In terms of profits, yes.

But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android, and I'm even more invested in macOS. That Apple builds nice hardware is a bonus for me (but I'd honestly prefer better software right now).

I mean, on paper Apple is making more money from hardware than from software, but how do you measure hardware sales that only happened because of the software?

I'm the inverse of you I guess. I'm not a huge fan of macOS or iOS (iOS's notification story is an absolute nightmare), but their hardware is always among the best, if not the best. Apple might not appear to be the best if you're just comparing line items on a spec sheet, but the whole package always seems more solid than their competition.

I'll never buy a non-Apple laptop anymore after dealing with flaky PC laptops for years, and the only reason I haven't bailed on Android is because of how bought into the ecosystem I am... but I'd buy an iPhone in a heartbeat if I could reliably run Android on it.

Apple has been very serious about how they’re a hardware company vs a software company for like 30+ years now. Literally the first thing SPJ did after coming back was kill the Mac clones program. They’re obsessed with the feel of the hardware in every way. The software is just a platform.

Actually, Steve Jobs emphasised a few times that the reason why Apple was successful is because of the software.

https://youtu.be/dEeyaAUCyZs

They're successful because of the software only because the hardware is ancillary to their software ecosystem. Their hardware makes their software run much more effectively than most of their competitors, and therefore acts as a major barrier to entry. I don't think there's a single tech company more completely integrated and whole than Apple. That's why they can emphasize on experience rather than just specs as they're selling more than just software, or hardware.

Judging from how bad the software is getting I’d wager they forgot this.

At least it's not Windows. I'm amazed at how something as basic as Bluetooth has been completely fucked for me since I got a PC. On no other platform have my Bose QC35s, AirPods, or wireless Logitech headset had issues. On Windows 10, they hardly work at all. Ironically the only device that works for longer than a few seconds before losing audio is my AirPods, which I still have to reconnect frequently to get the audio o actually come through.

At least it's not Android, either. I don't use Windows, but for me the Android OTA upgrade to Oreo on my Nexus 6P has been disastrous for use with the QC35s. I have to reboot the awful thing several times a day to get consistent BT audio, and it will happily chew through the battery several times a day too, unless I leave it on charge for periods. Been with Android since the G1, but I'm seriously thinking about switching to iOS because I'm just so frustrated on a daily basis with this awful release, which seems barely tested. I do wonder at which point I switched from the optimist's "oh yay, an update!" to the pessimist's "oh shit, here comes a boatload of careless regressions".

Thats the problem with Windows - it still does not carry a decent Bluetooth stack and depends on the vendor shipping one. And all of them I have seen so far are more or less crap.

Linux on the other hand is exclusively Bluez which works fine... but god forbid you want to do something like BLE communications or more complex sound stuff, the docs are horrid.

The OS X BT stack is... well I dont have any issues with it per se but it, too, lacks features like a file explorer or an easy way to send files via BT.

Hmm, I've got both Bluetooth File Exchange.app and Bluetooth Explorer.app on my mac which are both from Apple and I think what you're looking for. Not sure if they came default or when I downloaded the bluetooth dev kit years ago. I remember using it to transfer mp3s onto a ZTE bar phone back in the day.

So basically, bluetooth is still a PITA nowadays :/.

If I turn the key in my car, get the electricity running though the circuit, then the phone gets connected to the car. If I turn the key one more time to ignite the engine the car system lose the bt connection and I have to manually force the connection with the phone.

I just ignite the car as soon as I sit in now.

> the problem with Windows

Windows has a ton of problems.

FWIW, I just got rid of my wireless keyboard and mouse because I was tired of weird random connecting issues with my Macbook.

Yeah, I'd agree unfortunately.

Apple killed the clones because the clone program wasn't profitable enough to compensate for the fact that MS had already won the OS wars.

It was either Apple or the clones, and so the clones got axed.

Oh the horror. The clone I used was particularly troubled and the often-sensitive order of loading system extensions was farcically unstable.

Eh, our clone (Power Computing) was rock solid.

> Literally the first thing SPJ did after coming back was kill the Mac clones program.

That's because the clones were cannibalizing Apple's own hardware offerings - the clones were gradually putting Apple out of its own business.

This NYT article from 1996 talked about how the Mac clone strategy was playing out for Apple [0].

[0] https://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/1230macs.htm...

> But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android

Afraid I'm completely different. I have an iphone but my computer runs linux. The reason I have an iphone is because the hardware is top-notch, and the OS is rather constricting -- I would much rather have an iphone running android than one running ios.

