5 ms·

Are we at the end of an era computing wise or is it just Apple? I wonder if computing technologies great transformation of our society is coming to an end. I

Are we at the end of an era computing wise or is it just Apple? I wonder if computing technologies great transformation of our society is coming to an end. I also thought this in about 1993 and then again in the mid 2000s, so I'm probably wrong again. Maybe AI will be the new killer app that drives the next wave of upgrades.

shmerl 10y ago
No, there is simply more competition today, and market balances things out. Also, Apple grew too comfortable and stopped pushing forward. It was only a matter of time for this to happen.
- danieldk 10y ago
  Also, more in general, all the obvious improvements to the current smartphone form factor/concept have been made now: capacitive touch screen (iPhone), retina display (iPhone 4), fingerprint unlock/secure element (iPhone 5s), always listening Siri + Force Touch (iPhone 6s), plus huge improvements in CPU/GPU speed with all models. Where force touch was already quite a marginal improvement. I have an iPhone 5S and my primary motivation to upgrade would be to get a 64GB model. I just don't see any revolutionary changes in newer iterations (neither in Android). The same applies to the iPad. My wife has an iPad Air, but I have no clue telling how many generations it is behind, without checking Wikipedia. It works fine and there is no real reason to upgrade in newer iterations (except perhaps in specific niches).
  - shmerl 10y ago
    There is always room for improvement in hardware and software. And such high end handsets were never meant to be replaced very often, so the drop in sales is not due to technology saturation, but due to more competition becoming better than Apple.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      And such high end handsets were never meant to be replaced very often You're joking, right? If that were the case then why the rapid release cycle. Why do all these phones' screen break so easy. Why are all the batteries so terrible. No, I disagree. Here in Australia, I know at least one carrier (Telstra) who will allow you to pay an additional amount (AU$149) 12 months in to a 24 month contract to allow you to upgrade the phone earlier.[1] 1. https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/plans-and-rates/new-phone-feeling https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/plans-and-rates/new...
      - shmerl 10y ago
        > If that were the case then why the rapid release cycle. Competition. The fact that you don't need to upgrade doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to if you want to get something newer. Stronger competition forces them to move with good pace. Same as in for example regular PC hardware. Compare it to markets where competition is bad, like gaming consoles. There hardware release cycles are abysmally long.
        TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        Good point.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Push forward in to where? And I think this is great for users. In the same way that my Core 2 Duo ThinkPad running Windows 7 (with SSD) does everything I need, I don't want to have to upgrade my phone every 12 months due to planned obsolescence. I think one of the glaring areas for improvement is battery life. Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. Please.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      > Push forward in to where? In software. Apple's lock-in / NIH mentality combined with their slowness to innovate because they grew too comfortable bites them now (browsers is a clear example). And the trend will continue until Apple will wake up.
    - pdimitar 10y ago
