Alexander Chalkidis

Tag: google

  • Rigged elections, Open AI, the NBA finals and the next Google CEO

    Rigged elections, Open AI, the NBA finals and the next Google CEO

    Just switched off the first Mavs-Celtics game. Since the iconic rivalry of the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, NBA Finals ratings have never recovered.  Strangely enough however the lowest TV rated series was the most interesting to me.  It was 2020, the year of “the bubble”, an innovative solution the NBA found to continue working despite restrictions.

    And it won Joe Biden the elections.

    At a time when we were all stuck at home watching Netflix they managed to produce top level basketball and a potent political message at the same time.  Every match was a black lives matter match, a platform for players to talk about the importance of voting.  Personally I truly believe it made the difference by getting especially black voters determined enough to overcome all of Trump’s hurdles in order to vote against him and swing the election.  It wasn’t easy post Obama to keep their support, especially in the COVID mess of disinformation.

    Lebron James is a divisive figure in the world of basketball.  Billed from a very young age as “the next Michael Jordan” he is in fact much much more than Jordan can even imagine.  (Yes, I have written about him before, here is a good summary of a lot of things I admire in him.)  Mostly because this athlete had the courage to stand up against an acting President.  He alienated half his fans forever.  But he was right.  And he didn’t win that ring “for Cleveland” like the last one he got.  He won it for social justice, so he could have a platform to make change.

    LBJ is what I call “a benevolent dictator”.

    This is a term I have often used to describe Google too.  I laughed out loudly when reading magazine titles about how “open AI is challenging Google in artificial intelligence”.  Nobody is even close.  Google, much like LeBron James, is several steps ahead of everyone.  Google makes assists to everyone for as long as possible and only hammers specific baskets in if and when necessary.    LeBron this season at age 39 single handedly outscored the entire much hyped Clippers team in the fourth quarter to come back from a 19 point deficit.  Google can do the same any day of the week to Open AI.

    With much power, comes much responsibility.  Blowing out opponents simply makes nobody watch the game. LBJs history, much like Google’s is a constant string of everyone doubting them.  You rarely see a LeBron James team blowout opponents. I have oftened wondered why I am awake at 4am (Greek time) watching him play. I now know and it is addictive, he is very cunningly making sure the end result, what you bought a ticket for, is worth watching. It is the exact opposite of watching Giannis play. But even an aging LeBron can turn games around when he really needs to, he controls the narrative.  He knows when the league isn’t going to give him MVP, he knows when the league needs a different team to get a championship. He adapts the story, sure. But the end result is always worth watching if you know what you are looking for.

    Sundar Pichai, if you ever need help, who you gonna call?

    PS Lebron it’s time you switched to a Google Pixel.

  • Do no evil: ranking tech giants

    Do no evil: ranking tech giants

    Meta for sure is the most evil large technology company of our times.  It is at heart the extension of an extremely immature mediocre hacker.  Time and time again proven unreliable or just straight lying to everyone’s face.  Even if we accept that it has grown so much that it is now difficult for Facebook to act as bad as it used to, we know it will try.  How?  It’s the little things every day.  The lack of resources in policing content.  The experiments are still running on users all the time.  The lack of transparency.  Heck you can’t even export your data normally, they keep trying to hide deactivation menus or make not accepting cookies harder than they should.

    Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to connect people.  He just wants to connect your wallet to his bank account.  Plain and simple.  Facebook and Instagram are the crack cocaine of our digital world and he is always looking for ways to make them even more lethal to our psychological well being and social cohesion.  There is simply no upside to any of Meta’s products.  And even if there was some social aspect to them it is submerged in constant changes and lies of the platform.  One minute they are promoting facebook pages, get everyone to invest in those, the next they have relegated them and nobody sees them in the newsfeed.  Then it was video, the future of everything, go build studios in your companies….oh no, he ended that too without warning.  Nobody should take anything Meta says seriously anymore.

