5 ms·

Sorry to disagree with Gruber, but I don't think a set of devices made by one company is the future. It's always been Apple's play, in part because of the consi

by Todd 12y ago

Sorry to disagree with Gruber, but I don't think a set of devices made by one company is the future. It's always been Apple's play, in part because of the consistency of experience that it affords them, but it also let's them off the hook on the hard problems--device interop, working with varied OEMs, etc. Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices. So far, there's been no mention here of the developer experience. Gruber only mentioned developers, but not the 'developer experience.' It's like it doesn't matter anymore. Apple is finally doing interesting things in the developer area with Swift. However, here, they're playing catch up with Microsoft and, to a lesser degree, Google. Their language at 1.0 is similar to Windows Phone 7--very late to the game. In addition, you're still left with much of the less than desirable developer toolset. Microsoft developed C# and Visual Studio more than 10 years ago now. They're way ahead here. They also open source much of their developer stack now (the new C# compiler, TypeScript, web stack, etc.). Gruber doesn't even mention this aspect. I guess it's not important to end users, but it does make a difference with the people building for their platforms, devices, and services. I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on. This world makes the Internet and the Web seem like a rare anomaly. Tesla's opening of the patent portfolio in an attempt to stave off incompatible fuel stations is apropos to this.

IBM 12y ago
>Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices. Platforms that run on multiple OEMs might be good, but you haven't proven that. Those choices would be good if they actually delivered a better experience than Apple's vertical integration. It doesn't matter to me (or any other end user) that its harder for Google or Microsoft to deliver a good experience with their strategy. That's their problem and something of their own choosing, so they don't get any points for that.
- bane 12y ago
  > Those choices would be good if they actually delivered a better experience than Apple's vertical integration. "Experience" is not the only axis of a successful strategy.
rayiner 12y ago
> Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. After a six-month experiment with Android on a Nexus 5, I couldn't disagree more. Separating the folks who make the OS from the folks who make the device just leads to compromises. Apple has the right model. Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. This is the way forward. I'm extremely excited to see what Microsoft can do with Surface and Lumia brought under one roof.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  > Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. That's not my (anecdotal) experience at all. My friends with similarly-specced phones like the Xperia Z1 Compact have their battery last way longer than my iPhone 5S. The iPhone may have better standby life, but we're heavy users, and as soon as you're using it the iPhone drains it like there's no tomorrow, and Apple arrogantly put a tiny battery in it (1400 mAh vs 2300 mAh for average Android phones). Androids battery life woes are mainly due to the fact that apps can stay open in the background as much as they want, whereas on iOS Apple have strict limits (which is why stuff like IRC apps can't be done on iOS)
  - rayiner 12y ago
    The z1c has a 60% larger battery and weights 25% more. Ounce for ounce, or per mAh, though, the iPhone has really impressive battery life. Where it really excels is standby and radio power management. 10 hours of LTE browsing on Anand's and GSMArena's tests. My Nexus 5 is often on its last legs by midday with less than two hours of screen-on, because it'll chew through its battery in weaker-signal conditions. The iPhone tends to avoid killing itself that way. On the desktop side, Apple is in the 10-12 hour range of light use with the MBA and MBP Retina. Comparable ThinkPads require the six-cell add-on battery to get there.
    - vbs_redlof 12y ago
sdegutis 12y ago
I can almost hear the cringing of so many programmers at Apple right now as they read "finally doing interesting things in the developer area with Swift", considering the last 5 years saw tons of excellent improvements to Objective-C.
roberthahn 12y ago
"I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store." Me either. Even so, I still believe Apple got the model right. If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. Then you would have many options at hand to control your house, car, and life.
- bane 12y ago
  > If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. That would require these companies to share interoperability specification. Something Apple tries mightily to not do. All that being said, Apple definitely sets the gold standard on the user-experience axis, and the entire landscape is better for it.
  - roberthahn 12y ago
    Not at all. Each Apple-like company would create their own inter-op ecosystem for their own devices. In this hypothetical world, Todd would get exactly the choice he asked for - all of the good user experience without the Apple brand.
    - bane 12y ago
      Ugh, that sounds like a dystopian future to me. It reminds me of Sony's attempts at roping people into their media ecosystem during the 80s and 90s.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    Actually we are worse for it. No one focuses on cooperating on standards that could provide better experiences anyone. How often do you meet an engineer that has contributed to an IETF RFC or a W3C specification, and implementations of that specification. If anything, Apple has popularized the tragedy of the commons, giving everyone a false prophet to worship: walled gardens are the way to make seemless experiences. The only reason walled gardens provide seemless experiences is because everyone trying to make their own walled garden fragments things further. I know of know experience more seemless than Internet Protocol. RSS and XMPP were also pretty seemless for the user. A vision of the world where walled gardens are viewed as the only path to a seemless experience produces a vicious cycle leading to a dystopian self fulfilling prophecy.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
