12 ms·

Emotional Rescue

92 points by cwilson 16y ago

davidedicillo 16y ago
Another great article by John Gruber. It makes me laugh when people thinks Apple is going to fail based solely on % numbers without considering the growth of the market itself.
- cma 16y ago
  It happened in the 90's.
  - tiles 16y ago
    Apple didn't single-handedly invigorate (if not invent) two forms of consumer-class electronics in the 90's, and they didn't have strong leadership to continually innovate on their leads. Android could be the new 1995-era Windows; but who's saying Apple is the same Apple?
    - cma 16y ago
      I don't think Apple is going to get into the same situation they got into in the 90's. I was just replying to his argument, that growth of the overall market makes up for loss of percentage, with a counterexample. I personally think you have to consider a lot of other factors.
  - foobarbazoo 16y ago
    Apple barely got above 10% market share with the Mac since 1984. Even that high was done using tactics that left the company "beleaguered", and at any rate, Steve Jobs wasn't at the helm when that happened. It's really not valid to compare Apple now to Apple pre-Steve Jobs.
dasil003 16y ago
It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing Macintosh in the 90s. Apple was a slowly sinking ship after Jobs left, coasting on old ideas and brand loyalty from the 80s. The Apple of the 90s was a different company, and there are no lessons there that are applicable to the Jobs era(s). To argue any differently belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of Apple's success.
- billmcneale 16y ago
  > It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing Macintosh in the 90s. It looks extremely relevant to me, so I'd love to hear a more substantiated rebuttal from you. The market seems to be poised to become a 70% Android lead and the rest split among Apple, Microsoft and Nokia in quantities to be determined. I'm not even sure Apple will be able to get second place, to be honest, which makes the comparison to the Windows market even more relevant.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    A lot of the Mac vs. Windows scenario is more a myth than anything else. Look at the actual market shares in 1984 or 1985 and what they are now (hint: the C64 was a bigger player than the Mac). If you care about Mac vs PC, then surely iPod vs Zune should be just as relevant. More so, given the consumer focus and iTunes being just as big a factor in both. The Apple that existed from 1985 to 1996 is long dead, what remains is NeXT part 2. The massive economy of scale Apple can bring these days is pretty impressive and the iPod touch / iPad factors (as the article states) need to be taken into account.
    - billmcneale 16y ago
      > A lot of the Mac vs. Windows scenario is more a myth than anything else. Look at the actual market shares in 1984 or 1985 and what they are now (hint: the C64 was a bigger player than the Mac). You are confused. The Mac came out in 1984, and Windows 1 in 1985. We are talking about the 90's, and Windows certainly crushed Mac during that era (and most of the early 2000's too). And since Mac's world wide market share hovers around 6%, you can probably still argue that Windows continues to crush it today.
      - protomyth 16y ago
        No, I am not confused. MS-DOS / PC-DOS already had a significant share. The Macintosh was never dominant in the market. Calling Windows something new ignores the relationship between MS-DOS and Windows (ask the DR-DOS people).
wallflower 16y ago
Money quote. If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations. Make it easier for developers to build good-looking and good-feeling apps, fragmentation issues aside. The beauty of UIKit is if you think like an Apple Engineer (see WWDC10 'Designing Apps with Scrollviews'), you can build almost all of the user interfaces and apps that are standard. Even iMovie. They give you the tools to succeed. No other conference I've been to (WWDC10) was it so apparent they want to give you the framework and knowledge and expert advice to build apps that look good. Apple loves its developers. Not sure about Google's love for their Android developers. > Emotion is a huge factor when people choose what to buy — I’d say maybe even the biggest one. Apple understands this. All iOS devices — all Apple devices, for that matter — are designed with the emotional experience in mind. Why does almost everything in iOS animate? Why did Apple create CoreAnimation, and base UIKit app development so heavily upon it? Because animation, even in small unobtrusive doses, has an emotional affect. It results in a feeling.