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Siri: A technological revolution or an Apple magic powder?

The iPhone 4S is faster, slicker and has a better camera than its predecessor, the iPhone 4. But Siri is the iPhone 4S’main news: a voice-recognition feature.
Siri can do so many things: from giving the weather to calling your best friend.
At the beginning, when Tim Cook announced the iPhone 4S capabilities few weeks ago, I was skeptical. Actually, the vocal-recognition was created five (or more) years ago and it was not a success. We had to pronounce words exactly like a robot for being understood, and from then there are no more improvements.
What a surprise with Siri! Even if in French the application was not perfect for now, it is a huge novelty in technological matters.
According to Peter Nowak, “The tool works well with features embedded in the iPhone, such as weather forecasts, calling up contacts, scheduling notifications and launching media. Indeed, after a few hours of playing with it, I may just be ready to say it’s more accurate than anything I’ve seen on Android.”

Siri is the actual spot in the digital world, a lot of website are talking about it and some very funny about what can we ask to Siri: Shit That Siri Says, http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/
It’s true that we can ask a lot of thing to Siri; to cancel or to plan meeting on our agenda, to ask the Joseph Kessel’s best books (Siri launches an Internet research). We can also

But for using Siri, we have to be connected to Internet… An important constraint for users and a proof for the limited thinking of Siri: it is more of a programmed robot than a thinking entity. It means a lot of workers are behind this and have to anticipate questions and answers!

For Peter Nowak, Siri comes from The military: “As the video here explains, Apple’s tool started as a DARPA project called Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO).”

What do you think about it?

Has Apple any competitors ? Is there any company even close ?

We may say that Apple has positioned itself very specifically, and it seems like it is impossible for other brands to compete with.

Apple produces computers, telephones, tablets, music players, operating systems, television set-top boxes, lifestyle and productivity software, professional media software, wireless routers, and  finally Apple has an “app store” where you can buy movies, music and applications.

Today Apple is one of the leaders in the PC and smartphone markets. Due to the wide range of proposed products and services (providing content and applications for users)  it is really difficult for a company to compete with Apple. The competition is not coming from the “traditional” PC players, but from Amazon, Google, Real Networks, Sony and Hewlett Packard, because of their strong investment in content.

Amazon is the content competitor: it proposes digital music, films, TV shows, and books, but only for PCs.  

Google with Android OS and applications for smartphones, can become a real threat for Apple leadership.  

Microsoft with Windows OS is the main operating system competitor for Apple, but if not the price advantage, customers would be likely to chose Mac operations systems with an easy, commerce-based solution to content access.

Sony directly challenges Apple. Sony proposes movies, music, e-books, consoles, mobile games as well as advanced smartphones and PCs. 

Concerning iPhone hardware competitors, Nokia, HTC, LG and Samsung are strong but they  depend on someone else for the software. So all in all competition is weak taking in consideration the iPhone as a whole: hardware plus software.

Usually the competition in the technology market is very intense. Apple works very hard on R&D and marketing to keep the popularity of iPod, iPad, iPhone and Apple Mac. Apple’s success lets us even think that the company has No Real competitors. That no company has the same positioning, advantages and range of product as Apple.

Do you think Apple has no competitors? If yes, how long will it last?

Purchase Motivation

Great Appearance

The iProducts are always very good looking. For example iPod shuffle and iPod nano offer seven bright colors with sliver, black, blue, green, yellow, pink and red. It’s very simple but fashion. The Mac air is the thinnest laptop in today’s notebook market. With width of only 11.8’’ and height of 0.68’’, it’s just 1.08 kg light. Its sleek surface is faireshaped and durable. The iMac’s all-in-one beautifully package with wireless keyboard and mouse make your desk more orderly and clutter-free. The modern appearance of iProduct is really attractive for people who care about style.

Operation Experience

            Recently, Apple has launched the new operating system OX S Lion for Macs and iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Those new systems are much more intuitive, fast, powerful than Windows from Microsoft and Android from Google. Besides, there are thousands of software provided in the Mac App store, sorted by featured, top charts, categories with paid and free. Furthermore, it’s very user friendly, and quite different from the other background system, it’s just a click to both install and update application during all the process. In addition, Apple also offers the iCloud for iproduct user for helping integrate the information between your apple devices more conveniently.

