I wrote up this big old long post as a response to an Apple rant here a few weeks ago and IE8 lost it for me before I had a chance to post it. So I've been reluctant to contribute to any of the Apple threads since as a good majority of my thoughts were well expressed (I felt) in the lost post. Oh well. One of the points I made though is relevant to this topic, and it's one of my biggest sources of frustration: people seem to assume that just because Apple succeeds at doing things the way they're doing them, that somehow means that you *must* do it that way in order to achieve the same benefits (e.g. good user experience, smooth UI, etc.).
The fact is that Apple simply makes some very specific things a top priority, and those are things that few - if any - other companies focus on. Apple's prices aren't really that high these days when you take into account the industrial design and materials. Another company could choose to make a similar quality product with similar materials, and they would need to sell it at a high price to do so of course, but the quality would justify it. Granted Apple gets away with it a bit more because of their brand strength, so it's a bit tougher for others. But that's a "spell" that needs to be broken. There are plenty of people who will pay for quality, plenty of people I know who have bought an Apple laptop not because of OSX or liking Apple at all, but simply because they're well-built machines with great battery life and decent features. It's *hard* to find a comparably well-built PC laptop for *any* price! And that includes Sony equipment, Thinkpad, and the rest.
But the important thing to remember is that these are choices that manufacturers make. Manufacturers can *choose* to make industrial and UI design a priority. They can choose to use better materials and charge accordingly. They can choose to create a more cohesive end-to-end experience and not bundle crapware for a few extra bucks. And if they do they'll be competing for the same (or similar) market that Apple does, or at least a portion of it. But most manufacturers either choose to compete on price/features, or they compete in the business market on reliability, support, and other aspects. Few, if any, focus on UI and physical design, both aesthetic and functional. Apple does this and they have succeeded largely on the strength of this; well, combined with some very effective marketing. But that marketing would not be nearly so effective if it weren't half true a lot of the time. I don't think PC hardware and software manufacturers are doing themselves any favors in the way they often develop their products and set their priorities, at least not if the market that Apple targets is desirable (which it definitely seems to be).
Is it impossible to have a Windows 7 tablet that is as nicely designed and works as well as an iPad? NO. It just takes a manufacturer giving a sh*t, spending time not just on the hardware specs, but on the design of the unit, the aesthetics and feel, being willing to put money and time into battery technology so that they get better battery life, opting for higher-level components - even though they're more expensive - so that things work better, feel better, batteries last longer, screens look better, etc. And it takes spending some time on the software side too, customizing the Win7 install to optimize it for tablet use, maybe developing a few key utilities of your own that enhance the experience. It's not impossible, it may not even be *that* hard, but everyone is afraid to do it I think. Probably they fear trying to compete directly with Apple, but they're having to do so anyway whether they like it or not - they might as well be doing it *right*.
I think maybe it's kind of like the TV thing we were talking about in another thread, or what's happened with the music business: entrenched business models are painful and slow to adapt to a changing market. The PC manufacturers are used to competing on price, that's been the PC differentiator, ever since the "clone wars" of the IBM/Tandy and the rest, and and back then buying a Mac really was a lot more expensive for what you got. That continued for a decade or more. But these days there's less and less to differentiate a PC from a Mac spec-wise, after all it's the same basic platform, and meanwhile Apple's got aces in hardware and UI design, and isn't *that* much more expensive. Buying a tablet at $400 or $500 (PC/Android) vs. $600-$800 (iPad) is *not* that big a difference. It's not like the old days of Apple where a lesser-speced Apple product cost literally twice as much. Apple is reinventing the game and pushing ever further into other markets, while doing it *their* way and making higher margins than almost anyone in the process. This is not an ability unique to them. I'm waiting for a manufacturer to realize this and do something about it. Waiting...
And if you thought that rant was long, just imagine how long my original (lost) post was where I made 3 or 4 other major points!
- Oshyan
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