10 ms·

Apple has a Software Problem — Why I’ll be Switching to Android

49 points by soofaloofa 13y ago

eddieroger 13y ago
If Google was all I did with my devices, then sure, Android is the way to go. But this article discounts pretty swiftly that there is more to a device than my Gmail and Google Now. As for me, I like Google Now and will continue to use Gmail integrated with my iPhone's mail client, but I'm not willing to walk away from my decade of iTunes use and migrate my media elsewhere, and there isn't an Android equivalent to my AppleTV experience yet (are they even still selling the Nexus Q?), especially over not having to log in multiple times.
- twism 13y ago
  You may have a point with iTunes content, but that's Apple locking you into its ecosystem. As for Apple TV, that's what DLNA and Google Play is for. Why need another piece of hardware when one will do?
  - drharris 13y ago
    You get locked into an ecosystem either way. The bet is on which ecosystem will be around for the long haul. Given how Google just shuts things down all the time, I'd have to reject that one. Right now the only way to avoid lock-in is piracy.
    - _neil 13y ago
      Definitely this. Switching to Android was, if nothing else, an exercise in finding out who really owns my data.
- _neil 13y ago
  Agreed on iTunes content. I switched to a Nexus 4 a few months ago and this was/is the biggest pain point, but is really only an issue in the car. I've filled the gap with my little iPod shuffle or Spotify on my phone, but it's obviously not as convenient. I rarely stream to Apple TV from my phone anyways, so that was not a huge issue.
- soofaloofa 13y ago
  For a lot of users e-mail, calendar and social are the killer features of a phone.
  - umsm 13y ago
    Some people value their privacy so they don't use social apps.
- freehunter 13y ago
  iTunes lock in? I thought iTunes sold DRM-free mp3 files like every other music store?
  - bskap 13y ago
    Since 2008, yeah. But the only way Apple got the license to sell the music online in the first place was if they DRM'd it, and you have to pay to unlock the songs purchased prior to the switch.
  - robotresearcher 13y ago
    Movies, TV and books are still DRM'd though.
uslic001 13y ago
I think he has a good point. The first thing I do when I have a new computer is install Google Chrome and log into my Google account. All my Google Chrome apps then get synced and I am ready to get to work. When I got a chromebook and signed in for the first time I did not have to set many things up as most of my stuff synced except for Skype and a few other apps that are not available on the chromebook. The lack of Skype on the chromebook just pushed me to use Google+ Hangouts more so a loss for Microsoft/Skype. I have started to notice myself moving away from using my iPad 3 and iPhone 5 due to their lack of OS level integration with Google. I suspect my next phone and tablet will be Android based.
mulletbum 13y ago
This sounds like a person who likes their Google software to work on their iPhone without ever giving Apple software a chance. In fact he skipped right over Apple's software, never mentioning iCloud or other features.
- esolyt 13y ago
  And your suggestion is using iCloud Mail instead of Gmail? As for Safari, I'm sure he gave it a chance. I did too. However, I use Chrome on all my other devies and I love Chrome's tab and bookmark sync. Google Voice Search absolutely destroys Siri when asking questions, unit convertions etc.
  - moogleii 13y ago
    Safari has a pretty powerful bookmark sync as well, if you've set up iCloud correctly. All my bookmarks are synced across devices. I can also look up what tabs are open on other devices (provided the same user is logged in). With that in mind, I actually find it more powerful than Chrome's, and it's quite handy when juggling multiple machines for whatever reason (but I end up using Chrome 95% of the time anyway because of UI preference, and a better dev tool experience). I do prefer the Chrome iOS UI as well, but since Apple has concerns about letting people have access to JIT compilation, I stick with Safari on iOS. Definitely prefer gmail, though.
    - esolyt 13y ago
      Bookmark/tab sync is not the reason I use Chrome. I use Chrome on all my other devices and I want my bookmarks/tabs to sync with my phone as well. This is why I can't use Safari on iOS.
  - kylesethgray 13y ago
    Gmail works perfectly fine on iOS. and for Chrome, you can use Xmarks to sync bookmarks. I use both Safari and Chrome on the desktop, and the bookmarks are in sync completely, which makes them in sync with my iPad.
untog 13y ago
I don't think Apple has a software problem. I think Apple has a data problem. From the lack of movement on Siri to the numerous problems with MobileMe (or whatever it's called this week), the utter mess that was/is Apple Maps, Apple have proved time and time again that they can't excel where big data is concerned- sometimes they will be sufficient (the iTunes store, perhaps) but never great- and often subpar.
- nodata 13y ago
  But the "scale" part of iTunes is just a CDN, isn't it? The other problems are proper big data problems.
  - jes5199 13y ago
    iTunes has search, and it has some rudimentary suggestions. It's a store, like Amazon, but Apple just hasn't bothered to make it as smart as Amazon.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    And the CDN part of iTunes is done by Akamai, I think.
esolyt 13y ago
I completely agree. Except, unfortunately, there is no Android phone I can switch to. Apple gets most things right in terms of hardware. Switching to Galaxy S4 would be downgrading my experience because of ugly and bloated Touchwiz and a display with wrong, exaggerated colors. Switching to HTC One, would be downgrading my camera. Switching to Nexus 4 would be basically be downgrading everything (camera, battery life, call quality, display) but the OS.
