Alexander Chalkidis

Author: alexanderchalkidis

  • Apple is too lazy to be any good at anything

    Apple is too lazy to be any good at anything

    I enjoyed a recent Google blog analysis of the changes to advertising due to cookies being phased out. Google had tried something different, it didn’t go far enough for privacy advocates, now they are trying again. That’s life, a give and take between interested parties. Well, unless you are Apple. The Cupertino approach is to dictate anything they like, whenever they like, usually without advance warning. They have been doing it with everything from the plugs to their machines, to other standards, to features they simply kill suddenly.

    But this isn’t yet another rant about how insular and small minded Apple is, how small a part of the world they actually influence. This is a very serious warning to Apple investors: Apple’s lack of innovation and laziness will bite back.

    Let’s take an example like Maps. Pretty essential tool. Does Apple think it will get away with just buying up some companies and occasionally updating maps of, well, North America? Amongst the gazillion things Google Maps does better is a simple callibration whereby you lift your phone, it looks around and figures out where you are. Why? Because Google bothered to drive around the entire planet. It has the images and the technology to process all that. And then it went a step further by crowdsourcing a constant stream of updates through it’s Google Maps contributor scheme. These aren’t just “nice little touches”, these are very serious stepping stones in achieving faster, better, more meaningful experiences to users.

    Let’s take Siri. While the planet shoots ahead with voice search for more and more users, Apple is stuck in American English and an extremely limited real world application. Home automation? While Apple copies Tile (badly) and plays with a few retails sales, Google has paved a way through Google Home for thousands of developers and manufacturers to work together.

    It is easy to say “we are dropping Flash next year” like Steve Jobs did so prematurely. What is hard is coming up with real world solutions so that stuff actually works, millions of websites and web developers need to find a way to do what they do tomorrow as well. “Oh Google is so dominant in search, it is easy for them” says anyone too lazy to think it through. Have you seen https://crowdsource.google.com/ ? Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are organized by Google to actually work on making AI what we all imagine it will become. A trillion data points can only get you so far. An army of volunteers are helping to get us a bit further, a bit faster. That takes community building, events. It takes transparency and information moving around freely. Things Apple never has done and shows no intention of ever doing.

    They think that they can fool stockholders and markets with tricks like the M1. Some of us remember the last time they left Intel though. We all know how this ends in 3 or 5 years. Stunts like that can only go so far. In our globalized and extremely complex modern world even simple solutions that work need nurturing, explaining, selling to multiple interested parties. Real world problems take work to analyze and adress. It is more like gardening, yet Apple still wants to attack with a chainsaw all the time. Stop drinking the Kool Aid. It may not have cyanide, but it sure as hell has less and less of anything much better.

  • The biggest failure of global business

    The biggest failure of global business

    A trillion market cap is pretty impressive for a company that mainly sells to Americans. It’s not just the 8.5% global market share for computers that is pathetic. Nor the equally laughable share of global smartphones. Android is the defacto global standard, iOS is a joke. Yet for people living in Callifornia or New York (and them alone) it is important. And they are the people writing in tech magazines and blogs, they are the people in the media. They are the ones keeping the stock price so high for absolutely no reason.

    It takes a lot to make a truly global company. Google develops its products in local languages, it makes tools we all rely on. Really rely on, not fancy toys. Things you can’t live without anymore. HP has local support. You know real support, real sales people, real local offices in every country in the world. Apple? Not even close! And they have never seemed to care. Too big to fail, too close to an all American symbol.

    This does in fact present a real problem to users. With such a small loyal user base Apple doesn’t need to care about backwards compatibility, to take just one example. Unlike Windows or Android, they can just leave old users in the dust and demand you upgrade. It is amazing that I can still use a computer with Windows 95 for a lot of things (even running DOS applications!) or and old Android 4 phone. It will connect and work for most things unlike Apple devices. This is the real world of real responsibility. When major corporations, governments and institutions around the world rely on you, that is what you do, you care about connections and standards. You talk to other companies, you collaborate, you commit.

    Not Apple. Despite popular perceptions, Apple doesn’t actually innovate. At all. They are great at marketing. Design maybe. Innovation? Not really. Not at all. If we talk purely tech they have nothing. The very public and obvious failures of their Maps app or Siri or anything that demands you to – well – actually work seriously on something, they simply can’t do it.

