Insightful article by John Gruber.
So the irony here is that iOS vs. Android (or, if you prefer, iPhone and iPad vs. commodity smartphones and tablets) is in fact a replay Mac vs. Windows – but not in the way that most who make the comparison would have you believe. Judging by its actions, Apple is keenly aware of the lessons to be learned from 20 years ago. To wit, this has nothing to do with focusing on raw market share, and everything to do with keeping the pedal to the metal on design and quality. If Apple maintains a lead over its rivals in those regards, the Mac suggests that Apple can occupy a dominant, stable, long-term position as the profit leader in the mobile market as well – a market that is already bigger than the PC market ever was, and unlike the PC market, is still growing.
As insightful as the article is, it does pivot on the assumption that Apple does, indeed, “[maintain] a lead over its rivals” in design and quality. Design is largely a matter of taste, but as far as quality goes, Apple has, in my view, been surpassed in almost every aspect by Android – at least, when it comes to software. And let’s not even get started on internet services, where Apple is a complete and utter joke compared to its competitors. As far as hardware goes, however, Apple’s supposed lead is harder to debate – I’ve held a lot of phones and tablets in my hands over the years, and while many come close to Apple’s, I’ve never held anything that outright surpassed it (save for maybe the HTC One which no one is buying).
Unsurprisingly, Gruber believes Apple does maintain that lead, and as such, arguing his point becomes relatively easy. However, if you ascribe to the view that Android has surpassed iOS in quality (and certainly in design, in my view), it becomes a lot harder to accept that Apple can, this time, avoid the trap it fell into in the ’90s.
Now, before people will twist and turn this into me saying Apple is doomed – I don’t believe for a second that it is. However, that doesn’t mean a repeat of the ’90s is somehow magically off the table – Apple has a lot of work to do in order to avoid it. As Tom Dale stated so aptly almost a year ago, “Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services”. With Motorola and the Moto X, design might not be the only thing Google is getting better at faster.
Also remember that Google isn’t the only one – each of the vendors makes their own phones and tablets – I have a Toshiba Tablet and Samsung media player. There are a lot of phones, each with different features (including those with QWERTY for textaholics). SD cards make things so much easier.
The iPhone might be the best device for the center of the bell curve, but Google has the rest, and the sweet spot has been getting narrower.
The web services are fundamentally important, and Apple’s lock-in approach will burn them there if they aren’t careful. They can make a beautiful device, but if I can’t get my data where I want it, it will be a beautiful brick with a terrible experience. They have a dichotomy – either it should be great or impossible. And it takes a lot of engineering to make everything anyone would ever want to do great. And the impossible (or expensive with 3rd party stuff) has become significant. (Compare Blu-Ray or USB3 on OSX).
I remember the Bill Gates’ memos about making it a “jarring experience” for anyone using Netscape (and making IE “part of the OS”). As Apple tries to make things painful for third parties, they make it painful for their users.
They also haven’t learned (or forgot with Jobs loss) that they can’t use the checkbook in place of a designer. There are many things I hate about Google Maps, but it works. They bought a bunch of pieces for their mapping applications, but there is no maps.apple.com, I’m not sure about an OSX app (since they put the razor wire up with Lion). They could have an awesome, “insanely great” map application, but instead have a patchwork that doesn’t even work up to Google or Bing’s efforts.
How well is iBooks doing even without the lawsuit?
Google and others have “Import from iTunes” – but how easy is it to go the other way?
iCloud, me and the rest create a fragmented archipelago – and pushes you to jump entirely into their ecosystem (with a No Exit sign – but how do you collaborate with everyone else).
Google may go evil. They are already starting with a few shots across the Microsoft bow (but M$ is suing them or their customers so they declared war). But until they start going with the full lock-in, they end up where they want to be – a hub, a transfer station, not a one-way to a dead end.
I see a lot of nice Android phones out there, but when it comes to tablets, it seems like a race to the bottom, for the most part. I mean, out of the 9,000+ Android tabs currently on the market, the Nexus and Galaxy Note tablets are about the only ones I’d even consider purchasing. (Well, maybe the Asus Transformer line… but you’re lucky if you don’t have to buy 2 or 3 of those before you find one that isn’t defective in some way.)
I agree. While I think Android is fine for phones I don’t recommend it for tablets, especially for existing iPhone owners. The latest Nexus 7 is a nice tablet but I still don’t consider the savings to be worth choosing it over the iPad mini. The overall experience just isn’t on par yet.