- niggler 13y ago
  "Apple gets most things right in terms of hardware." Applies to Macs as well.
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    just wish OS X and accompanying apps were as good as the hardware they run on. From random beach balling, spending months with bad unacknowledged WI-FI issues that magically fixed after a patch, to the ever changing ever aggravating iTunes, I keep thinking it might be better loading a different OS. Apple truly makes some impressive hardware, it seems the software side of the company has not received the same focus.
    - mimiflynn 13y ago
      What OS are you considering? I've been running Ubuntu on my MBA for several months now and I find it to be faster and wonderful for most of my needs, but, not on par with the cleanliness of OS X. It works for me because I am willing to tinker with it and forgive things for not working at times (ex: having to point and click on 'suspend' since it would freeze in place if I close the lid or how my wifi has to be restarted every now and again), but, for the everyday 'normal' user, its not up to par just yet.
- revelation 13y ago
  Really? I thought we had established that pretty much all hardware nowadays is "good enough"? And that's why "software matters", DELL is private and "the personal computer is dead"?
adsr 13y ago
It's hardly unusual to find a 3rd party app that does something better than a system provided application regardless of platform, where better is in part dictated by personal preference and needs. What's a bit unusual is that the choices are google, google, google, google, google. Seems you have a bit of a bias there.
runjake 13y ago
And yet, just 3 hours before the post, the author apparently tweetspammed his followers for a chance to win an iPhone 5: Kevin Sookocheff ‏@soofaloofa 3h Enter to win a brand new iPhone 5 from @iPhoneinCanada and @TELUS! http://bit.ly/188DQzL So maybe take this with a grain of salt?
- soofaloofa 13y ago
  Guilty ... a free phone is a free phone.
  - runjake 13y ago
    And there's no crime in that. I'm firmly in the iOS camp, but have several Android devices for testing/playing. Unfortunately, there's been a rash of proclaiming! (iphones, androids, standing desks, whatever) posts submitted to HN, and you go back a week or a month later and the poster is back to their old ways. I would rather see submissions that are something like "6 months ago, I switched to x, and I'm never going back!". To me, these are the more insightful posts.
new299 13y ago
I actually find iOS almost universally easier to use in terms of software than Android devices. This pains me because I'd much rather use a more open device running Android, and would much much rather not go through the awful experience of the AppStore review when developing software. But I find the experience right through the stack from the UI, to the software architecture and hardware, far better on iOS than Android. What I think I'd really like to see is someone make an open iOS clone. Sony actually started working on this, building on GNUStep but then dumped it. I keep thinking about picking that up myself, anyone what to fund me to do it? :)
wes-exp 13y ago
If Apple's problem is that it can't upload my data to Google as efficiently, then I will consider that a feature, not a bug.
- thedrbrian 13y ago
  It does seem that a lot of people want to throw as much personal data at an advertising company. Maybe I'm the weird one , maybe I have something to hide.
- esolyt 13y ago
  Android has that feature too. Just don't use Google apps.
laveur 13y ago
I am gonna chime in here. I think he is absolutely wrong. Apple has amazing software built right in and usually never fails me. Siri can be a pain sometimes but it works 90% of the time for me. Apple Maps are pretty good despite the lack of local transit routing. I have had Google Maps for iOS's turn by turn navigation fail me just as much as Apple Does. I've been an apple developer for a long time now, and just recently started developing for Android. I will say this apple developer tools/API/SDK's are far better than android hands down. I spend more time doing stuff in android that could be done in less code for iOS. The quality of the apps there fore tend to be much better and more polished on iOS than Android. and it shows.
MatthewPhillips 13y ago
I still dream of world where I can combine a hodge-podge of services that intercommunicate through open protocols. Maybe the integration isn't quite as perfect, but it gets the job done. I'll gladly make that trade-off if I can avoid picking an "ecosystem" the way we pick a sports team.
- bane 13y ago
  The trouble is and always has been that it's very hard to monetize this. From mashups to open web services to RSS, it's hard to insert an advert into a back-end data stream the user never sees.
hadem 13y ago
I also feel like they are much slower in terms of innovation or exciting features. They had everyone when the iPhone was first released as it blew everything out of the water. Competitors have caught up, and in a lot of ways, are starting to pass Apple in various ways. Like the author of this post, Google apps have replaced most of the common Apple apps I use. I too am looking to switch to Android. If I do switch to Android, this means that staying with OS X and Apple hardware is far less important to me.
tuananh 13y ago
I'm using an Android phone. For long, I was never satisfied with the quality of software on Android. iOS apps are much more polished and innovative.
