Apple doesn't blindly copy? What do you call Apple Music then? Ping? What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original.
In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?
Not everything. "Redmond Start Your Copiers" was in response to some very specific copying over the previous year, though I don't remember the details anymore.
> What do you call Apple Music then?
I call it a subscription model to the iTunes store. Subscription models have been around for a long time, even though Spotify is the poster child for applying them to Music I don't think it makes sense to say Apple is copying Spotify (or anyone else) by having a subscription music service, it's the logical evolution of paid music services. You could certainly argue that Spotify proved the customer demand was there (as well as the ability to convince the labels to go along with this), but it's not like Spotify invented the concept.
> Ping?
An unmitigated disaster. But I'm not sure who you think that was copying. I can't think of any pre-existing service like Ping.
> What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify?
Provide a seamless "it just works" experience across all Apple devices, including integration into their customers' existing iTunes libraries, and into Siri, including the forthcoming Homepod. And I think it's fair to give Apple Music credit for iCloud Music Library as well, which is great.
> That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original.
Can you elaborate?
> In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?
Apple Photos does it all on-device.
Also, I really don't think you can claim that using machine learning to classify photos is something that Google owns. It's been an obvious idea for literally decades, it's just taken until now before it was feasible to do.
>Can you elaborate?
http://geeknizer.com/what-apple-copied-webos-android-wp8-bb1...
There's plenty more. The chrome tab switcher one is the most obvious ripoff.
Then you can add phablets, mini-tablets, big screen phones. Apple for years attacked these devices. They put out an actual television commercial saying any phone where your thumb couldn't reach the whole screen was a bad design. Steve Jobs famously said mini-tablets "should come with sandpaper, so users can file down their fingers"
Then they got up on stage and gave a ludicrous political talking point excuse as to why they had not produced a big screen phone prior to the iPhone 6+ by saying that "big screen display tech wasn't ready yet", absurd because Android devices had been shipping high-DPI Retina-quality displays 2 years prior, displays that when evaluated by DisplayMate often ranked as good or better than the small iPhone display.
The reality is, they had an institutional bias against larger and heavier devices, and got caught with their pants down when they found out that many people, especially in Asia, loved giant phones. Prior to that, Apple fan forums were full of people saying racist things like Asian hands are too small for big phones.
Or how about multi-tasking windows? They criticized that, and then copied Windows Mobile's split-screen snapping identically for the iPad Pro, it was so obvious that Walt Mossberg instantly gasped and called it out during their presentation.
>Apple Photos does it all on-device.
Does it worse, costs more, and the majority of users aren't aware, and don't care. "It's been an obvious idea for literally decades, it's just taken until now before it was feasible to do." Right, everyone else's idea is either obvious, or the innovation to implement it doesn't matter at all. Leaving aside that what you call "feasibility" wasn't just about compute power, but also required conceptual leaps to improve quality as well as ImageNet. It wasn't until CNNs and ImageNet, that the leap was made and quality started to get dramatically better to the point that it was worth shipping to users. And it wasn't until Google shipped it at scale and got industry applause for making photo management dramatically easier and hassle free, that suddenly they had to fast follow.
This is the problem with arguing with Apple loyalists. The constant hagiography. I work for Google, and I criticize the hell out of the failures and missteps Google makes. It is not perfect and I have no problem pointing out it out.
But it seems arguing with Apple fanboys is like arguing with a political pundit on a Cable news network. Their goal is to defend the image of their target no matter what.
Apple copies stuff. Sometimes they innovate, sometimes they just copy what is already proven to be a success without anything but superficial changes.
Going back to my original point, the constant minimization of other people's innovation and achievements, and the boosting of every Apple announced feature as if it's a breakthrough innovation, rubs people the wrong way, and that's why you see people pointing out hypocrisy.
I've been in this industry since the 80s. The marvelous iPhone you hold in your hand today is also the result of a long litany of achievements of others, Apple stands on the shoulders of giants.
In addition, Apple Music is not just a clone of Spotify. Besides the integration I talked about before, there's also the focus on human curation along with Beats 1. AIUI Spotify relies on algorithms to put together playlists (I'm not a Spotify customer). Apple took the core concept, of a music subscription service, and produced their own unique take on it. Even if you think making a music subscription service is copying (and I stand by my claim that it's an obvious evolution of the music store concept), you have to admit that this falls in the "great artists steal" side of things.