But…. Android tablets keep improving at all levels. Once $99 Android tablets are “good enough” it will be much harder for Apple to convince average consumers to pay the premium. It’s not just about initial savings, at $99 they will have the advantage of being disposable. Kid put a scratch in it? No big deal, just grab another when at costco.
My 2.5yo Asus Transformer mark I is really incredible after I installed a custom 4.2.2 ROM – smooth as butter, great looking, great battery and all the apps I need. I wouldn’t trade it for a free last gen iPad.
Maybe not, but you’re missing the point. Most people don’t want to install custom roms. They wouldn’t even know what that meant. Tech lovers like us get a lot out of that, but the iPad isn’t targeted towards us. It’s targeted at those who want a no fuss tablet, and who are willing to accept a few restrictions in order to have it. Remember, these are the kind of people that often think clicking on everything that jumps out at them is a good idea; the kind of people, in short, that can’t even keep their laptops running smoothly for a month. This is the market Apple targets with the iPad, though it has found success among some segments of power users as an auxiliary device.
Couldn’t agree more with the sentiment about the masses not being interested in installing custom roms.
I’ve been in the Software Development game for more than 40 years and I found it incredibly easy to brick my Android phone when trying to install one of these magical custom roms. Think about the carnage that would happen in the average user tried to do it… (shudder)
As a result if that somewhat sobering experience I decided that for devices that my business depends upon, I am just not going to fiddle with their innards any more than I have to. I exclude RAM and HDD upgrades to laptops from this but for phones and tablets…. Nope. not going to risk it.
I’m typing this on a 2009 13in Macbook. I use it for all my personal computing. I upgraded the Ram to 4Gb and the HDD to an SSD and I see it lasting for several more years yet. I got fed up with ‘fiddling’ with windows 5-6 years ago and switched to OSX. It works and does the job I want it to in the way I want it to.
The question is, would I replace it with another Mac? Yes I would. Windows has gone off into the world of LA-LA land. I write software for Linux servers every day and use RHEL/CentOS all the time. I know that that could provide me with a decent environment for my personal needs apart from one thing. Photoshop/Lightroom.
If however the next best thing comes along and sweeps all aside then I might consider it as long as that happens in the next 48 months. Then it is retirement and doing non IT stuff. Bring it on.
It was late when I wrote my post, so maybe I wasn’t all that clear on what my point was, so here goes.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that an average user install a custom ROM, I was saying that hardware that is 2.5yo runs incredibly well on a newer version of Android (BTW, it was painful to use on ICS or Honeycomb). Android made a great deal of progress with versions 4.2 and 4.3, to the point that it’s as smooth as the iDevices (provided you go with a Nexus or a Google Experience phone or tablet, or you are tech savvy enough to install a custom ROM).
Android is really a mixed bag in terms of quality and experience – there are some great devices which offer a similar experience to Apple + freedom + interoperability between apps and devices (if that’s interesting for you) and there are some really horrible devices (*cough* Samsung *cough*), bloated to the point that they barely function. The trick is to choose right. The bottom line is that it’s unfair to issue a blanket statement about Android tablets like ze_jerkface did – it shows either ignorance or malevolence.
It’s not the software on Android tablets that is the problem. (Or at least with stock Android anyway.) It’s just that everyone is trying to undercut the price of the Nexus tablets, and we end up with a LOT of sub-par crap. As a result of this (or maybe it is the hardware vendors reacting to market demand), people tend to buy Android tablets when they want something cheap, and go with iPads for a ‘premium’ experience. This is unfortunate, but it is what it is.
John Gruber focus too much on Apple’s US market, while the rest of the world is a bit different.
In many countries iDevices are a bit out of reach for normal citizens.
Or perfectly in reach but just not as good as the competion.
Before I begin, let me state that I live in the USA and have ever since I was born. Experiences in other countries may differ significantly, and I’ll probably get a chance to experience a few shortly.
Speaking from my own experience, here’s why customers stay with Apple once they go there. It has very little to do with design, or even quality (though most Apple devices I’ve owned have lasted longer than their non-Apple equivalents). Most of it is service. You see, and yes this is purely anicdotal, but when I call Apple or visit an Apple retail location, I get staff that: A. are friendly, B. speak English fluently, and C. are direct, to the point, and don’t treat me like an idiot. I can go in, examine the devices thoroughly before I purchase, all while not being bothered by pushy staff trying to force a sale. Apple know that if you don’t wish to purchase one of their products, no amount of pushing is going to help. If a device needs serviced, no problem. Call or take it in, and you get someone who asks you clearly what the problem is in your language, and doesn’t run through a script with you. If it’s clear you know your stuff, they treat you accordingly.
