Apple Beefs Up Smartphone Services in 'Silent War' Against Google (arstechnica.com) 64
Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that has created a collision course between the Big Tech companies. From a report: The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android "a stolen product" that mimicked Apple's iOS mobile software, then declared "thermonuclear war" on Google, ousting the search company's then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009. While the rivalry has been less noisy since, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a "grudge" against Google ever since. One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a "silent war" against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone-maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google.
[...] The second front in the battle is search. While Apple rarely discusses products while in development, the company has long worked on a feature known internally as "Apple Search," a tool that facilitates "billions of searches" per day, according to employees on the project. Apple's search team dates back to at least 2013, when it acquired Topsy Labs, a start-up that had indexed Twitter to enable searches and analytics. The technology is used every time an iPhone user asks Apple's voice assistant Siri for information, types queries from the home screen, or uses the Mac's "Spotlight" search feature. Apple's search offering was augmented with the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by former Google engineers that had described its mission as delivering "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web."
[...] The second front in the battle is search. While Apple rarely discusses products while in development, the company has long worked on a feature known internally as "Apple Search," a tool that facilitates "billions of searches" per day, according to employees on the project. Apple's search team dates back to at least 2013, when it acquired Topsy Labs, a start-up that had indexed Twitter to enable searches and analytics. The technology is used every time an iPhone user asks Apple's voice assistant Siri for information, types queries from the home screen, or uses the Mac's "Spotlight" search feature. Apple's search offering was augmented with the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by former Google engineers that had described its mission as delivering "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web."
Maps (Score:5, Informative)
Making an area cachable would go a long way towards making maps better. I had to use Google Maps to navigate when I found myself without signal in a part of the state I had the foresight to cache ahead of time.
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Wow, so the iPhone doesn't function as a standalone GPS? (At least not with Apple Maps.) That's what makes my Android device still useful after moving to dumbphone for my actual phone service.
Of course it's preferable to plan your route and study the map in advance, which I do, but it's useful to have a GPS on hand if you get directed somewhere else once you're already en route.
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It's not an "iPhone problem". You can still just install Google Maps or any of the other navigation apps that can work with downloaded maps.
Re: Maps (Score:2)
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You can make Google Maps the default map app in iOS, it's the map software that runs on my car stereo when I use Apple Carplay.
Re:Maps (Score:4, Informative)
The iPhone has the usual GPS. But GPS isn't map data. It's simple location.
I've run into this problem in parts of my province. Canada's vast, and large parts have little or no data connectivity. The phone can tell you where it is, but without the map it's not exactly useful. Knowing I'm at 55.2, -114.7 doesn't help me a whole lot.
So I did as above - I used Google Maps and downloaded the region.
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That's why I only use TomTom Go. It has the entire world as downloadable maps.
Apple Maps Data appears to be licensed from TomTom. It also credits OpenStreetMap "and other providers".
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Wow, so the iPhone doesn't function as a standalone GPS? (At least not with Apple Maps.) That's what makes my Android device still useful after moving to dumbphone for my actual phone service.
Of course it's preferable to plan your route and study the map in advance, which I do, but it's useful to have a GPS on hand if you get directed somewhere else once you're already en route.
Yes, it operates a "standalone GPS" (if that means it can tell you your current location, as well as route you to another location), with the minor restriction that you must currently be on planet Earth.
In fact, the default view when you Launch Apple Maps is to show your current location and which direction you are facing.
There are several Apps that can show more detailed info, geared toward hikers, etc. The free (no In-App Purchases) one I Installed claimed accuracy to 5 yards. I do not know if that can be
Do what I want. (Score:2)
The name of the game in all applications is the do what I want command. Until recently we have only had do what I say. To make do what I say work as close to do what I want you need to involve contextual information. Google seems more able to take the things it knows about me and figure out what I meant th
an Siri. But of course that's probably a matter of invasion of my privacy more than pricessing cleverness. Maps suffers from that too. But as a mapping function once you get it all keyed in, apple is
I feel like you are holding back (Score:2)
Tell me how you really feel.
Why not turn off those look ahead features or use services, like say apple or brave , that go out of their way to avoid leaking your information? After all that was in fact something I remarked in: Siri is less good mainly because it doesn't know as much about me as google.
