Android Army
Are you in the Android clan?
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FLASH DANCE!
The Verge
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MrHaroHaro
On The Verge since Nov 03, 2011
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It is technically possible to plagiarize yourself. (Not saying I feel this way or not, since I’m not sure how I feel about it)
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Is it officially supported? My mid-2007 MacBook wasn’t supported for Mountain Lion, so I wasn’t expecting the same for anything of this vintage working.
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“So we have this flagship phone that we’ll announce in January, release in March, have reviews panning it in April and announce a better phone 6 months from that first announcement that shares a resemblance to that phone as well, repeat cycle. Also no software updates. And no time to let the brand and marketing take off and mean something to consumers” – The head of Sony Mobile.
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Recommended LunchboxG5's comment in Crowd at the New Microsoft Store in Honolulu
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Recommended Caprica's comment in Best Explanation of the Xbox One vs PS4 argument from a MS Engineer who gets it.
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Seeing as Samsung Hub took some major inspiration from Windows Phone, maybe they might do this for more apps/features.
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Okay I’ll bite (I’m really bored at work today):
1) So does the iMac (the main difference between the two iMacs shown is the color/material) look like a speaker or CRT TV?
2) This isn’t mentioning that those products don’t even have similar functions. The T1000 radio shown next to the G5 is aluminum (actually might be magnesium) and has a door (total ripoff! right?) that covers the controls, whereas the G5 is a computer and the door leads to the internals, not to mention the mechanism for the door is totally different as the G5 has no hinge.
3) [This isn’t directed at you personally but at people that trot out images like this in this forum and tech sites in general.] Firstly, it’s interesting that people who generally are dismissive of design suddenly start being judgmental of design as if they were always knowledgeable or even cared about it much in the first place. Stick to spec sheets guys. Second, it’s interesting that so many of these people can totally see how Apple ripped off designs from unrelated products but can’t see how Android (and Samsung in particular) took major influence (ripped off in the case of Samsung) from the iPhone/iPad or how nearly every ultrabook just happens to look like the MacBook Air down to the color of the keyboard. Those aren’t ripoffs but these are somehow. -
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I think what many in the thread are trying to explain though is that “market share” isn’t the absolute indicator of customer satisfaction (or even desire) for the product. There are so many factors that affect market share than to say “well you’re product dropped X%, so obviously people aren’t happy with you” (even if people may in fact be unsatisfied with the product).
Think about the PC space. Windows is on everything from $200 PCs all the way up (not to mention they cater to businesses heavily). There are at least 10 manufacturers that I can think of that make Windows PCs at various price points. And the funny thing is even though the market share is astronomically high, 1) profit margins are thin (Windows marketshare situation doesn’t help HP’s finances which have no effect on Lenovo’s) and 2) customer satisfaction is generally not high. [This is just an example of market share not being a good indicator of an individual company’s performance, nor customer satisfaction. This is not really intended as a pissing contest]
The Android-iOS situation parallels this in many ways (but not perfectly). Dozens of manufacturers? Check. Extremely low price points? Check (they also have higher price points which may be more of an apples to apples comparison). I don’t know much about how they’re approaching the business market, so I won’t comment (it’s not like with Windows where you show up to work and there’s a 95% chance that there’s a Windows PC there on your desk).
So let’s suppose this: There is one manufacturer of iPhones (Apple) and there are a 12 Android manufacturers and they make as many different phones as they want. If Apple sells 1 million iPhones, those device manufacturers only have to sell 100,000 phones each for Android to have greater market share than Apple. Then there’s the matter of price. Apple’s cheapest phone is $450. The absolute cheapest Android phone seems to hover at about $100 (in developing countries where there is more of a off-contract purchasing market) but the average may be closer to $200 (half the price). There is a HUGE segment of the population that a) cannot afford the $450 and b)considers $200 still a luxury albeit considerably more affordable than $450. This says nothing of whether this market wants or doesn’t want an iPhone, they may want it (desire it! covet it!) and just can’t afford it, or they may not want it regardless of the fact that they can afford it or not, or there may be no awareness of the product whatsoever. But ultimately that customer’s best option is Android at that pricepoint.
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It looks okay from a distance but up close it’s not particularly good looking. And the doors feel cheap, they feel like a toy car’s doors. Same goes for the Kia Forte that I so want.
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I agree with your post but have the opposite feeling: I want Microsoft to succeed with Windows 8. I hope this can help potential buyers better experience the OS first hand and clear up some confusion.
