
Google is getting better at what Apple does best faster than Apple - shawndumas
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/01/betteridge-chromebook-pixel
======
magicalhobo
The original was "Google is getting better at what Apple does best faster than
Apple is getting better at what Google does best."

Truncating the sentence for the title changed the meaning to something much
bolder.

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wsc981
I still don't think Google has the culture to create a good consistent UI,
something that has pretty much always been Apple's strongest asset - the
reason I keep using Apple products. I don't think this will change, at least
not anytime soon.

Recently I developed an app for Android, but when using the toolkit and
testing on a real device I realised how much stronger Apple is in the
department of software design.

That's not to say I don't like certain products of Google. I appreciate Gmail
very much and I'm very likely to use AppEngine in the near future for a mobile
game I plan to develop. I just think Apple is much better when it comes to UI
design.

~~~
tonfa
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-
ho...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry-
page-engineered-beautiful-revolution)

------
onemorepassword
But is Google actually that good at services besides a few great products?

I'm considering moving away from Google Apps, because besides GMail, most apps
are a weak and seem to have become stagnant. Google Drive, which we had been
waiting for for half a decade, is still buggy, clunky and unreliable. And
don't get me started on the UI and the complete inconsistency between various
apps.

Yes, Apple has been consistently shite when it comes to online services, and
Microsoft entered the game way too late. But I don't think Google has such a
major advantage in anything else but search.

~~~
nirvana
This is an area where we can do direct comparison.

Mail- Google has gmail, Apple has iCloud mail. Both have "web 2.0" UI's. I
think here Apple wins hands down. Apple's support of sproutcore (what became
ember.js) has given it a great lead in the ability to do great web apps. And
apple's iCloud.com mail app is a good example of this.

Google "Office" vs. Apple Works - Apple wins again here in my opinion.
Numbers, Pages and Keynote are much better experiences than using google's
products thru the web, simply because they are native and can take advantage
of better APIs. Both products provide ubiquitous storage of your data, so you
can access your documents from your iPhone or your laptop. I wouldn't say
Google is ahead on services there, but before Apple released iCloud they were.

I really don't think Apple has done a bad job with online services. Certainly
not when compared to google. IF you look at iTunes Store-- which is actually
an web service-- it is larger than anything google has, except maybe google
search, depending on what metrics you use.

It's been stable and robust and usable with great UI since the store was first
launched. It's certainly sold more goods than google and made more profit than
amazon, I bet.

Apple took the lead with web development way back when it was NeXT with
webobjects which was the first modern web development framework. They again
have had the best product with sproutcore, dashcode, etc, though they've been
a bit inconsistent. Its only recently that google's really tried to produce
web development tech, and while go is a good attempt at a language it is
written by people who felt comfortable enforcing a religious design choice on
every programmer! (namely where the brackets go. I'm fine with people putting
them in the "wrong place", I can still read their code. Let them do as they
like, but forcing me, at the language level, to do as the language designers
like? Well, that's just being assholes, and I won't use the language because
of that (not to mention its crap design in some key areas.)

Where google's clearly winning? Ideological propaganda. The whole "open vs.
closed" campaign has people actually believing that Google is good and Apple
is evil. Apple which has never spied on its users or sold them out to
advertisers.

~~~
terminus
> Where google's clearly winning? Ideological propaganda. The whole "open vs.
> closed" campaign has people actually believing that Google is good and Apple
> is evil. Apple which has never spied on its users or sold them out to
> advertisers.

Umm, iAds?

------
bitL
I am not really happy that Google is cloning all successful approaches from
various companies with slight modifications to suit their own purposes. First
Facebook, now Apple. Where is that amazing, creative, innovative company I
once admired? It's like Microsoft all over again.

~~~
mailarchis
Well you are not taking into consideration google glass and self driving cars.

~~~
taligent
You do realise that Google didn't invent self driving cars and that they
aren't even leading the industry.

Mercedes Benz demoed the technology nearly 20 years ago and will be shipping
cars along with Audi, Volvo etc en masse over the coming years. In fact every
single notable car manufacturer has had their own program in place for
decades.

