Microsoft and Samsung – More Cool than Apple???
Anyone remember the PC vs. Mac wars with all the cool commercials and parodies floating around? I remember the commercials with the geeky and rather boring guy along side the mad hip Mac dude. The commercials always pointed out the issues with PCs and the good points of Macs. Truth be told a lot of what was said was true but I will add in that Macs are not always as easy to use as the commercials would have you think. Try selling a Mac to an old lady that had been a PC user for years and you will run into question upon question in call after call on how to do this and how to do that. No one reads now a days, well, if there were a manual that is…
Microsoft, or the PC, did hit back with some commercials of their own.
So now with the death of Steve Jobs we can only see a gradual decline in innovation coming from Apple. Apple has followed trends in order to keep up by going bigger (finally) and including internal improvements to hardware in their devices. Mind you this is all just updated stuff that Steve Jobs created. You also have the piety lawsuits that Apple has filed for stuff as simple as swipe to unlock which was really nothing new. Even before the later mentioned, Apple purchased numerous companies a large one being Beats Electronics. While it is smart business on their part you have to wonder where does Apple go from here. There is nothing innovative in buying others people’s ideas.
Today….
We have now the emergence of Microsoft who has done what Apple can no longer do it seems. The iPad is a cool tablet. It looks great and runs iOS. An overall exclusive Operating system with features that allow it to be compatible with it Mac OS. Let’s be real here, you cannot run a Mac OS application on iOS unless a version of said application is created for iOS. This leaves iPads as being more in the line of internet appliances. Now there have been apps made for specific purposes in an effort to make iPads more useful above these lines. This is great but why bother really with all the extra red tape?
Apple is now currently demoted to simply a hardware company. Okay they came out with the Apple Watch. A watch with sales that pale in comparison to Samsung’s watch designs. The Apple Watch was pretty much useless. You would only get it to have……a cool looking watch?…….Bragging right? Apple’s prices have always been exorbitant with products that mainly look great. Inside all of this, people still buy Apple. Of course they do. Apple has made simplicity in technology an art form. This is why people buy Apple. I would also add that buying Apple to be cool is another reason. Most people I talk to who are Apple fans can only say they stay Apple because it is just what they are used to. This make complete sense with Apple not really changing much of what is iOS. iPhones still look the same.
Majority of consumers are not the techy-est people and due to this Apple may always have a large following. Let’s looks at some facts here though. In the third quarter of 2016, revenue from Surface products shot to $926 million which is 38% more than the year before. This here is much less than Apple. A large factor in this here is cost though. Surface Pro tablets being PCs in all rights do cost more than a mere tablet. On this I give you (my readers) an idea. If you do not want to pay the larger cost for a new Surface Pro tablet then find an older one. You can in fact find older Surface Pros for the same price as a new iPad. In this case you can find an equal tablet price with the advantages of also have a full fledge PC that Surface brings. Just an idea for you.
Microsoft with the creation of its Surface Pro lines of products has taken over. Microsoft has done what Apple thought would not work well. So now you can have that tablet device that can replace your home computer. You do not have to limit yourself to an app store that is highly scrutinized leaving some really cool ideas only available for the competition. The Surface Pro, a PC/tablet, which can hold desktop applications that an owner can take with them anywhere. A graphic designer does not have to lose time while traveling in the air because he or she can work on their projects on the plane. Literally drawing that next idea on a plane. Apple has now turned into the company doing the copying as Apple has thrown Samsung into being. Do you see Microsoft suing Apple over adding a pen to their iPads?
Samsung, the other player in the market, has cut into Apple’s reign in 2015. Samsung and Android’s presence had gained about 80% of the market until recently due to the Note 7 battery fire issues that will probably plague the company at least until the Note 8 releases. Once the Note 8 proves itself to be safe sales will most likely soar and Samsung will be back on track as on top of the mobile phone industry. Samsung is also not stopping there with the Galaxy S8 and quite possibly a device that folds. Samsung has frankly been one of the companies to buy from to acquire a device with latest technology as each iteration of the Galaxy line of phones is always updated with bigger and better and faster components.
So here you see innovation going on in the faces of Samsung and Microsoft at this point and time. The question is can Apple get that Jobs-esk feel back? Do they even want to? Or can they create another persona that is Tim Cook where innovation becomes the goal again where if it does not fit in that scheme it does not get released until it is up to Jobs standards. Just what do you think?
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