12 ms·

How to beat Apple

182 points by locopati 16y ago

deidoe 16y ago
An excerpt: "...the Apple products & services that Apple does well are the ones that Steve Jobs uses (or cares about) and the ones he doesn't use/care about are less good (or just plain bad)..." Seems about right. Funny.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  This is also a reason why founders/CEO's of companies should use their own products. In many cases it doesn't seem like they do. If you wouldn't buy or use your own product, then something is wrong with it.
- joelrunyon 16y ago
  Interesting way to predict future Apple products -- find out what Jobs cares about
  - joezydeco 16y ago
    Does he have a TV in his house? There goes the Apple HDTV rumor...
- Timothee 16y ago
  "but I'm pretty sure Jobs never has had to schedule his own appointments with iCal so that program is less good" Speaking of, one thing I know for sure Steve Jobs doesn't do is getting directions to his meetings from iCal on his iPhone: the appointment's location can't be tapped to open Google Maps. This is driving me crazy. Not only because I want to use it, but because it's so simple and has been begging for it since the iPhone came out.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    People come to Steve for meetings. His direction needs are pretty simple.
  - samg 16y ago
    This bugs me too. I put the location in the Note section, which is tappable.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  Yeah I totally imagine Steve Jobs using Garageband and Final Cut Pro all the time.
- rbrown46 16y ago
  Jobs does use Mail (on both the iPhone and the Mac – as can be seen from examining the headers of his widely publicized emails)... and plenty of people aren't exactly fans of that application.
  - pimeys 16y ago
    Funny, I remember seeing a picture of re-designed Mail.app planned for the Lion release. Reminded me of the excellent Sparrow app.
dean 16y ago
"Apple is absurdly profitable and cash-rich; if they feel the need to compete with anyone on price in order to protect their business interests, they can do so with price cuts deep enough and long enough to drive most potential competitors out of business." Talk about 'not in their DNA', Apple will never compete on price. They never have and they never will. A brief look back at the history of the PC clearly shows this. They could have owned the PC market, they were first and best. But just too expensive.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  That simply isn't true. The iPad clearly competes on price, it could have been priced at $800 but they went for the aggressive $500 mark and began eating up the netbook market. Look at the iPhone it started out at $800, unsubsidized, and when that didn't take off they quickly got it subsidized and down to $200, and then have kept the 3GS around to sell at $99 and $49 price points... Clearly they are competing on price.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    Yeah, it's probably more accurate to say that they're competitive while preserving their margins. Apple will never sell a device for which they can't keep a healthy margin. They've optimized their supply chain and component procurement in such a way that they can make absurd margins on an iPad 2 and competitors still have a hard time beating them on price. They have to compromise with smaller screens and pretend that's part of the design strategy.
  - rickmb 16y ago
    People seem to underestimate what a unique product the iPad is: a consumer product that has been build to the highest standards of engineering and design, and would have been totally credible as a high end luxury product at three times the price. Yet it competes on price, unsubsidized.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      I think that's probably why it worked. It's a category of device that hasn't previously really worked, so it had to be priced for people to risk buying it. If it were priced as a luxury item, you'd have the Apple fanbase buying it, but it probably wouldn't reach wide adoption.
gamble 16y ago
> iTunes is showing its age and over the years has become a bloated collection of functionalities ... iTunes 'bloat' is a huge competitive advantage. Apple can make changes to their digital stores and instantly release to tens of millions of customers, including Windows users who aren't going to install a half-dozen discrete applications if Apple chose to split up iTunes.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Honestly, years of using iTunes daily on Windows completely turned me off of the idea of switching to a Mac or an iPhone. Without exaggeration, it is one of the worst pieces of software I've used. It's bad enough that my next MP3 player probably won't be an iPod, despite generally being happy with the one I have. Edit: and so this isn't just me ranting about iTunes (yet again, sorry), I think iTunes can actually harm Apple's image. It's tolerable if that's all you've used, but when compared to pretty much any other music player, it has glaring flaws (at least on Windows). To make a terrible continuation of the analogy, a Trojan Horse doesn't work if the Trojans hate your crappy horse and decide to never speak to you again.
  - ellyagg 16y ago
    Interestingly, when it first came on the scene as SoundJam, and in its earlier incarnations at Apple after it was bought, iTunes was by far the best music player out there[1]. The overwhelming favorite MP3 player on Windows at the time was WinAmp, whose UI was a ghastly collection of inscrutable, tiny fonted palettes. Compared to that, having your entire collection of music in a smart, scriptable database with a slick interface was a dream. Performance problems on Windows and tacking on one new non-music playing feature after another seems to have doomed the experience and reputation. [1] Well, Audion was pretty dope too: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