Can I get any of that through Google, Samsung, or any other Android OEMs out there? Not that I’ve found. There is no Google Store to let me try devices. I can’t call Samsung and expect to be able to understand the person on the other end, and if I go to any of our 3rd-party retailers (Best Buy and the like) I’m bothered by pushy staff trying to get me out of the store as soon as possible. Let alone trying to get one of these devices serviced should I need service within the warranty period.
It’s a repeat of the 90’s all right, except this time Apple has learned from their mistake and knows what customer service is about. Android OEMs are following the Dell example, and that’s not going to keep many customers long term.
I’d be interested to know if the situation is similar in Europe, for example. Apple do mostly concentrate on the USA at this point, so I’m wondering if their service in other regions comes anywhere close to matching what they do here.
Usually you only have Apple stores in the rich countries like Germany, France, UK and so on.
They tend to only exist on the big cities.
Apple’s prices are away out of reach for many families, specially in the south, unless they reach out for credit.
For example, in Portugal the minimum wage is around 380€ after taxes. So you really need to save a lot to invest into an iDevice.
Usually only the upper level of the society tends to have iDevices.
Experiences of other fellow Europeans might vary.
My Apple store experiences haven’t been that great. They’re as good or bad as best buy, in my experience. I’ve had them say just completely bogus stuff to me to try and entice additional sales. Case in point: the time I tried buying a usb micro cable from an apple store. I had a guy try selling me a lightning cable. I explained it wasn’t for an apple device, but he insisted that it would work.
(Edit: to be fair I was trying to buy something that in an apple store for an android phone. And I’ve heard many people say the same stupid thing)
Edited 2013-10-10 17:30 UTC
Apple store = Best Buy + pastel t-shirts.
I knew someone who took their pc there after the genius bar told her they would transfer everything from her hard drive without any problems. I’m still not sure what happened exactly but they returned it non-booting and claimed they were unable to transfer anything. I took it apart and found cables unplugged and a boot disc left inside the case. Anyways I fixed it and transferred everything in less than an hour. She had taken it back 3 times only to have them give her the run-around.
Microsoft stores are no better. I asked a sales guy at one if they had any laptops with quad-core processors and then he started into a condescending argument about how I probably don’t need one and blah blah blah as if it is just a buzz-word I read in the paper. Whatever, Goodbye.
All these stores don’t want to pay salaries that attract experienced and knowledgeable sales staff. They go cheap and hire 21 year olds who think they are geniuses because they can impress clueless grandmas by explaining gigabytes. The BS people all day and their egos have a hard time dealing with anyone that might know more than them. I normally just play dumb to see what they will say. It can be quite amusing.
There is also the inertia factor. The Android is often thought of as a geek’s phone but half the geeks I know have the iPhone because they bought into the ecosystem earlier and now have hundreds of dollars worth of purchases. What does Android offer them? A few hundred dollars off at retail? That’s not enough to make up for the lost purchases and time required to switch over. The “customization” factor of Android is also not enough to attract them. From a utility point of view the value is quite low relative to normal use. Being able to make superficial changes doesn’t improve their productivity.
Well said, But Lack of customer service is not Google’s problem. That rests squarely on the OEMs or the Phoen carriers. And as a customer, a customer would usually be satisfied with Android as teh operating system, but would choose another device manufacturer runnning the same if not updated OS.
That was true, until Google started selling their own Nexus line of phones and tablets. The moment they became an OEM (even though technically their products are built by other companies) it became their problem and I’ll not let them off the hook for it.
Thanks, I neglected to mention that. But the argument stays with the exception of the Nexus devices, the responsibility of support rests with the OEMs. And since the vast majority of Android run hardware doesn’t come from Google themselves, the point is still valid.
“Design is largely a matter of taste”
I suggest you revise your idea of “design”. You probably meant “looks” but even looks can be well and badly done.
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_acti…
Going to leave this here again.
If it’s true that Android surpassed iOS in design and software quality, which I suspect is true, leaving only hardware quality (and marketing) then Apple will be in trouble over the long haul. People don’t keep phones as long as computers anyway. Simply put, they don’t have to last as long and differences in quality will be harder to notice. As for marketing, with Samsung’s and other’s growing advertising budgets and a variety of options in the Android world, Apple has a step climb ahead of it to maintain its already shrinking share.
Who says Android has surpassed Apple in software design. In what way? By what measure?