> Multitasking / Task Switcher – Copied from WebOS
Apple's task switcher looks like CoverFlow, which is something they invented many years ago. Unless you're arguing that WebOS owns the concept of seeing the apps that you can switch to, but I don't buy that (besides the fact that seeing the apps you're switching to is a reasonably obvious thing to do once you have the computing resources for it, didn't Windows Vista introduce basically this exact same thing many years ago?).
> Calendar – Copied from Sunrise
I literally can't understand what the description for this one is trying to describe.
> iTunes Radio
iTunes has had radio support since forever, so I don't understand this claim.
> Back Navigation – Copied from BlackBerry OS 10
I've never used a BlackBerry, but after some searching around, it appears that BlackBerry's horizontal swipe gesture is not a back navigation gesture, so this claim is bogus.
> Notification Center / Toggles – Copied from Android, Samsung TouchWhiz
My recollection is that notification / control center was actually based on stuff people were doing with jailbreak.
> Lock Screen – Copied form Android, WP8
Haha what, are you serious? iPhone invented the slide-to-unlock (Apple even had a patent on it!), it's the other OS's that copied Apple here.
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> Then you can add phablets, mini-tablets, big screen phones. Apple for years attacked these devices.
What does that have to do with this conversation? Apple's pretty famous for saying they'll never do something right up until they do it. Remember the iPod Video?
But the point is, customer preferences changed over time. It used to be that everybody loved small devices (and many people still do). If Apple had introduced a 5.5" device back in, say, 2008, it would have been a humongous flop. So I don't understand what you're trying to say here, beyond acknowledging the fact that Apple recognized that customer demand for larger devices increased to the point where it made sense for Apple to expand their product line to meet that demand.
> Or how about multi-tasking windows? They criticized that, and then copied Windows Mobile's split-screen snapping identically for the iPad Pro
I am not very familiar with Windows Mobile (or even aware that it had split-screen snapping) so I can't comment here, except to question your "they criticized that" comment. When did Apple publicly comment about split-screen multitasking prior to adding support for it?
> Does it worse, costs more, and the majority of users aren't aware, and don't care.
Apple Photos is free.
As for "don't care", this is nonsense. Not only are you underestimating the number of people who go with Apple because they know Apple respects their privacy, you're also implying "it's ok to violate user privacy as long as they don't know you're doing it", which is a pretty shocking attitude.
> Right, everyone else's idea is either obvious
Oh give me a break. It's not my fault if you're picking obvious ideas to try and argue are unique. Or are you really going to try and argue that classifying and searching images isn't something people have wanted to do for decades?
Besides, most core ideas are obvious, and it's the details and execution that matters.
> And it wasn't until Google shipped it at scale and got industry applause for making photo management dramatically easier and hassle free, that suddenly they had to fast follow.
You really don't think Apple was looking into doing image classification and searching before Google released theirs? Just because Apple doesn't talk about upcoming plans doesn't mean they weren't already working on this. I'm very skeptical that this was a "fast follow" to copy Google, especially because Apple Photos gained this capability at the same time that the entire OS was upgraded with machine learning in all sorts of places. This is most assuredly just a case of it became feasible to do, so both Google and Apple did it at the same time.
> This is the problem with arguing with Apple loyalists. The constant hagiography.
This is the problem with arguing with Apple haters. Their insistence on retreating into accusing Apple users of cult-like or religious behavior to avoid having to actually construct good arguments.
> But it seems arguing with Apple fanboys is like arguing with a political pundit on a Cable news network. Their goal is to defend the image of their target no matter what.
Insulting the people you're arguing with is a terrible idea. Accusing people of being fanboys because they disagree with you is incredibly close-minded and offensive, and demonstrates that you're not arguing in good faith.
> Apple copies stuff.
Uh, yes, they copy things and make them better. That's was the foundation of this entire thread. You even quoted Steve Jobs saying "good artists copy, great artists steal". The argument here is that you're accusing them of "blindly copy[ing]", as well as implying that the companies they've "copied" are the sole inventors of the concept without any recognition that most of these core ideas have been around for a long time. Apple is literally famous for taking things that other companies have demonstrated the viability of and doing it better.
If you really want to accuse Apple of blindly copying, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Watson/Sherlock. That's by far the most famous case of Apple directly cloning someone else (and is notable in part because this isn't a case where Apple improved on the original, they merely copied it).
