iOS 6

[Mintmaster]

Apples strength is neither, its the fact that they have created the perception that Apple means premium and high quality with excellent support.

That was true maybe 5 years ago, but that's section of the userbase isn't what fueled their insane growth. From 2007-2011, the iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Air actually were giving a superior experience compared to the competition, partly because they did have the best hardware. It wasn't just a perception.

Only now have competitors truly caught up with the iPhone; only this year will the iPad begin to face competition from the Windows/x86 juggernaut; only now have manufacturers really challenged the MacBook Air in the sub-3lb market.

There are some people who are loyal to the Apple brand, but the people willing to standing in line for their product launches comprise a couple percent of their sales at most. It's the rest of their userbase that is so impressive, and while it can stay for a little while on momentum, this is the tech industry. You don't have the enduring reputations of the auto industry, which also took decades to build. If you give people the same functionality in a cheaper product with equal quality and functionality (which manufacturers can finally do), most will start jumping ship rather quickly.

Yet they get slaughtered at the 999$ laptop market by Macbooks. They simply cant get the same margins Apple has. Thats why you wont see a "retina" screen for windows laptops until 1-2 years in the future when its cheap. Because none of the OEMs can take the hit

Nobody rewards those makers with sales for a better display or better chassis (several manufacturers have tried). If Apple had a $1000 and $1100 model, with the latter having a retina display and reduced battery life, then it too would see a lot fewer sales of the latter. However, they won't give that option, and Apple fans won't look elsewhere. The supply chain argument is really overblown.

That's all moot, though, because Macbooks aren't where Apple is making it's big money. It's been able to sell phones to carriers for $600+, get them to sell to customers for $200 on a contract, and take a cut of the monthly bill. Sprint just signed on with Apple, and isn't expecting to make money for two years.

This kind of obscene profit taking can't be sustained once your competition has caught up.

I think WP8 will most likely take RIMs place in 18-24 months. But claiming more than that is pretty optimistic

WP8 will take a few years to catch on, when Win8 has some significant penetration (note that even the iPhone started off slowly), but that's not the main point. What I'm saying is that Android and the fact that manufacturers caught up is going to bring their margins back to earth. NVidia didn't lose much marketshare when the HD4000 series came out, but when its performance-mainstream part went from $299 to $199, it hammered their margins down from the record high it was at before.

I believe that's what they said about the iPod for years. All that was needed was a competitor who'd come out with slightly more features. It never happened (the competitor taking over, that is.)

Oh yes it did. It's called the smartphone:

Who buys dedicated MP3 players nowadays? People wanting cheap disposable junk to work out with? Parents as gifts for kids who are too young to have a phone? A smartphone does everything an iPod does and also lets you make calls. That squeezes the iPod into a tiny niche.

That's what Win8 tablets will do to Android tablets and eventually the ARM based iPad (I suspect Apple will eventually follow the MS lead into the software/hardware for a hybrid). We'll have x86 tablets that can also do everything a notebook can, and a smartphone that can do everything a tablet can but are more portable. ARM tablets will get squeezed into a niche.

For $2-300 you're going to get a non-IPS, 1280-rez pad with a plastic shell.

LOL, that prediction didn't even last 2 days...

 

[Mize]

What I find amazing is that I'm really interested in Asus' new Transformer Infinity, right? So Anand runs it against the iPad Gen3 and the iPad basically smokes it in every single category. I mean, seriously? Asus is releasing something that's nearly a year newer and it's Tegra 3 + multicore GPU can't even approach the iPad and then its battery is a 3-4 hour battery when gaming (compared to 3x that for iPad).

Unfortunately you can't bootcamp Android onto Apple's hardware

 

[Grall]

That's what Win8 tablets will do to Android tablets and eventually the ARM based iPad

I wouldn't bet much money on that wager. MS has historically had a TERRIBLE track record with anything mobile, including their then-newfangled WP7, which they then thanked the few customers they attracted by banging their fingers in a closed doorway of no upgradeability to future OS versions. Smooth, suave move there, MS.

I suspect Apple will eventually follow the MS lead into the software/hardware for a hybrid).

