Apple's Rivalry With Google Gets Personal

[distortedloop]

These are human beings. One flaw in one part of their life generally doesn't stay contained there. I have friends who aren't loyal but I also now enough to not completely trust them.

The only public comment that Schmidt has ever made disparaging Apple was the iPad being a large iPod comment which is what half this forum already believes. Everything else has been behind closed doors. I think his infidelities is a far more telling story of how trustworthy he is.

The same can also go for Schmidt pushing his "Don't be evil" BS but yet being the main force behind Google's move into China even when Larry and Sergey were against it.

I await, with bated breath, your response to this comment on the prior page, in which it is pointed out that Steve Jobs knocked up his girlfriend, kicked him out of her life and let her raise his kid on welfare while he made billions. A fine example of "family values" and a role model for all.

Perhaps we shouldn't trust Steve because of his personal life, and we should condemn Apple as an evil company because Steve is untrustworthy?

Your thoughts?

P.S. - Some of my friends, I would with trust with every aspect of my life, personal and business, despite their extra-marital affairs.

 

[distortedloop]

Truth is, there would of NEVER been an Android or Nexus if an iPhone didn't come around. There's nothing like the original. But guess Apple wants the credit.

I guess you missed the posts earlier about the OpenMoko phone being announced before the iPhone...

...since Google doesn't actually sell anything.

Except of course Nexus One phones and accessories. They also sell a few premium level versions of their products and services.

 

[str1f3]

I await, with bated breath, your response to this comment on the prior page, in which it is pointed out that Steve Jobs knocked up his girlfriend, kicked him out of her life and let her raise his kid on welfare while he made billions. A fine example of "family values" and a role model for all.

Perhaps we shouldn't trust Steve because of his personal life, and we should condemn Apple as an evil company because Steve is untrustworthy?

Your thoughts?

LOL, don't go ahead believing I'm a fanboy. I never said I thought Steve wasn't a jerk. You just proved my point as well. He was a jerk to his girlfriend and those same traits he is famous for at Apple.

For the record though, and not to defend his actions, he did make up for those mistakes. But people rarely change. I still wouldn't recommend to anyone to go and try to talk to him. You may be disappointed.

 

[chatin]

Google hiring a few dark knights

The inventor of XML was just hired by Google yesterday. He call Apple out in his blog. "Apple is a Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp toothed lawyers."

Ouch. Schmidt, the Mad Hatter to this guy's White Rabbit, must have interviewed him personally.

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google

 

[Darkroom]

My comment about Farmville, which uses Flash, making my iMac insanely hot because Flash is poor on the Mac platform is "fanboyism at it's finest"?

You've clearly not been here long enough pal, and you've clearly missed my comments criticising Jobs paranoia recently.

Go away and stop talking rubbish.

sorry, i didn't mean to quote you in my previous post along with anti-google posts. i had planned to respond to you about flash, but i forgot to do so.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

The thing Apple is worried about is that, since Google has so much money, they are going to destroy their opportunity in the phone market. Google really has no limits. A great example is mapping the ocean, for free? WTF is all that about? They do just because "they can".

Ams.

True enough... Apple realizes that Google is the key to the web... no matter how we feel about Google we use them to search and map our way through life...

 

[Glideslope]

True enough... Apple realizes that Google is the key to the web... no matter how we feel about Google we use them to search and map our way through life...

Kind of like Satan?

 

[Mackan]

No wonder that Google Voice app never got approved. It's personal.

 

[giosaccone]

Google traitors!

 

[AidenShaw]

The concept of gestures has been around since the movie "Minority report".

Nice try, buddy - - that's not until the year 2054!

Interesting connection - since Microsoft was involved in the movie!

A similar concept was used in the 2002 science fiction movie
Minority Report . As noted in the DVD commentary, the director
Steven Spielberg stated the concept of the device came from
consultation with Microsoft during the making of the movie.
One of the film's technology consultant's associates from MIT
later joined Microsoft to work on the Surface project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface​

 

[LagunaSol]

Now that Apple and Google are "battling" suddenly everyone thinks they are evil. Hilarious.

Creepy vibes about Google started before they officially started "battling" Apple - and not just from Apple fans.

 

[distortedloop]

LOL, don't go ahead believing I'm a fanboy. I never said I thought Steve wasn't a jerk. You just proved my point as well. He was a jerk to his girlfriend and those same traits he is famous for at Apple.

For the record though, and not to defend his actions, he did make up for those mistakes. But people rarely change. I still wouldn't recommend to anyone to go and try to talk to him. You may be disappointed.

Fair enough.

Disappointed; not.

