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From: nospam on 8 Aug 2010 19:53
In article <pudu56dashqeh1k5ji2perprj6mdkqfvdi(a)4ax.com>, Jeff
Liebermann <jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote:

> The problem with Apple's approach to progress in large jumps is that
> it automatically kills the sales of previous products. The
> incremental changes from iPhone 2G, 3G, and 3GS did not trash sales of
> the predecessor because they were mostly quite similar.

actually they did kill sales. the 2g was blown out for $100-200 (from
it's $400-500 normal price) to clear stock prior to the release of the
3g and there was even a brief period where you could not buy an iphone
at all even if you wanted to because they were all gone and apple
wasn't going to make any more just before releasing a totally new
model. sales of the 3gs slowed down a *lot* ahead of the iphone 4,
especially since it was exposed two months early.

> The iPhone 4
> seems to have cannibalize 3GS sales. $99 for a 3GS from AT&T.
> <http://www.att.com/wireless/iphone/>
> They'll probably give it away as the inventory dwindles.

the 'new' 3gs is actually a new version with half the storage (8 gig)
as the smallest version from last year (16 gig).

> Not so fast for the electronics and guts. Instead, a vendor arrives
> with a revolutionary new chip, that either adds features, reduces
> size, reduces power consumption, or otherwise is sufficient
> justification for a new design. Once product released and samples
> distributed, literally everyone in the biz starts using the same chip.
> Apple uses the Qualcomm 1GHz SnapDragon chip, but so does HTC.
> (Samsung uses their own Hummingbird chip). So, it takes a while for
> new electronics to appear, but they appear at almost the same time.

actually, apple uses their own a4 chip.

> The problem is that a vendor will often have the next two or three
> generations of newer products in the design chain when a product is
> initially released. It has to be as design cycles tend to be longer
> than product lifetimes. With an average of 18 months lifetime on the
> typical commodity cell phone, and 24 months on the PDAphones, a vendor
> has to have a totally new product line every 2 years or customers will
> balk at the "same old handsets" and look elsewhere.

true. the iphone 4 design goes back 2 years, at least. the original
iphone was roughly 3 years in the making (depends how you want to tally
it).

> Altruism is something that is not in the Apple culture. Ask any
> stockholder when they paid their last dividend. (Spoiler... 1995).
> So much for Apple sharing the wealth and taking a voluntary financial
> hit.

somehow i don't think anyone who bought apple stock in 1995 is all that
upset about not getting a dividend, given the *huge* increase in value.

> >I suspect Apple was aware of the tradeoff being made and decided to make
> >it anyway on the basis that it didn't impact real-world performance that
> >much. Which it doesn't seem to.
> >
> >They clearly failed to anticipate its potential to cause widespread
> >Internet hysteria.
>
> Well, that's one guess. Mine is that they knew, they were told by
> their engineers, but were over-ruled by marketing. The ground rules
> were probably "do whatever you want inside, but don't mess with the
> package and cosmetics". Another possibility was that few people had
> actually used the new phone sufficiently to notice the effect until
> late in the development cycle. At that time, someone probably decided
> that it was to late to stop and redesign, so just ship it and hope for
> the best.

except that it had been a work in progress for two years, so more than
a few had seen it and used it.

> I had this happen to me. I helped design an HF SSB radio. I spent
> about 9 months testing and tweaking it with the most sophisticated
> test equipment available. Someone finally suggested that we do a talk
> test. It sounded like garbage. RF was getting into the microphone,
> but nobody noticed because it had never been tested with a microphone.
> Same with antenna simulators, that model antennas based on theoretical
> conditions, but fail miserably when asked to model the antenna with a
> real user attached. It might be that Apple relied too much on
> computah antenna modeling.

or it might not.
From: John Navas on 8 Aug 2010 21:06
On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:38:56 -0700, in
<pudu56dashqeh1k5ji2perprj6mdkqfvdi(a)4ax.com>, Jeff Liebermann
<jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:16:01 -0400, ZnU <znu(a)fake.invalid> wrote:

>>Given the lead times for products this complex, I'm not sure I buy that
>>vendors can effectively 'borrow' from each other on timescales that
>>short.
>
>Ok, not borrow. More like steal, rip-off, plagiarize, etc, with hints
>of industrial espionage. It's nothing new. When I was in the marine
>radio biz, the Japanese engineers attended each boat show en mass, all
>carrying cameras. Our latest release magically was cloned immediately
>after showing it in public. Cosmetic turn around time is VERY fast
>these days.
>
>Not so fast for the electronics and guts. Instead, a vendor arrives
>with a revolutionary new chip, that either adds features, reduces
>size, reduces power consumption, or otherwise is sufficient
>justification for a new design. Once product released and samples
>distributed, literally everyone in the biz starts using the same chip.
>Apple uses the Qualcomm 1GHz SnapDragon chip, but so does HTC.
>(Samsung uses their own Hummingbird chip). So, it takes a while for
>new electronics to appear, but they appear at almost the same time.

