Tim knows what he’s doing, keeping the Mac prices a couple hundred dollars higher than we’d like.
Some tried from different angles but it seems people just don't feel confident enough to leave the ecosystem. Google keeps pushing sub-par phones. No one has delivered a robust face recognition tech as good as Face ID. Screen and camera quality are almost there but never better in a distinctive manner.
In fact, no one is trying to compete with Apple anymore. Android manufacturers abandoned the high-end market. The tablet and smartwatch markets are pretty much dominated by iPad and Apple Watch.
And as the service category expansion shows, people are getting comfortable with the idea of paying a monthly price for good tech. If competition eventually becomes a problem, they can just start bundling things up like Amazon does: iPhone Upgrade Plan + Apple Music + Cloud Storage + Apple Care + (eventual) TV content.
You'll need to convince me that the Note 9 is not a high end phone.
Just kidding, never used one, I’m sure it’s a fine device. But Apple has managed to dominate the high end smartphone market for over a decade and they don’t seem to be losing much ground there. Pretty amazing testament to the power of focus. Literally all their competitors have smartphones as a small piece of their business and it shows.
If only their laptops were this high quality.
The new Air may be enough for me to upgrade (mostly for the Retina Display), but that's mostly because I can rather than because I need to.
Both first-party location/data tracking by Google, and underhanded tracking by third-party apps on Android are pervasive, and more difficult to keep tabs on / opt out of.
Of course, the main people tracking your every move with any phone are the phone company, anyone the phone company is selling or providing your data to, and anyone operating a device which can trick your cell modem into connecting to it (“stingrays”).
On an Android phone, you can set an offline maps app as the default. On iOS, every map link will open in Apple Maps, sending data to Apple in the process. On an Android phone, you can set Signal as your default messaging app. On iOS, any time you click an SMS link, it will open in iMessage, which tells Apple the number you want to SMS and check if that user uses iMessage.
Really, anything Apple has said about privacy has been pure marketing for the easily duped.
For most people their phone is their only computer, television, ebook reader, camera, watch etc. It's their life. And so if you think your phone delivers you far more value than your car then you can appreciate why Apple is able to push prices up.
And so if you need a product like that I am sure you would be willing to absorb higher prices. Which is what people are doing.
Is that still the case or just urban myth at this point?
Then it has about 70% in japan. Europe is a bit lower, around 30-35%. And then the result of the world is android by a vast margin.
So in all the rich markets, iphone puts in a majority or good showing. Whereas android dominates at lower price points where the iphone doesn't compete.
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan
You can click around this site to see stats on different regions. Mind you I don't know where they source from.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a5e13a228eecc26008b5...
No majority in GB as well. France is highest in mainland EU at 22.7.
It’s a couple of generations old now, but it’s in immaculate condition with a good battery and will easily last me a couple of years unless I do something stupid.
Maybe to you but I've tried several other phones that are nowhere near that close to Apple. I'd give the best non-Apple phone I've ever used a 70% and even that might be being generous.
I'm typing on a $200 Huawei , and on my side there's a $900 iPhone paid by my employer that I can't even get bothered to use. I even switched to the iPhone for 4 weeks while abroad (free data roaming) and just went back to the Huawei when I returned; I just like it more.
I still prefer my personal handset (Honor 10 right now, love it).
The iPhone 8+ is closed and boring to me.
But if you didn't sort of like the 1st generation I don't think you will like the 3rd, 4th, 5th etc.
As far as we know. It’s only been a few months.
If the price ever outweighs the utility, I'll just stop buying Apple. There's nothing that's that important that would keep me locked in. If a comparable Android phone comes out that works as well as my iPhone, I'll jump ship but only because the extra cost in no way outweighs what I've spent in iOS apps. I'm not going to keep putting money into something that doesn't work for me. I don't get the people that are just brand loyalists for the sake of brand loyalty. I like Apple products because they're the best for me. Why is that weird for some people?
I think this really hits the nail on the head. Granted, this is all anecdotal, and for every positive story I'm sure there is a negative one, and we'll never really have these statistics, but I'd kill to know what percentage of long term Apple users feel this way about their products vs users of other companies. Not counting the Apple II's inherited from my stepdad as a kid, I've had a clamshell iBook that I ran Debian on in high school, a ~2008 Mac Mini that I developed my first iOS game on, an iPhone 3G, 4S, 5S, 7+, a ~2010 and a ~2014 Mac Mini at work, and my 2016 MBP, and every single one is either still in use, or was used basically to obsolescence.
FWIW, I don't use the entirety of the ecosystem by any means. I literally don't use iCloud, Apple Music, Siri, and probably a myriad of other tech they offer. And yet, I still get an enormous amount of value out of each product I purchase from them.
Full disclosure, I was primarily an iOS dev from 2011-2015, and at least 50% of what I do now is still iOS development.
The timing didn't work out for Sculley in '93, but maybe Tim will have better luck. Maybe "this time is different."
Today we have Apple with diversified Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch and Services businesses. And soon to add Glasses and Car if predictions come true.
Apple was less big in the 80s than today, but they were still huge. There's a reason they lasted a decade despite uninspired management.
The situation is remarkably similar, if you ask me. Just replace IBM/MS with Android vendors/Google.
† Edit: on second thought, it's not necessarily a plus to say Apple is working on many different products. That was part of the problem post-Steve. See: https://youtu.be/xchYT9wz5hk
That is why what they ought to know better now. Mind you, they probably do! I think they just worry about the next few quarters. As for the long-term, little personal incentive because "let the next guy or gal deal with that after I've moved on"
It's why I switched to a PC in the 1990s. And everyone I knew. And everyone I met, read or heard about.
What was the point buying a Mac, when you could buy a faster, more compatible PC running Windows 95, which was pretty Mac-like, for half the price?
I'm not sure what you mean about performance? When I switched, I had the impression PCs were outperforming Macs by a long shot. That must have been within a couple years of the Win95 release. I should probably hedge a bit there because my memory might be off. It was a long time ago.
Performance: Macs were quite competitive, or even better than PCs for quite a while. It was only later as the Intel juggernaut kept going that Apple started to get steamrolled and had to switch off 68k. They regained the crown for a little while, but even the G3/4/5 were quickly overtaken by Intel.