I usually take issue with people trying to force their morality on others, as long as the acts are not illegal, and do not impact me directly. I think very few people would stand up to scrutiny if the microscope were pointed at them. Look at all the sex scandals in government lately. I don't care if a politician cheats on his wife, has gay tickle parties with his interns, or parties like an animal on weekends, as long as he generally votes in line with the laws I'd like to see passed. I don't care what a business CEO does in his personal life as long as he provides me products and services I find useful at a price I think is fair, or, if I'm a shareholder, he does things that increase my stock's value.

I'm still confused about the position that I shouldn't trust Google, which was posted by the person I originally responded to, because Schmidt has a girlfriend, and yet I should trust Apple regardless of what an ****** Jobs is. That is pure fanboyism, whether it applies to you or not. I'd actually be more interested in the original poster's response than I was to yours.

Will he chime in?

 

[LagunaSol]

My comment about Farmville, which uses Flash, making my iMac insanely hot because Flash is poor on the Mac platform is "fanboyism at it's finest"?

Of course. Saying anything positive about Apple or anything negative about anyone else is considered "fanboyism" around here.

The "game changer" part for Apple was they were able to market the device to the masses and make it easy to use by people who weren't geeks - and that's big, but to the kind of people who would actually read this site, it should be clear that there are very few things about the iPhone that someone else hadn't been there, done that already with.

Here's the thing some of you are so inexplicably unable to grasp: making a device like this that's easy to use for the masses is what made the iPhone revolutionary.

Sadly, no one had "been there, done that" before at all. Your Treos and iPAQs were niche devices for nerds. And doomed to extinction.

Interesting connection - since Microsoft was involved in the movie!

Microsoft has always been good at make-believe tech demos.

Not so good with actual tech products.

 

[WeegieMac]

sorry, i didn't mean to quote you in my previous post along with anti-google posts. i had planned to respond to you about flash, but i forgot to do so.

Fair enough, apologies for my short tempered response ... I couldn't quite figure out what was so blatantly "fanboyish" (is that even a word?!) about my comment regarding Flash.

Apple are not without fault, and even though I love their products they are not the company I began buying products from 10 years ago.

I may be a relative "noob" to many Apple users on here, but Apple are in severe danger of turning into a paranoid, faceless organisation and are already far removed from the "Think Different" company we once knew.

Jobs is right to be angry at other smartphones copying the look/feel of the iPhone, but the borderline ordering of who to hate and who to like is beginning to grate somewhat.

We just want great products, Steve ... just great products.

 

[xbjllb]

You speak as if you know the man. Your words clearly show otherwise. I worked under him twice and this projection usually stems from high ego engineers who get their egos cut when they attempt to bring average to solutions when he demands something more.

Hey, thanks! Nice to know that things are SO dire at Apple that Steve-o has to call in his homeys as well as the usual shill shrill fanbois to prop him up.

Must be getting awfully tense in the boiler room these days...

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/15/preorders_for_apple_ipad_slow_after_120k_first_day_rush.html

And all the man had to do was not make war and implement flash and Blu-ray instead of acting like a petulant spoiled crashing and burning dictator-in-bunker.

Hey. I used to be a fanboi of Steve-o, Apple, and Apple COMPUTERS myself, back when they were truly cutting edge.

You know. Before Steve-o changed Apple into Mattel for people with more money than brains.

 

[kdarling]

The concept of gestures has been around since the movie "Minority report".

Hand gestures have been around a lot longer than that, especially with gloves like in Minority Report. The first such glove was invented in 1977, and by 1987 anyone could buy the Nintendo Power Glove; remember it?

Camera based gestures date back to at least the 1980s or early 1990s. One research review paper on them resides here.

Touch gestures have been around as long as touch screens, both in non-portable (1980s) and handheld (1990s) forms.

Heck, even 1950s SciFi movies used air gestures as an indication of higher technology. Think of all the Theremin music players! Not to mention the way that Klaatu controlled stuff in his spaceship by hand waving over photocells.

 

[LagunaSol]

Hey. I used to be a fanboi of Steve-o, Apple, and Apple COMPUTERS myself, back when they were truly cutting edge.

Great, go enjoy your Dell already. The constant whining grows tiresome.

Or can it be that you still love him even though he dumped you? Ah, the unquenchable rage of the jilted lover...

 

[cmaier]

I grew up in Brooklyn, and my dad taught me some hand gestures in 1975.

Hand gestures have been around a lot longer than that, especially with gloves like in Minority Report. The first such glove was invented in 1977, and by 1987 anyone could buy the Nintendo Power Glove; remember it?

Camera based gestures date back to at least the 1980s or early 1990s. One research review paper on them resides here.

Touch gestures have been around as long as touch screens, both in non-portable (1980s) and handheld (1990s) forms.

