Wait, a picture of a product you like elicits a positive response in your brain?? The horror of the Apple Cult!!!
No, its a question of position, dominance and longevity. The Friendster craze lasted about 2 years... Myspace was dominant for around 3 or 4.... hotmail used to be the best free email service online back in 1996. Yahoo, Altavista, Hotbot and Webcrawler were all the kings of internet search at some point for ~ 1-2 years apiece whereas Google is going on a decade of being the clear leader with most of their premier applications. Apple has only recently taken the crown of most phones sold, and they will probably lose it by this time next year. Android surpassed iOS in activations and active users earlier this year and it is still growing faster than iOS.
You only think it is a silly comparison because it exposes areas where Apple has little presence or success. Steve Jobs is itching to get rid of Google software on iPhones.... so apparently he finds it to be relevant (even if you don't).
Oh ok, so again, comparing a three year old smartphone to a search engine, is valid in your eyes, and a 1:1 comparison of longevity? That is what you're saying?
Would you like to try to compare apples to apples, or would you like me to try to convince you that oranges are a better vegetable then carrots?
Oh and position, domination and longevity huh? Ok:
1) iPhone is the top selling phone on both US carriers it's on, and by quite a lot (position)
2) Apple leads in every metric except marketshare, with one device, outsells many phones combined (every quarter), and last week was the most valuable company in the world (dominance)
3) The iPhone4, a year and a half old phone, outsells every 4G android phone combined, and is barely beaten by every 3g android phone combined. The 3G, a three year old phone was number four of the most sold phones in 2010. Number one? The iPhone 4. Numbers two and three? A nokia, and a windows phone. (longevity)
Again, you're short sighted. Apple's stock value is just that, a stock value. It has no bearing on the assets of the company itself. Let me ask you this (since Apple isn't a cult)... what bearing does Apple's success with massive profits have on you or for the country as a whole? They aren't making the iPhones any cheaper (still $200, as I recall) and all Apple is doing with their cash at the moment is suing their competitors. What do you 'get' from their relative success? Do you own their stock? (if you do, sell because it will go down in a few weeks) Google uses their money to fund research, new products and new technology (voice recognition, machine translation) and new services for the public at large that ANYONE can use for free.
Their value has no bearing on my daily life at all. What does it have on yours? Nothing, right? So, you just decided one day to hate a company for no reason, and generalize all its userbase as a cult? Is that caused by some need to fit in, or do you just want somebody to hate? Or did Apple do something to you? Or maybe you're just one of the verbatim "Apple makes great products, I just hate their philosophy" guys, right? I'd love to know the answer to that one. Feel free to actually answer the question and not spit out the usual regurgitated garbage. Why do you hate Apple?
And clearly you have no idea how the economy works if you think Apple is just "suing their competitors"...
The only thing Apple gives out for free are subpeona's for patent court cases.
Silly statement time? Don't mind if I do. The only thing Google does is steal IP....was that good enough?
Should I remind you that there are more Android phones sold than iPhones?
Should I remind you that iPhone has a 28% marketshare, against 300 other phones?
I'm not downplaying their success at all. Just because a company makes a lot of money doesn't mean that what it does is worthy of admiration. Apple sells middling hardware with crippled software by marketing it to non-tech savvy consumers. Then when someone develops a better product than them they try to sue that other company out of the market. They are worse than Microsoft in the 1990's and their (Apple's) customers are twice as obnoxious. Color me unimpressed.
So a tangible metric like profits leaves you unimpressed, but you're jumping for joy over marketshare in a saturated market? How does that work?
You're kidding, right? Google didn't exist in 1997, and 10-12 years later they are spanking Microsoft, Apple, and almost every other technology company that competes with them. I would say that Apple in the 1980's was more successful and revolutionary than Google is today, but times have changed. Anyone who has ever been on the internet has probably used 2 or 3 of google's services (search, email, maps). I know a great many people who have gone their entire lives never even having touched a Mac or an iPhone.
This is funny. Again, your idea of "spanking" is simply market share, right? Well no, I take that back. It's also comparing mobile phones to search engine...
That's the metric you use for success? There's no other metric that can gauge a company's success? Feel free to actually answer that, and not throw out silly phrases like "smacking" and "spanking".
And you know "a great many people"? LOL. Forget the people who've "never even touched a Mac or iPhone". Can you even name 70 people you know? Gimme a break. Sorry buddy, your 10 family members who have the same silly views as you doesn't somehow make you right...
This was cute. I lol'd.
