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Apple Working on Video-Sharing Social Network App for Launch in 2017
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“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” - Steve Jobs
I mean let's face it, Apple's product line is more complicated than ever, they're supposedly building a car, building a show on apps, launching a social networking focused app? What happened to saying no?
I mean let's face it, Apple's product line is more complicated than ever, they're supposedly building a car, building a show on apps, launching a social networking focused app? What happened to saying no?
I wouldn't call iMessage or FaceTime social networks. They are networks of people that socialize and they are private by design.
Tim Cook needs to go. No Mac Pro updates in over 3 years. No iMac updates in over a year. No MacBook Pro updates in over a year. What the f* are they doing over there besides cashing in stock options? This is the saddest time ever for Apple in terms of product innovation and even update cycles. It's like nobody at Apple cares anymore. It must be a very relaxing job working in the Mac hardware division. They don't do anything.
Anyone remember eWorld? Apple's attempt to topple AOL (the Facebook of the '90s).
Oh, and do tell me how much money you're planning to make, Apple, without doing any advertising? Most social startups are funded so that they'll get bought out by a big player that has a huge ad network and knows how to monetize things. Even Twitter can't figure out how to monetize, so what makes Apple think they know how to do so, especially considering their entire corporate philosophy revolves around privacy with few to no ads. Their past attempts at social networks were big flops. I wish instead they would focus on making their existing services faster and more reliable. For example, it takes forever to buffer 4K iPhone 6s videos back down from iCloud to my iPhone, even on a decent 110Mbps connection. And yet why is it sending a full 4K file? Why doesn't it optimize the stream for the device I'm using? I can't even play back most of my videos about half the time since I have cloud storage turned on.
I think there's a fear in Apple that a company like Facebook will eventually grow to a size that they release their own phones and mobile OS that is far more privacy invading than anything Google could dream up, and they don't want to lose the "kids" to this new system. What they need to focus on is making their platform so good that nobody would ever dream of leaving it. Instead of trying to mimic what everyone else is doing, Apple needs to be even better at what they've been doing for years: Making a great top to bottom ecosystem for users and developers. Apple isn't losing marketshare to Android because they don't have a cute social app. They're losing marketshare to Android because many Android phones are really freaking cheap. So do they want to be premium or not? A lesser reason is that Google gives users more features and choice with their settings on their OS. The problem lies in the fact that great UX design usually involves making choices for your users, which is part of why iOS is so easy to use. How does Apple balance that out? Does iOS need an advanced mode switch or something? Apple is also very stingy with upgrading battery life.
This is how you beat Android and increase profits:
- Quadruple down on services.
- Apple really needs to develop a search engine. It sounds absurd, and it's pretty difficult, but I think it's really important that they figure it out.
- Apple maps should provide a wealth of every type of information, including street views, detailed reviews of every type of business with hours and everything, and better contextual search.
- Mail needs more advanced functionality like reminders, inbox zero type workflow options, to-do list type workflows, etc
- Notes needs more advanced organization and pages
- Photos needs a lot more advanced machine learning capability for advanced search. This is coming but they should keep improving it going forward.
- The reminders app needs to be reworked. It's not great.
- iCloud Drive needs more seamless integration throughout every OS flavor they make. It needs to become the true Finder for iOS, in a streamlined way.
- Their iWork apps need to get more serious. I'm not sure how else to phrase it. They don't feel like professional WORK apps. I don't know of anyone who uses them to collaborate.
- Sell an older device ONLY in emerging markets like China and India
- Repackage something like the iPhone 5s
- Give it a 4.7" display, maybe an extra core or two in the graphics package to compensate
- Sell it for $299 16GB
- Give it a lightweight version of iOS, so it feels faster, but is somewhat more restricted on capabilities
- Introduce a Pro line for the iPhone
- A little thicker than whatever the current regular iPhone is, more battery life
- Advanced dual-camera system that is flush with the casing
- More RAM, slightly faster CPU, more graphics cores
- True-tone display
- Apple Pencil support for making little sketches on the go
- Charge $150 more than the base model iPhone "Air"
- If the new iPhone is 32GB/128GB, make this one 64GB/256GB. Two sizes for both models.
- Simplify the iPad Mini down to one model to simplify production and supply chain.
- Make the iPad Pro a truly Pro machine.
- It needs a way to organize files, or at least projects so that more complex things can be worked on.
- It needs more shortcuts—both gestural, keyboard, and with 3D Touch capability added in. The best way to get things done is quickly.
- Split-screen multitasking needs more capability to drag content across the divide and allow apps to talk to each other through secure APIs.
- Move to a tick-tock iOS upgrade cycle every six months.
- Every September we get iOS X.0 with new features.
- Every March we get iOS X.5 with big performance optimizations and massive bug fixes across the board.