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations. Why do you presume that they haven't? Every View has intrinsic full animation support, and of course there's a full simile of CoreAnimation in android.view.animation. So why don't Android apps make use of it? Generally as a function of time, care, and craftsmanship. Too often Android apps were second tier, and many Android app writers were doing it to scratch an itch (versus for the iPhone where it is typically productized). Android apps have the potential to be just as slick, just as polished, and just as nuanced and emotional as any iphone app. The state today is that they aren't, but that isn't any intrinsic failure of the platform. Honestly, though, I find that sort of observation superficial and just incredibly boring. Every iphone user when they touch an Android device will immediately comment on the lack of slickness of the non-GPU using transitions. As a day to day Android user, using my phone for virtually everything and anything, this has absolutely ZERO impact on my enjoyment of the device. To say it is unnoticed is still giving it too much credit. It's superficial bedazzling that differentiates based upon the utterly irrelevant.
  - wallflower 16y ago
guelo 16y ago
This article doesn't have much substance. "Can iOS remain the leading mobile platform without being the leading platform measured by device unit sales? " Well give us another metric! If Android triples their sales in 2011 (as forecast by HTC) by what measurement will iOS still be the leader?
- ra88it 16y ago
  Profitability.
- sandis 16y ago
  Dunno.. perceived quality? I (as an Android user) really hope that devs will focus on Android app quality. Currently, most of them feel like ports or something..
- billmcneale 16y ago
  Yes, that's called Gruber Statistics. Here is another example, just a few hours later: http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/ http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/ At the end of the day, the only metric by which Apple will be ahead of the competition for a while is profit. They have already lost on all other axes that I can count on, so get ready to hear "profit" trumpeted left and right by Apple sycophants for the next five years.
  - mikedouglas 16y ago
    Did you really just put the word 'profit' in scare quotes?
    - billmcneale 16y ago
      Yes, because I didn't mean you will hear profit (which makes no sense) but you will read the word 'profit' a lot. Quotes are necessary here, apologies if they scared you.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Keeping score with "earnings" doesn't make you a sycophant.
dageshi 16y ago
I have a friend who is an avid apple user, however she got a super cheap deal from her wireless company for an android phone. And as she says she can install the apps she really cares about (facebook e.t.c.) so sure she might prefer an iphone but cost wise as far as she's concerned she'd be mad to turn down the android because it's "good enough". And from a development point of view, it's not as if we can easily cross compile apps from one platform to another so with limited resources we have to choose. iPhone or Android, at the moment the calculation is iPhone first Android second, if that changes, and with sheer weight of numbers on Androids side it might, Apple should probably be worried about drifting into irrelevancy.
- gfodor 16y ago
  So she has an Android phone, but wants an Apple phone. This should tell you why Apple has nothing to worry about.
  - nhamann 16y ago
    I don't understand the logic here. An "avid apple user" went with an Android phone despite the apparent strong emotional connection she has with the Apple experience. How is that not something to worry about?
    - gfodor 16y ago
      Because in the end Apple can always lower their price to Android level and own the entire market, because they have the better product. Beyond that, the public sees Apple as the coveted device, and Android as the "good enough" device. Apple is the leader, Android is the follower. A company in this position is going to have the most success introducing new products and new variations of products, since they have the most goodwill.
cletus 16y ago
Great post that's basically a healthy dose of reality and commonsense. A lot of those predicting Apple's doom (or simply decline) or a repeat of the OS wars are ignoring the power of Apple's supply chain. As Gruber puts it: if Android can make a great $100 handset why can't Apple? The point about the cost of service contracts is worth repeating: the difference between an iPhone 4 or a free handset is about 10% of the total cost so price of the isn't all that important. You see the power of Apple supply chain with the iPad. Apple (IMHO) had no real inkling of just how big it was going to be, just like they didn't know wit the original iPhone. Now volume is more of a known quantity Apple has a lot more room to increase specs and/or lower price with the anticated revision. The Samsung Galaxy Tab (so far the most credible competitor) offers a screen half the size at a $600 price point. That's the power of Apple's supply chain.
- seabee 16y ago
