
Emotional Rescue - cwilson
http://daringfireball.net/2010/12/emotional_rescue
======
cletus
Great post that's basically a healthy dose of reality and commonsense.

A lot of those predicting Apple's doom (or simply decline) or a repeat of the
OS wars are ignoring the power of Apple's supply chain. As Gruber puts it: if
Android can make a great $100 handset why can't Apple?

The point about the cost of service contracts is worth repeating: the
difference between an iPhone 4 or a free handset is about 10% of the total
cost so price of the isn't all that important.

You see the power of Apple supply chain with the iPad. Apple (IMHO) had no
real inkling of just how big it was going to be, just like they didn't know
wit the original iPhone. Now volume is more of a known quantity Apple has a
lot more room to increase specs and/or lower price with the anticated
revision.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab (so far the most credible competitor) offers a screen
half the size at a $600 price point. That's the power of Apple's supply chain.

~~~
seabee
It might be only 10% in the US, but it's significantly more than that in other
countries.

In the UK, getting an iPhone 4 on a £25/mo 2 year contract from any of the 5
major carriers costs you £200-300, and gets you 100 minutes max and 500mb of
data (some networks are more generous with the data).

In the end I got an HTC Desire HD, still £280 up-front, but £10 less a month
(£240 less), 300 minutes, 'unlimited internet' (3GB). It was 70% of the TCO.

Even on the higher end (£40+), iPhone contracts offer significantly less of
everything per month than Android or Blackberry phones they give you for free.

I don't know who's setting the prices, Apple or the carriers, but as Android
keeps getting better I expect something interesting to happen over the next
year or so.

However I expect nothing interesting to happen in the tablet sector when you
can get a clearly-superior iPad for £30 more than Samsung's offering.

~~~
wazoox
Android phones are starting to appear nearly free, but everybody (really
everybody) seems to be carrying an iPhone nowadays. People don't even use it
for anything but for phone and SMS; but that tells a lot about how strong it
is as a phone brand now.

~~~
seabee
Despite knowing only two people with iPhones (brother and flatmate) and nearly
a dozen with other smartphones, it still amazes me how 95% of the phones I see
on the Tube are iPhones. London is more affluent than the rest of the country,
however.

------
NZ_Matt
These cheap Android phones are a bigger threat to Nokia than Apple.
Internationally Nokia feature phones are still incredible popular and pretty
soon Android phones will be priced low enough to be extremely competitive.

I bought my first smartphone yesterday. A Huawei Ideos for $150NZ about $100
US (I actually payed $300NZD but that included $150 prepay credit).
[http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-
review-...](http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/huawei-ideos-
review-50000664) Sure it's not as slick as an Iphone or Droid but the gap is
closing. It runs Android 2.2 and has all the popular features eg
gps/wifi/radio. Considering that an 8gb Iphone 4 costs $919 here in NZ ($600
on a contract) I think I got a pretty good deal. The next wave of smartphone
users are going to be people like me that are driven by price more than
features.

~~~
chaostheory
That's pretty much all I was thinking about while reading the article. While
cheaper Android phones may hurt Apple a bit, I think it hurts Nokia much more
if they aren't able to change fast enough. Judging from responses at the Meego
conferences, I feel bad for Nokia.

------
dasil003
It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that
Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing
Macintosh in the 90s.

Apple was a slowly sinking ship after Jobs left, coasting on old ideas and
brand loyalty from the 80s. The Apple of the 90s was a different company, and
there are no lessons there that are applicable to the Jobs era(s). To argue
any differently belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of Apple's
success.

~~~
billmcneale
> It's amazing to me that any pundit would be stupid enough to claim that
> Android will eat Apple's lunch based on an analogy to Windows crushing
> Macintosh in the 90s.

It looks extremely relevant to me, so I'd love to hear a more substantiated
rebuttal from you. The market seems to be poised to become a 70% Android lead
and the rest split among Apple, Microsoft and Nokia in quantities to be
determined.

I'm not even sure Apple will be able to get second place, to be honest, which
makes the comparison to the Windows market even more relevant.