Perhaps your anger issues have to do with your inability to carefully read and understand what someone else says. That is a well known trait of sociopaths. Ask your doctor if chillpill is right for you
yeah, they‘re trying (Score:4)
Re:yeah, they‘re trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and that's the cost of living a proprietary life focusing on lock-in instead of embracing standards. Winning battles is hard when you're one against many.
If you're the first on the market, it is the most logical strategy to go that route, focusing on users captive of your own ecosystem to maximize your revenue. The obvious counter to that strategy is having everyone else (who weren't the first) team up to lower costs, and define interoperability and standards. [The exact same situation happens on EVs btw, where Tesla is leading, with its proprietary plug and charging network, where everyone else is standardizing.]
It can work for a long time and make serious money, but it is a strenuous situation as more and more contenders team up against you ... and you'll disappear the moment you fail to adapt to change coming from the outside (which is tempting to reject because you know better, right?). Ask RIM/Blackberry.
All well and good (Score:2)
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Apple needs Android (Score:3, Interesting)
If Android didn't exist, and Apple had managed to secure the smartphone monopoly Jobs had dreamed of, then Apple would have already been broken up by regulators. They probably would have been prohibited from having an App Store. They probably would have been prohibited from having their iMessage. They would have been prohibited from withholding APIs for their own use or locking competing products out of their system, or dictating UI or security policies. They probably would have been forced to spin off iOS into a separate company.
If Android didn't exist, iOS would be Windows.
But! Android does exist. So whenever regulators come knocking, Apple can always say "Look you can't say we have a monopoly, we don't even sell the majority of phones!" They have since been given a free pass to lock in users however they like and demand any software tax they wish.
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The flip side is this gives Google something to point to when dealing with regulators - "we have to have all the things in one company because our competition is trying to do that too". It'd be hard to justify breaking up Google without doing the same to Apple.
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Right. They definitely benefit from each other.
The last thing either want is a serious third competitor.
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Android does exist. So whenever regulators come knocking, Apple can always say "Look you can't say we have a monopoly, we don't even sell the majority of phones!" They have since been given a free pass to lock in users however they like and demand any software tax they wish.
Antitrust does not require monopoly, so it doesn't do anything of the sort. The fact that we basically don't enforce antitrust in this country is what does.
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We do enforce antitrust laws all the time. They are mostly enforced during the mergers and acquisitions. Remember how Disney doesn't own Fox Sports (or whatever it's called now)? That's because they already owned a sports news franchise when they were buying Fox and they had to spin that company off.
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I will admit there has been a recent trend of occasionally denying a merger, but a lot of huge ones are going forwards as well. Tell you what, let's check back in when we find out whether this grocery merger happens.
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It'll happen, but not without concessions from the businesses. The various US Federal agencies are actually pretty good at these kinds of negotiations.
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That and we love to pick winners in the US - Duopolies, contracts that give exclusivity without requiring service, legacy 100+ cash handouts that require no actual return . . .
But hey, nothing wrong with having to have 2+ full time jobs to support a family of 4.
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Apple also needs Android to motivate them to continue improving their devices. Apple never would have introduced larger "phablets" if they hadn't become popular on Android first. Competition is a good thing for everybody.
By the way, you don't have to be a monopoly to be targeted by anti-trust regulators. A duopoly is still a plenty big target.
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If Android didn't exist, and Apple had managed to secure the smartphone monopoly Jobs had dreamed of, then Apple would have already been broken up by regulators. They probably would have been prohibited from having an App Store. They probably would have been prohibited from having their iMessage. They would have been prohibited from withholding APIs for their own use or locking competing products out of their system, or dictating UI or security policies. They probably would have been forced to spin off iOS into a separate company.
If Android didn't exist, iOS would be Windows.
LoL... just like Microsoft was broken up. The US doesn't do that any more.
Also you're wrong that IOS would be Windows, Windows is at least useful because it lets you do what you like. If His Steeveness had his vision you'd still not even be able to copy and paste on an Iphone, no (quasi)multitasking, they'd all still be the same size and probably still on 2G. Every user friendly feature was forced upon them by competition. If Android didn't exist most people wouldn't be using smart phones at all, many op
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Microsoft's monopoly ruling and the subsequent limitations on their business practices was extremely effective. If MS had won, they would have continued with their plan to make the internet a feature of Windows. We would all be using MSN today through a terminal application like AOL had. Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. would not exist as companies at all, or if they did they would be minor apps that ran through MS's MSN ecosystem. I can't overstate this, MS absolutely intended to kill the open internet and ma
what beef up? (Score:4, Funny)
Google working toward death of privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, COVID was an eye opening experience. Regardless of merit, there were views that were declared unacceptable and people that held these views were punished. In Australia, in Canada, and even in US these nonconforming individuals were identified, doxed to the government, and then punished in multiple ways, often without a trial. For example, does a Canadian trucker that peacefully protested government policies deserves to be identified based on phone location, reported to authorities and have personal communication, banking, social media all blocked? No, that is a turnkey dictatorship, even if you think current leaders are using it judicially, there is no guarantee that it won't be abused by the next populist.