  It might be only 10% in the US, but it's significantly more than that in other countries. In the UK, getting an iPhone 4 on a £25/mo 2 year contract from any of the 5 major carriers costs you £200-300, and gets you 100 minutes max and 500mb of data (some networks are more generous with the data). In the end I got an HTC Desire HD, still £280 up-front, but £10 less a month (£240 less), 300 minutes, 'unlimited internet' (3GB). It was 70% of the TCO. Even on the higher end (£40+), iPhone contracts offer significantly less of everything per month than Android or Blackberry phones they give you for free. I don't know who's setting the prices, Apple or the carriers, but as Android keeps getting better I expect something interesting to happen over the next year or so. However I expect nothing interesting to happen in the tablet sector when you can get a clearly-superior iPad for £30 more than Samsung's offering.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    Android phones are starting to appear nearly free, but everybody (really everybody) seems to be carrying an iPhone nowadays. People don't even use it for anything but for phone and SMS; but that tells a lot about how strong it is as a phone brand now.
    - 16y ago
Kylekramer 16y ago
Gotta love Gruber. He makes good points, but at the end of the day he falls back on the intangibles like emotion. Apple does consistently make superior products and have succeeded in cultivating an emotional fanbase, but emotion don't mean much. There has been plenty of companies with rabid fans who have died before. Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed? Here's some numbers. There are 323 Apple Stores in the world. There are over 1,150 Best Buys. That is Apple's real problem. They can evoke all the emotion they want, but they picked a battle against the entire industry. I doubt they can remain the profit leader for long.
- michaelbuckbee 16y ago
  Small point, but don't most Best Buys sell iPhones (all the ones near me seem to).
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    iPhones get sold in lots of places, but on launch day of a new model they are apparently banned from advertising that they have stock. I read that at the last launch in London, the queue for the Apple store went past several independant stores that had iPhones in stock. It's all a tacky PR stunt which you would think was beneath them. Why Gruber has recenty become fixated on this as an indicator of platform health I have no idea, it's like reviewing a movie based on how long some geek in a costume is prepared to wait outside a theatre.
- blinkingled 16y ago
  "but they picked a battle against the entire industry" - That's an excellent point which is often ignored. When you set yourself up to do everything on your own (OS, CPU, Other hardware design etc. in case of Apple) that poses serious scalability challenges and it of course exposes you to more and more competition from all directions. They are basically pissing off everyone - so they still don't have a free navigation app with turn-by-turn to compete with Google and they will struggle for some time to get that done. Now they got to do their own ads too. Own CPU too - so it's going to be longer than competitors to get a great dual core ARM CPU out. I understand there are different teams and Apple can hire as many people as they want but in reality it just doesn't scale in the long term. (They still need to shuffle teams between OS X and iOS as far as I can tell.) But Apple knows they cannot play the numbers game - so they will stay a #2 or #3 and get away with it by increasing their profitability - that's a no brainer. But how it affects their competence in delivering new features and hardware advances against competitors - that remains to be seen.
NZ_Matt 16y ago
These cheap Android phones are a bigger threat to Nokia than Apple. Internationally Nokia feature phones are still incredible popular and pretty soon Android phones will be priced low enough to be extremely competitive. I bought my first smartphone yesterday. A Huawei Ideos for $150NZ about $100 US (I actually payed $300NZD but that included $150 prepay credit). http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-review-50000664 http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-review-... Sure it's not as slick as an Iphone or Droid but the gap is closing. It runs Android 2.2 and has all the popular features eg gps/wifi/radio. Considering that an 8gb Iphone 4 costs $919 here in NZ ($600 on a contract) I think I got a pretty good deal. The next wave of smartphone users are going to be people like me that are driven by price more than features.
- chaostheory 16y ago
  That's pretty much all I was thinking about while reading the article. While cheaper Android phones may hurt Apple a bit, I think it hurts Nokia much more if they aren't able to change fast enough. Judging from responses at the Meego conferences, I feel bad for Nokia.
nhangen 16y ago