Hurm, Apple started down that path over a year ago, with the Mac appstore and iOSification of certain aspects of OSX. Not that I'm much of a fan of either OSX or iOS really; I'm just sayin'.

LOL, that prediction didn't even last 2 days...

LOL, and Google's selling that thing nearly at cost too, you expect everyone else to be able to do the same? I don't think so. And it's only 7 inches, not the size of an iPad and not the same resolution either. So LOL no, my prediction will last a bit longer still I say.

 

[Arwin]

The strength of Microsoft is that IF Windows 8 turns out to be good for tablets and mobiles, companies like Samsung will make good devices for it. They only need to get the OS right. It will be difficult, but there are definite advantages of course as being the same development platform as what currently most Work PCs still use. Personally for our work it would matter a lot.

 

[Grall]

I'm still sceptical how well one can expect apps for a mobile OS to work on a desktop system. I'm even more sceptical at MS's attempt to push metro on everybody else where you are ALWAYS punted to metro first when logging in and have to click your way back to the traditional desktop (sans start menu; they yanked that thing entirely out of the codebase so you can't fip a registry toggle to get it back)

I'm particularly concerned about its closed-system nature, that the ONLY way for you to obtain apps for your metro PC (or tablet) is to get them through MS's app store, where they have complete authority to reject anything they don't like or approve of. That's a terrible prescident they're setting for computing, and frankly a fuckiong dangerous and scary one as well. Personally I hope Win8 bombs harder than vista just because of this. I absolutely DON'T want any windows overlords at microsoft deciding what I can or can't run on my PC.

It's absolutely clear to everyone MS is hurrying to phase out the traditional desktop, and if they do, then what? Run linux? Can't do that on PCs with secure boot firmware, which will probably be everything sold from this year onwards to accommodate win8's requirements.

 

[french toast]

For sure that's the way we're heading, lets face it you have no other option as apple will go the same route.

 

[french toast]

What I find amazing is that I'm really interested in Asus' new Transformer Infinity, right? So Anand runs it against the iPad Gen3 and the iPad basically smokes it in every single category. I mean, seriously? Asus is releasing something that's nearly a year newer and it's Tegra 3 + multicore GPU can't even approach the iPad and then its battery is a 3-4 hour battery when gaming (compared to 3x that for iPad).

Unfortunately you can't bootcamp Android onto Apple's hardware

Well I don't think tegra 3 plus is a great chip at all..judging by the benchmarks all you get is worse battery life for a small bump in performance.

Really interesting seeing how w8 rt takes off.

 

[french toast]

That was true maybe 5 years ago, but that's section of the userbase isn't what fueled their insane growth. From 2007-2011, the iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Air actually were giving a superior experience compared to the competition, partly because they did have the best hardware. It wasn't just a perception.

Only now have competitors truly caught up with the iPhone; only this year will the iPad begin to face competition from the Windows/x86 juggernaut; only now have manufacturers really challenged the MacBook Air in the sub-3lb market.

There are some people who are loyal to the Apple brand, but the people willing to standing in line for their product launches comprise a couple percent of their sales at most. It's the rest of their userbase that is so impressive, and while it can stay for a little while on momentum, this is the tech industry. You don't have the enduring reputations of the auto industry, which also took decades to build. If you give people the same functionality in a cheaper product with equal quality and functionality (which manufacturers can finally do), most will start jumping ship rather quickly.

Nobody rewards those makers with sales for a better display or better chassis (several manufacturers have tried). If Apple had a $1000 and $1100 model, with the latter having a retina display and reduced battery life, then it too would see a lot fewer sales of the latter. However, they won't give that option, and Apple fans won't look elsewhere. The supply chain argument is really overblown.

That's all moot, though, because Macbooks aren't where Apple is making it's big money. It's been able to sell phones to carriers for $600+, get them to sell to customers for $200 on a contract, and take a cut of the monthly bill. Sprint just signed on with Apple, and isn't expecting to make money for two years.