~~~
robryan
How do we know who is leading the industry if the industry doesn't really
exist right now?

~~~
taligent
Firstly, the car companies have been shipping for the last few years many of
the key systems of an autonomous car. Even some of the cheapest cars can self
park and auto brake in the event of an impending collision. Adding more
sensors and better control systems builds on this.

Secondly, nobody knows who is leading the industry. But we know it's not
Google since all of the car manufacturers have their own programs in fairly
advanced stages. And due to the consolidated nature of the industry key
technologies are shared within the groups. So if Google has no one interested
in their technologies and they don't make cars then how will they ever lead
anything ?

------
7952
Apple sell hardware and Google sell ads, everything else is just semantics.
They may be competitive in certain areas but they are making money in
completely divergent ways. Companies like Google and Amazon are able to use
the Chinese electronics contractors to get products to market without the huge
amounts on R&D that Apple had to invest. That is only a threat to Apple if
they are unable to make innovative new hardware that can't be replicated
quickly.

~~~
jacquesm
> without the huge amounts on R&D that Apple had to invest.

Which amounts are those?

~~~
7952
I could look for links that prove my point but whats the point? That
information is naturally opaque. I believe that R&D costs are likely to be
lower because I see such a huge number of new devices coming from companies
without the clout of Google or Android. If Google are spending amounts
equivalent to Apple on the pixel they are doing something wrong.

~~~
nirvana
Apple is vastly more efficient at R&D than google is, in part because Apple's
products are so profitable, that it's R&D as a proportion of sales is "small".

Meanwhile, Apple is investing $10B this year in CapEx, and while a couple
billion of that are for server farms, the new HQ and store upgrades, many
billions are going into the equipment and tooling necessary to make Apple
products.

People seem to think you just call fox con and say "I want 100 million mobile
phones by monday!"

Apple's "R&D" includes the investment in being able to scale a manufacturing
business to the point where it can sell twice as many devices as the previous
year, for several years running.

This is under appreciated by people who look at no-sales devices like the
google Nexus and claim that google is in the lead by some arbitrary criteria.

~~~
7952
That is a false comparison. Google's business is to make money on ads, not
hardware sales. The R&D at Google is for a completely different purpose and
much harder to measure in terms of efficiency for an outsider.

------
mkr-hn
The more thoughtful Apple acolytes are becoming readable lately. This is a
good trend.

------
JumpCrisscross
From the original quote [1], what Apple does is "design" while what Google
does is "web services". Design is more fragmented than web services and thus
easier to break into. If Google + design -> Cupertino while Apple has only to
master "web services" the war has already been won. Given how premature that
seems, I'd say the core competences identified and thus the analogy as a whole
appear to be stacked.

[1] <http://patrickbgibson.com/post/36041799210/apple-and-twitter>

~~~
onemorepassword
If design is so much easier, then why have all hardware manufacturers failed
so miserably to match Apple over the past two decades?

Anything from phones, mp3 players, monitors, tablets, laptops etcetera, they
all look cheap, plastic and designed without love and attention to detail. And
yes, that includes Google's Nexus range, which aren't ugly but won't win any
awards either. It should be possible, look at B&O or Loewe in TV and audio for
instance, albeit that they sell at a premium way higher then Apple's. And by
the look of it, it's not others they haven't been trying to imitate Apple
(hence the lawsuits).

As far as I can tell, getting design right is very, very hard, and takes a
broad commitment to excellence most companies are lacking.

And if one company has very conspicuously ignored design and the basic notion
of delighting their users with products that aren't just functionally great
but make people fall in love with them, it has been Google.