I found Android to be borderline unusable. I have owned tons of phones over the years and the Galaxy S4 was the first one that I wanted to chuck at a wall … badly.
It was one of the slowest and recalcitrant OSs I’ve ever had the misfortune in using.
I bought it after using a Windows Phone 8 (Ativ S), which runs on slower hardware and was an absolute pleasure to use. As soon as Apple released the 5S, I almost ran to the store to end the madness.
Android sucks balls. I’m sorry to say it, but it does.
I think where you went wrong was when you invented the story about owning an S4. Why do so many iPhone owners in online discussions feel the need to do this?
I have never lied on this board. Not once, ever. I will post a photo of it if you like.
I still have the damn thing. Still have my Ativ S as well, if you’d like to see that too?
Edited 2013-10-14 00:13 UTC
Apple today seems not to care about innovating whether in design or quality. Or rather, they stopped experimenting and moving forward. The general feeling – stagnation. So the article could be right for the situation 5-6 years ago. But not anymore. Today Apple are too busy racketing competition with patents. As the saying goes, whole some innovate, those who stopped – litigate.
Edited 2013-10-10 19:15 UTC
Remember though that most people don’t want constant change. Small refinements over time is the name of the game at the moment, and that’s what most people are comfortable having. Look at Windows 8, or the ribbon: Microsoft “innovated” without warning and now users are confused and angry. Some people I know still hate the ribbon, let alone the “modern UI.” Not everyone’s a techie, and Apple aren’t going after the techies. People want improvements, yes, but those improvements have to come in such a way as to not break the foundations users already understand. Look at iOS 7: it looks different, has a few new additions (app switcher and control center), but still operates almost exactly the same as it did before. Opinions on the new look differ wildly, but no one is confused as to how to operate it. You could say the same about Android 4.x vs 2.x. New features abound, yet anyone familiar with 2.x can use 4.x without issue even though they may not know how to access the new features present in it.
This has another side. Stagnation will bite them hard later. Innovation doesn’t need to disrupt existing solutions, it can happen alongside them. But when no innovation happens – no patents will prevent falling behind.
Am I living on a different planet?
I still frequently get super slow response on Android tablets, so bad that when a virtual keyboard opens, and I start typing, it takes 5 seconds (!) before the first character appears on screen after pressing the key.
These things NEVER happen for me when using iOS.
Instant response, always.
How can you possibly claim that Android software is of higher quality if they can’t even get the basics right?
Heck, you admitted yourself that Android tablets get slower in time. When a year old, they are slower than when new. This reminds me of the Win95 installations with bloated registries that get slower and slower until you reinstall the OS.
Stop using cheap tablets.
It’s third party customizations that seem to cause all the problems. As soon as I switched to cyanogenmod all the hiccups in the UI went away. I bet if you had an AOSP tablet you wouldn’t notice any delays. So the argument still has merit. Google software is higher quality, especially if you include the apps like Maps, not just the OS. In fact I just recently upgraded my iPhone to iOS7 and it is extremely slow. My Android phone is much faster and smoother.
There is a tech urban myth which goes like this. Apple made the Mac and it was closed and costly and they wouldn’t license the OS. Microsoft made Windows which was almost as good as the Mac OS and it was licensed to lots of OEMs who drove innovation and costs down. As a result Windows took over the market and as a result of being reduced to a small market share the Mac fell behind technologically and Apple nearly went bankrupt.
The followup tech urban myth is that the same thing is about to happen all over again because once again Apple has a closed OS and now Android is playing the role of Windows by offering an open OS that lots of OEMs can deploy, etc, etc,.
The problem with the first tech urban myth, the one that people think is happening again, is that it never actually happened in the first place.
What really happened is that the from the beginning the Mac was vastly outsold by DOS PCs almost all of which were sold to businesses on the basis of price and the familiarity of corporate IT with particular sales channels. Much later, a full decade later, Windows 95 eventually came along and accelerated the growth of the non-enterprise consumer PC sales.
In parallel to all this but not synchronised with it or caused by it Apple drifted into a state of dysfunctional management and eventually a short lived profitability crises, a crises that came after ten years of the Mac having a small market share. Eventually Steve Jobs came back with his team from Next and remade Apple as a company as well as completely transforming Apple’s product range and Apple once again became profitable and financially stable. Simultaneously with this return to profitability Apple’s market share continued to decline for quite some time and it is only now, and only in some markets, that the Mac is once again approaching the 10% to 15% market share it had back at it’s peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Mac software and peripheral markets are now more healthy than ever and there are no ‘compatibility’ disadvantages to using a Mac resulting from it’s low market share. Apple now makes more money from the Mac than all the biggest PC OEMs added together.
