Steely_D wrote:

Those competing product lines and general chaos in hardware design began before Amelio showed up. You can revisit some of the problems Apple endured by going here.  For long stretches, it was not a well-run company. 

IIRC, Jobs winnowed matters down to the four-quadrant strategy because Apple was not only unfocused in terms of hardware development but also because it was losing a lot of money and market share because of Windows 95. Jobs moved away from the four quadrants when the company became more profitable, especially after the iPhone came out. The iPhone made Apple the commercially dominant company it never was during the Mac-only days. 

Is Apple rudderless? I don't know if I'd go that far. I've read that its secretiveness extends to inside the company. When people from different groups inside Apple team up to work on a project that bridges those internal divisions, they have to slowly feel out how much others know about secret projects and information. Apple doesn't like to be the first mover in a new product field or endeavor, so it looks like the company is losing out to others. Apple was relatively late to the cell phone party, for instance, and other firms were pushing tablets well before the iPad showed up. 

I'm not sure why you think that the diversification of the iPhone X is a sign of a rudderless company. Apparently not as many iPhone Xs were sold as Apple watchers predicted, but Apple is still winning in terms of total smartphone industry revenue and net income. Would you prefer that Apple merely sold older models to serve the lower-end market instead of coming out with various flavors of its flagship phone?

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
It's that whole thing of do you want an iPod, iPhone, iPhone XL, iPhone X, iPad mini, iPad, iPad Pro, blah blah blah...

 Steely_D wrote: 
Didn't they just roll out a spendy iPhone with a less expensive bastard child? 

 miamizsun wrote: 


This is why I sold my stock after Leader died. The company is rudderless. 

Remember the Gil Amelio days? The unfocused company began to create multiple products with only minimal differences and consumers got lost in the options. Jobs cut through the crap, defined four simple products, and the company flourished.

Apple’s Four Quadrant product grid

Complexity distorts information flow and decelerates clear decision-making. Any decision made in the face of complex operations, unnecessary product types or models are increasingly incoherent. Companies that do well have a sense of clarity and focus with less complex operations and product lineups.

Companies whose business models are simple can replicate their successes repeatedly. Apple’s co-founder Steven Paul Jobs (Steve Jobs) realized this quite early. At the MacWorld Expo in 1998, Steve revealed a four-quadrant product grid. Upon his return to Apple, Steve toured the company and found that there were far too many teams working on the Mac. Each team had different names and viewpoint of the Mac in mind and lacked coherence. He came up with the idea of a simple four-quadrant grid with two rows labeled as ‘Consumer’, ‘Professional’, and the columns as ‘Portable’ and ‘Desktop’. This way Apple engineers and managers had to focus on only four core product areas and the company could deploy the best engineers in the right area. 

 or 

Apple Plans Giant High-End iPhone, Lower-Priced Model

6.5 inch screen?

 Proclivities wrote: 
sounds plausible

but they're being sued

and weren't they on the that net neutering band wagon?

Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones To Save Their Battery Life

Confirming iPhone owners' suspicions that Apple purposefully slows the operation of older phones, Apple says that it does just that — and that slowing down processors makes it easier for old batteries to perform after they've begun to lose capacity...

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
that depends

 miamizsun wrote: 
The free market in action, right?

smart incentive

You can get an Apple Watch for only $25 ... with one small catch

You know, there's a predecessor to the iPhone X - it was sleek and innovative. And completely flopped:

The Twentieth Anniversary Mac

Apple and Aetna hold secret meetings to bring the Apple Watch to millions of Aetna customers

 miamizsun wrote: 

Apple takes considerable steps to make sure that aggregate data cannot yield identities of specific individuals. The Washington Post recently wrote an article claiming that this loyalty to customer privacy could hobble Apple's attempts to catch up with Google and Amazon in artificial intelligence.  