    Microsoft is of course evil but in a more traditional way.  This is old fashioned monopolistic behavior.  They build their products in all the ways they can to lock customers in.  Not as bad as Meta because after all this is the software that runs a lot of the planet’s infrastructure and day to day business.  But they do their best.  Complicated pricing structures that get you started and then hold you by the balls.  Lobbying to governments with shady deals that turn into long term locks.  They open up when they lose, like with mobile phones, just enough to try and keep a finger in every pie.  Just so they can weasel their way into your company’s backbone and get you paying a monthly fee for something or other.  And somehow that monthly fee grows over time.  They always find a way.  Microsoft is evil on a state level of lobbying and backroom dealing.  But at least they also get stuff done for the planet and occasionally actually improve their products.

    Google is much harder to consider evil because of the extremely unique business model.  Billions of people around the world have never ever paid Google a cent yet they use Google products all the time.  Google Maps, YouTube, Search, Docs, Android and other incredible and unique tools that are completely free.  Unlike what conspiracy theorists try to tell you, free means free.  In ten seconds you can get a Google account, 15GB for free and do absolutely amazing things on your phone, tablet or computer.  Google is what I call a benevolent dictator.  Sure, they could destroy the planet at any time.  They could ruin all of us.  They probably know what will happen a few years in the future better than anyone.  But they don’t.

    Chat GPT is an excellent illustration of this.  The “T” in GPT of course being a Google invention that the company gifted to the world.  Google could have released something similar a long time ago.  They didn’t.  The kind dictator knew it was too soon for humanity to handle it.  

    Apple shouldn’t even be on this list because it isn’t a tech company.  A giant yes, tech no.  Apple doesn’t innovate technologically.  It is a lifestyle company.  More importantly it is a staple of the American economy.  Much like the dollar.  Apple sells mainly in North America and doesn’t even bother to accommodate the rest of the planet in product design or support.  They make products with last year’s tech copied from everyone or from companies it buys out.  It makes “good enough” gadgets with the design language it has found works for it.  It’s financial success has nothing to do with any groundbreaking technology. Banks don’t run on Macs and neither does anything else of any consequence on the planet.


    So stop lumping “tech giants” in articles and opinions.  They are nothing like each other.  Sure there are product categories where they conflict.  But it is completely irrelevant.  The business models and the way they look at the world is so different that they should hardly ever be in the same sentence.  Some of us, the people that really try to think about technology, society and business care about these differences after all. Show some respect.

  • Apple can’t buy it’s way into AI

    Apple can’t buy it’s way into AI

    Have you heard of Google Crowdsource? It’s been around for years,

    a lot of volunteers helping Google become even better at AI. Thousands of people doing image label verification, or audio validation, handwriting verification and millions of other clever ways to help Google improve. I am Level35 because I found it interesting from the start. I enjoyed the tech talks from Google AI people and the seminars. You know, back when AI wasn’t all the rage like it is now.

    Or maybe you have heard of Google Photos. A ridiculous in scale endeavour whereby Google gave the entire planet (after all 8 out of 10 smartphones run on Android, not iOS) infinite photo backup. Thus sucking up the greatest free database of images anywhere. Ever. While iPhone users all have phones out of storage because they don’t want to pay anymore than they already pay every month to Apple.

    These are just two examples that you might not have thought of. Of course Google Maps, YouTube or Google Search are also on a scale way beyond anything Apple can even imagine. This isn’t like Siri, Apple can’t just throw 200 million to buy an SRI equivelant to catch up. In fact Siri is an excellent example because even when it was launched it was many years behind Google. Much like with Apple Maps, Apple seems content to have an inferior product simply window dressed for the North American market.

    Google has invested long term in making Google Maps a globally relevant product. There has been a vibrant group of contributors adding to the quality of the data and the AI. Apple has been too busy trying to upsell devices at a greater profit margin to bother to improve its products. Some say it’s the “dark horse” playing “the long game”. They are ignorant and almost funny in their ignorance.

    It isn’t just about massive datasets. AI focus has been at the core of Google’s existence from the get go. Converting Google search to Chat GPT like functionality was just the flip of a switch for Alphabet. They didn’t need to buy any companies because they are that company. And if it is about computing power again Google has the best model. They have been selling “free” services like search, maps, youtube and everything else for years, building massive infrastructure on the back of their ad business in ways that consumers consider a win win.

