OK, I believe I was the first here to start mumbling about Google’s Schmidt being a mole inside of Apple via his board seat, and did that over a year ago.

He is your typical arrogant liberal { unlike Jobs, who is an ATYPICAL arrogant liberal } and like Bill Gates so long ago, was invited into the Cupertino Cafe to “get involved” in the planning and future, AS A BOARD MEMBER. What he did, was glean the ideas, run home to GOOG and tell the eggheads there, “Boys, WE GOTTA GET IN THAT GAME, they have some GREAT IDEAS!” Leading of course, to Google developing CHROME, a rival operating system, and ANDROID another operating system,and even GRABBING AWAY AdMob at the last minute, a company that AAPL had been trying to close a merger with. They they went and got into hardware, and phones.

Typical arrogant liberal “do no evil” but STEAL EVERYTHING, just change the paint on the cars you boosted.

So, GOOGLE is the enemy now?

Most would say so, but old cranky Tan, the Neanderthal knuckle dragging antediluvian dinosaur here on the AFB, has a different perspective here. Let me try and lay that out, so you left coast green boys, can rip into me for being so cranky and cantankerous.

I love Apple, despite it being seen as a bastion of pinko commie greenies and aging flower children. Why? Because they make things that NORMAL PEOPLE { unlike us here, and geeks around the world } can actually pick up, and work, without poring over user manuals, and tweaking and twiddling every obscure setting just to make the darned things work. AND the biggest thing of all, when it doesn’t work, make an appointment at the Apple Store, take the sucker in, give it to the Genius, say to him “Make this WORK please,” and they DO! Praise the Lord, pass the moonshine, and kiss the Genius!

But my “problem” with Apple personally, is their SLOW almost glacial like roll outs of the cutting edge of things, such issues as connectivity with FAST Net Servers, USB3, and other matters, including processors, come AFTER the Windoz people have been selling them for months, sometimes years.

And the penny pinching, like sub par cameras and no flash, and nickel dimeing you to death on peripherals and cables are just annoying.

But now, with ANDROID and CHROME breathing down their necks, and others coming in for BLOOD, Apple cannot afford to sit on their laurels, and leisurely issuing a tweak here, and a diddle there, calling them upgrades. If they don’t hit the metal HARD NOW, and get out and move FASTER than they are used to moving, they will, mark my words here, WILL…be AGAIN where they were when Bill Gates the MOLE, came in a grabbed the GUI and MOUSE and took away their markets, or when VHS took BETAMAX to the cleaners. Being “better” is only a temporary situation in these arenea’s you have to be WAY BETTER, MUCH FASTER, and move so fast the “Jonny-come-latelies” cannot catch you. Recently, that hasn’t been the case.

So, as much as I despise GOOG and their underhanded ways, IF THE BOYS AT CUPERTINO are as P.O.‘ed as the press makes them out to be, the next round of “improvements” needs to be full bore ahead, MOVE UP all the pending goodies, and LOAD UP this years releases with EVERYTHING.

But the iPad shows me that they haven’t learned that lesson yet. You have a camera that isn’t there, connectivity in and out limited, and they plan on nickel and dimeing you death with the cables, and input output devices.

Maybe GOOG needs to nip at their heels even more?

TanToday - 16 March 2010 11:37 AM

You have a camera that isn’t there

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was AT&T that asked Apple to remove the camera. Imagine how much bandwidth that would suck up if everyone on an eat-all-you-can bandwidth deal starts video conferencing all the time. The only way to keep the cost of such plans down would be to remove the camera.

I totally agree that Apple needs competition, but they don’t need a one-time friend to undermine one of their biggest revenue streams by commoditising the “secret sauce”.

wheeles - 16 March 2010 11:45 AM

I totally agree that Apple needs competition, but they don’t need a one-time friend to undermine one of their biggest revenue streams by commoditising the “secret sauce”.

Who else is around that CAN scare them enough to actually PUT THE PEDAL TO THE METAL, and get into overdrive?

TanToday - 16 March 2010 11:49 AM

wheeles - 16 March 2010 11:45 AM

I totally agree that Apple needs competition, but they don’t need a one-time friend to undermine one of their biggest revenue streams by commoditising the “secret sauce”.

Who else is around that CAN scare them enough to actually PUT THE PEDAL TO THE METAL, and get into overdrive?

I would imagine Jobs himself can be pretty scary.

In a lot of cases I think Apple has a wait and see attitude. BluRay for example (in this case I think BR is a dead end. Flash or the cloud is where data storage is going.)

Apple already has plenty of competitors. I don’t for one moment think Apple has been sitting on their laurels, they just prioritise some things over others.