    - Egregore 16y ago
      May be I'm too old school, but I prefer to arrange my music and audiobooks in folders not in some application.
albertzeyer 16y ago
MobileMe was never really successful because it costs. I would have tried it the first time I heard about it if only it would have been free. Indeed, I found it quite interesting. Dropbox didn't cost anything for the basic usage so nothing stops you to just try it out. And then word of mouth does the rest.
Cherian_Abraham 16y ago
And I am not sure if Social is the key to making apple more successful or whether its their inherent weakness. All I see today are solutions where social seems to be tacked on as an afterthought regardless of whether it makes sense or not. And I cant speak for others, but I am not excited about a Facebook phone. A hardware device does not seem to be a natural progression for a company like Facebook. And allowing Facebook, an entity that has now taken dimensions beyond a simple social network in to a Central identity provider, to track every single aspect of my life (location, calls, contacts, browsing habits, etc..) is simply a non-starter. But maybe an FB phone will appeal to the 18-24 crowd for whom privacy is not as important as the desire to be social.
- Corrado 16y ago
  My first thought on this was the Microsoft phone platform (Windows Phone 7, or whatever it's called this week). I haven't played with it but it looks like they might have had a chance at hooking up with Facebook/Twitter/etc. and splashing their app on the WP7 dashboard. However, it's probably too late for that as the Windows phone platform seems to be heading down (again)...
  - nigelsampson 16y ago
    They have done this with Facebook, after setting up your People hub becomes a merged list of both your contacts and facebook friends. Status updates from both etc. I believe similar Twitter integration is in the works.
    - Raphael 16y ago
      Facebook can merge with contacts in Android too.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jpr 16y ago
One thing I find hard to beat when it comes to Apple: the image. Apple is the hip and cool thing that your artistic cousin uses, whereas Microsoft is the lame and boring thing that the enterprise uses. Between these two stereotypes, what would be the image you would market to in order to turn huge profits like Apple is doing? I have no idea, and I think it would be unwise to just imitate Apple, they have more experience being Apple than anybody.
- GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
  Think about that for a minute. They made a really good operating system which I would use if I could. However not many could afford it. Usually its... buy 2x computers, or one Apple. Thus only the few "elites" have it (or those willing to sacrifice to get it)
  - kahawe 16y ago
    Which is an absolutely perfect way to go for a luxury company, just think Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Rolex,Breitling etc. here. Apple never really compromised on price and image and they try very hard to keep a great overall product quality, if you ask me.
- sudont 16y ago
  You have no idea how many artists use shitty Windows XP laptops. As a computer guy in my school, I had to root out a ton of viruses and other crap. Even my painting professor, a renown watercolor and oil painter, had a 9 year old Taiwanese micro laptop that chugged on IrfanView. Minus the rich kids, designers and myself, I knew only about 10 other students with a Mac in the art department. Windows is cheap, which is good for an artist. Cultural cache can only go so far when one's judged on their work.
  - pushingbits 16y ago
    Image is not so much about who you are, but about how you would like to appear. It'd be pretty funny if Apple's success rested merely on people's desire to be perceived as creative and aesthetically discerning rather than on people who are creative and aesthetically discerning finding it to be the better product. I don't think that's accurate, but it does probably make up some measurable amount of their sales.
StrawberryFrog 16y ago
in the near term, companies making iPhone and iPad competitors are never going to beat Apple at their own game. We must then assume that Android is playing some other game. Either that, or he is simply ignoring large facts that don't fit his narrative. I would say a bit of both - Android is different ecosystem, but to ignore Android's market impact in smart-phones is negligent.
- sasidharm 16y ago
  I think he is talking primarily about OEMs. Except HTC, i dont think any other OEM building iPhone/iPad competitors is making much money.
  - dotBen 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure in the handset division, Motorola is making good revenues with the Droid family. They are still some of the most popular handsets, certainly on Verizon. What impact the failed Xoom has taken on their bottom line, I don't know however.
    - 18pfsmt 16y ago
      They report earnings this Thurs after the bell, so we will see then.
- combray 16y ago
  Apple's iPhone sales alone just surpassed Nokia's -- http://www.9computerstore.com/2011/04/22/apple-tops-in-handset-manufacturers-in-revenue http://www.9computerstore.com/2011/04/22/apple-tops-in-hands... -- and that's only talking about the phone part. It's not taking into the (in my opinion) the much more important iPod Touch through iPad market, which the Android has no answer to at all on the low end and no really contenders on the upper end. If smart-phones was actually the market that we were talking about, the fact that my iPhone sucks balls for making actual phone calls would matter.
