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Comment by Kylekramer | Hacker News Reader

Gotta love Gruber. He makes good points, but at the end of the day he falls back on the intangibles like emotion. Apple does consistently make superior products and have succeeded in cultivating an emotional fanbase, but emotion don't mean much. There has been plenty of companies with rabid fans who have died before.

Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed? Here's some numbers. There are 323 Apple Stores in the world. There are over 1,150 Best Buys. That is Apple's real problem. They can evoke all the emotion they want, but they picked a battle against the entire industry. I doubt they can remain the profit leader for long.

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When he talks about emotion, Gruber is not referring to a rabid fan base in love with a company. He's talking about the simple satisfaction that comes from flicking a UITableView and watching it scroll with inertia. I have an iPhone and have observed a lot of friends/family (who don't know or care a whit about Apple or Android) just take pleasure from flicking around the contact list or using multi-touch to resize a photo (that always draws wows). Hell, kids even enjoy the UI gesture to unlock the phone.

Android does this to a certain degree but it's obvious from the level of polish that their focus is not on these small things. And, BTW, that's fine - for someone like me, I'd rather see the stuff that Android is making progress in - but for many people, the iPhone UI still has that special 'something' that can't be described or measured.

"but they picked a battle against the entire industry" - That's an excellent point which is often ignored. When you set yourself up to do everything on your own (OS, CPU, Other hardware design etc. in case of Apple) that poses serious scalability challenges and it of course exposes you to more and more competition from all directions.

They are basically pissing off everyone - so they still don't have a free navigation app with turn-by-turn to compete with Google and they will struggle for some time to get that done. Now they got to do their own ads too. Own CPU too - so it's going to be longer than competitors to get a great dual core ARM CPU out. I understand there are different teams and Apple can hire as many people as they want but in reality it just doesn't scale in the long term. (They still need to shuffle teams between OS X and iOS as far as I can tell.)

But Apple knows they cannot play the numbers game - so they will stay a #2 or #3 and get away with it by increasing their profitability - that's a no brainer. But how it affects their competence in delivering new features and hardware advances against competitors - that remains to be seen.

I wouldn't be so quick to discount the idea of doing everything on your own. (Besides, they aren't exactly making all of the components on their own...just ones they believe they can improve upon)

Judging by Apple's rapid increase in portable computer sales in the last decade, I think many would say "picking a battle against the entire industry" hasn't worked out too terribly for them. Apple's one-model approach for mobile devices (with a small set of possible hardware configurations) has and will continue to pay off big for development purposes and will allow for more advanced features to be integrated thoroughly and simply across the platform more quickly (examples - GPS & gyro now & touch sensitive back & NFC technologies in the future).

The bottom line is that I would expect Android to continue to push the industry forward on many specification style features like high quality cameras, speedy hardware, and storage space while the iPhone will have more "leapfrogging" features like the examples listed above. Android software implementations will probably continue to be piecemeal while the iPhone implementations will be more thoughtful yet limited. (example - push notifications & UI)

There's a great article about Apple and vertical integration (specifically the PA Semi acquisition) here: http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/mitra-apple-pasemi-tech-ent...

Just to be sure, I wasn't discounting them - as I said it remains to be seen how they scale to the DIY challenges that I mentioned. Also the impact of any limitations resulting from these scale issues (if they prove to be a problem) may not be that much in terms of lost sales - as more than anything Apple's success lies in building brand loyalty and the Apple customers may choose to live with those limits. But it will pose problems for them if they target rapid sales growth outside the US.

Apple's ability to smoothly (re)use OS X components for iOS and vice-versa seems like a big plus. They can easily move staff around if need be, and the best features move back and forth quickly.

Small point, but don't most Best Buys sell iPhones (all the ones near me seem to).

iPhones get sold in lots of places, but on launch day of a new model they are apparently banned from advertising that they have stock.

I read that at the last launch in London, the queue for the Apple store went past several independant stores that had iPhones in stock.

It's all a tacky PR stunt which you would think was beneath them. Why Gruber has recenty become fixated on this as an indicator of platform health I have no idea, it's like reviewing a movie based on how long some geek in a costume is prepared to wait outside a theatre.

Certainly Nike volumes are dwarfed by chinese shoes makers, but who gets the money in the end? A company is all about profit, not revenues. Apple gets an astounding part of the industry's profits, and that's what counts.

Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed?

The long lines for the latest Apple release are an indictment of the Apple fanbase. They should never been seen as a benefit of the platform.

I see the same thing about the endless gloating about Apple profit. "Hey everybody, look at how much I overpaid! I surely picked the right horse to back!" It's a bit incredible.

Are you seriously trying to suggest that the fact that apple makes highly desirable devices that people are prepared to pay more for is a negative?

No. I'm suggesting that the media manipulation is a negative. That Apple customers actually haven't caught onto this is yet another negative.

The modern world is amazingly capable of huge feats of fulfillment without demanding that the hordes line up for the cameras at 5am. That practice is a ridiculous anachronism.

You're over thinking it. The people who line up at 5am are doing it because for them it's amusing to be involved in the event, not because they're victims of mass hysteria.

Sure, you or I might fine it strange that people do this but so what? What you've written smacks of the tired depiction of Apple customers as marketing victims.

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