So you don‘t think Apple could make a better product for the same price if they were okay with the same margins as other companies? So every year when they come out with something new it isn’t that the tech is cheap enough but instead that it didn’t exist before? their products aren’t the best they can make by a mile, they are just the best they can make with spending a decent amount less money than the competition spends.
Apart from FaceID and the SoCs Apple doesn’t have much hardware that is noteworthy in comparison to the competition. Apple is competing with marketing and the entire package with software that tries to make it harder to switch one of the units for something else.
I prefer iOS and the package I get with Apple too, but I am fully aware that the same features I like are made in a way to ensure maximum “lock in”, the hardware itself isn’t anything special but the package is nice.
But as someone that likes tech Apple is kind of forcing me to break out of it though since they are taking too long coming out with new hardware these days. Switching my 14 PM to a 15 PM basically gave me some weight reduction, a chamfer on the edges and a new button which wasn’t enough to not be bored with it instantly and start looking at alternatives.
(It's late, I have to work tomorrow, and am turning in after this post, so forgive me if it doesn't turn out as coherent as I would like). 😛
That’s just part of it, the main things they do is create an eco-system around their products. Most companies are not patient, most like to push things out when it's not ready just to say they are first (and by definition, innovative). Apple’s approach most of the time is to keep things in the oven a bit longer, which some think is boring. As the saying goes, "Rome was not build in one day."
Look, I get your frustration. You think that Apple is deliberating holding back every year just so there is something in store for them to upsell their customers on for the following year. You think that Apple is deliberately gouging its customers with high prices while also drip-feeding them with a slow pace of incremental improvements to their products. You make it sound like we are prisoners trapped inside a walled garden, stuck with "inferior" hardware and incapable of leaving. I have heard variations of this argument ever since I became an Apple product user in 2011. Cnet. Engadget. Theverge. Macrumours. The list goes on.
Maybe I can get better hardware elsewhere, but the whole point about Apple products is that the end experience is more than the sum of its parts. Maybe there's an android phone with a better camera, with better battery life, with a higher-res display, with some gimmick like a thermometer or the ability to double as a weighing scale. The point is that there really isn't this one mythical android smartphone that somehow amalgamates the advantages of every android handset out there, while somehow being immune to their collective drawbacks. Smartphones are a bundle of compromises. What I pay (and trust) Apple to do is find the best combination for me that simultaneously maximises the benefits while minimising the associated drawbacks.
The entire argument can therefore be summed up with one word -
trust. I buy Apple gear because I trust Apple to make the right call in what to prioritise in their devices, and I feel this is one of the really important aspects of Apple that people really don't understand. That Apple really goes the distance in building a strong relationship of trust with their customers.
This doesn't mean that Apple is perfect or beyond reproach. Far from it, but I feel that Apple has been very good in the areas that I do care about, while I find I can still tolerate the areas in which they are weak in. Their relatively few competitors are the inverse (again, for me) and I think you will find that while a lot of Apple users may struggle to articulate this point, it will nevertheless come out along this line of you poke them the right way.
It's the same as how people connect with their babysitter or hairdresser. I don't evaluate them solely on objective metrics. Instead, we connect based on how well we communicate, whether we trust them to be truthful and fair with us, how well we approach a given problem, and so on. That doesn't mean I am a cultist to the 40-year-old down the street who cuts my hair out of her apartment; it just means that my mom and I trust her and have built a rapport with her, and that's about 90% of what we're buying as part of that service.
To sum it all up, Apple users buy trust, not specs. You can wave your S23 and its 20x zoom in my face all you want. That's not what I look for in a phone.
It’s also said, and and somewhat hinted to by Apple, that they plan ten years in advance. It’s why they usually don’t bother to copy features from others if they don’t think they have staying power, but do come up with features that at first don’t seem to do too much, but over the years become part of a major ecosystem. I think if you look along this line, what Apple does (and chooses not to do) will also start to make more sense.
