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.
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.
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 think Apple explicitly position themselves as the combination of hardware and software and want as much vertical integration as possible... the more hardware they control the better they can make software to run on it.
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.
I believe there is distinction between Apple as a hardware company and Apple as a software company. First part works extremely well while latter one - not so much. I would not mix them together.
It doesn't make sense to split Apple into hardware and software since the integration and simplicity that comes from it is the very thing that makes Apple unique.
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.
Apple uses basically the same stock hardware as everyone else, and when they don't they mostly contract them out to the same companies to build them.
People don't like to believe this (see the fairytales people made up about the magical A4 chip before it was revealed to be Samsung's Hummingbird paired with a slightly less powerful GPU compared with Samsung's own version, which in itself is fairly equal to its Qualcomm and TI rivals) but it's just the way the world works.
You might have a stronger case on the software side, but even there Apple recognizes the strength of building on standards and open source which allows them more time to focus on differentiation rather than reinventing wheels (though they still do on occasion if it suits them).
Apple package these things together well, and I believe that's an important skill and adds value, but for whatever reason people don't value that so they need to invent secret sauces for Apple.
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.
My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to be able to knock a product category out of the park and legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles. Why does this keep happening?
I think the point of the article is to say, "You can't buy Apple's great software without paying for Apple's great hardware, but you can purchase Apple's great hardware, and still put someone else's software in there. Therefor, Apple is primarily a hardware company."
I would say instead, that Apple is a device company. Even though you can purchase Apple's hardware, it comes bundled with their software, no matter what, and if you want to purchase their software, you can only put it on their hardware.
The only device which you can put someone else's software on (disregarding linux on the ipod) is MS Windows on a Macintosh. You can't (with Apple's approval) put windows on Apple TV, iPods, or, the iPhone.
Apple is about the complete package. They prefer to design their own hardware, build their own software for their hardware, and build there own applications for their own OS.
The moral of the story: Apple, makes phenomenal products, does not play well with others.
It's so confusing, to ensure compatibility a consumer might be tempted to just buy everything from one manufacturer. This would be very upsetting for Apple, I imagine. Proprietariness by stealth?
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