Apple is currently the most successful digital goods, smart phone, tablet and PC company in the world. If in the future Apple ends up with just 10% or even 5%, of the world’s PC, phone and tablet business it is perfectly possible, if as a company it remains focussed on the right goals and is managed in the right way, that it could remain the most successful digital goods, smart phone, tablet and PC company. It is also perfectly possible that users of Apple computing devices will not suffer any subpar experience as a result of Apple having a small market share.
Currently the only threat is that with a small market share Apple devices may suffer from attracting less developer and third party support and as result offer an impoverished user experience. The example of the Mac, stuck at 10% or below of the PC market at birth and for for decades after, indicates that that is not an inevitable consequence of smaller market share.
Not only is the future not likely to be like the past but it is even less likely to be like an imaginary past.
Tony Swash,
To be honest, I’m glad that apple has lost their market lead. IMHO they don’t deserve a larger share so long as they continue to treat mobile devices like nanny platforms by forcing their customers into using a locked down app store and then censoring applications that end users are allowed to install. I for one do not accept that consumer technology should preclude owners from being in control over their own devices. A platform which restricts control to the hands of the few who built it yields a narrow approach to innovation on that platform. Locked platforms are a decidedly bad direction for the future of technology.
You may not believe it, but this view is driven by pragmatism rather than animosity towards apple. If apple were to turn around and begin championing the owner’s right to choose their own software, then I’d be far more supportive of them. I dare say even many fanboys who’ve been publicly defending the walled garden approach would secretly turn a smile inside too.
Job’s fixation on control came to the detriment of the platform insofar as it relates to openness. Apple’s products have historically been confined to *his* vision because that was all he ever allowed, yet I believe this egocentric mindset is needlessly costing apple market share. If apple doesn’t want to become marginalized again, they should re-evaluate their rigid approach and learn how to play nicer with others. How popular would they be if they hadn’t created such high friction with open aficionados with no real gains for their users? I’m not sure if it would be in Apple’s character to create a mobile platform that embodies openness and third party innovation, but if they did I think it would be the game changer they need.
Edited 2013-10-11 05:58 UTC
Apple doesn’t care about market share. I don’t care about market share. Why should anybody care about market share?
I have no idea what you mean about openness, if you mean licensing their OS Apple tried that and it nearly bankrupted them. Their ‘closed’ business model has made them the mosts successful computer and device maker on the planet, who should they be copying? Dell? HTC?
I would love to know what you mean by Apple becoming marginalized again. And if it happened how would that manifest itself as a problem for Apple or it’s customers?
Tony Swash,
“Apple doesn’t care about market share. I don’t care about market share. Why should anybody care about market share?”
I suspect that’s not completely true. For now apple’s share is still healthy enough, but the more it looses the more it risks loosing the critical mass it needs to attract the third party support that users benefit from. Instead of being a primary target, it could degrade to a secondary target or loose supported status all together if it becomes too irrelevant to developers.
I just don’t believe that writing off the importance of market share is wise. Even if you are being sincere that it’s not important to you, it is important to other users who want their products to be well supported by third party services. Apple still has tons of market momentum for the near term, but if their share erodes a small bit every single year to competitors, that will invariably result in apple returning to a marginalized market position.
“I have no idea what you mean about openness, if you mean licensing their OS Apple tried that…”
Of course I’m not speaking about that, I was referring to the restrictions on the device in the hands of the owner.
Edited 2013-10-11 19:30 UTC
If that were true then the software available for the Mac – perhaps 3% of the global PC market – would be markedly inferior to that available for the PC. In fact there is no general software deficit for the Mac. Some pieces of software are PC only, some are Mac only, most run on both platforms. I use my Mac for a very wide range of functions including office productivity, a very wide range of high end graphics and photo editing, web site design, video editing, music, sound, etc, etc, and I have never felt the software available in all those areas was better or more comprehensive on a PC. So why should it be different on phones and tablets?
Plus of course there is the huge disparity in platform utilisation and monetisation rates between Android and iOS. An average iOS user is worth about four times as much as an average Android user to third parties such as developers and peripheral makers.
Finally iOS is way ahead of Android in corporate and professional adoption and the iPad in particular has way more high end pro apps.
iOS is going to be on around a billion devices in a year or so (it’s already on 700 million) and I really can’t see how market share is going to undermine third party support in the foreseeable future.
