Apple is becoming an 8000 pound gorilla because nobody else can design a user interface! Windows is crap committee-ware, and open source UIs insist on imitating Windows (look at Gnome, KDE) which means they're imitation crap.
There are other aspects to Apple that matter too. Their code performs well and doesn't tend to break. There's a polish that Apple's code has that nobody else puts on their product.
Their hardware is decent (not excellent, but decent) on the quality factor too, but it's also well-designed just like their UIs are. The biggest feature of Apple's hardware is what it doesn't have: loads of useless buttons (stupid blue ThinkVantage button, I'm looking at you!), connectors you never use, etc.
Note that Linux rules the server space for the same reason. Open source UIs are crap, but under the hood the open source ecosystem obviously cares. So in markets where under the hood matters most, Linux and other OSS operating systems are the dominant players.
The moral of the story?
Stop listening to the idiots that tell you that the way to design software is to slap it together and focus exclusively on marketing. This only works if your market is not crowded. This worked for Microsoft in the 80s and 90s because there weren't many affordable alternatives.
Apple's aesthetics are important, no doubt. But equally important was its decision to standardize its computers on BSD and Intel. Before OS X, Apple was a niche product, and its niche didn't include most developers. After OS X, the dev community started to trickle in, but it really took off after the Intel switch. Partly because the Core Duo was much faster than the PowerPC, but also because the PowerPC was a form of lock-in. It kept good software out, and made it hard to develop for other platforms.
Apple owes a lot to standardization and opening up. It's not all App Store lockdown. The question is, is this App Store crap a general trend? Are they going to bring that to the desktop?
I'm not sure there are that many Mac apps that have been built since the Intel switch that are used by most of the types of folks that are new to the Mac. Lots of Mac users don't run much at all on their Macs besides Apple software other than perhaps Firefox and/or a 3rd party IM client.
As I see it, the Intel switch was mostly important to get Macs being used (and thus recommended) by geeks for the same reasons it's been popular among non-geeks: the ability to run Windows (and, of course, to a lesser extent, other Intel operating systems).
This, along with the increasing importance of the web (and thus lessened importance of the specific OS platform), the spread of Apple retail stores, and the iPod/iPhone halo effect I think are the main reasons Mac sales have done so well.
Because of that mix, it's hard to tell how much the platform's openness has been important to it. It certainly hasn't hurt any, though, and it's a very likable trait in a "desktop" OS!
The fact that most Mac users don't use many apps on their laptop, beyond what's built in, and what they do use is probably free is the one thing that makes me think the app store bubble will blow over.
That doesn't seem to be the story on the iPhone OS devices, though. Everybody I've ever seen with one, regardless of tech savvy, has it loaded down with apps and is excited to show off their favorites.
Mobile apps tend to be "bite size" (approachable), centrally discoverable through the App Store, very low cost, be built around rich media, and the user feels a control over their management that makes the experience more like the "lightness" of visiting a web page than the "heaviness" of traditional desktop app management which is marred by unpredictability, multistep install processes, reboots, conflicts, and a general feeling of lack of control. I think users really like software... they just hate all the bullshit overhead that has usually gone with it.
People care about aesthetics, and quality is, I think, one form of it.
Can't agree more, and I think there could have been many more Apples if more companies were run by technical people with a good sense of aesthetics (in a broader sense), rather than by business people.
I disagree, Apple's offering in terms of servers (both hardware and software) is downright ridiculous, no ability to virtual the servers. and the software doesn't scale well (they are very far from Microsoft in that regard).
Disclaimer:
All the desktop hardware we use are Apple, but we switched the OS's to windows 7, its more suitable for an organization.
I completely disagree that windows 7 is crap design. I'm more efficient with Windows 7's window management, for example, so I find their design much better than OS X's
Windows 7 is an improvement, but I still don't like it. I suppose some of it is personal taste.
I also still consider it ugly from an aesthetic point of view. It's not clean. It's cluttered and counterintuitive.
There's something else too... even with 7, Windows doesn't perform well. NTFS uses a "pessimum" allocation algorithm that seems to achieve maximum conceivable file fragmentation after even moderate use, and I'm still not sure why Windows disk thrashes more than any other OS. With equivalent workloads on Linux and OSX, the disk occasionally blinks. On Windows it thrashes wildly.
"Performance doesn't matter" is a relative of UIs as an afterthought. Performance is a UI issue, and it does matter. It's even more apparently on mobile devices... the iPlatform performs so much better than Windows Mobile. (Android isn't bad either.)
Perhaps I'm less sensitive, but I've noticed no more slow downs than any other OS I've used before.
Not that I'm loyal to any particular platform but I feel a need to voice that I like many of the things MS has done with 7, and that arguments that OS X (at least the UI, I still prefer the *nix environment for development) is far better are just not true anymore. I also enjoy the other desktops like Gnome or IceWM, but 7 is my favorite so far in terms of UI experience.
After working in Mac-centric development environments for the past 12 years, I can't say I'm enamored with Apple's hardware track record. The desktops have been for the most part reliable, but the laptops and iMacs have not fared so well. All 12 iMac G5s we purchased were serviced under Apple Care at least once - some went twice. And the survivors all have obnoxious fan noise problems. I remember a generation of PowerBook G4s that had a problem with the display losing connection. Plenty of those went back as well.
Externally, they are designed very nicely, and the internals of the desktops have always impressed me. I'd love to see something else similar come along. The closest I can remember is the old MIPS-based SGIs.
Does it count if someone makes something that does the same job at a quarter of the price, so that if you flex it too much, or run it over with your car, or leave it on the bus then you can replace it and still be saving half the price?
