Zephyrus of the Anemoi

.the ramblings of a radman.

Tag: Samsung

Best Over First or, how Apple avoids jetpack design and wins every time

September 18, 2012 /

Just a couple days ago, I wrote about how Apple’s new mantra appears to be “Best Over First”, as they continue to improve their hardware and software by focusing on adding features better than everyone else, rather than adding features before everyone else. My neighbor and bestie (a proud Android user) often ribs me for Apple’s announcement of year(s)-old features as though they are brand new. I’d argue, of course, that to the most of the populace, they are new features. Much of the world is a lot less tech-informed than those that focus on spec checklists (as many Android fans and even quite a few iPhone die-hards are wont to do) and therefore just don’t realize that LTE has been around for a few years. In fact, Apple usually benefits greatly from waiting for an emerging technology to mature a bit before including it in their software and hardware, as they’ve been able to analyze where the tech fails to meet expectations in their competitors and (usually) improve on it with their implementation.

It seems I’m not the only person to be supportive of Apple’s decision to focus on making sure their new features are the best, rather than the first. An post over at FJP (a site whose name directly applies to the title of that post and mine) about how Apple avoids implementing “jetpack design” just to be the first to include a new feature rather than making sure they release the best version of a feature (a mark that they occasionally miss, but that they hit often enough that it’s the reason the iPhone 5 preorders sold out in less than an hour).

Bonus points go to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber for pointing me to the post which, in a bizarre, circular fashion, pointed me back to a Macworld article by Gruber from 2010 about the original iPad: an article that is eerily prescient when read today in a world that has seen the release of three more generations of iPhone and two more generations of iPad.

In tech: Best beats first, almost every time

September 13, 2012 /

It’s not often that I read a post on MacDailyNews and I don’t close the window in disgust at the idiocy in the comments. Most of the time, it immediately devolves into political extremism and fanboy mudslinging. The number of idiots that use every opportunity to accuse someone of being wrong because they are a liberal or a conservative (which, of course, is almost never the issue at hand) is astonishing.

Today, however, I found two comments that were actually worth reading and prompted me to share some thoughts about them that I’ve had in the past, but never articulated as well as one of the comments. I’ve included the first comment, from “Michael” below:

…what you’ll find is that other companies did a lot of things first before Apple. Apple is not about [being] first. Apple is about being best. If you live your life chasing first to everything, you’ll never be best at anything. Until you understand this, you will not understand Apple.

This has always summed up my feelings whenever I see people complaining about whatever features Apple “left out” of their latest hardware. In fact, I’ve already begun hearing complaints from others about why Apple left out NFC or changed their dock connector. The dock connector question is easily answered by watching the video Apple posted on their website about the new iPhone 5, in which Jony Ive specifically talks about how the old connector prevented the new form factor we’re looking at today. Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior VP answered some questions (read more in the original interview, from AllThingsD) about the dock connector as well as NFC.

NFC is still a toy, not a tool. While it is growing in popularity, it is still spread too thin to be useful in everyday use. This is the same reasoning behind the lack of LTE in the last two versions of the iPhone. Until this year, only Verizon had any real LTE coverage and even their markets were spread too thin. It does not make sense to include technology that only a very tiny percentage of your customers can use. Time and resources are better spent developing features that everyone has an opportunity to enjoy. On top of that, LTE is a power-hungry technology. Android devices that use LTE have consistently had to increase their battery size to compensate. Plus, they required two separate chips in CDMA devices, one for LTE/GSM and another for CDMA. This, and the increased size of the battery is the reason for the sudden growth spurt in screen sizes. It wasn’t a feature, it was a necessity.

By waiting until LTE and CDMA technology could reside on a single chip, Apple was able to avoid the worst of the screen size problem (width). Obviously, they’ve still chosen to increase the screen size and I reserve judgment until I can hold one in my hand. By not making it wider, I know that I can comfortably hold and operate it with one hand. But, I want to see how it fits in my pocket and how difficult it is to reach the top of the screen before I decide if it was the right decision.

Finally, I’ve come to the second comment I wanted to talk about (from NCG598):

According to a report by Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, the performance gains Apple reported for the new A6 chip and other factors means that “it looks like Apple has integrated two ARM Cortex A15 cores on Samsung’s 32nm LP HK+MG process.”

This one, mentions an article on Anandtech that cannot be verified until the iPhone 5 hits the market. However, based on the speed increases and the way Apple names their chips, it seems likely that the A6 processor uses the as-yet unreleased ARM Cortex A15 in a dual-core configuration. If this turns out to be true, it means that Apple beat a number of companies to market with the next-generation of chips. This is notable, as Samsung announced that they had begun sampling the processor several months ago with the intention of bringing it to market this summer, a deadline they missed. While there is still some disagreement on whether or not these assumptions are true, the much more knowledgable members of the discussion have been unable to draw any other conclusions.

Obviously, Apple prefers to be best over first. But whenever they can take both, they will.

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