      Apple has a real opportunity to modernize iOS a lot and kick Google in the nuts since they are very content sitting on their ass doing practically nothing for Android. - Dark theme. Customization = good. Sends a good message. - More separate volume controls. For me one volume level for notifications and phone ringer is absurd in 2016. - LCD displays, really? The iPhone 7/Plus and the iPad Pro 9.7" are first of Apple's devices with an almost 100% correct color reproduction on the professional scales. About time for [s]AMOLED displays. - More privacy settings and abilities to break the sandbox if the user so desires. If I want 3 apps to have access to the same vault of files, then I should be able to! Since I sold my 6S Plus back in July I forgot the rest of my complaints but I remember them being between 10-13 in total. > I think one of the glaring areas for improvement is battery life. > Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. Please. That I absolutely agree with. The obsessiveness with thin phones is something many of us hate with passion. I am a 115kg man at 184cm and pretty strong -- and a bit overweight :D -- and I honestly can't tell the difference between 140 and 200 grams in my hand. I'm sure a 300 or so grams of a phone would be perfect for many people.
      - jsz0 10y ago
        > Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. This option exists in the form of battery cases.
- shmed 10y ago
  Do you have any data that suggest that the reason Apple's sales are decreasing is because they are loosing markets to competitors, rather than simply because the whole market is not growing as much as it was previously?
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Not sure if such data is public. That's my own deduction, based on apparent slowing down of innovation in Apple. It's natural to expect to fall behind competition in such case. If other manufacturers would start reducing production too, it would indicate, that market is now now not growing as much as before.
jarcoal 10y ago
Mobile is maturing and consumer upgrade cycles are starting to slow down because of it. So yes, I would say we are at the end of an era.
- rhino369 10y ago
  I'd also add that the move away from carrier subsidies may be slowing the upgrade cycle. We had an artificial 2 year upgrade cycle just because that was when your carrier would give you a subsidy. But now I'm sitting here with a 2.5 year phone that I don't feel like replacing for 700 bucks out of pocket.
Pigo 10y ago
It's the end if you still refuse to buy anything but Apple products. Check out new devices outside the Apple store. VR, IoT's galore, and look at all the things you can do with raspberry pi these days.
matthewmacleod 10y ago
I don't think it's either - what indicates we are at the "end of an era"? We've only had practical smartphones for about 10 years, which is an astonishingly short time!
matwood 10y ago
I don't think we are at the end of anything, much less Apple. AI looks like the next big thing, and Apple needs to be careful not to miss it. Siri is just is not as good as what Google and Alexa are doing, and Apple appears doing nothing to satisfy the home demand. If they somehow completely miss the home AI front then I might get onboard the Apple is dying train. There is still time right now though.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  They kinda shot themselves in the foot with their positioning on privacy. You can't get good at AI assistants without huge amount of training data.
  - matwood 10y ago
    The privacy thing is part of it, but Apples AI problem is deeper than that. Google and Amazon both have huge supplementary personalized datasets to pull from. Normal interactions with Apple just do not give away as much personal information, even if their privacy policy did not exist.
bcuzitsppl8383 10y ago
What has historically pushed consumer computing is new UX We're in a lull with no new UX paradigms with mass appeal VR/AR are still too expensive and inadequate. Plus a lot of people think they're plain silly AI assistants seem to be the obvious choice but are still pretty meh. And one doesn't need to upgrade a handset each year to use the latest cloud based AI Apple doesn't do well with services. They make hardware. Which is in a "good enough" state for many users
georgemcbay 10y ago
Phones are reaching (arguably have already reached a year ago) the point laptops reached a few years ago where it is becoming increasingly hard for even the earliest of adopters to justify upgrading more than every couple of years because the hardware differences just aren't very striking anymore. I'm not sure AI is the best "cure" for this as generally the heavy lifting of what AI is currently present in phones (both from Apple and Google) is offloaded to remote servers anyway.
