> it sells premium products at premium prices, and it never discounts.
I fail to see what's premium in a tablet that has an inferior screen compared to the cheaper alternatives.
Apple won the 10" market by virtue of literally doing everything better than the competition. Better screen, better battery life and so on. The iPad mini isn't like that. The $200 Nexus 7 has a much higher pixel density which used to be Apple's own obsession until the mini (retina iPad, iPod Touch, Macbook Pro, iPhone) and they completely ignored the whole pixel density and screen quality angle when comparing the mini to the N7, just stating the obvious "ours is bigger!!!".
When you ask for premium prices, you should deliver premium quality. The iPad mini is not premium enough to warrant premium prices. I would have seriously considered buying one even at a higher price IF it was actually a premium device, but it's not. The N7 is just the better device here, and if there was no software issue with their shoddy fork of android, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 would've also been interesting with its full hd screen. 1920x1200 8.9 display for... $299, less than the crappy iPad Mini.
I've never felt so underwhelmed by an Apple product since a long time. The iPad Mini feels Meh rather than making me drool at the thought of getting one.
Even if it's a nexus device it's pretty different from what we were used to with stock android : it's a blend of both the phone and tablet UI. Some apps are using the tablet UI, while others use the phone UI, and the launcher itself is based on the phone UI, rather than the tablet UI. What runs on the Nexus 7 is a form of Android that has never been seen before, and there isn't any other Android tablet that behaves in such a way, even those from Asus that are as close to stock android as an OEM can be.
Even with TouchWiz, the Tab 7.0 feels more like what we were used to than the N7.
I'm just stating facts though because I actually like the changes made for the N7 better, I think it fits a 7" screen more than the old tablet UI and I hope those changes will be copied by the others.
> Its all over the Internet Explorer thing happening again. But with IE at least you could tell your users to download a better browser if they want to use your app. You can not tell your users, "Buy another phone to use our service!"
That's what I take from the article. People got up in arms in a way that was much stronger against Microsoft during IE's early years and whining for Netscape (who lost because they just made a shitty browser, it wasn't 100% because of bundling IE with windows. Netscape Navigator 4 was terrible and slow compared to IE.) much more than people do against Apple, even though we could install an alternative browser, which is something you can't even do on the iPhone and iPad (without a modern JS engine you might as well give up, there isn't a single browser on iOS that is not based on the internal webkit and a JIT-lacking javascript engine. There's the oddball, Opera, that does all the rendering in their server farms, but they don't allow anything that runs locally).
There were even talks of cutting Microsoft into multiple companies, one that makes office, one that makes windows etc. Only people who have been around during those years would know what I'm talking about, but MS was hated to a point you couldn't begin to imagine in 2012, for something that wasn't even a bit as bad as Apple post-iOS.
I can't believe the crap Apple gets away with, they are getting away with so much that even Microsoft is now following their lead, Windows Mobile had far less restrictions compared to Windows Phone and Windows 8 on ARM which are both reactions to iOS rather than something MS thought of doing before the tide that iOS (and Android) did to the smartphone market. Windows Mobile wasn't open source, but the user was as free to install and use apps as they are now with Android. It's not the case anymore, and there won't be anything like Chrome or Firefox or (locally rendering) Opera for Windows 8 tablets on ARM. Only on x86 and only because they know how much of an uproar it'd be with current x86 users, because if they could close everything down and get away with it, they would, which is why we should be as loud as possible to show that we don't want this kind of future for our computing devices.
Apple can get away with this because they aren't a monopoly. Their market share isn't anywhere close to the 90% that Microsoft enjoys.
They temporarily enjoyed a 90% share of tablet sales, but that has since dropped substantially. This is probably a good thing from Apple's perspective, since if it would have stayed at 90% then they probably would have the DOJ on their back for their monopolistic practices.
You can sell your service to people that have iPads.
This is the fundamental question of what an iPad is. Apple would like it to be treated as an extension of their store, and you want it to be like a Windows PC. Any consumer that agrees with you is free to jailbreak -- your problem is that consumers seem to have no problem with Apple's model -- they probably don't understand it, but they haven't perceived an indirect drawback either.
Developers should have their eyes wide open about it by now.
So, the right thing, if your intention is to change their behavior is to not support them. Don't buy it, don't develop for it, encourage others to do the same.
The thing is ... everyone wants one and wants to develop for them.
No, we can not sell our service to people who have iPads without paying a 30% cut to Apple.
Again, as mentioned in the article, we think there is nothing wrong with Apple having an App Store and charging a 30% fee. What's wrong is, Apple forcing everyone to use their App Store for distributing Apps.
"Don't buy it, don't develop for it, encourage others to do the same" - That is the whole point of this article.
MS came under fire, not because it bundled its own browser, but because it was bullying other companies who were bundling Netscape with their PCs. (If I am not wrong, I think MS threatened to stop doing business with HP, if they bundled Netscape with their PCs).
Apple is doing even worse, not only is it not letting any other browser to be installed, its not even letting any other app to be installed without its "Distribution System". Its forcing you to use their "Distribution System" and pay for it.
Yeah. Kies is slow as hell (more than iTunes on windows.. it says a lot, because iTunes on windows is not a shiny example of good software.) and TouchWiz is slowing down Android, sometimes destroying the battery and is otherwise a design sin, it's far more uglier than the stock UI, it's got better recently (S3, Note 10.1 etc.) but it still has some badly copied parts from iOS that doesn't really match Android's aesthetics, like the custom keyboard. The Samsung keyboard has an identical color scheme to iOS's virtual keyboards, it looks good on iOS because the rest of the interface is similar but it feels like total shit on Android and really it just proves that Samsung actually deserved to get bitchslapped in the courts by Apple because even an Android fan like myself could find too many similarities between what Samsung did to Android (it was worse for past devices) and iOS. Stock Android doesn't look like iOS, but TouchzWiz used to, and some parts of TouchWiz still do to this day (like the keyboard I mentioned).
I love Android, and I like some of Samsung's hardware but I wish they'd shut their whole software division down and just put stock android on their phones and tablets. Stop writing code, and stop designing your custom UI, because you SUCK at this job.
I fail to see what's premium in a tablet that has an inferior screen compared to the cheaper alternatives.
Apple won the 10" market by virtue of literally doing everything better than the competition. Better screen, better battery life and so on. The iPad mini isn't like that. The $200 Nexus 7 has a much higher pixel density which used to be Apple's own obsession until the mini (retina iPad, iPod Touch, Macbook Pro, iPhone) and they completely ignored the whole pixel density and screen quality angle when comparing the mini to the N7, just stating the obvious "ours is bigger!!!".
When you ask for premium prices, you should deliver premium quality. The iPad mini is not premium enough to warrant premium prices. I would have seriously considered buying one even at a higher price IF it was actually a premium device, but it's not. The N7 is just the better device here, and if there was no software issue with their shoddy fork of android, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 would've also been interesting with its full hd screen. 1920x1200 8.9 display for... $299, less than the crappy iPad Mini.
I've never felt so underwhelmed by an Apple product since a long time. The iPad Mini feels Meh rather than making me drool at the thought of getting one.