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If the problem is that a protestor got his bank account frozen, that hardly has anything to do with Covid or Google. For example, in the US if you protest police brutality, you're likely to be shot at, arrested, booked, and fingerprinted - immediately. No two weeks' warning to clear the roadway.
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If the problem is that a protestor got his bank account frozen, that hardly has anything to do with Covid or Google.
It has everything to do with Google, because they are directly involved in identifying people and were caught doing that without court-issued orders. Google is an active and willing participant in this. Trying to deny this is happening, while at the same time lamenting that your cause gets unfairly treated is political tribalism of the worst kind - you know on some level that what is happening is a problem but you are not willing to consider it because wrong people are impacted.
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Re: Google working toward death of privacy (Score:2)
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To me, the worst kind is false equivalency and bothsidesism. All motivations are not created equal.
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I would like to know some details, please. Who had their personal communication, banking, and social media all blocked? That seems unlikely.
And if it's true, when I look into it will I find out that while "some" think he was just legally and peacefully protesting, "others" (such as the authorities) might think otherwise?
The ends justifying the means gets people into trouble.
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https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/09... [cnn.com]
They blockaded trade routes with tractor/trailers. Disinformationist is promoting disinformation.
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I know all about the protests. I'm asking about the claims made by the parent.
As for the protests themselves, I personally think that the trucking industry produces tremendous emissions, enables worldwide shipping and globalizations that destroy local businesses, and it should be dramatically curtailed. If I can gather enough folks to block up key points and cause economic damage, do I get my way? Because that's the world these folks wanted.
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I did a quick search for more context, and there were some things seized. That is correct. Trudeau stated intent on February 15. By the 22nd, pretty much everything was unfrozen. I'll "mostly" concede that point. But "personal communication, banking, and social media" being blocked is still claim that is very suspect to me.
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Okay, but that doesn't actually fit the claim - that people had their social media blocked. Deleting groups isn't that.
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If you're a part of a "group" that is dissolved, you have not had your access banned. You can still use all social media, including connecting with those same people. The "group" account you mention was deemed an attempt to circumvent another ban, and is specifically against their rules. Banning individuals was the scope of the discussion. You really don't see a difference? The only way to get to that conclusion is by using an all or nothing approach to freedom, oversimplifying things.
The individual ban yo
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If you're a part of a "group" that is dissolved, you have not had your access banned. You can still use all social media, including connecting with those same people.
I disagree. In a hypothetical scenario where a group dedicated to carrot tasting is banned it is clear that the ability to discuss carrot tasting is intentionally infringed upon. Banning individuals for discussing carrot tasting is on the same spectrum of the same intent - suppress discussion of carrot tasting.
For me to retract my view, I would need to see a group of individuals banned at the request of government to the media companies, or whose behaviour at the time of banning isn't pushing against clear and stated rules on the platform.
This is a very high bar of proof to clear. You require a definitive proof of criminal collusion, with receipts, to change your mind. I suspect you really don't want your view of PM and Canadian instit
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...I don't fault you in not knowing about this, as this was not reported in the mainstream media...
Well, that's clearly not true, because I found it all using normal searches, properly dated and timely, and on mainstream media.
It's clear I just wasn't paying enough attention.
Android is clearly beating iOS (Score:1)
iPhones today are something like BlackBerries... (Score:1)
Ketchup (Score:2)
Apple is playing catsup. Competition is good.
SdCard and Removable batteries (Score:2)
Since no android phone have them anymore, Apple should begun selling phone with both.
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Plenty of Android phones still have SD card slots, such as Moto G.
https://www.motorola.com/us/sm... [motorola.com]
Competition is wonderful (Score:3)
Apple has abused the loyalty of its customers for years. The presence of Android has force them to add and improve features on numerous occasions.
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Apple has abused the loyalty of its customers for years. The presence of Android has force them to add and improve features on numerous occasions.