I'm similar, I would love to buy Apple hardware and have the freedom to put my own software on it. I'd also be happy to buy a new laptop and install 10.6.8, or buy a new iPhone and install iOS 6.

But I despise Android--I want a real Unix. I feel like Android was architected by complete idiots. Oh how I wish WebOS won instead of Android.

I'll have random daydreams of some sort of way webOS would be a distant third place, but in a decent spot with say 10% market share. I'll think of some weird merger of BB switching to webOS, Microsoft and Nokia backing webOS. Shit. WebOS was likely doomed no matter what. But it came out at the right time and was so good.

I'd prob still use it on and off if HP didn't take the store down.

I'll always miss webOS.

Apple is making buttload of money on hardware because it does not sell any software anymore. I mean, in the mass consumer market – and they are cutting off the Pro software (which is sad). But remember the hardware sales pay for the software, too. So basically people say Apple is making $$$ on an iPhone price minus manufacturing costs and R&D but great slice of the zillion $$$ is the software part.

Anyway, not sure who said what exaclty, but Steve Jobs repeatedly said that Apple is great because of the tight interconnection between sw and hw. So Apple is not a hw company. It is not a sw company either. They do both and the result is greater than just a combination of the two.

I see Apple, and the way they present their products supports it, as an appliance company. It's harder and harder to repair their devices and the software is more and more integrated with the hardware – examples: force touch and feedback, Touch/Face ID, all the camera magic, Apple Pay, MBP Touch Bar etc. So basically the sw and hw are more and more inseparable unless you lose "half" the features.

The axiom is that people will sit around debating which is the correct axiom on tech boards ad infinitum.

Apple is tuple(Hardware,Software) = product. So simply a product company.

In Swift

product: (String, String) = (Hardware, Software)

Even their programming language looks great.

I see it as the reverse. Apple is definitely a hardware company that makes a solid OS and generally makes mediocre software outside of that

Yea, but that OS is everything. They barely make any software outside of it. And it's the best mobile OS by far.

iOS is a toy OS. The notifications alone make it useless for office productivity. The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix sync. You can't watch a YouTube video while doing something else. Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen. You can't even do basic things like set a system-wide default browser.

Android O is light years ahead of iOS.

> The limitations on background processing break, say, Plex or Netflix

You can quit e easily watch Plex (can’t remember if Netflix bothered) in the background while doing other shut with the PIP.

> you can’t watch a YouTube video either.

Which is YouTube’s fault ENTITELY. They are pushing YouTube red to allow for this (which isn’t even available in a lot of countries they advertise it in....)

I said Plex or Netflix sync specifically. Having to keep the app open while a 20 minute sync is going on is bone-headed.

PIP is not available on an iPhone.

The limitations on background processing are exactly why I prefer iOS. When something is acting funny, the foreground app is always the culprit, and killing it fixes the problem. I don't want to do any more complicated debugging than that on a four inch touchscreen.

1) The limitations on background processing are deliberate to prevent applications from needlessly consuming battery life/mobile data.

2) It is Google's fault that you can't watch YouTube whilst doing something else. Apple provided an API which third party YouTube clients already support.

You can debate whether Android O is better or not. But I would hardly call iOS a toy just because it doesn't allow for rich notifications.

You can't do PIP on an iPhone.

>Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen.

This is a feature, not a bug.

That is something I don’t miss at all from Android after abandoning Android for iOS 3 years ago (Samsung started locking down their phones with the Galaxy S5, decided I wanted no more part of Samsung bloatware and losing the ability to rid myself of it).

Chat heads are a great feature, and of course you can turn them off if you like. iOS doesn't even give you the option to do that.

Chat heads are a terrible feature, and now that you told me I can turn them off I’m going to go do that immediately.

What's your main issue with them? Aren't they just a superior version of the "reply-in-notification" feature of iOS?

The reply-in-notifications go away after I've replied, they don't hang around and cover a portion of the screen all the time. And if I don't want to read them right away, then I've got this thing hanging around on my screen with a angry red number that I don't want to deal with.

They're intrusive, they're obnoxious, they cause performance hiccups on occasion. They're not a superior version of anything.

I had to google it, they look pretty distracting to me, but I'm positive that if they turn out to be very useful Apple will release an API for it.

They haven't in years and I pray every day that it stays that way.

The notifications you are complaining about can be easily, and completely, disabled. In a few seconds. I don't think you've used iOS 11 on a recent iPad, either.