kylesethgray 13y ago
I find it interesting that just because someone has a different opinion, like that Medium piece on why "I won't wear Google Glass", it suddenly rises to the top. This article basically reiterates what others have argued for the longest time. One platform is better than the other, one company better than another. Who cares if you switch what phone model you use? It's not like someone is going to be converted because of what you did. Your phone isn't a religion.
umsm 13y ago
Why declare to the world your next phone? Buy whatever makes you happy and use whatever you like using. These discussions go nowhere quickly. IMO, you will be switching back to apple.
bane 13y ago
Beware, Android has its own share of software problems. Reflecting on this, I've come to the following conclusion, let me motivate it a bit. Jobs was a notable fan of Sony's industrial design in the 80s. But Japan's traditional industrial problem has been poor software despite great hardware. Often software so bad that it brings down an otherwise great piece of hardware. Jobs tried to solve this, great hardware and software, tightly integrated, completes the product. Small details, from the trackpad on a Mac to the clickwheel on an iPod, to the interface on an iPad are all examples of this philosophy. Fundamentally this puts the focus on building a product, the industrial design, the power supply, the BOM and the software (instead of all the previous bits and then later some software). But a product oriented development process means you build the product, ship it, then move on to the next product. You don't really keep revving a product after it ships. But software is a fundamentally different beast. As a discipline it has transformed into a continuous practice instead of a discrete practice like hardware. "Cloud" computing, with continuous updates are simply an extension of this understanding. It puts tension into Apple's product focused development practice because it forcibly decouples the software part of product design that Apple has spent so much effort into coupling. I'm not saying Apple never updates its software, to the contrary, Apple software is generally well supported and receives updates. But it feels like it's done in a begrudging kind of way. Major software updates tend to be lockstep released with major new hardware product launches, not independently (and then some older products can be updated with the new software). Contrast to other parts of the computing industry where the system software and hardware are completely decoupled. Which is the better approach? I don't know. Apple's innovation tends to come in huge leaps, followed by slow refinement. It's easy for consumers to keep track of and it seems to have worked well. But then every once in a while competitors will move ahead, and if it's early in an Apple product cycle it can take forever for Apple to reach parity since you have to wait for the next major product release to get the next major software release. It can feel like catching up. Some software development just simply works better with a continuous development process. Maps is a really notable example, all of the data lives outside the product and as the data improves, the product seems to magically improve as well. I think what we're realizing is that voice recognition applications (Siri, Google's Voice Search) benefit from out-of-product improvements to the fundamental algorithms as well. And this is where Apple is struggling, by viewing software as huge steps with small shuffles in between, they struggle in cases where software development works best as a continuous reasonable walk. It can feel like Apple just can't be bothered sometimes while you wait a year or two for the next major product cycle. (comparatively, Google suffers from the opposite, by keeping on their regularly paced march, the product ecosystems ends up horribly confused, you might be able to get the latest google tech on product A, but can you get it on product B? Who knows!? It can be frustrating as a consumer)
Zigurd 13y ago
Apple has an ecosystem/infrastructure problem. iPhone was built to be the best phone. And for a big part of the market, that's what it is. Android was built to enable widespread unhindered access to the Google ecosystem. That's what it does. Apple never built a competing ecosystem. iTunes is now 10 years old. The app store is 5 years old. Are there any other noteworthy achievements in ecosystem and infrastructure for Apple? Apple has spent a ton on capex recently. One hopes a big part of that is for gearing up to provide a first class ecosystem for core user needs.
squozzer 13y ago
I don't believe that right now any single Android can beat Apple in a fair fight. But it could be 1979 all over again. If Google follows in Microsoft's footsteps -- which is, to support Android in ways that 1) provide an Apple-like experience at a lower price; and 2) make life easier for developers, especially within the enterprise -- then it might win. One might be tempted to say Apple's design will always win. In reply I present Exhibit A - the IBM PC.
daemonl 13y ago
Sounds logical, but Google are putting so much effort in to outshine Apple on Apple hardware that iPhone users get better Google maps and google Now than Android users. Google's iOS team are producing some fantastic products, and I'm considering moving back to an iPhone to take advantage of them.
daemonl 13y ago
Sounds logical, but Google are putting so much effort in to outshine Apple on Apple hardware that iPhone users get better Google maps and google Now than Android users. Google's iOS team are producing some fantastic products, and I'm considering moving back to an iPhone to take advantage of them.