Warning: I'm an Apple fanboy, so take my opinion for what it's worth... I wasn't always a fanboy. In fact, prior to my iPhone 3G purchase last year, I'd never owned an Apple product. At present, my family has 2 3G's, a 4 (probably another in a week), an iPad, a Mac Mini, and an iMac. Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life because of the experience they provide from purchase to use. It's more expensive, but I willingly pay it because I know what I'm getting, each and every time. The iPhone works because you can't see it without being impressed. The Android is good, possibly really good (at the higher price range), but it's not great, and with the fragmentation, bloatware, and lack of controlled user experience, I don't think it can ever be great. This is why the iPhone won't go away. Should Apple be worried? Probably...I think they'll need a few tricks up their sleeves in order to a) keep their casual users and b) keep some semblance of their current market share. Google isn't in this for apps in the same way that Apple is, they're in it for search, which is what makes the game a bit lopsided. However, I think that's the same reason that Apple will prevail. I can't say how it will shake out, but there's got to be something said for devotion, both from a producer and consumer side of things.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  similar story here... I'd been a Windows dev for years. Never touched anything Apple (never really thought about them at all, to be honest), until 5 years ago when I got sick of my wife complaining about me always fiddling with the computer ("I never know where anything is 'cause you keep changing everything all the time") so I decided to buy her a Mac. Idea being I'd heard they were pretty simple so she'd be ok on it, and I wouldn't touch it because, well... it was a Mac Then I decided that I'd better figure out hoe to use it in preparation for the inevitable "How do I do [some task]?" Fast forward to now, and that iMac is still out main machine but we've also got a macbook, an iPod Nano, a 1st gen iPod touch, 2nd gen iPhone, 3rd gen iPhone, 4th gen iPod Touch and an old Apple TV. Oh, and my using the Mac has developed in me an appreciation for unix which has led to a love for Linux
- billmcneale 16y ago
  > Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life I felt exactly the same after a few years with my Apple ][ more than twenty years ago. I was a die hard Apple fan back then. But today's Steve Jobs scares me. And now that Apple has shown its true colors (you know, "we can't have an app that mentions Android in our app store, sorry"), I'm certainly happy that Android is out there to give Apple a run for its money. As for you being a "lifetime" fan... we will see. I'm pretty sure you will grow out of it at some point.
dave1619 16y ago
In my opinion Apple does need to worry about Android. Android is improving at a faster rate than iOS and is gaining faster momentum. Developers are catching on and more are starting to see the potential behind Android. However the biggest advantage for Android is price and variety. At Virgin Mobile you can get an Android device, Samsung Interceptor, for under $200 with no contract and pay just $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes, taxes included. That's amazing. I love my iPhone 4, but if Virgin Mobile had a slightly better Android phone like a Droid than I'd be tempted to switch. Sure Apple has the emotional appeal, but how can you argue with saving $1000+ over 2 years? Apple needs a stronger argument with the iPhone. The iPod touch and iPad are priced very aggressively. That's why it's difficult for competition to get a hold. But in my opinion the iPhone is overpriced and Apple is raking in the profits. Why is the iPhone priced $400 more than a iPod touch? Doesn't make sense. Its price abuse. Apple should price the iPhone more aggressively. And get some variety out there.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
There's some kind of Zeno's Paradox that applies to competing with Apple. Android (for example) can start off with ugly hardware that's missing vital components and a half-finished OS and no apps and Apple fans will, quite rightly, point out these flaws. They'll maybe go further and assume the platform will fail because of these things. Fast-forward a couple of years and Android sales are soaring, often despite these issues, which while mostly solved, may not have trickled down to the actual Android using masses yet. You would assume that with that rate of change, it's only a matter of time before Android will surpass iPhone which doesn't seem to have changed quite as much. Instead you find that now the reasons they will never pass Apple are actually subjective and non-quantifiable notions of elegance, emotion and class (also, oddly, the ability to get geeks lining up to be the first to buy mass-produced devices sold in the tens of millions per year). And despite butt-ugly hardware and software not stopping Android in its 1.5 days, the near imperceptible (if not actually preferable) differences between 2.3 and iOS4 will forever hold them back.

