Is that really a common belief? I know many people who think the opposite - apple is a hardware company.
In fact Tim Cook went out of his way several times to remind people that apple isn't a hardware company.
But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android, and I'm even more invested in macOS. That Apple builds nice hardware is a bonus for me (but I'd honestly prefer better software right now).
I mean, on paper Apple is making more money from hardware than from software, but how do you measure hardware sales that only happened because of the software?
I'll never buy a non-Apple laptop anymore after dealing with flaky PC laptops for years, and the only reason I haven't bailed on Android is because of how bought into the ecosystem I am... but I'd buy an iPhone in a heartbeat if I could reliably run Android on it.
Linux on the other hand is exclusively Bluez which works fine... but god forbid you want to do something like BLE communications or more complex sound stuff, the docs are horrid.
The OS X BT stack is... well I dont have any issues with it per se but it, too, lacks features like a file explorer or an easy way to send files via BT.
If I turn the key in my car, get the electricity running though the circuit, then the phone gets connected to the car. If I turn the key one more time to ignite the engine the car system lose the bt connection and I have to manually force the connection with the phone.
I just ignite the car as soon as I sit in now.
Windows has a ton of problems.
It was either Apple or the clones, and so the clones got axed.
That's because the clones were cannibalizing Apple's own hardware offerings - the clones were gradually putting Apple out of its own business.
This NYT article from 1996 talked about how the Mac clone strategy was playing out for Apple [0].
[0] https://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/1230macs.htm...
Afraid I'm completely different. I have an iphone but my computer runs linux. The reason I have an iphone is because the hardware is top-notch, and the OS is rather constricting -- I would much rather have an iphone running android than one running ios.
But I despise Android--I want a real Unix. I feel like Android was architected by complete idiots. Oh how I wish WebOS won instead of Android.
I'd prob still use it on and off if HP didn't take the store down.
I'll always miss webOS.
Anyway, not sure who said what exaclty, but Steve Jobs repeatedly said that Apple is great because of the tight interconnection between sw and hw. So Apple is not a hw company. It is not a sw company either. They do both and the result is greater than just a combination of the two.
I see Apple, and the way they present their products supports it, as an appliance company. It's harder and harder to repair their devices and the software is more and more integrated with the hardware – examples: force touch and feedback, Touch/Face ID, all the camera magic, Apple Pay, MBP Touch Bar etc. So basically the sw and hw are more and more inseparable unless you lose "half" the features.
product: (String, String) = (Hardware, Software)
Android O is light years ahead of iOS.
You can quit e easily watch Plex (can’t remember if Netflix bothered) in the background while doing other shut with the PIP.
> you can’t watch a YouTube video either.
Which is YouTube’s fault ENTITELY. They are pushing YouTube red to allow for this (which isn’t even available in a lot of countries they advertise it in....)
PIP is not available on an iPhone.
2) It is Google's fault that you can't watch YouTube whilst doing something else. Apple provided an API which third party YouTube clients already support.
You can debate whether Android O is better or not. But I would hardly call iOS a toy just because it doesn't allow for rich notifications.
This is a feature, not a bug.
They're intrusive, they're obnoxious, they cause performance hiccups on occasion. They're not a superior version of anything.
I'm talking about an iPhone obviously.
Notification aggregation and priority is table stakes for serious office work.
Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.
At least I wasn't enough of an idiot to use iMessage and get locked into the Apple ecosystem.
And yet Android dominates the market share. I don't think iOS is the best mobile OS, let alone the best by far.
Someone above concluded they are a product company and I was thinking 'appliance.' That's not a negative, they make devices fit for function and they, Apple, are remarkably good at it.
I can't think of an Apple product, and I type this on an iPad, that is truly the best in every aspect. However, they surely aren't the worst and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I think.
Apple targets only the top end of the market. I’m a mobile developer and that’s why native apps are almost always iOS first. We know our iOS sales will be higher, and these are proprietary apps, not system features.
It was in the pre-iphone era.