Specifically regarding the iPad vie put several theories forward regarding the 7" vs 10" tablets:
1. Apple has tied up the world supply of 10" capacitative touch screens. That's not far-fetched;
2. Price: as per Gruber's argument;
3. Fear: no one wants to directly compete with the iPad so they're seeking some form of differentiation. Nikon did this with DSLRs and Canon. It wasn't necessarily fear but Nikon DSLRs weren't positioned directly against Canon equivalents: they were in between; or
4. Volume: to Apple's credit they bet big on a market with very little evidence. To the victor the spoils. The rest are much more sheepish hoping something sticks before going all in. This is much like the "shotgun marketing" vie mentioned previously.
I'm reminded of a scene from "How I Met Your Mother" several years ago. Barney made a video resume. His argument was that Corporate America wants someone who looks like a bold risk-taker but does risk anything because taking risks gets you fired.
There's a lot of true in that and the response to the iPad can be construed as a collective aversion to risk by all the people involved.
Once more all this highlights the importance and strategic advantage of having a committed product guy at the helm of a tech company.
All these might be true, but still be on-the-margin effects.
In the PC world (and I think the old audio player world), any new Apple product was met a competitor with the similar specs (often better) at close to half the price (taking into account sales and such). Like the post concludes, if it was possible to make an android tablet (even a 7" one) that was a direct alternative to the ipad at $350 someone would be
Another factor here is that mobile devices are all a tier or two down from personal computers in terms of the raw number of dollars. Seems like a 15% premium is something people will consider paying if it only amounts to $30, but might not if it's $300.
This was especially true in the early days of the PC revolution. The Mac 128K sold for $2495 at the time, which is more than $5000 in today's dollars[1]. I can't find any good stats on what a typical PC cost at the time, but let's say it was half that. That's a HUGE difference; a mortgage payment (or more than one!) and not something many individuals or businesses are going to pay, even for substantially better quality.
Other factors:
* No amount of speed was enough. People bought computers to, well, compute things, and there were real limits users experienced because of slow processors. This is no longer true for most uses. Faster speeds are nice to have, but it's no longer true that 20% faster number crunching is a huge win for many people.
* With such expensive kit, businesses were understandably reluctant to commit to any platform that didn't let them multiple-source parts and perform repairs. Backups were expensive or non-existent. By contrast, a defective mobile device is simply exchanged or written off.
* In 1984, worldwide PC shipments totaled 6.3M units. Commodity parts were the only way to achieve any kind of economy of scale, not to mention the benefits of competition. 20 years later, it was 177M. [2] At that level, even a minority player can get the same economy of scale that the entire PC industry enjoyed a decade earlier.
Anyway. Nobody knows how this will all shake out. But the spectacular success of the modular PC market doesn't mean it's the inevitable outcome.
But the laptop and the phone, you touch and carry with you in public. It's a personal accessory.
People will pay more to have nicely made personal accessories -- for many reasons -- looks, durability, pleasant to use, feels well made, status signaling.
The industry has changed and is continuing to change into a world that suits Apple better. Getting in early and big (eg iphones & ipads) is letting them influence the change even more in their favour.
What caught my eye in this article was: "Nobody knows what kind of CPU they have in their phones." That's a world that suits Apple. Interestingly, PCs are unique in that people take an interest in components. Do people know what kind of wood and textile is used in their couch (beyond the external, visible components.) The only products I can think of that compare are houses and cars at many times the cost.
I think your first bullet point is especially significant, and I wrote about a similar issue here: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/30/computers-and-network-effects... . If your primary uses for a computer these days are e-mail, browsing the web, using office software, playing DVDs, and listening to music... pretty much any computer in the last five to ten years will do just fine. You won't get massive increases in speed and ease like you did in the 90s.
I think a related part of Apple's pricing advantage comes from the fact that they are good at taking technologies developed for the iPhone and using it in other places instead of reinventing the wheel for every product.
