I disagree.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft have a walled garden, in-fact every company on earth thinks on how to keep customers from leaving.
The difference between Apple and others is that Apple products are far superior, i can't imagine myself using any Microsoft product if Apple provides it.
Google releases pretty much all of its products on iPhone. Apple doesn't releases anything on other platforms and when they do because they have no choice (iTunes on Windows), they do it poorly.
All of these companies throw walls up for the sake of profits and strategic benefit. Different heights, different locations, some hard walls, some soft, -but they all build them.
The entire free Android operating systems itself is just vendor lock-in for Google, which is an advertising (not search) company.
Android is not vendor lock in, because Google isn't the vendor in this scenario, Samsung, Amazon, Sony, etc are. For example, Amazon doesn't include Google's services, and Samsung is clearly moving in the direction of pushing their own stuff in front of Google's.
I didn't say they didn't, nor did I even imply it. Understand that this doesn't change the fact that Google witheld app features from other OEMs and kept enhanced versions for its own partners for competitive reasons. Just because Apple did it too doesn't mean Google didn't (as I already pointed out).
>Android is not vendor lock in, because Google isn't the vendor in this scenario, Samsung, Amazon, Sony, etc are.
I was talking about walled gardens, and wasn't making an arbitrary distinction of "vendor" lock-in.
As I was saying though, from the standpoint of a walled garden, Android as a free operating system has been remarkably successful as a soft wall for Google, getting their advertisements on more handsets more quickly than any other method. Instead of risking consumers switching, they are eliminating competitors before consumers even get the option to switch. OEMs have been keen to adopt an OS that cost them next to nothing and played nice with branding and in house apps.
Clearly Amazon and Samsung modifying the OS is a concern of Google's, and they are combating this with native apps, web apps, and their own competitive offerings (hardware included).
Chrome serves the same function. It ensures Google is not blocked by browser default search engine changing, it prevents other people's walls. But would you claim Chrome is "vendor lock in"?
Android is primarily a defense mechanism. If Apple and Microsoft together had nearly 100% of the market for the mobile web, they could change the default search engine to Bing and sink Google overnight.
Android if anything, preserves choice and prevents lock-in, because unlike iOS, it is an open OS, and vendors can always change the defaults.
I can say that you are in the minority, people use apple now because they are cool and with subsidies cheap. I see a larger amount of android phones now than I did 2 years ago when everyone and their mother had an iPhone and now the Android phones are starting to look cool with there gimmicks like the phone pausing video when you look away.
People bought iPads because they were a cheapish replacement for a computer and they were cool, I think Apple has everyone beat on the tablet market at the moment, while more people might know what a Galaxy S4 is they probably don't know the name of a Tablet that isn't iPad.
But for computers cheap Windows laptops still reign supreme.
At 10" yes, but at the 7" range the Nexus 7 is really superior to me as a user - I don't know the sales numbers though, maybe the iPad Mini is doing better there too.
Really? How are superior?
Go a head, take OSX and Windows 7 and compare between them, see how much it takes Windows 7 to crash and tell you: "do you want to send us a report?".
The report should be sent automatically and analyzed by computers before it reaches humans.
As I type into my girlfriend's macbook, I feel ashamed, but at the same time I cannot get myself to buy a laptop because they all suck.
But seriously, what are you demonstrating here by providing an anecdote? I've got some of my own: I use osx and windows 7/8 extensively every day, and (except xcode!) neither of them crashes with even the slightest degree of regularity: they're both great operating systems.
But of course, neither are evidence of any form to support the claim "x is better than y". Which is good, because it's a stupid debate anyway.
*Sent from my Linux Mint machine.
I have not seen a OS crash since years. If you're talking about app crashing I see more less the same on both oses
Did you try microsoft mice?