“Why does everyone pick on Apple products?”
This was an implied question I got from @Scionwest on Twitter recently. In light of last week’s column on the new iPad overheating, I thought it was a fair observation: We clearly have had laptops that seemed to get hotter than the iPad 3, and we sure didn’t pound on them as hard.
Part of that is likely because you don’t typically hold a laptop. But there are other examples of Apple catching an especially hard break, like Antenna Gate. The same issue existed in other products at the time, yet generally didn’t get much ink. Why?
It’s a downside to Apple’s homogenous product line.
It’s ironic when you look back at Apple’s iconic 1984 ad that the company has stopped being the rebel and is now even more consistent than IBM, the company it was making fun of in the original ad. It also showcases that the one-time IBM model, now Apple model, works.
Every strategy has advantages and disadvantages, but often we look at one or the other and don’t contrast them. The disadvantages can range from opportunity costs (what was not done in order to do what was done), to outright problems with the strategy. For instance, the advantage of speeding is you get where you are going quicker; the disadvantages include higher chances of a ticket, accident, fatality, and insurance cost risks. But I’ll bet none of us, including me, think through those when we put the pedal to the metal.
So let’s talk about the advantages and disadvantages to Apple’s simplified line model.
The simplified lineup
When compared to other computer and consumer-electronics companies, Apple is more successful, but its product lines look downright anemic. At the start of Apple’s recovery, there was just one iPod. Then different capacities came out. Then different sizes and colors.
The iPod line was more of an exception, because with the iPhone you can only choose capacity, and with the iPad, capacity and connectivity. Both just come in black and white. The core components, processor, screen, case, battery and other essential parts don’t change. The same goes for Macs: Apple basically offers two laptop designs and three desktop designs.
The advantages of keeping it simple
Operating this way allows Apple to focus. It can put more into design, more into marketing, and maintain a higher level of connection with its brand and hardware ID. In addition, its repair, stocking, returns, and sales incentives are simpler and cheaper. Finally, there is less customer confusion. Nobody is confused between buying an iPhone against an iPad. Within Apple, only the iPod line presents any opportunity for product confusion, and even there it is likely minimal.
Go to buy an Android phone and you have plenty of choices, but which one is the right one? Sometimes Apple is simply the easier decision to make.
The pitfalls of no choice
When something goes wrong with this approach, problems are magnified.
If Dell or HP has a problem with one of its PCs, it might affect a few thousand people. If the something goes wrong with a laptop, they can simply push buyers to another model. If Samsung has an issue with one of its phones, it can simply just push you to another phone. In any case, because the lines are so diverse, one problem seldom touches a company’s entire customer base.
When an Apple product has a problem, it touches all buyers of the line in most cases. You might opt to buy the older model (for instance, given the new iPad’s problems, I’m recommending the iPad 2), but for Apple, pushing the older product would look like a failure. It can’t support that strategy publically. The iPhone 3G truly sucked, but did Apple push folks to the older model? No. Apple always has to ride through or cover up the problem, because it doesn’t have the option of pushing people to another product – it doesn’t have another viable product to push them to.
Image courtesy of Consumer Reports
That’s why Apple is generally slow to admit problems, and you get what looks like a company in denial while engineers frantically work on the issue. Recall that Apple never publicly fessed up to the problems with MobileMe, but fired the team that created it and replaced it with iCloud. Steve Jobs downplayed Antenna Gate as much as possible, but Papermaster got fired for it, Apple had to go to IBM for a fix, and the subsequent iPhone 4S featured a complete (hardware) redesign, suggesting there were likely other problems with the iPhone 4 we didn’t catch.
Skip the iPad 3
From Apple’s standpoint, the simplified product lineup is working — just look at the company’s bottom line. But once you understand the shortcomings (the company has to cover up problems while it fixes them) consumers might want to adopt a different strategy for buying Apple products: Don’t be the first to buy, and skip products that appear to have a critical or unusual number of problems.
