I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phones.
"...my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune."
What's a Zune? /s
If Microsoft had the other 85%, they'd be in a good position.
they can ignore the 85% if they want. The 85% of the market will ignore them back in turn.
Apple makes good products, but they arent without frustrations or limitations, and you'd better accept these if you want what you do get from apple products.
You know that the engineering will be in the top ~90%, for example. What is the 10% or so that apple fails on WRT to engineering; accessories, flexibility/upgradability, vendor-lock-in on software. All of which simply lead you to spend more money on supporting having apple products.
Accessories: How much money have you spent on chargers, cables, headphones, cases, screen-protectors, screen repairs?
Flexibility/upgradability: Want more storage/ram? Buy the next model - no upgrades.
Software: Fewer OSS options for software/apps.
There are certain things I like about apple, and certain things I hate. But the primary thing I hate is that you cant do much without paying a premium...
#buildbridgesnotwalls
Apples investors do not expect them to grow much more unlike Google or Facebook which both act as monopolies in both the smartphone and online markets. I'm sure apple knows what it wants but it sure doesn't show any abition to take over the world with their products.
People forget that they effectively do have most of that 85%. Every Android installation kicks back some money to Microsoft in the form of patent royalties.
Market share doesn’t lead to profit.
If by "basically accurate," you mean "not accurate at all."
It's a long way from 2% to 45%. Not many companies get to underestimate their competition's potential marketshare by a factor of 22 and survive.
It's the think starlord got at the end of guardians of the galaxy 2.
Still, at least it didn't suffer like the ipod -- it had No wireless and Less space than a Nomad. It was "Lame".
The Zune was a litany of poor decisions, but that word choice must have been the worst.
Though, I also found the word "squircle†" amusing, and still use it when the opportunity arises. The Zune was the first time I'd heard it used outside of math nerds trying to out-nerd each other.
Addition: Which part, if any, are the downvoters objecting to? From the people I have talked to in the industry that is exactly what happened and why a lot of companies got out of it.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-s...
Some other fun ones to mention:
didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone), didn't let you record video, and didn't let you make a selfie while looking at the screen. (no front-facing camera)
To be fair no smartphone did in the first couple years.
didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone)
I got the iphone right after this shipped just by chance, and I couldn't understand how anyone lived without it. Also the had just added the "task switcher" carousel and the precursor to the control center, both features I used heavily and was surprised to learn didn't exist just a few months prior.
I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores.
> iPhone first came out it wasn't very good
Unequivocally false! It did everything a normal phone did fine. However, it did something no other phone came close to offering and it singly handley made it the best mobile device. It had an astoundingly intuitive and fast UX for browsing the web combined with an unlimited data plan. That's why I convinced my parents to drive me to the apple store so I could buy it despite the high price (they had to reduce the price by 200$ soon after because it was so freaking high (400-500$ for a phone in 2007)). The phone and app stuff was all moot. I wanted to be able to browse the web just as well as I did on a computer anywhere and everywhere and the iphone was what completely revolutionized that.
Sprint had been advertising its “Vision network” since at least 2005.
“Sprint Navigation” powered by Telemachus was a J2ME app that was an add on service in 2005.
(The timeline varied a lot by your country - I saw the iPhone available a year later than N95)
Bill Gates and patent troll Nathan Myrvhold wrote a while book unironically displaying their utter lack of vision about the industry. Their while business is a mix of making bland weak copies of more popular software to run on their decades old Windows entrenchment, Xbox, and a few nice keyboard and mice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_b...
Steve Jobs may have had some bad qualities (many of them irrationally amplified in the "Jobs-bad-Woz-good" revisionist history SV jealousy echo chamber), but he was one hell of a futurist.
For the record: I believe Jobs definitely deserves the credit, I'm just observing the mud that has been slung his way.
I perhaps unfairly read negative connotations in your use of "revisionist", but I see nothing wrong with adding Jobs' uglier side to the historical record. It doesn't change what he accomplished, and it's something we can learn from. I do question the idea that Woz has been irrationally overemphasized. By the time the iPod was dominant, and a year before the iPhone, Woz felt so left out of the historical record that he published his autobiography to set the record straight, particularly about the misconception that Jobs himself invented/built the Apple I and ][ machine. Even then, Woz gives clear credit to Jobs for having the entrepreneurial sense and vision to make Apple a company, whereas Woz was perfectly content to work at HP for all his days.
After the iPhone, Woz became even more a part of Apple's ancient, forgotten history. He was a bit character in the Jobs' movies came out, and AFAIK, no movie yet has been made about Woz's life.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/01/daughter-stev...
As for Jobs, I was thinking more of his technical abilities. The Woz-worshippers putting him on a pedestal seem to feel it simultaneously necessary to denigrate Mr. Jobs' technical side.
Jobs knew a hell of a lot about computers. More than I, or anyone I've met, ever will. It's clear reading old interviews with him that he knew his stuff, all the way down to the circuit level. But these days the conventional wisdom is that Woz built everything and Jobs was the equivalent of P.T. Barnum.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Did he personally know how to program 68000 assembler? Maybe some, or maybe not. But did he know how the chip worked? Absolutely. And more importantly, he picked the right kind of smart people and let them (largely) do their thing. And he did something that rarely happens these days — he gave them personal credit for their technical achievements.
When I read his biography a few years ago, it reduced my respect for him. But these days, reading archives of first-hand documents and interviews, I have more respect for him than before.
[0] https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2...