    It’s a one horse pony. For a single market. And it’s time we all started treating it as such.

    Clever street promo in Berlin which pops up at night. You know normal marketing from companies that sell computers that actually do the work the world runs on

  • One tennis player just made fools of all of us

    One tennis player just made fools of all of us

    Did Novak Djokovic really contract COVID? A simple antibody blood test would tell us. But it won’t happen. Because we failed on a global scale to curtail forgeries and tricks that render pandemic controls meaningless.

    How easy is it to get fake proof that you have COVID? In most countries it is the same cost as any other COVID test. The person or lab doing the test is willing to write “positive” as the result. After all nobody can retrospectively prove otherwise, it may have been a false positive.

    How easy is it to get fake COVID vaccination proof? Harder but also not impossible. After a long battle with Greek authorities, my partner just walked into a pharmacy in Berlin at the airport and got her American (genuine) vaccination paper converted to an official European certificate. 10 euro and 2 minutes in total. Could she have done it with fake papers? Hell yeah!

    The tennis player just made public what we have all suspected from the first days of the pandemic. There is no way to force people to do anything unless you live in a dictatorship or an incredibly cohesive society. The country I lived in during the pandemic is a prime example of massive hypocrisy. Through a variety of measures the Greek government crippled the economy, destroyed most small and medium size businesses and managed to also kill an amazing number of people. Here is a small comparison during the time AFTER we all received vaccinations.

    That’s right. Greece had more deaths compared to its population than similar countries. Or even countries we made fun of as inept. Since all European countries received the same number of vaccines, this was a clear test of governments and Greece obviously has one of the most useless in this respect.

    An excellent example is the SMS lockdown measure. For a long time Greeks had to (theoretically) send an SMS before leaving their house. There were categories of reasons to leave the house and (theoretically) after receiving an SMS reply you had to show this to any policeman that stopped you during the curfew. In practice everyone went pretty much wherever they wanted. That is to say us law abiding people sent SMS and followed the lockdown rules but anyone not wanting to follow the rules, pretty freely roamed the land. Some people got fake excuse papers, others didn’t bother knowing that there was no way the police could stop and check everyone. Many of us law abiding citizens also bent the rules when “necessary” to be honest. Essentially let’s admit it, there was no actual rule being enforced.

    This is pretty much what was happening globally. At every airport I visited during the pandemic the measures are laughable. In every line I waited to show my papers or flash some “proof” on my phone I couldn’t help but feel certain that a good percentage of the people in front of me have forged theirs. It is too easy to do and too difficult, if not impossible for the thousands of unqualified people suddenly thrust into being pandemic police to actually perform a proper check.

    I only once got denied entry and that was incorrectly! A junior gate agent from Turkish Airlines incorrectly denied me entry to the airplane because she didn’t realize that the antigen test I showed her was in local United States time. I don’t blame her. She was alone, trying to figure out the complex rules for each country and receiving conflicting information from her superiors who are also trying to make sense of ever changing rules and regulations from every embassy in the world.

    And therein lies the problem. A globalised world with insufficiently globalized information. Europeans managed to coordinate their vaccinations certificates eventually but it is by no means a safe, complete or conclusive system. Because we are dealing with medical data, anyone can throw a spanner in the works by claiming it is personal and sacred. Google and Apple built something amazing at the start of the pandemic but nobody wants to trust them. Politicians can’t deal with uncertainty but that is what science should always thrive towards.

    Novak Djokovic raised a middle finger to all the people in the world who have been trying to keep a lid on the pandemic. He also raised the rally cry for antivaxxers and antisocial elements who can now scream “the king has no clothes”.

    Unfortunately they are right.

