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In order for Apple to maintain its unprecedented brand recognition and profit margins it's not good enough to match the competition. They have to be unambiguous

In order for Apple to maintain its unprecedented brand recognition and profit margins it's not good enough to match the competition. They have to be unambiguously better than the Android alternatives and they just aren't right now. I disagree… are Macs unambiguously better than the alternatives? I'd say they aren't, but they still give Apple unprecedented brand recognition and profit margins. Ditto for iPods. For years, Macs and iPods often only saw incremental and obvious improvement. Innovations don't always need to come from Apple; as is eagerly pointed out here, Apple's quite happy to let others pioneer tech (like, say, NFC) and only adopt it when it makes sense for Apple's product story. Apple creates a superior story, a superior experience. That's it. Macs, iTunes, iPods, Apple Stores, and iOS devices all play together to offer clear and obvious benefits to consumers. Apple only needs to innovate when nothing currently on the market meets their product goals. Otherwise, they're focused on improving and refining the tech they're already shipping.

old-gregg 14y ago
Ryan, I disagree. I just got an iPhone 4s. Actually it was given to me for free. It was a major downgrade from Samsung Nexus (naked latest Android), actually it felt like traveling backwards in time. Heck, in many respects it's not even up to the original Nexus One! iPhone simply feels outdated because it's not as "online" as Androids are. The notion of "syncing" reminds me of my decade-old Nokia, the maps are barely useful (I use google maps via browser instead), the address book, the mail app, the way you use it is just ughh... old school: everything lives on an island which needs to be "synced". You can't even put a music on it without the iTunes, still. And even basic UX is plain wrong in many places, for example why does it keep beeping when receiving SMS messages while I'm typing??? Sorry, but this is a phone from 5 years ago. The world has moved on.
- ryannielsen 14y ago
  Interesting perspective and, like I said, one with which I'm not familiar. I've used a few Android devices (basically, I've played with all of the Nexus devices because we have them around for work), but only for a day or so at a time. Personally, iCloud solves all of my syncing issues; the device is basically always online and all of my data's always up to date without manually syncing. All of my media is in iCloud, so I never need to sync my music, movies or TV shows. Likewise, I can purchase all of that media from the iTunes store on the device. Maps on iOS 6 is hugely improved with an enormous (and potentially disastrous) regression – there are no transit directions. And I've never noticed the beeps from Messages when I'm typing a response… I must have internalized and learned to ignore those. ;-) I think it may really come down to: I can't use Android because I'm so tied to iCloud/iTunes and some of my favorite apps (Tweetbot and Reeder are probably the big ones) haven't been ported to Android. Also, the lack of polish on Android (even in 4.1) and in all Android apps drives me nuts. Maybe I'm too brainwashed by iOS. Every time I use an Android device, I feel like I've picked up an unusable and barely functional rip-off of iOS. Likewise, perhaps iOS isn't usable to you because you're so tied to Google's ecosystem, and you're accustomed to Android and Android apps. And because you're used to the way everything works in that universe, iOS feels like the backwards, decrepit OS.

old-gregg 14y ago

Ryan, I disagree. I just got an iPhone 4s. Actually it was given to me for free. It was a major downgrade from Samsung Nexus (naked latest Android), actually it felt like traveling backwards in time. Heck, in many respects it's not even up to the original Nexus One! iPhone simply feels outdated because it's not as "online" as Androids are. The notion of "syncing" reminds me of my decade-old Nokia, the maps are barely useful (I use google maps via browser instead), the address book, the mail app, the way you use it is just ughh... old school: everything lives on an island which needs to be "synced". You can't even put a music on it without the iTunes, still. And even basic UX is plain wrong in many places, for example why does it keep beeping when receiving SMS messages while I'm typing??? Sorry, but this is a phone from 5 years ago. The world has moved on.

ryannielsen 14y ago
Interesting perspective and, like I said, one with which I'm not familiar. I've used a few Android devices (basically, I've played with all of the Nexus devices because we have them around for work), but only for a day or so at a time. Personally, iCloud solves all of my syncing issues; the device is basically always online and all of my data's always up to date without manually syncing. All of my media is in iCloud, so I never need to sync my music, movies or TV shows. Likewise, I can purchase all of that media from the iTunes store on the device. Maps on iOS 6 is hugely improved with an enormous (and potentially disastrous) regression – there are no transit directions. And I've never noticed the beeps from Messages when I'm typing a response… I must have internalized and learned to ignore those. ;-) I think it may really come down to: I can't use Android because I'm so tied to iCloud/iTunes and some of my favorite apps (Tweetbot and Reeder are probably the big ones) haven't been ported to Android. Also, the lack of polish on Android (even in 4.1) and in all Android apps drives me nuts. Maybe I'm too brainwashed by iOS. Every time I use an Android device, I feel like I've picked up an unusable and barely functional rip-off of iOS. Likewise, perhaps iOS isn't usable to you because you're so tied to Google's ecosystem, and you're accustomed to Android and Android apps. And because you're used to the way everything works in that universe, iOS feels like the backwards, decrepit OS.