Look at the iPad 3. Like the iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, chubby iPod, and tiny iPod Shuffle, it has some critical issues. It runs hot (Consumer Reports has now been corroborated by other reviewers, which means we should anticipate early battery fatigue and other internal problems over time), takes twice as long to charge, is heavier than the last model, LTE isn’t available in many places (Australia just forced a refund, and parts of Europe appear to be ramping up to do the same), and in a constrained data market it consumes a ton of it (folks are burning through their monthly data plans in days). This last point is like bringing out a Hummer during a gas shortage. If you think about it, had anyone else brought out a product with this many issues, it wouldn’t have sold. That either speaks to the power of Apple marketing, or our own gullibility. Maybe both.
I expect the fourth-generation iPad to run cooler, be lighter, still have the same display, use data compression and upscaling to get around the data problem, arrive in a world with more LTE, and likely have Gorilla Glass (I’m throwing that in because products without it are breaking a lot, and Apple helped invent it). Engineers might also try to get the battery to charge more quickly, but that’s a tough problem.
When Apple has a bad product, it typically fixes the problems in the following product, which is the one to buy. It reminds me of the “buy the third generation” rule we used to use with Microsoft.
Game the system
Apple has clearly selected a selling strategy that works best for its bottom line. Once you learn it, you can adopt a buying strategy that works best for your bottom line. By waiting to jump on the latest products, you can buy smarter, navigate through the problems with Apple’s strategy, and more reliably pick the best products over a period of time. The iPad 2 was the high point in the iPad line, as is the iPhone 4S, and both are still on the market.
Just like, as an adult, you don’t have to eat everything on your plate, you don’t have to buy every Apple product. You really don’t.
Guest contributor Rob Enderle is the founder and principal analyst for the Enderle Group, and one of the most frequently quoted tech pundits in the world. Opinion pieces denote the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Digital Trends.
@fubajuba, not only does your post reek of Apple fanboy, but the fact that you deny such, makes your post hypocritical. Should’ve just stayed a fanboy…….
Because Apple, Google and Microsoft have become a religion
The poster children for exploiting Chinese workers would have nothing to do with it….
I am tired of their so called innovations. Yeah they basically made the tablet PC but they dont add shit that other companies have added to make them worth their inflated price tag cause of their use of aluminum rather than polycarbonate.
by the way, my quad core laptop with 8 gigs of ram outdoes it Irun linux on it, nuff said…
apple products are for yuppies and snobs because they don’t know anything about computers,but want something for thier ego to impress people…that is why gprovida, besides any tablet running linux will outdo any apple product…
I-sheep don’t might standing in-line 4 the latest over-hyped product bcos they get 2 be seen by others as up-to-date, trendy , potentially affluent & all the other image stuff. These people aren’t independent-thinkers but crowd -pleasers ~ U know the kind of morons who also hang out in shopping malls or spend hrs drinking one cup of Coffee at a side-walk cafe…mannequins on show.
Because of the image it portrays in its commercials…people think that you have to be a tree hugging…vw driving..vegetarian who drinks coffee at starbucks and has no problem getting the same old phone or tablet or mp3 player while paying more for the device even though its competition can do the same thing for cheaper
because they’re overpriced, they are proprietary in the parts they use for thecomputers they sell(you can’t use regular hard drives,you have to use the one they designed to replace it.Its products are not upgradeable you have to buy the next generation,and thier products are not as goo as anyone else’s). and the stuff apple sells is overpriced yuppy crap now a days.,Oh and you can’t run linux on any of it’s computers…
People fear what they do not understand.
I’m thinking about taking back my iPad 3. To be honest, the screen doesn’t look all that much better than the iPad 2. I looked at an HD movie and it didn’t look any different than how it looked on the iPad 1 from my naked eye.
@Thom Bell – I take it you ate Chinese food recently?
I am tired of their so called innovations. Yeah they basically made the tablet PC but they dont add shit that other companies have added to make them worth their inflated price tag cause of their use of aluminum rather than polycarbonate.
Because Apple customers are all willing beta testers and Apple loves the feedback.