  • Greatest of All Time: the fun game for everyone

    Greatest of All Time: the fun game for everyone

    Moving the goalposts is an excellent phrase. Religions have got away with it for centuries. And in sport, when discussing who is the greatest player of all time is how the rest of us indulge. So taking basketball as an example, and the common “LeBron James vs Michael Jordan” debate, here are a few goalposts for you to use next time you play with someone:

    1. “Basketball was different back then”. True. Also irrelevant. Unless you are trying to prove a point regarding some particular statistic, in which case it is so self evident that it is pointless. 0-0
    2. “Jordan/LeBron had a better supporting cast”. LeBron changed many teams and built up different teams. Some use that against him with the “superteam” argument, most admit that the 2016 Cavaliers championship was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. In any case you have to give LeBron points for flexibility if nothing else. 0-1
    3. “Republicans buy sneakers too”. It doesnt matter whether Jordan actually said that or not, the fact is that he never had the audacity to take on politically divisive issues like LeBron. Nowhere close. Even if you despise him as an athlete you have to bow in respect for what he dares outside the court. 0-2
    4. It has also been well argued that the way that Michael Jordan was used as a token African-American athlete was in fact a form of white-washing that he was happy to go along with. LeBron on the other hand is always on the cutting edge of race relations, not letting anything slip by in terms of popular culture. 0-3
    5. “Even Michael Jordan, with his gambling habit and ultra-competitive, combustible personality, could only live up to the image when certain of his traits were ignored.” (Bleacher report article) In this age of social media it is pretty clear that Jordan wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Too many dead bodies in the closet at a time when the NBA was happy to be more like Disneyland. 0-4 (Jordan was super lucky to get away with all he did)
    6. Philanthropy is an excellent example of their differences. LeBron from his early days was constantly making large and meaningful contributions to society, cullminating with his truly groundbreaking educational system which is being copied around the world. Jordan only recently started some minor give aways. 0- 5

    5-0 to LeBron and you can only really counter possibly in point No2 regarding the supporting cast. Which is partly why I haven’t even included backetball statistic type arguments. Some sneaky sportscasters simply wait for any LeBron average to come down below Jordan’s to make a big fuss. That is not how it works. At the equivelant number of games LeBron is still ahead in a number of meaningful statistics and/or it is too close to call.

    What is clear is that LeBron is a better rounded player, succesful in a number of roles with more rebounds, more assists and more of well everything that Jordan never bothered doing. Saying that Jordan was GOAT because he is higher up in one or another stat is like saying that Senna was the greatest F1 driver because he did really well in the rain.

    Many LeBron haters try to downplay his statistics by saying he simply stuck at the game longer. Which is an easy (and important) 6-0 in this scoring system. LeBron is central to the NBA and world basketball for more years in an active and energetic way. More than anyone else. Even as the NBA actively tries to build up more superstars in these past years as a central marketing strategy, LeBron manages to remain not only relevant, but a key part of every re-invention the league thinks of. Michael Jordan was crucial to the NBA at a particular point in time, helping it reach new audiences. LeBron has been doing exactly the same thing , spanning multiple eras. And for longer.

    And that is the easiest definition of a G.O.A.T. anyway you look at it.

  • No, I’m not burning alive: What you need to know about Greek wildfires

    No, I’m not burning alive: What you need to know about Greek wildfires

    1. We have a lot of forest. Since the second world war Greece’s forest coverage has increased. I remember the first time I went walking in England with an Ordnance Survey map how shocked I was that every single tree was on the map. This would be impossible in Greece, we have a lot of wild forests, vast forests even near big cities like Athens.
    2. People and property are (thankfully) rarely truly in danger. Sure, in Mati a few years ago, a unique combination of inept politicians and other issues caused a tragedy. But in general, even though fires go near houses, they rarely burn them. Partly because in Greece we build earthquake resistant houses with cement, not wooden toy houses like in America.
    3. Fires are started by either the power company (pylons in forested areas badly maintained causing sparks), people burning old fields or spare material and cigarettes which are often thrown out of cars awaiting the right heat and wind combination. There has been very limited and not really convincing evidence of foreign powers or other conspiracies.
    4. Greece has awesome firefighting capabilities. If you could see the recent fire that came within 500meters of my home you would be impressed. Watching the scene from above I almost pitied the fire, it was like a scene from a film with a constant stream of firefighting helicopters, airplanes and drones attacking it. Targeted shots right on whatever little flame dared appear. It never had a chance. Also importantly the coordination of these vehicles and land firefighters is much improved recently.
    5. The media always hypes things up. They will do anything for an impressive shot. Go to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere and title it “houses burning” or find an old car someone left in the forest to say that “property destroyed”. Anything you see on the news…cut it by half at least. Also combine it with increased risk aversion on the part of government officials, the “better safe than sorry” approach which I guess is justified. We get evacuation messages even if there is very very little danger.
    6. Yes, this is global warming. Of course it is. Erratic rains late in the summer ensure a lush undergrowth and then extreme heat turns it into tinder. Get to Greece on holiday as soon as possible, last chance to see before it gets turned into one big desert. Unless we all think of something clever (and DO something) we have maybe 10-20 years of it still being the paradise that it is.
    Me and the media. They are looking for a dramatic shot and I am looking for trouble trying to persuade them to be more accurate in their reports
  • Apple would have never made a vaccine even if it could

