This is the problem I have had with it. Last month I decided to check out some Latino music from Columbia after a recommendation, and my Discover Weekly playlist after that started to get populated with almost all Portugeze songs and Brazillian artists. I did find some great songs in them too, but I would have preferred more Latino music. It was disappointing that their model is not able to properly disambiguate between two popular, yet distinct languages/genres.
Although I am skeptical that Apple will bring out a good, furnished AR product, I am afraid that they might actually be successful because developers have often showed a good inclination towards making apps for Apple devices, and it is one of the primary reasons why Apple has been really successful in what they do, they have apps. Microsoft's HoloLens uses apps from their Windows Store and those that they made themselves, which is a very big limitation for them, and when both devices are out in public and ready for use, Apple will probably get a much larger influx of apps for their device than other AR/VR products. Even failed Apple devices are good money-makers for Apple, and apps are one of the main reasons for it.
The only reason I see Apple failing in the AR and VR field is their lack of data. Apple refuses to save data from their users, and although it is something I admire about them, it is what drives Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Google and Microsoft is successful in this area because of the data they collect (via their Search engines and other OS services), which Apple does not. It is one of the reasons why Siri is competitively weaker than it's counterparts on Android and Windows, because it does not have a good data-driven Machine Learning backend, and unless Apple starts changing their policy on the type of data they collect and use from their devices, their AR/VR devices will go the same way, that is they will be successful in the amount of sales they make, but will be the weakest in terms of functionality and services they can provide.
I see AR and VR being two very different markets. VR is going to initially be almost entirely for entertainment while AR will be almost entirely for industrial applications. The first commercially successful AR systems are going to be based around integration with software from companies like Autodesk, Bentley, Catia, Tekla and the like, not some consumer app store.
> Microsoft's HoloLens uses apps from their Windows Store and those that they made themselves, which is a very big limitation for them, and when both devices are out in public and ready for use, Apple's devices will probably be more successful.
What does the current state of the various app stores have to do with AR? By that, I mean, AR applications are so fundamentally and significantly different than 2D apps that back catalogs are meaningless. Any new player to the AR ecosystem is starting with an essentially empty app store, regardless of whether or on they deploy it on top of a pre-existing, successful app store. We can effectively say that Microsoft has the largest AR app store in the world.
And, we can expect Windows Store to grow as they push Windows Holographic and their tethered, cheaper VR displays (the Hololens is still a $3000 "dev kit"). Apple is not just starting from behind, they haven't even started yet.
Apple does have more registered developers than any other company right now. It is why Apple is able to get a larger portion of the consumer market than other devices even when they arrive late. Just take Apple's Watch and it's competitors for instance (Android wear and Microsoft Band).
That's disappointing. Google will probably keep the service alive for recruiting and the consumer base, while most of it's technologies will probably be shut off. Being owned by Google might also mean that some companies might not want to post challenges on Kaggle anymore, like Facebook or Microsoft.
I really don't understand this assumption that all acquisitions are going to lead to disaster. I work in the Firebase team at Google and couldn't be happier that they've joined (it's what got me to return to Google). Google doubled down on the product and it's grown in ways that Firebase could never have achieved on its own. All while integrating into the broader ecosystem of Cloud.
Firebase then acquired DivShot and people cried doom. Yes DivShot was shut down--after completely rearchitecting Firebase's CLI and Hosting to have DivShot's open source web hosting framework with the features of both product lines. The CEO of DivShot now runs Firebase Hosting's product line and has massive resources at his disposal to push his (great) agenda of simple and speedy static web services.
What is kaggle's technology really? The notebooks? It's a rather experimental feature that doesn't work all that well most of the time, and shouldn't be going nowhere as a lot of people still appreciate them.
I agree for big companies though, even if that doesn't make a whole lot of sense (as there's no private info involved here, the competitions being in the open including the data provided by these companies).
Some people spend years competing and trying to get top rankings. It was a great signal to show to recruiters/potential employers. If Google shuts it down, all this work will be gone.