People pick on Apple about these things because Apple keeps on trying to show itself as problem-free, “it just works”. No one ever said all Android products work without a single problem, for example, so, when there is a problem related to an Android phone, it’s discussed, but the company in question isn’t attacked in that sense. However, Apple (and/or Apple fanboys) often claim their technology is perfect, and then when it does fail, often largely, people have every right to complain. Especially the Antennagate problem – it was huge. The worst part: first, Apple tried to cover it up by saying it was a software problem, then, tried to make it look like other phones had the same problem as well (I remember seeing a video where a motorola droid x was being squeezed to the point that it looked like the person was trying to destroy it with his bare hand, the signal “finally” went down then), until finally, they admitted that yes, it was a hardware problem.
Gee Rob, link bait much? You have been pretty much wrong on everything Apple for a long long time. Even CR admits that the temperature issue is not much as you will notice it, but there is no risk of burning anything. Why you would sit there and rate the iPad 2 over the new iPad is ample evidence of your lack of credibility. LTE, and a Retina display combined with a larger battery with nearly no increase in size (slightly thicker), weight (slightly heavier), same battery life, and more importantly the same price is another display of just how good Apple is at this stuff.
What you don’t hear from Rob is that he is a marketing consultant who is working for or has worked for most of Apple’s competition.
He has a financial interest in lowering the sales of Apple’s products.
You can’t believe a word the greedy SOB says.
This makes no sense. IPhone 3G and iPhone 4 and iPad were terrific products with generally silly nit picking criticisms and category defining devices with sales and aspiring copy cats everywhere. Apple gets picked on because it makes web click headlines. The lates web click silliness on new iPad is about non-issue heat, read PC Mag, or it has fast wireless and people use it (so limits are reached sooner) or its less than 5% heavier and thicker yet has battery for 10 hours and competitors are striving to minic and it sells super well. Again this article makes no sense. Regarding “choice” from a reviewers perspective it keeps them employed with near useless spec tables and for buyers it doesn’t offer choice it offers confusion and anxiety. Famous study of choices of jam 5-10 is great 50-100 is buyer misery.
Because page views.
Haters gonna hate
“Why does everyone pick on Apple products?”
Answer: Not everyone picks on Apple. But those that do, have an irrational fear/hatred of things that are positive/beneficial.
This is the same as those people who fear/hate the idea of everyone having guaranteed health care, as if everyone being provided health care (no matter how rich or poor they are) is a terrible thing.
People have irrational fears of things that are good for them simply because they don’t think logically for themselves, but are easily led by others (religious leaders, political leaders, technocrats, etc.) who have their own personal motives and agendas.
Because they’re a lot of money and pretty so Apple products make you look like your Bill Gatin’
@fubajuba, not only does your post reek of Apple fanboy, but the fact that you deny such, makes your post hypocritical. Should’ve just stayed a fanboy…….
Touché?
or a political party
Hmm, let me know when Bing and Apple start filtering search results to better promote their political agendas like Google does. Do a search for “Google Plays Politics with the Search Results” and you’ll find the top link should be a article on politicnow.com that describes what a lot of other political sites are complaining about that don’t fall into Googles political agenda. I don’t see this blatant attempt at controlling the information that people are exposed all over mainstream media. Instead were to busy arguing over iPads being hotter and apple fanboys. At least their not trying to control you.
Because Apple, Google and Microsoft have become a religion
Apple has always had that following. This is nothing new. Google is growing one now and Microsofts is unique. Poeple tend to like the PC experience better due to freeware stuff and customization, but hate Microsofts OS.
I personally don’t own a Apple computer. My house has two Windows 7 laptops and a Windows 7 desktop. I own Apple phones and tablets however because there isn’t any other tablet out there that works as simple as Apples. When I’m laying in bed at night or sitting at the Dr. I don’t need customization, I need it to just work quickly so I can do a few things while waiting and then put it away. I have my laptops and desktop at home.
