Maybe Samsung needs to take another look at Apple.
You don't need to be first, Apple has repeatedly claimed to have the first of its kind but it was always just a clever rebrand of an existing technology. Sure somethings they did do first but sometimes it takes Apple years to adopt something and they will still claim they did it first.
I actually don't care who does it first. Its who does it best that matters.
I think the main difference is that Samsung is primarily a hardware company. Their phones are showcases of what they can do with screens, sensors etc.. Once they have shown that, companies like Apple will buy said screens from Samsung.
And in the meantime Samsung's credibility will sank. I don't buy it that they did it to showcase the technology. They could have done the same with a prototype showcased to a selected few. They went loud in order to awe the public and it blew in their face. Which sends the message that they don't really care about quality. Good luck the next time they'll try to sell a high-end phone. Perceived value is very important for a company's image.
Samsung is having a lot of quality issues lately. There is a problem with the S10, which causes it to permanently lose connectivity, requiring a device swap. It seems to affect all carriers, but for some reason is affecting Sprint more than others. Of the 7 people I know on Sprint with an S10, all have had to swap them out for replacements.
Current rumor is "there is a RF transmission issue that burns up the modem, quite literally, so then it won't read anymore. Can happen on any band. The software releases are supposed to prevent this from happening. But if your device has succumbed to this already, you're hosed." https://s4gru.com/forums/topic/7899-galaxy-s10-family-discus...
Apple sell a unified package of hardware and software. An iPhone without iOS is just another flagship phone with mediocre battery life and a good camera. Many (most) of the advantages of MacOS disappear if Apple supported the same range of commodity hardware as Microsoft.
Samsung can't credibly claim that their software is a selling point; for Apple, it's an integral part of their business.
Close to 50-50 according to their breakdown of revenue by business division [0]. Assuming "consumer electronics" and "mobile communications" mostly refer to selling finished products, and the other groups like "semiconductors" are for selling components.
Samsung is a big and diverse company, not really comparable to a more focused company like Apple. In addition to smartphones and components, they’re the largest manufacturer of TVs and a big manufacturer of appliances. If you look at the larger Samsung group, and not just Samsung Electronics, it includes one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, construction, life insurance, and more.
Apple doesn't do the sort of in depth R&D into things like displays that Samsung does. They do it with their A series chips, but for displays, modems etc. they source from the likes of Samsung etc.
Yes, am sure, they may have future plans to develop something in house, but I was talking about what's going on currently. I mean they probably have a lot of plans; develop their own modem, switch Macs to ARM etc. but that's not the reality on the ground at the moment.
Also, there's a lot of display tech that Samsung has, so Apple would either have to license these, driving the component cost higher, or work around them, which seems quite difficult.
I think there's still a fundamental difference in Samsung's focus on competing on hardware, while Apple seems to put more emphasis on building a custom software ecosystem, rarely caring (or perhaps needing) to be at the cutting-edge of phone hardware specifications.
>You don't need to be first, Apple has repeatedly claimed to have the first of its kind but it was always just a clever rebrand of an existing technology.
The First part is invention, the second part is innovation.
And yet people and media keep complaining about Apple will / might / could be late with Phablet, 5G, Folding Screen etc.... And being late will fall behind and damage the company. I could understand this coming from common people who are not well versed in tech, but tech journalist? They are either an idiot or making up stories for attention.
The masses are probably going to want one once the tech matures a bit and Apple releases one. I wouldn’t be surprised based on the way it went with MP3 players, tablets, and even touchscreen phones in the first place.
If Apple doesn’t release one, it’s because the tech is too fragile, and that’s a huge signal worth waiting for if you’re on the fence.
I'm not sure what Samsung is going to learn from Apple specifically. When Jobs demoed the iPhone in 2007, they had to hard-code the bars that indicate a full strength mobile signal. Up until the 3GS in 2009, people complained that their iPhone kept dropping calls. When Jobs, widely feted as a design and customer experience obsessive, was asked about it, he just said "You're holding it wrong".
The 2018 iPad Pro, the super-premium professional's device, still doesn't have mouse support. It's marketed with the quote "What's a computer?" which is a bit ironic.
>super-premium professional's device, still doesn't have mouse support
I would like mouse support on the iPad as much as anyone else here, but it's still a very bold assumption to say it needs to have a mouse to be called "professional". It only takes a few minutes in any large airport to see real professionals using iPads for real work.
Not having mouse support is just the tip of what's wrong with the iPad Pro as a work device. The file management system is extremely primitive compared to Android, never mind a desktop OS. A quote from an article [0] about using the Ipad Pro as a daily driver:
> Accepting this new reality – that an iPad can't manage local files and folders like a Mac – took time and dedication. If you don't adapt – if you think you can force iOS to be more like the Mac's Finder – you're going to have a bad experience in your transition to iOS.
I think people's expectations of a 'professional' device include not having to adapt their workflow to suit the device's inherent half-baked approach.