The iPod touch, Apple TV, and iPad are all variously stripped, screenless, and scaled versions of the iPhone. They share the same processor and underlying OS. This allows Apple to not just sell a lot of stuff, but to sell a lot of the exact same stuff. So not only are their marginal costs lower from buying in bulk, their fixed costs of research and development are lower, too.
Could an iPad's cost $499 or an Apple TV $99 if they didn't sell the iPhone? Probably not, and definitely not if they wanted to keep the kind of margins they command right now.
This reminds me of a quote from Bill Gates, early on in his career, in which he says that Microsoft's business model is "creating variable revenue streams from fixed engineering costs."
Although that's true of many software companies, Apple is proving to be very adept at creating revenue streams across multiple, very different product categories from the same engineering investment.
First, Apple is the world’s leading volume buyer of a precious, expensive component: flash storage. They get better prices and priority availability from suppliers.
Do they get better prices than Samsung? Because Samsung is who designs and makes the flash memory. (Also, Wikipedia seems to say that Sony buys more than Apple.)
If Apple has a long-standing contract for deliveries of flash, Samsung probably can't easily say that they'd prefer to keep the flash memory for use in their own gadgets. Considering that at times Apple has placed orders for more than half of Samsung's annual output, such a contract is likely to exist.
Wikipedia seems to say that Sony buys more than Apple
The table on the Samsung page lists companies by fracton of Samsung's total sales, not just flash memory. Nor, for that matter, does Apple only buy flash memory from Samsung.
Lucky for Apple's competitors they have Android, otherwise they'd really be up a creek.
With the hardware volume purchasing advantage combined with the many-year head start they have on the OS, it will be surprising to me if any competitor obtains a 10% market share in the iPad or iPod Touch markets.
At this point, you should probably remember that Android came out 2 years ago and managed to overtake the iPhone in that short time frame. I highly doubt Apple will have even a plularity (let alone a majority) of the tablet market in 2 years.
I'd argue that if the competitors didn't have Android, the tablets would just run on x86 processors. And run either windows or linux. I believe that the presence of ARM early in this market is actually good on the OS side, because it doesn't lead to shoehorning windows onto a tablet. x86 tablets aren't going to succeed both because of the pressure to run desktop OSes, but also because x86 processor companies only seem to be able to produce and market market clock speed and not what really matters in this case (low power consumption and heat output).
First of all, I priced this at work out of curiosity when buying some Mac Pros and some Macbook Pros. You can get a PC with the same hardware specs as a Mac Pro for about half the cost. You can also get a PC with the same specs for about the same cost if you get one of the gamer brands, but just a Dell or HP Quad core machine is far cheaper than a Mac Pro, assuming all things that can be compared on an apples to apples basis are the same.
In notebooks the price disparity is not quite as large, but it's still large. You'll get about the same notebook for $800 that you'd get for $1,200 from Apple. Also, stuff like RAM upgrades and SSDs cost far more for the same thing. Again though, you could find comparable Windows units for about the same prices, or at least close, if you went with higher end notebook brands.
Second, in phones the price disparity is still large because of Apple's deal with AT&T. They're getting not only the $600 unsubsidized prices, but some extra fee as well taken from the contract. You might argue that AT&T is paying that, not you, but your bill may be higher as a result, or you may be on AT&T rather than Verizon since VZW wouldn't agree to that, etc.
Even in tablets, competitors definitely can match the iPad's prices. The Nook is $250. I of more tablets costed below the iPad than above.
Not doing this again now, but in my experience over the past few years the "Apple tax" on notebooks based on specs alone was about $100 - $200.
Apple doesn't sell cheap laptops but when you compare a $800 machine to a $1200 Mac, I dare say that many of the components in the $800 PC will be inferior, CPU, screen, etc. Not even mentioning the chassis where nobody can touch the unibody design of the Macs.
Apple makes premium stuff that comes with premium components - high end PCs which also come with premium components usually cost just as much, or just a tad less.
For the Mac Pro, it's probably a similar situation - you can probably make a cheap junk PC with the same CPU and as much HD space for much less, but if you use high quality components you'll be right up there fairly quickly.