49 points by soofaloofa 13y ago

If Google was all I did with my devices, then sure, Android is the way to go. But this article discounts pretty swiftly that there is more to a device than my Gmail and Google Now. As for me, I like Google Now and will continue to use Gmail integrated with my iPhone's mail client, but I'm not willing to walk away from my decade of iTunes use and migrate my media elsewhere, and there isn't an Android equivalent to my AppleTV experience yet (are they even still selling the Nexus Q?), especially over not having to log in multiple times.

twism 13y ago
You may have a point with iTunes content, but that's Apple locking you into its ecosystem. As for Apple TV, that's what DLNA and Google Play is for. Why need another piece of hardware when one will do?
- drharris 13y ago
  You get locked into an ecosystem either way. The bet is on which ecosystem will be around for the long haul. Given how Google just shuts things down all the time, I'd have to reject that one. Right now the only way to avoid lock-in is piracy.
  - _neil 13y ago
    Definitely this. Switching to Android was, if nothing else, an exercise in finding out who really owns my data.
_neil 13y ago
Agreed on iTunes content. I switched to a Nexus 4 a few months ago and this was/is the biggest pain point, but is really only an issue in the car. I've filled the gap with my little iPod shuffle or Spotify on my phone, but it's obviously not as convenient. I rarely stream to Apple TV from my phone anyways, so that was not a huge issue.
soofaloofa 13y ago
For a lot of users e-mail, calendar and social are the killer features of a phone.
- umsm 13y ago
  Some people value their privacy so they don't use social apps.
freehunter 13y ago
iTunes lock in? I thought iTunes sold DRM-free mp3 files like every other music store?
- bskap 13y ago
  Since 2008, yeah. But the only way Apple got the license to sell the music online in the first place was if they DRM'd it, and you have to pay to unlock the songs purchased prior to the switch.
- robotresearcher 13y ago
  Movies, TV and books are still DRM'd though.

