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.