Googling around, it looks like the S4 still has animation lag in all sorts of places. Amazing.

I mean, hats off to Samsung for getting as far as they have. They've basically exploited Google's engineering resources brilliantly and have been ruthlessly competitive. Their design skills seemed to have gotten slightly better, and bigger screens and every-feature-but-the-kitchen-sink moves phones when they are compared to the iPhone, especially at a lower price point.

But the bottom line is they still don't really have the design chops and the attention to detail. Their "innovations" on the S4 are pretty gimmicky. They haven't built up a large economic moat around their ecosystem. I feel Apple can pretty easily leapfrog them by introducing a device that is a reasonable leap forward from where we are now. The iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 are all in the same design family. I expect the iPhone 6 will be pretty different than any phone we've ever seen before. I think Apple might even surprise us with an iPhone 6 this year. Who knows though.

Oh. My. God.

The difference in user experience is astronomical. I work in the tech industry and I train users on how to use my company's software, and I could not for the life of me wrap my mind around some of the most basic aspects of the phone. Most functions, from scrolling and animations to simple things like changing the focus from a text box on the web page to the URL bar of the browser, had noticeable lag. Sometimes the lag was so atrocious that I could not be sure if my taps worked. Occasionally I would get impatient and tap again, and it would register two taps simultaneously and treat it as a double-tap! You are absolutely right that it felt like using a regular computer - and old and slow one. I couldn't deal with it.

At one point I was checking my work email and had to access a voicemail that arrived as an attachment. I clicked it, and instead of playing the voicemail right away (which the iPhone does), the S4 downloaded it as a file. Okay, fine, I get it, you want to pretend you're a computer. But where the hell did it go? Is there a separate browser area for downloaded items like in Chrome? Is there a desktop, or some kind of folder? And if you're pretending to be a computer, am I going to need special software to be able to open this file? Are you really going to make me open another tab and Google "how to find downloaded files on Android"?!? WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME THINK? WHY ARE SIMPLE THINGS NOT OBVIOUS LIKE THEY ARE ON IOS?

In my experience, people are drawn to Android don't care much about user experience and instead want larger screens and tons of features. Personally, I view my smartphone the way I view my car: I want one that is easy to drive, responsive and won't lag for ~2 seconds every time I do something.

Coming from Android, I have exactly the same response when moving to iOS. 'Why is there no back button? Why is all the functionality shoehorned into one button? Oh, you have to press the button for certain amounts of time for different features? Where's the discoverability?".

You seem to be complaining much more about unfamiliarity with workflow than real issues.

In my experience, people are drawn to Android don't care much about user experience and instead want larger screens and tons of features.

Did you honestly just say that a larger screen doesn't have anything to do with the user experience?

An initial report by Steve Kovach of BusinessInsider proclaimed "Samsung Made $1.43 Billion More In Profit Than Apple Last Quarter, " before the site realized that it was comparing Apple's after tax net income to Samsung Electronics pre-tax operational income.

The site subsequently corrected its story with a new, less racy headline "How Samsung's Profit Compares To Apple's

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-de...

An earlier version of this said Samsung made more profit last quarter, but it was comparing Samsung's operating profit to Apple's. We apologize for the error.

http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-made-more-profit-than...

OOPS! :)

Most functions, from scrolling and animations to simple things like changing the focus from a text box on the web page to the URL bar of the browser, had noticeable lag.

So I just tried this now and saw no lag. It's not that I don't believe you, but I'm surprised that the Nexus 4 can demonstrate good UI response but the S4 can't (even with all the junk that Samsung puts on top of Android)

I don't see lag as an issue but I agree that there are lots of UI inconsistencies still in Android that make it not as easy to use as an iPhone.

On the other hand - good god is inter-app sharing/integration so useful and efficient. Apple's kinda dropping the ball on that one.

In my experience, people are drawn to Android don't care much about user experience and instead want larger screens and tons of features

Or maybe they, you know, what to actually make their phone do stuff for them beyond what the manufacturer thought they may require.

There's a lot of good stuff on both sides. Dismissing one side condescendingly like that doesn't move the discussion forward.

1. Competition is good! Don't act like there should be only one good option, or you might end up with just that.

2. I really don't like apple as a company, but the iphone seems to be pretty good. It's form factor is a bit better than my S3, and it's noticeably smoother. On the other hand, I drag folders of music onto my S3 and it just fucking plays them. I don't have to sync anything with my computer (and I don't), I get detailed metrics on what my apps are doing (which I find very useful) and I can tear out my default launcher and put something better in (which I have done). Oh and I can change the battery by popping the back off!