The design of the latest Chromebook is a huge leap, surpassing manufacturers
that have attempted to match Apple for years, and comes completely out of left
field from a company has so far shown little sign if even having any feeling
for design.

~~~
nirvana
It's also a pretty blatant copy of the Macbook. Given the history you outline
(which I agree with) I think the huge leap for the pixel came from Apple. Just
like the huge leap from a blackberry clone to an iPhone clone that android
took over the course of 2007-2008.

------
pinaceae
the big question is though, can Google also be awesome in Services going
forward?

i am loyal user of chrome, gmail, search, youtube, maps, picasa - in this
order. none of which is younger than what, 5 years?

innovation in those items? gmail got a new UI, but else?

where are the BETA products? used to be the awesomeness of Google. ever since
Page took over, they've been killing the small, useful things. ok, they want
to be apple. google glass, cars, chromebooks - big ambitious things, big bang
approach. nothing below 1500 usd.

of course there is android, but that one is slipping away - samsung, amazon,
chinese manufacturers - all are eating it up and taking ownership.

how come amazon is the premier cloud provider, not google? how come dropbox is
the premier storage provider, not google? they are moving from a (ad-
supported) knowledge company to a product company. more money there i guess.
still makes me sad.

~~~
taligent
Don't forget that they acquired YouTube, Maps, Picasa, Android and Chrome is a
wrapper around WebKit.

~~~
graetzer
Chrome is not just a wrapper. WebKit requires you to implement networking,
graphics rendering, font rendering etc. There are huge differences between the
different WebKit based browsers

~~~
taligent
Sure but you can just defer to the OS for the bulk of those services e.g.
CoreGraphics, DirectWrite etc.

~~~
jganetsk
Things unique to Chrome that don't come from the OS: V8 Javascript engine,
process isolation model, networking including new protocols like SPDY and
possibly QUIC [1], auto-update (for browser and all apps and extensions)
Chrome sync (for bookmarks, open tabs, apps, extensions). Don't forget that
the Chrome team is now a major contributor to WebKit.

[1]
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/100132233764003563318/posts/b36w...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/100132233764003563318/posts/b36wVornPtD)

------
ishansharma
Google is definitely getting better. Their search infrastructure gives them a
huge advantage over Apple. I have used Google Now on my friend's Android and
it is much better than Siri.

I remember someone linking to a video of Google Now (maybe it was Gruber)and
commenting, "How fast should Siri be? - This fast!"

Google can put a voice over their search interface and boom, they have a Siri
alternative that works on any platform(though for web only, but it can
integrate with Chrome and Android very easily). Just imagine asking your
Chromebook to create a new appointment, that would be a nice feature. Or just
asking Chrome to do it.

The only problem with Google is that they do not have any customer care! When
things go fine, everything is well and good. But one day when your GMail
account suddenly stops working and gets blocked, you have no human to talk to!

~~~
jacquesm
> Just imagine asking your Chromebook to create a new appointment, that would
> be a nice feature. Or just asking Chrome to do it.

> The only problem with Google is that they do not have any customer care!

> you have no human to talk to!

I think you just solved google's main problem at some point in the future.

------
alaskamiller
Apple needs Yahoo and Yahoo needs Apple.

Yahoo's culture conditioned by a strong personality cult is on par with
Apple's own culture. They bring all the web expertise that can compliment
Apple.

That's an easy US$25B to spend.

------
nirvana
I think people musnderstand what it is that Apple does best. And what it is is
deliver great products that focus on what the consumer needs.

Google has yet to deliver a compelling or wildly popular hardware product to
the market. Google is getting really great at propaganda and hype though--
like that carefully set up PR event of brin on the subway with glass.

Glass and this computer are both misfires because glass is just a bluetooth
headset with a camera-- it needs a network to work. It needs an iPhone or
android device to teather too (and I still think its really going to have bad
battery life.)

Same with this netbook-- it doesnt' have a real operating system, and it
relies on being connected to the cloud all the time... which is impractical in
a lot of ways.

The iPad is the competitor to this device, not the macbook. The macbook is a
real computer you can use for development, the iPad you can use for content
creation but not really hardcore software development.

The iPad is much cheaper, higher build quality, and doesn't need a network
connection to really work.

Google's delivered a lot of products like the nexus, the nexus q that have had
a lot of hype but haven't really been big successes.

Until they do make a big hardware success you can't really say they're
learning to do what Apple does.