This kind of obscene profit taking can't be sustained once your competition has caught up.
WP8 will take a few years to catch on, when Win8 has some significant penetration (note that even the iPhone started off slowly), but that's not the main point. What I'm saying is that Android and the fact that manufacturers caught up is going to bring their margins back to earth. NVidia didn't lose much marketshare when the HD4000 series came out, but when its performance-mainstream part went from $299 to $199, it hammered their margins down from the record high it was at before.

Oh yes it did. It's called the smartphone:

Who buys dedicated MP3 players nowadays? People wanting cheap disposable junk to work out with? Parents as gifts for kids who are too young to have a phone? A smartphone does everything an iPod does and also lets you make calls. That squeezes the iPod into a tiny niche.

That's what Win8 tablets will do to Android tablets and eventually the ARM based iPad (I suspect Apple will eventually follow the MS lead into the software/hardware for a hybrid). We'll have x86 tablets that can also do everything a notebook can, and a smartphone that can do everything a tablet can but are more portable. ARM tablets will get squeezed into a niche.
LOL, that prediction didn't even last 2 days...

Yea I have to admit I don't really see the use for arm tablets now, I mean it's just a giant smartphone without call functionality...its good for growing the smartphone apps eco system and nothing else really.

Haswell + ipad 3 size batteries will destroy arm in tablets imo.

 

[wco81]

What I find amazing is that I'm really interested in Asus' new Transformer Infinity, right? So Anand runs it against the iPad Gen3 and the iPad basically smokes it in every single category. I mean, seriously? Asus is releasing something that's nearly a year newer and it's Tegra 3 + multicore GPU can't even approach the iPad and then its battery is a 3-4 hour battery when gaming (compared to 3x that for iPad).

Unfortunately you can't bootcamp Android onto Apple's hardware

Why would you want to?

They offer BootCamp because there are far more Windows than Mac applications. The same can't be said of Android apps. vs. iOS apps, especially in tablets.

Is Android going to offer better performance or battery life on the same hardware?

 

[Mize]

Why would you want to?

They offer BootCamp because there are far more Windows than Mac applications. The same can't be said of Android apps. vs. iOS apps, especially in tablets.

Is Android going to offer better performance or battery life on the same hardware?

Because I'm a hopeless gadget geek who has no OS or vendor allegiance whatsoever and I enjoy such things...why do I switch between three different cell phones within one week ?

Oh and Bootcamp is for gaming.

 

[silent_guy]

Oh yes it did. It's called the smartphone:
Who buys dedicated MP3 players nowadays? People wanting cheap disposable junk to work out with? Parents as gifts for kids who are too young to have a phone? A smartphone does everything an iPod does and also lets you make calls. That squeezes the iPod into a tiny niche.

You miss my point completely.

The specs of the iPod were at the surface so simple that a lot of people and companies thought it'd a breeze to copy. What they all missed was that a piece of HW and SW is only a small part of a more complex whole. Your graph about declining iPod sales doesn't change the fact that, over the span of 10 years, nobody was able to challenge the iPod in the field of pure music player market share.

IOW: checkmarks alone (OS blah is catching up to iOS in terms of features) are not sufficient to explain why one product takes the biggest major part of the cake. There are other factors that obviously more important.

Now these factors may well change over time, but for now there aren't major reasons to think that a shift has started.

 

[Mintmaster]

I wouldn't bet much money on that wager. MS has historically had a TERRIBLE track record with anything mobile

Right, they only had what, 90% of the sub-3lb marketshare before tablets came out? Linux was an abject failure for netbooks. because people didn't care about the minimal cost savings over loss of functionality. The same thing will happen to tablets.

If you're talking about hardware, I don't know what your point is. Surface could account for only 1% of Win8 sales and ARM tablets will still die off.

Hurm, Apple started down that path over a year ago

Nothing even remotely close to what MS is doing with Win8/WP8. But they will soon, despite their public insistence that the tablet and notebook need to be kept separate.

So LOL no, my prediction will last a bit longer still I say.

Go read what you wrote again. You were dead wrong, plain and simple.

 

[Mize]

Did you just equate success in notebook OS proliferation to future mobile hardware sales?

MS is, indeed, hugely successful on notebooks, but it hardly can be called a mobile product and that success is predicated entirely on a defacto monopoly of the corporate and consumer desktop OS space.

