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5930 Posts
On April 25 2012 14:03 vepos wrote:
After their rootkit scandal, DRM scandal, and PS3 scandals - first removing a promised feature after user purchase (OtherOS), and then letting their network get hacked and leaking millions of accounts - I can only hope that Sony dies a horrible, dreadful, death. They have shown nothing but contempt for their users; hopefully "lol capitalism" will work and they will pay for their mistakes.
On the other hand, you have Microsoft refusing to deal with Xbox Live hack victims as a result of a Fifa bug (amongst other problems but this is the main one) and doing little after suffering the single largest data loss disaster in cloud computing history. No idea how Microsoft kept the Xbox Live issue quiet (they still haven't fixed it IIRC) but they kept the data loss issue relatively silent by quickly blaming it on everyone else. Everyone who knows anything knows that Roz Ho was instrumental in the data loss.
The difference between companies like Microsoft and Sony is that Sony is a nice punching bag for everyone, as evident by your opinion.
On topic: Sony (or anyone Asian manufacturer) simply cannot compete with American companies in the long run. As Steve Jobs said, Asian manufacturers just don't understand software and with hardware being commodity items these days, the most important thing is the quality of your software. South Koreans and the Chinese can do commodity hardware cheaper than the Japanese so they're simply getting pushed out of the market.
Even then, the profit margins just aren't high enough for most electric hardware companies to really survive at their current state. Basically every company related to consumers electronics is tanking because profit margins for everything is now razer thin (does Samsung even make cash from their consumer electronics like TVs?). CES was really the place to see all of these companies flailing around as everything but the Crystal LED and OLED demos were absolutely worthless.
TVs make zero money whatsoever so everyone is trying to push stereoscopic 3D and OLED (3D has failed, OLED probably will too); laptops are now dirt cheap so they need ultrabooks to improve profit margins (Ultrabook prices are already racing towards the bottom); computer hardware is now largely dirt cheap and DRAM manufacturers are all bleeding money out of every hole (there is close to no solution to this problem).
The only company making megabucks is Apple and that's because they build good hardware, good software, don't dilute the brand name, and give everyone else - especially retailers - extremely small profit margins. People can try to emulate Apple's hardware but they will never, ever be able to emulate Apple's iOS ecosystem and software. The OP is 100% correct that Sony missed a huge opportunity because they are simply incapable of creating good software and doing something with their fairly decent ecosystem.
Sony really needs to understand how to design good software and stop manufacturing so much stuff and so much shit because you can't win a race to the bottom with China/South Korea in that market. That obviously won't happen but the best thing they can do is cut the losses and shift right back to being a high end hardware company. Its pathetic to see that only now does Kaz Hirai see that making so many god awful products (everything low end) is a terrible idea since it makes your whole brand look shit, even if you do make some pretty legendary products (i.e. Dream Machine, Sony MDR-V6/MDR-7506, every CRT, and NEX cameras).
On April 25 2012 02:21 kakaman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 02:15 surfinbird1 wrote:
Everywhere I hear that people like Steve Jobs are critical to their companies. But I just can't believe that a global multimedia company would depend on the creativity and the genius of one man. Is this actually the case? He pretty much single-handedly created/made popular some of the most important markets today: digital media stores, smartphones, tablets, 3d animation, app stores, cloud computing. No one else really comes close.
Protip: Steve Jobs did not do all of that alone. When Steve Jobs talked about Apple's achievements, he always said "we". That's because Steve Jobs, while all important in designing the right brand image and making sure his products were pitch perfect, often fiddled with awful ideas (anyone remember the really terrible iPod Hi-Fi?) and lost arguments over stuff like design for the better.
To be quite honest, I think Jony Ive's death would be a bigger blow to Apple than Steve Job's death. The most important thing Steve Jobs did was create the right corporate culture inside Apple but besides that, Tim Cook (changed manufacturing and supply line methodologies) and Jony Ive (principle hardware designer) are the real reasons why Apple earns billions in profit ever quarter.
Every aluminium Apple device is literally Jony Ive's child and the vast majority of them have great hardware design...pick up any iPhone and see how easy it is to use with only your left or right hand. Tim Cook, on the other hand, basically pioneered the art of cutting costs of manufacturing while fucking over competitors' supply lines at the same time.
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Womwomwom, I can understand a certain amount of asslicking due to being a fan and whatnot but you went overboard here. We've all used apple products before, come on it gets old. Your phone example is wtf...
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5930 Posts
How so? You're welcome to join the discussion instead of amusing I'm an "asslicker" and actually dispute some points.
Edit:
Or is someone who doesn't irrationally assume all Apple products are useless and overpriced (because I actually know stuff beyond benchmarks) an "asslicker"?
The iPhone is just as example of their attention to detail when designing a product. A lot of people ask why Apple isn't designing a 4.3" or 4.8" mobile phone to compete with Android and that's because they're all completely unusable with a single hand. You can reach everything with a single hand - thumb for onscreen items, fingers for lock, home, and volume - and it doesn't matter if you are left or right handed.
