> there is virtually only one "elite" brand and that is Apple
Bzzt, thank you for playing.
What sticks in my craw is that they're not even "elite", they just do things differently, and not always better than the competition/Android, even for things like UI.
And if Apple are found to have done or said something stupid (Nexus 7 vs. the iPad mini springs to mind here, along with the early 'supercomputer' G4s being hamstrung by their PC133 memory bus), then history is revised, instead of people learning from their mistakes.
I don't see how Motorola/Freescale and IBM having shifted focus from competitive consumer PowerPC chips to embedded applications reflects so badly on Apple. That platform remained competitive with Intel until the G5, which never hit its stride.
Apple learned from their mistake. They made a dramatic transition to Intel inside of a single year. The impact to consumers was nearly zero.
Compare this with Microsoft's recent efforts to switch to ARM.
This is nothing to do with the processor, or PowerPC vs. Intel, but the memory bus in early G4s being a limiting factor. The G4 was great in specific Photoshop benchmarks, but getting beaten in real world tests by 18 month old Pentium IIIs.
Of course, you'd never know that from the ads or commentary at the time (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwI7xcdYV2k).
Bzzt, thank you for playing.
What sticks in my craw is that they're not even "elite", they just do things differently, and not always better than the competition/Android, even for things like UI.
And if Apple are found to have done or said something stupid (Nexus 7 vs. the iPad mini springs to mind here, along with the early 'supercomputer' G4s being hamstrung by their PC133 memory bus), then history is revised, instead of people learning from their mistakes.