Daring Fireball’s John Gruber offers three main takeaways Apple’s WWDC Keynote on Monday:
• Apple has — dare I say finally — become a company that can walk and chew gum at the same time… Today, Apple has two OSes that are both in active concurrent development. Year-over-year, it’s hard to say which OS has seen the most improvement.
• The new “next-generation” MacBook Pro with Retina Display is, in short, “Back to the Mac” for hardware. This is an iOS-inspired appliance — battery, RAM, solid state storage — all of it is sealed in a magnificent enclosure… I have a review unit from Apple, and after just 15 minutes or so trying it out, it’s damn impressive. Much like with the iPhone and iPad, it’s not so much that the Retina display looks good as that, after you’ve used it for even just a few minutes, non-retina display MacBooks look bad. It’s not just pixel size, either — color, brightness, viewing angles — everything about it is amazing. Best display I’ve ever seen, period.
• Starting with the opening gag with Siri doing stand-up comedy and continuing through to Apple’s new maps and Siri’s new features, there was an unmistakeable “Fuck you, Google” undertone to the whole keynote. Apple is forcing Google out of iOS… Google made a mistake by deciding to oppose rather than ally with Apple on mobile.
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: In other words:
Google’s going to rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them. – MacDailyNews Take, March 09, 2010
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]
Unmistakeable.
Apple needed to dump Google maps prior to going strong into China. Google burned their bridges in China already. That is also why you saw Baidu and Siri in Chinese Mandarin too.
When people anywhere get a choice of iPhone or Android, Android and Google loose. It happened in the USA and will all over the world now! iKill again!
It will be awesome to watch the Chinese gobble up the iPhone and to see Android fall off a cliff there.
You know that’s not very likely unless Apple continues selling older model iPhones to compete with those really low-cost Android smartphones. It will also depend upon carriers which will continue to push Android models if they can make some commissions from them. Android is not going to fall off a cliff. The best you can hope for is a gradual slowdown. Those 900,000 daily activations would have to slow to a trickle. I was hoping Windows Phones would help cut into Android smartphone sales, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.
And that is exactly why Apple has been careful not to leave behind the old iPhone models. The iPhone 3GS is still compatible with iOS6. So there you have your answer. Not everybody will have an iPhone 5, but everybody can and should have an iPhone.
You’re discounting a VERY important cultural factor. The Chinese consumer is still very much into status. Only an iPhone confers the pinnacle of status upon its owner in China. Wait and see.
That’s consistent with what I’ve read and heard from friends in China. Apple needs to retain its high-status position in the US in order to dominate in China. That means no minimally-equipped, low-price iPhones or iPads.
Chinese hands are somewhat smaller than hands in the US, and that consideration suggests that the iPhone will not become wider in future releases.
“Chinese hands are somewhat smaller than hands in the US…” Oh come on. I grew up in SF with Chinese and worked with Chinese in Silicon Valley and have worked extensively in China and what you say is generally not true in my own experience.
The average difference in height (and hence ~hand-size) for USA v China is only 4-5% (m and f) which translates to 0.2″ (5 mm) difference for a 4″ screen. A significant factor but perhaps smaller than most people would guesstimate.
To add to what Zeke said, Apple made a very strong point to mention China over half a dozen times on the Keynote for the WWDC, and are clearly devoting a lot of resources to making their products more China friendly. That cannot go unnoticed by the Chinese people who are proud, and will appreciate the respect and attention.
Why copy a copy when you can copy the original?
@ Jersey_Trader:
you need to get out more. Apple may earn a lot of cash from its app store, but InformationWeek on May 24th reported:
“Google’s Android platform is the top [smartphone] platform worldwide, with 59.0% of market thanks to 89.9 million units shipped during the first quarter. Android grew an astonishing 145% year-over-year. Much of that growth can be attributed to the never-ending onslaught of new devices that range from entry-level handsets to flagship hero devices. Apple’s iOS platform follows Android with 23.0% and 35.1 million units shipped. It, too, saw massive growth with an 88.7% increase year-over-year. The iPhone 4S–even though it wasn’t the iPhone 5 that everyone wanted–has proven to be a very popular device.”
