[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I've had a Samsung UMPC from 2008 to 2010.
I absolutely loved it.

What did you do with it?

But I've got a simple explanation, why iPad did succeed, where all the other tablets before had failed: iTunes.
Before iTunes, you had to use sheer endless sources:
- Music maybe from a single source.
- Movies, if you actually bought them, from another source, but still might have been a single source.
- Software (nowadays we call it apps): Each app from a different source.

That's a good point, and is certainly a major factor in Apple's success. but I don't think its a full explanation.

The key to the success of any device is what the user will do with it. Apple has historically thought that through, and crafted devices based on it. They are fanatical about the quality of the user experience. In the process, they created devices the user found of sufficient value to be willing to pay a premium price, and Apple got soaring revenues and profits and a stock price in the ionosphere in consequence.

These days, Amazon wants to be your single source for everything.

I still have my old programs from 10 years ago backed up.
I put each .exe file in a separate folder. And I put the emails, containing passwords, registration numbers and such, into the very same folder.
I've got hundreds of those folders.

I'm also a pack rat, and still have distribution archives for MS-DOS software dating from when the original IBM PC was first taking over the micro computer space. (I still use a few of those things, too.)

And still: Each time I reinstalled my system, some apps/programs had been missing. I simply couldn't remember, where I had bought a specific app. Games, for example, could be bought from tons of sources.

One of the things I tended to do was keep a list of what was on the system and where it came from, to make re-installation easier. I could generally find it when it came time to re-install. The trick was remembering it needed to be.

Now we use iTunes (or Google Play or the Microsoft store) as our central platform for every type of content.

I don't. I do use the Google Play Store for Android for most of what is on the tablet, but I have some things grabbed from elsewhere.

It's similar on Linux. I run Ubuntu, and use apt-get (command line) os Synaptic (GUI) to get and install packages. Ubuntu has the best dependency management I've see in Linux, and when an install is done, the system checks to see what you already have, so the download includes any dependencies the program may have that aren't already installed, and things Just Work.

The problem is the lag in new versions making their way into the official Ubuntu repository. Because Canonical offers paid support for Ubuntu, new versions don't automatically get posted. Canonical has to be able to support it, and doesn't add updates till they've tested and verified them. I run a fair number of bleeding edge versions, and had to add various application specific repositories to those apt-get and Synaptic would look in, to be able to get current versions.

And on Windows, I have a variety of sources, with a preference for open source.

That, in my opinion, is the single most important argument, why iPad did succeed.
And, funny enough, Apple did the very same before for music. iPods, imho, couldn't compete with the specs of Sony players or even Microsoft Zune. But the combination of iTunes and good enough hardware was outstanding.
And it shouldn't even have been a surprise: It had been Apple's approach for Macs as well = Hardware and OS from a single source.

I've never considered Apple an innovator in the new product sense. All of the product lines Apple is in existed before Apple got into them. Apple's great strength was in refining the concepts, and creating what became the example for "This is how you do that!" Apple is a master at UI design, and when you select something from the UI, the device generally does what you expect it to do, the way you expect it to do it.

The limitation with one-stop shopping is the "Have it our way" approach. If what you really want isn't available through them, you have a problem.

Simple, but looking backwards all genius decisions seem simple...

Hindsight is always 20/20...
______
Dennis