uslic001 13y ago

I think he has a good point. The first thing I do when I have a new computer is install Google Chrome and log into my Google account. All my Google Chrome apps then get synced and I am ready to get to work. When I got a chromebook and signed in for the first time I did not have to set many things up as most of my stuff synced except for Skype and a few other apps that are not available on the chromebook. The lack of Skype on the chromebook just pushed me to use Google+ Hangouts more so a loss for Microsoft/Skype. I have started to notice myself moving away from using my iPad 3 and iPhone 5 due to their lack of OS level integration with Google. I suspect my next phone and tablet will be Android based.

mulletbum 13y ago

This sounds like a person who likes their Google software to work on their iPhone without ever giving Apple software a chance. In fact he skipped right over Apple's software, never mentioning iCloud or other features.

esolyt 13y ago
And your suggestion is using iCloud Mail instead of Gmail? As for Safari, I'm sure he gave it a chance. I did too. However, I use Chrome on all my other devies and I love Chrome's tab and bookmark sync. Google Voice Search absolutely destroys Siri when asking questions, unit convertions etc.
- moogleii 13y ago
  Safari has a pretty powerful bookmark sync as well, if you've set up iCloud correctly. All my bookmarks are synced across devices. I can also look up what tabs are open on other devices (provided the same user is logged in). With that in mind, I actually find it more powerful than Chrome's, and it's quite handy when juggling multiple machines for whatever reason (but I end up using Chrome 95% of the time anyway because of UI preference, and a better dev tool experience). I do prefer the Chrome iOS UI as well, but since Apple has concerns about letting people have access to JIT compilation, I stick with Safari on iOS. Definitely prefer gmail, though.
  - esolyt 13y ago
    Bookmark/tab sync is not the reason I use Chrome. I use Chrome on all my other devices and I want my bookmarks/tabs to sync with my phone as well. This is why I can't use Safari on iOS.
- kylesethgray 13y ago
  Gmail works perfectly fine on iOS. and for Chrome, you can use Xmarks to sync bookmarks. I use both Safari and Chrome on the desktop, and the bookmarks are in sync completely, which makes them in sync with my iPad.

untog 13y ago

I don't think Apple has a software problem. I think Apple has a data problem. From the lack of movement on Siri to the numerous problems with MobileMe (or whatever it's called this week), the utter mess that was/is Apple Maps, Apple have proved time and time again that they can't excel where big data is concerned- sometimes they will be sufficient (the iTunes store, perhaps) but never great- and often subpar.

nodata 13y ago
But the "scale" part of iTunes is just a CDN, isn't it? The other problems are proper big data problems.
- jes5199 13y ago
  iTunes has search, and it has some rudimentary suggestions. It's a store, like Amazon, but Apple just hasn't bothered to make it as smart as Amazon.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  And the CDN part of iTunes is done by Akamai, I think.

esolyt 13y ago

I completely agree. Except, unfortunately, there is no Android phone I can switch to. Apple gets most things right in terms of hardware. Switching to Galaxy S4 would be downgrading my experience because of ugly and bloated Touchwiz and a display with wrong, exaggerated colors. Switching to HTC One, would be downgrading my camera. Switching to Nexus 4 would be basically be downgrading everything (camera, battery life, call quality, display) but the OS.

niggler 13y ago
"Apple gets most things right in terms of hardware." Applies to Macs as well.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  just wish OS X and accompanying apps were as good as the hardware they run on. From random beach balling, spending months with bad unacknowledged WI-FI issues that magically fixed after a patch, to the ever changing ever aggravating iTunes, I keep thinking it might be better loading a different OS. Apple truly makes some impressive hardware, it seems the software side of the company has not received the same focus.
  - mimiflynn 13y ago
    What OS are you considering? I've been running Ubuntu on my MBA for several months now and I find it to be faster and wonderful for most of my needs, but, not on par with the cleanliness of OS X. It works for me because I am willing to tinker with it and forgive things for not working at times (ex: having to point and click on 'suspend' since it would freeze in place if I close the lid or how my wifi has to be restarted every now and again), but, for the everyday 'normal' user, its not up to par just yet.
revelation 13y ago
Really? I thought we had established that pretty much all hardware nowadays is "good enough"? And that's why "software matters", DELL is private and "the personal computer is dead"?