~~~
silvestrov
In the 90s Apple went for maximizing profits without any regards to market
share, and they had bunch of CEOs who didn't understand computers.

Todays Apple has a fantastic production and supply chain, and a CEO who is way
way better.

Instead of looking at Macs in the 90s, the pundits should look at the iPod
domination in the last 10 years and how the iPad currently completely outsells
the very few competitors.

Look at how MS tried to enter the mp3 player market, and have completely
failed. Their latest phones failed too. Why do anybody expect them to be able
to get anywhere when they have a CEO who doesn't understand consumers but only
enterprise sales?

tl;dr: the pundits should talk with their kids and teenagers.

~~~
billmcneale
> Look at how MS tried to enter the mp3 player market, and have completely
> failed. Their latest phones failed too. Why do anybody expect them to be
> able to get anywhere when they have a CEO who doesn't understand consumers
> but only enterprise sales?

We're talking about Android, not Microsoft.

In terms of market share, all the numbers indicate that Android will most
likely be #1 in the world (even passing Nokia) while Apple will struggle to be
#4 or maybe #3 if they can keep ahead of Microsoft.

Again, I'm talking about market share, not profits (where Apple is the
indisputable #1).

------
wallflower
Money quote. If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake
in standard animations. Make it easier for developers to build good-looking
and good-feeling apps, fragmentation issues aside. The beauty of UIKit is if
you think like an Apple Engineer (see WWDC10 'Designing Apps with
Scrollviews'), you can build almost all of the user interfaces and apps that
are standard. Even iMovie. They give you the tools to succeed. No other
conference I've been to (WWDC10) was it so apparent they want to give you the
framework and knowledge and expert advice to build apps that look good. Apple
loves its developers. Not sure about Google's love for their Android
developers.

> Emotion is a huge factor when people choose what to buy — I’d say maybe even
> the biggest one. Apple understands this. All iOS devices — all Apple
> devices, for that matter — are designed with the emotional experience in
> mind. Why does almost everything in iOS animate? Why did Apple create
> CoreAnimation, and base UIKit app development so heavily upon it? Because
> animation, even in small unobtrusive doses, has an emotional affect. It
> results in a feeling.

~~~
ergo98
>If Android were serious about their developers, they would bake in standard
animations.

Why do you presume that they haven't? Every View has intrinsic full animation
support, and of course there's a full simile of CoreAnimation in
android.view.animation.

So why don't Android apps make use of it? Generally as a function of time,
care, and craftsmanship. Too often Android apps were second tier, and many
Android app writers were doing it to scratch an itch (versus for the iPhone
where it is typically productized).

Android apps have the potential to be just as slick, just as polished, and
just as nuanced and emotional as any iphone app. The state today is that they
_aren't_ , but that isn't any intrinsic failure of the platform.

Honestly, though, I find that sort of observation superficial and just
incredibly boring. Every iphone user when they touch an Android device will
immediately comment on the lack of slickness of the non-GPU using transitions.
As a day to day Android user, using my phone for virtually everything and
anything, this has absolutely ZERO impact on my enjoyment of the device. To
say it is unnoticed is still giving it too much credit. It's superficial
bedazzling that differentiates based upon the utterly irrelevant.

~~~
silvestrov
Looking only at the functionality and completely ignoring the design is
superficial.

Animations are a core part of the design, they make it much easier for normal
people to understand transitions and spatial interfaces in the UI, e.g. when
going from one screen to another in a hierarchy. And they make it look nicer.
(When was the last time a consumer bought a car by specs instead of by looks?)

First we had text-based UIs (hello /bin/sh). Then we had static GUIs. Now we
have animated GUIs. Many old-school unix gurus couldn't see the need for GUIs,
e.g. BrianK said "What You See Is All You Get" about WYSIWYG because he
thought GUIs were more limited than text-based UIs. But for normal people, the
'G' in GUI was the important letter and is what enables them to use the
computer.

edit: added missing word: 'limited'

~~~
ergo98
>Looking only at the functionality and completely ignoring the design is
superficial.