    Apple’s endeavours in digital video creation are an excellent illustration of the extent of the hole they have dug themselves. A few decades ago the company thought that digital video creation would be the next DTP, the next saviour for their computing division. Even now with their touted advantage in processors they have just 20% of the global computer share. Back then they bought software like Final Cut and other more expensive digital creation tools and tried to package them in various ways to sell more Macs into studios and broadcasters. It didn’t work of course. Apple was not that kind of company, it made money from iPhones. There was no durability to the vision and the software started dying out with less and less updates. It went back to being a cute toy for some Apple loving film folk.

    Right now Apple has no AI vision. It can’t even think of how to develop one. They are too busy trying to think of some gadget that will sell as the iPhone’s market share which is puny. For all you Americans reading, globally just 15% of humans use an iPhone. They all prefer products that are more affordable, more flexible, more open and with the innovations that Apple copies for their next flagship every year. They haven’t been beating world champions at the game of Go, nor folding proteins.

    So when Apple inevitably announces what its plan are in AI, I would take them with a massive pinch of salt. Buying any company won’t solve their problem and no new technology they can announce will either. AI thinking is a long term project and Apple has been absent from the party.

  • Google AI reveals Greek government propaganda works

    Google AI reveals Greek government propaganda works

    So I got access to Bard, Google’s AI. And I thought to ask it about the upcoming Greek elections which were announced today.

    So far so good. Up to date and pretty good summaries. But it made me suspicious, so I delved a bit deeper.

    The problem became apparent. Based on popular articles on the internet, Bard is starting with what is the official line (propaganda) of the Greek government. Makes sense. But as soon as I insist on a specific topic, it reverses that summary.

    In fact not a single of the positive initial claims in its summary stood up to a simple second question. I particularly enjoyed its extremely accurate summary of how far back Greece is in terms of e-government, a sector in which most Greeks have believed government propaganda.

    In fact the harder you push, the better a summary you get.

    In all I am impressed. Sure, those not bothering to ask a second question, or those not asking something specific will only get a superficial answer. But Bard is amazing at locating the real issues and answering them succinctly. I used to consider Wikipedia the best source of balanced answers but Bard is now my No1.

  • Big Tech saves lives – 911 calls need to change

    Big Tech saves lives – 911 calls need to change

    If and when you are psychologically up to it, listen to some 911 calls. It is not just good indirect experience in case you are ever in a desperate situation but also heart warming to know that so many ordinary people can turn into super heroes when the need arises.

    It is also absolutely infuriating.

    As a person that always looks for the optimal solution to problems, I often find myself wanting to scream at either the caller or the operator. 911 (or 112 if you are in Europe, or other numbers in other countries) is an amazing feat of collaboration and government actually managing to do something useful which generally works well. The history of getting different carriers to maintain an emergency service is fascinating.

    But it is far from enough.

    In the recent pandemic we initially all discussed contact tracing. Apple and Google silently yet amazingly, produced a way to use our smart phones. They got little credit for it mainly because they are so afraid of the privacy backlash. But maybe emergency calls is a way for us all to reap the benefits of this work in the long term.

    Have you ever dialed in an emergency? Here’s what happens. Regardless of whether or not you have paid your bill, or even if you are near a cell tower of the company you buy service from, your route gets patched through to a central service. (In the U.S. it is a bit more complicated due to different State laws and histories with telcos.) Your phone sends your location to the person picking up your call to save everyone time.

    So why just location? Your phone battery levels might be useful for emergency services to know. But what would be really great would be access to your cameras. Oh, you are worried they might abuse it? Well listen to the lady that drowned in her car because 911 didn’t believe it was filling up with water. In fact why stop at your cameras, based on location in case of emergency, 911 should be able to ask bystanders’ smartphone cameras to switch on. You get an emergency notification and accept if you want. It would help in a lot of situations. All available data from smart phone sensors of the person calling 911 as well as people nearby could save a lot of lives and energy.