I don't know any other phone on the market you can do this (because there are no good <4" phones anymore), I just used a HTC One X and its a pretty uncomfortable fit unless you treat it like a miniature tablet.
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If PlayStation dies I am literally no longer going to play console games, my PS3 is the only thing that I use for electronic entertainment (and my PSP) other than my computer.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Are Asian countries devoid of solid software engineers or designers? I beg to differ, as I know many who can go toe to toe with the best in the west.
The difference is in the leadership. The West is a breeding ground for those who strive for change and differentiation, risk taking and bold decisions. The East is, as some have mentioned, a place where the current societal tide is one geared towards stability, assimilation, and optimization. The thought is not, "what better place can we go with our ship," but rather, "how well can we steer this ship towards where we are already headed".
Was it always this way? I doubt it. Post-war Japan was a den of crazy risk takers. Something changed it though; maybe success lead to riches, and those riches became something to guard: a shackle.
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5930 Posts
However the quality of Japanese hardware has declined considerably. Asian manufauctuers still can't design software very well, you just have to look at how awful most Japanese and Korean websites are to see some of their problems in that critical sector.
Now I can only speak about the A/V sector, because that's the market I normally pay attention to, but most Japanese manufauctuers have greatly declined in every single way in the name of cost cutting. Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, JVC, Denon, Yamaha et al. all played the A/V sector reletively safely and outcompeted most people through sheer quality of their hardware: full aluminium face plates and knobs, huge full sized toroidal transformers, extremely reliable interiors. Most, after 40 years of use, still sound fantastic and only need replacement of the capacitors that are long past their used by date.
The same goes for the Sony Trinitron that was reletively late to the colour TV market but was simply better than anything else by a country mile. Akio Morita refused to listen to shareholder pressure because he refused to release a less-than-acceptable product to the market - he was right to wait.
In the 90s and 00s, in particuar, Sony eroded like their whole brand name by releasing awful product after awful product. Currently they can't go toe to toe with Western manufacuters. The British (or Chinese since they buy companies like Wharfedale) and Americans now own the high end Hi-Fi market while the Japanese have vanished off the face of the planet. Some, like Luxman, don't even really exist anymore because of botched shifting from the high end to mid and low end markets.
I understand the economics don't support such methods anymore but all of these Japanese manufacuters have declined in hardware quality, save perhaps Yamaha. Most Japanese TVs are not expected to last and neither are their receivers. Sony is particuarly terrible since all of their modern day receivers and amplifiers are god awful in terms of reliability and most can't output their rated power.
Since they can't design software as well as American counterparts - you can't honestly say Samsung, Sony, Epson, and Panasonic can design software as good as Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, HP, etc. - and don't produce the legendary long lasting hardware they used to, what makes their hardware better than their competitors?
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On April 25 2012 03:49 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 03:21 kakaman wrote:On April 25 2012 03:02 IntoTheWow wrote:On April 25 2012 02:21 kakaman wrote:On April 25 2012 02:15 surfinbird1 wrote:
Everywhere I hear that people like Steve Jobs are critical to their companies. But I just can't believe that a global multimedia company would depend on the creativity and the genius of one man. Is this actually the case? He pretty much single-handedly created/made popular some of the most important markets today: digital media stores, smartphones, tablets, 3d animation, app stores, cloud computing. No one else really comes close. single-handedly? lol, I think that's stretching it a big too much. Not really, none of those segments were important in anyone's lives until Apple got into the mix. Jobs was able to monetize industries where others tried and failed. That's for another debate. All I'm saying the term single-handedly is a bit ridiculous when you have other people in the picture, such a Wozniak, Atkinson, Catmull, etc etc arounds jobs, not counting pioneers in each industry, such as the Xerox Graphical Team, the MP3 players pioneers. And smartphones didn't came to be with jobs. Also Jobs was against Apps developed by others than Apple at the start, so I wouldn't list the App Stores as one of his achievements, nor 3D animation.
Single-handedly probably is a bit much, but he did bring a lot of stuff to the masses that didn't work before. He obviously saw something in Pixar which was a big part of 3D animation. He also fostered some neat stuff with NeXT. Those computers gave birth to the first web server and Doom.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On April 26 2012 12:19 Womwomwom wrote:
However the quality of Japanese hardware has declined considerably. Asian manufauctuers still can't design software very well, you just have to look at how awful most Japanese and Korean websites are to see some of their problems in that critical sector.
Now I can only speak about the A/V sector, because that's the market I normally pay attention to, but most Japanese manufauctuers have greatly declined in every single way in the name of cost cutting. Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, JVC, Denon, Yamaha et al. all played the A/V sector reletively safely and outcompeted most people through sheer quality of their hardware: full aluminium face plates and knobs, huge full sized toroidal transformers, extremely reliable interiors. Most, after 40 years of use, still sound fantastic and only need replacement of the capacitors that are long past their used by date.