Apple cares about sales but not market share. Apple doesn’t chase the low end Android customers because they are just not worth it.
This is avery good article about Apple” approach to market segmentation:
http://stratechery.com/2013/the-550-iphone-5c-makes-perfect-sense/
(Thom – note the use of global figures this time – does that make me less of a ‘fanatic’?)
If apple didn’t care about marketshare they wouldn’t force ios developers to purchase a mac to develop for ios.
Are you really saying that you think iOS developers being required to buy Macs is going to impact on market share figures?
How many iOS developers do you think there are?
Maybe in US, because in Portugal was quite different.
My first PC, a 386SX in 1991, when converting the old price in Escudos to Euros, it costed around 1500 euros and had to be payed on credit, given our average salaries.
I could buy a PC everywhere in the country, almost every computer shop assembled their own brands, besides selling Amiga and Atari computers alongside. The later were mostly seen as programmable games consoles.
A Mac would cost me over 2000 euros, if I recall correctly, with one single importer, Interlog, available only in Lisbon and Porto. Plus, I had to buy Mac specific hardware, while PCs were already full of standard parts I could buy anywhere in the country.
It had nothing to do with Windows 95.
Edited 2013-10-11 07:37 UTC
I admit I am probably slightly too young to properly comment on the computer market in the 80’s, but from growing up in that decade gave me the impression there were a lot more players in the game at the time. It wasn’t really until the 90’s that it turned into the two player game it is today.
The openness part of the myth comes from the fact that during the 90’s Microsoft benefitted greatly from the innovation from 3rd party developers, which in many ways can be compared to the more open model in how Android can be customized.
So while overall I agree comparing the past and now reveals too many inaccuracies, there is enough similarities too to merit the question if iOS could end up marginalized in the same way Mac OS became in the late 90’s. Right now I don’t see the risk that great (it is much bigger for Windows Phone atm), but it will be interesting to follow.
A wonderful fable. The truth is totally different. Bill Gates saved Apple to avoid MS being broken up for antitrust violations. MS was almost totally paralysed for a decade by ongoing numerous lawsuits in the USA and EU that prevented them from taking any competitive action against Google or Apple.
Apple had very little worthwhile to offer for at least 3-4 years after Jobs returned. OSX was basically unusable until about 2004 and the PowerPC architecture was totally uncompetitive.
Apple had over a billion dollars in cash when MS invested $150 million in stock. Getting the MS investment was just PR.
Microsoft were inhibited from deploying their monopoly on desktop OS as aggressively as they would have liked but they could have innovated. Microsoft could have invented the iPhone. They didn’t because they are not a product innovation company, they are a company for whom market share is very important because they have always depended on the leveraging of monopoly power against competing products in order to win.
Most of what Jobs did at Apple in the first few years was internal. He cleared the warehouses stuffed with unsold stock, he drastically reduced the number of SKUs, he closed dozens of in house research programmes and projects that were going nowhere, he remade the Apple Board and the top management and he brought in a little known executive called Tim Cook to revolutionise Apple’s supple chain.
The first new product was the iMac in 1998 a year after Job’s return, not very technological innovative although it’s adoption of the new and barely used USB port standard was startling and made it the first legacy-free PC. It was the product that marked the return of innovative design to Apple.
On January 7th 1998 Jobs announced a projected $47 million profit for the first quarter at Macworld Expo, finally bringing Apple back to profitability.
None of your errors or my corrections in anyway effect the argument I was making in my original comment.
That billion dollars cash would have lasted a couple of weeks at most. Steve Jobs later admitted that Apple would have been bankrupt within a month if MS hadn’t intervened. The MS intervention created enough investor confidence so that Apple could restructure. However if MS had canceled the Apple versions of Office and Internet Explorer Apple would have almost instantly ceased to exist.
In 1997 Apple had an an obsolete OS tied to outdated, slow and expensive hardware. They didn’t even have a proper web browser or office suite. In fact they had absolutely nothing of real value.
Macs had mostly disappeared from the education and corporate market in Australia by about 1991-2. My university had stopped supporting any Apple technology by 1995 (except for specialist graphics use).
That does not contradict what I said. The Mac never had anything other than a small minority market share, and until Windows 3.1 came along the Mac was being easily and hugely outsold by DOS PCs. During that whole period Apple was profitable.
Well, I guess it’s a myth in the sense that Apple didn’t have any market share to begin with for MS to take over.
