Virtually any device you put out that's not exactly, spec-by-spec the same, you can say 'never been a product like this before'. It's true and empty.
They do a lot of those, they're true, hyperbolic, and totally devoid of any significance.
For example they'll say 'the iPhone 6 was the most popular iPhone ... EVER'. As if it's significant. But that's completely unexpected and it's not news, either. I'll happily take a 10 trillion dollar bet that the iPhone 7 will sell even better. And that the new Galaxy S 6 sells better than the 5, and the 7 will sell better than the 6, too.
Or they'll say the iPhone 6S is the most advanced iPhone ... EVER. As if, again, that's news. As if we think they built a 6S that's worse than the 6.
It's a truthful, hyperbolic, totally insignificant statement. It's different from a falsehood.
Calling a 3 second video, a photo, in the sense that it's a bunch of photo frames, that's more of a direct falsehood to me. We use the word photo to denote a still image, and video for multiple frames of photos. But that's a marketing gimmick that's more ridiculous than it is disingenuous.
As for innovation, I mostly agree. The ability to execute extremely well and polish your work isn't innovation. It can be driven by innovations of course but it's not the kind of innovation we talk about when we refer to Apple's history. Since the iPhone 4 I've mostly felt a ton of polish but no real breakthroughs on the phone department for example, tablet wise... mostly just solid iterations like everyone else, nothing fundamentally innovative about the iPad 4 or Air or mini, really. Pro feels like more of the same, split screen we've seen before, styluses we've seen before. Again, executed well and polished.
I mean of course there's innovation, but it's not what sets them apart. Look at Force Touch for example, now 3D touch. People probably missed the fact Huawei demo'd force touch last week on their android phone. And that's a feature we'd think of as their innovation. Others, like a large tablet, split screen, type covers, wireless charging, a stylus, 3-second videos (called live photos) etc are all seen before.
What's the best Microsoft desktop OS? Which is the best Dell screen? Which is the best keyboard? Motorola phone? The current year's Apple lineup has always been better than the last year's, and that's what the "best ever" statements mean to me, and I believe that's what they mean to the target audience: "This is new, and it works at least as well as the old stuff."
Which other company, which other product line of comparable complexity, introduces features without compromising usability?
I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but cmon, this is some serious kool-aid drinking here.
Apple doesn't produce software that is any less issue prone than any other vendor. In fact the chorus complaining about software regressions has been getting louder and louder, even from Apple fans.
Yosemite was a particularly low point with regard to Apple software.
http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/the-worst-bugs-in-os-x-yosemit...
http://www.tekrevue.com/yosemite-bugs-time-for-another-snow-...
Software is hard. Apple aren't special, their software has just as many issues as any other vendor's, which is actually kind of disappointing given they have full control of the hardware, MS actually does a lot better with regard to software quality given the varied HW landscape Windows is deployed to.
Edit: Software quality isn't just a Yosemite issue with Apple, it's a long running joke that you should never install a X.0 OSX release due to bugs.
I don't think it's remarkable at all. It would be remarkable if they weren't getting better year after year.
You understand that sales growth can't last forever right?
iPad for example has had that happening to it (later revision sold less well).
Of course they're selling the hell out of it, that's what companies that take in billions of dollars do: make a decent product and then promote it. At least the stuff Apple makes usually works and the features they add into their products are actually useful - yeah, I'm looking at you, Samsung, and your list of Samsung XXX functions that were obviously designed and implemented over a weekend.
It's an admittedly nuanced statement, but not an outright falsehood.
I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro. Just like they were inspired by the original iPad, which was inspired by... which was inspired by... etc...
In my opinion, this should be made illegal. We have seen in Germany during the years 1935 to 1945, and more recently with ISIS, what manipulative talk could lead people to do.
>I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro.
Perhaps that's true for a room of tech experts and media. As for the thousands of common consumers watching at home, they may not draw the same conclusions.
It's also depends on the level we're talking. If we just take "product like the iPad pro" to mean "a large tablet" then yes it's a "complete falsehood".
But it obviously means "a large tablet with this attention to detail, with the supporting OS and app ecosystem finely tuned to work along with it". Which is true -- as all Surface tablets I've seen are if not subpar, different in several ways.
Oh yes, it will. Getting teen-agers to start applying basic precepts of personal hygiene is like trying to drill an oil well with a toothbrush. Those commercials get it exactly right: (1) you stink (2) only men who don't stink get laid (3) use a bloody deodorant, you testosterone-laden pig!
I was just thinking how a terminal web browser gets you laid :)
Yes. It's marketing - the magic context in which we suspend our disbelief and let people lie to our faces, and we then applaud and pay them.
Marketing is the process of figuring out who a product is for and how to get them to want to buy it (through channels like engineering, design, and yes, advertising). Apple being an excellent marketing company isn't a slur — it's an incredible complement. They absolutely excel at understanding who their target audience is, building devices that appeal to that audience, and advertising to ensure that audience is aware of how those devices address needs they may not have even known they had.