    Apple would have never made a vaccine even if it could

    Look at the market share. Globally Android has 73% of the mobile operating market and iOS 26%. But in Africa it is more like 83% vs 14%. Only in North America is Apple ahead. And this has repercussions which I am amazed the rest of the world puts up with.

    Unlike Google that tries to build products for humans all over the world, Apple is simply catering to its locals. It’s not just the languages it doesn’t bother including. It’s entire distribution and support is focused on the US, UK, France and a few other countries. That’s it. Apple has always acted – and still acts – as if it is a little Callifornian company that made it big. In America. And it doesn’t care about anyone else. The rest of the world can adapt to the products.

    Is it working? Sure. The profits speak for themselves. Is it good for customers? Only if you are American. Here in Greece where I live, if you have a Mac computer you are the proud third minority after Windows (84%) and Linux (9%) as Apple only has 3% market share. Good luck getting any sort of support for your product, most Mac owners struggle to find a friend that knows what they can do about any issue. And they end up paying through the nose for good tech to help them out.

    Globally OS X commands just 15% market share, even in the United States all those iPhone users aren’t buying as they total just 28% compared to 62% Windows users and even Chromebooks are making an attack and becoming popular. Yet somehow Apple isn’t irrelevant. Is it through innovation? Heck no! I would disregard their recent relative success with their own chipsets, it is a short lived fluke much like all those years when they were going to “burn Pentiums to the ground”. M1 is a party trick that fools only Apple die hards. No IT manager is falling for it because we all know Apple never sticks to anything long term. It is a marketing company, not a tech pioneer.

    Is it important? I would say that it is a problem we need to take care of. It skews the market in a big way. A bad way. There are plenty exciting technologies that get shelved behind all the media focus on Apple adding a new button to its iPhone or something equally stupid as that in Apple’s constant efforts to copy Android whilst making it look like it thought of something up on its own.

    So is Google better? Hell yeah! While Apple spends ages dreaming up of new ways to get their phones to use a different dongle that costs 80 dollars for no good reason, Google is out there making products for the entire planet. Saving lost languages. Making useful products we all use everyday like Search, Maps, YouTube and so many more applications of its advanced Artificial Intelligence that actually helps the planet. They are giving away protein databases to scientists and the infrastructure on which so much of the modern world progresses on.

    Google is global, Apple is American.

    And there is nothing wrong with being American. As long as they don’t try and sell their extremely limited in purpose and use case products to the rest of the world. In fact the way Apple refuses to follow international standards and constantly blackmails developers into their walled garden is costing the world economy every day. We live in a globalized world. Amazing collaboration such as what we witnessed recently with the COVID-19 pandemic can only be achieved though open standards and transparency.

    If Apple was into pharmaceutical vaccine and developed a vaccine, it would be ten times the price of competitors, incompatible with anything else, they would not reveal their research results and would expect everyone to pay every year for an update. So why are you letting them control the devices you use every day?

  • The Greek Freak is killing the NBA: how a wonderful person is in conflict with an organization’s core values and audience expectations

    The Greek Freak is killing the NBA: how a wonderful person is in conflict with an organization’s core values and audience expectations

    “…so ….efficient!”  The sportscaster was struggling to find the right words after the Bucks won the championship.  Giannis Antetokounmpo had some pretty impressive stats.  But other than a few blocks was he spectacular?  No, of course not.  He never is.  Despite his unique physical gifts, the man can’t even make a cool dunk.  Unless you are Greek or a Bucks fan, the game he plays is boring.  It is…European.  As an NBA fan I am disappointed.  I think Adam Silver is worried.  This game can not just be about winning and…efficiency.  

