What makes Apple sooo successful?

The story is told that Steve Jobs is obsessed with fonts. Yep, the letters and numbers you read now. He obsesses about the small things and that is what makes Apple products so desirable. The hunt is now on for Jobs' replacement. I'm 100% sure Jobs will hand-pick the person to make sure he/she is as obsessed with the very fine details as he is. To be considered you have to know your fonts.
 
As a long time Linux user I can say that this is not the case.
I need a proper command line environment for work purposes. Windows command line is a joke, and I'm simply tired of having to fiddle with my Linux desktop when I have work to do (usability, drivers, app support). OSX gives me third party support, and a decent command line environment. My mac is far from a fashion accessory. Before I get labeled as a fan boy, I'm not a big apple fan. You can pry my linux servers and android devices from my cold dead hands, but OSX an Apple hardware is solid.
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Apple hardware is PC hardware these days (apart from their mice, keyboards and very nice monitors)?

It's obviously going to be dependent on what you do. My experience with using Macs for editing, illustration and video work has been as good (and bad) as my experience with PCs. Most of the people who I know that actually use Linux are my brother's engineering friends and they swear by it (but then again that's obvious since I don't think Apple target the engineering market).

The majority of people I have met who have Macs, apart from people in film and graphic design, are students who have no need for them (and a graphic designer doesn't even really need one these days). Even my brother has noticed a lot more undergrads at UCT wandering around with Macs, and most of them only seem to use them for internet and word processing. In my head I would rather buy a R5000 laptop that does what I need it do, than spend double and fit in with the "cool kids".

End of the day, your average Joe buys into Apples marketing and spends double what he needs to on a portable/desktop computer, to do the same things he can for a lot less money.
 
Their secret ?

Their software is developed by them, and so is their hardware with associated drivers etc. So everything is designed to work right out of the box and keep on working. No problems with incompatible drivers etc
There is a lot more - like good marketing, good business strategies etc, but at the end of the day their equipment looks good, and works well - for that peace of mind I am happy to pay a bit more
 
"Focusing is about saying no" - Steve Jobs (WWDC'97)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8eP99neOVs (terrible quality video but some good thoughts as usual)

Think about Apple products - how ruthlessly minimalist they are - the are insanely focused. They remove a lot of features, and take out a lot of options from their products, all to make it simpler. They will only implement something if they do it well. Most companies are too scared to do that.
 
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zolly said:
Apple products are like fashion accessories, in fashion today, out of fashion tomorrow. While they have definitely redefined/created new markets with the Ipod, Iphone and IPad, I will never understand why anyone, outside of the arts/film industries, would buy a Mac. A Mac these days is PC hardware with an OS that is no better than Windows 7 or any of the other free popular linux distros.

Another thing that bugs me is the costs involved with repairing one. There is always a cheaper, better alternative, but due to Apple's marketing people will buy one just to be cool (as numerous others have pointed out). One friend of mine was having issues with her Windows XP notebook. It was about 3 years old. I fixed it in a couple of hours for free, but the most it would have cost her at a store was R200 p/h of service. Another friend of mine had her macbook (which was literally 2 weeks out of warranty) and took it to Apple shop where they wanted to charge her something like a minimum of R500 just to look at the thing.
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Linux is still rubbish for a normal user. It's come a long way, but it remains lacking.

In the film world there's no real value in the Mac. In other creative fields you might find it worthwhile because the Mac is entrenched (not because it has any performance advantage).

The Apple laptops are nice and thin, but they end up short on ports and completely missing standard video output (unless you buy their overpriced add-ons). Their touchpad is unbeatable though. I wish for the day when PC laptops get decent touchpads with working drivers.

Is there anything in the PC world that compares to the iMac? I can certainly see the appeal of the design to an ordinary person who has no desire to fiddle with their machine, open or upgrade it.

For OS X vs Windows I think each has it's pros and cons. A big plus of OS X for me is having a unix OS with a decent GUI and integration. I really wish Microsoft would put a proper shell into Windows. And I wish Apple would include a file browser that works like Explorer. Both of their web browsers are rubbish. And Chrome on OS X has a serious CPU utilisation problem. There is no file comparison tool for OS X that is reasonably priced and matches the one I use on Windows. Because I use both Windows and OS X I don't believe anyone that pretends that OS X is more reliable than a modern version of Windows - they can both get flaky and both have bugs, in their initial releases and updates.