>I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on. It is almost always the case that a company desires a monopoly on its market - despite whatever thin endorsement of "strong competition" they espouse.
nemothekid 12y ago
Its odd to imply that Apple iOS has a worse developer experience than Google. IMO, MS is far and away the best but if I had the choice of targeting Apple's 5 devices vs Android 1000, I'd choose Apple. I have not heard spectacular things about Android development, especially with regards to fragmentation that would lead me to believe that from a developer POV Google is better than Apple. Granted that this is only for mobile. Doubling down on mobile, say what you want about the walled garden, but it seems in "developer" experience Apple also wins when you consider the size of their developer eco systems. The App Store simply makes more money and it still seems that the iPhone still gets preferential treatment. In the end open vs. closed or single OEM vs multi OEM doesn't seem to matter.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  In my experience, the java code is more concise to read and easier to deal with. At work the android client is less 'visually ambitious' than our iphone client, but tends to actually have less bugs and faster development times. Android has put some thought into multi-sized layouts and had the right idea how to do ui layout files from the start with their xml layout files. Android accepts the reality that multiple versions exist and allow you to backport new libraries into old versions. iOS not so much and we feel the pain in our development times and bugs. Apple did their GUI foundation right with CoreAnimation, touch recognition and choosing c++ & objective-c as the foundation of their mobile OS. Android didn't do it right with java, a garbage collected language and their UI rendering fundamentals, and everything suffers the consequences of that today.
fryguy 12y ago
I just hate that I can't charge my phone in my co-workers car because uses an iPhone. Vertical integration is great and all, but having horrible experiences with outside things isn't.
shurcooL 12y ago
> I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices. But you are okay with your only option being some humans on this planet, you just don't want them to be in the same company? > I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on. Isn't that what you said you wanted?
lxcid 12y ago
I agree with the notion of a single vendor for all our needs is a scary future but AFAIC, we not moving in that direction. We have experienced first hand how it was like when Microsoft dominated the desktop space and I wouldn't want history repeat itself. That said, that doesn't mean that I should choose my allegiance based solely on the point. Years of development although does translate to maturity of the technology, it doesn't translate to superiority. Often, it could means lots of legacy, extra baggages in the name of backward compatibility and even stifled development. If you consider Objective-C vs C#, Objective-C is over 20+ years old and have always been the main language for the Mac/iOS Platform. How have it served Apple? Many people here wouldn't argue against it. What do you think truly make C# much better than Objective-C? If we based our criteria on years of experience, Objective-C would be hands down winner here. But no, they have their pros and cons. Xcode might not have been as well developed as compared to Visual Studio for a long time, but thats gap is closing rapidly. Since Xcode 5, I haven't been really haven't been mad at Xcode. I'm excited about Xcode 6. Beneath Xcode is the amazing LLVM that provides a solid foundation. Previously, it was based on GCC. In the most simplistic term, think of LLVM as the .NET of Visual Studio. It allows multiple languages interoperability with the software interface, but LLVM did it in a much lower level and isn't specific for any single software interface. (This is a very dumb down explanation of LLVM capability and might not be true to its goal) It is being open sourced which spurs technologies like RubyMotion (Ruby to iOS/Mac/Android) and WebKit FTL JIT. This bring me to Swift. Swift is technically 4 year old and designed by Chris Lattner, the creator of LLVM. I believe, my personal opinion, that Swift is born because optimising Objective-C with LLVM is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Objective-C is my favourite language but there are things that the compiler just can't statically analyse with high degree of confidence in Objective-C. A good example is NSArray or NSDictionary; You technically can store any object in a single array/dictionary, but its hard to be specific about the class/type of the objects stored at compile time. NSArray and NSDictionary is in NSFoundation API, rather and a language feature. I see no easy way to get around it, at least with my limited knowledge. Swift is very strict about types and it learns heavily from other languages. That can only be good thing for Apple ecosystem. Not everything Apple does is to compete with others. They did it because they have set the foundation ready for this eventual transition. This is years in the planning, not out of the whim decisions. Its a misconception for people to think of Apple technology of being incompatible with the overall technological ecosystem. But LLVM and WebKit have shown that Apple are extremely capable of building technology that play well and improve the overall technological ecosystem. Microsoft on the other hand haven't have such a good track record. I welcome the more open Apple and I disagree with your second half of the comment as its a too simplistic and under appreciative view of Apple's technological stack.