I should also mention that all of the services I use on my PC’s are Googles. So I have nothing against either company. I use Chrome, GMail, Docs, Cal and their awesome search. People expect a 1 stop shop with tech but to get the most out of tech, you have to use products from all three companies. IMHO.
To use the proverbial “when one is handed a lemon, one makes lemonade” metaphor, but in this case I DON’T think the iPad is a lemon. With regard to the heat problem, put it in a case. With regard to the battery charge, I welcome the longer battery life. With regard to the weight….SRSLY? Join a gym, lift weights.
Why does “everyone” pick on Apple products? We call them playa’ haters. Simple solution…don’t whine just don’t buy. It’s not complicated.
Screw the iHaters. They’re just jealous. If they want to rip apart products, they should start with the subpar products from Dell or H-P. That should give those nincompoop know-it-all tech critics something to really howl about. Consumers are buying Apple products like there’s no tomorrow and most of them are very happy with what they get. It’s just those damn losers that always got something negative to say about any Apple product when they’re probably trying to find fault with some of the best products on the market. Who give a fig what those Droid Lovin’ losers think about Apple products. If they don’t like them, that’s their tough luck. The iHaters jumped stink all over the iPad when there are dozens of Android craptablets that go unsold on the shelves they could pick apart.
Because they are trendy, and ultra cool nerdy ass people dont like em because they are closed source. They love to waste countless hours modding and hacking, but while they are hacking I’m busy gettin Laid. Ya heard?
ROFL +1
Does Mrs Palmer really count?
The quality of apple hardware is never really the issue I believe. You pay for quality when you purchase a mac sure. It’s the retarded OS’s on Apple products that puts people off, and starts the torrent of hate against them. My Fiance was told to purchase a Mac Book Pro for her Media Design Degree, but it’s been all problems, crashes, hangs and extra costs for applications that are freeware on the windows platform.
The best thing we did was install Windows on the Mac… no problems at all, and the productivity went up thanks to the many choices available to handle the many tasks. It’s put us off Apple Mac products in a big way…
I myself absolutely love to customize my OS experience and make it perform and react to my needs, through freely available software (freeware btw, not dodgy pirated stuff) and readily available options that don’t seem to have a premium apparently reserved for the superior apple programming o.O.
Because the products are overhyped and overpriced…the culture surrounding them is pretentious…the company pushing them is arrogant and delusional…they value form over function and ignore the needs of users…they take credit for the ideas of others…they put other people’s technology and put it in a shiny package and act like they invented something…they make Microsoft seem like an Open Source, non-proprietary company in comparison…they cater to people who are technologically illiterate and to people who think they need a $2000 laptop to check their email…..other than that I don’t see any reason to pick on them
Well, first things first, you can buy a laptop from apple for $1000, not $2000.
Secondly, they do nothing different with their OS that Microsoft does. Microsoft provides users with a SDK (.NET) or straight C++ if you choose to develop for their OS. So does Apple. You can build any kind of app you want with C++ or use their SDK to build apps for the OS X.
Microsofts Windows Phone 7 is locked down, with no C++ support. You are forced to use C# and their .NET mobile platform. Where’s the outcry from that? None. Plenty regarding Apples sandboxed model approach though even though Microsoft does the same thing and has a very strict policy on submitted apps. I know because after 6 months of trying I just dropped my app and moved on (eating my $100 developer costs).
Third, I used to work at Frys Electronics. While working there, you as a employee could buy anything in the store with a discount of 10% of company cost. So I bought a complete new stereo setup for two different cars. The total cost was $2,600 but I only paid $1,100. Tell me that’s not a massive inflation. How about blu-ray movies that cost $20-30 but only $0.75 to burn, package and ship? The larger movies like Iron Man made all their initial costs back in the box office, so why the need to sell for $25?
Once again, people single Apple out, even though the entire industry does this.
Fourth, Apple has been the first to do several features and ideas in the past. The ones that they are not the first to, they are open about and disclaim that. Steve Jobs would typically say in his keynotes “We might not be the first with this, but we will be the best”.