There is a difference between the Apple that let Microsoft steal the crown jewels and the Apple of today.

Firstly the Apple which was run by the Sugarwater salesman and his crack team of bean counters did nothing original save managing to oust the only thing that was driving the creativity, Mr Jobs. The legal department at the time should have been well aware that when they got Microsoft to work on Word and Excel for the Mac the wording was so loose that they basically gave the house away.

Secondly the team in charge these days are much more in control and on message and as such I think they are ready to step up to the challenge. The only inkling to updated product lines is the quote from Jobs saying that the next iPhone will be an A+ update and as such I am looking forward to it.

We’re currently in the exhibition season where everyone is laying out their plans and showing what this will do and what that will do and getting press coverage. So with this stuff going on it looks like the competition is making improvements while really all they are doing is showing people where they are going.

Meanwhile Apple is being silent. This means that everyone is doing the skating to where the puck is and not where it will be by the time these things hit.

The single most important update this year will be the next version of the iPhone OS and what it will bring. Nothing is known about it yet. But boy they are working on it. I hope they don’t leave it as late as WWDC to launch it, or worse still announce it but only time will tell on that one.

The glacial moves are part of how Apple works. It’s a large company but not with a huge development team - any idea how many non-store employees Apple has now? They can only do so much.

The competing teams, Google and MS, have lots of engineers and such but very few people who know how to reign engineers in and get them to produce stuff that works and is not just full of cool crap “which we put in because man it’s cool - we’re geeks.”

There was a product demo that hit the net yesterday from SXSW of a magazine purchasing kiosk. You can see it here. The question it raised really is WHY bother to do this. OK it’s kinda cool - but are you really going to search around for a physical device to make a purchase rather than just visit the store on the device in your pocket?

If you leave engineers in charge this is what you get.

Look at what happened with Google when they launched Buzz. Again a product defined by engineers and geeks who have no concept of how things work outside their ivory towers and so stuff like your ex-boyfriend who is hate mailing you daily suddenly becomes one of your most important contacts. It seems they have a problem thinking outside the box.

Is the Pad the next big thing? Is this the future of computing? I don’t know - but I am willing to shell out some cash to try it out. The question really is when the killer apps get released and we’re using these things more and more and the desktops and laptops less and less will Apple be the company that owns the market?

The only problem that Apple really have is if another company produces something that just works enough. It doesn’t matter that it is not as good or as brilliantly put together but it works just enough and is cheaper enough for people to flock to it. This is how Microsoft won the war. There is a possibility that Google could do this but I am pretty certain that Apple is lean enough and fast enough to react.

At the moment the battle seems to be squaring up with all the freetards spreading the meme that “Apple is Evil” which, considering that Google is a company that makes its money by carefully storing and examining the minutia of everyones lives online and selling them on, is a little ironic.

The only other point which we don’t know at the moment - is how much of Apple’s roadmap is Google aware of? How many things were brought up at the Board Meetings and handed to the Schmidt? How far ahead is Google now aware of Apple’s plans? Because that makes playing the chess game all that much easier.

Yes, I also find it strange that Apple will go through such pains to keep a new product release quite. But at the same time, inviting a competitor to set on their board of directors. Arrogance or maybe a sense of invincibility.

FWIW Google WAS working on a phone when Apple announced iPhone so it was not a new project to Google. Also technology is in the market place and reverse engineering is what happens everyday. As you said, Apple is not on cutting edge when it introduces or uses stuff. Touch and multi-touch was out there before iPhone. Apple’s strength is how it uses technology and not in being first to use technology.

If there is a weakness that cannot be fixed or protected once found by a competitor, isn’t it better to abandon as early as possible a business direction built on the weakness? Therefore isn’t it best that Apple did let Google have the information to attack? A bit like letting your kids catch illnesses while they’re small, to protect them when they’re adult. A small sacrifice today delivers a big benefit later.

Apple can’t afford to have a business that depends on competitors being slow and clumsy.This Google conflict will result in Apple making small changes that make the business much more secure.

Apple also left the key under the mat, and all internal doors unlocked in the original iPhone OS; hackers swarmed over it searching for and exploiting flaws. Two years later, and iPhone has acquired battle hardened security at a low cost.

I’m with Tan; this Google spat is good for Apple. It’s also the kind of destabilisation that Steve Jobs the businessman is a past master at exploiting.

MacOz - 16 March 2010 05:40 PM

FWIW Google WAS working on a phone when Apple announced iPhone so it was not a new project to Google.

Fair point save that up until the iPhone all the screenshots looked like a RIM killer. Then the iPhone was released and Android looked and felt completely different.