Or are we forced to accept Apple's business model as a given, just like Microsoft fought against the netbook pricing model because it began to make their OS pricing look ridiculous?
No, because it's not about the initial purchase price. It's about having your stuff crammed into a piece of hardware, and for most people being dependent on that stuff being readily accessible.
That's why the "it just works" attitude is very powerful amongst the almost entire population for whom replacing hardware is a really huge deal, because they
a) have to be without their stuff for the time it takes for the computer repair guy to fix it, and
b) because they're scared pantless that their stuff will have been destroyed.
If you're not in the know, broken computer _might_ mean loss of data. That thought means loss of sleep.
That counts as a valid preference, but it isn't an answer to "who makes better quality hardware?" unless you are implicitly answering "nobody you can think of".
This is the place where a discussion turns into a pointless unending argument. We are certainly not talking about the same thing in the same context.
Are you
a) defining or redefining "quality" to so that a cheap item can be considered high quality because it can be replaced cheaply?
b) avoiding answering the question of who makes a better laptop hardware than the unibody mbp because you can't suggest any company and don't want to admit that
c) you think I am refusing to see some obvious and relevant point because I'm an apple fanboy or that I am just being obtuse
My point, which I didn't think was too obtuse, was that if you squint at a bicycle from the point of view of a motorcyle, then you could easily conclude that it was just a crappy motorcycle, as it doesn't meet the applicable quality criteria.
But, and this is where it gets interesting, you can do the same in the opposite direction and conclude that a motorbike is just a really crappy bicycle because it's heavy, expensive etc.
You could say the same about most web apps versus their desktop equivalent.
So, to a lesser degree, a laptop designed within the constraints of a factor of 4 price difference, perhaps with mobility (and all the many non-obvious things that mobility entails, like the iBooks being designed to be put in student backpacks and so not having little breakable flaps covering ports) being paramount are going to be faced with very different set of engineering trade-offs. I think it's simplistic to say that the Apple one has greater quality if you don't take that into account. (Especially when their expensive material choices seem to regularly kill wireless signals, that's a quality and engineering factor too).
Apple themselves have said that they don't know how to build a cheap netbook that isn't crappy (I think that's almost a direct Jobs quote) so I don't see why they should be getting plaudits for sitting out a market that they've decided is difficult, when you're calling out the folk who actually make products for their lack of quality. I think it's a good business move for them, and I'd continue to buy their products as I have for years, if I couldn't get something much, much cheaper, that does the same thing (and often a few more things) and doesn't lock me in to a series of interlocking, expensive purchases within their ecosystem. What locks-in their users, also locks out people like me.
Mine had a cracked motherboard because I was apparently picking it up off the table wrong, by the corner vs gently holding it on both sides, as designed. IBM initially claimed that it was water damage (6 months prior), searching online revealed a small army with the same problem as I.
I still use that ThinkPad (well minus the new motherboard) on my electronics bench, but to say that its on par with the iPhone or Mac Pro in terms of quality is laughable. The whole thing looks and feels like its made out of recycled plastic. Its so ugly it looks rugged.
No, but I have coworkers that do. They're nice machines, but they're still a collection of plastic components, and don't have the tight tolerances and clever case design that one sees in recent MacBooks.
I can't get past the blue "ThinkVantage" key. It's like a big pimple that says "a douchebag designed this." It also has no purpose once you install a real operating system, since the software that it invokes only runs on that crummy OS they ship it with.
Ok that came of way too snarky. What I was attempting to say was that Thinkpads were (I haven't used any that were made by the Chinese manufacture so I can't answer for them) made to be used and were designed to handle the hits and spills that would happen naturally over the course of such work (the keyboard had drainage, the hinges were extra enforced and it could take quite a few drops).
On the other hand my iPod has already got three scratches in it. One was because my keys were in my pocket (which I do all the time with my cell, without any issues) the other when when I dropped it two feet (of my bed, and not on purpose).
Sure the iPod stuff is nice, but I wouldn't rely on it for actual work.
I agree. I actually prefer Toughbooks for that reason. The biggest thing I dislike about Apple's hardware is that you have to treat it like a family heirloom.
It is more durable than cheap PC hardware though, which is why I called it middle-of-the-road in terms of durability.
But I still massively prefer the aesthetics and designs of Apple's hardware. I do not see why you couldn't design a Toughbook-type machine with sparse Apple-like aesthetics. In fact, it almost seems like it would make it easier... fewer connectors and buttons means less points for liquid entry, eliminating extra drives means fewer moving parts, etc.
If I ditched Apple for Linux, I'd probably take a look at the Sony Vaios... they're pretty sparse and seem well made.
Apple is becoming an 8000 pound gorilla because nobody else can design a user interface! Windows is crap committee-ware, and open source UIs insist on imitating Windows (look at Gnome, KDE) which means they're imitation crap.
There are other aspects to Apple that matter too. Their code performs well and doesn't tend to break. There's a polish that Apple's code has that nobody else puts on their product.
Their hardware is decent (not excellent, but decent) on the quality factor too, but it's also well-designed just like their UIs are. The biggest feature of Apple's hardware is what it doesn't have: loads of useless buttons (stupid blue ThinkVantage button, I'm looking at you!), connectors you never use, etc.
Note that Linux rules the server space for the same reason. Open source UIs are crap, but under the hood the open source ecosystem obviously cares. So in markets where under the hood matters most, Linux and other OSS operating systems are the dominant players.
The moral of the story?
Stop listening to the idiots that tell you that the way to design software is to slap it together and focus exclusively on marketing. This only works if your market is not crowded. This worked for Microsoft in the 80s and 90s because there weren't many affordable alternatives.
People actually do care about quality.