Surely properly done, prioritized, aggregated notifications like on Android are better than no notifications?

I'm talking about an iPhone obviously.

What “office productivity” are you unable to do using iOS? Pretty sure millions of people use it just fine.

What happens when you receive 100+ new email notifications on iOS? I ended up ignoring all of them, missing out on important notifications.

Notification aggregation and priority is table stakes for serious office work.

If you’re regularly getting 100+ notifications you need to setup filters, change your notification settings, or find a new job.

Or you know, just use an Android phone.

Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.

Being a former android user, I see no fundamental difference in how notification are implemented for email between the two platforms.

Have you used recent versions of Android with priority and aggregation? I've found that iOS users have no idea how good notifications are on Android.

Just curious, why are you getting 100+ emails at once that you can't filter into a low priority/no notification inbox?

The most common case is overnight with a geographically distributed team.

How does that many notifications help? Isn’t it enough to see a ton of email and open an email client which does all of that aggregation for you?

Of course it doesn't, but Android already does the aggregation for me so that I don't miss important notifications from other apps. It's just a better way of working.

Again, it’s a question of degrees: you’re talking like this is a dealbreaker but it seems like more of an edge case.

I do think it, along with all the other ways iOS is deficient, is a deal breaker. I finally switched to Android after years on iPhone and I can't believe how much of an idiot I was for not switching earlier.

At least I wasn't enough of an idiot to use iMessage and get locked into the Apple ecosystem.

This runs contrary to Apple's philosophy. The user should not have to do anything.

Phone makers or phone maker?

> And it's the best mobile OS by far.

And yet Android dominates the market share. I don't think iOS is the best mobile OS, let alone the best by far.

I'm typing this from an Android right now, but it definitely feels like iOS is the majority of the high end market and Android completely owns mid to low end. Apples chosen their niche and fills it well, they shouldn't be compared to a generalist in terms of who is best

It's a very subjective thing, really. I actually like my Windows phone, it's the only Windows I have.

Someone above concluded they are a product company and I was thinking 'appliance.' That's not a negative, they make devices fit for function and they, Apple, are remarkably good at it.

I can't think of an Apple product, and I type this on an iPad, that is truly the best in every aspect. However, they surely aren't the worst and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I think.

I think appliance fits for apple if you use it with the connontations that word had pre 70s. They we're amazing time saving devices and well built enough that they seemed magical. Ive talked to my grandparents and their reaction to using a TV was similar to my reaction to a smart phone for the first time. My gushing over how much time my Roomba saved me also reminded my grandmother of getting a dishwasher

Android dominates because Apple refuses to sell $50 iPhones. iOS app revenues still outpace Google Play, Android is the OS of choice for people who use it like a feature phone.

I've seen that revenue stat mentioned before, but never any evidence that this isn't due to something like Android having free options available for functionality that only paid apps have on iOS.

Name one bit of useful Android functionality that is only available paid on ios. There isn’t any. The average Android users pay far less for their phones, and spend far less on apps, that’s been true forever.

Apple targets only the top end of the market. I’m a mobile developer and that’s why native apps are almost always iOS first. We know our iOS sales will be higher, and these are proprietary apps, not system features.

I don't think Android market share is enough of a metric to determine the quality of iOS. There are so many different cheap android phones to choose from, and people do not buy them because Android is a better mobile OS.

I've ONLY heard that "Apple is a hardware company". that's their defining difference from Microsoft, and now Google

Does Apple actually manufacture anything itself? I thought it was all outsourced. That would make them a software and hardware-design company, but not really a manufacturer.

Not doing the final assembly yourself does not somehow disqualify you from being a hardware company. There is no company in the world that possesses the manufacturing prowesss of Apple, yet they all have access to the same final assembly shop (Foxconn, basically).

The component manufacture is outsourced too isn't it? It seems they have been setting up or buying some chip fabrication facilities, but does any current Apple product contain anything built in an Apple factory?

I don’t get it. Apple makes the best mobile processors in the world. They routinely introduce low volume manufacturing techniques to the iPhone, which they then scale to 100+ million units per year. How are they somehow not a hardware company?

They design processors, but they are manufactured in volume by Samsung or other outsourcing companies.

You have to design the hardware with the manufacturing process in mind. It's not like a re-compile.

I’m not saying that they actually manufacture the products. I’m saying they are a hardware company.

"Is that really a common belief?"

It was in the pre-iphone era.