The Epic Battle Between Apple & Google Is All But Over - Who Won?

[Fat Abe]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

And there are always parents who want their kids to be the coolest and will spend the money to get whatever the kids want.

People buy Apple for the status, not just the iPhone but Apple stock.

I have no doubt that rich kids in China demand a Apple plaything over anything by Samsung. This was relayed on an NPR broadcast on kids with ultra-rich parents:

"One girl told our teacher that each year at the spring festival, she might have more than 20,000 U.S. dollars as pocket money."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2...ensive-Lessons

For a long time, the iPhones were notorious for dropped calls due to the service provider (ATT). Recently, they attempted to foist buggy navigation software on the users. When people stand on line to buy a phone that does not function well, that's what I call sick love. Never try to argue with an Apple fan boy or fan girl. Chacun à son poût. (Sic)

[MrDoug]

Originally Posted by david_e

Ah, the market segment no one is competing for, AARP + ADHD

Seriously?

[forsooth]

Originally Posted by david_e

Ah, the market segment no one is competing for, AARP + ADHD

Explain please.

[wizwor]

Apple is like an ice breaker launching new products in the icy oceans of unknown markets. Google is a tug boat drafting behind the SS iPhone. This article is like the SS Google declaring that they got there too. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have made very nice smart phones, but let's not pretend copying a smart phone is the same as inventing one.

I wonder what Derek Brown thought the Battlefield of Tomorrow would be in 2006...

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

For a long time, the iPhones were notorious for dropped calls due to the service provider (ATT). Recently, they attempted to foist buggy navigation software on the users. When people stand on line to buy a phone that does not function well, that's what I call sick love. Never try to argue with an Apple fan boy or fan girl. Chacun à son poût. (Sic)

I'm not an Apple Fanboy. But my first Android phone experience was a horrible one. I had Android 2.3 on the phone, and I could never get the phone to unlock when a call would come in. It sometimes took me 20 times pulling down the lock bar to unlock the phone, and it was very unresponsive when the phone was ringing. After a few weeks of missed calls, I bought an iPhone. It unlocks instantly, every time.

In 2006, I grew tired of reloading my Windows computer every 7-12 months to fix things that shouldn't have gone wrong in the first place. I used to work in IT, held a few certifications, and the day came where I just wanted a computer to work instead of having to work to make it do what it was supposed to. Bought my first iMac. Loved everything about it, and I haven't gone back to a Windows environment.

I write this now using an antique Powerbook G4, which oddly still works just fine running an outdated OS. It would have set me back $3300 new, but was only $150 on eBay. How many Windows laptops from 2005 are still even minimally functional?

On the other hand, I have an original iPad that is very long in the tooth. Apple broke the OS in IOS 5.2 and then dumped support for the original iPad with IOS 6.0. There's a memory leak in 5.2 that hasn't been fixed, and it causes any memory-intensive application to crash frequently (this includes Safari.) Frustrating, to say the least. That's why my second tablet was a Nexus 7, which I love most of the time.

What Apple excels at is making a high-quality product that functions the way it should. Where they fail is in locking users into proprietary formats or standards (for instance, the long-term lack of a 4G phone, the long-term lock into AT&T or the fact that you can't read a book from the iBookstore on a Mac.) I think most people who hate Apple do so because of their proprietary nature and their high cost. I think most people who love Apple do so because of their user-friendliness and quality offerings. In my case, I believe you get what you pay for, and now that there are Android products that are the equal of Apple's for similar prices, you can get a quality experience from either environment, but this was not always the case.

Going forward, I think Apple needs to do more to improve their hardware. The iPhone 5 doesn't make me want to replace my iPhone 4, but the Galaxy S4 does. The OSs are now close enough that I don't really care one way or the other.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by theinfamousj

But Apple didn't create the smart phone market nor the tablet market. Both existed for many - and in the tablet market 's case, for at least ten years. Bro had a Toshiba Satellite tablet - years prior to Apple' s entry into those markets.

Before the iPhone came out, I had already imported a Nokia smart phone from the Ukraine. It even had (Symbian) apps and an integrated GPS.

So this comparison to Mercedes is faulty. Best to compare it to Jaguar. Makes high end in an already pre-established market, at times copying features - though just enough not so as to avoid IP issues - from the early pioneers in that market 's successful models.

Google, on the other hand is a car upholstery company. It lets someone else determine the actual engineering while contributing something key for the consumer-product interface. Lots of "cars" can sport Google-fabric seats, and they'll even allow the car manufacturers to tweak the color (something purely cosmetic).

In the end, Google loses if the hardware folks decide to go with a different interface. Apple loses if they cannot convince enough consumers to buy their hardware model with its exclusive interface. But the consumer? The consumer has already moved on to the personal hovercraft market being established by SpaceX (to keep the metaphor going) that Apple will try to use their marketing team to convince you that they started.