kmfrk 10y ago
I see zero reason to upgrade my 5S. I just have not seen a compelling selling point for the later models compared to all the major overhauls phones like the 4 and 5 represented. There's the form factor I guess, but everything just feels incremental or like basic maintenance right now. A more realistic reason is probably saturation, a little like Facebook's user base. They're going to pursue new market rather than get people to replace their current phones from now on, I imagine.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bane 10y ago
Gunpei Yokoi (the designer of the Game Boy) had a philosophy "lateral thinking with withered technology". At the time this meant finding creative new form factors and uses for existing, highly commoditized, technology. There was nothing really special about the Game Boy, but it dominated the portable gaming market because of packaging and software. The computing industry is now almost entirely commoditized, there's really nothing component-wise you can add that makes a huge difference, it's now about packaging, form factor, use-cases and software. Apple figured this out with the original iPhone. There were plenty of smart-phone devices on the market before then, but Apple figured out the lateral strategy and ended up owning the smartphone market for a few years. Nintendo's Game Boy also had portable gaming predecessors, but they nailed the size, cost and performance triangle. Nintendo, just like Apple, had loads of portable gaming competitors, the list is endless. And just like Apple, didn't have a real competitor until a huge company with lots of staying power got involved (Sony). Now in many ways, Smartphones and cousin Tablets are Nintendo's competitors, again developed and sold by massive competitors with deep pockets (Samsung, Apple, etc.), but Nintendo's lateral thinking policy is still turning heads and making the company money. Apple is now in a position where they need to think laterally again. They sort of tried with Smart Watches, but are those really reformulations of commidity hardware? They were pitched and sold very heavily as luxury lifestyle items and the market hasn't embraced them with the kind of fervor previous electro-gadgets were grabbed onto. Apple's not hitting it either with the new MBP or the aging and impossibly priced Mac Pro trashcans. In fact the Mac Pro is a better example of what's wrong at Apple today than the MBP. It's a new form factor that doesn't provide any new use cases, gets rid of many of the other ones and is so overpriced and mismatched in features that nobody can quite figure out what they're supposed to be for. Where we're seeing Yokoi-ing style thinking right now is at Microsoft. Repackaging existing hardware in new formulations, driving it with software (sometimes better than others), and then using that combination at reasonable price points to get product into consumer's hands and build profit options. There's now devices that run consistent software from tablet to wall-sized collaboration screens on the market, today, from Microsoft. When a business person looks at a Surface, they see "light, portable, runs my business software, plus enables me to scribble notes" they get it and who it's for. Nobody can quite figure out who the new MBP or the Mac Pro is supposed to be for. They're still selling because Apple, but there's a real sense that Apple has started to lose the Golden Spark and is just making stuff to make stuff. They don't have a coherent philosophy anymore, it used to be "it just works" and those were glorious times and set laudable goals that I think drove them to innovate and make people centric and approachable machines. But that's gone, it's clearly gone, and they don't have a new corporate philosophy. I think it should be something Yokoi-like, because of the nature of the hardware available these days. But that's not where the company is either.
tormeh 10y ago
I don't think so, really. Self-driving cars are a big one. Wearables (lenses, implants, clothing, etc.) are coming. Business software for SMBs probably has a bit to go yet in using big data/AI. I do think biotech is the hot stuff of the future, but it's going to take a decade or two before it really takes off.