by Todd 12y ago

IBM 12y ago

>Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices. Platforms that run on multiple OEMs might be good, but you haven't proven that. Those choices would be good if they actually delivered a better experience than Apple's vertical integration. It doesn't matter to me (or any other end user) that its harder for Google or Microsoft to deliver a good experience with their strategy. That's their problem and something of their own choosing, so they don't get any points for that.

bane 12y ago
> Those choices would be good if they actually delivered a better experience than Apple's vertical integration. "Experience" is not the only axis of a successful strategy.

rayiner 12y ago

> Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. After a six-month experiment with Android on a Nexus 5, I couldn't disagree more. Separating the folks who make the OS from the folks who make the device just leads to compromises. Apple has the right model. Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. This is the way forward. I'm extremely excited to see what Microsoft can do with Surface and Lumia brought under one roof.

kalleboo 12y ago
> Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. That's not my (anecdotal) experience at all. My friends with similarly-specced phones like the Xperia Z1 Compact have their battery last way longer than my iPhone 5S. The iPhone may have better standby life, but we're heavy users, and as soon as you're using it the iPhone drains it like there's no tomorrow, and Apple arrogantly put a tiny battery in it (1400 mAh vs 2300 mAh for average Android phones). Androids battery life woes are mainly due to the fact that apps can stay open in the background as much as they want, whereas on iOS Apple have strict limits (which is why stuff like IRC apps can't be done on iOS)
- rayiner 12y ago
  The z1c has a 60% larger battery and weights 25% more. Ounce for ounce, or per mAh, though, the iPhone has really impressive battery life. Where it really excels is standby and radio power management. 10 hours of LTE browsing on Anand's and GSMArena's tests. My Nexus 5 is often on its last legs by midday with less than two hours of screen-on, because it'll chew through its battery in weaker-signal conditions. The iPhone tends to avoid killing itself that way. On the desktop side, Apple is in the 10-12 hour range of light use with the MBA and MBP Retina. Comparable ThinkPads require the six-cell add-on battery to get there.
  - vbs_redlof 12y ago

sdegutis 12y ago

I can almost hear the cringing of so many programmers at Apple right now as they read "finally doing interesting things in the developer area with Swift", considering the last 5 years saw tons of excellent improvements to Objective-C.

roberthahn 12y ago

"I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store." Me either. Even so, I still believe Apple got the model right. If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. Then you would have many options at hand to control your house, car, and life.

bane 12y ago
> If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies. That would require these companies to share interoperability specification. Something Apple tries mightily to not do. All that being said, Apple definitely sets the gold standard on the user-experience axis, and the entire landscape is better for it.
- roberthahn 12y ago
  Not at all. Each Apple-like company would create their own inter-op ecosystem for their own devices. In this hypothetical world, Todd would get exactly the choice he asked for - all of the good user experience without the Apple brand.
  - bane 12y ago
    Ugh, that sounds like a dystopian future to me. It reminds me of Sony's attempts at roping people into their media ecosystem during the 80s and 90s.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Actually we are worse for it. No one focuses on cooperating on standards that could provide better experiences anyone. How often do you meet an engineer that has contributed to an IETF RFC or a W3C specification, and implementations of that specification. If anything, Apple has popularized the tragedy of the commons, giving everyone a false prophet to worship: walled gardens are the way to make seemless experiences. The only reason walled gardens provide seemless experiences is because everyone trying to make their own walled garden fragments things further. I know of know experience more seemless than Internet Protocol. RSS and XMPP were also pretty seemless for the user. A vision of the world where walled gardens are viewed as the only path to a seemless experience produces a vicious cycle leading to a dystopian self fulfilling prophecy.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

>I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on. It is almost always the case that a company desires a monopoly on its market - despite whatever thin endorsement of "strong competition" they espouse.