    One of the biggest problems with 911 calls is pranksters. Again, there are tech solutions. Because if the call also send a log of recent activity, emergency services could much more quickly and reliably assess if you are serious or a ten year old playing a bad joke. It could be with your approval, a message on your phone saying “we need to access your internet history and app usage to make sure your emergency call is valid”. If my kid was in danger or my car is half fallen down a cliff I am pretty sure I won’t mind them seeing whatever else I did today to prove I am serious.

    In the early days of the internet, I had suggested public use of banners on websites for announcements that are important to society. It would a kind of online ad tax to help find missing children or spread awareness for important topics which don’t get enough funding for communication. Maybe 911 calls can start something which brings back the concept of public dogoodery in a new way again.

  • Google and the Golden State Warriors: similar approach

    Google and the Golden State Warriors: similar approach

    As I watched the champions get annihilated by the Raptors this morning over breakfast I had yesterday’s Senate hearings in mind.  Steph Curry only got 3 out of 12 but didn’t look worried.  Much like Sundar Pichai yesterday.

    Here’s what happened NBA-side in summary:  The Warriors gathered not one, not two but five All Stars.  These people are basically statistical outliers, freaks that make a difference when it matters.  There have been maybe a hundred such homo sapiens since basketball started and the Warriors have five.  So they dominate.  They dominated so badly last year that a lot of us were put off the game.  So what did the NBA do about it?  For starters they tweaked the schedule to help the Lakers just to keep up the LeBron narrative.  A bit like the stock market pumps up Apple every so often even though Apple has hardly no technological advantage.  Just so it looks like Google has a competitor.  Then they tweaked the rules to help teams that play in the paint.  Then they gave refs instructions on how to execute the rules so as to give the Warriors a harder time.  Not to get too technical, but the NBA did everything it could to make this years championship more fun.  They even asked the Warriors to tone it down.

    It is pretty similar to the Google situation.  The company has created not just 5 but an almost infinite number of All Star technologies.  Worse still, they have tools that ensure they stay ahead of the pack.  They just need to choose when they will uncover what.  Not to look too good, that will increase calls for regulation and intervention.  The Golden State Warriors are following this example.  All year they bench key players with phony excuses to rest them, or simply play as if it is practice.  They don’t even use their best game plays all year unless they need them.  Maybe one or twice here and there, like…well, like a Google experiment.

    Is this bad?  I have written about the Google monopoly since Google started and my position is the same.  It is the kindest dictator we could ask for.  I would much rather Google decides on major issues than Donald Trump or most other politicians.  Is it fair?  Business was never fair.  Should we change it?  I don’t see how and to be honest I don’t see why.  Much like the NBA, maybe tweak the rules a bit so that it is more fun to watch at least…

  • Here is your first class action suite for GDPR (and why it is stupid)

    As an experiment, I decided to ask Google to remove all my contributions to the Google Maps Local Guides scheme.  For those of you not aware, Google Maps uses volunteers to improve maps.  And we do a lot.  They have gamified the process, which makes me a Level 9 guide (of 10 levels) thanks to thousands of reviews, ratings and photos seen by millions of users that I have uploaded.  So what happens if I want to leave?

    Joke No1.  Google itself, clearly says that you can delete your profile but your contributions will remain!  End of story, judge makes verdict, 4% of your global revenue please.

    Joke No2.  It is not easy to even find what to do if you are not OK with the above Joke No1.  Suppose you look hard, you will find somewhere under legal a procedure.  So you fill in a form.  Already we are way out of GDPR, this is not easy or intuitive.

    Joke No3.  Google doesn’t even have a human to respond.  Their first email is generic:

    “Thanks for reaching out to us!

    We have received your legal request. We receive many such complaints each
    day; your message is in our queue, and we’ll get to it as quickly as our
    workload permits.

