4 ms·
> It's common knowledge that Apple doesn't get the web in general and social in particular. It is? > In iMovie, you can take your professional looking photos
by bonch 15y ago
> It's common knowledge that Apple doesn't get the web in general and social in particular.
It is?
> In iMovie, you can take your professional looking photos and stitch them together with the Ken Burns effect. The name says it all right there.
So you acknowledge that iLife is a counter to your point, and your only refutation is that there is a Ken Burns effect? I don't get it.
The premise of this very short article seems to be that, because Apple includes some professionally-made templates and used stock photos in a keynote, they don't get amateur content. iLife is the biggest counter to this argument. Apple does try to make sure that amateur content doesn't look or sound too shitty, but how does that mean they don't understand amateur content at all? It just means they're removing the boring work for the average user who doesn't want to spend an hour making a theme look good. Apple totally gets amateur content. They want every kid with an iPad to be recording music in Garageband.
The amateur content argument is weak and doesn't support the social argument. As for Ping, I never understood the hatred for it as it was always clearly just a way to see the music people were buying and not some major social network competitor. I've used it to browse a few people and found new albums I liked. It did its job in my case.
Facebook was the clean, professional-looking, easier-to-use alternative to the chaotic and amateurish MySpace. The idea that Apple must embrace amateur chaos just doesn't make sense to me and seems like it would be the wrong thing to do. Apple is the kind of company that is often a few years behind but eventually releases something so polished and easy to use that it's successful anyway.
- ghurlman 15y agoI don't think there was ever a hatred for Ping -- a hatred would infer that people cared about it. Nobody cared at all... logged in once, and then never went back to that part of iTunes again.
- bonch 15y agoFair point, but a lot of people freak out over Ping for some reason.
- mikecane 15y agoI think people freak out over Ping because it has a lameness to it that people would have expected to originate from Microsoft or even Google -- but not from Apple. Its entire approach is actually anti-social. It's not web-based, it's locked into iTunes and is meant for customers. Customers are busy buying, they want "Give it to me and let me go enjoy it now." They connect with other people on the Internet, outside of a commercial setting. Apple's own support forums are more social even though the purpose is to solve customer problems. You don't need iTunes to use them.
- cageface 15y agoThis is the problem. iTunes may have been an acceptable interface five years ago but compared to the better "HTML5" web sites of today it feels slow, clunky, awkward and, most crucially, arbitrarily fenced in. Apple's challenge going forward will be to make interfaces that maintain their quality standards but with fuzzier boundaries with the rest of the web.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- smackfu 15y agoThe other social failing I see pointed to is Game Center. Which is yet another separate social network that Apple runs, that doesn't particularly improve on the third party solutions, and is nowhere near as good as something like XBox Live. (Interestingly, Game Center doesn't look particularly professional. Apple tends to aim a bit low when they do aim for consumers, IMHO.) Ah, found a link: http://www.macworld.com/article/159833/2011/05/game_center_flaws.html#lsrc.rss_main http://www.macworld.com/article/159833/2011/05/game_center_f...
- seabee 15y agoThat link was sorely missing a mention of Steam as an example of all those features done right (and he has no excuse given how long it's been on Mac...)