Who is completely ignoring the design? My comment was specifically and only
about essentially spurious, extraneous chrome -- literally interface
bedazzling. It has nothing whatsoever to do with usability, and actually
little to do with design.

You know I still marvel that Apple is held as the gold standard of design. The
iPhones notification system is truly _terrible_. The messaging system is a god
awful sin of design (for the longest time I simply could not believe that the
screenshots posted were actually from the esteemed iPhone). Many of the
transition effects stink of excess.

~~~
alanh
I downvoted you for asserting that animations have nothing to do with
usability or design, and that they are "nothing more than interface
bedazzling." Animations and movement can communicate a lot. They can give a
sense of place and aid navigation, especially in "Navigation-based" apps
(those with that left-pointing button in the top-left). They can enhance the
perceived speed of the software. They can be annoying if abused, and on iOS I
do not believe they are. They can lend a touch of consistency and increase the
perceived value of the software or entire device. And that's off the top of my
head.

~~~
ergo98
I actually said "My comment was specifically and only about essentially
spurious, extraneous chrome", which you extrapolated, and got upvotes, for
misrepresenting as "animations have nothing to do with usability or design".
Kudos on your misdirection.

~~~
alanh
What “spurious, extraneous chrome” are you referencing, and are you really
attempting to claim said chrome has no effect on the user experience?

------
guelo
This article doesn't have much substance.

"Can iOS remain the leading mobile platform without being the leading platform
measured by device unit sales? "

Well give us another metric! If Android triples their sales in 2011 (as
forecast by HTC) by what measurement will iOS still be the leader?

~~~
billmcneale
Yes, that's called Gruber Statistics. Here is another example, just a few
hours later:

<http://beust.com/weblog/2010/12/27/fragment-this/>

At the end of the day, the only metric by which Apple will be ahead of the
competition for a while is profit. They have already lost on all other axes
that I can count on, so get ready to hear "profit" trumpeted left and right by
Apple sycophants for the next five years.

~~~
mikedouglas
Did you really just put the word 'profit' in scare quotes?

~~~
billmcneale
Yes, because I didn't mean you will hear profit (which makes no sense) but you
will read the word 'profit' a lot.

Quotes are necessary here, apologies if they scared you.

------
Kylekramer
Gotta love Gruber. He makes good points, but at the end of the day he falls
back on the intangibles like emotion. Apple does consistently make superior
products and have succeeded in cultivating an emotional fanbase, but emotion
don't mean much. There has been plenty of companies with rabid fans who have
died before.

Plus, linking to a Nexus S "line" that the photographer admits was posed?
Here's some numbers. There are 323 Apple Stores in the world. There are over
1,150 Best Buys. That is Apple's real problem. They can evoke all the emotion
they want, but they picked a battle against the entire industry. I doubt they
can remain the profit leader for long.

~~~
blinkingled
"but they picked a battle against the entire industry" - That's an excellent
point which is often ignored. When you set yourself up to do everything on
your own (OS, CPU, Other hardware design etc. in case of Apple) that poses
serious scalability challenges and it of course exposes you to more and more
competition from all directions.

They are basically pissing off everyone - so they still don't have a free
navigation app with turn-by-turn to compete with Google and they will struggle
for some time to get that done. Now they got to do their own ads too. Own CPU
too - so it's going to be longer than competitors to get a great dual core ARM
CPU out. I understand there are different teams and Apple can hire as many
people as they want but in reality it just doesn't scale in the long term.
(They still need to shuffle teams between OS X and iOS as far as I can tell.)

But Apple knows they cannot play the numbers game - so they will stay a #2 or
#3 and get away with it by increasing their profitability - that's a no
brainer. But how it affects their competence in delivering new features and
hardware advances against competitors - that remains to be seen.