    Due to the large volume of requests that we experience, please note that we
    will only be able to provide you with a response if we determine your
    request may be a valid and actionable legal complaint, and we may respond
    with questions or requests for clarification.  For more information on
    Google‘s Terms of Service, please visit http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

    Regards,
    The Google Team”

    Whoops!  Under GDPR, referring to fine print just doesn’t cut it.  Even if the judge hadn’t slammed the hammer and demanded gazillions before, now he can.
    Joke No4.   Luckily for them, I too think GDPR is crap, so I respond honestly and fully.  Oh no, bot response again:

    “Thanks for reaching out to us.

    To request the blocking of URLs from Google Search results under European law, please use this form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form. If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.

    To request blocking of your personal information from specific Google products other than Web Search, please use the following form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_pir

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form.

    If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.

    Regards,
    The Google Team”

    This is pretty bad.  The bot didn’t even get it right.  So I send “This request does NOT concern blocking information.  The form you are sending me to is irrelevant.  Please get a homo sapiens to respond.” And the bot insists: “After reviewing your submission, we weren’t able to fully understand your request. If you send us more details to clarify your concerns, we will investigate further.”

    Joke No5.
    Luckily for Google, I am on their side, so I explain with plenty links.

    “I am a Google maps local guide. Level 9 in fact. This means I have made thousands of contributions. However if I want to remove these contributions, there is no automatic way of doing it.Under GDPR this should be possible more easily. Manually deleting tens of thousands of comments, reviews and photos is not practical or even feasible.

    I refer you to the discussion going on here
    https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/How-to-Exit-Local-Guides-Program-and-Delete-ALL-my-Contributions/m-p/934274#M264101

    And here
    https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Local-Guides-and-GDPR/m-p/926431#M259635″

    Bot screws up even worse up the same rabbit hole:

    “To request blocking of your personal information from specific Google products other than Web Search, please use the following form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_pir

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form.

    If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.”

    Now, if you follow that last link, it is as unGDPR as humanly possible.  And it is off topic, it won’t even work if I request it like that.

    I really need no further proof than the above emails to sue Google under GDPR.  Will it work?  Hell yeah!  Class action?  Easily!  Google has been pushing users on to Local Guides for ages, millions of Android users are on it already.  Will I do it?  Of course not.  GDPR is ridiculous, useless and bureaucratic for no reason.  Google Maps is useful and Local Guides wonderful.

    This is a complicated world but useful trumps EuroBureaucracy every time.  Even well meaning European initiatives are counter productive when they are implemented like this.  A horse designed by a Euro Committee isn’t even a camel, it is a monster that can’t walk.  GDPR is not enforceable in any practical sense, it is simply the threat of a vindictive consumer.

  • Notifications chaos? Across platforms, devices and the Universe. Solved!

    I was looking at the new and improved YouTube when it came to me.  Check out all the new bells and whistles, the polls and the posts you can make in a tool that is more and more like a social network, and it will notify you…  I  just kept thinking “wow, how will users handle all the extra new notifications from this app?”  And then I logged in to Google Local Guides connect and thought “I wish this sent me notifications more often without me needing to log in”.  I keep forgetting about it.

     

    There is no easy solution.  No magic bullet.  Oh, wait a minute.  Yes there is!

     

    It is currently chaos.  Every app tries to dominate on my phone and my computer and everywhere it can.  AirBnB sends me text messages just to make sure I have read my emails about a place I am staying in two months.  When I get a new phone or reset my old one, Google does an excellent job of bringing back all sorts of settings.  But not notifications.  Because that is a job bigger even than Google.  Here is how we could  it:

     