So not only does Android have a larger installed base, it is growing faster than iOS. Look at it this way: it doesn’t matter if Porsches are better than Hyundais and earn more profit per car, the sheer number of Korean shitboxes on the road means that’s where most future car buyers’ money will be going. Dumbass consumers would rather buy disposable junk than quality, long-lasting, high-performance products, at their own economic peril. Apple hasn’t won the mobile competition yet, and it certainly isn’t looking as good for Apple as you imagine it to be.
Mike, you are the one who needs to do more research. Apple makes more profit on its iOS business than all the Android product makers put together AND MULTIPLIED BY THREE (almost four). Last time I checked, it was the goal of a business to make money, not achieve market share.
And, it DOES MATTER if it is a Porsche or a Kia because the first is far more profitable, and consequently more sustainable. As Steve Jobs was very fond of pointing out, BMW has about 1% of the global auto market, but nobody questions its success and relevance.
Mike your guilty of the Microsoft (Google) myth that manufactured equals market share, opposed to real world, market share equals sold reality. In truth the only thing that counts is who makes the most money, or people who believe the market share myth should pull their head out.
@Mike
Android is going to get killed from fragmentation and a lack of developer support. No amount of marketshare can negate that.
@ mike
Apple takes 80% of the cell phone (both smart and dumb phones) profits in the world.
ALL the androids, blackberries, WP, Symbian etc make up the rest…
http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/30/apple-samsung-take-profit/
last quarter, AT&T said iPhone made 78% of their smart phone sales. As AT&T is the first iPhone carrier expect the rest to follow in its footsteps.
http://www.imore.com/2012/04/24/iphone-accounted-78-atts-quarterly-activations/
Google makes more money in mobile from iOS than Android (or use to before iOS 6!)
When Android came out Google was a larger company by marketcap than Apple, today apple is twice google’s size.
Developers make more money by a wide margin off iOS than Android.
More developers want to develop for iOS.
http://news.yahoo.com/developers-still-more-interested-ios-android-010559532.html
(I copied this post from one I wanted to post on ZDnet on one of their ‘android fan’ blogs. They refused the post and have since banned me from posting, every time I try to post anything now.. it’s ‘permission denied’ … lol )
Android frothing at the mouth rabid senseless Google fans are a sensitive bunch. And the truth is a difficult thing for them to deal with.
“Google’s Android platform is the top [smartphone] platform worldwide, with 59.0% of market thanks to 89.9 million units shipped during the first quarter. ”
False. Android could sell 10x or even 20x as many handsets as the iPhone and not be the top “platform” because:
1. Android is not a unified platform. Fragmentation matters.
2. The vast majority of Android handsets are not sold nor used as smartphones. The usage data clearly backs this up. Safari on the iPhone crushes the Android browser usage.
3. Most top tier developers are iPhone and iOS first and for most, and they may do an Android port later. The best and brightest developers and the best Apps are all on the iOS platform where all the paying customers are.
4. The Android numbers are vastly over reported. Both by Google which has a vested interest in pumping up Android and by the handset manufacturers themselves, who do not report actual sales, but rather “shipments”. It’s a completes scam.
This all works out to make your entire argument meaningless because your entire premise is completely false.
As far as an actual smartphone platform Google’s Android is hopelessly behind iOS and falling further behind daily.
Now if they can stop doing business with Samsung, things would be lovely. Stop financing your enemies.
Go ahead! Start a semi-conductor company here @ home! No one’s stopping you!
… Well, except that not many US citizens are willing to be paid the slave wages that are the default in many countries overseas. There is more going on with the Slave Wage Labor Movement than mean old greedy companies. It’s the CUSTOMERS who also demand cheap products. Why else would the USA be selling its soul to China: Criminal Nation. It’s the cheap labor that make the cheap products. Apple are merely riding along with the Slave Wage Labor Movement like most other companies. That’s economics! That’s capitalism.
Perhaps. But when China decides they don’t want to work anymore and they would like to be waited on hand and foot, Americans will have jobs once again.