Security System

            Operating system such as Microsoft, Apple’s latest operating system OS X Lion phone is more security than Windows’ system. It has less bug and leaks, and harder to get in the background system.

It’s cool!

Another one of the main motivations of buying an iProduct is: it’s cool! Apple has built itself an advanced image successfully and it did a great marketing job to make the iProduct with the cool label. They had put it into people's consciousness that Apple is cool, advanced, high tech, having an iProduct make you looks cool. People are willing to pay more for this cool label even it’s much more expensive than other digital products.

What’s your purchase motivation of buying an iProduct? Its appearance? Its function? Its security? Or just because it looks cool?

Tim Cook = Steve Jobs?

For his first public apparition at the Keynotes for iPhone 4S, Tim Cook looked like Steve Jobs… a man in dark, casual clothes walking around a stage telling the world about how wonderful his company and its products are.
But appearances are misleading… Apple's new boss recognized that this was his first launch since taking over, as if to say, "be gentle with me". After, he talked about stats in the familiar manner with new shops in Asia, more Macs sold and so on.
Just one statistic did not look so great - the iPhone has just 5% of global phone sales, although its share of the smartphone market is much higher.
Mr Cook's point was that the whole market is going to be smart - so there is plenty for Apple to aim at.

But then just as we were waiting for the big reveal, Tim Cook left the stage and handed over to a succession of his colleagues.
It’s the first change after Steve Jobs; Tim Cook gives importance to the real makers of Apple’s products. Is he more discreet and friendlier? Yes, for now. It is better? We don't know...

At the end, Tim Cook finally came back on stage to tell us that Apple was not about the individual products, more about how they all worked seamlessly together.

Do you prefer an almighty CEO or a social and respectful CEO?

What do you think?

What about working conditions in China?

As you all know, in 2010 there was a wave of suicides (12 in a few days) in one of the factories –based in Shenzhen- producing Apple’s products.

Foxconn is a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, and the firm also produces for brands such as Dell, Sony Corp. Hewlett-Packard and Nokia. Out of 900,000 workers, Foxconn employs nearly half of them in Shenzhen.

The first suicide was done by a 19 years old who had joined the factory the month before. Then a 21 years old suicided too, and the investigation revealed there was no link with Foxconn. Apparently, the person was suffering from loneliness and depression…but then suicides happened again.

The China Labor Watch accused Foxconn of a military-style management, which leads to a lot of pressure and overtime work. See after an extract from International Business Time:

“Most of whom are in their early 20s with little or no social support, labor for up to 12 hours at a stretch on highly-repetitive, assembly-line tasks without any break and sometimes the workers are forced to work even on weekends. The workers, the group said, have often complained to them that they are "extremely tired, with tremendous pressure." Li Qiang, the group's executive director, said Foxconn "tramples" workers' personal values for the sake of efficiency.”

Plus, employees on the same production line are not allowed to talk during working hours. They are really isolated as being cut from their families and lovers. It is kind of a microcosm.

Last year, Steve Jobs was asked about these working conditions, he said first than the suicide rate was lower than in the US. Also, he said: "It's a factory, but they have restaurants and movie theatres.”

In addition, workers are manipulating hazardous chemical. The n-hexane used for screen is very strong and made dozens of workers fall ill, faint, and having fertility issues. One of them – Guo Ruiqiang- wrote a letter to Steve Jobs to alert him on health issues and to ask the company some compensation. They never got any answer from the firm and Guo said last week: “I care more about my health than Jobs' passing away,” said Guo. “With Jobs dead, I feel more lost than before. I really don't know what to do.”

 Foxconn is not an isolated case, in China, lots of factories have similar rules, and the 12 suicides at Foxconn denounced “sweatshops” general low labor conditions in the whole country.

After reading this, do you think your buying process will be affected next time you want to buy an Apple product?

How do you think Apple should have reacted?