92 points by cwilson 16y ago

Another great article by John Gruber. It makes me laugh when people thinks Apple is going to fail based solely on % numbers without considering the growth of the market itself.

cma 16y ago
It happened in the 90's.
- tiles 16y ago
  Apple didn't single-handedly invigorate (if not invent) two forms of consumer-class electronics in the 90's, and they didn't have strong leadership to continually innovate on their leads. Android could be the new 1995-era Windows; but who's saying Apple is the same Apple?
  - cma 16y ago
    I don't think Apple is going to get into the same situation they got into in the 90's. I was just replying to his argument, that growth of the overall market makes up for loss of percentage, with a counterexample. I personally think you have to consider a lot of other factors.
- foobarbazoo 16y ago
  Apple barely got above 10% market share with the Mac since 1984. Even that high was done using tactics that left the company "beleaguered", and at any rate, Steve Jobs wasn't at the helm when that happened. It's really not valid to compare Apple now to Apple pre-Steve Jobs.

dasil003 16y ago

It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing Macintosh in the 90s. Apple was a slowly sinking ship after Jobs left, coasting on old ideas and brand loyalty from the 80s. The Apple of the 90s was a different company, and there are no lessons there that are applicable to the Jobs era(s). To argue any differently belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of Apple's success.

billmcneale 16y ago
> It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing Macintosh in the 90s. It looks extremely relevant to me, so I'd love to hear a more substantiated rebuttal from you. The market seems to be poised to become a 70% Android lead and the rest split among Apple, Microsoft and Nokia in quantities to be determined. I'm not even sure Apple will be able to get second place, to be honest, which makes the comparison to the Windows market even more relevant.
- protomyth 16y ago
  A lot of the Mac vs. Windows scenario is more a myth than anything else. Look at the actual market shares in 1984 or 1985 and what they are now (hint: the C64 was a bigger player than the Mac). If you care about Mac vs PC, then surely iPod vs Zune should be just as relevant. More so, given the consumer focus and iTunes being just as big a factor in both. The Apple that existed from 1985 to 1996 is long dead, what remains is NeXT part 2. The massive economy of scale Apple can bring these days is pretty impressive and the iPod touch / iPad factors (as the article states) need to be taken into account.
  - billmcneale 16y ago
    > A lot of the Mac vs. Windows scenario is more a myth than anything else. Look at the actual market shares in 1984 or 1985 and what they are now (hint: the C64 was a bigger player than the Mac). You are confused. The Mac came out in 1984, and Windows 1 in 1985. We are talking about the 90's, and Windows certainly crushed Mac during that era (and most of the early 2000's too). And since Mac's world wide market share hovers around 6%, you can probably still argue that Windows continues to crush it today.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      No, I am not confused. MS-DOS / PC-DOS already had a significant share. The Macintosh was never dominant in the market. Calling Windows something new ignores the relationship between MS-DOS and Windows (ask the DR-DOS people).

wallflower 16y ago

Money quote. If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations. Make it easier for developers to build good-looking and good-feeling apps, fragmentation issues aside. The beauty of UIKit is if you think like an Apple Engineer (see WWDC10 'Designing Apps with Scrollviews'), you can build almost all of the user interfaces and apps that are standard. Even iMovie. They give you the tools to succeed. No other conference I've been to (WWDC10) was it so apparent they want to give you the framework and knowledge and expert advice to build apps that look good. Apple loves its developers. Not sure about Google's love for their Android developers. > Emotion is a huge factor when people choose what to buy — I’d say maybe even the biggest one. Apple understands this. All iOS devices — all Apple devices, for that matter — are designed with the emotional experience in mind. Why does almost everything in iOS animate? Why did Apple create CoreAnimation, and base UIKit app development so heavily upon it? Because animation, even in small unobtrusive doses, has an emotional affect. It results in a feeling.

