Apple wants strict market segmentation. Why would they sell you once device that does everything when they can sell you 2 or 3 devices for specific tasks.
There might even be some logic to that with each device optimized for it's specific best purpose. It also doesn't hurt that it makes them more money.
This seems like a giant extrapolation based on only the merest hint of any actual evidence.
The big question to me, is why would Apple, the quintessential hardware company, be going out of their way to try and sell you less hardware? They don't want you to reuse your iPhone as your main computer. They want to sell you both. In general they detest the whole concept of shoehorning bits of technology into roles they are not meant for. In Apple's eyes, each device you own is exactly optimized for its unique role.
This whole thing sounds like Cringely's personal fantasy rather than anything Apple would actually do.
Why sell us one device when they can sell us two or three? I own an iPhone and a MacBook Pro. Why would Apple want to leave all that money on the table by converging these two devices?
This, or something close to it, is surely the reason. Everything Apple does can be traced to a motivation to sell more hardware. (e.g. iTunes, App Store, iWork, Apple Maps, etc...)
Hardware and the OS are their secret sauce, commoditizing everything else (applications, services, content) is in their best interest.
And who is Apple competing with? Aren't they in the business of selling consumer computing devices to end-users, including hardware to developers who create stuff for their platform?
i.e. it is rational for them to optimize the number of Apple products get used.
Other companies make hardware, and include software. Or they make software to run on some platform. Or something. Apple has realized that large numbers of people want whole products, not bits and pieces. It's not all that subtle of a difference, but it still seems that Apple's major competitors haven't quite got that idea yet.
I may have misunderstood your first point but one of the primary reasons Apple is purchasing so many screens is to purposefully reduce the amount of components on the market to block out competitors from reaching demand.
Apple uses many of the same hardware and component manufacturers as do Dell, HP, Microsoft, etc., so I don't see any benefit to this–and they seem to be doing a decent job of satisfying their customers in terms of hardware.
You're right - it only makes sense to you, though I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
I guess they want to cater to people who think a product works best if the hardware and software are both made by the same company. And many people think so probably because of Apple products.
Apple doesn’t want to be in that business. Apple doesn’t want to supply an industry with components, it wants to supply an industry with an entire ecosystem.
Apple’s approach to technology is to provide the whole setup.
Are the entire products outsourced, or just the componenets?
Either way, I think this suggestion is implying that Apple stop selling hardware and instead just sell software that runs on other peoples' hardware (it's the "compete more directly with Microsoft" bit that leads me to believe this is what they meant).
This article seems to completely miss the point that almost all of Apple's revenue comes from hardware sales: they pretty much build software to make certain that there is incentive to own their hardware; even more so, as all of their revenue is from hardware, they are in a uniquely deranged position where you are encouraged to throw away your old devices and replace them with new ones.
Apple wants to sell more devices, not less. And it also helps their iCloud business (which wouldn't exist if everybody had only one device).
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