Lastly, If Apple valued form over function, then why is the iPad 3 one of the very few that has a quad-core and the only device to have a retina display? iPad 3 has a lot of function that other devices don’t have and it’s in a form that’s consumer friendly. In a lot of areas, the iPad can do more than what the low end $500 laptops can do with a better battery life and more power. Find me a quad (or dual) core laptop for $350 (iPad 2) or $500 that runs snappy. Zero.
“New” iPad, or any other iPad for that matter, is NOT quad-core. And no, graphic cores DOES NOT count. Stop spreading faulty Apple propaganda. It is still a dual-core device, period!
You make my point even more valid. Find me a $500 laptop with a dual core CPU & quad core GPU. The last $500 Windows 7 laptop I had could barely run Aero without lag let alone a full screen FPS with its integrated graphics chip
How does me pointing out your mistake/lack of knowledge/ignorance to the specs of a product you dissect so deeply make your point more valid is beyond me but I don’t want to get involved in this fanboy-heavy discussion too much. Know your s%&$ before you post, that’s all. I will just add that flashy graphics and FPS is not always the most important aspect of the device. I can name hundreds of things iPad won’t do and a crappy $379-$479 laptop (HP 2000z series, HP Pavilion g6z and g6x series) will do with ease, activities required by my job description. Tablets are great and are the future but currently there is still plenty of applications where they simply won’t suffice. So for me tablets-to-laptops comparison is still the equivalent of comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended).
I’m not criticizing you because I disagree with your post. It is not ignorance or lack of knowledge, I did not separate the CPU/GPU in my original post because this was not a technical discussion, nor was the point that I was making so I simplified the specs. The point was that you can not find a quad-core or dual core laptop for $350-$500 that can run as smooth as a tablet. Read a comment through thoroughly before you decide to start calling people ignorant. Find me a laptop that can handle video editing or do gaming as smoothly with its integrated graphics like the iPad. It might not be the most important aspect of the device, but it is one of the key selling points Apple makes with it. You can’t pick and choose what aspects you want to compare to, you compare against the entire device or not at all.
The difference between the laptops and tablets is marginal now. I just played with another Windows 7 laptop today to see if they’ve improved since my last one and no, sadly it was still just as sluggish as my last one was for $500. If Microsoft would ship the laptops with Aero disabled and Windows Widgets disabled, less services running in the background, it would run great. I don’t buy a laptop though so I can go home and spend several hours improving performance myself.
Lastly, tell me which laptops you can get 10 hours of constant use out of without charging? I’d like to know what you feel a laptop in that price range can do that a tablet (not iPad only) can’t do. In a polite way if you could :) No need to not be professional in our discussion lol.
As a side note, I’m not a apple fan boy. I simply like their products. Like I mentioned someplace on this pages comments, I have a Windows 7 Alienware PC and two Windows 7 laptops. I even worked on developing Windows Phone 7 apps which I mentioned in my original comment post. I use Google products on my devices all the time. I regularly defend Googles practices such as their latest Policy change, because peoples ignorance and instant “have to blame the company for something I know nothing about” really annoy me.
I own a new iPad, and love it. Heat? No problem. LTE? No problem. Magnetic cover? No problem. Whatever else you got? No problem. Its display is beautiful, and it “just works.” If you don’t want one, that’s fine. But you’re sure bending over backwards to come up with reasons why.
Because most apple fanboys are so GD pretentious.
I find it ironic that the Apple Fan boys are labeled pretentious by the PC/Android world going well out of their way to bash apple products… So supposing that you are superior/smarter/wiser than apple product owners of all shapes becaus you choose to dispense your discretionary income in other ways is *NOT* pretentious?
I love these “arguments”.
I think the better question is why do apple fanboys defend them no matter what..
This is one of the dumbest articles I have ever read….