ergo98 16y ago
>If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard animations. Why do you presume that they haven't? Every View has intrinsic full animation support, and of course there's a full simile of CoreAnimation in android.view.animation. So why don't Android apps make use of it? Generally as a function of time, care, and craftsmanship. Too often Android apps were second tier, and many Android app writers were doing it to scratch an itch (versus for the iPhone where it is typically productized). Android apps have the potential to be just as slick, just as polished, and just as nuanced and emotional as any iphone app. The state today is that they aren't, but that isn't any intrinsic failure of the platform. Honestly, though, I find that sort of observation superficial and just incredibly boring. Every iphone user when they touch an Android device will immediately comment on the lack of slickness of the non-GPU using transitions. As a day to day Android user, using my phone for virtually everything and anything, this has absolutely ZERO impact on my enjoyment of the device. To say it is unnoticed is still giving it too much credit. It's superficial bedazzling that differentiates based upon the utterly irrelevant.
- wallflower 16y ago

guelo 16y ago

This article doesn't have much substance. "Can iOS remain the leading mobile platform without being the leading platform measured by device unit sales? " Well give us another metric! If Android triples their sales in 2011 (as forecast by HTC) by what measurement will iOS still be the leader?

ra88it 16y ago
Profitability.
sandis 16y ago
Dunno.. perceived quality? I (as an Android user) really hope that devs will focus on Android app quality. Currently, most of them feel like ports or something..
billmcneale 16y ago
Yes, that's called Gruber Statistics. Here is another example, just a few hours later: http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/ http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/ At the end of the day, the only metric by which Apple will be ahead of the competition for a while is profit. They have already lost on all other axes that I can count on, so get ready to hear "profit" trumpeted left and right by Apple sycophants for the next five years.
- mikedouglas 16y ago
  Did you really just put the word 'profit' in scare quotes?
  - billmcneale 16y ago
    Yes, because I didn't mean you will hear profit (which makes no sense) but you will read the word 'profit' a lot. Quotes are necessary here, apologies if they scared you.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Keeping score with "earnings" doesn't make you a sycophant.

dageshi 16y ago

I have a friend who is an avid apple user, however she got a super cheap deal from her wireless company for an android phone. And as she says she can install the apps she really cares about (facebook e.t.c.) so sure she might prefer an iphone but cost wise as far as she's concerned she'd be mad to turn down the android because it's "good enough". And from a development point of view, it's not as if we can easily cross compile apps from one platform to another so with limited resources we have to choose. iPhone or Android, at the moment the calculation is iPhone first Android second, if that changes, and with sheer weight of numbers on Androids side it might, Apple should probably be worried about drifting into irrelevancy.

gfodor 16y ago
So she has an Android phone, but wants an Apple phone. This should tell you why Apple has nothing to worry about.
- nhamann 16y ago
  I don't understand the logic here. An "avid apple user" went with an Android phone despite the apparent strong emotional connection she has with the Apple experience. How is that not something to worry about?
  - gfodor 16y ago
    Because in the end Apple can always lower their price to Android level and own the entire market, because they have the better product. Beyond that, the public sees Apple as the coveted device, and Android as the "good enough" device. Apple is the leader, Android is the follower. A company in this position is going to have the most success introducing new products and new variations of products, since they have the most goodwill.

cletus 16y ago

Great post that's basically a healthy dose of reality and commonsense. A lot of those predicting Apple's doom (or simply decline) or a repeat of the OS wars are ignoring the power of Apple's supply chain. As Gruber puts it: if Android can make a great $100 handset why can't Apple? The point about the cost of service contracts is worth repeating: the difference between an iPhone 4 or a free handset is about 10% of the total cost so price of the isn't all that important. You see the power of Apple supply chain with the iPad. Apple (IMHO) had no real inkling of just how big it was going to be, just like they didn't know wit the original iPhone. Now volume is more of a known quantity Apple has a lot more room to increase specs and/or lower price with the anticated revision. The Samsung Galaxy Tab (so far the most credible competitor) offers a screen half the size at a $600 price point. That's the power of Apple's supply chain.

