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Originally Posted by Lucky LITE
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People who don't think AAPL could become RIM or NOK need to look at aa graph of smartphone vender and OS history, or Apple's own history when they went nearly bankrupt with the closed ecosystem Mac philosophy as hardware caught up and Apple's initial design advantage became secondary to superior software and a range of hardware. They simply do not remember the highs of RIM in 2008 and what all analysts said at the time. Something similar will happen again given the complete lack of innovation from Apple and their weakness in software. RIMM was worth more than $100 billion less than five years ago, with the untouchable market leader heading into an explosively growing market, and most analysts thought people were nuts to predict their demise.
That was a really good post except I don't understand the bolded part. Personally when I use an android phone or an ios phone, I find that the ios phone is extremely easier to use. I guess my question is how is Apple's software weak?
Apple software is very simplistic and closed, combined with excellent attention to visual design and UI interaction. It can't handle complex use cases, or broad open interaction, it's not designed that way, and it would take years for Apple to write this software no matter how much money or how many people they threw at it. It also would no longer be Apple - it would be Windows.
Apple software is a perfect fit for new hardware which isn't quite fast enough for mainstream, whose flaws can be covered by self designing the hardware and combining it with simplistic closed software. The original iPad for example was a piece of crap, incredibly slow and not even up to web browsing, but they covered it with animations to hide the slowness, a super simplistic operating system (iOS), and turning off features that it couldn't handle, like flash, and produced a product that was great to use. They also did that with the Mac in the 80s and had great success, before nearly going bankrupt as computers circa 1995 got faster, and more sophisticated operating systems destroyed their ****ty software and closed philosophy.
The trouble for Apple now is that we're approaching 1995. Phones are reaching a state where Apple's initial design advantages are declining, and competing software is becoming compelling. See Android - from 0 to 70% in three years - and Windows Phone 8, which will integrate perfectly with Windows 8/9, its apps and ecosystem as it slowly gets installed onto a billion PCs.
On the tablet side, hardware is for the first time getting fast enough that it can run full Windows with a good experience. If you've used a Surface Pro you'll realize how vastly superior the experience is to an iPad. Battery life, ecosystem, inertia and lack of sales channels and supply of parts (there's a severe lack of touch screen components) are the only reason Windows tablets aren't destroying the iPad yet, but they will. It'll be Mac vs PC all over again and Apple will get killed.
In five years, phones will be computers. You'll put them down and they'll display full operating system interaction on nearby screens. And what have people put on computers for the past 20 years? Windows. Why? Because no other operating system has the ecosystem or the complexity or the polish. And just as importantly because no other company has the incredibly complex business backends that took the work of tens of thousands of people over a decade to develop. Mac has a small following but is generally not wanted by the market, and never will be - it's ****ty software that can't do complex things. Businesses alone guarantee that Mac will never be mainstream.
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Also, about the underlined part all I wanted to say is even though they have missed innovations lately they are considerably more innovative than RIMM was or ever will be.
Apple have a single innovation - the iPod touch. Everything else is a stretched version of that. While the iPod touch is a great idea - a smart device with beautiful aesthetics and a clever ecosystem - it's all they've ever created, and it's important to understand that when talking about Apple's innovation. I also think you're underestimating how amazing and unique and loved Blackberry was for several years.
If Apple were truly innovative, they would be busy creating things like
Google Glass rather than changing dock connectors on their products.