Apple Compromises - Why do you think apple does it?

[aphex]

I think all people (apple fans and apple haters) for the most part can agree that apple leaves different things out of some of their devices over the years (1 button mouse for years, no A2DP until leopard, no MMS/Video in iPhone, etc). While apple fans (myself included) usually don't mind these missing things as we don't personally need them, I know many of those in the Anti-Apple community pounce upon the missing features as a reason for not wanting the devices or liking the company.

Now, why do you think apple has taken this approach over the years?

• Is it an attempt to make things easier for all to use and only concentrate on things that what apple thinks most users care about? (removing things that could cause problems and simply working on ease of use and aesthetics)
• Is it because apple is stubborn? (pushing what they think we need)
• Is it an attempt to "think different"? (simply trying to differentiate from the competition)
• Is it smart business? (force customers into frequently upgrading to get the features they desire that were left out of the previous gen) - as suggested by NaOH

I welcome a serious discussion (please try and keep the useless bashing to a minimum), curious what you guys think. I'm sure its not just one of them, and i'm sure there are many other reasons you might think as well.

 

[NaOH]

its so they have some thing to add into their products later so that people are compelled to upgrade. Think about it, leaving basic things out such as mms and 3g because people will buy it regardless. Then they have something to include in their products a year later. The way they spread it out is very smart and it brings on lots of profits. Why give the people everything at once when you can slowly spread it out and milk them for more? By the way I'm not an apple hater. I own several iPods and an iPhone.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: NaOH
its so they have some thing to add into their products later so that people are compelled to upgrade. Think about it, leaving basic things out such as mms and 3g because people will buy it regardless. Then they have something to include in their products a year later. The way they spread it out is very smart and it brings on lots of profits. Why give the people everything at once when you can slowly spread it out and milk them for more? By the way I'm not an apple hater. I own several iPods and an iPhone.

Truth.

Not only that, but Apple is well known for trying to "force" standards on people.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: NaOH
its so they have some thing to add into their products later so that people are compelled to upgrade. Think about it, leaving basic things out such as mms and 3g because people will buy it regardless. Then they have something to include in their products a year later. The way they spread it out is very smart and it brings on lots of profits. Why give the people everything at once when you can slowly spread it out and milk them for more? By the way I'm not an apple hater. I own several iPods and an iPhone.

Yeah, but MMS is a ridiculous feature to "add later..." It's an embarrassment IMO.

I think they leave out things partially to minimize choice. Less options for Apple is more control. Ties into a bit of the whole "What's next I have to have it" RDF they've created and successfully pulled off.

Right now, I personally hate it. It's causing me a headache at work. We need new macs, but mac pros are far far overkill. iMac would work, but the built in monitor really really irks me. And it's hard to convince our users it will be at least better then the early G4's (it will be a 24" iMac for the screen).

And no doubt it's a part of steve job's smug attitude about himself, heh.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: NaOH
its so they have some thing to add into their products later so that people are compelled to upgrade. Think about it, leaving basic things out such as mms and 3g because people will buy it regardless. Then they have something to include in their products a year later. The way they spread it out is very smart and it brings on lots of profits. Why give the people everything at once when you can slowly spread it out and milk them for more? By the way I'm not an apple hater. I own several iPods and an iPhone.

So essentially what may be good for business, may not be in the best interest of the customer. Makes sense, I own an array of apple products and upgrade each of them all the time.

Very good point.

 

[Kaido]

It's simple:

1. Apple is a dictatorship run by Steve Jobs. His way or the highway. I've read countless stories about how his personality has influenced design decisions that perhaps weren't the best.
2. Apple is a big corporation, despite the warm-fuzzy outward appearance. They don't care about you at all. They care about making money.

That's pretty much it. On the plus side, their engineers are given enough freedom to deliver a good-quality product to customers, which is a lot more than I can say about many other companies. Apple is in business to make money and is tightly controlled by Steve Jobs, so we get what we get. If Apple really wanted to make some serious money and make people happy, they would simply change their pricing structure and add a few products:

1. iPhone to $99 (with tethering)
2. $49 MobileMe service
3. MacBook Air to $799 (including USB DVD drive)
4. Mac Pro Lite with upgradable graphics (Apple-supplied), single CPU (dual or quad-core), and max 8gb or 16gb ram (something Shuttle-style would be great)
5. Docking station for the laptops
6. 15" MacBook for $999 (non-Pro)
7. Enter the gaming market
8. Ultraportable MBP (like the old 12" PowerBook)
9. Extra iPhone features (copy-paste, Flash, MMS, etc.)

etc. The MacBook Air is what 99.9999% of the population needs in terms of a laptop - great screen, fast enough for Office, runs Internet stuff, easy to stow-and-go. That coupled with a cheap iPhone and cheap yearly MobileMe service for easy syncing. A larger, cheaper MacBook would be nice as well...don't get me wrong, the 13" is great, but that extra couple inches of screen real estate really makes a difference. And letting that out the door for under a grand instead of $2k for the MBP would make sales go crazy. I dunno. I think that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot a lot of ways...there is absolutely no reason why their price point is where it is other than Steve Jobs wants their products to be distinguished by price and their shareholders are greedy. Apple could dominate the marketplace if they simply lowered the prices, and then win everyone over if they gave us the products we've been asking for all along. The iPhone is already poised to kill the Blackberry market with the 3G offering, but it still lacks basic features like MMS, which is frustrating.