seabee 16y ago
It might be only 10% in the US, but it's significantly more than that in other countries. In the UK, getting an iPhone 4 on a £25/mo 2 year contract from any of the 5 major carriers costs you £200-300, and gets you 100 minutes max and 500mb of data (some networks are more generous with the data). In the end I got an HTC Desire HD, still £280 up-front, but £10 less a month (£240 less), 300 minutes, 'unlimited internet' (3GB). It was 70% of the TCO. Even on the higher end (£40+), iPhone contracts offer significantly less of everything per month than Android or Blackberry phones they give you for free. I don't know who's setting the prices, Apple or the carriers, but as Android keeps getting better I expect something interesting to happen over the next year or so. However I expect nothing interesting to happen in the tablet sector when you can get a clearly-superior iPad for £30 more than Samsung's offering.
- wazoox 16y ago
  Android phones are starting to appear nearly free, but everybody (really everybody) seems to be carrying an iPhone nowadays. People don't even use it for anything but for phone and SMS; but that tells a lot about how strong it is as a phone brand now.
  - 16y ago

Kylekramer 16y ago

Gotta love Gruber. He makes good points, but at the end of the day he falls back on the intangibles like emotion. Apple does consistently make superior products and have succeeded in cultivating an emotional fanbase, but emotion don't mean much. There has been plenty of companies with rabid fans who have died before. Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed? Here's some numbers. There are 323 Apple Stores in the world. There are over 1,150 Best Buys. That is Apple's real problem. They can evoke all the emotion they want, but they picked a battle against the entire industry. I doubt they can remain the profit leader for long.

michaelbuckbee 16y ago
Small point, but don't most Best Buys sell iPhones (all the ones near me seem to).
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  iPhones get sold in lots of places, but on launch day of a new model they are apparently banned from advertising that they have stock. I read that at the last launch in London, the queue for the Apple store went past several independant stores that had iPhones in stock. It's all a tacky PR stunt which you would think was beneath them. Why Gruber has recenty become fixated on this as an indicator of platform health I have no idea, it's like reviewing a movie based on how long some geek in a costume is prepared to wait outside a theatre.
blinkingled 16y ago
"but they picked a battle against the entire industry" - That's an excellent point which is often ignored. When you set yourself up to do everything on your own (OS, CPU, Other hardware design etc. in case of Apple) that poses serious scalability challenges and it of course exposes you to more and more competition from all directions. They are basically pissing off everyone - so they still don't have a free navigation app with turn-by-turn to compete with Google and they will struggle for some time to get that done. Now they got to do their own ads too. Own CPU too - so it's going to be longer than competitors to get a great dual core ARM CPU out. I understand there are different teams and Apple can hire as many people as they want but in reality it just doesn't scale in the long term. (They still need to shuffle teams between OS X and iOS as far as I can tell.) But Apple knows they cannot play the numbers game - so they will stay a #2 or #3 and get away with it by increasing their profitability - that's a no brainer. But how it affects their competence in delivering new features and hardware advances against competitors - that remains to be seen.

NZ_Matt 16y ago

These cheap Android phones are a bigger threat to Nokia than Apple. Internationally Nokia feature phones are still incredible popular and pretty soon Android phones will be priced low enough to be extremely competitive. I bought my first smartphone yesterday. A Huawei Ideos for $150NZ about $100 US (I actually payed $300NZD but that included $150 prepay credit). http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-review-50000664 http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-review-... Sure it's not as slick as an Iphone or Droid but the gap is closing. It runs Android 2.2 and has all the popular features eg gps/wifi/radio. Considering that an 8gb Iphone 4 costs $919 here in NZ ($600 on a contract) I think I got a pretty good deal. The next wave of smartphone users are going to be people like me that are driven by price more than features.

chaostheory 16y ago
That's pretty much all I was thinking about while reading the article. While cheaper Android phones may hurt Apple a bit, I think it hurts Nokia much more if they aren't able to change fast enough. Judging from responses at the Meego conferences, I feel bad for Nokia.