  - Raphael 16y ago
yahtzee 16y ago
Apple is a hardware company. Of course Dropbox and Pandora should be able to beat them at their side competency. When it comes to hardware, Apple has such a huge lead in product design, I don't see anyone challenging for a while.
bobstobener 16y ago
Microsoft became successful primarily by IT department mandate in the 80's and 90's. Apple has been successful due to its focus on user/consumer experience. We now live in an era where consumers have a larger voice in technology selection and the Microsoft/Corporate IT department mandate is becoming less significant. You can beat Apple only by delivering the best consumer experience possible.
- zppx 16y ago
  From what I read, I think there were not that much IT departments in the 80's outside technical companies, I think Microsoft got its position because of a series of factors, one of them was the presence of Visicalc-like programs (specially Lotus 1+2+3), in the 80s Apple was already offering an absurdly good user experience compared with Microsoft, yet it failed in the first time. I remember that people got pretty excited with Windows 95, I don't think that this excitement was a enterprise mandate at all.
maverhick 16y ago
Care about your business. Care about your people. Care about your people. Care about your company. I mean really care. Obsess. That is what gives you the best possible chance at building something great.
asr 16y ago
"If they feel the need to compete with anyone on price in order to protect their business interests, they can do so with price cuts deep enough and long enough to drive most potential competitors out of business." If they try to drive competitors out of business by pricing below cost, this is illegal. Apple is already getting looked at by regulators, and I doubt they want to invite more investigation, which slows a company down and may prove really harmful to the culture (see: Microsoft). If this just means Apple might be willing to cut their margins, then yes, I agree. So the key is to make something with a lower cost structure than Apple has. Not going to happen for iPads in the near-term, but this industry changes pretty quickly...
- DavidAdams 16y ago
  Apple doesn't have to go below cost to outprice its competitors, just as Wal-Mart doesn't have to. Apple has huge profit margins and huge economies of scale that would enable it to, in some cases, sell products for less than another vendor could build a comparable substitute for.
michaelpinto 16y ago
Apple is brilliant at zigging when everyone else zags. Nobody cares about an MP3 player -- Apple does the iPod. Smart phones are dead, just look at Palm -- Apple does the iPhone. Tablets are a joke, even Microsoft gave up -- Apple does the iPad. Want to beat Apple? Just do something that nobody else cares about anymore. You can build a better PC. You can reinvent MySpace. You could even reinvent old Apple products like HyperCard or printers.
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  Printers is an area which I've been waiting to see disrupted for a long time.
  - parbo 16y ago
    Ink/toner subscription with free printer?
    - redorb 16y ago
      perhaps a flexible subscription I.E. I agree to buy 12 cartridges ... within 2 years; but can request up to that time when I need them. - Although I think you need a price on the printer to weed out those who will default on the ink. Much like the square cost $10 at the Apple store; but is free online.
    - mgkimsal 16y ago
      Not so much that, but better integration with other devices and services. Printer integration to automatically wake up and print documents when I need them, not when I remember to print. (boarding passes, etc). Printers that can take half-size paper, and potentially auto-scale down documents to work with that half-size paper. I hate printing because 70% of the time I need about 5 things on the page, but they're all spread out, and an entire sheet of paper is a waste. Email/web/bookmarks helps out, but we could get by with smaller paper most of the time, except all printers expect larger size paper. Better auto-discovery of local printers around me, and cloud integration to print things wherever I'm at. Easier ways to print remotely. If I'm onsite at a client, I can't print something I need until I get home, but I may forget then. Letting me print remotely so it's ready when I get home would help, and/or the scheduling for future printing, either at a set time or set context (IE - at home). "3D printing" that would allow me to use those awesome red/blue glasses to get the full 3D effect from my documents. Relatedly, I'm not sure why companies aren't giving schools free paper with ads on the back. This would help school budgets, and give advertisers a captive audience.
rkon 16y ago
Price is part of their brand image -- I really doubt they would ever undercut a competitor on new products.
- brianpan 16y ago
  Apple competes on price in ways that preserves their brand- offering more for the same price, clearance/refurb section, previous model at a discounted price. I agree with Kottke, Apple has a huge ability to compete on price if needed, and I think they are more than ever. Discounted previous models used to be limited to clearance/refurb. But now you'll find the iPhone 3GS and the MacBook prominently displayed as a part of the lineup. The iPhone is available via the online store "from $49", not "from $199".
webXL 16y ago