Heck, even 1950s SciFi movies used air gestures as an indication of higher technology. Think of all the Theremin music players! Not to mention the way that Klaatu controlled stuff in his spaceship by hand waving over photocells.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

I don't like Microsoft.

I don't trust google.

Not much of an improvement.

 

[Deslock]

This is going to piss off some of the most die-hard Apple fanboys, but I'd have to say that the Palm was a much greater impact on my life, in terms of changing the way I did things in business and personal life than the iPhone.

The Palm let me lose my extremely large Day Runner planner and combine my calendar, contacts, note-taking, and many other functions into one easy to use, POCKET-SIZED device that synced up with my computer. Prior to that everything was on paper lugged around and manually put into the computer.

What the iPhone did was let me shrink my PDA, Phone, and iPod into one slick device. The Treo managed to combine two of those, but it was a lousy iPod. Apple's iPhone combined the three well, but it hardly had the same game-changing impact on work & life-style that the first pocket-sized PDAs did.

It's a shame Palm lost their way, and didn't quite find their way back with the Pre.

The iPhone is clearly derived from Palm because the Pilot 1000 was the first device that put the stylus touchscreen and GUI into a device of that size. The Pilot 1000 wasn't my first handheld computer, but it was the first one I *always* carried with me and was the first "modern" PDA.

On the other hand, when the Pilot 1000 came out in 1996, I'd already been using pocketable electronic organizers for years. Touchscreen stylus devices weren't new. PDA syncing wasn't new. Allowing 3rd party apps on a mobile device wasn't new. Even the Pilot's form factor had similarities to previous devices.

But the Pilot 1000 was the first device to do all those things well. And a somewhat subtle innovation made all the difference: the dedicated Graffiti area allowed for a more effective way of inputing characters without requiring much CPU overhead, and thus allowed for a tiny touchscreen device that was quick and fun to use (compared to what existed before).

Sound familiar?

Before the iPhone, there were small cell phones, media players, and handheld PDAs with web browsers. But they were clunky, the browsers sucked, and the devices (that could do video and browse) tended to be a bit large for the pocket.

There wasn't a single phone that did it all well and was truly pocketable until the iPhone. And by using a finger-input GUI and capacitance multitouch screen, the iPhone ditched the stylus (which had become a bit cumbersome when PDAs added media and communications capabilities) and was quick and fun to use.

I'm not claiming the iPhone is as significant as the Pilot 1000, but they're both up there.

 

[distortedloop]

The "game changer" part for Apple was they were able to market the device to the masses and make it easy to use by people who weren't geeks - and that's big, but to the kind of people who would actually read this site, it should be clear that there are very few things about the iPhone that someone else hadn't been there, done that already with.

Here's the thing some of you are so inexplicably unable to grasp: making a device like this that's easy to use for the masses is what made the iPhone revolutionary.

Sadly, no one had "been there, done that" before at all. Your Treos and iPAQs were niche devices for nerds. And doomed to extinction.

Wow, you seriously made me laugh out loud with that diatribe.

My god man, do you even read posts, or do you just look for an opportunity to make silly responses to them?

Isn't that exactly what I said? "The "game changer" part for Apple was they were able to market the device to the masses and make it easy to use by people who weren't geeks"

You also conveniently left out the last part of my post that you quoted which narrowed the comment down specifically to geeks: "All the iPhone did was slick them up and mass market them, BRILLIANTLY, I'll admit, but hardly revolutionary (aside from the lack of a stylus needed) from a geek's perspective."

For those of us on this site, everything else had been done before, so to your point, I guess what's revolutionary about Apple is that they're good marketeers, not revolutionary hardware or software developers.

You've taken my quote, said the exact same thing, and then tried to turn it into some kind of negative attack on me. Now that's inexplicable.

 

[distortedloop]

I grew up in Brooklyn, and my dad taught me some hand gestures in 1975.

Probably the best post I've read on the net today.

I can think of a simple gesture or two for a few posting here. ;-)

The iPhone is clearly derived from Palm because the Pilot 1000 was the first device that put the stylus touchscreen and GUI into a device of that size. The Pilot 1000 wasn't my first handheld computer, but it was the first one I *always* carried with me and was the first "modern" PDA.

On the other hand, when the Pilot 1000 came out in 1996, I'd already been using pocketable electronic organizers for years. Touchscreen stylus devices weren't new. PDA syncing wasn't new. Allowing 3rd party apps on a mobile device wasn't new. Even the Pilot's form factor had similarities to previous devices.

But the Pilot 1000 was the first device to do all those things well. And a somewhat subtle innovation made all the difference: the dedicated Graffiti area allowed for a more effective way of inputing characters without requiring much CPU overhead, and thus allowed for a tiny touchscreen device that was quick and fun to use (compared to what existed before).