Quit being stupid Apple! We can make you 10 times as rich if you'll let go of your pride!!

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: Kaido
It's simple:

1. Apple is a dictatorship run by Steve Jobs. His way or the highway. I've read countless stories about how his personality has influenced design decisions that perhaps weren't the best.
2. Apple is a big corporation, despite the warm-fuzzy outward appearance. They don't care about you at all. They care about making money.

That's pretty much it. On the plus side, their engineers are given enough freedom to deliver a good-quality product to customers, which is a lot more than I can say about many other companies. Apple is in business to make money and is tightly controlled by Steve Jobs, so we get what we get. If Apple really wanted to make some serious money and make people happy, they would simply change their pricing structure and add a few products:

1. iPhone to $99 (with tethering)
2. $49 MobileMe service
3. MacBook Air to $799 (including USB DVD drive)
4. Mac Pro Lite with upgradable graphics (Apple-supplied), single CPU (dual or quad-core), and max 8gb or 16gb ram (something Shuttle-style would be great)
5. Docking station for the laptops
6. 15" MacBook for $999 (non-Pro)
7. Enter the gaming market
8. Ultraportable MBP (like the old 12" PowerBook)
9. Extra iPhone features (copy-paste, Flash, MMS, etc.)

etc. The MacBook Air is what 99.9999% of the population needs in terms of a laptop - great screen, fast enough for Office, runs Internet stuff, easy to stow-and-go. That coupled with a cheap iPhone and cheap yearly MobileMe service for easy syncing. A larger, cheaper MacBook would be nice as well...don't get me wrong, the 13" is great, but that extra couple inches of screen real estate really makes a difference. And letting that out the door for under a grand instead of $2k for the MBP would make sales go crazy. I dunno. I think that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot a lot of ways...there is absolutely no reason why their price point is where it is other than Steve Jobs wants their products to be distinguished by price and their shareholders are greedy. Apple could dominate the marketplace if they simply lowered the prices, and then win everyone over if they gave us the products we've been asking for all along. The iPhone is already poised to kill the Blackberry market with the 3G offering, but it still lacks basic features like MMS, which is frustrating.

Quit being stupid Apple! We can make you 10 times as rich if you'll let go of your pride!!

This argument is spot on. If they had all of those things they'd sell TONS more Macs, but I guess their elitist attitude is what is sacrificing the customers' experience. Just dumb.. but yet, I still buy their products.. so I guess I'm the dumb one.. :/

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

For all of you that wants Apple to sell TONS more Macs, the problem with that is if they become more popular they'll become more targeted by malware. By being an "elitist", they are giving their customers security and protection against that and providing enough money to their R&D department.

 

[Kmax82]

I don't necessarily want them to become more popular to the masses, but rather for me. I want them to incorporate things that will help me out in my life... and while the Mac is tons more productive than my previous Windows machines... I still would like more. I'm a greedy devil. heh..

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
For all of you that wants Apple to sell TONS more Macs, the problem with that is if they become more popular they'll become more targeted by malware. By being an "elitist", they are giving their customers security and protection against that and providing enough money to their R&D department.

That's a good media response, but one that I don't know is necessarily true. OS X is built on UNIX, so it's a pretty tough cookie to crack. To date there have been no successful viruses on the Mac that I'm aware of...all of them require installation with user authorization

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
This argument is spot on. If they had all of those things they'd sell TONS more Macs, but I guess their elitist attitude is what is sacrificing the customers' experience. Just dumb.. but yet, I still buy their products.. so I guess I'm the dumb one.. :/

Maybe when Ives takes over Apple we'll see a price drop...they could kill Microsoft easily, if they wanted to. They're already set to take over the smartphone market thanks to the 3G iPhone with aftermarket apps. And no, that doesn't make you the dumb one...I still think their OS is the best in the market

 

[sourceninja]

I disagree on killing microsoft. Microsoft holds a power that is very hard to overcome. They hold the developers. Apple would need a HUGE culture shift to win over those developers. Just look at how Valve has spoken out on how poor mac has treated them and how they have no interest to work with them in the future. Sure mac has one over a bunch of linux geeks like me due to their ease of use and unix compliance, but winning over the windows developers and windows applications is a long hard road. If it was as easy as building a better product, well I think linux would have killed off wndows by now.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: Kmax82

Originally posted by: Kaido
It's simple:

1. Apple is a dictatorship run by Steve Jobs. His way or the highway. I've read countless stories about how his personality has influenced design decisions that perhaps weren't the best.
2. Apple is a big corporation, despite the warm-fuzzy outward appearance. They don't care about you at all. They care about making money.