My experience of Apple service in the UK was very different to here. The hourly rate for servicing in the UK was £24, they'll find the problem for free and I'll guarantee that if a product is only just out of warranty they'd fix it for free too. It's all about market size though. Every Apple store I went into in the UK was packed, all the time. They sell so much stuff that keeping their customers happy is more important than scraping a few extra quid for a repair. In reality you're paying for all that service upfront because no matter what anyone tries to claim you can easily get branded PC hardware in the UK for much less than an Apple machine will cost. The problem in South Africa is you're paying the premium and getting little, if anything, in return.

Overseas you'll see a lot of students with Apple computers and you'll see businesses standardising on them because Apple gives both huge discounts. That's another way Apple gets their lifelong customers. Here I'm surprised any students buy them with the pitiful 5% discount offered.
 
surfs-up said:
Their software is developed by them, and so is their hardware with associated drivers etc. So everything is designed to work right out of the box and keep on working.
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In theory the same applies to PC laptops. The problem I found was manufacturers moving on from a particular model and no longer bothering to fix bugs in the custom drivers they supplied for the hardware, along with generic drivers either not existing or being almost impossible to get installed. Not that Apple doesn't abandon users of older hardware, but it does tend to take longer. And there have been cases of them supplying horrible drivers, then taking a long time to fix the problem.
 
I've been a PC fan all my life, but when my work offered if I wanted a Macbook Pro (2011, i7, 13"), I accepted because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

I have an Ubuntu and Windows PC at home, so I know both the 'nix and win's very well. But I must say, the thing that has me most impressed about the Macbook Pro, is the quality of the hardware. This thing is an engineering marvel. My colleague and I compared his new i7 HP; Its an eyesore in comparison. Bits and bobs sticking out with sharp edge, felt much thicker, heavier and bulkier than the Macbook.

The power chord is a fine example of what makes Apple so damn good; HP has the good old thick power cable with the male point. Bulky and heavy to carry. Apple has that thin cable with the magnetic end, which pops into place and is easy to roll up to pop in your bag. BTW if you accidentally trip over the cable, it pops out with ease, so your Macbook doesn't land on the floor. Try that with a normal laptop/notebook.

Another thing to note; The battery time. Using MacOS, it lasts 7-8hours. I sat almost the entire day working unplugged. If I switched to my bootcamp partition after a full recharge, Windows displays less than 3 hours remaining. We even tested that and it ran out of juice in under 2.5 hours.

Anyways, I doubt I'll get a Desktop, but their Macbook Pro was worth every penny and I'm planning to buy it from the company.
 
I think it all started with being the first (i minght be wrong) co. to focus on OCNTENT with the iTunes store. This gives them a HUGE userbase and that is on of the main reasons many choose them.

That said it is also:
* fine design, which means looking at it from the user's perspective, looking at every little detail.
* Apple has amaising people working on the prodcts and Steve'o is a great leader.
* They focus on design in everything they do from the motherboards to the posters in the Apple Stores
* In the US they have OUTSTANDING customer support
* They leave things out where others try to cramp more in.

PS. the above does not mean they don't make mistakes :)
 
koffiejunkie said:
They have. It's called Windows Powershell. And if you poo poo it, you probably haven't taken the time to get to know it - it's very powerful.
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Didn't realise they'd eventually integrated that. Then cmd.exe should no longer exist.
 
They make beautiful products that anyone can use. People who are naturally bad on computers can pick up an ipad or ipod and be using it within a few minutes without any help. Their battery life is outstanding and their stuff just works.
The sleek packaging is amazing too. Even the first iPod I bought came in a really beautiful box. (And this was in 2006)
 
RustyPrincess said:
They make beautiful products that anyone can use. People who are naturally bad on computers can pick up an ipad or ipod and be using it within a few minutes without any help.
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Not true of their actual computers though.
 
noxibox said:
Not true of their actual computers though.
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I know you don't mean the design of the machines... anyone who thinks the MBP or MBA or iMac are ugly is a Philistine. ;)
I really didn't think the switch from Windows to Mac was difficult at all, but hey, that's just me. Remember, on a Mac you can also run MS apps like Word and Excel and that makes the change a lot easier... also Macs can, in fact, run Windows... Don't remember Windows being like that... Just saying.
 
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