but I've found a couple more articles that I will try next. The same happens when I use a Linux box and it goes wrong. Or a Windows box and it goes wrong. When a Mac goes wrong, I generally spend no more than an hour trying to fix it. Either it works or I run out of options. When an iOS device goes wrong, I generally spend about ten minutes trying to fix it. Google a solution, it either works or it runs out of options. To some people, the Android situation is preferable - I can fix it myself and it's a problem I want to solve. So I'm happy to spend the time looking into it. Personally, I spend all my working day fixing technical problems. I don't want to spend any more time chasing solutions. I'm actually grateful to iOS for giving me a binary yes/no answer within minutes.
  - josteink 11y ago
    > (I can't believe we're still having this conversation but...) Like I finished my comment with: This is how I see things. But I'm not going to assume that applies to everyone everywhere, like the author of the linked article does. My comment was meant as a contrasting view just to illustrate how wrong broad generalizations like the author made can go. Anyway, bad generalizations are bad generalizations no matter who makes them and no matter what they are about. The plural of anecdote is not data. Etc etc. But if people instead wish to discuss how I see things and how those views are somewhat wrong... They should be free to do so, even though they're obviously also going to be doing the exact same "mistakes" they accuse me of.
  - cbeach 11y ago
    > When an iOS device goes wrong, I generally spend about ten minutes trying to fix it. Google a solution, it either works or it runs out of options. If my iPhone was bricked by a software update and I couldn't fix it, I'd simply take it to one of the many nearby Apple Stores, and (going by previous experience), they'd fix it or replace it without fuss. Try taking your HTC One M8 back to Carphone Warehouse if you ever get in trouble. I'd be interested to see how their service compares.
- interpol_p 11y ago
  > For instance every developer I know has Android, but again I'm not going to draw any general conclusion based on my limited data-sets. I have the opposite experience. Every developer I know, and most people pursuing computer science, are big iOS / OS X users. The only developer I know who has chosen Android based his decision on the lower price. He says he prefers the technical underpinnings of iOS, but just doesn't want to spend so much on a phone. He owns an iPad and MBP. There's a lot of hidden tech stuff in iOS, little things like the fact that Emacs hotkeys work in iOS text fields. I generally regard the iOS SDKs (Core Graphics/Text/Audio/Image/Media, UIKit, and so on) as more capable than what's available on Android. Though Android seems to be getting better all the time, and I don't develop for it that much anymore so can't make a good comparison. I recall some developers being swayed by Apple's initial heavy contributions to LLVM way back, and more recently by Swift — a lot of the programming purists at my workplace felt that Apple had done something right with that language. Most of the technically inept people I know use iPhones; but most of the computer science academics and professional developers I know use them too. They just appreciate different things.
pjmlp 11y ago
> iPhone are so mainstream, so isn't so clear cut anymore. No on countries where 500 euros is around the average salary and consumers have to pay full price for their devices.
- romankolpak 11y ago
  I live in Ukraine and I can confirm this. iPhone here is a thing of luxury and status. Funny how people here can spend their entire monthly income on a dated iPhone 6/5s because it's an item of status and they want it so badly. Chinese smartphones here are dominating the market though. They're pretty much everywhere these days.
- touristtam 11y ago
  >No on countries where 500 euros is around the average salary and consumers have to pay full price for their devices. Point taken. I guess I am guilty of having another cultural bias; I assumed pretty much everyone is getting their mobile device through a 24 month+ contract with their network. At least this is how I got my first mobile phone, over 15 years ago.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Yeah, in some countries, pre-paid is the rule, not the exception. I pay $12/month for 500 minutes/SMSs plus 200MB, so the total after 24 months is less than $300 - kinda hard to bundle an iPhone with that amount :)
flohofwoe 11y ago
Exactly, at least here in Germany iPhone users are just as 'all over the place' as Android users, if you really want to stand out from the crowd you need to get a Windows Phone ;)

