
I’m Sorry I Criticized You, Apple. You Win - askafriend
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-02/i-m-sorry-i-criticized-you-apple-you-win
======
kozhevnikov
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16977334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16977334)

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rainbowmverse
Replacing my 3 year old Moto G3 with a 3 year old 6S Plus was one of the best
calls I've made in years. It's a weird feeling being current on an older
phone, and knowing that it's got at least one more OS update coming. I know
it's flagship vs. budget, but the way the Android phone began decaying before
it even got here was still inexcusable.

I'd never really used an Apple device before, so it was easy to knock them for
this thing or that, but I wouldn't go back after actually seeing how their
philosophy works.

~~~
amelius
Two big reasons why I might switch from Android to Apple:

\- My Bluetooth audio has been broken for years. There's a discussion forum
topic about this, but Google doesn't listen.

\- Starting the camera app takes about 3-5 seconds. In most cases, this is
enough time to spoil the entire photo-moment.

Edit: it's also the fact that Google allowed these problems to exist in the
first place.

~~~
ReverseCold
These are bad reasons. Top of the line Android phones generally have
better/faster launching cameras than the top of the line iPhone and don't have
bluetooth broken.

Even some mid-range Android phones would probably outperform the iPhone X in
these two areas.

Valid reasons to switch to an Apple product (in my opinion) are

\- Privacy

\- Better App Ecosystem (arguably, for both MacOS and iOS)

\- Faster Processors (for iOS)

\- Better idle battery life (for both)

\- Battery Life in general (for MacOS)

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flashgordon
So I have a pixel 2 XL and I can attest for the camera taking upto 3s to load
on average. This has been progressively getting worse with each OS upgrade (no
way I am upgrading to the "AI" OS). My iPhone 3GS actually ran for a good 5
years and though "hot" apps werent fast, the default apps were as zippy as
they were the day the phone was bought. Somehow Google doesnt seem to care
about this!

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stupidcar
> (But I won’t buy a $1,000 phone; sorry, Mr. Cook.)

Strange that the author correctly dissects the problem with Apple's
competitors, i.e. that their products are subsidised by violating their users'
privacy and selling their data, but then ends with the conclusion that they
still won't pay what Apple is charging. I wish they'd elaborated: Are they
arguing that it'd better not to have a smartphone, or better to accept selling
your privacy to get a cheaper phone?

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dingaling
Or get the cheaper subsidised phone and don't submit to the data collection.

Much like buying a Windows laptop subsidised with crapware but putting Linux
on it.

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MBCook
How do you not submit to the data collection? Didn’t we just find out google
does that when you turn it off?

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solarkraft
Remove Google software.

Unfortunately usually seems to result in a pretty bad experience.

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ordinaryradical
The narrative that it’s marketing or cult thinking that got Apple here always
ignores this elephant in the room: what if consumers put a premium on their
privacy?

Privacy is itself valuable. Until SV can see this obvious, self-evident truth,
the ad-driven models will rule and shrivel with a predictable boom-bust
cadence.

~~~
merpnderp
I prefer most things Google, but stick with Apple for the privacy. I'll put up
with lower quality services, buggy Apple TV, and an expensive phone that
arguably not much better than a $200 cheaper Google alternative, just to know
some creepy corporation isn't collecting mounds of data on me which will be
used who knows how in the future.

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kuu
I'm pretty sure Apple also collects your data.

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umvi
While I applaud Apple for some of their practices, I still hate their heavy
handed approach toward hardware/software control:

\- OSX _must_ run on Apple-approved hardware

\- iOS apps _must_ come from the official app store

\- iOS apps _must_ be developed on an Apple-approved device

\- Extremely difficult to repair your own devices

\- etc.

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nazka
Like Steve Jobs said: "people who are really serious about software should
make their own hardware". I heard that a lot and never thought about it. But
it started to grow in me and now I can see it wasn't just a cool sentence but
rather a real mean to make the best products ever to have the best experience.
Even if it was challenging and he had to go against the flow.

~~~
__sr__
It was Alan Kay, actually.

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cryptozeus
Why is everyone here talking about iphone and mac products ? I thought the
article was about how the Apple’s philosophy has remained true to the
customers vs rest of the big sv companies

“We view that privacy is a fundamental human right and that it's an extremely
complex situation if you're a user to understand a lot of the user agreements
and so forth. And we've always viewed that part of our role was to sort of
make things as simple as possible for the user and provide them a level of
privacy and security. And so that's how we look at it.”

This I agree with 100%

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minimaxir
Note that this was written after the previous-quarter's earnings, _before_
AAPL crossed the $1T market cap.

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rayiner
From Cook:

> If you look at our model, if we can convince you to buy an iPhone or an
> iPad, we'll make a little bit of money. You're not our product.

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brightball
Despite my departure from Mac to happily become a full time Linux
user...you'll pry away my iPhone from my cold dead hands.

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cryptozeus
Too dramatic for an electronic device, no ?

~~~
brightball
People did call it the Jesus Phone when was first released.

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kvczor
"complex and expensive cashierless stores that won’t deliver much of an
improvement to our shopping experience but may cost underprivileged people
their jobs" Cashierless stores are simple and amazing. I won't even comment
the part about "underprivileged people", this is straight up dumb.

This is a time when an entire driverless car industry is trying to convince
the world that its products are safe before it can even come up with
convincing stats - Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on
average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or
disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults
ages 15-44. THAT is not convincing enough? Autonomous cars are the future and
will allow us to focus on other activities during the daily commute or long
distance travels. Will decrease deaths, will optimize energy consumption by
intelligently setting the right route and speed. Humans are inferior to
computers on the road, that's a fact.

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kec
Re: autonomous cars

Your narrative is a thing which _could_ happen, not the current truth on the
ground. The truth is every time a Tesla rams into a stationary object at
speed, or an Uber runs down someone crossing the road, the public’s faith in
the tech erodes. Every time that happens we edge closer to overburdensome
regulation in the “Thanks to 3 mile island & Chernobyl it’s basically
impossible to build a new nuclear plant in the US” sense, and farther away
from your utopian dream.

