I have never been a Mac person. I have always found them difficult to use the few times I have sat in front of them. It just wasn't what I was use to. I liked all of the buttons and tool bars that were on all of Microsoft products. From spreadsheets to word processing they all sort of behaved alike which in turn is what we all expected. There may have been better processors out there but I like many of us never bothered to look. I had what I was use to and I liked and that was it.
My experience with cellphones has been different. I got my first phone back in 1999. It had a big battery and couldn't do much other than be expensive. I "upgraded" to a smaller phone, to a flip-phone, camera phone, etc. Problem was the phones never lasted long. They were all different. It would be weeks before I knew all the features. That changed for me in 2009 when I bought an Apple iPhone 3G. It took a little while to get a feel for touchscreen but after that I saw what all the rage was. IT JUST WORKED. It was easy to use. You could transition from one task to another just like those Microsoft PC products I mentioned earlier. Here was Apple's competitive advantage and it only got better. I bought my iPhone 4 a year later which was even better!
Sadly the man who bought us all of this passed away in 2011. Since then Apple has had some missteps. Apple rolled out the iPhone 5 and a new OS earlier this month that has underwhelmed. I has some new features that I am curious to try, but other programs that many of us use everyday don't give me the same feeling I had three years ago. They don't JUST WORK anymore. Did Apple's competitive advantage die with Steve Jobs?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/29/opinion/patel-apple-maps/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
In my opinion, what happened to Apple after the death of Jobs shows that the company did not prepare as they should for the "next day". They did not find the appropriate successor to "fill the gap". The result is that Apple fans are not satisfied with the new CEO.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that there was nothing wrong with the way Apple computers are designed. Actually the thing is most of us mostly used Microsoft Windows based computers rather than MAC as a result very few of us are familiar with this product. On the other hand I agree using an iphone is much easier in comparison to MAC . The problem lies in their strategy which was less competitive incase of MAC and excellent incase of iphone. As a result customers are more inclined towards Apple phone rather than MAC.
ReplyDeleteAs far as planning goes. Supposedly Steve Jobs put together about four years worth of products.
ReplyDeletehttp://macdailynews.com/2011/10/10/steve-jobs-left-plans-for-future-apple-products/
So then was the strategy flawed or the implementation? I remember when I got my iPhone 4 there was the issue with the antenna and they immediately started issuing free bumpers. Alledgedly the iPhone 5 scratches because it is made of aluminum. Apple's answer this time around is aluminum is suppose to do that.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/apple-says-iphone-5-scratches-normal-aluminum-products-222413716.html