(My whole family are early adopters. Oh the stories I can tell of original netbooks, nettops, tablets, PDAs, and portable music players.)

Apple didn't create the smart phone, tablet or digital listening device (i.e. iPod), but what they did is take a very small niche market and make it main stream. I had mp3 players before the iPod, tablets before the iPad and a smartphone before the iPhone. However, they were novelty items for geeks, not something your average person would buy.

[Prestidigitweeze]

One question is this: Do you want to let journalists condition you to think in polarizing terms or would you prefer to remain semi-objective and independent?

I don't base my choice in gadgets on what wins the popular vote but on what's useful to me personally, so the numbers are only interesting in the abstract and in terms of support (popularity = third-party choices).

I also have zero faith that any major company is looking out for my interests. What Apple does to my platform independence Google does to my privacy. And nearly all the other companies are just as bad. It always comes down to which gadget/platform proves most useful, not who makes it.

The journalistic template is to take a triggering subject and make a Boolean pronouncement about it. This polarizes people to the point that responses become heated and the article gets a lot of hits, but the debate isn't usually constructive for the participants. In many cases, anything which is said is (i) taken to be an endorsement of one side or the other or (ii) ignored.

For the moment, Apple's not going to disappear and neither (obviously) is Google. Of the majors, the only one that truly looks shaky to me is Sony. I'm not happy about that either -- even though I hate what happened to content access after Sony acquired a record label and a television and film production company, I'd like nearly all of the major/minor companies to be successful because choice is good.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by forsooth

Explain please.

David seems to be making a joke about elderly Apple users with short attention spans, who in his opinion would be the only ones to respond to Jobs' being resurrected and becoming a "computer god" (or, as Doug put it, computer GOD).

To Fat Abe:

A lot of people bought Apple stock not for the status but the profit, but now is clearly not the time to buy. When my girlfriend bought a hundred shares of Apple stock in the early 90s, individual shares were around fifteen dollars. Imagine how much those stocks were worth right after Jobs died, which is exactly when she sold them.

[MattW]

Originally Posted by frahse

Apple Stuck At Square One In The Cloud -[/B][/I]"

Blow by Blow Account

So, let's see.

"Blah. Blah. Blah." [...]

"it is a given (to me, anyway) that Android will be soon be effectively ubiquitous around the globe."

[...] "And, so, I will reiterate the view I've held for some time now:"

[...] "In my view, no company in history" [...]

I mean, seriously. That's astonishingly bad writing. And journalism. Cringe-inducing. Are we meant to continue to read this... very poorly written, very personal Android-fanboy rant?

I'm not an Apple fan, but that "article" is utterly ridiculous.

Matt

[Prestidigitweeze]

At least the writer makes no pretense of objectivity. It isn't as if he said, "According to the pedigreed microbot army in my left lobe, it is an undisputed fact that Android kicks ass."

[MattW]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

At least the writer makes no pretense of objectivity. It isn't as if he said, "According to the pedigreed microbot army in my left lobe, it is an undisputed fact that Android kicks ass."

That's a very low standard you have there.

I expect a bit more from articles like these. Your mileage may vary.

Matt

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Imagine how much those stocks were worth right after Jobs died, which is exactly when she sold them.

The nominal answer is, of course "a lot more than she paid for them" but the narrower answer is "less than at any other time in Apple's recent history."
Seems like rather the worst possible moment to have sold (allowing that "worst" in this context is still darn good.)

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Sregener

I write this now using an antique Powerbook G4, which oddly still works just fine running an outdated OS. It would have set me back $3300 new, but was only $150 on eBay. How many Windows laptops from 2005 are still even minimally functional?

I think you are being unkind there to Windows laptops. I am certain that if you were to run a circa 2005 Windows Laptop with the SAME O/S and applications as were current when it was shipped, you would have a good level of functionality. The majority of people do NOT look at the requirements for an application or O/S upgrade on those machines, and assume that just because it runs an older version of Windows, and that Microsoft is now actively showing how fantastic the newest version is, that their laptop will be fantastic with the new release.

[alicepattinson]

I like Google and I like Apple as well but i use iphone and iPad. hihihihi seriously this article is on Google's side.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I think you are being unkind there to Windows laptops. I am certain that if you were to run a circa 2005 Windows Laptop with the SAME O/S and applications as were current when it was shipped, you would have a good level of functionality. The majority of people do NOT look at the requirements for an application or O/S upgrade on those machines, and assume that just because it runs an older version of Windows, and that Microsoft is now actively showing how fantastic the newest version is, that their laptop will be fantastic with the new release.

I've got a few running at work that are that old.
And one at home from the start of 2007 that I got to test Vista (Still running Vista on it as well). Works fine - no problems.
One of my servers at work is from 2002 (running NT4), still going strong, had no problems with it at all.