    1. Start a service which picks up from your phone and computer as many as possible of whatever apps and services you are connected to automatically.  No easier way around this, you need to authorize it to know your Twitter, Linked in, Gmail or whatever else you want it to handle the notifications for.
    2. You then get a master notifications center.  I am talking about all your apps and all your devices.  Here is where the magic starts.  Because you tell it that you want your cell phone, any cell phone you connect to the service, to always notify you if something happens on Twitter.  Or to never notify you about anything on Facebook other than someone tagging you.   Or to always tell you somehow about stuff happening on Google Local Guides Connect.
    3. Obviously some apps and services won’t comply.  My notifications platform isn’t just another app.  We are now the gold standard, the international bar to reach for everyone.  We are consumer rights!  Heck I can do it as a panEuropean initiative or something, go all political and make any company that doesn’t comply look bad.  We will advertise with slogans like “works with all apps apart from those nasty people at Instagram that won’t let us access their API”.
    4. There is nothing stopping us from creating a service for non compliant devices or software.  You will tell it what you want your connected microwave to do and we will bust the balls of the manufacturer to get on our platform until it complies.  This isn’t some sort of “if this then that”, this is only notifications and specifically notifications.  This is your life!  Who gets the right to interrupt you? (You see how I go all philosophical and touchy-feely, eh?)
    5. Eventually my platform becomes the go to place for all apps and devices to get their notifications settings from.  Cross platform, cross countries, across the Universe.  A Russian cosmonaut with an iPhone will return to earth after 18 months, throw away the damn thing because it drove him nuts and get his Android phone set up the same for notifications within minutes.  Elon Musk will return from Mars after 3 years and fly his new Tesla home without interruptions from any app he hasn’t chosen.

    Notifications are a problem which is not going to go away.  Google is the only company anywhere close to a chance of making the world better in this respect but only for those of us that use and love their products.  But even if you only use Android, Chromebooks and full use of all Google apps, devices and services, there will be other companies creeping in to annoy us with their notifications.  We need something bigger than Google in a much smaller way.  A vertical.  A fine layer of control on the last mile, the last inch of space between the world and anything that comes to interrupt me with a notification.

     

    The business beauty of the proposal is that you don’t need to include everyone and everything from day one.  Even if this platform handled just notifications from 3-4 apps and services it would be useful.  Think about it.  Never having to set up your phone regarding what can ping and ding from Facebook or Gmail or whatever.  Not even Google offers this right now.  Eventually our protocol becomes the global standard for notification control of course, we pay ourselves mega bucks and become more important than the United Nations.

     

    Any developers up for making this?

     

  • The best monopoly the world has ever seen

    The amount of complete gibberish I am reading about the HTC-Google deal is phenomenal.  You don’t need particular insight to see what is happening.  Nor do conspiracy theories help or those “grand scheme” type wackos that explain how it is “just the first step” of something enormous we all don’t understand.

    Google is keeping the Android ecosystem healthy.  Google is doing what no government is fast enough or decisive enough to do.  Bailing out a company with something good to offer the world.  Much like Motorola before that.  No, the plan is not to “kill Apple” with some super phone.  Quite the opposite.  Pixel phones will continue to be in short supply.  They are not meant to be iPhone killers.  They are simply tools to show the way ahead.  Not light years ahead, just the next year.

    Being a monopoly, much like being a dictator, is not an easy job.  You have to make everyone look good and take a back seat even when minor things don’t go your way.  Wait for everyone to get onboard instead of issuing marching orders and killing them off.  AndroidOne is an excellent example of the “try, try again” approach.  Sure, they could force everyone in a number of ways.  When you own most of the searches on the planet, YouTube, Google Maps and other prime everyday tools, it would be easy to force people.  But Google isn’t Facebook and it isn’t Apple.  “Do no evil” means “wait until they all think they want what you want them to do.”

    Google isn’t “challenging its partners” as some ignoramous wrote in the Verge.  Selling off Motorola wasn’t an admission of failure.  The Android ecosystem looks much healthier with Lenovo and Motorola and Nokia in it.  In essence they are all Google, all marketing and selling machines that make money for Google.  Google learnt from Microsoft’s mistakes: Never make it too obvious that you control the whole technology platform.  Microsoft and Apple are welcome diversions in this respect, making Google look like less of a monopoly than it really is.  They kick up a big fuss about whatever silly little project they are launching all the time, keep press and people busy thinking about something else.

    Google is an awe inspiring monopoly.  It controls most of the answers to the planet’s questions.  Never in history has one institution had such power.  I ask it if it will rain tomorrow, how to get to my next appointment and why Hitler didn’t attack in Dunkirk.  Google knows how many iPhone Apple will sell in Indonesia better than Apple does.  They have probably correlated it to search queries on peanut butter or something.

