What's so fantastic about Apple?

[Stomatopoda]

Mac fanboys who will defend anything Apple does or buy anything they make.

Windows users who will attack anything Apple does or makes.

Encouragement of black-and-white thinking is one of the classic warning signs of a cult (or Fox News). This may come as a shock, but disdain for company A is not the same thing as love for competitor B.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

The iphone 3GS, 4, continue to lead sales because it's all a trick.

Yup, all marketing hype.

As I posted above, I care about what Apple is doing because, unfortunately, their less-feature-rich phones are driving the smartphone market. Hell yeah I'm going to throw out a bit of criticism toward Apple when people start trying to argue that iOS and the iPhone are "great" products. It's not great products. It's great marketing.

Yup. All marketing hype. Thanks for your opinion

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Yup. All marketing hype. Thanks for your opinion

That's not opinion in my post. The iPhone has fewer features than the other phones it's outselling. How can the fact that it's outselling those other phones be anything other than marketing hype?

What, exactly, can an iPhone do that my Win6.5 phone from two years ago can't? What about the new Android phones?

Oh, the interface? Really? That's the difference? Because my Win6 phone has a similar interface. So does my Win6.5 and basically all the Android phones. Only the Android phones are more powerful/faster, my Win6.5 is more powerful/faster with a better screen, etc.

It's marketing.

 

[kajata]

As I posted above, I care about what Apple is doing because, unfortunately, their less-feature-rich phones are driving the smartphone market.

Just be grateful. What did smart phones and tablets look like before the iPhone and iPad? What were the browsers like on most smart phones?

Fun article.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Just be grateful. What did smart phones and tablets look like before the iPhone and iPad? What were the browsers like on most smart phones?

Fun article.

Now, see, this is the problem. There were already touchscreen smartphones prior to the iPhone (see: E-ten Glofiish, et al). It wasn't some phenomenal leap forward in cell phone design, just a bit thinner (which is the way those phones were going anyway.

And, really, after I make the point that the iPhone is lacking in features compared to other smartphones, your response is: "Well, it looks good"? WELL, you've certainly shown me the error in my above post.

 

[kajata]

Now, see, this is the problem. There were already touchscreen smartphones prior to the iPhone (see: E-ten Glofiish, et al). It wasn't some phenomenal leap forward in cell phone design, just a bit thinner (which is the way those phones were going anyway.

And, really, after I make the point that the iPhone is lacking in features compared to other smartphones, your response is: "Well, it looks good"? WELL, you've certainly shown me the error in my above post.

ok, disregard my earlier browser comment. I'll throw in visual voicemail too. It lacked plenty (MMS, flash) but I think you're not being fair to it.

But seriously. Trust me. Nothing makes me happier on this planet than knowing you love your non-Apple smart phone. But sorry, we like our iPhones too and not just because of advertising.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

That's not opinion in my post. The iPhone has fewer features than the other phones it's outselling.

That's the problem. Number features != how good the phone is. There are lots of craptastic devices out there that check more feature 'boxes' than much better devices.

In my opinion, it's certainly possible to fewer 'features' and have a better experience as a whole, making the phone a more desirable device.

But I am not going to get in some silly pissing contest about listing what phone has what features. If you think that is what makes a phone 'better' we'll just agree to disagree.

 

[Lamuella]

But I am not going to get in some silly pissing contest about listing what phone has what features.

You? Not getting into a silly pissing contest regarding something to do with Apple?

Who are you and what have you done with TheL8Elvis?

 

[Almo]

As I posted above, I care about what Apple is doing because, unfortunately, their less-feature-rich phones are driving the smartphone market. Hell yeah I'm going to throw out a bit of criticism toward Apple when people start trying to argue that iOS and the iPhone are "great" products. It's not great products. It's great marketing.

Here is something you have to contend with on Android that you don't with Apple:

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

Inhomogeneous hardware. This is an objective fact: if you write an iPhone app, you only need to worry about one aspect ratio, and two possible pixel densities, and one density is 2x the other. On Android, all bets are off, and it is quite challenging to design an interface that will look good on every device.

Apple makes good design decisions, much of the time. Not all the time, as I pointed out in a previous post with a non-exhaustive list of mistakes they've made.

From a developer's persepective (I've published one complete iPhone application), I would not touch Android development if I could avoid it.

This is just one example of the issues involved. But this single issue alone makes me want to avoid Android at all cost.

 

[Almo]

The iPhone has fewer features than the other phones it's outselling. How can the fact that it's outselling those other phones be anything other than marketing hype?

Maybe a phone with fewer features is easier to use? It is not a slam-dunk that fewer features means people only buy it because of hype.

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

From a developer's persepective (I've published one complete iPhone application), I would not touch Android development if I could avoid it.

How did you feel about Objective C? I've done nothing more than a Hello World app for each platform, and I was totally turned off by Objective C.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Maybe a phone with fewer features is easier to use? It is not a slam-dunk that fewer features means people only buy it because of hype.

Features like being able to run more than one app at a time? Or send pictures via text message (a la MMS)? And while those may have been addressed in subsequent releases, it doesn't explain the initial popularity/hype that is what carries a substantial amount of iPhone sales today.

I don't know the developer's side of it, but I can understand where that would be a pain (the same complaint you have with Android is the same I hear about Windows programming), and it's a valid one. But I wouldn't say that makes Apple better as it's certainly a more restrictive environment so I'd rule that a net-zero.

 

[Blackadder]

In any case, PC vs Amiga was a much more interesting and meaningful war.

qft!


Did Commodore have a significant market in the USA? here in Europe they were huge, and cheap enough that many kids could buy their own Amiga500/600 (or get them from their parents) Half my school had one at some time. (ok , maybe not the girls)

 

[John Albert]

I remember back before Jobs returned to the company, Apple tried allowing third party companies to manufacture Macs. However, Apple quickly pulled those licenses, once those companies proved able to produce faster, better computers for much lower prices.

