It's why I consider Apple to have no direct competitors, which is a situation that I do not like (as an Apple user!) Nobody else seems to be seriously targetin

It's why I consider Apple to have no direct competitors, which is a situation that I do not like (as an Apple user!) Nobody else seems to be seriously targeting the exact market segment they do, so if that's the segment you'd like to be in, your choices are Apple, and... that's the entire list. The others are so far off that Apple has a worrisomely-large "mistake line of credit", if you will, against which they may draw (and sometimes do) before reaching the point where switching would be an improvement, rather than just trading one set of problems for an even larger set of problems. Plus, downward price pressure isn't what it might be if they had closer competitors. All of which isn't great.