nhangen 16y ago

Warning: I'm an Apple fanboy, so take my opinion for what it's worth... I wasn't always a fanboy. In fact, prior to my iPhone 3G purchase last year, I'd never owned an Apple product. At present, my family has 2 3G's, a 4 (probably another in a week), an iPad, a Mac Mini, and an iMac. Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life because of the experience they provide from purchase to use. It's more expensive, but I willingly pay it because I know what I'm getting, each and every time. The iPhone works because you can't see it without being impressed. The Android is good, possibly really good (at the higher price range), but it's not great, and with the fragmentation, bloatware, and lack of controlled user experience, I don't think it can ever be great. This is why the iPhone won't go away. Should Apple be worried? Probably...I think they'll need a few tricks up their sleeves in order to a) keep their casual users and b) keep some semblance of their current market share. Google isn't in this for apps in the same way that Apple is, they're in it for search, which is what makes the game a bit lopsided. However, I think that's the same reason that Apple will prevail. I can't say how it will shake out, but there's got to be something said for devotion, both from a producer and consumer side of things.

cubicle67 16y ago
similar story here... I'd been a Windows dev for years. Never touched anything Apple (never really thought about them at all, to be honest), until 5 years ago when I got sick of my wife complaining about me always fiddling with the computer ("I never know where anything is 'cause you keep changing everything all the time") so I decided to buy her a Mac. Idea being I'd heard they were pretty simple so she'd be ok on it, and I wouldn't touch it because, well... it was a Mac Then I decided that I'd better figure out hoe to use it in preparation for the inevitable "How do I do [some task]?" Fast forward to now, and that iMac is still out main machine but we've also got a macbook, an iPod Nano, a 1st gen iPod touch, 2nd gen iPhone, 3rd gen iPhone, 4th gen iPod Touch and an old Apple TV. Oh, and my using the Mac has developed in me an appreciation for unix which has led to a love for Linux
billmcneale 16y ago
> Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life I felt exactly the same after a few years with my Apple ][ more than twenty years ago. I was a die hard Apple fan back then. But today's Steve Jobs scares me. And now that Apple has shown its true colors (you know, "we can't have an app that mentions Android in our app store, sorry"), I'm certainly happy that Android is out there to give Apple a run for its money. As for you being a "lifetime" fan... we will see. I'm pretty sure you will grow out of it at some point.

dave1619 16y ago

In my opinion Apple does need to worry about Android. Android is improving at a faster rate than iOS and is gaining faster momentum. Developers are catching on and more are starting to see the potential behind Android. However the biggest advantage for Android is price and variety. At Virgin Mobile you can get an Android device, Samsung Interceptor, for under $200 with no contract and pay just $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes, taxes included. That's amazing. I love my iPhone 4, but if Virgin Mobile had a slightly better Android phone like a Droid than I'd be tempted to switch. Sure Apple has the emotional appeal, but how can you argue with saving $1000+ over 2 years? Apple needs a stronger argument with the iPhone. The iPod touch and iPad are priced very aggressively. That's why it's difficult for competition to get a hold. But in my opinion the iPhone is overpriced and Apple is raking in the profits. Why is the iPhone priced $400 more than a iPod touch? Doesn't make sense. Its price abuse. Apple should price the iPhone more aggressively. And get some variety out there.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

There's some kind of Zeno's Paradox that applies to competing with Apple. Android (for example) can start off with ugly hardware that's missing vital components and a half-finished OS and no apps and Apple fans will, quite rightly, point out these flaws. They'll maybe go further and assume the platform will fail because of these things. Fast-forward a couple of years and Android sales are soaring, often despite these issues, which while mostly solved, may not have trickled down to the actual Android using masses yet. You would assume that with that rate of change, it's only a matter of time before Android will surpass iPhone which doesn't seem to have changed quite as much. Instead you find that now the reasons they will never pass Apple are actually subjective and non-quantifiable notions of elegance, emotion and class (also, oddly, the ability to get geeks lining up to be the first to buy mass-produced devices sold in the tens of millions per year). And despite butt-ugly hardware and software not stopping Android in its 1.5 days, the near imperceptible (if not actually preferable) differences between 2.3 and iOS4 will forever hold them back.