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Apple

Submission + - Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma (hbr.org)

Submitted by hype7
hype7 writes: With yesterday's release of the Steve Jobs biography, a raft of interesting information has come to light — including Jobs' favorite books. There's one book there listed as "profoundly moving" Jobs — the Innovator's Dilemma by innovation Professor Clayton Christensen. The Dilemma explains how in the pursuit of profit, good managers leave their companies open to disruption. There's a fascinating article over at the Harvard Business Review that explains how disruption works, and how Jobs managed to solve the dilemma by focusing Apple on products rather than profit.
Google

Submission + - Jobs wanted to destroy Android (google.com) 5

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "It's clear that Steve Jobs didn't pull any punches from the interviews for his forthcoming biography. In the latest release from the book, hosted over at AP: "Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft."
In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.
"I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want." The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.""

Comment Re:Indeed, and for a LONG TIME. (Score 3, Insightful) 692

by hype7 (#37709452) Attached to: Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?

This is patently false.

Techcrunch: Yes, others have done voice controls before — even Apple has had them baked into iOS for a few years. But most, including Apple’s previous attempt, have been awful. Others, like Google’s voice services built into Android, are decent. Siri is great.

In the coming weeks and months, we’re going to hear: “both fill-in-the-blank-Android-phone and the iPhone 4S have voice control functionality”. But that’s like saying both Citizen Kane and BioDome are films. True on paper. Decidedly less true when you have to actually experience them.

You really have to use it yourself to see just how great Siri actually is. Using it for the past week, I’ve done everything from getting directions, to sending emails, to sending text messages, to looking up information on WolframAlpha, to getting restaurant recommendations on Yelp, to taking notes, to setting reminders, to setting calendar appointments, to setting alarms, to searching the web. The amount of times Siri hasn’t been able to understand and execute my request is astonishingly low. I’ll say something that I’m sure Siri won’t be able to understand, and it gets it.
Apple

Submission + - Apple's Siri is as revolutionary as the Mac (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: "the desktop metaphor — that the Mac introduced all those years ago — has long been stretched past breaking point. Novice users often don't know where to begin. The touch paradigm introduced in the iPhone began to change that: it removed the intermediary of the mouse and the cursor. But even still, unnecessary complexity remains...

Siri is going to be the first step in fixing it.""
DRM

Submission + - Spotify to bait and switch? (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review, of all places, is running a story suggesting that Spotify may have to rely on a bait & switch strategy — or might have one forced upon it by the record labels. From the article: "Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does –" the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don't like the new price, you don't have to buy the new track. In Spotify's world, if you don't like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear.""
Music

Submission + - RIAA/MPAA: the greatest threat to tech innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren
TAGmclaren writes: The Harvard Business Review is running an article stating that it's not India or China that are the greatest threat to technological innovation happening in America. Rather, it's the "big content" players, particularly the movie and music industry. From the article: "the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence."
Movies

Submission + - Big content killing innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren
TAGmclaren writes: America is at risk of losing its place as the leading place to innovate — not because of China or India, but rather because of the big content industries like the music and movie industry. So says the Harvard Business Review. It's interesting to see a big business publication come down on the technology side. From the article: "despite making their living relying on it, the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. "
Businesses

Submission + - Big Content is strangling American innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article close to many slashdotter's hearts: the problems with "Big Content". They make the argument that all the measures that the movie and music industry are putting in place to protect their business models actually threatens to undermine the innovation engine that the US has built up in the tech space. Very interesting reading."

Submission + - The fall of Wintel and the rise of Armdroid

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — "Armdroid"."
Google

Submission + - The future of Android and Google (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."
Google

Submission + - Google losing control of Android (hbr.org)

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running an interesting article, questioning whether Android will end up making Google any money in the long run — with the likes of Microsoft and Baidu fighting to take the place of Google's services on Android handsets. It certainly does beg the question — what would the future of Android look like if Google no longer supported it, or if they closed the source off?"
Science

Submission + - Balloon 100,000ft up - with a digital camera

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "An Australian student at Deakin University had a fascinating idea for a final project — to send a balloon up 100,000ft (~30,000 metres) into the stratosphere with a digital camera attached. The university was supportive, and the project took shape. Although there were some serious hitches along the way, the project was successful, and he managed to retrieve the balloon — with the pictures. What's really amazing is that the total cost was so low; the most expensive part was buying the helium gas for approximately AUD$250 (~USD$200)."

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