They make okay products (in absolute terms, not implying that anything is better) and would not have their completely rabid following did they not manipulate people into buying into their status, lifestyle, and that they're more valuable than their worth.
If anything gets us is not us believing the ad, but just getting pumped with the nice visuals and subtle suggestions (so more subsconscius manipulation than convincing us).
Watching theses events is like this famous passage of the Odyssey. Once you are tightly attached, and don't risk to go overboard (and start buying stuff you don't really need), then enjoy the show. I've been told their exciting song is the most detailed and beautiful thing you've ever heard :)
Their execution/quality control is still top notch though, but other companies are catching up.
Oh yes there is. The car.
Very high margin. Plenty of opportunity to do something radically different.
As an aside, I find the obsession with touchscreen interfaces in cars to be irritating because obviously the testers test these things whilst sat perfectly still in a stationary vehicle or in a car with hydrogas suspension (just kidding), and not on a typical road that has bumps. They're impossible to use whilst in motion as your arm bounces around.
I'm assuming you haven't used a Surface Pro but you can mark my words now, Apple will release a direct copy of the Surface within 3 years. The iPad Pro is a glorified iPad and will be utterly unusable for doing anything professional, so it's not a copy at this stage.
Pretty much everything serious.
https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/health...
iPod had iTunes, true flat rate pricing for all music. Giant articles (if not books) have been written describing the huge challenge that was.
The iPhone was a completely new relationship between the phone manufacturer and the cellular carrier that allowed Apple to rake in unheard of profits. Their other main innovation with the iPhone was making a touch screen UI that was good. To be fair, that took a lot of engineering and UX work (early gen cap touch was terrible).
Apple was then able to pivot and make an app store built on existing infrastructure, another innovation that none of the other phone manufactures made. Yes "app stores" existed before the App Store, but they where not the one stop shop with guaranteed assurances that Apple offered. Executing on the App Store idea perfectly involved innovation for sure.
Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.
What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.
Apple Pay didn't come out of the blue. The impending POS infrastructure change created the opportunity to launch a better payments user experience in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Apple knew this, and developed/acquired/refined a better security method (touchID + tokenization) and corresponding user experience to negotiate on favorable terms with banks and merchants, which sealed the deal for many and created momentum toward getting stragglers onboard and reaching broad market penetration.
Just adding an NFC chip and calling it a day changes nothing. Few markets are penetrated by hardware - or even hardware and software - alone.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/06/octob...
When it comes to market adoption of hardware, typically the market leader gets picked up for adoption. By forcing their own version of mobile payments (passbook) and not allowing NFC, the market was split and NFC adoption stymied.
Apple Pay does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals.
So merchants are not "locked in" to passbook.
The reason for Apple Pay success is that they worked with the companies in question so that the infrastructure was already in place when the phone was launched. I was in the UK the week of the Apple Pay launch there and the same terminals that 3 months prior were accepting my contactless card were now accepting my iPhone.
In other words it just worked.
The only reason Apple has support for those now in 2015 is because merchants weren't falling for the walled-garden ploy. Apple has finally caught up with other forms of payment, which is why Apple was a major staller for NFC technology adoption.
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944863/apple-reveals-full-line-up-of-pas...
From related link [1]:
> There's no NFC in the new iPhone, but you'll be able to use your screen as a scannable gift card/plane ticket/voucher/etc. with Passbook, which creates a virtual bundle of all those annoying cards you cram into your wallet. Here's an ideal little scenario for you: a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, because you've got a $25 credit built right into your phone. Hand it to the cashier, beep, coffee, slurp, bye.
If you think this somehow stymied NFC... thats an incredible stretch. Before Apple was it the gift card mafia stopping NFC? Were merchants going to just throw away their perfectly usable POS machines... because technology?
[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944514/all-the-best-new-features-of-ios-...
The entire context of this discussion was how Apple killed NFC adoption in 2012 by not supporting NFC and splitting the market with their own walled-garden solution. Even your quote shows the surprise on Gizmodo's part that they released some gift card substitute...
Lets say Apple had stuck NFC in an iPhone 4S. What then? Mobile payments is not a faucet you just turn on. They'd have to convince the entire market - retailers, banks, and credit card companies alike - that they needed to incur tens of million dollars of infrastructure changes and possibly more with fraud in order to... well, what exactly do they get? They'd move from something that people were used to (credit/debit cards) that had clear risk profiles to something unknown with little evidence of consumers willingness to adopt and no added benefit to retailers or banks.
You might respond - its a better user experience! Banks don't give a shit about user experience, thats why they close at 4pm. Retailers don't either, thats why they'd buy POS machines with crap UIs and never replace them even when the digitizer could barely create a signature.