~~~
bjtitus
I wouldn't be so quick to discount the idea of doing everything on your own.
(Besides, they aren't exactly making all of the components on their own...just
ones they believe they can improve upon)

Judging by Apple's rapid increase in portable computer sales in the last
decade, I think many would say "picking a battle against the entire industry"
hasn't worked out too terribly for them. Apple's one-model approach for mobile
devices (with a small set of possible hardware configurations) has and will
continue to pay off big for development purposes and will allow for more
advanced features to be integrated thoroughly and simply across the platform
more quickly (examples - GPS & gyro now & touch sensitive back & NFC
technologies in the future).

The bottom line is that I would expect Android to continue to push the
industry forward on many specification style features like high quality
cameras, speedy hardware, and storage space while the iPhone will have more
"leapfrogging" features like the examples listed above. Android software
implementations will probably continue to be piecemeal while the iPhone
implementations will be more thoughtful yet limited. (example - push
notifications & UI)

There's a great article about Apple and vertical integration (specifically the
PA Semi acquisition) here: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/mitra-apple-
pasemi-tech-ent...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/24/mitra-apple-pasemi-tech-
enter-cx_sm_0425mitra.html)

~~~
blinkingled
Just to be sure, I wasn't discounting them - as I said it remains to be seen
how they scale to the DIY challenges that I mentioned. Also the impact of any
limitations resulting from these scale issues (if they prove to be a problem)
may not be that much in terms of lost sales - as more than anything Apple's
success lies in building brand loyalty and the Apple customers may choose to
live with those limits. But it will pose problems for them if they target
rapid sales growth outside the US.

------
dageshi
I have a friend who is an avid apple user, however she got a super cheap deal
from her wireless company for an android phone. And as she says she can
install the apps she really cares about (facebook e.t.c.) so sure she might
prefer an iphone but cost wise as far as she's concerned she'd be mad to turn
down the android because it's "good enough".

And from a development point of view, it's not as if we can easily cross
compile apps from one platform to another so with limited resources we have to
choose. iPhone or Android, at the moment the calculation is iPhone first
Android second, if that changes, and with sheer weight of numbers on Androids
side it might, Apple should probably be worried about drifting into
irrelevancy.

~~~
gfodor
So she has an Android phone, but wants an Apple phone. This should tell you
why Apple has nothing to worry about.

~~~
nhamann
I don't understand the logic here. An "avid apple user" went with an Android
phone despite the apparent strong emotional connection she has with the Apple
experience. How is that not something to worry about?

~~~
gfodor
Because in the end Apple can always lower their price to Android level and own
the entire market, because they have the better product. Beyond that, the
public sees Apple as the coveted device, and Android as the "good enough"
device. Apple is the leader, Android is the follower. A company in this
position is going to have the most success introducing new products and new
variations of products, since they have the most goodwill.

------
dave1619
In my opinion Apple does need to worry about Android. Android is improving at
a faster rate than iOS and is gaining faster momentum. Developers are catching
on and more are starting to see the potential behind Android. However the
biggest advantage for Android is price and variety. At Virgin Mobile you can
get an Android device, Samsung Interceptor, for under $200 with no contract
and pay just $25/month for unlimited data and 300 minutes, taxes included.
That's amazing. I love my iPhone 4, but if Virgin Mobile had a slightly better
Android phone like a Droid than I'd be tempted to switch. Sure Apple has the
emotional appeal, but how can you argue with saving $1000+ over 2 years? Apple
needs a stronger argument with the iPhone. The iPod touch and iPad are priced
very aggressively. That's why it's difficult for competition to get a hold.
But in my opinion the iPhone is overpriced and Apple is raking in the profits.
Why is the iPhone priced $400 more than a iPod touch? Doesn't make sense. Its
price abuse. Apple should price the iPhone more aggressively. And get some
variety out there.

