As for the hardware products, I think it mostly comes down to making quality a strategic priority. As a result they’re willing to spend more money and make sacrifices in other areas in order to build great high-quality hardware and a cohesive overall experience for users. For example, I suspect they deliberately de-prioritize pre-installed/default apps, like maps and email, and make hardware and integration throughout their ecosystem a higher priority. They let their apps be just good enough to keep too many people from downloading alternatives but they don’t try to make them great. People buy iPhones because they are widely seen as “the best” overall phone. Most people won’t buy a phone because of any one app, so there is no point in making any one better than good enough. So that’s one area where they allocate resources in a way that drives hardware quality.
Other smartphone makers have different strategic priorities that make them deprioritize quality. For example, some compete on low prices. Google got into the smartphone business largely for defensive reasons, and they’ve never put much focus on creating great phones. Microsoft was starting to follow Apple’s strategy, and maybe could have given them a run for their money, but they gave up pretty quickly because they could make more money elsewhere.
My favorite example is a few years back (don't remember how many) - people perceived iPhones as waaay faster than android phones, even though they had similar CPUs. It's because Apple made sure that in the hardware + software, the screen refresh would take priority. So users would literally see everything faster. It took Google years to finally do the same - they simply didn't think it would matter.
Here are some examples:
- It eliminates some quality issues due to requirements misunderstanding
- It eliminates some delays specially the ones related to decision making
- It might allow deployment of the same levels of QA and QC with impact in the final product
I think there is something more deeper here which is worth putting effort to explore and to be spread across different companies, otherwise this product quality gap will never be closed.
I am huge fan of APPL but at same point I want their product decision knowhow to be spread across different industries like in health , education , automotive , VR to have deeper impact on overall society. APPL by itself cannot enter into all these segments on its own so there is no direct competition for them.
I am always fascinated by how APPL abstract solid technology(hardware and software both) underneath their minimalist design which make their products so painless to be used addictively on daily basis.