whyagaindavid 11y ago

>So yes, Chinese handset makers did quite well in 2015. But >can they climb that cliff? Could they actually beat out Apple? >No. At least not in the sense of eating into Apple’s >specific chunk of the market. >They may be able to boost their numbers by picking up more >users in developing regions, but none of the three is >likely poaching any of Apple’s market anytime soon. The author must change the title. why have it different to what is written in the article. None of these handset makers compete with Apple. @author Rolls-Royce, Aston martin do not compete with Fiesta. Thanks

efes 11y ago
I don't know what gives you that idea. Huawei is like a Ford of chinese phones. Just because they have a fiesta doesn't mean they don't also compete with rolls royce at their highest end. I think the article is giberish because of the marketing feel good about ourselves nonsense: Picture a person who wears a kravat, not sure what a kravat is? See! Apple wont lose their shirt by being unable to compete with the 4 times larger Android marketplace and whatever circuses it spins off. Those markets will be dominated by players like Huawei and will inevitably be putting compatibility pressure on Apple's 20% over time. Also, Rolls Royce is a little footnote in a more successful company with a larger demographic today which is itself not all that great. That Apple still will have fans is more likely to get them to jump in that shrinking hole of past prestige based pricing like they did for the 1990s.
- oblio 11y ago
  Rolls Royce is now owned by BMW. If you're calling BMW "not all that great", I wonder what your standards are :)
  - efes 11y ago
    Market share.
    - sbuk 11y ago
      Meaningless. As proven by iOS.

diezge 11y ago

Simplicity is actually the opposite of unsophisticated. For example nearly every developer I know uses a Macbook Pro - they aren't "technically inept" (that's quite arrogant btw), they are just more interested in getting stuff done as opposed to spending 10 hours setting up a Linux distro no one has heard of just to make themselves feel l33t...

vacri 11y ago
What, every developer? You really live in a bubble - get out and meet more. > just to make themselves feel l33t. Yeah, because there's absolutely no status signalling with Apple products. Edit: parent comment has since been altered.
- diezge 11y ago
  > What, every developer? You really live in a bubble - get out and meet more. Not all of them run OS X, but yep - the devices are reliable, last for a very long time and do the job well. > Yeah, because there's absolutely no status signalling with Apple products. Most people I know with iPhones are just regular people. I used to be an Android user (and will never hate on it) but most Western tech people with them are like the poster above - smug with an unfounded sense of superiority.
  - vacri 11y ago
    Keep on changing your tune. Every developer you know uses a macbook pro because they don't want to set up a linux distro, but not all of those macbook pros are running OSX? What are the non-OSX macbook pros running? ^BSD? Just as much fiddling as linux. Windows? Now that is a rare creature. > most [broad demographic] are [negative attribute] Sure they are. At least the GP openly recognises that they might be projecting.
    - dagw 11y ago
      Windows? Now that is a rare creature. Not in my experience. At most .Net/Windows dev events I've been to Macbooks running windows are hardly uncommon.

bbayer 11y ago

I am using both iOS and Android phones. Both have good and bad points. I am a hacker and sometimes I need Android's customization features. Most of my colleagues prefer Android because of it is hacky nature like me. But the reality is my wife cannot use Android. She had to tweak lots options that she don't ever need. Even my 1.5 years old kid can use iOS more effective than Android because it is much more responsive and well designed. UI is much more consistent that 1.5 years old kid can figure out how to do slide to unlock. Apple producing hardware and software together and both of them equally important and should be complementary for success. I think that is why they cannot steal customers from Apple.