I'd say that this article is spot on except for weak spot #2. Mobile Me integrates very well with iOS devices (AppleTV incl.) right out of the box. And then there's that huge datacenter they're building... BTW, how is Dropbox more compelling than Mobile Me? Sure it's cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's better. I'm just saying I wouldn't dive headfirst into competition with them in the cloud space just yet. The tethered syncing issue is a valid point, but don't Microsoft and Google already have solutions for that?
- bonaldi 16y ago
  Dropbox is way, way more compelling than iDisk, the equivalent bit of MobileMe. Why? Because it just works: your files are always available on whichever computer you're on, so long as it has been recently connected to the net. With iDisk, that's almost never true, and you have to either put up with a WebDAV implementation that's slower than making your own floppies and posting them or a weird hybrid local sync that always breaks. It Never Works, basically, and even if it did wouldn't have the great social and versions features of DropBox. As for the rest of MobileMe, the sync is OK, except when it gets confused. The whole setup is definitely a weakness, it's just one to be exploited in pieces, as DropBox has.
hernan7 16y ago
About point #1... wasn't the Microsoft Kin supposed to be the "Facebook Fone?"
antihero 16y ago
> Competitors should take a page from Apple's playbook here and be open about stuff that will give you a competitive advantage and shut the hell up about everything else. Open is not always better. That's pretty horrible. Life isn't all about profit, you know?
- kanamekun 16y ago
  In his previous sentence, Jason uses the phrase "competitors" and talks about "competitive advantage". So when he says, "open is not always better" - he is saying that being more open isn't always better for your competitive advantage. That is definitely a true statement. Life isn't all about profit, but staying competitive is a huge contributor to maintaining any profit at all.
ansy 16y ago
1. See the future. 2. Execute. 3. Profit. The points in the article are as myopic as Apple's competitors. You aren't going to beat Apple by reacting to what Apple does poorly today. Instead, ask "Where is technology going in one, two, and five years?" Then get the people that can do something about it and do it. Maybe you will see a future that includes things Apple doesn't do. But maybe you will see a future with things Apple already does and you had better get on board or face extinction.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
FTA: "Someone should figure out how to leverage Facebook's social graph to make the phone/app/gaming/music/video experience significantly better than on the iPhone/iPad and then partner exclusively with Facebook to make it happen." New title suggestion: How to Beat Apple and Drop Your Work into Facebook's Lap. I fail to see how this competitor might be more benevolent than the other.
crag 16y ago
It's not hard: build a better product. Talking computers, why the hell doesn't Dell hire a few great industrial designers? Dells' best notebooks (which all cost over 2k) look just like their $300 notebooks; fat, covered in black hard plastic, stickers stuck on the palm rests - and not to mention loaded with bloatware. If Dell (and HP and all the rest) built compelling looking (and performing of course) higher end notebooks then folk might not keep looking to Apple as the standard "best". All these companies (except Apple, since they enjoy such high profit margins on everything) fight over scraps at the low end. Even in their business lines (not talking servers here just notebooks).
zarify 16y ago
I just couldn't read the first point without cringing. Looking to Facebook to socialise gaming? Christ. Games on Facebook might be popular (actually, I don't know, are they still popular? I ditched Facebook a year ago), but they sure as hell aren't good, and interaction with other people (ie the social part) certainly seems to be restricted to blatantly pimping your game. I'd be looking more to Steam for doing a decent job of mixing social with gaming, where you have recommendations, inbuilt groups to join for people who play the same games, etc. That way you're connecting with people you know share an interest, not inflicting your latest 'social' game status updates on your friends who are most likely not interested. Personally what I find deficient in iOS devices is real time communication (I know I know, they're called phone calls) and the single foreground task nature of the device. With web based games or Steam there's always a real time method of communicating with your friends no matter what you're doing, you can see who's online and so on. On the other hand, due to the casual nature of specifically gaming on phones and tablets, I don't think the desktop paradigm really works anyway. From a non-gaming perspective, what I'd like to see most on iOS is a better way to manage files, rather than sending copies to any app which I would like to use them with. I don't really want to access a file I've stored in DropBox, then send it to GoodReader or Keynote or whatever. I don't want to load a picture from Photos into $editingApp then save a copy into Photos then load the new photo into something else. It seems a terribly wasteful way of handling things (and very much a 'tacked on' approach while people figured out what to do with a tablet).
renegadedev 16y ago
One of the reasons Apple fails at social is it's fanboys/gals. If you're walking around telling people to "Get a Mac" when your friends run into minor issues, chances are your social recommendations are not going down well either.