Yes, @G4Dualie. That is the inevitable effect.
I personally do NOT welcome our Chinese Empire Overlords. Thanks dumbass US Corporate Oligarchy for making certain that this is exactly where we are going. 😛
In the end it will be the Muslim Empire vs the China Empire. Here come the nukes! There goes the species. Oops.
Love the Mickey Avatar BTW!
Air Races over Burbank August 22-28, 1933. It’s from the poster.
The A5 and A5X chips used in iPhones and iPads are made in Austin, TX, by Samsung. The Gorilla glass is made at a Corning factory in Kentucky. These parts and many others made in the USA get assembled in China using cheap Chinese labor.
Until Google is punished by the law for IP theft, no, they did not make a mistake.
And the probability that Google will be ever really punished is low, unfortunately, because the patent system for now proven to be useless.
When you consider that they make much more from iOS than they do from Android, yes, they made a mistake.
Since what they make is what they already make, no, they did not make a mistake. Google earns well on iOS, and makes itself inroads to the future with Android.
their income from iOS is about to decrease dramatically. Better start growing those Android revenues by a factor of 10 if they want to maintain.
Mapping is very small portion of from where Google’s mobile income come. Most is advertising network AdSense, which is widely used by all kinds of iOS applications, and the search itself, which is still Google as default choice in iOS.
So, for now, no mistake is seen as there is no punishment yet.
Don’t forget Siri. Rather than using Google to search for things, some people will begin using Siri.
Crime and punishment?
You’re off the deep end, duress. This is a market matter so let’s leave justice out of it.
Google, like Microsoft are software people who NEED HARDWARE people to survive.
Google’s mistake was believing they had any business savvy in telephones. Ed Colligan was thinking about people like Google when he said, “Apple isn’t just going to walk in here…”
Let’s keep it real here!
Android is a FREE OS. Google make NO money from it. What they gain is secondary income from the marketing surveillance and sales at their wide-open-to-everything-including-malware software store.
It’s the same old BS as Amazon losing money on the sale of each Kindle Fire. Instead Amazon make money on the secondary sales.
That we focus on the ‘market’ for Android, Kindle Fire, and the Xbox 360 for that matter, is utterly LUDICROUS. What kind of ‘market’ consists of giveaway and pay-to-buy products?
So what DOES make sense regarding the mobile market?
1) The sales of the manufacture’s HARDWARE that happens to be infected with the free Android OS.
2) The sales of the SOFTWARE for the hardware infected with the free Android OS.
THERE IS NO ACTUAL ‘ANDROID MARKET’. There is only a SECONDARY SALES market relevant to Android.
But of course, talking beyond the surface of tech causes most people’s minds, especially financial ANALysts and DayTraderTards, to EXPLODE with incomprehension.
TechTardiness will be forever rampant. 😯
All this Google and Samsung scumbaggery is a GOOD thing for Apple. That’s why we have shuch great products. As long as Apple is kicking ass as a result of competition – fair or otherwise – we’re the winners.
I don’t think you really get Apple. They don’t compete, they lead and innovate. Samsung thinks that competition is copying a great product and seeing if the original can still make sales.
That’s it in a nut; Apple doesn’t compete against anyone but themselves.
Perhaps… But the key, IMO, is that Apple would have done what it is doing sooner or later without Google or Samsung. In contrast, neither Google nor Samsung would have come up with some of their key products without Apple lighting the way.
Apple – chew google uP and spit out the remains.
You can tell by the way google have updated there lamedroid OS that they aren’t in the same league as apple.
Google isn’t an innovator, a software or a hardware business. They should have just stuck to search and. E happy with that.
Whatever Eric the mole thinkss in his deluded head, google isn’t apple and never will be.
“Apple – chew google uP and spit out the remains.”
Apple – chew Google up and shit out the remains.
There, fixed it for you.
thanks :))
Schmidt did a favor for Apple by being a stealthy mole.
It energized Apple to expand its horizons beyond just hardware and into the AppStore and iAds arena and mapping.
