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Apple is officially dropping iPhone support for web apps in the EU - The Verge (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Apple being Apple again. Just why does anyone actually like that company?

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[–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

create new product categories

I'm wondering what they are. The Newton was kind of cool, but before it's time. mp3 players had been out for years before Apple jumped on the bandwagon. Same with phones. I hope this doesn't come across as snarky "fuck apple", I'm genuinely curious.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    They don't create new product categories. What they do is enter an existing category, do it the Apple Way, which is generally high-quality and integrated well into their ecosystem, and thus they become the default in people's minds.

    They've almost never done anything new, but they integrate existing technologies better than almost every other company.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Oh, man! Quite a bit of traffic on my original comment. I won't spend time engaging on these since they're pile-ons, but this is objectively trivial to refute.

    "They've almost never done anything new"? Seriously? How about the user interface when everyone was using DOS? Or the Mac Plus/SE/any of half a dozen other macs in the 80s and early 90s that redefined what a computer could act like and look like? When every other PC was a beige box with identical specs?

    Maybe the iPod, which redefined that category and made every other MP3 player obsolete overnight? The iPhone, perhaps? This was the absolute gimme, like I can't imagine how you made that comment with the iPhone hanging around. What were phones before the iPhone? Blackberries and flip phones. Yeah, it couldn't copy/paste for two years, but Steve wanted it released, lol.

    The iPad would be another. There were smart watches before Apple's, sort of, but they were pretty crappy and didn't do the same stuff.

    While we're at it, find me some PC laptops that ever debuted with the stuff Apple put in theirs. High-res screens? Touch ID? Face ID? Even OSX, which is old as hell, is built on UNIX and rock-stable -- and was definitely innovative when it first came out, as were some of its predecessors. When OSX came out, your alternative was Windows 95.

    Then there are the airpods, I don't think there were any wireless bluetooth earbuds before those, although I might be wrong. And finally, despite it being way too expensive and five generations away from being useful, the ski goggles. Before you say there's other VR goggles, recall that only Apple is doing that as AR computing instead of dumb fucking avatars in virtual conference rooms that probably run telemetry on how big your living room is and sell it.

    By all means, say Apple is greedy as hell, but don't make stuff up.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're making up a lot of stuff, Xerox had a gui UI for a whole decade before apple and they certainly weren't the only ones.

    The MP3 player they made was literally just a feature limited version of already popular devices. I got my arcos a year before the first apple device was released and it had every single feature that apple would slowly add in every new expensive version over the next decade

    Apple does hype and marketing, that's their innovation - taking a feature restricted version of a technology and getting celebrities and media idiots to pretend it's the best thing in the world and actively ignore or discount the many better options.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yes, Xerox PARC existed, and was totally non-commercial / didn't offer any product. Saying the iPod was the same thing as all those crappy MP3 players we all lugged around in the aughts is objectively LOL. The rest of your comment is pretty much ad-hominem and editorial -- and of course, you don't refute the rest of my points because you can't.

    Bottom line, discussions like this on Lemmy are no different than Reddit ever was. They're circlejerks. I figured I'd drop in this one time to note that, but ultimately it's pretty boring.

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  • [+] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Oh, man. I’m definitely not going to point by point. On a sub-argument that’s not even the topic of the thread? These are minutes in my life I don’t get back. But, seriously? My argument is invalid because I said Windows 95 instead of XP? And I must not have used any good MP3 players? By the way, they all sounded the same since they were playing 128 kbps MP3s… by the definition of how those work, they had to 😂

    And just to consider this from another angle, if apple did get the goggles from hololens, where did Microsoft get their UI from in the 80s? How about Android?

    Wow, I am so, so done seeking out a non-groupthink argument in this format ever. On any site. The memes are still better than Reddit though!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Hey man, pick one. Are we supposed to debunk your comment point by point, like you demanded of me. Or is it wasting minutes to destroy your corporate dribble. Make up your mind.

    Here's a new fallacy for you baby, this one doesn't have big words so it is easier to remember: “moving the goalpost”.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So for you, you're objectively not smart enough to have the debate with. You're all set, you don't need to do anything 👍

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  • [+] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Ok ok, I'll give you what you seem to need. Let's step back a moment and recall the context of this thread: Apple's being shady as hell about complying with the DMA and everyone's piling on. I've noted that Apple is pretty greedy, but probably not as objectively evil as some other big tech companies, so this is a circlejerk. But, it's verboten to say that Apple's not terrible. I've also said that at least they innovate, but that's also verboten. You can't say Apple innovates. So, that's why we're here.

    Now, going from memory, I've listed some Apple products that I think were innovative for their time. You've made a few counterpoints. Btw, it did take some time for that reply. I hope you weren't... researching? If not, congratulations: you're fellow GenX and either you have an eidetic memory or you work in UI/UX. Either way, you did teach me a couple of things, so thanks for that.