182 points by locopati 16y ago

An excerpt: "...the Apple products & services that Apple does well are the ones that Steve Jobs uses (or cares about) and the ones he doesn't use/care about are less good (or just plain bad)..." Seems about right. Funny.

nextparadigms 16y ago
This is also a reason why founders/CEO's of companies should use their own products. In many cases it doesn't seem like they do. If you wouldn't buy or use your own product, then something is wrong with it.
joelrunyon 16y ago
Interesting way to predict future Apple products -- find out what Jobs cares about
- joezydeco 16y ago
  Does he have a TV in his house? There goes the Apple HDTV rumor...
Timothee 16y ago
"but I'm pretty sure Jobs never has had to schedule his own appointments with iCal so that program is less good" Speaking of, one thing I know for sure Steve Jobs doesn't do is getting directions to his meetings from iCal on his iPhone: the appointment's location can't be tapped to open Google Maps. This is driving me crazy. Not only because I want to use it, but because it's so simple and has been begging for it since the iPhone came out.
- jonknee 16y ago
  People come to Steve for meetings. His direction needs are pretty simple.
- samg 16y ago
  This bugs me too. I put the location in the Note section, which is tappable.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Yeah I totally imagine Steve Jobs using Garageband and Final Cut Pro all the time.
rbrown46 16y ago
Jobs does use Mail (on both the iPhone and the Mac – as can be seen from examining the headers of his widely publicized emails)... and plenty of people aren't exactly fans of that application.
- pimeys 16y ago
  Funny, I remember seeing a picture of re-designed Mail.app planned for the Lion release. Reminded me of the excellent Sparrow app.

dean 16y ago

"Apple is absurdly profitable and cash-rich; if they feel the need to compete with anyone on price in order to protect their business interests, they can do so with price cuts deep enough and long enough to drive most potential competitors out of business." Talk about 'not in their DNA', Apple will never compete on price. They never have and they never will. A brief look back at the history of the PC clearly shows this. They could have owned the PC market, they were first and best. But just too expensive.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
That simply isn't true. The iPad clearly competes on price, it could have been priced at $800 but they went for the aggressive $500 mark and began eating up the netbook market. Look at the iPhone it started out at $800, unsubsidized, and when that didn't take off they quickly got it subsidized and down to $200, and then have kept the 3GS around to sell at $99 and $49 price points... Clearly they are competing on price.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Yeah, it's probably more accurate to say that they're competitive while preserving their margins. Apple will never sell a device for which they can't keep a healthy margin. They've optimized their supply chain and component procurement in such a way that they can make absurd margins on an iPad 2 and competitors still have a hard time beating them on price. They have to compromise with smaller screens and pretend that's part of the design strategy.
- rickmb 16y ago
  People seem to underestimate what a unique product the iPad is: a consumer product that has been build to the highest standards of engineering and design, and would have been totally credible as a high end luxury product at three times the price. Yet it competes on price, unsubsidized.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    I think that's probably why it worked. It's a category of device that hasn't previously really worked, so it had to be priced for people to risk buying it. If it were priced as a luxury item, you'd have the Apple fanbase buying it, but it probably wouldn't reach wide adoption.

gamble 16y ago

> iTunes is showing its age and over the years has become a bloated collection of functionalities ... iTunes 'bloat' is a huge competitive advantage. Apple can make changes to their digital stores and instantly release to tens of millions of customers, including Windows users who aren't going to install a half-dozen discrete applications if Apple chose to split up iTunes.

jokermatt999 16y ago
Honestly, years of using iTunes daily on Windows completely turned me off of the idea of switching to a Mac or an iPhone. Without exaggeration, it is one of the worst pieces of software I've used. It's bad enough that my next MP3 player probably won't be an iPod, despite generally being happy with the one I have. Edit: and so this isn't just me ranting about iTunes (yet again, sorry), I think iTunes can actually harm Apple's image. It's tolerable if that's all you've used, but when compared to pretty much any other music player, it has glaring flaws (at least on Windows). To make a terrible continuation of the analogy, a Trojan Horse doesn't work if the Trojans hate your crappy horse and decide to never speak to you again.
- ellyagg 16y ago
  Interestingly, when it first came on the scene as SoundJam, and in its earlier incarnations at Apple after it was bought, iTunes was by far the best music player out there[1]. The overwhelming favorite MP3 player on Windows at the time was WinAmp, whose UI was a ghastly collection of inscrutable, tiny fonted palettes. Compared to that, having your entire collection of music in a smart, scriptable database with a slick interface was a dream. Performance problems on Windows and tacking on one new non-music playing feature after another seems to have doomed the experience and reputation. [1] Well, Audion was pretty dope too: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
  - Egregore 16y ago
    May be I'm too old school, but I prefer to arrange my music and audiobooks in folders not in some application.

albertzeyer 16y ago

MobileMe was never really successful because it costs. I would have tried it the first time I heard about it if only it would have been free. Indeed, I found it quite interesting. Dropbox didn't cost anything for the basic usage so nothing stops you to just try it out. And then word of mouth does the rest.