adsr 13y ago

It's hardly unusual to find a 3rd party app that does something better than a system provided application regardless of platform, where better is in part dictated by personal preference and needs. What's a bit unusual is that the choices are google, google, google, google, google. Seems you have a bit of a bias there.

runjake 13y ago

And yet, just 3 hours before the post, the author apparently tweetspammed his followers for a chance to win an iPhone 5: Kevin Sookocheff ‏@soofaloofa 3h Enter to win a brand new iPhone 5 from @iPhoneinCanada and @TELUS! http://bit.ly/188DQzL So maybe take this with a grain of salt?

soofaloofa 13y ago
Guilty ... a free phone is a free phone.
- runjake 13y ago
  And there's no crime in that. I'm firmly in the iOS camp, but have several Android devices for testing/playing. Unfortunately, there's been a rash of proclaiming! (iphones, androids, standing desks, whatever) posts submitted to HN, and you go back a week or a month later and the poster is back to their old ways. I would rather see submissions that are something like "6 months ago, I switched to x, and I'm never going back!". To me, these are the more insightful posts.

new299 13y ago

I actually find iOS almost universally easier to use in terms of software than Android devices. This pains me because I'd much rather use a more open device running Android, and would much much rather not go through the awful experience of the AppStore review when developing software. But I find the experience right through the stack from the UI, to the software architecture and hardware, far better on iOS than Android. What I think I'd really like to see is someone make an open iOS clone. Sony actually started working on this, building on GNUStep but then dumped it. I keep thinking about picking that up myself, anyone what to fund me to do it? :)

wes-exp 13y ago

If Apple's problem is that it can't upload my data to Google as efficiently, then I will consider that a feature, not a bug.

thedrbrian 13y ago
It does seem that a lot of people want to throw as much personal data at an advertising company. Maybe I'm the weird one , maybe I have something to hide.
esolyt 13y ago
Android has that feature too. Just don't use Google apps.

laveur 13y ago

I am gonna chime in here. I think he is absolutely wrong. Apple has amazing software built right in and usually never fails me. Siri can be a pain sometimes but it works 90% of the time for me. Apple Maps are pretty good despite the lack of local transit routing. I have had Google Maps for iOS's turn by turn navigation fail me just as much as Apple Does. I've been an apple developer for a long time now, and just recently started developing for Android. I will say this apple developer tools/API/SDK's are far better than android hands down. I spend more time doing stuff in android that could be done in less code for iOS. The quality of the apps there fore tend to be much better and more polished on iOS than Android. and it shows.

MatthewPhillips 13y ago

I still dream of world where I can combine a hodge-podge of services that intercommunicate through open protocols. Maybe the integration isn't quite as perfect, but it gets the job done. I'll gladly make that trade-off if I can avoid picking an "ecosystem" the way we pick a sports team.

bane 13y ago
The trouble is and always has been that it's very hard to monetize this. From mashups to open web services to RSS, it's hard to insert an advert into a back-end data stream the user never sees.

hadem 13y ago

I also feel like they are much slower in terms of innovation or exciting features. They had everyone when the iPhone was first released as it blew everything out of the water. Competitors have caught up, and in a lot of ways, are starting to pass Apple in various ways. Like the author of this post, Google apps have replaced most of the common Apple apps I use. I too am looking to switch to Android. If I do switch to Android, this means that staying with OS X and Apple hardware is far less important to me.

tuananh 13y ago

I'm using an Android phone. For long, I was never satisfied with the quality of software on Android. iOS apps are much more polished and innovative.