As for tablets - Gruber's argumentation is way more conclusive, sorry.
Did you just compare the Nook to the iPad? How is that at all comparable to the feature set of the iPad? Go on.
You're also somehow assuming that other phones are not subsidized??? This has been going on before the iPhone existed so don't be surprised if the Android is too. So no, what AT&T pays doesn't count.
One of the main things I've never heard enough about in comparing Macs and PCs is the service. The ease of service with defects and breakage with Apple is world class. That's surely something that Apple factors into the price and Apple thinks it's worth it. Software etc as well. So I don't know why Gruber thinks he can really compare those things.
I've noticed this even with normal laptops at the smaller end. If you're looking for a 15" laptop, you can find a lot cheaper PCs than the $1,799 MacBook Pro. But if you're looking for a 13" laptop with roughly equivalent processing power and weight, it's hard to find a PC laptop much cheaper than the $1,099 MacBook or $1,199 MacBook Pro. Some are considerably more, because while Apple prices the 13" at the bottom of their range, a lot of PC manufacturers price the "ultraportables" as a premium item.
Having just recently priced laptops, I didn't have this experience. A 13" MBP is $1200 for the bare-bones options (4GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 250GB 5400 RPM SATA). It weighs about 4.5 lbs. They want an additional $400 for an extra 4GB of RAM (wtf?)
A Dell Inspiron 14" with the same specs clocks in at $665 at 4.9 lbs (which is still under the 5lb "ultraportable" mark). A Lenovo U350 with similar specs clocks in at $700 and 3.5 lbs.
I believe that the price advantage comes not insignificantly from the market side of reselling software, apps, music and video and taking a not insignificant slice of the sale of those items.
If you remove the market from the equation Apple's bottom line isn't as impressive, in fact the rise of Apple in recent years is coupled to the rise of their market place.
So strong is their domination over music distribution that I'm starting to think that when an investigation starts against Apple that the target should be to split Apple into two companies; one for hardware (and OS) and one for the markets. Only then will Apple operate on a level playing field with regards to other hardware manufacturers, as it is the advantage of the market that enables them to subsidise the price of hardware, and as they have grown dominant in hardware (especially in music players) they should be treated as a monopoly of that market and competition encouraged (by just levelling that playing field slightly).
I realise that these views aren't in line with the opinion of the vast majority of people I speak to, especially online and in circles who use Apple gear. But this is long term speculation stuff, the "What-if"... years ago I speculated how dominant itunes could be and it mostly has come to pass and is still increasing (25% of all US music, 69% of digital music as of mid-2009).
You seem to be operating under some misconceptions about antitrust law in the US. Being a near-monopoly is not illegal. Abusing your monopoly to force your way into a new market is, but simply using profits from one product line to fund R&D on a new product doesn't count.
Even if Apple has achieved a near-monopoly over digital music or sales or portable music, it's not at all clear that they have had the opportunity to abuse that monopoly. There have been cases (Psystar, etc.) that have tried to get the bundling of Mac OS X and Apple computers ruled as illegal tying, and they have failed. For the foreseeable future, there will not be grounds for a federal antitrust case against Apple.
You should try to conceive of Apple as the poster child for a successful business strategy: vertical integration. A large part of the success of Apple's expansion beyond computers is due to the fact that they can and have ensured that the products work well together, and that most of the products they have introduced have been natural complements of their existing products.
You also seem to be somewhat ignorant of the timeline of Apple's rise over the past decade. The iPod was on the market and gaining traction for a year and a half before the iTunes Music Store opened. At the time the iTunes Store opened, DRM was mandated by pretty much all the content owners. If this contributed to Apple getting a monopoly on digital music sales, the blame should fall on the music studios for not insisting that the online stores they deal with use a single interoperable DRM system, and not on Apple, who had no incentive to promoting interoperability with other music stores and players.