The problem with that thesis is that there are often (usually?) multiple
possible components in the pipeline with staggered availability times.
Snapdragon (lower case "d") is a notable and relatively rare exception.
"Do we go with component Q today (and for the rest of the product life),
or wait for component T in two months?" Worse, the longer an arbitrary
product cycle (as in the case of Apple), the greater the chance that a
cool component won't be available on your arbitrary release cycle.

>The problem is that a vendor will often have the next two or three
>generations of newer products in the design chain when a product is
>initially released. It has to be as design cycles tend to be longer
>than product lifetimes. With an average of 18 months lifetime on the
>typical commodity cell phone, and 24 months on the PDAphones, a vendor
>has to have a totally new product line every 2 years or customers will
>balk at the "same old handsets" and look elsewhere.

My friends at Motorola tell me current design cycles have been shortened
considerably. See <http://goo.gl/lzKY> for example. Also
<http://www.mpdigest.com/issue/Articles/2007/oct/Agilent/Default.asp>
And <http://goo.gl/evVj>. Many more.

>Well, that's one guess. Mine is that they knew, they were told by
>their engineers, but were over-ruled by marketing. The ground rules
>were probably "do whatever you want inside, but don't mess with the
>package and cosmetics". Another possibility was that few people had
>actually used the new phone sufficiently to notice the effect until
>late in the development cycle. At that time, someone probably decided
>that it was to late to stop and redesign, so just ship it and hope for
>the best.

I think it's a good bet that the arbitrary Apple yearly release cycle
inhibited significant changes, part of the price Apple pays for that
long and arbitrary cycle.

--
John

"Assumption is the mother of all screw ups."
[Wethern�s Law of Suspended Judgement]
From: Ted Nelson on 8 Aug 2010 21:22
> >> Apple was lucky that the problem was somewhat mitigated with a rubber
> >> bumper. Had it been something more difficult to solve, it could
> >> easily have been a disaster

actually, the bumper solved the problem by 100% ---
From: John Navas on 8 Aug 2010 21:33
On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:22:45 -0600, in
<4c5f5866$0$48224$815e3792(a)news.qwest.net>, Ted Nelson <ted(a)rnelson.org>
wrote:

>> >> Apple was lucky that the problem was somewhat mitigated with a rubber
>> >> bumper. Had it been something more difficult to solve, it could
>> >> easily have been a disaster
>
>actually, the bumper solved the problem by 100% ---

But only for those happy with a bumper, so not 100% overall.
I personally don't like the idea of a bumper or skin --
my phone (T-Mobile myTouch 3G, aka HTC Magic) doesn't need one,
and I prefer to keep it naked in a holster. In other words,
count me in the percentage for whom the bumper solves the problem by 0%.

--
John

"Assumption is the mother of all screw ups."
[Wethern�s Law of Suspended Judgement]
From: nospam on 8 Aug 2010 21:56
In article <agmu56h8nf7gc6ol3rthl2drol2abndrvt(a)4ax.com>, John Navas
<spamfilter1(a)navasgroup.com> wrote:

> >> >> Apple was lucky that the problem was somewhat mitigated with a rubber
> >> >> bumper. Had it been something more difficult to solve, it could
> >> >> easily have been a disaster
> >
> >actually, the bumper solved the problem by 100% ---
>
> But only for those happy with a bumper, so not 100% overall.
> I personally don't like the idea of a bumper or skin --
> my phone (T-Mobile myTouch 3G, aka HTC Magic) doesn't need one,
> and I prefer to keep it naked in a holster. In other words,
> count me in the percentage for whom the bumper solves the problem by 0%.

that's assuming you experienced the problem. not all iphone users do.

since you claim at&t is fantastic in the bay area, you probably would
not have had a problem, thus no need for a bumper.
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