That's pretty much it. On the plus side, their engineers are given enough freedom to deliver a good-quality product to customers, which is a lot more than I can say about many other companies. Apple is in business to make money and is tightly controlled by Steve Jobs, so we get what we get. If Apple really wanted to make some serious money and make people happy, they would simply change their pricing structure and add a few products:

1. iPhone to $99 (with tethering)
2. $49 MobileMe service
3. MacBook Air to $799 (including USB DVD drive)
4. Mac Pro Lite with upgradable graphics (Apple-supplied), single CPU (dual or quad-core), and max 8gb or 16gb ram (something Shuttle-style would be great)
5. Docking station for the laptops
6. 15" MacBook for $999 (non-Pro)
7. Enter the gaming market
8. Ultraportable MBP (like the old 12" PowerBook)
9. Extra iPhone features (copy-paste, Flash, MMS, etc.)

etc. The MacBook Air is what 99.9999% of the population needs in terms of a laptop - great screen, fast enough for Office, runs Internet stuff, easy to stow-and-go. That coupled with a cheap iPhone and cheap yearly MobileMe service for easy syncing. A larger, cheaper MacBook would be nice as well...don't get me wrong, the 13" is great, but that extra couple inches of screen real estate really makes a difference. And letting that out the door for under a grand instead of $2k for the MBP would make sales go crazy. I dunno. I think that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot a lot of ways...there is absolutely no reason why their price point is where it is other than Steve Jobs wants their products to be distinguished by price and their shareholders are greedy. Apple could dominate the marketplace if they simply lowered the prices, and then win everyone over if they gave us the products we've been asking for all along. The iPhone is already poised to kill the Blackberry market with the 3G offering, but it still lacks basic features like MMS, which is frustrating.

Quit being stupid Apple! We can make you 10 times as rich if you'll let go of your pride!!

This argument is spot on. If they had all of those things they'd sell TONS more Macs, but I guess their elitist attitude is what is sacrificing the customers' experience. Just dumb.. but yet, I still buy their products.. so I guess I'm the dumb one.. :/

The moment Apple loses their "underdog" and "We're proud of our 3-8% market share" stigma is the moment their sales plummet. They make huge sales the same way starbucks has. They've managed to convince a whole bunch of dummies that if you pay twice as much for something it's going to be THAT much better, and they make you feel like you're in some sort of snobby social club because you do it. 90% of the people I know that own macs buy a mac and immediately think that their opinion on computers is worth a damn.

Apple's second greatest sales tactic is convincing Windows users that having a completely fucked up computer is entirely Microsoft's fault, when in fact anyone who has ever done tech support knows otherwise. Buying an Apple computer means that you will never again have problems and that everything will be easy... right?

 

[sourceninja]

Well a lot of problems normal users have with windows is

A) they are normal users
B) their OS of choice is targeted by criminals
C) They are normal users

So if you take out B, then A and C don't matter as much. This is what makes OSX so 'secure'. So when apple said switch to mac and you won't have any problems, they really are not lying. At least until they gain enough mass to grab the attention of those criminals. At that point A and C because huge issues again.

Apple also suffers from the same stupid problem windows suffers from. The first account you make is the account you are encouraged to run as and is an admin. If they ever get popular, this will bite them in the ass.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Kmax82
This argument is spot on. If they had all of those things they'd sell TONS more Macs, but I guess their elitist attitude is what is sacrificing the customers' experience. Just dumb.. but yet, I still buy their products.. so I guess I'm the dumb one.. :/

Maybe when Ives takes over Apple we'll see a price drop...they could kill Microsoft easily, if they wanted to. They're already set to take over the smartphone market thanks to the 3G iPhone with aftermarket apps. And no, that doesn't make you the dumb one...I still think their OS is the best in the market

Yea.. I agree. I love my iPod Touch and I know that the 3G phone is going to be amazing! Especially now that I can replace the GPS on my current phone.

Heh.. I don't really think that I'm the dumb one, but I wish I could justify my purchase a little more for business reasons. If I was just using this machine on a personal level, I'd be super happy. But I really, really miss having a docking station, and two 20"+ LCD's.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Kaido
That's a good media response, but one that I don't know is necessarily true. OS X is built on UNIX, so it's a pretty tough cookie to crack.

Now that was a media response. Do you really think that there's something so fundamentally secure about unix that roughly basing an operating system on some unixish code automatically makes you a "tough cookie?" Sure, the default pattern of having unprivileged users is good, but that's not necessarily tough to implement in any operating system and there are certainly many ways to mess it up on a unix system.

 

[scootermaster]

Wow...a lot of Marshall Biz school grads here, eh?

Not to mention some University of Chicago Economics types too.

Yes, Steve Jobs is in the business of keeping shareholder value low. And there is OBVIOUSLY no one on his biz/econ/planning staff that would run sector analysis and determine if market share and profits would go up if Apple had lower price points. Why would they worry about that sort of thing? Obviously, the only thing discussed in the Apple board room is how to please dudes with messenger bags at coffee shops.

Obviously.