The profits of the iPod+iTunes Store combo provided most of the funding for the Intel switch and the development of the iPhone. Like the iPod, the iPhone was on the market and gaining traction for about a year and a half before the App Store opened. It's hard to argue that Apple's computers have been helped much by the iPod and iPhone other than by generally strengthening the Apple brand.
Each step of the way to their current position, Apple has done it by introducing products that can be at least moderately successful on their own, without the hardware/software tying you are complaining about. None of those individual steps has been anywhere as close to monopoly abuse as, say, Microsoft's entry in to the video game console market, which faced no significant legal challenges. Nor has Apple clearly erected any artificial barriers to entry for competitors. Their agreements with content producers are not exclusive, and now that DRM is not applied to music sales, there's no significant barrier to using music purchased through iTunes on other music players. To the extent that Apple has created any barriers to competition, it has only been by raising the standards for usability and quality.
Only then will Apple operate on a level playing field
with regards to other hardware manufacturers, as it is
the advantage of the market that enables them to subsidise
the price of hardware
I must be reading it wrong but it sounds a bit like „let's make it worse for Apple, because others cannot quite catch-up“. iPod'a are not the cheapest players, are they?
Any "Android tablet" lacking Market access, as these do, might be competition for the iPod nano, or the Nook, but it's not in the same space as the iPod touch.
A theory: Archos has obviously created prototypes to send to the press, but it doesn't look like they're pulling off mass manufacturing at the advertise prices just yet (except the Archos 5, which has a resistive screen). Could it be that the prices quoted are simply an over-ambitious projection?
I would very much like to know how exactly they can be so cheap. Their 10" tablet will sell for $350 (16GB), the spec-wise very similar 16GB iPad costs $150 more. (The one downside is that you cannot buy it yet, it’s supposed to be out “this fall”.) Oh, and if Archos can do that, why not Samsung?
The T-mobile Vibrant (aka Galaxy S) is $499 off-contract from T-mobile, with 16 GiB of internal storage. You can call them and unlock it for free immediately. This is slightly different from the quoted $600 with 8 GiB internal. /pedantry
Apple priced iPad very aggressively. No question about this. This is a brand new product category and Apple wanted to own it, and priced it that competitors find hard to compete. In fact, Jobs had warned about this, saying margins with iPad will be lower (i.e. no Apple tax). It was on the strength of this comment that I bought an iPad, something I would not normally do. In contrast, all the Windows tablet systems are still priced in the 3k mark.
The 2nd paragraph: "Now, even putting quality aside, competitors can’t match Apple’s prices."
Does not jive with the prices mentioned later:
Apple Ipad - $599/$699 for the 16/32 GB models
Samsung Galaxy S - $594
HTC A8181 Desire - $527
I don't know what the author's definition of "match" is, but seems to me Android tablet makers have matched prices quite well. *Edit: fixed my formatting
iPad aside, the tablet form factor has been tried and failed before. The original 7" EEE, which retailed for $400 bore a whole new 'netbook' segment. That was a multi-million dollar gamble which ultimately paid off. Give the previous failures of tablets, that no one is stepping up to the plate to try again at that price, even given Apple's success (hey, they're Apple) isn't surprising.
It's a bit disappointing when "the world" and "USA" are used interchangeably. The US market is fairly small. Things are quite different in other places.
The Android vs. iOS marketshare race is one in which iOS is hobbled because of iOS's exclusivity. When the iPhone 4 hits Verizon next year, $199 Android phones will take a massive hit in demand and they will quickly be dropped in price to spur demand.
Apple has dropped it's prices to compete before. It'll be really interesting if Apple drops the price of the iPhone below the top of the line Android phones.
While it is true that Android phones haven't been able to undercut iPhones by much, the argument doesn't hold up for tablets and iPods because these markets haven't really been entered by the Android manufacturers yet. The Samsung Galaxy tablet is at the forefront but the real wave of Android tablets is months away waiting for the release of Gingerbread. Expect a lot of announcements around CES time. As for the iPod market, Android has a lot of catching up to do with it's media software so that will probably be a bit further out.