kylesethgray 13y ago

I find it interesting that just because someone has a different opinion, like that Medium piece on why "I won't wear Google Glass", it suddenly rises to the top. This article basically reiterates what others have argued for the longest time. One platform is better than the other, one company better than another. Who cares if you switch what phone model you use? It's not like someone is going to be converted because of what you did. Your phone isn't a religion.

umsm 13y ago

Why declare to the world your next phone? Buy whatever makes you happy and use whatever you like using. These discussions go nowhere quickly. IMO, you will be switching back to apple.

bane 13y ago

Beware, Android has its own share of software problems. Reflecting on this, I've come to the following conclusion, let me motivate it a bit. Jobs was a notable fan of Sony's industrial design in the 80s. But Japan's traditional industrial problem has been poor software despite great hardware. Often software so bad that it brings down an otherwise great piece of hardware. Jobs tried to solve this, great hardware and software, tightly integrated, completes the product. Small details, from the trackpad on a Mac to the clickwheel on an iPod, to the interface on an iPad are all examples of this philosophy. Fundamentally this puts the focus on building a product, the industrial design, the power supply, the BOM and the software (instead of all the previous bits and then later some software). But a product oriented development process means you build the product, ship it, then move on to the next product. You don't really keep revving a product after it ships. But software is a fundamentally different beast. As a discipline it has transformed into a continuous practice instead of a discrete practice like hardware. "Cloud" computing, with continuous updates are simply an extension of this understanding. It puts tension into Apple's product focused development practice because it forcibly decouples the software part of product design that Apple has spent so much effort into coupling. I'm not saying Apple never updates its software, to the contrary, Apple software is generally well supported and receives updates. But it feels like it's done in a begrudging kind of way. Major software updates tend to be lockstep released with major new hardware product launches, not independently (and then some older products can be updated with the new software). Contrast to other parts of the computing industry where the system software and hardware are completely decoupled. Which is the better approach? I don't know. Apple's innovation tends to come in huge leaps, followed by slow refinement. It's easy for consumers to keep track of and it seems to have worked well. But then every once in a while competitors will move ahead, and if it's early in an Apple product cycle it can take forever for Apple to reach parity since you have to wait for the next major product release to get the next major software release. It can feel like catching up. Some software development just simply works better with a continuous development process. Maps is a really notable example, all of the data lives outside the product and as the data improves, the product seems to magically improve as well. I think what we're realizing is that voice recognition applications (Siri, Google's Voice Search) benefit from out-of-product improvements to the fundamental algorithms as well. And this is where Apple is struggling, by viewing software as huge steps with small shuffles in between, they struggle in cases where software development works best as a continuous reasonable walk. It can feel like Apple just can't be bothered sometimes while you wait a year or two for the next major product cycle. (comparatively, Google suffers from the opposite, by keeping on their regularly paced march, the product ecosystems ends up horribly confused, you might be able to get the latest google tech on product A, but can you get it on product B? Who knows!? It can be frustrating as a consumer)

Zigurd 13y ago

Apple has an ecosystem/infrastructure problem. iPhone was built to be the best phone. And for a big part of the market, that's what it is. Android was built to enable widespread unhindered access to the Google ecosystem. That's what it does. Apple never built a competing ecosystem. iTunes is now 10 years old. The app store is 5 years old. Are there any other noteworthy achievements in ecosystem and infrastructure for Apple? Apple has spent a ton on capex recently. One hopes a big part of that is for gearing up to provide a first class ecosystem for core user needs.

squozzer 13y ago

I don't believe that right now any single Android can beat Apple in a fair fight. But it could be 1979 all over again. If Google follows in Microsoft's footsteps -- which is, to support Android in ways that 1) provide an Apple-like experience at a lower price; and 2) make life easier for developers, especially within the enterprise -- then it might win. One might be tempted to say Apple's design will always win. In reply I present Exhibit A - the IBM PC.

daemonl 13y ago

Sounds logical, but Google are putting so much effort in to outshine Apple on Apple hardware that iPhone users get better Google maps and google Now than Android users. Google's iOS team are producing some fantastic products, and I'm considering moving back to an iPhone to take advantage of them.

daemonl 13y ago