A company like Nintendo doesn’t seem like it has an American equivalent, and I actually can’t imagine a company like that surviving the ups and downs of the 80s/90s/00s tech cycles in the US, especially with our tendency towards M&A.
If anything, Sony is Japan's Microsoft: Do a gazillion things, many of them poorly, to such a unfocused extent that some of your divisions actually end up competition with each other.
Like in Sony's case, how they've had internal battles for decades between the device side (that wants to make devices that are useful) and the content side (that wants DRM out the ass on everything)
Sony is older than Apple and was one of Steve Jobs' main inspirations. He even wanted to make everyone wear uniforms (which Sony and Nintendo still did then) - that's where his same outfit every day habit came from.
They weren't focused back then, but neither was Apple.
Yea it's crazy. My dad has a classic Gameboy that his great grandfather purchased during the first world war. That Gameboy saw a couple more wars after that too, including 5 years up my grandads ass in a POW camp, and 2 more inside another soldier who brought it back for us.
I know you're trying to make the point that Nintendo revolutionized itself and is a foundationally different company than it was in the 1910's, but not really.
Trading cards (cutting edge color printing) -> Mechanical toys (cutting edge machining) -> Basic games like Game and Watch -> Video Games.
Nintendo just makes complex toys using cutting edge tech and always has.
It's a bit of an amalgam, and it honestly depends on which version of OSX you're talking about. Mach itself was designed as an improvement over BSD, and it was more or less a microkernel developed around BSD concepts with binary compatibility. My understanding is that as time went on, performance issues and security concerns forced Apple to poach more and more BSD code onto Mach, which leaves us with the pretty messy codebase they use today. Supposedly (?) a lot of the zombie code is being cleaned up internally, but it's been an ongoing, multi-year process for Apple, probably made even more difficult with their bonafide UNIX certification.
> make everyone wear uniforms (which Sony and Nintendo still did then)
Nintendo still requires uniforms. They're pretty casual about it and you can just throw the factory-style short sleeve shirt or the jacket over whatever you're wearing, but everyone except the suits does wear it.
I dont know if you can say that Sony is doing stuff “poorly”. Most of the hardware they make is very solid. Think about their speakers, headphones, the consoles, etc.
But yes i agree, they are a huge company with a lot of divisions where sometimes the decisions are at odds.
Which parts do you think are doing poorly?
That's easy, UUIDs are unique, so it's easy to tell them apart, although it's hard to group them. Much better than deciding what the heck 'new iPad' means or if you want a new old 3ds or a used new 3ds, or if updating iOS means your phone or your router.
Just because Apple has had some bad names doesn't make Sony's names better. Don't compare Sony's naming conventions with iPad, compare them with iPhone, which is significantly easier.
Q: Which iPhone do you have
A: iPhone 12 Pro Max (I choose this one because it's one of the longer iPhone names)
vs
Q: Which Sony headphones do you have
A: MX 4 or something like that. Let me check my Amazon order history. Oh yeah, here it is. The WH-1000XM4
I'd much prefer the iPhone naming convention to what Sony does, and Apple having screwed up the iPad naming doesn't really excuse Sony here.
Naming things is still one of the harder problems in computer science. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is descriptive, but doesn't say everything. How much storage it has, how many sim slots (there are dual-nano-sim iPhones in special regions) it has, the modem and antenna configuration, the color. From Apple's POV, the plebs don't need to know the difference between A2342, A2410, A2411, and A2412 versions of the iPhone 12 Pro Max and it's not clear that they're wrong.
Hardware is generally great but their software and UI are often crap.
I think the problem for this is they have separate divisions often developing the bits and bolts behind their consumer/business hardware who are doing very high quality and innovative engineering and then the separate company developing the actual devices that use that hardware is more of an afterthought. They just want to sell the bits and bolts to everyone else as well.
What does Sony do poorly? Sony has the same dysfunction Apple has - everything has to be invented in house. If you told me that a company invented an high end camera that 20% more than the competitors and used proprietary connectors and memory cards, I wouldn't be surprised if that was Apple.
>decades between the device side (that wants to make devices that are useful) and the content side (that wants DRM out the ass on everything)
It's not entirely about the business structure or its fundamental revenue sources. Don't think like an accountant here, it's about the brand. In terms of being the top-tier tech and hardware firm of your nation, Sony is Japan's Apple. It's a strong household name too, regardless of their conglomerate style being close to Microsoft.
I pin the failure of the Vita (a system designed around downloadable games with hardware buttons) on the need to use proprietary memory. Yes, Sony made more off of the proprietary memory than off of SD/uSD cards, but handicapped the system and made the downloadable games that should have been its bread and butter an expensive proposition for users.
I would say Panasonic is actually the Apple of Japan but with more of a focus on business to business in addition to consumer. They make a gazillion things but generally they are all damn good.
That comparison aside, I think Nintendo and Apple are very similar in a spiritual sense. They both love vertical integration, they both love to own as much of the software and hardware stack as possible, they both have a perceived emphasis on quality, independence of thought, they don't play nicely with others as much as they can get away with, they both have super loyal, obsessive fanbases, and they have literal mountains of cash because of this attitude within their respective industries. I think Sony is in a similar line of business as Apple but they don't have the same attitude that these two share.
Another company I'd lump in with these 2 would be Disney for the same reasons as above.
> A company like Nintendo doesn’t seem like it has an American equivalent
I find they're similar to pre giant-media-conglomerate Disney. Their products target families, and are very child friendly. Ridiculous limits on when you can buy things (Disney Vault, Mario 35). Both are incredibly litigious.
Although I can't think of any comparisons to Nintendo's lack of decent online services.
I would disagree - No one ever really assumed Sony would go out of business from a fundamental standpoint. They may have gone through a period of diminished value and failed projects (laptops, smartphones, etc.), but the PlayStation has always been a hit, the media arm has always been a 'Top 4' player, the headphones were always category-leading, the camera sensors were always top notch, and I'm sure I'm missing many other aspects of their business. If anything that brings to mind MSFT (who's always led in core areas, but has also had periods of diminished value and failed projects).
On the other hand, many people thought Nintendo (as we know it at least) might go belly-up in the Gamecube and Wii U eras. There was real talk of them becoming a game dev with no hardware if the Switch was as much of a failure [0]. Similar to the talk around Apple post-Newton, pre-iBook.
Nintendo has a lot of money, a failure of a home console after Wii U probably would kill their home console division (no reason to continue making products if they all fail), but it wouldn't kill the company as a whole, in particular they would keep making handheld consoles.
Since Sony has entered home console market, Nintendo was essentially unable to compete with them. Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii U weren't successful compared to PlayStation. Wii and Switch on the other hand succeeded by doing something completely different to what PlayStation did.
A company like Nintendo doesn’t seem like it has an American equivalent, and I actually can’t imagine a company like that surviving the ups and downs of the 80s/90s/00s tech cycles in the US, especially with our tendency towards M&A.