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Technology has a delayed effect. As in what was high-tech back then is low-tech now. Computers have finally become low-tech. Apple is top heavy, the ones in ch

Technology has a delayed effect. As in what was high-tech back then is low-tech now. Computers have finally become low-tech. Apple is top heavy, the ones in charge are the ones that scraped to the top and didn't retire or leave. They have with them the ideas that came about and pioneered in the 60's and 70's and are only finally now being in the position and getting around to implementing them. Underneath them is a cadre of management that grew up and holding on to ideas from the 80's and 90's and only are now in a position to suggesting them to someone else with more power and abilities and getting the okay to try them. Apple is really a stack of computing ideas from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. Starting with the Macintosh derived from the mother of all demos to now we're finally getting around to implementing the idea of a central mainframe with diskless devices accessing it. A "cloud" with black mirrors everywhere giving you value? Oh, my, that sounds like what Larry Ellison saw as the future with the Network Computer back in 1996. I'm old though. Accepting this new reality that this red-headed stepchild of a computer we used to argue about during elementary school recess about which is better turns out to become the most valuable company in a world and is finally in a position to push through something as magical as instant access to computing everywhere. That is freakin' amazing.

LiweiZ 12y ago
Upvoted and really appreciate your comment.
hrktb 12y ago
I share the feeling, but at the same time Apple seems to be what Sony was back in the day. They have central very successful products, and are spreading their influence in numerous new markets while betting a lot on artificial restrictions keeping users in their ecosystem. Sony wasn't the biggest company in the world I think, and the game was a lot more primitive back then, but I remember owning a walkman with a Cybershot, a Sony music compo and at the end a matching laptop because all of there where integrated. If I had the money at the time I'd bought a Handicam and a matching TV in a heartbeat. Sony seemed unstoppable, until the pieces just crumbled; there would be way better laptops, the camera market evolved and there were far from keeping in touch with the best players in the field, then the music industry moved on, and keeping the integration going on becomes more and more compromising. With today's Apple, while they are spreading, the same cracks seem to appear to me. They still have very competitive products on each market, but these are more and more compromised as deep design decisions are made and the competition is getting better. As an anecdote, a year ago I broke my iPhone and decided to go android for a few month waiting for the iPhone 6, and surprisingly to me it didn't really matter much in my day to day use, except for the artificial limitations (no iCloud, no iMessage) on the integration. But these limitations instead of being a deal breaker, really forced me to go into Google/third party centric services on my laptop/ipad/other family members devices. In a Apple heavy household there is now one device that forces the others to change service providers for central things like email, messaging, calendar, online storage, and the thing is it's not really difficult nor handicapping, the pros and cons balance very well. Interestingly enough, with Apple Pay, Apple is starting to step on the feet of the new Sony who've been investing in payment processing and ecosystem for so many years now. TLDR; I think Apple has started playing a game that put them in a position where they have to be better than everyone else at basically everything. Right now I don't think they are at the top of their game, especially in giving options to their customers or software quality/reliability. So, while they have a ton of money and are super successful, I think there is even bigger pitfalls waiting for them ahead. Hope they don't fall.
- bobbles 12y ago
  Sony absolutely couldve continued to own the portable media player market. They decided to use smaller, more expensive storage, with no discernible reason to choose their players over existing ones that used standard storage like SD cards. I worked for an electronics retailler around the time that the iPod came out (our store didnt sell Apple products at all) but it was obvious that Sony would burn out their loyal customer base just from the number of people we had coming in complaining about their memory costing 2-3x for the exact same storage size. People got turned off the brand due to bad experiences
  - hrktb 12y ago
    Totally. They had a string of bad decisions when it came to the overall experience, the network walkman with loading the songs from usb was a nightmare too, hardware quality also degraded over time. I've been reminded of these when I has to sync to my computer to load arbitrary mp3 in the iOS library. The tracks are on a NAS, I could get them through dropbox as well, or any other way, really. But I have to go through iTunes if I want to add it to the library and listem to them through the main music player (and since at the start every app duplicating existing fonctionnality were refused, there's just no compelling, high quality alternative player not relying on the song library) This is a single bit of annoyance, but then you still have to juggle with the libraries' respective itunes accounts, getting your tracks randomly deleted while syncing to a new computer etc. It's still somewhat better than what I had to deal with when I was using a Sony MD with digital tracks. But for comparison I don't have these music related pbs on android.
- dasil003 12y ago
  Apple improved on Sony's success by understanding how to integrate open or semi-open ecosystems which Sony still doesn't really comprehend. Apple's analog is web services, which, to their credit they have tried harder to figure out then Sony ever did with open ecosystems, but which they likely will never be able to compete with Google. That said, I'm still not seeing the cracks yet since their software/hardware integration UX combo and ongoing mindshare with creatives is setting a bar that no one else has the vertical integration to approach. Google's services are clearly superior to Apple, but that only puts Android on equal footing with iPhone, it's a long way from a knockout blow.