Talk about myths…
I don’t know where that 10-15% comes from but it sure wasn’t like that in Sweden. I had friends with PC’s, Amiga’s, C64’s, ZX Spectrum’s and TI-99’s and whatnot but I didn’t know a single person that had a Mac. In fact, I didn’t even see a Mac in the wild until I went to Uni in the 90’s and then I encountered exactly one.
Mac’s where kinda like SGI workstations: some kind of mythical and cool computer but you’d have to be insane or filthy rich to buy one for personal use.
Edited 2013-10-11 09:48 UTC
Those are US figures. Apple fanatics have silently moved from supplying worldwide figures to US figures.
I was comparing like to like. During the early period of the PC market the US market was a huge proportion of the global PC market.
If by using US figures for the current period I have overstated the percentage of Mac sales globally, apparently due to some sort of fanaticism on my part, that only strengthens my arguments. The Mac is a very healthy business for Apple and is one of the most successful PC OEM businesses, and that is with a small market share.
10-15% is a bit high but global figures weren’t that different:
The Macintosh was also doing well, rising from 1.3 million units in 1990 to its all-time high of 4.5 million units in 1995. Macintosh market share peaked at 12% in 1993.
http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/7/
This Ars article is likely also US-centric – not even a mention of Sinclair ZX Spectrum and its clones.
Whether the Mac has 1% or 20% of the current PC market is utterly irrelevant to the argument I was making. If it’s a lot less globally than the US figure I quoted that doesn’t matter and I bow to your greater statistical knowledge. It doesn’t effect the argument I was making and it it doesn’t bother me as an Apple fan and customer.
I think non-Apple fans, and in particular Fandroids, often completely fail to understand what is important to Apple fans and Apple customers. Speaking as both a customer and fan of Apple I love to see Apple products achieving high sales and a large market share because I want more people to experience the benefits of using well designed software combined and integrated with well designed hardware and wrapped in first class customer support and service. But if other people want to use non-Apple devices and if a large majority of customers reject Apple I don’t care.
The state of market share is of intellectual interest, as is occasionally offering a response to the relentless rubbish that is talked about mobile market share, but I don’t think and have never thought that market share matters much in and of itself.
What matters to me, and to other fans and customers of Apple, is that Apple continues to be a successful and profitable business with ample resources to allow it to continue to develop and innovate new products, and that even if reduced to a permanent minority platform status there are no significant disincentives to using the minority Apple platform. On both counts I am very confident about the future.
There is no sign that Apple is going to encounter any sort of financial or business problems in the foreseeable future. Based on the current state of the Mac platform (a small minority player in terms of market share) and iOS (a minority player in terms of market share) it is very unlikely that using either MacOSX or iOS is going to become problematic or impoverished because of it’s minority status, quite the contrary as iOS, and I would argue MacOSX, have a richer ecosystem of software offerings. So things are looking very rosy indeed.
I liked this comment by Horace Dediu at Asymco
All products released under Jobs supervision.
What products did Apple successfully release during the years Jobs was away?
Newton, IIfx, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, Motorola and Umax clones. /sarc
That was literally my experience. I saw my first Mac in 1993. During my undergrad studies in the 80s we used PCs or terminals on mainframes. Most people used C64s or Amigas at home.
In what dimension? I have the Asus Transformer 300T which is certainly not the most expensive or fastest around but it’s not some Chinese who-knows-what either. It’s currently running Android 4.2.1 from Asus.
After a while it just becomes less and less responsive to the point when after clicking a text input in the browser the keyboard takes a couple of seconds to appear. And it’s not like I have 20 apps running in the background, I usually “pull down” stuff that I don’t plan on continuing to use. I also don’t use any custom app launchers, keyboards and what have you and Asus to my knowledge does not “customize” it’s android roms with crap-ware too much (only some power management stuff which I find quite useful actually).
Granted, after a reboot it works quite nice for some time, but it still kind of ruins the experience. It’s quite pathetic compared to my old windows 7.8 phone which runs fine for months without rebooting.
I don’t plan to use any custom roms or kernels, I just can’t be bothered to fsck around with a device that I use as a portable media player/web browser. The point is this shit should work correctly OOTB.
I think in Mobile Apple is going to lose to Android, in Tablets they’re probably going to break even or win, and in Laptops/PCs they’re going to dominate. Windows is a shit experience, and Android is a bad desktop experience.
It already has lost to Android. More people have smartphones running Android than iOS, but that doesn’t mean those Android users use their phone as a smartphone.