DataPlan destruction on the iPad 3 has almost nothing to do with the design or implementation of the iPad, but rather the sheer ham-handed consumption patterns and a massively bloated web designed for Wi-fi based broadband access pushes this…
It’s amazing that critics, reviewers, and writers forget the amount of malarky they punished on the web about the same products now heralded as the pinnacle of modern development…
The original iPad was ridiculed for its design, purpose, features, and even name.
iPad 2 was torn apart for lack of 4G, lack of retina displays, lack of features of other tablets.
iPad 3 is torn apart for the fact that it adheres to laws of physics (i.e more heat, a larger battery required [longer charge time, more heat], 4G availability issues etc…).
When will it be that people can stop judging a product based upon its imaginary future version, write concerning its objective qualities, and actually diagnose real issues.
I am far from an Apple Fanboy, but it’s kind of sad watching all facets of information pump out the same crap, droning on about “issues” that are imaginary, remote, caused by an outside force, or inconveniences at best.
Thank god Apple doesn’t expose its users/developers to the torture that the fragmented Android world goes through.
I’ll take a hot/slow charging iPad 3 over a hot/slow/slow charging/iPad 1-2 ripoff any day….
*Please let me revise my “dumbest article I have ever read”… It’s not the article that is dumb, just the issues it is forced to address…
My apologies for a hasty and annoyed response….
Good article, I enjoyed reading it.
While I agree that Apples marketing and peoples gullibility helped sell iPad 3, I believe that the people are also naive. How do you not realize that the iPad will take longer to charge when they add LTE and Retina with it and maintain the same battery life? LTE drains battery like crazy, ask HTC with their Evo or even my iPhone 4S. It’s common sense that the battery would take longer to charge, but most consumers seem to be lacking that now-a-days.
Also still find it humerous that people cry over 16 degrees. Yeah it’s warmer than the iPad 2 but it’s not burning your hand. I just ate a slice of pizza last night and held it in my hand fresh from the oven and it was more than 16 degrees, but I was still able to eat. Granted you hold the pizza for less time than a iPad.
Bottom line is I agree with waiting for iPad 4. I personally did not buy the new iPad, primarily because the difference between iPad 2 and 3 was not large enough for me to have it.
Good write up, glad I was able to help :)
People always want to tackle the guy with the ball.
Because their Apple-wannabe products can’t compete!
because all of the marketing and image that is associated with Apple inflates the prices beyond reason? Not to mention the margin they get anyhow?
@craig fenton,as if american industries in general dont exploit workers especially overseas workers….microsoft? dell? and we as consumers have just as much to blame…not to mention…apple has not disregarded the issue and is taking a very proactive roll,when they could have just as easily looked the other way.
The poster children for exploiting Chinese workers would have nothing to do with it….
Yes they are the poster child for being open and dealing with the issue. The irony is that Apple addressing this is going to hurt their competitors. Apple was the one who released a supplier report that admitted to these issues, Apple is the one who brought in the Fair Labor group, they re the ones who forced Foxconn to up wages. They are the ones pushing for better working conditions. You might want to go talk to MS, Dell, HP, Gateway, and others who also use those factories. It was actually an XBOX line where the workers on mass threatened to commit suicide. Also when Foxconn upped the payouts to families of suicides they saw an increase in suicides, drop the payout and the suicides went down. The actual suicide rate at these factories is well below the national averages for the US and CHinese general populations. Those workers have vastly better conditions and get paid more then the vast majority of Chinese workers. It’s so easy to spew BS as an iHater.
Because they are jealous they didn’t buy AAPL stock when it first hit the market to rake in the money today from obedient little Apple consumers.
They are very good but unfortunately they are also arrogant so when they slip up, people will pounce on their flaws.
Because they are number 1 and make lots of money.
I think you misunderstand how compression works. Compressed images would come out at a lower quality than the ones specifically designed for the retina display. The carriers need to catch up with the technology – not the other way around. Other than that, good article.
Exactly right, you dont have to buy every Apple product. Why do people pick on them? All their products are excellent dont get me wrong, but this company by such a higher margin than any other company deliberately leaves out features in their products that should just be standard given the time period in which it comes out. It causes buyers to nitpick and use patience like they’re at bat waiting for a fastball which isnt necessary when you have so much established already.