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posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the have-you-tried-programming-on-a-tablet? dept.

Christopher Mims writes at the WSJ that Apple like all ambitious companies occasionally strays from its focus. According to Mims the iPhone is just coming into its prime, the iPad is an immature platform and the iWatch is in its infancy, yet Apple continues to invest in one-of-a-kind feats of engineering like the Mac Pro, which ships in volumes that are a rounding error on pretty much everything else Apple makes. "Something's got to give," writes Mims. "Showpieces like iMacs with screens that have more pixels than any PC ever (and four times the average selling price of a PC) are impressive, but what is Apple trying to prove? Is it really a good idea for Apple to continue to put resources against being king of a last-century technology?"

According to Mims the world's best tech companies can be the best at two things at once, maybe three and even a company as mighty as Apple gets to be the best at only a handful of things. "In a world in which the cloud is increasingly the hub of everything individuals and businesses do, and our mobile devices its primary avatar, what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I'd rather see Apple push the envelope on what's next."

takyon: Paywall buster.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:38PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:38PM (#203750)

    Most of the responses WRT phone vs desktop have focused on the phones really poor UI for serious tasks.

    However I'd propose there's bigger differences like the walled garden vs relative freedom. A world where I can only develop software that apple approves of and is flawlessly politically correct and doesn't compete with apple, would pretty much suck. Or a world where I have no choice other than what apple decided (kind of like Gnome, which no one likes but the designers and utter noobs). A world where I never really own or control "my" computer and have to pay extortionate IBM mainframe like monthly fees per device for network access, sucks.

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