    Let's go point by point:

    • MS stole from Xerox and Apple did too, but Apple was sued - You didn't mention that Xerox lost the case, since you can't patent the concept of a UI. Also, Apple released their first Mac more than a year before Microsoft released Windows 1.0, which by all measure was utterly atrocious and looked slapped together. Are you sure Microsoft didn't borrow from Apple instead of Xerox? You're leaving out all the context here and I don't come away thinking the early Macs were not innovative.
    • Apple stole from LG when they noticed Google was building a mobile OS - You didn't mention that although LG sued Apple, Apple then produced design docs that proved they'd been working on that years earlier... and LG lost the case. I'm not even going to bother linking to Wikipedia. I didn't remember the Prada, though. You omitted things here too, so I'm not feeling like the iPhone wasn't innovative. It was the first commercially viable smartphone. You make a good point that Apple and Google were in an arms race on smartphones, though I'm not sure if you knew you were making that point. Of course, Google being Google, they bought the solution, still got beaten to the market, and then Android absolutely sucked ass for years anyway. Not to mention, early Android was basically iOS with a Google search box and moar telemetry.
    • 192 kbps existed and so do hardware DACs - I didn't know what DACs were, so thanks for that. But, I wonder if anyone could hear the difference on the headphones of the time? I also hadn't heard of the Cowon and don't know anyone who had one. I wonder if they sold... eleven units? Maybe you meant Creative Zen? Creative sold a ton of MP3 players and I had a few, but the iPod was much better. This is a straw man argument anyway, though. You're saying that since one random MP3 player that nobody bought had a better DAC, and also that 192 kbps exists (this is literally just offered randomly), the iPod was not innovative. I'm not sure it's working out for you.

    As for this:

    The real issue for you isn’t your “done seeking out a non-group think argument”, the reality is you are desperately looking for a group-think group that only sees Apple as some all mighty and infallible company that can do no wrong and none can do better than them. I wish you the best of luck finding such a group, but as you’ve noticed, it won’t be here.

    That sounds great. If I were 20, I'd be very intimidated and I'd feel cast out. I'd be sad. But actually, that's ... another straw man argument! Love those. I'm "desperately" looking for a group that thinks Apple is all-mighty, I won't find it here, good luck with that, etc. Well yes, but actually no. Congrats on proving that a thing I never said is unavailable to me 😂

    That took 20 minutes and I could have done literally anything else with that time. I should bill you.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago

    They existed before iPod, they just didnt get the marketing blitz Apple did. Cowon comes to mind, and had much better quality audio.

    I did some research on this, because I was a big fan of MP3 players in the late 90s early 2000s and never heard of them. Turns out that the only Cowon Mp3 player I could find from around the iPod launch was the iAudio CW200, which had a capacity of 256MB.

    This explains why I had never heard of it, as I was shopping for HDD-based players that could hold my entire library(I was looking at PJB, Nomad, Archos, etc).

    Sorry but this illustrates OP's point. The iPod was the smallest HDD-based player on the market for years, all the other HDD players were chunky and could barely fit in a pocket. All the flash-based players had pitiful capacity. It wasn't that there were no MP3 players, it was that all the products had compromises that made them not ready for mass adoption.

    While OP is overstating some things, your counter examples are rife with oversights like this.

    As an example you are badmouthing Apple's "low resolution displays", while missing the fact that the MacBook Pro was the first ever mass market high dpi laptop. Ironically Samsung had produced a limited production laptop with a similar screen, but because Samsung lacks focus and had 1000 different laptop SKUs, they didn't make it a premiere feature of their brand, instead Apple simply bought out Samsung's entire manufacturing capacity for years and put them in their laptops.

    This is the pattern. There are interesting technologies, but they are in products with mediocre design or appeal, and are not mass produced. Apple identifies these technologies, optimizes them, integrates them, ensures that there is a good user experience, makes a million of them, makes a billion on that, then changes the entire landscape of the market they entered by virtue of their success.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    The iPod was so derivative of the creative labs mp3 player that Apple ultimately had to pay them $100 million.

    The Lisa and later the Macintosh copied from xerox. Something that everyone was doing around then. Amiga and Atari ST both had guis. Hell even the commodore 64 had Geos. The Mac didn't even get color until 1987.

    Handspring had a smart phone, complete with touch screen and apps, years before the iPhone.

    Mac os didn't have proper multitasking until version 7.5, years after Windows had it.

    Onkyo created the first true wireless earbuds.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Everything, all of that existed way before Apple. Just because you are ignorant of history doesn't make your point right. Apple got all of their ideas from interacting with other companies in private, then stealing their ideas. Jobs was no longer invited to certain demos because of that kind of shenanigans. And oh god, OSX is NOT build directly from UNIX. It's BSD which they scrapped from the NeXT computer. Everything you are spouting is just wrong. Apple is just good at marketing to chumps who care more about status and looks than usability, and who just buy into the cult mentality and lap all of Apple's bullshit without rubbing two neurons together long enough to notice they are being scalped with overpriced crap.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Please do continue to spew ad-hominem copypasta from every Apple hate thread in the history of Reddit like you're a first-gen LLM trained on r/foss posts. "All of that existed way before Apple" ... please feel free to refute each product I listed as being innovative or new by showing where it previously existed. I'd love to understand how some form of the iPhone was around way before Apple, or the iPad -- please go for it.

    As for the statement that OSX is based on BSD, wow! Such an important distinction when BSD is a descendant of UNIX... this is a nice little straw man thing, please go look up what a straw man argument is.

    On Jobs getting banned from demos, that's actually hilarious. But please do list any products I named that Apple objectively stole. I'm sure you have all the info there.

    Just super fun times, I always hoped that Lemmy would have a higher level of discussion than Reddit. But how can it, when it's the same people and they're even more self-important? :D

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, the circlejerking and dog piling from people who have no idea what they are talking about is actually far worse here than it was at Reddit - but just know, we aren’t all as misinformed as these people. You’re absolutely correct.

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