    Everyone goes on and on about how Giannis worked hard and made it through adversity.  Rightly so, it is an amazing true story and he is an awesome human being.  But I didn’t sign up for a subscription to Reader’s Digest.  I want my NBA back.  The one with the show above all, the one where players focus on giving the crowd something unique to watch.  Other than a few blocks, the Greak Freak is no freak at all.  He is boring as hell.   Ten years from now they will struggle to find anything to put in a show reel from his highlights.

    Is it important?   It is to me and it is to many of the NBA’s target demographics.  We want stars that are stars, not “amazing hard working people”.  I could go to a factory floor and watch that if I wanted to.  Antetokounmpo is an anti star.  He doesn’t hang out with other NBA players, he doesn’t train with them, he doesn’t know how to make an inspiring speech or even a fun meme.   Already in the United States, rich white parents take their kids to soccer, not basketball. Giannis may be black, but he plays like a boring white person who wins through being gifted and working hard. Admirable. Not NBA though. It will make the rift even bigger.

    In a strange way it is similar to the election of Obama.  Despite the rhetoric, a simmering racism ensured that in the next elections Donald Trump won.  There were many more racists annoyed at Obama’s presidency than could publicly vent during his tenure.  Something similar is happening now with NBA fans.  Giannis doesn’t feature in rap songs because well, he is boring, he is an anti star, he does nothing like all the true NBA stars that built the league.  True NBA fans are sad today.  We are simmering with rage.  We are not racist of course.  But we hate “efficient”, boring players like Antetokounmpo.   When Kevin Durant slogs it out alone in Game7 it is epic. He generates stories, this is what the NBA is about. Giannis has one story, always the same story as his game does nothing to add to it, it is awesome, the boy that sold trinkets at traffic lights who went to the NBA. Fantastic. Let’s make it a movie. For DISNEY, not for the NBA.

    I am Greek.  Everyone here is ecstatic.  I am sad they missed the whole point of what makes the NBA special.  He was lucky to get a ring, now just watch as he fails spectacularly to even make it past the 1st or 2nd round in the playoffs the next years. Giannis Antetokounmpo should move to a European team as soon as possible and leave our league as we like it.

  • The case for a pyjama phone

    The case for a pyjama phone

    Maybe you will call it something else in the future. But I know you need it. I have used a pyjama phone from the first time I swapped up my mobile phone. That previous model seemed fine up until yesterday, it did the same stuff more or less, maybe a bit slower.

    1. Are you worried about your battery? You haven’t decided if it should stay on the charger all night or not, maybe you want it to stop at 80% charge, whatever you like. Get home, switch off your main phone and plug it in to exactly the level you think best. In the meantime….
    2. …relax. Your pyjama phone has only the apps you need at home. Only what you choose to use, the rest can wait. It has to wait, you haven’t even installed it. Instant recallibration.
    3. Take a load of your main phone. A whole lot of apps are only useful when you are home. Why carry them around all day and weigh down your main phone (and your brain) with them? Numerous chat apps or social media I only have on my pyjama phone. If you message me on Viber I won’t see it until I get home. TikTok is not something I need to be seeing all day.
    4. Test and play with stuff you aren’t sure about. That app you read about (on your pyjama phone at night, on that news app you wouldn’t install on your main phone) and are curious? Just try it out.

    There are a lot of uses for a pyjama phone. But the main objective is to create a “safe place”, a calm place, you are not going to switch off all phones completely like they say you should, so at least have a phone which is automatically set up to be closer to whatever you want to feel like doing at home.

  • You are all wrong about Google. 2-5 years wrong.

    You are all wrong about Google. 2-5 years wrong.

    It is fascinating to watch the media, analysts or financial whiz kids try to explain how and why Google does anything. How they enjoy the “failures” or run through the “threats” to the company. “Google just can’t seem to get it together in messaging apps” writes one guru. “Privacy issues could damage its advertising revenue” another. “Pixel phones never got market share” proclaims a title.