shmerl 10y ago

No, there is simply more competition today, and market balances things out. Also, Apple grew too comfortable and stopped pushing forward. It was only a matter of time for this to happen.

danieldk 10y ago
Also, more in general, all the obvious improvements to the current smartphone form factor/concept have been made now: capacitive touch screen (iPhone), retina display (iPhone 4), fingerprint unlock/secure element (iPhone 5s), always listening Siri + Force Touch (iPhone 6s), plus huge improvements in CPU/GPU speed with all models. Where force touch was already quite a marginal improvement. I have an iPhone 5S and my primary motivation to upgrade would be to get a 64GB model. I just don't see any revolutionary changes in newer iterations (neither in Android). The same applies to the iPad. My wife has an iPad Air, but I have no clue telling how many generations it is behind, without checking Wikipedia. It works fine and there is no real reason to upgrade in newer iterations (except perhaps in specific niches).
- shmerl 10y ago
  There is always room for improvement in hardware and software. And such high end handsets were never meant to be replaced very often, so the drop in sales is not due to technology saturation, but due to more competition becoming better than Apple.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    And such high end handsets were never meant to be replaced very often You're joking, right? If that were the case then why the rapid release cycle. Why do all these phones' screen break so easy. Why are all the batteries so terrible. No, I disagree. Here in Australia, I know at least one carrier (Telstra) who will allow you to pay an additional amount (AU$149) 12 months in to a 24 month contract to allow you to upgrade the phone earlier.[1] 1. https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/plans-and-rates/new-phone-feeling https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/plans-and-rates/new...
    - shmerl 10y ago
      > If that were the case then why the rapid release cycle. Competition. The fact that you don't need to upgrade doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to if you want to get something newer. Stronger competition forces them to move with good pace. Same as in for example regular PC hardware. Compare it to markets where competition is bad, like gaming consoles. There hardware release cycles are abysmally long.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        Good point.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Push forward in to where? And I think this is great for users. In the same way that my Core 2 Duo ThinkPad running Windows 7 (with SSD) does everything I need, I don't want to have to upgrade my phone every 12 months due to planned obsolescence. I think one of the glaring areas for improvement is battery life. Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. Please.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    > Push forward in to where? In software. Apple's lock-in / NIH mentality combined with their slowness to innovate because they grew too comfortable bites them now (browsers is a clear example). And the trend will continue until Apple will wake up.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    Apple has a real opportunity to modernize iOS a lot and kick Google in the nuts since they are very content sitting on their ass doing practically nothing for Android. - Dark theme. Customization = good. Sends a good message. - More separate volume controls. For me one volume level for notifications and phone ringer is absurd in 2016. - LCD displays, really? The iPhone 7/Plus and the iPad Pro 9.7" are first of Apple's devices with an almost 100% correct color reproduction on the professional scales. About time for [s]AMOLED displays. - More privacy settings and abilities to break the sandbox if the user so desires. If I want 3 apps to have access to the same vault of files, then I should be able to! Since I sold my 6S Plus back in July I forgot the rest of my complaints but I remember them being between 10-13 in total. > I think one of the glaring areas for improvement is battery life. > Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. Please. That I absolutely agree with. The obsessiveness with thin phones is something many of us hate with passion. I am a 115kg man at 184cm and pretty strong -- and a bit overweight :D -- and I honestly can't tell the difference between 140 and 200 grams in my hand. I'm sure a 300 or so grams of a phone would be perfect for many people.
    - jsz0 10y ago
      > Won't someone give us the option of a 10+mm thick phone with a huge battery in it. This option exists in the form of battery cases.
shmed 10y ago
Do you have any data that suggest that the reason Apple's sales are decreasing is because they are loosing markets to competitors, rather than simply because the whole market is not growing as much as it was previously?
- shmerl 10y ago
  Not sure if such data is public. That's my own deduction, based on apparent slowing down of innovation in Apple. It's natural to expect to fall behind competition in such case. If other manufacturers would start reducing production too, it would indicate, that market is now now not growing as much as before.

jarcoal 10y ago

Mobile is maturing and consumer upgrade cycles are starting to slow down because of it. So yes, I would say we are at the end of an era.

rhino369 10y ago
I'd also add that the move away from carrier subsidies may be slowing the upgrade cycle. We had an artificial 2 year upgrade cycle just because that was when your carrier would give you a subsidy. But now I'm sitting here with a 2.5 year phone that I don't feel like replacing for 700 bucks out of pocket.

Pigo 10y ago

It's the end if you still refuse to buy anything but Apple products. Check out new devices outside the Apple store. VR, IoT's galore, and look at all the things you can do with raspberry pi these days.

matthewmacleod 10y ago

I don't think it's either - what indicates we are at the "end of an era"? We've only had practical smartphones for about 10 years, which is an astonishingly short time!

matwood 10y ago

I don't think we are at the end of anything, much less Apple. AI looks like the next big thing, and Apple needs to be careful not to miss it. Siri is just is not as good as what Google and Alexa are doing, and Apple appears doing nothing to satisfy the home demand. If they somehow completely miss the home AI front then I might get onboard the Apple is dying train. There is still time right now though.

maverick_iceman 10y ago
They kinda shot themselves in the foot with their positioning on privacy. You can't get good at AI assistants without huge amount of training data.
- matwood 10y ago
  The privacy thing is part of it, but Apples AI problem is deeper than that. Google and Amazon both have huge supplementary personalized datasets to pull from. Normal interactions with Apple just do not give away as much personal information, even if their privacy policy did not exist.

