Funny you should mention social media in the context of Apple, because they seem to have been attempting that with iTunes Ping[1] and then Apple Music.
iTunes Ping was a Jobs-era attempt to create a social network for music. It seems that they were trying to rely on integrating with Facebook, who pulled out of the collaboration in the last minute before Ping's release.
Apple hasn't seem to have given up on social networks for music. Apple Music presents a nascent networking feature where users can see what their friends are listening to.[2] It seems that Apple has learned their lesson from Ping and does not rely on a third-party for a social graph, which is instead powered by iOS contacts.
While social media is not Apple's bread and butter, they have maintained their interest in having presence in this market. I would assume that this stems from Apple's overall desire to maintain influence over on-the-top services that define the iOS experience. If they let third parties flourish even further, thirds parties gain leverage that they can use during negotiations with Apple. If third parties successfully negotiate for more features that creates parity with apps on non-Apple devices, Apple loses its differentiation on the device markets, thereby losing revenue.
(I think Stratechery wrote about Apple's service strategy that was motivated by its past relationships with Adobe and Spotify. Couldn't find the link.)
> We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix.
You're right that we haven't asked them for better on-the-top services. But it seems to be in Apple's interest to compete with third party services providers and make sure they do not supersede Apple in terms of their influence over on-the-top experiences.
Just as an aside, I do not get a social media platform for music. I don’t need a separate social network to manage, and certainly wouldn’t care what 99% of the people I know are listening to 99.9% of the time.
I think this is an interesting application of computer vision for healthcare purposes.
I've noticed that the app tends to use 15% of my CPU constantly. I wonder if there is room to improve efficiency so that the app does not hog resources.
Cook makes shareholders happy but he's not much of a leader. Jobs was a leader.
The butterfly keyboard catastrophe whereby Apple sold broken laptops for 4 years just because they didn't want to waste money retooling, would never have happened under Jobs. Jobs had the courage to say fuck the shareholders when necessary, Cook does not and it's a recurring theme of his leadership.
Being a 70's child, thus having lived through most Apple consumer history, I would say it slowly feels like the Apple of old, when Steve Jobs was busy with NeXT and Pixar, the main difference is that now they have enough money to burn and make dumb decisions.
I recently got a newer iPhone and moved to iOS 18 with the hardware change. I had to watch some youtube tutorials explaining navigation and swipe locations. Over and over I've had the thought "this never would have flown under Steve."
This comment reminds of me of these such philosophical dualisms:
- Form (Formal Blueprint of Ideas) vs Appearances (Actual Manifestation of Ideas) (Plato)
- Noumenal (how things are in themselves) vs Phenomenal (how things appear) (Immanuel Kant)
Gruber has been an idealistic and longtime Apple observer. This is probably why he seems to invoke the Idea of Apple to compare and critique the current Appearance of Apple.
Fascinated to see a remark on HN that reminds me of this concept in philosophy.
(1) Are you supposed to join the waitlist to use this ("Get Early Access"), or can you just start using via TestFlight ("Download Today")? I see two different links on this page.
(2) How does this app measure the amount of light received by the Apple Watch? Does the Watch have such sensors and expose such APIs?
Thanks
(1) You can join the waitlist for our hormone tracking device, the app is available for download today on TestFlight. Eventually the app will be used to show you the connection to your hormone balance (like cortisol etc.) and your light exposure. They are very tightly linked!
(2) there is a light sensor in the display of the Apple Watch that automatically tracks it. It works ~80% of the time, but struggles if you have a big jacket
Most people have their phone in a pocket or purse or similar while outdoors. Wouldn't this require the phone to be out and exposed to light in order to work correctly? So not only are you trying to get people to change habits of getting outside, you're also requiring they change habits with the devices as well. Good luck with that, and I mean that with more sincerity than snark but not no snark.
The light sensor is in the Apple Watch display (behind the screen) it's what it uses to adjust the screen brightness. So if it's exposed to the sun it will count it automatically
I made a film called "Searching For Kurosawa". This short documentary chronicles the story of Kawamura, a man who worked with legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa on the set of his opus "Ran". Kawamura was working in the BTS crew, but his footage got confiscated. It took almost 40 years to recover the footage and present that as his feature film.
My film got screened at the Academy Award-qualifying Bali International Film Festival and the Marina Del Rey Film Festival in the past month. It will be screening next month in New York City at the Asian American International Film Festival.
iTunes Ping was a Jobs-era attempt to create a social network for music. It seems that they were trying to rely on integrating with Facebook, who pulled out of the collaboration in the last minute before Ping's release.
Apple hasn't seem to have given up on social networks for music. Apple Music presents a nascent networking feature where users can see what their friends are listening to.[2] It seems that Apple has learned their lesson from Ping and does not rely on a third-party for a social graph, which is instead powered by iOS contacts.
While social media is not Apple's bread and butter, they have maintained their interest in having presence in this market. I would assume that this stems from Apple's overall desire to maintain influence over on-the-top services that define the iOS experience. If they let third parties flourish even further, thirds parties gain leverage that they can use during negotiations with Apple. If third parties successfully negotiate for more features that creates parity with apps on non-Apple devices, Apple loses its differentiation on the device markets, thereby losing revenue.
(I think Stratechery wrote about Apple's service strategy that was motivated by its past relationships with Adobe and Spotify. Couldn't find the link.)
> We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix.
You're right that we haven't asked them for better on-the-top services. But it seems to be in Apple's interest to compete with third party services providers and make sure they do not supersede Apple in terms of their influence over on-the-top experiences.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping
[2] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphdf490a9e9/io...