[skewart]

I take it you’re only talking about hardware product development, right? Apple’s software product quality is pretty low. There certainly are lots of companies that far exceed Apple when it comes to software.

As for the hardware products, I think it mostly comes down to making quality a strategic priority. As a result they’re willing to spend more money and make sacrifices in other areas in order to build great high-quality hardware and a cohesive overall experience for users. For example, I suspect they deliberately de-prioritize pre-installed/default apps, like maps and email, and make hardware and integration throughout their ecosystem a higher priority. They let their apps be just good enough to keep too many people from downloading alternatives but they don’t try to make them great. People buy iPhones because they are widely seen as “the best” overall phone. Most people won’t buy a phone because of any one app, so there is no point in making any one better than good enough. So that’s one area where they allocate resources in a way that drives hardware quality.

Other smartphone makers have different strategic priorities that make them deprioritize quality. For example, some compete on low prices. Google got into the smartphone business largely for defensive reasons, and they’ve never put much focus on creating great phones. Microsoft was starting to follow Apple’s strategy, and maybe could have given them a run for their money, but they gave up pretty quickly because they could make more money elsewhere.

[abhikhar]

I am not only mentioning about the hardware product development, rather overall product experience. I mean in terms of software upgrade process, touchscreen latency , connecting to external monitor etc. etc.. all these features work so seamlessly working every time even after so many number of years. Even though the hardware and software is not the best in the industry but system overall performance and user experience is far far better than any other product out there. Question is why does this apple secretive system optimization process been easily followed for other consumer products like TV , Auto , VR glasses by other companies. Are they not trying enough or they don't know the complete picture of how to apply it ?