------
nhangen
Warning: I'm an Apple fanboy, so take my opinion for what it's worth...

I wasn't always a fanboy. In fact, prior to my iPhone 3G purchase last year,
I'd never owned an Apple product. At present, my family has 2 3G's, a 4
(probably another in a week), an iPad, a Mac Mini, and an iMac.

Why do I say this? Apple converted me into an Apple buyer for life because of
the experience they provide from purchase to use. It's more expensive, but I
willingly pay it because I know what I'm getting, each and every time.

The iPhone works because you can't see it without being impressed. The Android
is good, possibly really good (at the higher price range), but it's not great,
and with the fragmentation, bloatware, and lack of controlled user experience,
I don't think it can ever be great. This is why the iPhone won't go away.

Should Apple be worried? Probably...I think they'll need a few tricks up their
sleeves in order to a) keep their casual users and b) keep some semblance of
their current market share.

Google isn't in this for apps in the same way that Apple is, they're in it for
search, which is what makes the game a bit lopsided. However, I think that's
the same reason that Apple will prevail.

I can't say how it will shake out, but there's got to be something said for
devotion, both from a producer and consumer side of things.

~~~
cubicle67
similar story here...

I'd been a Windows dev for years. Never touched anything Apple (never really
thought about them at all, to be honest), until 5 years ago when I got sick of
my wife complaining about me always fiddling with the computer ("I never know
where anything is 'cause you keep changing everything all the time") so I
decided to buy her a Mac. Idea being I'd heard they were pretty simple so
she'd be ok on it, and I wouldn't touch it because, well... it was a Mac

Then I decided that I'd better figure out hoe to use it in preparation for the
inevitable "How do I do [some task]?"

Fast forward to now, and that iMac is still out main machine but we've also
got a macbook, an iPod Nano, a 1st gen iPod touch, 2nd gen iPhone, 3rd gen
iPhone, 4th gen iPod Touch and an old Apple TV.

Oh, and my using the Mac has developed in me an appreciation for unix which
has led to a love for Linux

------
ZeroGravitas
There's some kind of Zeno's Paradox that applies to competing with Apple.

Android (for example) can start off with ugly hardware that's missing vital
components and a half-finished OS and no apps and Apple fans will, quite
rightly, point out these flaws. They'll maybe go further and assume the
platform will fail because of these things.

Fast-forward a couple of years and Android sales are soaring, often despite
these issues, which while mostly solved, may not have trickled down to the
actual Android using masses yet.

You would assume that with that rate of change, it's only a matter of time
before Android will surpass iPhone which doesn't seem to have changed quite as
much. Instead you find that _now_ the reasons they will never pass Apple are
actually subjective and non-quantifiable notions of _elegance_ , _emotion_ and
_class_ (also, oddly, the ability to get geeks lining up to be the first to
buy mass-produced devices sold in the tens of millions per year). And despite
butt-ugly hardware and software not stopping Android in its 1.5 days, the near
imperceptible (if not actually preferable) differences between 2.3 and iOS4
will forever hold them back.

------
davidedicillo
Another great article by John Gruber. It makes me laugh when people thinks
Apple is going to fail based solely on % numbers without considering the
growth of the market itself.

~~~
cma
It happened in the 90's.

~~~
tiles
Apple didn't single-handedly invigorate (if not invent) two forms of consumer-
class electronics in the 90's, and they didn't have strong leadership to
continually innovate on their leads.

Android could be the new 1995-era Windows; but who's saying Apple is the same
Apple?

~~~
cma
I don't think Apple is going to get into the same situation they got into in
the 90's. I was just replying to his argument, that growth of the overall
market makes up for loss of percentage, with a counterexample. I personally
think you have to consider a lot of other factors.