Does he even read the things he links to? The amazon page of the HTC desire says 499$, that is not "just under 600$". Why do people link to this fan-boy all the time?
[+] [-] cletus|15 years ago|reply
Specifically regarding the iPad vie put several theories forward regarding the 7" vs 10" tablets:
1. Apple has tied up the world supply of 10" capacitative touch screens. That's not far-fetched;
2. Price: as per Gruber's argument;
3. Fear: no one wants to directly compete with the iPad so they're seeking some form of differentiation. Nikon did this with DSLRs and Canon. It wasn't necessarily fear but Nikon DSLRs weren't positioned directly against Canon equivalents: they were in between; or
4. Volume: to Apple's credit they bet big on a market with very little evidence. To the victor the spoils. The rest are much more sheepish hoping something sticks before going all in. This is much like the "shotgun marketing" vie mentioned previously.
I'm reminded of a scene from "How I Met Your Mother" several years ago. Barney made a video resume. His argument was that Corporate America wants someone who looks like a bold risk-taker but does risk anything because taking risks gets you fired.
There's a lot of true in that and the response to the iPad can be construed as a collective aversion to risk by all the people involved.
Once more all this highlights the importance and strategic advantage of having a committed product guy at the helm of a tech company.
[+] [-] netcan|15 years ago|reply
In the PC world (and I think the old audio player world), any new Apple product was met a competitor with the similar specs (often better) at close to half the price (taking into account sales and such). Like the post concludes, if it was possible to make an android tablet (even a 7" one) that was a direct alternative to the ipad at $350 someone would be
[+] [-] andreyf|15 years ago|reply
Except Apple ;)
[+] [-] kemiller|15 years ago|reply
This was especially true in the early days of the PC revolution. The Mac 128K sold for $2495 at the time, which is more than $5000 in today's dollars[1]. I can't find any good stats on what a typical PC cost at the time, but let's say it was half that. That's a HUGE difference; a mortgage payment (or more than one!) and not something many individuals or businesses are going to pay, even for substantially better quality.
Other factors:
* No amount of speed was enough. People bought computers to, well, compute things, and there were real limits users experienced because of slow processors. This is no longer true for most uses. Faster speeds are nice to have, but it's no longer true that 20% faster number crunching is a huge win for many people.
* With such expensive kit, businesses were understandably reluctant to commit to any platform that didn't let them multiple-source parts and perform repairs. Backups were expensive or non-existent. By contrast, a defective mobile device is simply exchanged or written off.
* In 1984, worldwide PC shipments totaled 6.3M units. Commodity parts were the only way to achieve any kind of economy of scale, not to mention the benefits of competition. 20 years later, it was 177M. [2] At that level, even a minority player can get the same economy of scale that the entire PC industry enjoyed a decade earlier.
Anyway. Nobody knows how this will all shake out. But the spectacular success of the modular PC market doesn't mean it's the inevitable outcome.
[1] http://bit.ly/9P293K
[2] http://bit.ly/a9XLJF
[+] [-] mturmon|15 years ago|reply
But the laptop and the phone, you touch and carry with you in public. It's a personal accessory.
People will pay more to have nicely made personal accessories -- for many reasons -- looks, durability, pleasant to use, feels well made, status signaling.
[+] [-] netcan|15 years ago|reply
What caught my eye in this article was: "Nobody knows what kind of CPU they have in their phones." That's a world that suits Apple. Interestingly, PCs are unique in that people take an interest in components. Do people know what kind of wood and textile is used in their couch (beyond the external, visible components.) The only products I can think of that compare are houses and cars at many times the cost.
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdz|15 years ago|reply
The iPod touch, Apple TV, and iPad are all variously stripped, screenless, and scaled versions of the iPhone. They share the same processor and underlying OS. This allows Apple to not just sell a lot of stuff, but to sell a lot of the exact same stuff. So not only are their marginal costs lower from buying in bulk, their fixed costs of research and development are lower, too.
