5 ms·

I am not sure why both Apple and Google looked at Microsoft of late 90s and decided to behave the same way.

• smt88 3y ago
  When companies can't grow by competing, they monopolize, buy govt officiala, and acquire competitors. Apple isn't the best in any category anymore, so they have to cheat.
  • askonomm 3y ago
    Not the best in _any_ category? Really? Not in a single one? Do you have any evidence for this?
    • rapsey 3y ago
      At least when it comes to phones Samsung phones are actually better. Better screens, better camera. But Apple has the branding and other options are frowned upon. At least in the US, outside Android is the leader.
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        As an Android user, yes Samsung has the superior HW like display and stuff, but Apple leads on SW, simplicity and ecosystem. If you already own a Mac computer then the choice is a slam dunk in favor of buying an Apple phone as well. There's no 1:1 equivalent ecosystem for PC/Android even though apps that replicate certain functions of the ecosystem exist: KDE Connect, Microsoft PhoneLink, Samsung whatever, they can never match what Apple does since neither of them owns the full SW & HW stack across phones and laptops plus the adjacent services like Music, video streaming, etc. Then there's the network lock-in effect of iMessage, in the US at least. Samsung's HW and Android implementation and skin, is in many ways superior to Google's Pixel but the overall packaged is hammered thanks to their bloat trying to replace Google's apps with their own offers to replicate Apple's ecosystem but with Samsung apps instead of Google and it ends up with a confusing duplicate mess. Observe: Google Chrome and Samsung Browser, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, Google Keep and Samsung Notes, Google Drive and Samsung Cloud, Gmail and Samsung Mail, Google Photos and Samsung Gallery, etc. Oh, and the "best" part is, the functionality of certain Samsung apps like Pay is region locked for some reason, so in some EU countries like Germany you can end up with Pay refusing to work if you didn't buy it locally(even though this is the EU so region shouldn't matter). So if you buy your Samsung phone online from some small retailer running a sale you need to make sure the retailer is selling the right SKU for your region otherwise you can end up with Pay refusing to work with some obscure error. Thanks Samsung, great UX. The EU should look into this and maybe fine them as well.
      • dimask 3y ago
        iPhones have better CPU/GPUs though.
        • kelnos 3y ago
          Customers don't care who has a better CPU or GPU. They care that the phone does what they want and gives them a good experience. Not saying the GPU or GPU doesn't affect that, but I think we're to the point where phone performance (at least at the higher end, where both Samsung and Apple live) isn't much of an issue anymore. Having a better screen and camera, like GP points out? Yeah, that's something actually important to customers.
          • throwaway2990 3y ago
            > Customers don't care who has a better CPU or GPU. They care that the phone does what they want and gives them a good experience. So they don’t pick apple because it has a better CPU or GPU. They pick it because it gives them a superior experience and does what they want.
            • prmoustache 3y ago
              Usually you don't know what is the experience before buying. Most people buy expensive things primarily out of network effect and or influence by marketing and person of relevance. And I don't mean this as to diminish iphones usage experience or capabilities. It is the same for people buying one of those über expensive Samsung folding phones, cars, clothing or the latest Thermomix.
            • CRConrad 3y ago
              Except those of us who don't pick Apple because it doesn't give us what we think of as a superior experience and doesn't do what we want.
          • dimask 3y ago
            It is a whole package that creates a different experience. And customers are not one thing. There are different stuff that different groups may prioritise, and not all care about "better screen". For example, people may go for lower resolution screens because they prioritise batteries. And cameras nowadays are much more than purely hardware. Having better processing hardware and OS results in a phone that can last better and longer for instance, and this is a strength of iphones.
      • actionfromafar 3y ago
        I can't stand Android compared to iOS. I buy Apple stuff despite their corporate shenanigans. But Google and Microsoft are just worse. I also use Linux a lot in embedded and server roles, but in daily interaction, for now, a MacBook and an iPhone it is.
        • CRConrad 3y ago
          There might be more people thinking like you than other way around... in America. But I bet in Europe it's the opposite: More people can't stand iOS compared to Android. (I'm one of those.)
          • actionfromafar 3y ago
            Also, Europe is more price sensitive.
      • askonomm 3y ago
        Raw specs mean nothing. You can throw 16GB RAM at an Android, and for some reason it can still be perceived to be slower than a 4GB RAM iPhone. Likewise, MKBHD has given iPhone the best overall camera system award many times now, simply because the results are so much more consistent as well as being the best in taking videos.
    • smt88 3y ago
      > Really? Not in a single one? Really. At least they're not the clear favorite. It's not like 2010 when the best phone and laptop hardware was clearly, indisputably Apple. Samsung phone hardware is better, vanilla Android is better than iOS (ex: recent HN threads raging about iOS not even having schedule-to-send for SMS), many laptops are better than MacBooks or are at least very competitive. M3 chips are be the best laptop silicon available, but I don't think the average consumer knows/cares much about that. > Do you have any evidence for this? It's an opinion, so no.
  • rickdeckard 3y ago
    I'd argue the practice of Apple, Google et al is still "growing by competing". Without regulation on what defines acceptable competition, everything is acceptable competition.
    • staunton 3y ago
      There is regulation on what defined acceptable competition.
      • rickdeckard 3y ago
        Yes. By not regulating it, existing regulation defines the current behavior as acceptable competition. The EU is in progress of updating these terms, no longer accepting the practice of "silos" which hinder consumers from moving freely as acceptable competition, which is the root of all this drama.