nemothekid 12y ago

Its odd to imply that Apple iOS has a worse developer experience than Google. IMO, MS is far and away the best but if I had the choice of targeting Apple's 5 devices vs Android 1000, I'd choose Apple. I have not heard spectacular things about Android development, especially with regards to fragmentation that would lead me to believe that from a developer POV Google is better than Apple. Granted that this is only for mobile. Doubling down on mobile, say what you want about the walled garden, but it seems in "developer" experience Apple also wins when you consider the size of their developer eco systems. The App Store simply makes more money and it still seems that the iPhone still gets preferential treatment. In the end open vs. closed or single OEM vs multi OEM doesn't seem to matter.

mahyarm 12y ago
In my experience, the java code is more concise to read and easier to deal with. At work the android client is less 'visually ambitious' than our iphone client, but tends to actually have less bugs and faster development times. Android has put some thought into multi-sized layouts and had the right idea how to do ui layout files from the start with their xml layout files. Android accepts the reality that multiple versions exist and allow you to backport new libraries into old versions. iOS not so much and we feel the pain in our development times and bugs. Apple did their GUI foundation right with CoreAnimation, touch recognition and choosing c++ & objective-c as the foundation of their mobile OS. Android didn't do it right with java, a garbage collected language and their UI rendering fundamentals, and everything suffers the consequences of that today.

fryguy 12y ago

I just hate that I can't charge my phone in my co-workers car because uses an iPhone. Vertical integration is great and all, but having horrible experiences with outside things isn't.

shurcooL 12y ago

> I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices. But you are okay with your only option being some humans on this planet, you just don't want them to be in the same company? > I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on. Isn't that what you said you wanted?

lxcid 12y ago

I agree with the notion of a single vendor for all our needs is a scary future but AFAIC, we not moving in that direction. We have experienced first hand how it was like when Microsoft dominated the desktop space and I wouldn't want history repeat itself. That said, that doesn't mean that I should choose my allegiance based solely on the point. Years of development although does translate to maturity of the technology, it doesn't translate to superiority. Often, it could means lots of legacy, extra baggages in the name of backward compatibility and even stifled development. If you consider Objective-C vs C#, Objective-C is over 20+ years old and have always been the main language for the Mac/iOS Platform. How have it served Apple? Many people here wouldn't argue against it. What do you think truly make C# much better than Objective-C? If we based our criteria on years of experience, Objective-C would be hands down winner here. But no, they have their pros and cons. Xcode might not have been as well developed as compared to Visual Studio for a long time, but thats gap is closing rapidly. Since Xcode 5, I haven't been really haven't been mad at Xcode. I'm excited about Xcode 6. Beneath Xcode is the amazing LLVM that provides a solid foundation. Previously, it was based on GCC. In the most simplistic term, think of LLVM as the .NET of Visual Studio. It allows multiple languages interoperability with the software interface, but LLVM did it in a much lower level and isn't specific for any single software interface. (This is a very dumb down explanation of LLVM capability and might not be true to its goal) It is being open sourced which spurs technologies like RubyMotion (Ruby to iOS/Mac/Android) and WebKit FTL JIT. This bring me to Swift. Swift is technically 4 year old and designed by Chris Lattner, the creator of LLVM. I believe, my personal opinion, that Swift is born because optimising Objective-C with LLVM is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Objective-C is my favourite language but there are things that the compiler just can't statically analyse with high degree of confidence in Objective-C. A good example is NSArray or NSDictionary; You technically can store any object in a single array/dictionary, but its hard to be specific about the class/type of the objects stored at compile time. NSArray and NSDictionary is in NSFoundation API, rather and a language feature. I see no easy way to get around it, at least with my limited knowledge. Swift is very strict about types and it learns heavily from other languages. That can only be good thing for Apple ecosystem. Not everything Apple does is to compete with others. They did it because they have set the foundation ready for this eventual transition. This is years in the planning, not out of the whim decisions. Its a misconception for people to think of Apple technology of being incompatible with the overall technological ecosystem. But LLVM and WebKit have shown that Apple are extremely capable of building technology that play well and improve the overall technological ecosystem. Microsoft on the other hand haven't have such a good track record. I welcome the more open Apple and I disagree with your second half of the comment as its a too simplistic and under appreciative view of Apple's technological stack.