Saying that doesn't make it true. As a a matter of fact, the ABUSE that apple users have taken is inflicting connected-searches/voice recognition and ANY attempt to parallel Google's advertising strategies.
Go ahead, if you want your Android OS, you can KEEP your Android OS, because most devices don't get any meaningful upgrade (same crap we got from phone manufacturers since the mobile phone was invented).
No, thank you.
Disclaimer - I am only not on Graphene or Librium due to sheer and utter laziness.
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I see you are a real live Apple fanboy.
Here are some specific ways Apple has abused the loyalty of its customers.
1. Needlessly developing pricey, Apple-specific connectors, instead of supporting USB and other standards widely in use.
2. Removing handy connectors like, you know, a headphone jack, and then selling you overpriced Beats ear buds..
3. Failing to support standard communication mechanisms like being able to text a quality picture or video to friends who don't happen to have Apple devices.
4. Delibera
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I see you are a real live Apple fanboy.
Here are some specific ways Apple has abused the loyalty of its customers.
1. Needlessly developing pricey, Apple-specific connectors, instead of supporting USB and other standards widely in use.
2. Removing handy connectors like, you know, a headphone jack, and then selling you overpriced Beats ear buds..
3. Failing to support standard communication mechanisms like being able to text a quality picture or video to friends who don't happen to have Apple devices.
4. Deliberately slowing down processors on older models in the name of battery conservation.
5. Claiming to place importance on privacy, while quietly selling targeted ads using your phone's ID.
6. Making it impossible to side-load apps.
7. Inflating prices to maintain the highest profit margin of any phone manufacturer.
If you want sources, I'll be happy to provide them, but I doubt you'll be interested or convinced regardless.
Wow, that's *EXACTLY* what I am.
1) How is lightning pricey? It was there before USB-C - ALSO, from day 1 the first gen mag-safe was "trip-proof" (idiot proof)
a) USB-C is disgustingly fragile, even after you know it is and are careful
b) What speed are you charging at? How does a laymen know that without a big circus?
2) Except everyone followed that. No one with a brain buys Beats and you're being a child if you're implying it's required. A lightning dongle to a nice set of wired headphones is the way to g
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Interesting. You claim to be critical of Apple's stupidity, and then defend each and every thing I listed, that they do.
Here are some sources.
1. Apple's over-priced cables: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-M... [amazon.com] $19 (corresponding USB-C cables are more like $7). You noted that Lightning was around before USB-C, and so it was. But it wasn't around before micro-USB, which is just as effective and low-cost.
2. No, not everyone removed headphone jacks, just the priciest "flagship" phones. Motorola, which makes great
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Interesting. You claim to be critical of Apple's stupidity, and then defend each and every thing I listed, that they do.
Here are some sources.
1. Apple's over-priced cables: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-M... [amazon.com] $19 (corresponding USB-C cables are more like $7). You noted that Lightning was around before USB-C, and so it was. But it wasn't around before micro-USB, which is just as effective and low-cost.
2. No, not everyone removed headphone jacks, just the priciest "flagship" phones. Motorola, which makes great phones in the $200 price range, is one example https://www.motorola.com/us/sm... [motorola.com].
3. So you admit, but still defend, Apple's refusal to support texting of video and photos outside of the Apple fold. OK. Yeah, it supports MMS, but if you try to send a photo or video, the recipient will get a tiny postage-stamp dumbed-down version. Good for you that you have only one friend with the sense not to pay the "Apple tax".
4. You conceded this point, I think, that Apple deliberately slowed down older phones.
5. So Apple gives you opt-outs, then ignores your opt-out settings. https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
6. Jailbreak, really? That sounds like a concession to me.
7. Apple excessive markups: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Now, I don't expect to convince *you*, but some other readers seeing this thread might find some useful bits of information.
Did you know that "The Register" has a decades-long grudge with Apple and frequently posts opinions as news? I mean, I get it that it happens about just about everything else here in the US, but someone in Apple definitely peed in their cheerios.
Okay - so, you just replaced your arguments and my responses of "no, they're not hindering or forcing you to do that" with a list of $#!+ you don't like the way they do. You know, using words like fanboy or "apple tax" and pointing out generic stuff isn't proof.
"C
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How about GizModo. Do they have a grudge too?
https://gizmodo.com/apple-ipho... [gizmodo.com]
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Poor Wording (Score:2)