- Give users an advanced mode
- Bury it in the settings
- Allow us to customize almost everything. Some examples:
- Customize numerical values for just about everything. Example: Options to keep messages include 1 Year, 30 days, or forever. They could easily add more options to this page. I don't need to keep a years worth of messages (which adds up to many gigabytes of storage, but I often check back at messages that are a month or two old). Why can't this just be a number tumbler? Same for things like how many times the phone buzzes for a message, etc.
- Allow more fine-tuned customization for things like Night Shift or Do Not Disturb. Why can't I set different settings for different days of the week? I often stay up later on the weekends and it annoys me when I stop getting texts or my screen turns to piss yellow.
- Customize the UI, things like changing out settings in Control Center, or putting shortcuts to other apps at the bottom
- Loading whatever animated wallpaper we want, instead of the same circles we've had for years. I mean really, what ever happened with that? I thought we were eventually going to get an API for developers to make animated wallpapers.
- A full Finder to store and browse files
- Customize 3D Touch menus
- Turn on and off individual capabilities
- Move things around like the URL bar in Safari so it's on the bottom. I tap it the most, and use gestures to navigate back and forth. I want it at the bottom.
- Change how many apps are shown per page of a folder, or how tall the folder is on the display (the old style showed more apps at a time)
- Customize every single little thing with Homekit, including actions and triggers and all kinds of stuff so it works together better. Maybe this is possible in iOS 10, I'm not sure.
- Create custom gestures for things like bringing up iOS search, even when inside apps
- Lots of other random crap that I can't keep writing about right now
- Give iOS a freaking dark mode
- Random rant question: Why can't we save videos from photo streams? So simple, and yet no.
- Speaking of photo streams, why not focus on giving that more love? This is like THE social network I use with my family. It's private and we can share photos of our young kids without worrying about internet creepers. It would be fun to get stickers, advanced media replies, customizable notification settings, etc within that system.
Agreed. Just make phones and computers and app stores. The only advantage I see to them creating a new messaging service is security. If you want to make sure no data is kept for later warrants and want to use chat service on a device that would be very difficult to hack into, sure Apple, but other than that just keep making me phones and computers and app stores.
you mean make it better but just for Apple devices?
Apple making any social media attempts ends the same, just a closed circle, of course there are many IOS devices around so not small circle, but still, something peolple doesn't need because someone close to them is using another platform!
another baby born dead, but hey! they are spending money, so good the markets
One could argue Newton was ahead of it's time and the tech failed it (the handwriting tech wasn't great, yet was one of it's touted features, source: Wired).
As the case with Ping and Connect, there wasn't a ton of innovation there...it was just poorly executed. The value-add for Ping back in the day was very questionable for a consumer. For iTunes Connect, it made sense in theory, but the user experience was very poor and the "social networking" features were very limited (you could comment/like but that was about it).
With the latest betas of iOS, I'm starting to really question Apple's design philosophy when it comes to mobile devices. Google has slowly won me over with the consistency of their Material Design (even though things are starting to look bland), but at least there is a very visible effort at great user interfaces and experiences on mobile.
Someone mentioned iMessage and Photo/iCloud sharing (you can comment, like, etc in a closed-social network), which could serve as a great foundation for more public social networking. Taking a page out of Snapchat's playbook with their recent move to "replace the camera", Apple should do the reverse and build on top of the camera.
However, if they think "square" videos are the future ("One of the prototype designs for the unnamed app was said to record video in a square-shape"), not going to be too optimistic about this attempt either.
Here is a better idea Apple, fix the problems in your current apps instead of completing where you shouldn't.
Isn't a key factor in Facebook's dominance its ubiquity? Like, I think you can buy a refrigerator with a FB app. Probably more so than most people care for, Facebook is everywhere. Another key was probably timing. Being in the right place at the right time.
Apple isn't going to have either.
First, it's a pretty safe bet any Apple social network is going to be limited to Apple devices. So you've just drawn a line around 15-18% of smartphone users (and 10% or so of computer users) and told the rest of the world to get lost. Is anybody really interested in having to figure out what kind of phone someone with whom they want to socialize uses?
As for timing, you never know the optimal time to launch a product or service until after you've done it and been successful. But I'm near certain this ain't the right time.
Apple has the resources to squander on as many bad ideas as they like. A failed, all-Apple social network isn't going to break them by a longshot. But you do have to wonder where the new ideas that will work are hiding.
Apple isn't going to have either.
First, it's a pretty safe bet any Apple social network is going to be limited to Apple devices. So you've just drawn a line around 15-18% of smartphone users (and 10% or so of computer users) and told the rest of the world to get lost. Is anybody really interested in having to figure out what kind of phone someone with whom they want to socialize uses?
As for timing, you never know the optimal time to launch a product or service until after you've done it and been successful. But I'm near certain this ain't the right time.
Apple has the resources to squander on as many bad ideas as they like. A failed, all-Apple social network isn't going to break them by a longshot. But you do have to wonder where the new ideas that will work are hiding.