Banks and credit card companies care about risk, and retailers care about keeping costs down and seeing clear benefit in the form of evidence of consumer interest before adopting. Banks and credit card companies are also powerful, quite conservative, and are middle-men that do not necessarily have users interests at heart. Nobody in this industry turns on a dime (heh). Knowing this, Apple chose to wait for the steady trickle of POS machine replacements in the coming POS transition that would follow from Visa's EMV migration announced in 2011 [1], focus on risk-reduction and gaining leverage with credit card companies and banks through TouchID, and launch Passbook as a proof of concept both to train users and show retailers that people want to use their phones. Passbook wasn't an mobile payments competitor, it was a progenitor. It sidestepped major gaps in infrastructure, and it was placed in the second or third tier of iOS features due to its limited usefulness.
Passbook seems to be what you're hung up on. Here's a question - if Apple is so amazeballs that it could have moved the market in 2012, why then are there still retailers and banks that are slow on the Apple Pay uptake? Is it because Google and the coalition of second tier nobodys is missing? No, its because banks and retailers generally don't give a shit about user experience, manage their infrastructure at their own pace, and have all sorts of issues and internal politics that affect their decision making about _anything_.
You keep saying the same thing and haven't provided nearly enough evidence to support the leaps you're making that Apple somehow killed the beautiful 'open' fairyland that would have been NFC in 2012. There was no NFC market in 2012 to split, just bumbling attempts that misread how to make headway in the market, and a handful of Android phones with the hardware just so they could say 'first!' I'd love to see evidence to the contrary.
[1] http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-migration-driven-by-paymen...
I had said that Apple stalled NFC development by not releasing it in 2014. Are you saying that NFC market adoption would have been the same, if Apple had released NFC in 2012?
NFC was a complete basket case, and still remains that way except for Apple.
The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful.
June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up steam, but Apple elected to try to build their own walled-garden payments system using Passbook and bar codes.
Well, they did Apple Pay. NFC is just an implementation detail, and NFC payments is far from dead
Disagree. This is a really commonly held viewpoint that I think is the product of our fast news cycles, and I don't think it approaches truth for another several years.
You are totally right that iPod and iPhone were not the first. While these were cool products when they came out, I think what's often lost is that it was only in the years of incremental improvements that defined how important these products were.
Tons of use cases are being unlocked in health, education, home automation, transportation, payments, enterprise, etc that these markets have been waiting for and wanting and are truly transformative. They're just not talked about as much, or hit that level of 'omg' for people who aren't dealing with those use cases, but they're real. The less sexy incremental stuff is amazing, and in fact, way more interesting because so few companies get the details right.
Just like you're saying about not being first, most blow-your-mind ideas that will come out in the next 10 years are probably already thought of, prototyped, or launched in some highly crippled form to an extremely limited audience. Two amazing things we can assume are in the pipeline are:
1. Driverless car, which will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure.
2. Eye tracking and face tracking, which unlock new interaction paradigms that are even more natural and seamless. See the recent Faceshift acquisition [1] for evidence.
These are going to be awesome! But they'll take time to perfect.
I'm not sure what qualifies as innovations for you. I'll admit I'm not blown away by today's stuff, it is S-cycle after all, but I am impressed by the way they've implemented 3D touch. Its the first force touch implementation (vs watch and macbook) that I really like because it looks incredibly intuitive and everyday useful - like something that I'll wonder how I lived without.
Well anyway, I think we'd probably agree about a lot things, but I'd be curious as to what big innovation you've got in mind that's missing. Cheers.
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture...
Just because they've been a computer company thus far doesn't mean it'll always be that way. They're the largest company on earth with over $100B in the bank and incredible consumer goodwill looking for any space with large profit margin potential where they can differentiate with good user experience.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self...
Surface 3 Pro:
12.0 inches (30 cm) 2160x1440 (216 ppi) = 3 M pixels and the noisy fan
iPad Pro:
12.9-inch 2732-by-2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi) = 5.5 M pixels (!) and no fan
On the other hand, as long as we don't know how good the Apple pencil is for writing (e.g. palm recognition), it's quite unclear how well suited the iPad Pro really is. A year from now the Pro tablet market will look very competitive I think, but for now it's still too much of a toy for my taste.
"The aspect ratio of A4, 1:1.414 is near the average of 1.5 for 2:3 and 1.333 for 3:4. US Letter is 1.294.
Still Surface Pro 3 aspect is better than 16:9 (1.78) at least.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-apple-samsung-l...
> Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each company's tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.
> "Not at this distance your honor," said Sullivan, who stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.
I get what you're saying, but they were asked to tell the difference over an unspecified distance.
I don't see this argument holding water and it seems to me that my interlocutor is comfortable with Apple stealing/copying other people's work but when they do to Apple it's all hell breaks loose, double standards maybe?
The iPod was nowhere near the first mp3 player, it was just the best one. The iPad wasn't close to the first tablet. Will it be the best tablet? I don't know, but whether or not the Surface had a keyboard first won't be the deciding factor.
Every company is incorporating an absurd number of innovations pioneered by other people. When it comes to hardware, I just want to love using the device.