~~~
kvczor
Accidents will happen, that is inevitable. Autonomous cars don't have to be
perfect - they only have to be better than humans and that bar is not set very
high.

There are very little examples of autonomous cars causing trouble on the road
and plenty of them preventing accidents - an example would be videos on
youtube showing Teslas predicting accidents in advance and taking action.

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archagon
> _they only have to be better than humans and that bar is not set very high_

Not to rehash this discussion, but: the bar is actually set _very_ high, and
current self-driving tests are seemingly not meeting it. There's a lot of
deaths because there's a whole lot of driving.

Give humans credit where it's due.

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ocdtrekkie
I spent a lot of time a number of years ago making fun of Apple, their
technology, and their business models. I have come to the realization that all
of my criticisms were wrong. I don't own any Apple products right now, but
unless the market changes significantly, my next phone will be my first ever
iPhone.

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solarkraft
Ah man. Tim is a cool guy and Apple's products are quite solid, but their
arrogance just isn't quite gone yet.

I don't want to charge through a weird port, need a dongle for everything and
be prevented from installing/using proper apps that can even do what theirs
can.

~~~
PappaPatat
That's your list of priorities: great! I understand your decision. However I
accept all of these inconveniences since my list is different: Privacy

Tom Cook's words: > If you look at our model, if we can convince you to buy an
iPhone or an iPad, we'll make a little bit of money. You're not our product.

Not to mention that I love the years long consistent updates of all my iPhones
/ Macs.

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saudioger
Despite the iPhone and business success, I do kind of mourn for the days when
their hardware was more reliable. My 2017 Macbook is not nearly as nice as my
2015 model.

Though, as a bit of irony I do like that I can charge my Android phone with my
Macbook charger.

~~~
dimillian
My father still use my square white Macbook, it stills work as good as day 1
with the factory battery. I wonder if my 2016 and 2018 MacBook Pro will get
the same lifetime, if they does, it's still crazy hardware.

~~~
saudioger
My keyboard broke on my 2017 Macbook and they had to replace the logic board
to fix it. I've already broken keycaps on my replacement. I'll be lucky if
this thing sees 3 years.

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ProAm
If only we could praise the actual product (iPhone, Macbook Pro, Mac Pro,
iMac, etc...) for being amazing an great and not something they dont do
(collect user personal data and sell it). It's great Apple takes privacy
seriously (as all companies should) it seems like lately Apple is using that
all the cherry for the company versus turning out great innovative products
that just work (like they used to). If they did both I could get on the Apple
bandwagon, right now this is just PR and marketing.

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Bud
"Marketing" is the stuff you write about yourself. Praise from a critic is
called something else.

~~~
ProAm
I would agree but Apple has a handful of journalist it 'likes' and get's first
shots at a lot of things. Not saying this is the case, and this is a good
thing Apple does. I think its just ignoring a important part of the Apple
ecosystem, the product itself.

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aresant
My secret hope for Apple is that they buy an ISP / Telecom like Comcast.

It curdles my blood that ISPs are not only logging so-called advertising data,
but are permissibly collecting and storing http requests, building full
browser profiles etc, and of course are not being transparent with any of it.

Apple's message around privacy as a Human Right, along with the natural
business model fit around content, wireless, telecom, etc gives me some hope
that they could pull this off.

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olivermarks
I switched to android and am struggling to justify buying a new mac laptop:
their whole platform is in the rear view mirror for me after decades of use. I
may just get a chrome book to replace the old Air I'm writing this on. Time
for a new platform with some new innovations!

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O1111OOO
Is he actually making the case for stagnation? There are serious issues in
tech these days - from surveillance to censorship. His argument seems to be
that we can't be trusted to innovate and that Apple has essentially stopped
doing so.

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the_cat_kittles
my mind is being blown that this is getting upvoted. this article can be
summarized as "other companies are making dumb products, so good for apple for
not doing that". what? what the what? is this vapid apple propaganda really
worth the read? to me the salient trajectory of apple of the last 10 years has
been the absolute decline of their software. people who upvoted this article-
why? genuinely curious

~~~
MBCook
This article is a mea culpa. He spent the last however many years bashing
Apple for not doing what everyone else does.

Now he finally sees there is value and merit to the way Apple has chosen to do
things.

That’s more than ‘everybody sucks so go Apple!’

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the_cat_kittles
ah- i dont follow the writer so that makes a bit more sense

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amrrs
I'm not sure if it's okay to call the entire Silicon Valley has gone rogue.
Satya Nadella's Microsoft is still one company that's not part of these
controversies and yet trying to innovate at the same time. What's
disheartening is how Apple has become like IBM rather than Amazon. Probably,
Always listening on Speaker that can steal couple's conversation wasn't their
thing but they failed to capitalize on the love Siri had received!

~~~
_bxg1
Microsoft is no angel, it's just dwarfed by the egregiousness of Facebook,
Google, and Amazon. It still does some sketchy data-collecting in Windows
unless you opt-out (though it's backed off a bit since that came to light).
Microsoft can afford to not fully partake in the skeeviness because a) it's
not in the ad business, and b) it _is_ in the enterprise business. Enterprise
customers won't put up with that stuff, and they have the money to pay for
that privilege. So when Microsoft makes most of their money that way, their
business model isn't centered around the other stuff, and customers get
partially spared from it by proximity.