I do see people using iPad Pros for work. The head of my division is one of them. Unsurprisingly, he uses it to respond to emails and swipe through slide decks people send him. So basically, exactly like an iPad or even a $300 Android tablet. I'd wager there are 10x more users like him using iPad Pros than there are people using the Apple Pencil to do SVG or print design in Procreate or Affinity Publisher, apps that are actually tailor made for the ipad Pro.
> The 2018 iPad Pro, the super-premium professional's device, still doesn't have mouse support. It's marketed with the quote "What's a computer?" which is a bit ironic.
Is mouse support required for something to be considered a computer? Recall that computers existed before mice and professionals still managed to use them.
It's worth noting that the iPad does support pointing devices, just not mice. You probably have more than one of those pointing devices attached to your body at all times. The iPad also supports an implement that mimics something professionals have been using to draft blueprints and create art for millennia.
"What's a computer?" clearly bombed as a commercial tagline, but it raises an interesting point. The iPad is not the kind of computer you're used to seeing, but it most definitely is a computer.
> Is mouse support required for something to be considered a computer?
The ipad pro's marketing copy describes it as "..packed with our most advanced technology, it will make you rethink what iPad is capable of. And what a computer is capable of."
Computers are capable of using mice. Even a WinCE box sitting inside a touchscreen ATM will support a mouse if you can hook one up to it.
> The iPad also supports an implement that mimics something professionals have been using to draft blueprints and create art for millennia.
I don't recall ever needing to buy a pencil that was specific to the make and model of the paper I wrote on.
My original comment was in response to "Samsung should look at what Apple is doing". And what they're doing, and doing very well, appears to be writing persuasive marketing copy that turns glaring feature deficiencies into upsell opportunities like "just buy the pen for another $100".
Not all of them. The iPad is a computer and it doesn’t support mice. To be less flippant, neither did a lot of computers prior to the original Macintosh, but they were certainly computers that were capable of real, professional work. Even today, many programmers still favor text editors like vi and emacs for which the mouse is an afterthought if it’s supported at all. You don’t need a mouse to make a computer.
> In fact, Even a WinCE box sitting inside a touchscreen ATM will support a mouse if you can hook one up to it.
If WinCE is your example of “advanced technology”, I think we’re done here.
Almost all technology becomes obsolete eventually. I’m not saying that’s happened to the mouse (in fact, rumors suggest that the next version of iOS will support mice), but I also think you’re failing to acknowledge that progress sometimes means removing vestigial features. I don’t see too many people complaining that it’s hard to find floppy disks these days. You don’t have to buy the pencil. It’s a value-add. You can use your fingers. You know, the world’s most natural, intuitive, and (in almost all cases) inexpensive pointing devices. On touch-screen devices, they’re a pretty good substitute for a mouse in the same way that a USB drive is a pretty good substitute for a floppy disk.
I don’t really understand why you’re so concerned with marketing copy. My guess is that you just don’t like Apple and nothing will convince you that you’re wrong. But you are. The iPad is a computer. A pretty powerful one too. That fact that it doesn’t adopt the 40-year-old WIMP-based user interface scheme doesn’t mean much.
It seems like it comes down to intent. If Samsung has released a prototype device (could be the exact same device but labeled as prototype), then people are likely to be more forgiving. There is a certain level of expectation that a prototype has known shortcomings or incomplete consumer-level testing.
Of course, this means that competitors probably have hands-on with your device as well.
Edit: See below comment for insight into situation
No, but it's a really fucking good way to make money.
Apple has managed to convince a huge number of people to pay premium prices for average hardware and software that often loses features with each new release. Any company on the planet would be thrilled to be in that position.
> No, but it's a really fucking good way to make money.
How do you figure? It would be a huge win for consumers, but all it would accomplish is making Apple compete more. There's still more blue ocean to grab, no need to bloody the waters just yet.
The funny thing is, Samsung will work out all the bugs and take the hit to their reputation, then a few years from now, Apple will buy those parts from Samsung while claiming they invented the technology and its now the Best Thing Ever.
It turns out that it matters more to be able to exercise judgement than to be able to create brand new things.
Most really amazing products and inventions are constructed out of technological building blocks that already existed. The Mac, the iPhone, Bitcoin, and many others that I'm forgetting. Existing technology, applied together with judgement about the way it can actually be used by The Rest Of Us, for lack of a better term.
Fun fact: Not one cryptographic primitive in Bitcoin was less than (IIRC) 7 years old when Bitcoin was first released.
Well, at least Apple is not bashing competitor's innovation this time around, as they did with phablets ("nobody would buy something that big"), spen ("over my dead body"), or AMOLE ("awful), that's a progress for Apple.
We probably won't see any foldables from Apple for a long while, but, when they do release one with few cosmetic changes here and there, you are right that their loyal customers would all rise and praise it as a first breakthrough innovation.
You don't need to be first, Apple has repeatedly claimed to have the first of its kind but it was always just a clever rebrand of an existing technology. Sure somethings they did do first but sometimes it takes Apple years to adopt something and they will still claim they did it first.
I actually don't care who does it first. Its who does it best that matters.