Cherian_Abraham 16y ago

And I am not sure if Social is the key to making apple more successful or whether its their inherent weakness. All I see today are solutions where social seems to be tacked on as an afterthought regardless of whether it makes sense or not. And I cant speak for others, but I am not excited about a Facebook phone. A hardware device does not seem to be a natural progression for a company like Facebook. And allowing Facebook, an entity that has now taken dimensions beyond a simple social network in to a Central identity provider, to track every single aspect of my life (location, calls, contacts, browsing habits, etc..) is simply a non-starter. But maybe an FB phone will appeal to the 18-24 crowd for whom privacy is not as important as the desire to be social.

Corrado 16y ago
My first thought on this was the Microsoft phone platform (Windows Phone 7, or whatever it's called this week). I haven't played with it but it looks like they might have had a chance at hooking up with Facebook/Twitter/etc. and splashing their app on the WP7 dashboard. However, it's probably too late for that as the Windows phone platform seems to be heading down (again)...
- nigelsampson 16y ago
  They have done this with Facebook, after setting up your People hub becomes a merged list of both your contacts and facebook friends. Status updates from both etc. I believe similar Twitter integration is in the works.
  - Raphael 16y ago
    Facebook can merge with contacts in Android too.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jpr 16y ago

One thing I find hard to beat when it comes to Apple: the image. Apple is the hip and cool thing that your artistic cousin uses, whereas Microsoft is the lame and boring thing that the enterprise uses. Between these two stereotypes, what would be the image you would market to in order to turn huge profits like Apple is doing? I have no idea, and I think it would be unwise to just imitate Apple, they have more experience being Apple than anybody.

GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
Think about that for a minute. They made a really good operating system which I would use if I could. However not many could afford it. Usually its... buy 2x computers, or one Apple. Thus only the few "elites" have it (or those willing to sacrifice to get it)
- kahawe 16y ago
  Which is an absolutely perfect way to go for a luxury company, just think Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Rolex,Breitling etc. here. Apple never really compromised on price and image and they try very hard to keep a great overall product quality, if you ask me.
sudont 16y ago
You have no idea how many artists use shitty Windows XP laptops. As a computer guy in my school, I had to root out a ton of viruses and other crap. Even my painting professor, a renown watercolor and oil painter, had a 9 year old Taiwanese micro laptop that chugged on IrfanView. Minus the rich kids, designers and myself, I knew only about 10 other students with a Mac in the art department. Windows is cheap, which is good for an artist. Cultural cache can only go so far when one's judged on their work.
- pushingbits 16y ago
  Image is not so much about who you are, but about how you would like to appear. It'd be pretty funny if Apple's success rested merely on people's desire to be perceived as creative and aesthetically discerning rather than on people who are creative and aesthetically discerning finding it to be the better product. I don't think that's accurate, but it does probably make up some measurable amount of their sales.

StrawberryFrog 16y ago

in the near term, companies making iPhone and iPad competitors are never going to beat Apple at their own game. We must then assume that Android is playing some other game. Either that, or he is simply ignoring large facts that don't fit his narrative. I would say a bit of both - Android is different ecosystem, but to ignore Android's market impact in smart-phones is negligent.

sasidharm 16y ago
I think he is talking primarily about OEMs. Except HTC, i dont think any other OEM building iPhone/iPad competitors is making much money.
- dotBen 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure in the handset division, Motorola is making good revenues with the Droid family. They are still some of the most popular handsets, certainly on Verizon. What impact the failed Xoom has taken on their bottom line, I don't know however.
  - 18pfsmt 16y ago
    They report earnings this Thurs after the bell, so we will see then.
combray 16y ago
Apple's iPhone sales alone just surpassed Nokia's -- http://www.9computerstore.com/2011/04/22/apple-tops-in-handset-manufacturers-in-revenue http://www.9computerstore.com/2011/04/22/apple-tops-in-hands... -- and that's only talking about the phone part. It's not taking into the (in my opinion) the much more important iPod Touch through iPad market, which the Android has no answer to at all on the low end and no really contenders on the upper end. If smart-phones was actually the market that we were talking about, the fact that my iPhone sucks balls for making actual phone calls would matter.
- Raphael 16y ago

yahtzee 16y ago

Apple is a hardware company. Of course Dropbox and Pandora should be able to beat them at their side competency. When it comes to hardware, Apple has such a huge lead in product design, I don't see anyone challenging for a while.