ScottFromWyoming wrote:

I think your opinion is right on this for most of the time. For many years (before Jobs' return and OS X), Apple ran on the attitude of rejecting technologies "not invented here" and tried to push home-grown technologies that were supposedly better than the industry's standards. Jobs redux was still a control freak (two-button mice would confuse users, and I like the round hockey puck shape! The iPhone's 3.5" screen is the perfect size, and if your cell signal cuts out because your grip is blocking the hidden antenna...well, you're holding the phone wrong!). Don't get me started on the BS you still have to go through to change your hard drive in an iMac...

Jobs supposedly once said something like, "It's not the customer's job to know what he wants. We get to figure that out", and for the most part Apple does a great job at that with the first iteration of a product. The company actually does a lot of work with focus groups to create and revise prototype/beta products. Unfortunately it doesn't always respond to the customers' response of "Wow, great product! But you could change/add this feature in the next release?" However, Apple has in the past lightened up and made their products more flexible or responsive to customer requests.

If Apple regards this HomePod as the AI Trojan horse it absolutely needs to have in customers' homes in order to keep up with Amazon and Google in the field, it will bend over backwards to make it work with your current audio setup and relationships with other companies like Amazon and Google. Amazon Echo and Google Home and the HomePod are basically stationary smartphones providing shortcuts to information services, purchases and personal-assistant apps. I think Apple will carefully try to protect your privacy while gathering anonymized data from the HomePod because it can use that data to improve voice-recognition services and natural-language technologies for use in future services and hardware products. Voice-activated interaction with your computer may be the new OS (shades of Star Trek). Farhad Manjoo wrote a good article in the NYT about Apple's cautious steps into AI.

Personally, I'll be interested to see if Apple sticks with this project. After Jobs returned, projects were rejected or discontinued if they couldn't create a marketable product within a year or two. Apple tends to neglect a product line from time to time until customers' complain, especially if it's chasing money with another product or service. We'll see if Apple is willing to keep at the long game again. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
The Alexa device has an available remote voice controller; I imagine the Apple product would as well.

 miamizsun wrote: 
No, but that's a fun one to roll out every once in a while.
 
Some parts of Apple's ecosystem are top-down "you must do it this way," and they don't do enough beta testing to find out how people want to use the product. Of course they can't please every possible variant but I don't want my audio to come out of that device, either. My setup isn't as elaborate as Steely's but the point is the same. I want it to handle commands without me needing to find my phone etc. Speaking of which, the "Remote" app on the phone now only controls an Apple TV, not iTunes (I think, I sort of remember figuring out how to do it but it's changed anyway) ... that's not data gathering, it's just the old, "we've changed the ecosystem so now you have to buy new gear" trick.

I would consider this device with only a small speaker that acknowledges the command but does not attempt to play the music. And I would want a remote indoor/outdoor microphone for it so I could control it from the back yard. A voice controller for my voice controller.

 Steely_D wrote: 
as the end user/consumer, i think you're saying that the device should have at least two modes

one that is stand alone and one that is slave

your observation/criticism is legit for alexa and google home too

their outcome is to provide a quality product to further their ecosystem (integrate into your daily life) and gather data

you: i want a product to do what i want when i want

them: you are the product

Good idea: some sort of processor/sensor combo to optimize the speaker.
Bad idea: making the speaker itself the superintelligent hub.

Should acknowledge that people use the laptop/pad/desktop/ATV to look and and control their music, and then connect to peripheral speakers through WiFi/Airplay.

The pad and ATV and phone need to be able to broadcast to multiple sites, dammit. My desktop/laptop can, but I have small speakers throughout my house all playing simultaneously. Can't have that happen through the iPhone unless I use it as the remote to control my laptop. It should be able to do it natively, so it's more acceptable to the average non-nerd.

 Proclivities wrote: 

i've got an alexa and google home(s)

they're not ultra hi-fi but they work for me great for podcasts streaming rp around the house

the GH you can group together and light up your place (they sync with each other)

when i want to go all out i usually use my A5s or headphones 

 pigtail wrote: 
Yeah, it's pretty pricey - like everything Apple makes.

 miamizsun wrote: 
Only if you can afford it!