3 ms·

You could say mobile operating systems may be a duopoly, but cellphones themselves are made by a dozen or more manufacturers. And the company that makes the mos

You could say mobile operating systems may be a duopoly, but cellphones themselves are made by a dozen or more manufacturers. And the company that makes the most widely used mobile operating system is not Apple.

Retric 3y ago
Sorry, yes cellphone operating systems is the market I was thinking of. But my point is you can slice and dice markets in multiple ways, however brands themselves don’t qualify as a market otherwise every brand would be a monopoly and the word stops being meaningful. It’s the expensive watch market not the Rolex watch market.
- qwytw 3y ago
  I guess the thing is that there is much more to it to it than just a brand. If you're heavily invested into Apple's environment (spend a lot of money on apps, maybe media on iTunes etc. and/or you rely on their cloud services etc.) the cost for switching to Android is significant enough that you might be willing to tolerate some abuse from Apple's before you do that.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Lock in doesn’t qualify as a monopoly. Camera lenses etc aren’t necessarily portable from camera to camera. However, if Company A went bankrupt, then someone would eventually by X, Y, or Z. Whatever those things are defines the market.
  - seec 3y ago
    Yep, pretty much. I am in the process of doing that and it is a rather long and annoying. I had the argument with my cousin a week ago, he was pissed off about how bad his iMac is for the price he paid. But when everything was said, he just defaulted to : yeah but I have all my stuff here, it would take so much effort to switch I would rather pay up. I believe this is exactly what Apple knows and precisely why their behavior is so despicable even toward their most long term customers. It makes a good reason to never actually rely on Apple software for anything. I used to be an advocate for their nice and clean software, but nowadays I would rather take the "inferior" options than being locked in their extortionate pricing. The problem with Apple is clearly that they have no real competition, there are alternatives but it's not an easy quick switching like you could be doing with any other computer maker. In the end, Windows is what it is, but at least you will not be locked to a particular company and their pricing for the OS feels fair enough. Apple approach of locking their software to the hardware supposedly gives better result, but this has not been true for quite a while and doesn't actually give many benefits to the end user (cue the refrain for ecosystem gimmicks).

Retric 3y ago

Sorry, yes cellphone operating systems is the market I was thinking of. But my point is you can slice and dice markets in multiple ways, however brands themselves don’t qualify as a market otherwise every brand would be a monopoly and the word stops being meaningful. It’s the expensive watch market not the Rolex watch market.

qwytw 3y ago
I guess the thing is that there is much more to it to it than just a brand. If you're heavily invested into Apple's environment (spend a lot of money on apps, maybe media on iTunes etc. and/or you rely on their cloud services etc.) the cost for switching to Android is significant enough that you might be willing to tolerate some abuse from Apple's before you do that.
- Retric 3y ago
  Lock in doesn’t qualify as a monopoly. Camera lenses etc aren’t necessarily portable from camera to camera. However, if Company A went bankrupt, then someone would eventually by X, Y, or Z. Whatever those things are defines the market.
- seec 3y ago
  Yep, pretty much. I am in the process of doing that and it is a rather long and annoying. I had the argument with my cousin a week ago, he was pissed off about how bad his iMac is for the price he paid. But when everything was said, he just defaulted to : yeah but I have all my stuff here, it would take so much effort to switch I would rather pay up. I believe this is exactly what Apple knows and precisely why their behavior is so despicable even toward their most long term customers. It makes a good reason to never actually rely on Apple software for anything. I used to be an advocate for their nice and clean software, but nowadays I would rather take the "inferior" options than being locked in their extortionate pricing. The problem with Apple is clearly that they have no real competition, there are alternatives but it's not an easy quick switching like you could be doing with any other computer maker. In the end, Windows is what it is, but at least you will not be locked to a particular company and their pricing for the OS feels fair enough. Apple approach of locking their software to the hardware supposedly gives better result, but this has not been true for quite a while and doesn't actually give many benefits to the end user (cue the refrain for ecosystem gimmicks).