Could an iPad's cost $499 or an Apple TV $99 if they didn't sell the iPhone? Probably not, and definitely not if they wanted to keep the kind of margins they command right now.
[+] [-] mediaman|15 years ago|reply
Although that's true of many software companies, Apple is proving to be very adept at creating revenue streams across multiple, very different product categories from the same engineering investment.
[+] [-] jrockway|15 years ago|reply
Do they get better prices than Samsung? Because Samsung is who designs and makes the flash memory. (Also, Wikipedia seems to say that Sony buys more than Apple.)
[+] [-] wtallis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GHFigs|15 years ago|reply
The table on the Samsung page lists companies by fracton of Samsung's total sales, not just flash memory. Nor, for that matter, does Apple only buy flash memory from Samsung.
[+] [-] marze|15 years ago|reply
With the hardware volume purchasing advantage combined with the many-year head start they have on the OS, it will be surprising to me if any competitor obtains a 10% market share in the iPad or iPod Touch markets.
[+] [-] martythemaniak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchowe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmaroon|15 years ago|reply
In notebooks the price disparity is not quite as large, but it's still large. You'll get about the same notebook for $800 that you'd get for $1,200 from Apple. Also, stuff like RAM upgrades and SSDs cost far more for the same thing. Again though, you could find comparable Windows units for about the same prices, or at least close, if you went with higher end notebook brands.
Second, in phones the price disparity is still large because of Apple's deal with AT&T. They're getting not only the $600 unsubsidized prices, but some extra fee as well taken from the contract. You might argue that AT&T is paying that, not you, but your bill may be higher as a result, or you may be on AT&T rather than Verizon since VZW wouldn't agree to that, etc.
Even in tablets, competitors definitely can match the iPad's prices. The Nook is $250. I of more tablets costed below the iPad than above.
[+] [-] frou_dh|15 years ago|reply
(Whether the average Mac Pro user gets any real benefit from these parts is another question)
[+] [-] nikster|15 years ago|reply
Apple doesn't sell cheap laptops but when you compare a $800 machine to a $1200 Mac, I dare say that many of the components in the $800 PC will be inferior, CPU, screen, etc. Not even mentioning the chassis where nobody can touch the unibody design of the Macs.
Apple makes premium stuff that comes with premium components - high end PCs which also come with premium components usually cost just as much, or just a tad less.
For the Mac Pro, it's probably a similar situation - you can probably make a cheap junk PC with the same CPU and as much HD space for much less, but if you use high quality components you'll be right up there fairly quickly.
As for tablets - Gruber's argumentation is way more conclusive, sorry.
[+] [-] jules|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] napierzaza|15 years ago|reply
You're also somehow assuming that other phones are not subsidized??? This has been going on before the iPhone existed so don't be surprised if the Android is too. So no, what AT&T pays doesn't count.
One of the main things I've never heard enough about in comparing Macs and PCs is the service. The ease of service with defects and breakage with Apple is world class. That's surely something that Apple factors into the price and Apple thinks it's worth it. Software etc as well. So I don't know why Gruber thinks he can really compare those things.
[+] [-] _delirium|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheald|15 years ago|reply
A Dell Inspiron 14" with the same specs clocks in at $665 at 4.9 lbs (which is still under the 5lb "ultraportable" mark). A Lenovo U350 with similar specs clocks in at $700 and 3.5 lbs.
The Apple tax is very definitely still in play.
[+] [-] rythie|15 years ago|reply
If you want a midrange or high end laptop then Apple's don't look bad, most people don't though - but then they don't care about the OS either.
[+] [-] buro9|15 years ago|reply
If you remove the market from the equation Apple's bottom line isn't as impressive, in fact the rise of Apple in recent years is coupled to the rise of their market place.
So strong is their domination over music distribution that I'm starting to think that when an investigation starts against Apple that the target should be to split Apple into two companies; one for hardware (and OS) and one for the markets. Only then will Apple operate on a level playing field with regards to other hardware manufacturers, as it is the advantage of the market that enables them to subsidise the price of hardware, and as they have grown dominant in hardware (especially in music players) they should be treated as a monopoly of that market and competition encouraged (by just levelling that playing field slightly).
