Why Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Huawei Can't Compete with Apple

Cost. Developing world people ... they maybe walk to market, maybe visit another village, they don't want to drop huge money on mobile data, which is stupid slow anyway and developers don't care about their use case. With local mesh it's fast enough that things work anyway.

I still get a console on Mac and I'm using it every day. What I don't want to do, though, is for me to start working for the computer, I want the computer to work for me. After years and years, I've reached a point where I just want the stuff to work. I still do like tech and I'd rather spend my time on investigating new technologies than tinkering with settings.

For me it's cheaper to buy Apple and get the free time. There's nothing wrong with other choices, though.

No, that would have been Neonode with the N1, about 2 years before the first iPhone:

http://www.geek.com/apple/apples-slide-to-unlock-patent-inva...

...but I tend to think that 'slide to unlock' was 'invented' a bit earlier, probably around the time the Sumerians felt the urge to lock their doors to keep out nosy neighbours and keep in wily camels.

There is some sens of "entitlement" and superiority that comes with the turf of using an Apple product, I get that feeling every-time someone starts talking to me about their Apple device.

It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Because it's the only one that gets the job done without unnecessary and non billable issues and still has awesome software support.

I picture an iPhone user who's discerning enough to understand the engineering trade offs, and prefers multitasking to be tightly controlled and specialised as it is in iOS.

I remember when Android users proudly touted Android's support for Flash. I think we've all since learnt why Apple made the decision to drop Flash. A mobile phone is a battery-constrained device. I want a device that's optimised for its constraints, even if that means developers get fewer toys to play with.

My take on it is this:

With Linux, Windows and Android, when something goes wrong, you may be able to fix it.

For example, my wife's HTC One M8 received an OTA update that bricked it. I googled it, and started trying to fix it. 8 hours later it's still bricked, but I've found a couple more articles that I will try next.

The same happens when I use a Linux box and it goes wrong. Or a Windows box and it goes wrong.

When a Mac goes wrong, I generally spend no more than an hour trying to fix it. Either it works or I run out of options.

When an iOS device goes wrong, I generally spend about ten minutes trying to fix it. Google a solution, it either works or it runs out of options.

To some people, the Android situation is preferable - I can fix it myself and it's a problem I want to solve. So I'm happy to spend the time looking into it.

Personally, I spend all my working day fixing technical problems. I don't want to spend any more time chasing solutions. I'm actually grateful to iOS for giving me a binary yes/no answer within minutes.

I have the opposite experience. Every developer I know, and most people pursuing computer science, are big iOS / OS X users. The only developer I know who has chosen Android based his decision on the lower price. He says he prefers the technical underpinnings of iOS, but just doesn't want to spend so much on a phone. He owns an iPad and MBP.

There's a lot of hidden tech stuff in iOS, little things like the fact that Emacs hotkeys work in iOS text fields. I generally regard the iOS SDKs (Core Graphics/Text/Audio/Image/Media, UIKit, and so on) as more capable than what's available on Android. Though Android seems to be getting better all the time, and I don't develop for it that much anymore so can't make a good comparison.

I recall some developers being swayed by Apple's initial heavy contributions to LLVM way back, and more recently by Swift — a lot of the programming purists at my workplace felt that Apple had done something right with that language.

Most of the technically inept people I know use iPhones; but most of the computer science academics and professional developers I know use them too. They just appreciate different things.

Chinese smartphones here are dominating the market though. They're pretty much everywhere these days.

Point taken.

I guess I am guilty of having another cultural bias; I assumed pretty much everyone is getting their mobile device through a 24 month+ contract with their network. At least this is how I got my first mobile phone, over 15 years ago.

Not all of them run OS X, but yep - the devices are reliable, last for a very long time and do the job well.

> Yeah, because there's absolutely no status signalling with Apple products.

Most people I know with iPhones are just regular people. I used to be an Android user (and will never hate on it) but most Western tech people with them are like the poster above - smug with an unfounded sense of superiority.