Can they extend that monopoly to tablets by promising desktop functionality? Maybe. Gamers are out - no dedicated GPUs on tablet x86 yet...casual users will be an uphill battle against the iPad...they really need to focus on the business user, but then they pilfer from the desktop/laptop market space rather than tablets...

We'll just have to wait and see...

 

[Mintmaster]

You miss my point completely.

The specs of the iPod were at the surface so simple that a lot of people and companies thought it'd a breeze to copy. What they all missed was that a piece of HW and SW is only a small part of a more complex whole. Your graph about declining iPod sales doesn't change the fact that, over the span of 10 years, nobody was able to challenge the iPod in the field of pure music player market share.

What point did I miss? The one that addressed the strawman you fabricated? I never claimed Win RT will beat the iPad. If I did, then you could point to the Zune or some other device trying to top the iPod with marginal feature advantages, but I didn't.

On the contrary, you completely missed mine.

The iPod became obsolete because another common device that every keeps on themselves - the phone - took over its functionality. That's what's going to happen with ARM tablets. There's no point in getting them once x86 notebooks take on the tablet form-factor with similar battery life. Everything looks peachy for ARM tablets now, just like the iPod did in 2007, but x86 tablets/hybrids will do to them what the iPhone and other smartphones did to iPods.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

ipods are still selling quite high volumes and iphone wont be able to replace some of the usage of ipods. iphone also goes for what 600-700$/€? or a very expensive contract. You'll have to pay an arm and a leg for that phone app. I'm thinking the ipods still have room to live even if the best years are behind.

 

[Laurent06]

The iPod became obsolete because another common device that every keeps on themselves - the phone - took over its functionality. That's what's going to happen with ARM tablets. There's no point in getting them once x86 notebooks take on the tablet form-factor with similar battery life. Everything looks peachy for ARM tablets now, just like the iPod did in 2007, but x86 tablets/hybrids will do to them what the iPhone and other smartphones did to iPods.

Where are the Win8 x86 tablet applications? What will make people pay $1000 for an x86 tablet instead of $500 for an iPad that has far more applications available now? A vast majority of end users simply don't care about Windows compatibility, especially compatibility for applications designed with desktop in mind.

The pro market of course is completely different.

 

[Mintmaster]

MS is, indeed, hugely successful on notebooks, but it hardly can be called a mobile product and that success is predicated entirely on a defacto monopoly of the corporate and consumer desktop OS space.

How is a tablet so much more mobile than a netbook?

I should have been more clear when I said "Win8/WP8". I was thinking about the unified kernel they're going for with the same OS for tablets and notebooks, contrary to the iPad's iOS vs the Macbook's OSX. In the smartphone market, I can't see anywhere near the degree of inevitability that I do for tablets, so WP8 will be a minor player for a while.

Can they extend that monopoly to tablets by promising desktop functionality? Maybe. Gamers are out - no dedicated GPUs on tablet x86 yet...casual users will be an uphill battle against the iPad...

The iPad is young and too simple a device for OS marketshare to be a problem there. Remember, the iPad's problem wasn't that the smartphone was a better MP3 player, but that the latter was almost as good while serving other essential daily functions (calling people) that the smartphone couldn't do. Similarly, an x86 tablet isn't going to outdo the iPad at tabletish tasks, but most of them have (and want too keep) a notebook for other computing tasks.

 

[wco81]

Most laptops sold are probably in the $500-600 range? Maybe less, sometimes you see ads for sub $400 laptops.

They're crap but they're right in the price band that most people can afford or are willing to pay for.

If x86 tablets are around $1000, the volumes aren't going to be that high. I think Apple has a huge marketshare for computers over $1000 (or maybe some slightly higher price point).

 

[Mize]

The point was that W7 isn't just a mobile product and MS doesn't make notebooks so comparisons to past performance are not applicable.

Also, iOS and OSX today are far closer to a unified kernel than anything MS is shipping yet. W8/WP8 may leapfrog in this category, but it's hardly a game changer.

 

[Mize]

Wait...surface isn't competitive as a tablet and can't replace a laptop? If true that's spelled fail.