[acdha]

> Unlike Apple customers, the rest of the population is sensitive to performance and cost. If Google can't compete people move on.

This is an odd phrasing: Apple's pricing isn't higher than the competition — flagship Android phones frequently cost noticeably more — and when it comes to performance it's very hard to beat the $400 iPhone SE2 at any price.

Vertical integration is what allows Apple to be ahead on both price and performance. The only way Google is matching that is with a strong long-term commitment to make similar investments. Apple will falter at some point but after years of ignoring the basics Google won't be able to take advantage of that — especially since at this point they're chasing Apple's previous generation so it'd take an extended sag for Google to catch up much less surpass with their current half-hearted strategy.

[rement]

I think free2OSS is implying that Apple customers care more about the brand than the performance and cost.

[zepto]

A weird suggestion, given that the products they choose have better performance and cost than the competitors.

The facts suggest it is Samsung customers (and perhaps a few other brands) who care more about the brand than performance and cost.

[DangitBobby]

There's also the OS and other aspects of the walled garden that you must choose between an iPhone and some other flagship. I personally select for some perceived optimization of attributes such as "has Android" and "has good value for price" among other things. If Apple made a phone like that I might buy one. Unfortunately, all of their phones have iOS.

[zepto]

How many apps have you sideloaded?

[toast0]

Google curates the play store with a much lighter touch than Apple curates its store. Possibly because they don't want to drive people to sideloading.

[zepto]

It’s still a walled garden.

[DangitBobby]

IDK, a handful. The point I was trying to make is less about the selection of apps and more about the actual operating system.

[lern_too_spel]

Hundreds. I develop apps for my own devices. This is supposed to be a forum for technologists.

[zepto]

“Hundreds. I develop apps for my own devices. This is supposed to be a forum for technologists.”

Sideloading doesn’t refer to installing apps you have developed yourself.

It’s about distributing software outside of app stores.

[lern_too_spel]

Apple computers have always been slower and more expensive than their non-Apple counterparts, and this gap has been larger recently due to sourcing from the struggling CPU vendor and the struggling GPU vendor. Worse, the software adds a 30% performance penalty on top.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos101...

Their phones were slower at productivity tasks than midtier phones from the previous generation for many years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emPiTZHdP88

https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY

https://youtu.be/B5ZT9z9Bt4M

I agree that Samsung's phones are also overpriced.

[zepto]

“The software adds a 30% performance penalty on top”

That seems like a straight up falsehood.

[lern_too_spel]

Which is why I provided a link to show it. Whenever I see IntelliJ IDEs on Macs, they seem so sluggish, and the benchmarks in that link show that Java2D is several times slower on MacOS on the same hardware.

iOS is even worse, taking vastly superior hardware and still managing to perform worse on standard productivity tasks.

[zepto]

The post doesn’t substantiate the claim: “The software adds a 30% performance penalty on top”. It shows performance on an extremely narrow test which clearly doesn’t represent general performance.

As to your claim about iOS. There is literally nothing to substantiate it.

You are simply lying and hoping nobody checks.

[threatofrain]

It's hard to imagine Apple's brand maintaining its luster without good performance, and when Apple sells over 1B phones, it's hard to imagine that price-efficacy wasn't a huge part of the package.

On the other hand, Androids have a reputation to get somehow jankier or sluggish over time, and that surely must affect its brand and overall standing for consumers.

[rpdillon]

I think Apple is on the hook for $100M+ for degrading performance of their phones over time intentionally.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

I understand there are arguments about why this is a good idea, but Apple is settling, which tells me a fair amount about how Apple thinks those arguments would land in court.

[free2OSS]

I find the opposite True.

I imagine you watch lots of Apple ads.

[Dylan16807]

> Vertical integration is what allows Apple to be ahead on both price and performance.

I don't know about that. The processor is the main thing they have vertically integrated, right? And if I go look at a flagship like a Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G I see a BOM of $57 for the processor. (It does have a hideously expensive modem for 5G but it didn't need to have that.)

[acdha]

They control the entire system on a chip — remember how long it was before Android devices started to have the security features which Apple introduced in the iPhone 3GS? That took Google getting phone vendors to get the CPU vendors to all work together, whereas at Apple that's a couple of teams all working on the same product with the same incentives to make it succeed.

[lern_too_spel]

With Apple, it was security theater. With multiple vendors working together, it has to actually work to get everybody on board with putting in the resources.

https://www.wired.com/2009/07/iphone-encryption/

[cmsj]

Consider the knock-on effects though - that processor isn't necessarily optimising the things Samsung might want, nor is Android, which costs them more in other ways (I'm particularly thinking of the fact that Android phones seem to have to include a lot more RAM than iPhones, so that's another chunk of BOM).

[websitejanitor]

>Apple's pricing isn't higher than the competition

Back in the Intel days you were paying twice as much for a Macbook laptop that used the same CPU as whatever Windows laptop with similar specs.

[lrae]

That might have been true for a couple of years if you just compare pure computing power, as soon as you factor in build quality and compared it to Thinkpad X1s, XPS & Co you were in similar price ranges again. Or if you don't care about build quality, another classic is the high-res displays (and software support) which took the competitors years and some might argue that they're still not there.

Oh and there was also a couple of generations where Apple had pretty much kind-of exclusivity on Intel's newest CPUs and they were really only available in MacBooks for the first few months.

[free2OSS]

Build quality is a term non engineers use. It's a marketing term.

Seems like you got sucked up into it.

Edit- butterfly keyboard, airpods, bad iphone signals come to mind

[lrae]

Yeah, all stuff that sucked. There is even more, Staingate, Bendgate, ... Never said Apple is flawless :) You think the comparable offerings from Dell, Lenovo or HP are flawless? Oh I have news for you.

You know what, if you look close enough, "they all suck".

Nice Ad hom though. :)

[syshum]

Apple and Build quality should not go anywhere in the same sentence.

Take a watch at any of the Louis Rossman's "Think Different" Series to see Apple Build Quality....

[acdha]

Not for comparable quality, you weren't. The prices varied depending on features but it wasn't twice as much unless you failed to control specs (I remember forum posters accusing everyone of being fanboys when they came up with a number like that by comparing, say, an Apple device with an SSD to something with a previous-generation processor and spinning metal drive). If you're buying comparable quality you get fairly comparable cost.

[pram]

Back in the Intel days? You mean one month ago? lol