The same goes for the Sony Trinitron that was reletively late to the colour TV market but was simply better than anything else by a country mile. Akio Morita refused to listen to shareholder pressure because he refused to release a less-than-acceptable product to the market - he was right to wait.
In the 90s and 00s, in particuar, Sony eroded like their whole brand name by releasing awful product after awful product. Currently they can't go toe to toe with Western manufacuters. The British (or Chinese since they buy companies like Wharfedale) and Americans now own the high end Hi-Fi market while the Japanese have vanished off the face of the planet. Some, like Luxman, don't even really exist anymore because of botched shifting from the high end to mid and low end markets.
I understand the economics don't support such methods anymore but all of these Japanese manufacuters have declined in hardware quality, save perhaps Yamaha. Most Japanese TVs are not expected to last and neither are their receivers. Sony is particuarly terrible since all of their modern day receivers and amplifiers are god awful in terms of reliability and most can't output their rated power.
Since they can't design software as well as American counterparts - you can't honestly say Samsung, Sony, Epson, and Panasonic can design software as good as Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, HP, etc. - and don't produce the legendary long lasting hardware they used to, what makes their hardware better than their competitors?
No I agree with you that the megacorporations in Japan are basically dogshit.
But to equate their incompetence with the lack of talent and ability in the population would be a mistake. The youngsters with legitimate skills and sense for design, software, etc, are in smaller firms or are completely shackled by the corporate bureaucracy of bigco. (it doesn't help that the Asian corporate hierarchy is based on seniority, so their unilateral, outdated decisions guide the company at large into oblivion)
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I believe Sony's only relevant hardwares are only PS3 and PSP brands. Pretty much other companies have steamrolled sony on other electronic hardware brands.
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5930 Posts
On April 26 2012 13:18 thedeadhaji wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 12:19 Womwomwom wrote:
However the quality of Japanese hardware has declined considerably. Asian manufauctuers still can't design software very well, you just have to look at how awful most Japanese and Korean websites are to see some of their problems in that critical sector.
Now I can only speak about the A/V sector, because that's the market I normally pay attention to, but most Japanese manufauctuers have greatly declined in every single way in the name of cost cutting. Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, JVC, Denon, Yamaha et al. all played the A/V sector reletively safely and outcompeted most people through sheer quality of their hardware: full aluminium face plates and knobs, huge full sized toroidal transformers, extremely reliable interiors. Most, after 40 years of use, still sound fantastic and only need replacement of the capacitors that are long past their used by date.
The same goes for the Sony Trinitron that was reletively late to the colour TV market but was simply better than anything else by a country mile. Akio Morita refused to listen to shareholder pressure because he refused to release a less-than-acceptable product to the market - he was right to wait.
In the 90s and 00s, in particuar, Sony eroded like their whole brand name by releasing awful product after awful product. Currently they can't go toe to toe with Western manufacuters. The British (or Chinese since they buy companies like Wharfedale) and Americans now own the high end Hi-Fi market while the Japanese have vanished off the face of the planet. Some, like Luxman, don't even really exist anymore because of botched shifting from the high end to mid and low end markets.
I understand the economics don't support such methods anymore but all of these Japanese manufacuters have declined in hardware quality, save perhaps Yamaha. Most Japanese TVs are not expected to last and neither are their receivers. Sony is particuarly terrible since all of their modern day receivers and amplifiers are god awful in terms of reliability and most can't output their rated power.
Since they can't design software as well as American counterparts - you can't honestly say Samsung, Sony, Epson, and Panasonic can design software as good as Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, HP, etc. - and don't produce the legendary long lasting hardware they used to, what makes their hardware better than their competitors? No I agree with you that the megacorporations in Japan are basically dogshit. But to equate their incompetence with the lack of talent and ability in the population would be a mistake. The youngsters with legitimate skills and sense for design, software, etc, are in smaller firms or are completely shackled by the corporate bureaucracy of bigco. (it doesn't help that the Asian corporate hierarchy is based on seniority, so their unilateral, outdated decisions guide the company at large into oblivion)
Yeah I basically agree with you there. Seems like we're on the same page now.
To be fair on Sony, they're at least they seem to be aware of their problems (too many useless products, software and hardware departments too territorial). A lot of other companies are so much more terrible...my dad's LG smart TV has possibly the worst GUI in the world.
On April 26 2012 13:36 TehPrime wrote:
I believe Sony's only relevant hardwares are only PS3 and PSP brands. Pretty much other companies have steamrolled sony on other electronic hardware brands.
Sony still makes a lot of very relevant hardware: very good mid-range and entry level professional monitor headphones, professional hardware in general, HX series of Bravia TVs, NEX series of small mirrorless cameras (NEX-5 and NEX-7 are absolute beasts), etc.
The problem is the billion god awful consumer electronics drown all the very good hardware.
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