bobstobener 16y ago

Microsoft became successful primarily by IT department mandate in the 80's and 90's. Apple has been successful due to its focus on user/consumer experience. We now live in an era where consumers have a larger voice in technology selection and the Microsoft/Corporate IT department mandate is becoming less significant. You can beat Apple only by delivering the best consumer experience possible.

zppx 16y ago
From what I read, I think there were not that much IT departments in the 80's outside technical companies, I think Microsoft got its position because of a series of factors, one of them was the presence of Visicalc-like programs (specially Lotus 1+2+3), in the 80s Apple was already offering an absurdly good user experience compared with Microsoft, yet it failed in the first time. I remember that people got pretty excited with Windows 95, I don't think that this excitement was a enterprise mandate at all.

maverhick 16y ago

Care about your business. Care about your people. Care about your people. Care about your company. I mean really care. Obsess. That is what gives you the best possible chance at building something great.

asr 16y ago

"If they feel the need to compete with anyone on price in order to protect their business interests, they can do so with price cuts deep enough and long enough to drive most potential competitors out of business." If they try to drive competitors out of business by pricing below cost, this is illegal. Apple is already getting looked at by regulators, and I doubt they want to invite more investigation, which slows a company down and may prove really harmful to the culture (see: Microsoft). If this just means Apple might be willing to cut their margins, then yes, I agree. So the key is to make something with a lower cost structure than Apple has. Not going to happen for iPads in the near-term, but this industry changes pretty quickly...

DavidAdams 16y ago
Apple doesn't have to go below cost to outprice its competitors, just as Wal-Mart doesn't have to. Apple has huge profit margins and huge economies of scale that would enable it to, in some cases, sell products for less than another vendor could build a comparable substitute for.

michaelpinto 16y ago

Apple is brilliant at zigging when everyone else zags. Nobody cares about an MP3 player -- Apple does the iPod. Smart phones are dead, just look at Palm -- Apple does the iPhone. Tablets are a joke, even Microsoft gave up -- Apple does the iPad. Want to beat Apple? Just do something that nobody else cares about anymore. You can build a better PC. You can reinvent MySpace. You could even reinvent old Apple products like HyperCard or printers.

mgkimsal 16y ago
Printers is an area which I've been waiting to see disrupted for a long time.
- parbo 16y ago
  Ink/toner subscription with free printer?
  - redorb 16y ago
    perhaps a flexible subscription I.E. I agree to buy 12 cartridges ... within 2 years; but can request up to that time when I need them. - Although I think you need a price on the printer to weed out those who will default on the ink. Much like the square cost $10 at the Apple store; but is free online.
  - mgkimsal 16y ago
    Not so much that, but better integration with other devices and services. Printer integration to automatically wake up and print documents when I need them, not when I remember to print. (boarding passes, etc). Printers that can take half-size paper, and potentially auto-scale down documents to work with that half-size paper. I hate printing because 70% of the time I need about 5 things on the page, but they're all spread out, and an entire sheet of paper is a waste. Email/web/bookmarks helps out, but we could get by with smaller paper most of the time, except all printers expect larger size paper. Better auto-discovery of local printers around me, and cloud integration to print things wherever I'm at. Easier ways to print remotely. If I'm onsite at a client, I can't print something I need until I get home, but I may forget then. Letting me print remotely so it's ready when I get home would help, and/or the scheduling for future printing, either at a set time or set context (IE - at home). "3D printing" that would allow me to use those awesome red/blue glasses to get the full 3D effect from my documents. Relatedly, I'm not sure why companies aren't giving schools free paper with ads on the back. This would help school budgets, and give advertisers a captive audience.

rkon 16y ago

Price is part of their brand image -- I really doubt they would ever undercut a competitor on new products.

brianpan 16y ago
Apple competes on price in ways that preserves their brand- offering more for the same price, clearance/refurb section, previous model at a discounted price. I agree with Kottke, Apple has a huge ability to compete on price if needed, and I think they are more than ever. Discounted previous models used to be limited to clearance/refurb. But now you'll find the iPhone 3GS and the MacBook prominently displayed as a part of the lineup. The iPhone is available via the online store "from $49", not "from $199".