I realise that these views aren't in line with the opinion of the vast majority of people I speak to, especially online and in circles who use Apple gear. But this is long term speculation stuff, the "What-if"... years ago I speculated how dominant itunes could be and it mostly has come to pass and is still increasing (25% of all US music, 69% of digital music as of mid-2009).
[+] [-] wtallis|15 years ago|reply
Even if Apple has achieved a near-monopoly over digital music or sales or portable music, it's not at all clear that they have had the opportunity to abuse that monopoly. There have been cases (Psystar, etc.) that have tried to get the bundling of Mac OS X and Apple computers ruled as illegal tying, and they have failed. For the foreseeable future, there will not be grounds for a federal antitrust case against Apple.
You should try to conceive of Apple as the poster child for a successful business strategy: vertical integration. A large part of the success of Apple's expansion beyond computers is due to the fact that they can and have ensured that the products work well together, and that most of the products they have introduced have been natural complements of their existing products.
You also seem to be somewhat ignorant of the timeline of Apple's rise over the past decade. The iPod was on the market and gaining traction for a year and a half before the iTunes Music Store opened. At the time the iTunes Store opened, DRM was mandated by pretty much all the content owners. If this contributed to Apple getting a monopoly on digital music sales, the blame should fall on the music studios for not insisting that the online stores they deal with use a single interoperable DRM system, and not on Apple, who had no incentive to promoting interoperability with other music stores and players.
The profits of the iPod+iTunes Store combo provided most of the funding for the Intel switch and the development of the iPhone. Like the iPod, the iPhone was on the market and gaining traction for about a year and a half before the App Store opened. It's hard to argue that Apple's computers have been helped much by the iPod and iPhone other than by generally strengthening the Apple brand.
Each step of the way to their current position, Apple has done it by introducing products that can be at least moderately successful on their own, without the hardware/software tying you are complaining about. None of those individual steps has been anywhere as close to monopoly abuse as, say, Microsoft's entry in to the video game console market, which faced no significant legal challenges. Nor has Apple clearly erected any artificial barriers to entry for competitors. Their agreements with content producers are not exclusive, and now that DRM is not applied to music sales, there's no significant barrier to using music purchased through iTunes on other music players. To the extent that Apple has created any barriers to competition, it has only been by raising the standards for usability and quality.
[+] [-] rimantas|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|15 years ago|reply
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/31/archos-unleashes-five-fiv...
[+] [-] rimantas|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irons|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreyf|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ary|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b3b0p|15 years ago|reply
Macbook Pro + Xcode + Mac OS X
vs
Lenovo or Dell upper end model + Visual Studio + Windows 7
Visual Studio adds a considerable amount to the final cost, but I'm also willing to put down a fair amount more for having Mac OS X.
[+] [-] awa|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChRoss|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recoiledsnake|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedbrown|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teyc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nowarninglabel|15 years ago|reply
Does not jive with the prices mentioned later:
Apple Ipad - $599/$699 for the 16/32 GB models
Samsung Galaxy S - $594
HTC A8181 Desire - $527
I don't know what the author's definition of "match" is, but seems to me Android tablet makers have matched prices quite well. *Edit: fixed my formatting
[+] [-] fragmede|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heiti|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesk2|15 years ago|reply
Apple has dropped it's prices to compete before. It'll be really interesting if Apple drops the price of the iPhone below the top of the line Android phones.
[+] [-] tibbon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eftpotrm|15 years ago|reply
Why does an iPhone cost more than an iPod Touch, a standard 2G phone and a 3G USB dongle? That's all the hardware is.
Why does an iPad with a 10 inch screen cost twice as much as a netbook with a 10 inch screen and a keyboard?
Apple may have found some good niches to milk for cash with some attractively designed products, but cheap they most definitely ain't.
[+] [-] fs111|15 years ago|reply