  • adamlett 3y ago
    Which company makes better laptops than Apple?
    • ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
      Lenovo, Dell and others. Because they make laptos with matte screens.
      • piva00 3y ago
        That's a bit of hyperbole, matte screens doesn't make a laptop better, it's a preference.
        • prmoustache 3y ago
          Same as a better battery life, number of ports, keyboard layout/feel, anything else. The whole package is just a sum of what fits anyone's requirements / preferences.
          • piva00 3y ago
            In that sense any discussion of a "better laptop" is nonsensical if it's only matters of preference and no agreed upon objective metrics to be based on :)
            • rcxdude 3y ago
              Well, it's sufficient to point out that for some people, other manufacturers make better laptops than Apple.
        • nottorp 3y ago
          They do if you dare to use your laptop in a brightly lit room or ... shudder ... on a balcony/porch outside. Even if it's shaded. The problem is you have to run Windows, and while Apple is starting to go nuts with their OS, Microsoft is still outdoing them in the insanity department. I'm just setting up a new win 10 install for development... takes longer to disable the spam and upsells than to set up the actual project.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• rickdeckard 3y ago
  That's easy: Because a company is not a person. It is a hive of individual people with ambitious KPIs and personal goals, forming an echo chamber of self-confirmation. Increasing commercial success moves the boundary of what's feasible/acceptable, increases the confirmation bias and feeling of entitlement.
• dimask 3y ago
  To be honest, I feel vastly indifferent towards the current whole DMA conflict on who is gonna get what profits from microtransactions out of addicting games (often targeting minors), and I think it is nothing alike the issues the monopolistic position of microsoft was causing in the 90s-00s. But otherwise yeah, this is how any corporation this size behaves always.
  • pjerem 3y ago
    I honestly think it’s worse this time. Microsoft was in monopolistic position and yes it was a serious issue, but at least it was on standard computers. It was a de facto monopoly but you were mostly free to escape by removing Microsoft from your computer (which basically meant installing Linux). Nowadays, our platforms are heavily locked, which gives Google and Apple an unprecedented power over all the computers of the world. For sure, if you aren’t satisfied anymore with your phone / tablet because your OS vendor changes the rules months or years after your purchase, you are "free" to switch … as long as you are ok to lose all your investment in the platform, as long as you have hundred of dollars to throw into another phone for the the same usage, and as long as you are confident that the only other OS vendor will not make another stupid decision for the years to come. The world is trapped between two aggressive monopolies and everyone acts like the market offers enough competition to fulfill everyone’s needs. The state of affairs is bad enough that the most probable new competitor could have only been Microsoft.
    • rickdeckard 3y ago
      In hindsight, I think Microsoft was stopped from taking ownership of the internet back then (by bundling the Internet Explorer and taking control over the whole experience, evolution of standards, etc.). It was already (very!) close back then, it still took a decade to reverse that. Now we are dealing (among others) with the same topic, but are already much deeper in the swamp: Several companies are actively working to replace the internet with a walled abstraction they own and monetize, for more than a decade now, trying to argue "it's not the internet, it's an app!" or "it's not the internet, it's a profile-page on our portal!" IMO we're deeper in it now, because of how much better these arguments seem to work now among tech-people I talk to (compared to how futile Microsoft's arguments were for tech-people back then)
• blitzar 3y ago
  > decided to behave the same way They didn't. They truly deeply believe that they are behaving differently to the evil 90's Microsoft. It is possible to have an 120 IQ and still be dumb, especially from the comfort of your private jet.
• fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  This comparison comes up a lot, but in my recollection the 90s were not nearly as bizarre as what we are seening now, especially with Apple. It would have been completely unimaginable for Microsoft to dictate what software people were allowed to install on Windows, how to pay for it, and then take a revenue cut. It would have been unimaginable for Bill Gates to issue whiny statements about developers feeling entitled to a free ride on his platform because they refused to give him a cut. The 1990s controversies were all about preinstalling and bundling stuff. To a lesser degree it was also about access to undocumented APIs and the right to implement proprietary Microsoft network protocols. Granted, Microsoft had an even tighter OS monopoly than anyone does today. But the control it gave them was nothing compared to what today's oligopolists have.
  • geraldhh 3y ago
    probably more "unfeasible at the time" than "unimaginable"
    • rightbyte 3y ago
      Nintendo, Sega, Sony etc took a cut of each program sale at the time. It was not really unfeasible technically, but socially. Like selling "hats" or lootboxes to gamers were not unfeasable, but they refused to pay even the tiniest amount.
  • flakeoil 3y ago
    > Microsoft had an even tighter OS monopoly than anyone does today. But Microsoft has a much tighter grip of the software market today than they ever had. They are in almost every vertical and they are number 1 or 2 in each. That's probably worse than a near monopoly in only one of the verticals.
  • DanielHB 3y ago
    Microsoft also did try to push their closed platform with the windows store (win7 days I think). It is the whole reason Steam OS and Steam Deck exists today. It just didn't catch on. Nintendo/Sega/Sony did essentially do the same thing in the 90s that Apple does today with cartridges and CDs in their consoles. I guess Microsoft just didn't have enough leverage to push a closed platform (considering previous non-IBM PC platforms were also open) in the 90s (licensed boxed software) or in the 2010s (windows store).