Android has won in the eyes of the general public, Apple still dominates in the eyes of the nerds and hipsters
I have to disagree on your point there Thom. I bought a HTC One to replace my aging iPhone 4, fter hearing such good things about it. And while it’s probably the best looking Android phone available (for someone who doesn’t want a plastic rock in his pocket) and one of the most powerful, the build quality isn’t the best. I remember dropping my iPhone 4 out of my pocket onto a solid stone floor about 2 weeks after i got it, and there was only a slight dent in the metal band. I did the same with my HTC One 2 days after getting it, and now it has a square corner. And don’t get me started on the software…. Whilst i love Android, i hate it when OEMs make it so the software is unusable and looks like shit.
On another note, anyone want to buy a HTC One?
Very interesting and insightful comments here, indeed. And the “Apple” subject is of perennial debate through the years, it seems.
I personally think that Apple’s “pros” are too much clear for everyone, customers or not. Me myself was an Apple fan for 12 years or so, but now not anymore (if I can say forever).
About “Cons”: there is something Apple can’t and won’t change: high price and walled gardens. Surely they can take a nice share of the global market. They can reinvent themselves (as they have done so successfully). They can play the psycological game once and again; but they cannot grow more and more outside their self imposed glass dome: Price + Lock.
Apple stuff isn’t cheap, but it’s not crap either.
If you go to the Dell site you’ll find a lot of PCs that are a lot cheaper. But select one and customize it. The price will shoot up. Spec it like an iMac, which would include a screen, and suddenly an iMac isn’t that expensive.
The specced Dell wouldn’t include OS X either nor would it look as good as an iMac.
Sure enough for a lot of ordinary people an iMac would be more than they need and they have a lot of options with non-Apple computers.
Although many tend to compare Dell prices with Apple, many people still buy desktop computers from local OEMs, not Dell and friends.
Actually, I only started to care about global PC brands when I moved to laptops as my main computer. And even those have now modular versions that local OEMs assemble.
Finally, the Asus laptop where I am typing this, isn’t as pretty as a MacBook Pro 17, but beats it in all technical specifications (CPU/GPU/…), except for the design and uses plastic instead of aluminium. Two things not worth paying the 1000€ price difference.
I never buy PCs, but if I did I’d go for Dell of only because they include very little crapware (at least on their business offerings).
Unlike PCs you see in shops that are infested with stuff bordering malware.
No sane person buys a Dell desktop for private use. They are very expensive, use a lot of proprietary hardware and are only sold online.
Every dell workstation I’ve had at work has been rock-solid.
Buy Business not the stuff that the sell to consumers.
Apple is doing a damn fine job in the PC/Laptop sphere. Their marketshare is doing just fine and their profitability even better. *When you consider that their competitors are HP, Dell, Acer, etc – NOT windows machines as a whole.
Is this really an article? It’s just full of “My oppinion is that iOS is worse than Android because I feel like it”. Feelings don’t make an article, facts do. Where are the insight full articles I used to read?
I can write an article 180 degrees the other way around about how Android is crap in 5 minutes. Give me 10 and I can even give you some spot on arguments.
Gruber say: “Apple can occupy a dominant, stable, long-term position as the profit leader in the mobile market as well”
Which is his definition of success (and mine).
You say that Android is (arguably) better than iOS: whether it is true or not is irrelevant if your goal is to answer to Gruber’s article.
Some say that model X from company Y is better than the iPhone or more often that the camera is better or the display or the CPU or whatever. Other say that Android or WP is better than iOS, Google Maps is better than Plan, GMail better than iCloud and so on.
But people are not buying smartphones by combining the best of dozens of models, picking features from several OSes, they are buying a whole package which includes the hardware, the OS, the design, the fun or fashion element, the AppStore, the ecosystem, the integration between their various devices, the services end everything else.
When you agree that for a company, success = profit (what else?), then it becomes obvious that Apple has by far the better situation in the market to ensure long term success. They have every pieces of the puzzle (some being stronger than others) and they are going to make the puzzle bigger by adding more pieces (TV, iWatch, mobile payments, etc.) and the overall package they offer (hardware, OS, design, ecosystem, services, customer service etc.) is unmatched as a whole for a company (and not by putting in the same bag many companies together against Apple and considering only the strength of each of them: profit and success is not something companies share).
If you want to argue about Gruber’s conclusion, you should explain us why Apple may no longer be a successful company in the future and which company is going to take its place as a profit leader.
Edited 2013-10-11 16:07 UTC
Why on earth are you so enthusiastic about handing over as much of your cash as possible to Apple? Insanity.
He never mentioned buying anything.
Many Japanese Keiretsu trading house have survived for centuries while basically ignoring short-medium term profits.