

Google vs. Apple - k7d
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_04/b4164032489508.htm

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martythemaniak
Although its a bit tongue-in-cheek, it really shows why Apple investors pay so
much attention to Jobs' health. Apple is a very centralized and secretive
organization with the appearance that all important decisions, from strategic
to design decisions, going through Jobs. No wonder people wonder if Apple can
keep being great if he leaves.

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gabrielroth
'Think different' isn't a motto, it's a slogan. One's for people inside the
company, the other's for people outside.

~~~
jpeterson
What's a motto?

~~~
sundarurfriend
>> One's for people inside the company

That one, I'd venture.

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jganetsk
Date Founded (1998 vs 1976) is listed as a difference, but really, it's more
of a similarity. The "new" Apple, with Steve Jobs at the helm, was founded at
about the same time as Google.

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joubert
I don't know what experience the author of this matrix has in programming, but
Infinite Loop's API's have a noticeably higher degree of engineering than any
other API / toolchain I've used.

~~~
haberman
The QuickTime API in C is horrific. It requires tons of unsafe-looking casts
and even memcpy()-like operations between types. QuickTime Kit (an Objective C
API) was released with QuickTime 7, which can only be better.

Here are excerpts from some code I wrote back in the day to import audio files
into Audacity using QuickTime:

    
    
       // GetMediaSampleDescription takes a SampleDescriptionHandle, but apparently
       // if the media is a sound (which presumably we know it is) then it will treat
       // it as a SoundDescriptionHandle (which in addition to the format of single
       // samples, also tells you sample rate, number of channels, etc.)
       // Pretty messed up interface, if you ask me.
       SoundDescriptionHandle soundDescription = (SoundDescriptionHandle)NewHandle(0);
       GetMediaSampleDescription(mMedia, 1, (SampleDescriptionHandle)soundDescription);
    
       // If this is a compressed format, it may have out-of-stream compression
       // parameters that need to be passed to the sound converter.  We retrieve
       // these in the form of an audio atom.  To do this, however we have to
       // get the data by way of a handle, then copy it manually from the handle to
       // the atom.  These interfaces get worse all the time!
       Handle decompressionParamsHandle = NewHandle(0);
       AudioFormatAtomPtr decompressionParamsAtom = NULL;
       err = GetSoundDescriptionExtension(soundDescription, &decompressionParamsHandle,
                                          siDecompressionParams);
       if(err == noErr)
       {
          // this stream has decompression parameters.  copy from the handle to the atom.
          int paramsSize = GetHandleSize(decompressionParamsHandle);
          HLock(decompressionParamsHandle);
          decompressionParamsAtom = (AudioFormatAtomPtr)NewPtr(paramsSize);
          BlockMoveData(*decompressionParamsHandle, decompressionParamsAtom, paramsSize);
          HUnlock(decompressionParamsHandle);
       }

~~~
Locke1689
This is just dishonest. QTKit was released _5 years ago_ and works just fine.
If you want to cherry pick code from 6 years ago that was originally targeted
at an architecture from 15 years ago you can do a lot worse than QT API.

~~~
haberman
Your characterization of my comment is unfair and untrue. I didn't "cherry
pick" anything; the above code is from my only significant experience with any
Apple-designed API. The grandparent comment in glowing and general terms
praised Apple APIs as noticeably better than other APIs, and this ran strongly
contrary to my own experience with them. I even mentioned that this was old
code, that QTKit has been released in the meantime, and that it is probably
better.

I'm not sure why you think that old APIs designed for old architectures are
obviously bad or are not relevant to the discussion. How is C substantially
different than in 1994, that newer APIs would be better? Why do you think that
architectures from 15 years ago required bad APIs? I can think of many
excellent APIs that I was using ten years ago or more.

Feel free to say that the new Apple APIs are much better than the old ones,
but my experience says that historically Apple has had some very poor ones.

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dirtyaura
Although Google uses data-driven decisions to optimize existing products like
the search UI, it's a misconception that strategic decisions of new products
and services would be done in a same way.

Of course not. They are made in a similar way that every other human
organization does it: based on the intuition and knowledge of the decision
makers.

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gtzi
With so many markets they commonly target, and with such a great success one
of them has in each market, I cant help but wonder what the implications of a
merger would be. Search & hardware, design & algos, high-end & low-end, who
could compete with them if they join forces?

~~~
nailer
Apple has great design skills, but they're still in the desktop era. There's
still no compelling online version of iWork, iTunes has been eaten by Spotify
in mindshare in Europe, the iPhone still requires syncing. I don't think
Google wants or needs any of those pre-internet products.

~~~
DLWormwood
> the iPhone still requires syncing

True, but for how much longer? Already the Cocoa Touch platform supports
application installs via WiFi and can use MobileMe for syncing info via "the
cloud" instead of a hosting computer. The only bit left is the media
library... (and you can buy the smaller stuff like songs and music videos via
the phone/iPod even then.)

> Apple has great design skills, but they're still in the desktop era.

As a Mac user for two decades now, it seems to me that Apple is in the process
of leaving us behind. The current OS X desktop UI is made more for Windows
switchers, and Apple's may-or-may-not exist tablet is expected to continue
distancing itself from the desktop flavor of the OS. (I've been doing
experimental development for Cocoa Touch over the last couple of months, and I
can tell you that despite the "same" language and API, the programming and
security enviroments are completely different from the historical desktop
experience.)

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MikeCapone
Did they pull the "Mercedes SL55" reference out of their asses, or are people
at Apple (or Steve?) really known for driving those?

~~~
dchest
<http://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+mercedes>

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diggboard
Apple is a fruit, Google is a number?

~~~
ajross
Googol is a number. Google is what Cookie Monster's eyes do.

