Techcrunch Is Wrong About Apple's Past Copying When Talking About Xiaomi

Techcrunch's post regarding Xiaomi's blatant copying of Apple and casually throwing in Apple's copy of Xerox's GUI and mouse is very much erroneous and trying to equate Apple's past with Xiaomi is just wrong.

First, I would like to acknowledge that Apple did in fact copy Xerox. It's a very well known historic fact. However, it was Apple that used that concept and brought it to the consumer market at a time when the GUI was still sitting in a PARC lab.  There was no Xerox version of the Mac in 1984 or at any other time before that.

If anything, Microsoft's copying of Mac OS is closer to what Xiaomi is currently doing in copying what Apple does, what its products feel like, and the UI experience.

And the "one more thing" slide that Xiaomi even used on its product launch event (which Steve Jobs is famously known for), Apple has never gone as far as to place competitor logos on its website and claiming as its own.  Just as TC's post mentioned in Xiaomi's own product page.

Bottom-line here is that it was a different era back in the early 1980s.  And Apple did not copy something on the market and blatantly ripped it off.  That's the big difference here between what Apple did and what Xiaomi is doing now.

Xiaomi is just shamelessly photocopying all things Apple.

Xiaomi Highlights China's Problem And Reputation As Second Rate Tech World

Source:  9to5Mac.

Here is yet another example of Chinese consumer tech companies demonstrating their inability to innovate and using government shields to copy Western companies like Apple.  Here is its Miui 6 skin that runs on top of its own Android variant (san Google apps) where it copied the look and feel of Apple's iOS.

What's worse as it has been reported previously by various media outlets is that it even copied the look and feel of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S.

However, don't look for Apple to do anything about this in China anyway.  It's unlikely Chinese courts under Beijing's control will issue favorable rulings to foreign companies.  If anything, should Xiaomi become a threat outside of China, look for Apple legal to go to bat once more.

However, this is just one example of how Chinese companies are unable to innovate all on their own.  For one thing, the OS Xiaomi and other phone/tablet makers are using are Google's Android.  That in and of itself highlights just how the Chinese will be followers in tech for decades to come.

On top of that, the development of UI experience that is so essential to a user's experience is virtually nonexistent beyond being copiers.

At the same time, the premium on high-end Chinese consumer tech is very low as it simply only copies what many Western companies spend billions to develop.  This is something that many governments from Washington to EU capitals fail to address time and time again with world economic forums out of fear of making Beijing angry.  However, it does show that if Chinese brands has to compete on the global market with established brands like Apple, it fails miserably.

What's worse is the plethora of consumer orient issues that are not addressed with Chinese tech, security concerns like spying by the Chinese (Washington is right to be wary of Chinese tech being used in government), and other legal issues.

Mobile Companies That Might Last The Decade

In the mobile market, a quarter can be a life time let alone a year.  So, why am I talking about the rest of the decade?  Frankly, a quarterly misstep or two could be enough for a company to start sliding but with all the corporate cash companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have, any decline could be stave off for years.

Sure that could also mean that companies have a better chance to survive any downturn or misstep and maybe innovate its way out of corporate death much like Apple did.  However, there are a couple of companies that I think are not going to disappear within the year but could very likely be gone by 2020.

I'm talking about Blackberry and Yahoo.  Blackberry and Yahoo has 2.68 and 2.78 billions of cash on hand.  Blackberry has been bleeding money while Yahoo has managed to eek out some profit.  However, each of these two companies have critical decisions to make.

The decisions each of their respective CEOs make will determine whether they can innovate or reinvent their ways out of the bottom of the mobile market and come up stronger and continue to stay relevant.

Blackberries are not selling well even as Blackberry 10 has garnered raved reviews.  The company has a perception issue and attempting to match the iPhone and the hundreds of Android phone models just won't cut it.  Furthermore, Blackberry lack the ecosystem that Apple has, which is the same issue that plagues Microsoft's Windows Phone devices.

So far, Blackberry CEO John Chen has failed to make the hard calls.  Chen was brought in to cut costs and slow the bleeding just enough to make Blackberry attractive enough to be a takeover target and has even failed miserably at that task.  There was a glimmer of hope that perhaps the Blackberry Messenger could be the key to the company's turn around when Facebook bought Whatsapp, a popular iOS/Android messaging app, for $19 billion.  However, any hope there quickly fizzled as more attractive alternatives to BBM were already on the market.

As for Yahoo, Marissa Mayer brought a lot of hope and optimism when she took over as CEO back in the middle 2012.  I think it's still early.  However, the changes Mayer made seemed more like patchwork than actually swing for the fences.  A series of acquisitions like Tumblr, while made for interesting talk around the blogger water cooler, still has not demonstrated that it'll be better than past Yahoo acquisitions by former CEOs like Geocities or Broadcast.com.  Yahoo! Launchcast is interesting and this could be where Yahoo can become a viable niche player in original video content.

Still, it'll just be a niche in a submarket.  Hardly anything to write home about.

So, Blackberry and Yahoo are facing a lot of head winds.  They'll both be fine over the next year or two but as their competitors continue to forth, they could both be squeeze out of existence.