    So if some idiot journalist wants to wax lyrical about it’s “failure to make a feature phone and grab market share” just do what Google does:  smile and ignore.

  • Apple: We burn Pentiums to the ground

    If you don’t remember that slogan, let me remind everyone.  Because in a rather strange way, it has been wiped from Google!  Seriously, Google it.  “We burn Pentiums to the ground” and toasting Pentiums was a major Apple promotional campaign, aimed at convincing us all that their proprietary Motorola (IBM) processors were “better” or “faster” than the Intel alternatives.  It is an extremely educational story to take to hearth as Apple goes down the same rabbit hole with the iPhone today.   Back then it took users a couple of years to figure it out.  Graphic artists were trying to ignore that benchmarks of actual task performance was showing a huge disadvantage.  Back then, Apple was the tool of choice for creative professionals in the visual design.  So it was a matter of pride.  You applied a Photoshop filter and it took twice as long to render it as that guy you made fun of with the cheap PC.  In video it was ridiculous.  Apple did its best to make sure that there weren’t many applications running on both PC and Mac, but Adobe After Effects slipped through the net.  Benchmarks there were off the chart, with the ultra expensive Apple machines trailing by whole minutes in everyday tasks.

    So what did Apple do?

    They lied in your face!  The “we burn Pentiums to the ground” campaign, much like a lot of Steve Jobs’ presentations, were 100% lies.   He used vague graphics and charts showing an X percent advantage, or stating the new processors were 22% faster than…something.  And then they got personal claiming they “toasted” the Pentium processor.   But you won’t find it easily.  Here’s a video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE6aKeK61A4

     

    Where are the ads now?  I am a long time Apple hater so I know very well how I used to find them with an image search…..gone.  Zilch.  Almost no digital footprint of them left!  Either Apple or Intel, or both of them, got Google to make them disappear.  And this is where it gets interesting.  Because Apple is heading the same way today.  I wrote a short article highlighting the many things about the iPhoneX.  Quad DAC, GigabitLTE, MQA, Log and lookup tables for video…it is a long list of useful high end features other smartphones have already.   I post it on Facebook and an Apple fan friend (I still talk to them) starts going on about the “all mighty A11 Apple chip”.  Obviously he had no better response.  But allmighty Apple chip?  Really?

    The company is in its classic rabbit hole.  It needs to “think different” but instead it is focusing on “being different”.  Not the same thing.  When the whole world has Bluetooth, the whole world needs Apple working on a safer, faster, better standard.  Not to just tweak it a bit and call it iBluetooth, making its AirBuds “proprietary”, “more expensive” and “not compatible”.  (What their tag lines should have been in the first place.)  When the world agrees to use USB type C we don’t want to carry around custom Apple dongles and dangles.    Siri is a joke and new Apple “features” are usually just copied from Android.  If they are not, they are a bad idea.  Like getting rid of the home button.

    I still remember holding the very first iPhone and asking “where is the copy-paste” function?  They laughed.  Like they laughed when I asked where the right click was on their mice.  Guess what?  The iPhone got copy and paste eventually.  And the Mighty Mouse had a right click.  Even now, Apple products are not as good as others in these two respects.   In Android we have built in advanced clipboard features and multiple windows to play with.   They copied too little, too late.  And made a mess of the reality distortion necessary to cover up their tracks.

    Much like the old days, someone is going to have bail Apple out.  Not talking about cash this time.  It will be Google that will run to the rescue and they won’t even tell us about it.  Suddenly Siri will magically get better, Apple Maps will work around the world instead of the rather limited version they have now and other Google power features will trickle through in various ways.  Just enough for Apple to pretend it is the innovator.  Which it is.  Just not in technology.  In technology it takes R&D, persistence and number crunching to get to the top.   Apple is better at getting money off people.  Some call it marketing, some of us like to call it as it is.  Especially since most of us aren’t making any money from this mass dellusion.

    Don’t let me spoil the party though, enjoy looking at your shiny iPhoneX until it unlocks.