bcuzitsppl8383 10y ago

What has historically pushed consumer computing is new UX We're in a lull with no new UX paradigms with mass appeal VR/AR are still too expensive and inadequate. Plus a lot of people think they're plain silly AI assistants seem to be the obvious choice but are still pretty meh. And one doesn't need to upgrade a handset each year to use the latest cloud based AI Apple doesn't do well with services. They make hardware. Which is in a "good enough" state for many users

georgemcbay 10y ago

Phones are reaching (arguably have already reached a year ago) the point laptops reached a few years ago where it is becoming increasingly hard for even the earliest of adopters to justify upgrading more than every couple of years because the hardware differences just aren't very striking anymore. I'm not sure AI is the best "cure" for this as generally the heavy lifting of what AI is currently present in phones (both from Apple and Google) is offloaded to remote servers anyway.

kmfrk 10y ago

I see zero reason to upgrade my 5S. I just have not seen a compelling selling point for the later models compared to all the major overhauls phones like the 4 and 5 represented. There's the form factor I guess, but everything just feels incremental or like basic maintenance right now. A more realistic reason is probably saturation, a little like Facebook's user base. They're going to pursue new market rather than get people to replace their current phones from now on, I imagine.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

bane 10y ago

Gunpei Yokoi (the designer of the Game Boy) had a philosophy "lateral thinking with withered technology". At the time this meant finding creative new form factors and uses for existing, highly commoditized, technology. There was nothing really special about the Game Boy, but it dominated the portable gaming market because of packaging and software. The computing industry is now almost entirely commoditized, there's really nothing component-wise you can add that makes a huge difference, it's now about packaging, form factor, use-cases and software. Apple figured this out with the original iPhone. There were plenty of smart-phone devices on the market before then, but Apple figured out the lateral strategy and ended up owning the smartphone market for a few years. Nintendo's Game Boy also had portable gaming predecessors, but they nailed the size, cost and performance triangle. Nintendo, just like Apple, had loads of portable gaming competitors, the list is endless. And just like Apple, didn't have a real competitor until a huge company with lots of staying power got involved (Sony). Now in many ways, Smartphones and cousin Tablets are Nintendo's competitors, again developed and sold by massive competitors with deep pockets (Samsung, Apple, etc.), but Nintendo's lateral thinking policy is still turning heads and making the company money. Apple is now in a position where they need to think laterally again. They sort of tried with Smart Watches, but are those really reformulations of commidity hardware? They were pitched and sold very heavily as luxury lifestyle items and the market hasn't embraced them with the kind of fervor previous electro-gadgets were grabbed onto. Apple's not hitting it either with the new MBP or the aging and impossibly priced Mac Pro trashcans. In fact the Mac Pro is a better example of what's wrong at Apple today than the MBP. It's a new form factor that doesn't provide any new use cases, gets rid of many of the other ones and is so overpriced and mismatched in features that nobody can quite figure out what they're supposed to be for. Where we're seeing Yokoi-ing style thinking right now is at Microsoft. Repackaging existing hardware in new formulations, driving it with software (sometimes better than others), and then using that combination at reasonable price points to get product into consumer's hands and build profit options. There's now devices that run consistent software from tablet to wall-sized collaboration screens on the market, today, from Microsoft. When a business person looks at a Surface, they see "light, portable, runs my business software, plus enables me to scribble notes" they get it and who it's for. Nobody can quite figure out who the new MBP or the Mac Pro is supposed to be for. They're still selling because Apple, but there's a real sense that Apple has started to lose the Golden Spark and is just making stuff to make stuff. They don't have a coherent philosophy anymore, it used to be "it just works" and those were glorious times and set laudable goals that I think drove them to innovate and make people centric and approachable machines. But that's gone, it's clearly gone, and they don't have a new corporate philosophy. I think it should be something Yokoi-like, because of the nature of the hardware available these days. But that's not where the company is either.

tormeh 10y ago

I don't think so, really. Self-driving cars are a big one. Wearables (lenses, implants, clothing, etc.) are coming. Business software for SMBs probably has a bit to go yet in using big data/AI. I do think biotech is the hot stuff of the future, but it's going to take a decade or two before it really takes off.