Apple Can (Should) Surprise With iPhone Release Without iOS 8

The market, by that I mean the financial as well as mobile, is used to Cupertino release new iPhones along with a new version of iOS to go along with it.  However, I think for the sake of market disruption, I would love to see Apple release a new iPhone even without a new iOS in the fall, say, this summer.  That would really kick things up for its fans and really screw things up for its competitors. 

Has this happened before?  Sure, the iPad. 

What if there are new features that are specific to the new iPhone hardware?  Well, then Apple simply (okay, I know it's not simply but the talented hard working Apple employees sure make it appear that way) update apps and release codes for this new iPhone.

As it is now, it's the hardware that catches up to the software.  Beta versions of iOS are released in the June to coincide with Apple's World Wide Developer Conference.  Then new iPhones are released later in the fall that support new features.  Take the iPhone 5S.  When iOS 7 beta was released at the WWDC last year, there no mention of TouchID and yet when the 5S was released in October, the codes to support fingerprint magically appeared.

Not wanting to get into current rumors regarding iPhone 6 and possible (though highly improbable) release dates, Apple can move up a bigger screen iPhone 6 this summer with a special version of iOS 7 specific to it and then wait for iOS 8 to catch up to the hardware for once. 

When Apple moved from the 3.5" screen to the 4" screen, apps continued to work flawlessly as 3.5" screen apps with black bands on the sides until developers updated their apps to take advantage of the added pixels.  The same can happen with 5" or 5.5" iPhone 6 screens.

Can it happen?  Nah.  This is a "wishful thinking" post on my part. 

Apple's New Camera Hire: You Get 8MP So Make Every Pixel Count

I'm always been a bit jealous of the camera capability of the high-end Lumia devices running Windows Phone from Nokia.  I want those features.  I mean the camera on the 1020 is just crazy.  Sure, the iPhone 5S camera rocks but there are still new tricks the next iPhone can pick up.

It's why Apple hired away from Nokia its top camera expert, Ari Partinen.  With Nokia having sold its mobile division to Microsoft, it was a perfect tiemf or Mr. Partinen to move to sunny California.  And he's exactly the type of new blood that Apple can use. 

Imagine what he can bring.  Just looking at Nokia's Lumia 1020 page, I want it all.  Lossless zoom.  Better pics in poorly lit environments.  Better flash.  Truer colors. 

Of course, he'll have to really be creative and innovate in ways that he was not familiar with or expected to at Nokia.  There is the design element that the new Apple hire will have to deal with.  He won't have the option of making the camera stick out the way they are on the Lumia devices. 

Plus, he won't have 40MP to work with.  In fact, he'll have a lot less to work with, along the line of 8MP or maybe just a tad more.  So, he'll have to find ways to improve the iPhone's camera abilities and bring new features beyond megapixels.

So, dude, make every pixel count!

Beats As Apple's Instagram

This might not be the best analogy but I'm beginning to see Beats as Apple's Instagram.  Bear with me and maybe I'll manage to muddle my way through this.  This is because I'm not entirely convinced about why Apple would want to buy Beats.  In fact, I'd bet come next week, there will be no announcement regarding Financial Time's breaking rumor about Apple plucking down $3.2 billion for Beats, maker of headsets and floundering streaming music service.

So, the only thing I can think of is that Apple is looking at Beats for the streaming music service to supplement its iTunes buy/download music store as interests in streaming music has increased while downloads have decreased in the last couple of years.  Most of Apple's iTunes service growth comes from app sales. 

And just like Facebook who spent $1 billion for Instagram (which as far as I know is still not making money), Apple is buying Beats to make sure it has a foot in the streaming music service.  Why not buy Spotify, you ask?  I'm sure Apple took a look at it and for its own reasons decided Beats makes more sense.  There have been speculation that Apple will keep around the team of music insiders that built Beats' music service. 

Like everyone else, I don't think Apple bought Beats for the headset hardware. 

And like Facebook, Apple probably will not fold Beats into Apple and rename it iTunes Music Streaming.  It makes sense for Apple to keep the appeal of Beats for other mobile platforms as well as the PC market. 

So, what do  you think?  Make sense?  It's not so much as a defense play but see the right opportunity to get into a new service with the right people. 

ISP to FCC: Pay Up Or Stick with Slow 28.8kbps Lane

Source: Arstechnica.

The FCC abandoning net neutrality (essentially a U-turn from its previous position has many big and small companies protesting the move.  It's good for broadband dumb pipe operators like Comcast (currently trying to buy Time Warner Cable to gobble up more bandwidth) and Verizon but not for end-users.

So, while most companies like Google and Netflix are content with sending letters and lobbyists, one ISP decided to act.  So, it's taken FCC's IP addresses and throttle all connections down to dial-up speed of 28kbps.  I think that is kinda cruel considering 56K should be enough but I'm a gentle person at the end of the day.

The ISP, Neocities, And they're quite funny about it too. They're giving the FCC a special "Ferengi plan" (obviously Star Trek fans there):  pay the $1000 a year (they'll accept most payments including digital currencies but not Latinum) and Netcities will remove the throttle.

I think that's brilliant.  Maybe Google and others should consider doing something similar.  After all, I can see ISPs begin to charge the government access to the fast lane which means the tax payers, you and me, will have to fork over even more money to the greedy cable and DSL providers.