PowerComputing had some great ads from that era. "We lost our license for speeding"...priceless.

I seem to remember that era quite differently. the PowerComputing boxes were always crashing, and had extreme difficulty running even some of the most popular graphics-related applications. Apparently PowerComputing was skimping on the hardware costs to keep the price tag down, and some of the components' firmware wasn't 100% compatible with the MacOS hardware abstraction layer. The college I attended eventually pulled all the PowerPCs out of the graphics labs and classrooms and replaced them with Macs, then relegated the PowerPCs to the coding labs.

PowerComputing might have said that, but it appeared that the actual reason was just what Apple claimed: in licensing out their OS, they lost control over quality assurance, and that was damaging the market for the entire platform. To be fair, Apple might not have allowed their OEM manufacturers enough time to work out all the engineering details before deciding not to renew the licenses.

 

[John Albert]

"Hey! Look what my new iPhone can do! It can send pictures via text message!"

"I can receive/open documents!"

"I can surf the net!"

I hear they have an app for that... only on the iPhone!

 

[John Albert]

There's something about Apple. Something polarizing and interesting. There are more people who have a strong opinion one way or another about Apple than about Android or Windows or Dell or Samsung. There's got to be a reason for that, and I suspect the reason is related to Apple's attempts to link a product to a lifestyle.

Exactly. It's a totally unwarranted elitism based on ownership of a company's consumer products, just like Mercedes or Gucci. Today's Macintoshes are just PCs running a specific UNIX-based OS that doesn't work with all hardware. The worst part of it is that the perceived elitism is deliberately cultivated by the company, as the marketing angle of a basically disingenuous and manipulative business model.

Apple manufactures serviceable and attractive products, don't get me wrong. But they also implement deliberate design decisions in their products that restrict their consumers' freedom of choice in the name of wringing every penny out of them in the form of various "Apple taxes."

Here are a few examples of how they do that:

• Designing specialized proprietary connectors and interfaces instead of using industry standards, for the express purpose of restricting users to buy all Apple-manufactured and -licensed components

• Building non-removable batteries into all their devices, prohibiting users from changing batteries as a warranty violation, and instead requiring them to submit their device for service from a licensed outlet at a premium price

• Designing their media devices to require the use of extraneous commercial bloatware/middleware (iTunes) that asserts control over the users' own media collection and imposes Apple's marketing and advertising apparatus onto their own computer

• Employing destructive "synch" protocols in iTunes that can result in inexperienced users inadvertently deleting their own entire media collection from their own computer

• Imposing poorly-conceived DRM schemes on media devices that make it difficult to recover files from the device without the use of specialized software

• Shoehorning users of iOS devices into relying on Apple's App Store to obtain software

• Exploiting the App Store monopoly to strong-arm developers and dictate to users what apps they can or cannot install on their phone

Those are a few of the reasons why I will never purchase another Apple product so long as the company maintains that kind of business model.

 

[BenBurch]

Well, I've been an Apple user since the Mac, and for much of that time (excepting the mid to late 90s) Apple has had a product that was superior to its competition in many respects. I very much like OSX and have written a lot of software that runs in the underlying *nix layer. I have found very little I cannot do with it, including running Linux and Windows.

But they are just not high end gaming machines, so if you want that, go elsewhere. They are fine for playing Civilization and things like that, however.

 

[John Albert]

I'm a regular Mac OSX user, even though the only Apple device I own is a 5th Gen iPod that runs RockBox.

You don't need an Apple computer to run Mac OS.

 

[Zelenius]

qft!


Did Commodore have a significant market in the USA? here in Europe they were huge, and cheap enough that many kids could buy their own Amiga500/600 (or get them from their parents) Half my school had one at some time. (ok , maybe not the girls)

Based on my experiences, they once did(at least in my area of the U.S), but they were not as popular as in Europe. I first learned how to program on Commodore 64s. Our school only used Commodores. The failure of Commodore/Amiga was largely due to terrible marketing and bad business practices, rather than the quality of their years-ahead-of-their-time computers.

I remember running into a few Amiga enthusiasts in the mid to late 90s and they were very cult-like. Their stubbornness made little sense to me, since by then just about all computer manufacturers had caught up. It would have been easy to understand their fanaticism in the late 80s/early 90s, when Amigas clearly were better at graphics.

Similarly, Apple products once were better and more reliable than Windows PCs, but that hasn't been true for many years now. There's always a lot of hype surrounding each new Apple product release, but they don't seem any better than their competitor's products. As innovative as they still are(and for how much longer?), it is very easy for competitors to catch up or even surpass Apple these days. From its competitors perspective perhaps it is even better for Apple to do all the R&D, while they come out with a similar enough product to compete against Apple. This could hurt Apple in the long-run.

I think the tech sector knows which direction to go in now, in terms of innovation and seizing the future, without Apple always having to pave the way for everyone else to follow. Apple will lose it's edge in the coming years. No one can stay on top for that long, especially not in the unpredictable, rough-and-tumble technology sector.

 

[Zelenius]

Exactly. It's a totally unwarranted elitism based on ownership of a company's consumer products, just like Mercedes or Gucci. Today's Macintoshes are just PCs running a specific UNIX-based OS that doesn't work with all hardware. The worst part of it is that the perceived elitism is deliberately cultivated by the company, as the marketing angle of a basically disingenuous and manipulative business model.

Apple manufactures serviceable and attractive products, don't get me wrong. But they also implement deliberate design decisions in their products that restrict their consumers' freedom of choice in the name of wringing every penny out of them in the form of various "Apple taxes."

I agree, very well-said.