Sound familiar?

Before the iPhone, there were small cell phones, media players, and handheld PDAs with web browsers. But they were clunky, the browsers sucked, and the devices (that could do video and browse) tended to be a bit large for the pocket.

There wasn't a single phone that did it all well and was truly pocketable until the iPhone. And by using a finger-input GUI and capacitance multitouch screen, the iPhone ditched the stylus (which had become a bit cumbersome when PDAs added media and communications capabilities) and was quick and fun to use.

I'm not claiming the iPhone is as significant as the Pilot 1000, but they're both up there.

I think we're largely in agreement. I don't expect you to go back and find all my other posts, but that's been my basic theme in this thread in regards to the iPhone and preceding devices: all of it was done before by others in both terms of software and form factor, Apple did the convergence best with the iPhone in terms of combining all into one with a mass marketable device, the iPhone did not have as large a game changing impact on those who've used gadgets the last decade as any number of other (for me the Palm Vx) devices.

Also, from my point of view and preferences, Apple currently does not do it best. Android and the Nexus One are currently ahead in the game for my needs, but I wouldn't recommend them to non-geeks who want a slick iPod with phone and app abilities that's pretty much idiot proof to use. In that regard, the iPhone is still king.

P.S. - couldn't agree with you more about Grafiti. That rocked, and I wish the iPhone had similar. Google's sort of implemented it on the Nexus One with its "Gesture Search", which works well at recognizing finger writing of alpha-numeric characters, but it's limited to search on the phone, and is not currently an option for general input into text fields. :-(

 

[little.pm]

The iPhone is clearly derived from Palm because the Pilot 1000 was the first device that put the stylus touchscreen and GUI into a device of that size. The Pilot 1000 wasn't my first handheld computer, but it was the first one I *always* carried with me and was the first "modern" PDA.

Oh boy, the Apple Newton was there first in 1993. There would be no Palm without the Newton.

 

[sg.hill]

it's different.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I guess we just disagree about daily voting with dollars.

I'm trying to show you the forest man, and you are talking about the trees. Open Source was at first kind of like a non-formal academic environment for computer scientists and engineers. Individuals contributed, and society, or at least the CS's and engineers benefited. OHA is nothing like that. It is pure corporate-driven. The members of the society and the internal Google control precludes code contribution that formerly characterized Linux development.

Yes, sure, nothing created is for anything but economic gain. But in Linux development, economic gain was realized by individual coders working in a community that supported one another. This is a corporate community that you really can't break into, becauase the code develpment follows the interests of the corporations. In all other open source projects, it wasn't like that.

So, in my belief, it is a fallacy to call this open source. Basically, it's just a stratagem to diffuse legal liability among the OHA.

Now that argument is long, and I can't take any more of your bromides such as, "everyone who creates something has an economic interest." So, I leave it for you to think of.

Fair enough -- we don't agree.

The core pieces of open source are all still there: if you want to install Android on a supported phone, you don't have to pay anyone for licensing; you're free to download the source and modify it how wish before installing it on your phone; you can submit bugs and patches as well. You can even create your own ROMs with overclocks and things (which is continuously done). Furthermore, I'll state that the most successful open source projects tend to be corporate-led (Java, Firefox, MySQL, Chromium...)

Or, as distortedloop said better...

While the romantic vision of open source is a bunch of geeks around the world working in their garage sharing ideas to make a better software, the reality is that open source just boils down to releasing the source code for public review and modification free of cost. Android does that, and that's thanks to Google.

Truth is, there would of NEVER been an Android or Nexus if an iPhone didn't come around. There's nothing like the original. But guess Apple wants the credit.

Awfully bold statement, considering Google bought Android almost 2 years before the iPhone was introduced [source].

 

[CaptainCannabis]

From my point of view... By doing this Apple is just reinforcing the fact that Android is an amazing and very competitive OS that can induce users to replace their current iPhone OS with it.

I've been a loyal Apple customer since 2002, and I've spent over $15,000 on Apple products since then. After a few horrible experiences with the MBA (heat shuttering, etc) and bad quality on their MBP's (including the latest OS... oh... how I miss the PPC days and Tiger). I switched to Window$ (yes I did). And bought myself 2 Sony Vaio's, one of them the Vaio X, which kicks the MBA's ass so hard... even switched to Blackberry.

Apple or Steve is very good at creating markets from thin air, and that is where their strategy resides. The new touch smartphone market is very new, and competition is aggressively trying to enter. I think Google's threat to Apple is very healthy, and Apple should respond in healthier customer oriented ways other than this one.