[dragonwriter]

> Apple's only real advantage now is privacy

Apple's main real advantage is lots of the high-disposable-income market is heavily invested in their ecosystem. The big ecosystems are real competitors, but the individual offerings within them are rarely direct competitors because the utility of the individual offerings depends on degree of pre-existing investment in the ecosystem.

[digi_owl]

In effect Jobs (or maybe the unnamed middle manager to managed to convince him it was a good idea) managed to make the fruit logo a status symbol, in large part thanks to allowing the iPod and iTunes to work on Windows...

[chaostheory]

Yeah I see Apple more as primarily a fashion company that integrates a lot of tech into their products; not far from say Rolex, with the main differientator being that Apple keeps updating their technology stack.

For this reason, Apple will probably be one of the few western 'tech' companies who will most likely always have a foothold in places like China.