    How little they know.

    The only way to explain how Google does business is to imagine you are a two year old child. And Google is the adult. Not even any adult, a really smart and fit adult. Say you are playing catching and throwing a ball. You can hardly manage it, the ball falls out of your hands, you fall over trying to run to it. And Google will pretend to be at the same level of incompetence as you are for a while just to keep you happy.

    We get glimpses of this at times. But Google is a pretty smart adult and doesn’t rush into giving things away. When pressed by the stockmarket or developments it releases something that wows us. Or something to distract attention. Take Apple’s privacy war for example. First move was the Pixel 3a. Easy. Destroy Apple’s margin by bringing the whole smartphone market to a much lower average price point. But Apple insisted. No problem. Google doesn’t need old fashioned methods of tracking users. Just burn the whole thing. Google has tools to track which are far more advanced. Much like the stupid European GDPR fuss, Google will always come out on top. It now announced it is reducing its cut of Play Store app and digital goods sales from 30% to 15% for the first $1 million of revenue a creator earns each year. Big deal! That will be around 600 million of just 1.6 billion in revenue a year. Drop in the pond. Whatever keeps the kids happy.

    Because it is only pretending to be dumb when playing catch with you.

    I reckon Google is 2-5 years ahead of most of its competitors in most important fields of whatever it does. And even if it isn’t, it can make up for it with other tools or knowledge to the same end. It is just carefully cherry picking so that we don’t all figure it out. Elon Musk is a brash three year old in comparison. He makes a big fuss about buying into cryptocurrencies. Google founders made moves in the same field long ago quietly. Because with the amount of data and the AI they have, they know things a long long time before anyone else.

    So when online booking for hotels was announced recently, free for all, and retail shopping….soon free for the whole planet, well you see where it is going. Google decides when and how to release tools that can totally dominate. Don’t mess with the adult or they will get out the adult tools.

    Feel free to drop the ball now.

  • How many people have cheated their way to the vaccine?

    How many people have cheated their way to the vaccine?

    The answer to this question is much more complicated than it seems. In fact despite its dreadful toll in human lives and economies, the pandemic is a wonderful opportunity to see societies, governments and well, all organized systems in our world, tested.

    Capitalism or globalization or whatever you want to call it was already in trouble before all of this. Demonized and blamed for all sorts of problems. But if it was all about money, rich people all over the world would just buy a vaccine, wouldn’t they? We all have a sneaking suspicion many of them have, but then what about…

    … the rule of law? Because sure, you could get your hands on a couple of doses but then how would you do the paperwork? I am pretty sure that in Greece thousands of people have been vaccinated much earlier than they had the right to. They jumped the line by using political connections even though they are 40 or 50 years old. This should be impossible because of…

    …transparency and digital accountability. It is after all a most valuable item, every dose of vaccine should be on a computer system and accounted for. But it isn’t. Nobody wants the bad press that would accompany news that 1000 doses expired unused due to a mistake and in very few countries do governments allow their citizens access to such data.

    Social cohesion has been tested in these conditions. You can bad mouth Sweden all you like about the way they handled the pandemic, but you have to admire them in this respect. Depending where you live you have a very different approach to what you consider “normal” in terms of somebody jumping the line to get vaccinated before you. In Greece we consider it almost normal but…

    …group country behavior was spectacular. The European Union flexed its muscles to protect its members. It seemed a wonderful move which would protect smaller countries. It backfired. Other, small countries in the region did better. But like with masks and PPE, the gloves came off when it mattered, global cooperation went out the window when it mattered. So efforts like the…

    …green passport are in great danger of proving to be a joke. If I live in a country where I can get vaccinated just because I know a politician or a journalist, of course they can also produce any fake document or assurance with any dates they like afterwards. It will only work within countries, for their own use, like they did in Israel.

    So I don’t know exactly how many Greeks cheated their way into getting the COVID-19 vaccination before me. I am pretty sure it is several thousand. But I am even more sure we will never find out. If you live in a country which inspires more certainty you are lucky.

    Hopefully this pandemic will teach us all the value of institutions we can trust.