mineshaftgap 11y ago
The real problem with Android is security, it cannot just be tacked on as an afterthought.
m0skit0 11y ago
My baby has 11 months and can slide to unlock my wife's HTC Android phone. That point was useless, but yeah, Apple users are usually not hackish nor need all the customizations and power user options Android offers (without talking about rooting and custom ROMs world). This is probably similar to Windows/Mac vs Linux discussion, although still my wife has zero technological skills yet uses Ubuntu on her laptop with zero issues. I still think that Apple products are way overpriced but they still sell because of a perfect marketing hype campaign. It is true that Apple really excels at making the right product from existing ideas, but still overpriced, and IMHO highly overrated. It's just not worth the price. I would go for Android/Linux every time even if I didn't need the flexibility they offer.
- sbuk 11y ago
  Why do you think they are "overpriced"? Is this generally or merely a personal opinion? What is it based on?
  - Yetanfou 11y ago
    On (drumroll....) the fact that the average price-to-own for an iOS device is about double that of an Android device? On the fact that 128GB of memory for an Android device costs (in local - Swedish - currency, but the importance here is the relation between the prices) 400 kr compared to the ~3000 kr price difference between a 16GB and 128GB iPhone 6s? That a 'flagship' Android device will cost anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the price of the current 'flagship' iOS device? That those Android devices come equipped with micro-USB ports so they can connect to the-world-and-its-brother while those iOS devices nowadays sport 'lightning' ports which require special (and, need I say, rather expensive) cables? That you can develop software for Android on whatever system you prefer, while developing for iOS means you need to buy into OSX and use Xcode? That apple only offers a limited spectrum of devices, none of which can be termed as 'affordable' compared to the plethora of Android devices?

cbeach 11y ago

I love when Android users project their inferiority complex in this way. Yours, Smug iPhone User

Raed667 11y ago
I don't get attached to "devices" they are tools, "means to an end", something most iPhone users forget
- cbeach 11y ago
  "Most Apple users" always comes before a facepalm-inducing generalisation. Apple have always designed their hardware and software to fade into the background of what the user is trying to actually achieve. That's one of the reasons they're popular with creatives. Fiddling with the hardware and software becomes secondary to the task in hand.
  - finishingmove 11y ago
    You must be an artist. Are you posting this from Starbucks?
    - cbeach 11y ago
      I'm a polyglot developer currently working a Scala contract in Canary Wharf. But nice try.
      - finishingmove 11y ago
        "Try"? I guess you're right. I was merely trying to point out how you were behaving as a bit of an asshat there. Since you continue to do so, I have obviously failed at that. Not everyone can be successful as you. But you already know that.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]

est 11y ago

On a side note, apple got 17.0.0.0/8, only a handful of companies can compete with that.

philippnagel 11y ago
What makes Apple's Push Notification service special?
mkj 11y ago
Is there actually anything interesting they do with that address range that they couldn't do with say 65k of IPs (like other companies might get)?

contingencies 11y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the first mobile device manufacturer to commit to making ad-hoc and mesh networking fully available to developers in a functionally secure fashion will profit immensely. It will certainly herald a major shift in mobile. Why the hell can't your phone talk to your TV talk to your computer talk to your wife's phone within an app? "Send this music to friend", "Play this game with whoever's on the smart-TV", "auto-share my RSS reads with family and friends", etc. Now, I'm no lawyer and I'm not interested in digging through Google's Android licensing fortress, but even if there are issues there, if there's a place in the world where a company can make the requisite API extensions happen and have them reach a mass-market product regardless of legality, it's China. That company will win the developing world low end smartphone segment, because cellular data simply doesn't exist in an affordable, user friendly and decent performance manner for most of the developing world's population. It will bring a return of SMTP/UUCP-style store and forward. It may be the apple in the developing world's eye. Closest thing out there right now seems to be http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

kbart 11y ago
Such devices would be great from the user point of view, but not so great if you want to make money from them. Apple have proven that walled gardens will make you tons of money, while a lot of manufacturers, that provide more open solutions, struggle to survive. It's not so much of a technological problem as that ad-hoc and general purpose computing/networking is notoriously hard to monetize.
signal11 11y ago
> the first mobile device manufacturer to commit to making ad-hoc and mesh networking fully available to developers in a functionally secure fashion will profit immensely Ironically, Apple did this in iOS 7, and this resulted in chat apps that could work even in the absence of a phone signal (e.g. FireChat, which now works on Android too). I think a big blocker from getting these to work on TVs is that TVs had non-standard OSes. With more TVs running Android, and Apple pushing SDKs for tvOS, I'll be surprised if these apps don't become more popular.
11y ago