And yet despite your criticism they are selling more devices than during Steve Jobs by a large margin. My iphoneX is by far the most usable and comfortable form factor of a smart phone I’ve used in the past decade. I’m just glad Apple has far better ways to decide on their device strategy than internet hot takes to so reliably and predictably miss the boat.
I've always hated Cringely's opinions on Apple and this article is no exception. He has simply been wrong about them time and time again, yet people looking for FUD disguised as thoughtful criticism keep giving him hits. Apple, by every known metric known to the financial world, is doing spectacularly well. They are innovating at the same pace the always have, which has always been a brand new product category every 3-5 years with a series of incremental improvements on existing products from year to year. They absolutely dominate the wealthiest subset of the consumer market, and as such, they can seek rent for the next 10-20 years and continue to make money hand-over-fist for themselves and their investors without ever introducing a new product again. But they're going to continue to innovate just like they always have, and that innovation is going to be met with skepticism, ridicule, and dismissiveness just as it always has been. Bet against Apple at your own peril. Having closely followed them since 2003 when I made the switch to OS X myself, I've yet to see a single indication that they have made anything but the best business decisions of any company during that same period (possibly ever).
Apple is responsible for shockingly little of the innovation in the smartphone field.
They didn't create their processor (though they managed to brand it and fool a lot of people for a while). They didn't create the GPU.
They didn't create the "Retina display" or their memory or their touchscreen sensor.
They are a software company that other companies -- like LG and Samsung -- supply with hardware.
The electronics market has traditionally been a very low margin industry (which is good for consumers). Apple has managed a pretty remarkable game of finding a very profitable niche and exploiting it as it exploded, with them in a leadership position, however it is not sustainable, which Apple realizes.
And it is simply perverse seeing people actually bragging on behalf of Apple about the fact that they are rolling in cash.
This is not about Android or iPhone. Or Google or whoever. I'll happily acknowledge that Apple sells well thought out products.
I stand by what I said earlier. There's too much of a cult of personality associated with Apple.
Why do we shrink our worldview to gossipy discussions of a corporation. Tell me something interesting, something edifying that came up in this discussion?
Your comment is making clear Apple does a great job letting you believe this. Your statement about Smart phones is just plain false. Samsung alone is outnumbering iPhones. Apple is zigging best with the iPad.
But then again other tablets are not a joke. There are some really good ones on the market and a lot of people are happy using them. And Microsoft did not gave up, they just did not believe in tablets. They believe in smartphones and released WM7.
MP3 players.. well ofcourse they sell a lot of them, but Creative and other brands still sells a lot of them too.
It's very simple: people who are having a nice bank account buy Apple, all the others buy something else.
Apple is a great brand, but it's stupid to say nobody cares about something other than Apple.
To be honest, I'm not an Apple fan. I'm a fan of the iPhone; I think it's a superb bit of kit. But I waited 4 years to upgrade my last one, so I'm probably not exactly their best customer.
I don't really see the problem with claiming a company sets out to make money. But Apple's achievement in this area is nothing short of phenomenal. They've driven component costs down to the point that there's _hundreds_ of dollars of margin on every device. Then they've got the app store. The only firm I can think that does it this well is Nintendo, who even in the days they weren't fashionable were nonetheless very profitable.
Once again, complete bullshit. iOS is extremely innovative, iPods changed the portable player landscape and challenging Microsoft for a real place in the desktop OS market isn't exactly easy.
They are also great marketers, but to deny that Apple has brought no technical innovations to the table is just ridiculous and you know it. Or at least I hope you know it.
That's a false argument. These are separate points of discussion. You're arguing that they're right because they were first to market in a new space and have achieved significant momentum. Momentum is just that. They've been riding on it for a while. The last significant innovation was iPad, which was just an evolution of the one real innovation: iPhone. That's only going to carry them so far. Android is eating their market share while Apple is extracting what they can from this momentum and iterating on a theme.
I think Apple's products are great. Their ID is fantastic. Their developer ecosystem leaves much to be desired. The fact that I no longer buy their products due to their closed nature (and, by extension, their philosophy for the future: closed, controlled, and owned) does not take away from my admiration of the company from a product and engineering perspective.
Apple maybe made great products that just worked but honestly it isn’t that simple anymore. With the Apple Watch, multiple kinds of phones, iPads and Macs they definitely fragmented their lineup to a point where they seem to have trouble to maintain quality software-wise. I had so many issues with iOS and iPadOS and always thought I’d be the only idiot who doesn’t know how to use a phone. Until I’ve started googling. I don’t even say Apple is not cool or whatever but don’t give me the „it just werks“ because it simply isn’t true.
Not one single thing in your comment is factually correct. In fact, both points are demonstrably the opposite of the truth. Apple is not perfect. It is very good at marketing, very good at aesthetic design, decent to good at acquiring marginally above average hardware, and ranges poor to decent at software. The most important thing Apple is good at is marketing, and your comment demonstrates why.
People say Apple is a tech company or a toys for millenials company, but I claim that fundamentally Apple is a user experience company (maybe the only one).
They dominate because Steve Jobs realized what business they're in, and none of their competitors have. This is like when the railroads' lunch was eaten by the tractor trailer because the railroads thought they were rail companies, when in fact they were transportation companies. Samsung and all the other competitors think they're in the device business, but they're not. They're in the UX business.
It helps to have Steve Jobs, who was actually a user experience zealot and in a normal org would have been the CUXO, masquerading as a CEO. As an example, think of the difference between being an Apple vs. Samsung customer, all the way through the value chain. Shopping in that beautiful airy Apple store, experiencing those matte textures and ingenious packaging while unboxing your new devices, the industrial design wizardry that constructed a machine with such amazing fit and finish and tight panel gaps and textures, software that (sometimes, mostly) just works.
Jobs was a strong enough leader to make a bunch of mostly-orthogonal disciplines (e.g. manufacturing, industrial design, software engineering, packaging design) subservient to the company's ultimate objective, which is UX. It doesn't hurt that Apple tends to execute best-in-class on each of these axes, but that's tactics not strategy.
The big question for the future is whether Tim Cook understands this. It's left as an exercise for the reader whether the Apple watch is a product made by a UX company or by a company intent on duplicating the financial success of the ipad and iphone by cargo-culting the "create new device class" methods that worked before.
I'm as big a fan of taking shots at Apple as anyone, but only when it's on topic. This is about mobile. Apple's inability to gain traction on the desktop for decades didn't affect the popularity of their take on the smartphone and tablet.
iPhones last longer and going rates for second hand ones speak volumes for themselves.
Also, Apple sells more products than the top of the line XS Max, they have plenty of middle of the road models like the iPhone 7, which is still faster than any Android phone ever made.
If you really care about it, why don't you talk about the regaining iPad? Are you selling Apps for themselves? iPad is the prime platform and with Photoshop coming, it will only do good.
Apple says they have now 1.4 billion active devices.
I love it when someone tries to tell me what I should like or do. I don’t care if you like Apple or not. I happen to like them, not everything of course, but overall yes. And you’re advocating limiting their success? They, like all of us, can succeed or fail in America. They are successful because people like their products and software. Duh. Jealousy does not suit you very well. Don’t get me wrong, I like Android and Linux too, I’m an expert on Linux myself. But there’s a reason I use an iPhone, iPad Pro and MacBook Pro. It’s called convenience and productivity. And I like it!
Who basically invented the App Store? And now you don’t like that they make money on it?
Your whole article just strikes me as sour grapes.
The difference is Apple has incredible momentum behind it pushing the Apple way. It took them decades to get to this point (and Steve Jobs, the real one).
reply