When you wake the sleeping giant…
For that matter, I would love to see what Apple could do in the search engine field if they really put their money and effort into it. Having control over a top-class search engine could really expand their footprint across the web. They wouldn’t even have to take a huge chunk of market share from Google on the Desktop, but they could very easily own the search space for their own platforms and especially their mobile platforms.
Siri is a great start, and I think partnering is a very smart idea. Imagine if they could do something similar for a regular search engine, that has major partners from Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Wolfram, Rotten Tomatoes, sports and media companies.
Include their own maps, and add other enhancements. Keep it as clean as possible, and focus on what the users want, not what will push up the bottom line as much as possible. Apple wouldn’t need revenue from their search engine so they could do things that Google can’t. In other words they would be more nimble in Google’s own turf, and hurt Google where it really matters.
It would be a great way to warn other companies that want to Fuck with Apple, to think twice.
Fireball’s analysis of the keynote was the best summary I’ve seen:
“…there was an unmistakeable “Fuck you, Google” undertone to the whole keynote.”
That says it all.
For the 89.1 millionth time shipped is not sold and ther is no android platform!!! There are many phone companies who have hacked, fragmented and hobbled a set of routines that are not only incomparable between different phone manufacturers, but are just as incompatible within any one manufacturers hardware line. If comparisons are to be made between iOS numbers and Android it is iPhones, iPads, iPod touches and Apple TVs sold to Android devices sold. Since no one knows the latter, there is no comparator other than reality to fantasy. If one wishes to compare handsets sold with iOS vs Android there is still no real comparator. The only reasonable comparator is iOS profit to Android OS profit and as far as I can see, since Android is freeware, iOs is infinitely more profitable than Android OS. You cannot even throw in Google revenue from iOS advertising, AKA stealing users privacy, because, if the numbers are available of mobile vs of advertising, I haven’t seen them. If they do exist they cannot be compared to iOS revenue only Apple advertising revenue. Apple sells hardware, software and ecosystem. Google sells its users souls. Priceless!
I don’t know. I believe Android’s ICS is a platform in the making. But with only 7% marketshare it could be ten-years before ICS becomes the defacto standard on the Android platform.
As for all the other Android models out there, made expressly for the carriers, I agree, there is no platform, no continuity, and there sure as hell isn’t any consistency.
The incestuous relationship between the handset makers and the carriers have yielded some real Android jewels, many of which are the topic of conversation all over the net about how they suck the life out of everything when they spoil the moments of inspiration and take the spontaneity out the simple pleasures of life.
Android might be activating 900,000 units a day but how many of those are cheap kinds? With only 7%running the latest android software, it only means majority of android sets that’s being sold are bargains.
Android is the new Symbian.
“Android is the new Symbian.”
That’s the best comment of the day! 🙂 priceless.
Google sells its users souls. Priceless!
EXACTLY. The USERS are the market. Selling you and me. Frack that!
Google is profiting more on iOS than their own Android.
Siri was just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come for Apple.
Google has acquired zagat. On the other hand, Apple partnered with yelp and opentable.
Google map is the default on iOS. But it will soon change. That’s actually a big blow to google.
Baidu as the default search engine for China. Thats a blow to google too. Don’t mess with china’s market lol.Google tried to mess with FB. Now FB allied with Apple.add twitter too if you want.
So basically, Apple is now fighting Google over …….
iMap vs google maps
Baidu search(default in china) vs google search
Siri with Yelp and open table integration vs Zagat
FB and twitter integration vs Google+
Safari vs the upcoming chrome on iOS(safari owns more than half of the mobile traffic)
It’s clear that Apple is slowly taking away the profit that google is getting from iOS.
Google isn’t the only one who made this mistake, Samsung did also.
The only thing that’s stopping Apple from doing this is Samsung’s ability to supply components to Apple that others can’t do.
Samsung would of been cool only if they didn’t start ripping off their partners.
Would you prefer to be in the rank of the 1% wealthy instead of the 70% poor (discount the morality or the religious discombobulate of politics)? Being the mass of humanity without the means to change the course of the world means nothing at all.