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I think this is a win-win. Microsoft needs a larger, more meaningful retail presence, and expanding Microsoft Stores seems expensive. Best Buy needs to create a better customer experience for selling computers but probably doesn’t want to invest their own money in making a better customer experience.
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I think the Pixel’s niche is people designing sites for “Retina”-like displays.
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Recommended wheeelan's comment in 'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': Apple's bravado clouds the company's real challenges
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That’s true, but I think the foundation of that design is really good and can be modernized and improved upon.
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It’s one of their better designs. That home button could be better admittedly and bezels modernized. But the design language in that device is tops. Looks like nothing else out there and just feels distinctly Samsung on a good day.
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Nice to know Google invented bokeh?
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But that’s the thing. For the critics improving isn’t enough. It has to be “new”.
Let’s take search as an example. The best thing for the ecosystem is to tie into providers that have been doing it longer (they have more user data to start from so they can give better results). Other than trying to find files on your device (as Spotlight already does) what good is creating your own search engine for integrated search on your device. Spotlight would be good for local device search and Google would be better for web, no point in creating an in-house web search engine to cover that. (Yes, they did this with Sherlock, sort of, but web search was absolute garbage in the pre-OS X days.)
DropBox is a great web service that is available on iOS for uploading/backing up files. But iCloud fills an important niche in many respects. It can back up settings. This is important to have built-in to your device for obvious reasons and is a case where an integrated solution is necessary. There’s no incentive to make this open for everyone as it’s primary function is not just cloud storage but a means of tying into Mac OS and iOS specifically. And I think this is how everyone misses the point with Apple’s “web services”.
They supplement the device and aren’t intended as standalone services.Other standalone services further supplement more specific needs DropBox for file storage, Google for search, Facebook for expressing the banality of modern life, etc. I think Google does this to albeit differently in that the service is the product so the service has to do more. But still, there are holes in that integration that are (well) filled by other services. My problem with Google’s and Microsoft’s (as a Windows Phone user) approach is that because they focus on services, the experience is even more detrimental when using a competing service. You’re either with Google or Microsoft but it’s hard, try as I might, to bridge that gap.
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All they need to do is make this running whatever the latest version of Android next year is and I’d be willing to buy it.
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Nilay you’re a cool dude but you’re focusing on the finger and missing the Moon.
What’s the point of Apple creating new web services? If you want search there’s already Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, Duck Duck Go, etc (and that’s just in the US!). What niche could they carve out there? A social network? There’s already Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Path, Google+ (and we see the difficulties in trying to push a social network in that latest example). Ditto this for photo sharing services. Any approach to this is hindered by the fact that Apple wants its services exclusively available to its devices. So what good is a social network/photo sharing service that only works with other iPhone users? If Apple had any interest whatsoever in making popular web services we’d see iCloud accounts being able to be started from non-Apple devices, Apple Maps available from any web browser or an app on every platform, there’d be Siri app on Android too. This is simply not how Apple makes its money. It’s business is selling integrated hardware-software (and a few services that tie to that hardware and software) solutions (that allow you to access everybody else’s services). They make a product with intriguing features that costs a certain amount to make, then sell that product for more than it costs to make it.
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Yup. Most of the pros I’ve seen don’t care about fiddling with their computer’s internals just about getting their work done without having to think about their computer.
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That’s interesting. Based on my (anecdotal) experience AT&T reps have always tried to sell my wife on Android (and at one point Windows Phone).
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That assumes Apple is interested in marketshare at all, and approaching it as a zero sum game. I’m pretty sure Apple could make and mass produce a sub $500 desktop or heck even laptop/netbook running OS X on some Atom processor to make a bigger dent in the marketshare battle. But they don’t as that doesn’t seem to be their priority.
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Recommended cargath's comment in 'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': Apple's bravado clouds the company's real challenges
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Recommended jaywontdart's comment in 'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': Apple's bravado clouds the company's real challenges
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It really wasn’t though, and that’s my problem with The Verge lately.
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Recommended RiffRaff30's comment in 'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': Apple's bravado clouds the company's real challenges
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Recommended darkcrayon's comment in 'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': Apple's bravado clouds the company's real challenges
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I don’t like big phones much, so no. The absolute biggest I would like is 4.3" screen size.
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Not really as iOS 7 manages to look totally different and work differently.
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Recommended incredibilistic's comment in Tracing iOS 7's influences: Apple remixes almost everyone in the industry
