Many months ago, my friend James Pelayo, expressed his view on why the American automobile industry declined. In short, he believed Americans relied too heavily on market powers and ignored advances in technology. It served the USA well for a long time, because Americans were patriotic fan boys of their own product. But eventually, the world caught up, the public got wise, and American auto plants closed down.
See this viral video that compares Apple's iPhone 4 to HTC's EVO with Droid
In watching this video, I thought to myself, “Why are there so many Apple fan boys? Why are so many people buying this fluff? When will consumers look beyond the marketing and spend money wisely? If consumers come to their senses, will Apple experience a demise similar to that of the American automotive industry?”
I posed the question to James. Here are his thoughts.
My answer in a nutshell is that Apple will probably not decline significantly until Steve Jobs is no longer in charge. Jobs is the greatest entrepreneur I have ever seen: he has an uncanny ability to anticipate what people (not just the technorati, but the mass market) want and how to give it to them. In fact, Apple probably would have gone under had they not brought Jobs back in 1997.
As for the Evo being superior to the iPhone, I don't think this portends a long-term subpar performance on Apple's part. Remember in the early to mid 2000s AMD was kicking the pants off Intel by winning on both price and performance until Intel scrapped the Pentium 4 series and came out with the Core 2. Of course it is possible that Apple will fail to meet the challenge and gradually lose their market share as their reputation deteriorates, but as I mentioned, I don't think Steve Jobs will let that happen. (Granted, it does take a long time for a lofty reputation to deteriorate. BMW and Mercedes have been getting terrible marks for several years now, and Jaguar for almost two decades, yet they are still popular.)
I also don't think Google considers themselves a direct competitor of Apple's. Google's revenue base is advertising; their contribution to the smartphone world is the Android OS - which is free software! - and their financial interest in the platform seems to be data collection for ad targeting and, naturally, delivery of ad content. HTC are the ones making the money off the phones themselves (though Google has designed a phone of their own, which HTC manufactures for them... and is the subject of a patent lawsuit from Apple: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9164938).
Disclaimer: I don't actually own a smartphone. I don't know if this makes me too inexperienced to offer an opinion, or unbiased so as to offer a better opinion. But for the sake of this discussion I accepted the claim about the iPhone's inferiority at face value and just expressed my views on the positioning of the companies within the industry.
The video is also BS. You cannot interpret the mobile phone market in North America without considering carriers. Apple's restrictions on the use of 3G data are a direct result of contracts with AT&T, which has a shitty network that cannot accommodate the massive amount of data video chat or VOIP would add. Remember, a simple software unlock on the iPhone enabled the use of 3G data for skype and other similar services. In addition, why would Apple make this iteration of the iPhone 4G compatible when none of its carriers at the time product planning began had any hope of having 4G at launch? For years Creative MP3 players had way better audio quality than iPods, but who the hell owns a Zen now? Are they even made anymore?
The issues with the camera are legitimate, although the megapixel race has come at the detriment of photography and image quality in general. No mobile phone sized sensor has the capability of fully making use of the megapixels the cameras are starting to possess. The two highest rated point and shoot cameras, the Canon S90 and Panasonic LX3, both have something like 10 MP when other tiny purse cameras have 14-18. There is no point.
Those who criticize Apple ignore the issue of usability. The iPad was ridiculed on this site and guess what, it's been a huge hit (and has added $50 to my Apple shares since launch). Apple's brand loyalty is partly due to the trendiness of the company, but mostly because it simply makes better-built devices that get the user experience right.
I bought a macbook 4 years ago and have been very happy about it. People tell me people remember value long after the price. I'd say it's true here. My macbook hasn't given me any problems. It's been a very sturdy and robust machine.
I was looking for a new laptop last month and was considering another macbook. But the cheapest model starts at 1050$. For a machine with equivalent hardware specs from another brand like dell, acer, hp etc.., you can get it for anywhere between $500 and $700. Or for 1050$, you can get a really nice ASUS laptop, which can handle all your high-end 3D games.
I bought the macbook 4 years ago because I had an employee discount and I wanted to ease myself into unix-like operating system so I can start doing crazy server stuff. Now that I don't have a discount, and I'm proficient with linux OS to manage my own servers, I can't justify spending almost twice the amount on a mac product when there are so many cheaper and reliable alternatives out there.
So now when I look at macbooks, macbook pros, imacs, and mac pros, I see overrated products.
i don't think the comparison is analogous
cars are a product of the industrial era, associated with the country from which it was made.
electronics are a post-industrial product. people have no idea whether they are buying an 'American' computer (IE: Dell, HP, Apple) a Japanese one (Sony) or a Chinese/Taiwanese one (HTC/Lenovo). People kind of acknowledge that its all made in Asia now more or less.
That being said, the electronics market is so volatile that its impossible to say how long a product will last. Apple is one of the only (if only) consumer electronics product with any sort of brand loyalty, which I think they've earned. But make no mistake if HTC, Sony or any other company invents the next big thing, people will be gone like that.