It's not like you just call up foxxconn and say "I want 100 million phones
made."

Meanwhile, what google does best is selling customers to advertisers and
search.

I'd say Apple getting good at that reasonably fast. Apple's SIRI upended
search and was a big jump forward. Apple's iAds has not been as successful,
but this is probably due to mobile being a hostile environment for ads (google
and facebook aren't having great success yet either.)

~~~
jmduke
I agree with the vast majority of what you said, but Siri upending search
seems incredibly pre-emptive.

I think Siri opens a lot of doors, but 90% of the Siri use I've seen (which I
admit is somewhat anecdotal, but still) is hands-free texting & easter eggs
("Siri, where can I hide a body?")

Once Apple opens up Siri's functionality a bit more and makes it actually
actionable ("Siri, pre-order my usual Chipotle burrito, please.") then things
are going to go crazy.

~~~
nirvana
What you say is correct, but what I was trying to say (you may disagree) is
that SIRI was a big jump into mobile search, and that it is a bigger move into
mobile search than google's hardware projects have been in competing with
Apple.

SIRI is still in the early stages and would benefit a great deal from becoming
more of an App platform, but I think that is going to take some time due to
the nature of how SIRI works.

~~~
ChuckMcM
As a 'UI', SIRI was pretty cool, but if you compare SIRI on an Apple device
with Google Now on an Apple device, both of them use Google to do the 'search'
part except that Google Now's integration with the search backend gives it
more visibility in what you are trying to find.

------
taligent
The premise is pretty stupid.

Firstly Apple does do services. They run the world's biggest media store, the
world's biggest syncing platform and a semi popular email service. Sure they
aren't perfect but they can be considered successes for the most part.

And the point about hardware is completely misguided. Apple's true strength
has never been their ability to build a well designed machine. It is the fact
that they can do it consistently and ship it on a scale unmatched in the
industry. All whilst maintaining a huge profit margin.

Until Google can demonstrate that they can actually ship a product and do so
profitably then nobody will or should take them seriously.

~~~
patrickaljord
So Google just released a laptop that is actually better than an MBA and you
think Apple shouldn't take Google seriously? Good thing you're not running
Apple.

~~~
rethaw
>actually better than an MBA

Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The Chromebook does have a nice
screen, but...

\- The Chromebook is almost half a pound heavier that the Air.

\- It only has USB 2.0, not 3.0 like the Air.

\- It has just a 32GB SSD, the Air has 128GB/256GB/512GB.

\- It has just 5 hours of battery, compared to 7 hours with the Air.

\- It only has Bluetooth 3.0, not 4.0 like the Air.

\- It still starts at $100 more expensive that the Air.

~~~
patrickaljord
Funny to read someone defending Apple based on hardware specs when Apple
lovers told us for years that Apple killed specs because no one care about
them and that hardware should be judged on its beauty and slickness and the UX
of its software which is where the Pixel does indeed shine. As for the 32 GB,
the Pixel comes with 1TB of google drive and a "save to Google drive" option.

~~~
nirvana
Forget specs, lets talk about software: The MacBook air is a real computer.
You can compile your code on it. IT has an operating system. You can play
games.

The pixel is just a web browser.

The correct thing to make the comparison to is the iPad, but even the iPad is
more functional, since it can run apps that aren't browsers.

From a usability viewpoint, the pixel is kinda laughable... it's so
arbitrarily limited, it isn't even really usable unless you're on a network.

~~~
myko
> From a usability viewpoint, the pixel is kinda laughable... it's so
> arbitrarily limited, it isn't even really usable unless you're on a network.

Stated by someone who obviously hasn't used Chrome OS.

Also, it's trivial for a developer or semi-technical user to install Crouton
and setup a build environment or whatever else.

------
largesse
Playing up Google? Now Gruber is just screwing with us.

~~~
parfe
Treat Gruber like Apple PR and it makes sense. He's seeding the conversation
so an upcoming Apple announcement makes sense. Maybe another sub par app
release which will be wildly outmatched by the competition, like maps.

