How Apple cashes in on 'inferior hardware'

What nonsense, apple makes superior products now let me get back to fixing my iphone antenna with black tape so I can get some reception.

I unfortunatly own 1 apple product. the iphone. you know what? its good. except for the sim card errors and short battery and stupid song conversion and using itunes and NO flash player and Steve Job's stupid rules(i mean seriously, his rules suck. He's like a bossy 7 year old girl raised by her puritan great grandmother.) Besides all that, its good when jailbroken. What i am confused about is why apple is so popular when they obviously rip everyone off. i go to best buy and check out the macs there and they cost 2-3 times more than my beloved compy that i bought 2 years ago and mine out performs theirs easily. The argument i hear most often is "(insert whiney voice here)It's about interface!" Well, you know what else has an easy interface? Friggin ball-in-a-cup, thats what. I guess some people are just that lazy that they will spend extra hard earned cash on something stupid because its easy. Like Twilight. i mean, apples even on the cover of the book. its an omen: Fruit on outside = unholy garbage and despair on the inside.

People, how can we rid the world of Apple fanboys? C'mon, there's gotta be a way!

I had a customer ask me if I thought it was worth paying £1300 for an iMac to just browse the web and email.

I told him he'd get the same end result if he just bought a £400 Dell and threw the other £900 on the fire.

He bought the Dell. Not sure if he did the second part though.

how the hardware fixated guys get it wrong all the time. what Apple is doing is called vertical integration, acknowledging the fact that it is the user experience that matter to the user, not the spec sheet. this is why we will see tablet after tablet fail in the market. and while apple certainly is not a generation ahead of the competition, they are most definitely not behind. they are shipping now. there is no other tablet weighing 700grams with a capacitive ips panel and 10hour battery life even on the horizon.

Vote to disable comments when apple is mentioned in an article so the goddamn prats don't get a chance to disgust the world with their fanboi drivel.

It's true, Apple makes the BEST looking stuff out there by far. The (mostly) people who buy it think it must be as good inside as outside. Many rich people don't know and don't care. I really do like OS X but pretty does not cut it for me and what is on the inside is what most important. Apple is not advanced hardware but advanced appeal. I give them a 10 for looks and a 7 for hardware. Generally you can buy a comparative system for about half what apple charges.

The Inquirer is up to it's old tricks of publishing this usual rubbish for the sole purpose of getting as many hits to the website as possible. Provocative headlines and rubbish writing produces controversy and bottom line dollars, pounds, and euros - they have no shame!

Many people on the Wintel side of computing are obsessed with hardware. But, it is the combination of hardware and software which makes a product a success.

Apple is creating new markets; therefore, it is inadvisable for them to initially have high prices. The leading edge of technologies cost big bucks and this is often a reason that products, and markets, are unsuccessful.

Take the iPhone for instance. The Anti-iphone pundits loftily said, three years ago, that the iPhone did not have the necessary features of other Smart Phones. It was too late to enter these markets.; hence, it could never compete. The arguments against the iPhone sound quite similar to those used by the author; Apple was delivering nothing new or even leading edge.

What the iPhone had was a unique set of technological advantages: more RAM than anyone had tried before and a faster processor. Both of those were necessary to take advantage of the software which Apple had designed. The iPhone was the first Smart Phone to offer a good web experience.

Since then, the iPhone hardware and software has gotten better. So much so, that the other Smart Phones are playing catch up.

The point was that the features which the other Smart Phone manufacturers claimed were necessary weren't valued that much by customers. That was why only a 100 million Smart Phones had been previously sold, out of some billion mobile phones. Apple has much increased the numbers of Smart Phone by, mostly, gaining converts from feature phone users.

Clive Akass's arguments are meaningless, because they don't tell the whole story. The iPad does not have leading edge hardware, but its combination of hardware and software is likely to turn a moribund Tablet market into a success.

The previous Tablet computers were sold to Geeks while the iPad is sold mostly to computer novices. The iPad solves the problems of those novices well when the Wintel Tablet computers pleased no one.

IPhone killers are talked about constantly, but none are successful because the manufacturers cannot match the services that the iPhone can offer. IPad killers are due to appear and are likely to have the same failure. Why? Because the manufacturers think that hardware advancements can make up for the lousy services which those Wintel products offer.

Here's a hint. No iPhone or iPad killer is possible so long as Microsoft is involved in them. The Microsoft operating system is the kiss of death.

Boy, I hope this guy doesn't do technology consulting! What little of this speech is reproduced here is largely inaccurate or flat out wrong :D

Lies. Lies. Lies.

"Current Apple products ... are not technically very good," he said. "They are usually about a generation behind. You get the Ipad launched without 3G, [products with] low resolution screens, poor battery life and so on."

The A4 processor in the ipad is a generation ahead. So the wifi version of the ipad launched first - what, by a couple weeks?

The screens on apple devices are absolutely beautiful. They are the envy of the tech world. The new iphone launching in June will have print quality resolution.

Poor battery life? Biggest lie on the planet. The ipad gets 11 hours. Apple laptops offer twice the battery of anyone else and the iphone is best in it's class.

What a pack of lies. I can see how Britain is falling behind in IT if folks believe this load of bull.

The attorney quoted is misguided. While one can argue that the hardware is held back, the devices themselves are responsible for exploding the market size for their segments (e.g., iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air to a lesser degree, and now iPad). This is due to so many factors, its impossible to discuss at length here. But one factor, software innovation and integration into their own product lines (including iTunes for Windows) are key reasons why. Harware always catches up. It has been this way ever since 1984 turned out be not like "1984."

P.S.: To Luddite: Given Apple's ridiculuos growth, profits, cash hoard, and market dominance in several expanding segments, I would say that the market for "smug and cutesy" is off the charts. And since when are open-sourced alternatives cheaper than Apple? Droid cost as much as an iPhone when it was introduced, despite its Android operating system. It only fell in price when it couldn't sustain volume, like the iPhone has proven it can.

Oh yes, there are literally dozens of 1ghz ARM powered tablets around, some of them even have 3G!!

Here is a comprehensive list:

ipad
erm... thats it

Perhaps because the market for smug and cutesy is limited.

I've looked at Apple products from time to time, starting with the first Mac in 1984, and I mean mostly literally "looked", without the urge to play with. They just don't appeal to most geeks the way M$ products do (or *did*, back in the day when "geek" meant familiar with hardware details).

Anyway, I don't agree with the unstated premise that the Apple way is what most people want. Besides, you can get versions of Linux that *do* copy the Apple interface -- and I don't like them either.

This is one of dumbest articles I've read in a long time.

It's all about the ease of use of the operating systems--both Mac OS X and iPhone/iPad OS.

The hardware almost becomes irrelevant. Idiots can pick up in iPhone or iPod touch and use it for useful and fun activities with almost no learning curve.

And the Mac operating system "just works."

yes its because the uk is someone else's biatch and its valuable home industries have been sold off by rogue governments for a fast profit.
blame the politicians for having no conscience and blame the public for not kicking off about it.

Am I the only one who finds the Inq's relentless Apple bashing just as deeply tedious as the pro-Apple fanboys biased commentry? I have no problem with criticism where it's due, but I'm on the verge of removing it from Google Reader because of article after article of empty content.

Is it just trolling for hits? Is this partisan reporting all the Inq is good for these days?