webXL 16y ago

I'd say that this article is spot on except for weak spot #2. Mobile Me integrates very well with iOS devices (AppleTV incl.) right out of the box. And then there's that huge datacenter they're building... BTW, how is Dropbox more compelling than Mobile Me? Sure it's cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's better. I'm just saying I wouldn't dive headfirst into competition with them in the cloud space just yet. The tethered syncing issue is a valid point, but don't Microsoft and Google already have solutions for that?

bonaldi 16y ago
Dropbox is way, way more compelling than iDisk, the equivalent bit of MobileMe. Why? Because it just works: your files are always available on whichever computer you're on, so long as it has been recently connected to the net. With iDisk, that's almost never true, and you have to either put up with a WebDAV implementation that's slower than making your own floppies and posting them or a weird hybrid local sync that always breaks. It Never Works, basically, and even if it did wouldn't have the great social and versions features of DropBox. As for the rest of MobileMe, the sync is OK, except when it gets confused. The whole setup is definitely a weakness, it's just one to be exploited in pieces, as DropBox has.

hernan7 16y ago

About point #1... wasn't the Microsoft Kin supposed to be the "Facebook Fone?"

antihero 16y ago

> Competitors should take a page from Apple's playbook here and be open about stuff that will give you a competitive advantage and shut the hell up about everything else. Open is not always better. That's pretty horrible. Life isn't all about profit, you know?

kanamekun 16y ago
In his previous sentence, Jason uses the phrase "competitors" and talks about "competitive advantage". So when he says, "open is not always better" - he is saying that being more open isn't always better for your competitive advantage. That is definitely a true statement. Life isn't all about profit, but staying competitive is a huge contributor to maintaining any profit at all.

ansy 16y ago

1. See the future. 2. Execute. 3. Profit. The points in the article are as myopic as Apple's competitors. You aren't going to beat Apple by reacting to what Apple does poorly today. Instead, ask "Where is technology going in one, two, and five years?" Then get the people that can do something about it and do it. Maybe you will see a future that includes things Apple doesn't do. But maybe you will see a future with things Apple already does and you had better get on board or face extinction.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

FTA: "Someone should figure out how to leverage Facebook's social graph to make the phone/app/gaming/music/video experience significantly better than on the iPhone/iPad and then partner exclusively with Facebook to make it happen." New title suggestion: How to Beat Apple and Drop Your Work into Facebook's Lap. I fail to see how this competitor might be more benevolent than the other.

crag 16y ago

It's not hard: build a better product. Talking computers, why the hell doesn't Dell hire a few great industrial designers? Dells' best notebooks (which all cost over 2k) look just like their $300 notebooks; fat, covered in black hard plastic, stickers stuck on the palm rests - and not to mention loaded with bloatware. If Dell (and HP and all the rest) built compelling looking (and performing of course) higher end notebooks then folk might not keep looking to Apple as the standard "best". All these companies (except Apple, since they enjoy such high profit margins on everything) fight over scraps at the low end. Even in their business lines (not talking servers here just notebooks).

zarify 16y ago

I just couldn't read the first point without cringing. Looking to Facebook to socialise gaming? Christ. Games on Facebook might be popular (actually, I don't know, are they still popular? I ditched Facebook a year ago), but they sure as hell aren't good, and interaction with other people (ie the social part) certainly seems to be restricted to blatantly pimping your game. I'd be looking more to Steam for doing a decent job of mixing social with gaming, where you have recommendations, inbuilt groups to join for people who play the same games, etc. That way you're connecting with people you know share an interest, not inflicting your latest 'social' game status updates on your friends who are most likely not interested. Personally what I find deficient in iOS devices is real time communication (I know I know, they're called phone calls) and the single foreground task nature of the device. With web based games or Steam there's always a real time method of communicating with your friends no matter what you're doing, you can see who's online and so on. On the other hand, due to the casual nature of specifically gaming on phones and tablets, I don't think the desktop paradigm really works anyway. From a non-gaming perspective, what I'd like to see most on iOS is a better way to manage files, rather than sending copies to any app which I would like to use them with. I don't really want to access a file I've stored in DropBox, then send it to GoodReader or Keynote or whatever. I don't want to load a picture from Photos into $editingApp then save a copy into Photos then load the new photo into something else. It seems a terribly wasteful way of handling things (and very much a 'tacked on' approach while people figured out what to do with a tablet).

renegadedev 16y ago

One of the reasons Apple fails at social is it's fanboys/gals. If you're walking around telling people to "Get a Mac" when your friends run into minor issues, chances are your social recommendations are not going down well either.