LiweiZ 12y ago

Upvoted and really appreciate your comment.

hrktb 12y ago

I share the feeling, but at the same time Apple seems to be what Sony was back in the day. They have central very successful products, and are spreading their influence in numerous new markets while betting a lot on artificial restrictions keeping users in their ecosystem. Sony wasn't the biggest company in the world I think, and the game was a lot more primitive back then, but I remember owning a walkman with a Cybershot, a Sony music compo and at the end a matching laptop because all of there where integrated. If I had the money at the time I'd bought a Handicam and a matching TV in a heartbeat. Sony seemed unstoppable, until the pieces just crumbled; there would be way better laptops, the camera market evolved and there were far from keeping in touch with the best players in the field, then the music industry moved on, and keeping the integration going on becomes more and more compromising. With today's Apple, while they are spreading, the same cracks seem to appear to me. They still have very competitive products on each market, but these are more and more compromised as deep design decisions are made and the competition is getting better. As an anecdote, a year ago I broke my iPhone and decided to go android for a few month waiting for the iPhone 6, and surprisingly to me it didn't really matter much in my day to day use, except for the artificial limitations (no iCloud, no iMessage) on the integration. But these limitations instead of being a deal breaker, really forced me to go into Google/third party centric services on my laptop/ipad/other family members devices. In a Apple heavy household there is now one device that forces the others to change service providers for central things like email, messaging, calendar, online storage, and the thing is it's not really difficult nor handicapping, the pros and cons balance very well. Interestingly enough, with Apple Pay, Apple is starting to step on the feet of the new Sony who've been investing in payment processing and ecosystem for so many years now. TLDR; I think Apple has started playing a game that put them in a position where they have to be better than everyone else at basically everything. Right now I don't think they are at the top of their game, especially in giving options to their customers or software quality/reliability. So, while they have a ton of money and are super successful, I think there is even bigger pitfalls waiting for them ahead. Hope they don't fall.

bobbles 12y ago
Sony absolutely couldve continued to own the portable media player market. They decided to use smaller, more expensive storage, with no discernible reason to choose their players over existing ones that used standard storage like SD cards. I worked for an electronics retailler around the time that the iPod came out (our store didnt sell Apple products at all) but it was obvious that Sony would burn out their loyal customer base just from the number of people we had coming in complaining about their memory costing 2-3x for the exact same storage size. People got turned off the brand due to bad experiences
- hrktb 12y ago
  Totally. They had a string of bad decisions when it came to the overall experience, the network walkman with loading the songs from usb was a nightmare too, hardware quality also degraded over time. I've been reminded of these when I has to sync to my computer to load arbitrary mp3 in the iOS library. The tracks are on a NAS, I could get them through dropbox as well, or any other way, really. But I have to go through iTunes if I want to add it to the library and listem to them through the main music player (and since at the start every app duplicating existing fonctionnality were refused, there's just no compelling, high quality alternative player not relying on the song library) This is a single bit of annoyance, but then you still have to juggle with the libraries' respective itunes accounts, getting your tracks randomly deleted while syncing to a new computer etc. It's still somewhat better than what I had to deal with when I was using a Sony MD with digital tracks. But for comparison I don't have these music related pbs on android.
dasil003 12y ago
Apple improved on Sony's success by understanding how to integrate open or semi-open ecosystems which Sony still doesn't really comprehend. Apple's analog is web services, which, to their credit they have tried harder to figure out then Sony ever did with open ecosystems, but which they likely will never be able to compete with Google. That said, I'm still not seeing the cracks yet since their software/hardware integration UX combo and ongoing mindshare with creatives is setting a bar that no one else has the vertical integration to approach. Google's services are clearly superior to Apple, but that only puts Android on equal footing with iPhone, it's a long way from a knockout blow.