3. Actually good, useful smart phones are still a pretty damn new thing. Yeah technically they've been around for a while, but anybody who used a Palm Treo knows what I'm talking about. That means that all these "iphone is so much faster!" or "S4's battery life sucks!" is just related to the fact that we haven't figured it out yet. It takes time to really polish complicated tech.

As happy as I am to see Android thriving I'd prefer to see somebody other than Samsung on top.

Now, for some reason, Apple got the volumes mixed up so that it was IMPOSSIBLE to get any sound (except 6.) without plugging in a 30 pin connector and increasing the volume.

It took me MONTHS to work this out. All of the Apple "experts" I knew swore that this was not possible until I showed them. Even Apple said there was no bug and that it was faulty hardware, which I knew it wasn't.

The problem is that I keep on having similar issues with IOS. It's just "too clever" for its own good. Settings that you need are just not there (eg. accessing WIFI settings with a single click or slide).

There was also the time that iTunes REFUSED to copy music to my iPhone. If I used a 3rd party tool, songs would be copied and could play, but as soon as I used iTunes, it knew the new songs were "corrupted", and put the broken versions of the music on my phone. Thankfully, this bug only lasted a week.

I also find my iPhone 4s laggy. As an example, if I load a web page in the background, and try to scroll the current web page, the phone locks up for about 1000 milliseconds (ie. a VERY long time). It really infuriates me.

As for the Android lag, I am not sure what people are referring to. the Google hardware has not been a problem that I have seen - ever.

I think the best summary I can think of is that IOS is for people that don't want choice (eg. no FLAC, no 1080p MKV, no volume settings, you can't copy music files directly - you need iTunes, etc). Android has more that you need to know about, but at least you CAN find it if you want to.

I have a love/hate with IOS. But, when IOS pisses me off, it REALLY pisses me off. I can't say the same for Android.

You can see that I like choice. I also agree with others that I'd rather see Apple do well than Samsung. Samsung have a highly unethical history. If it weren't for Apple, Samsung would still be churning out rubbish handsets.

It's one of the worst user experiences I come across - very few UI's are so actively unfriendly to discoverability

People have different priorities. This is a tired meme; if you're that bothered by lag you're not using Android, if you're using Android it's not going to be such a huge change in the grand scheme of things. Can we have another argument for Apple superiority please?

Say what you will about Apple, but it's pretty clear they pride themselves on shipping things they are proud to put their name on because they only ship it when they feel the details are right. The App Store review process is in this spirit, they don't want shitty apps screwing up the experience on their phones.

This is why the Maps debacle was a catalyst for their stock plummeting, it showed to many this may have been lost with the loss of Jobs. I think the final build of iOS 7 is going to speak volumes about how Apple's culture has changed or not. If they get the details right, they've still got it. If it's laggy, has minor usability issues everywhere, etc, then that is the type of thing that I think spells Apple's doom.

edit: To summarize, I don't think 'animation lag' is in the same class of tradeoffs as 'open vs closed app stores.' Animation lag is a bug, and makes your work look objectively shitty, full stop. Animation lag 'matters' to everyone, even if they don't overtly notice it, because to everyone, animation lag breaks the illusion of fluid motion and interactivity on a subconscious level. It's sloppiness, plain and simple.

Your use of the word "shitty" here is highly subjective though. The evidence seems to be that most (or at very least a non-trivial subset of) consumers don't know, don't care or even actively prefer the "shitty" experience. Thus one could even argue that Samsung, far from being unaware or lazy is actively choosing this as the most rational and logical path to profits. It may just be that the people such as yourself are in the 10% of the population who are a) particularly sensitive to this sort of thing and b) extremely used to the iPhone level of experience.

Now I myself also find the stock Samsung experience incredibly ugly and laggy. The interesting thing is that you can remedy it in about 30 seconds by dragging a few widgets off the screen, disabling a few useless services and/or putting an alternative launcher on. Thus most of the lagginess is only "skin deep" and not a fundamental property of their phones. I think internally Samsung actually does very good engineering and optimization of their phones. At some point the marketing department gets a hold of the phone and completely ruins it, but thankfully it is too far down the chain for them to do any fundamental damage to it.

There is still such a thing as craftsmanship. When building a dresser, a craftsman ensures the back of the dresser looks as clean and elegant as the front, despite the fact that people will generally never see the back. A corporation churning out dressers as cheap as it can will just line the back with particle board. In furniture, where things generally don't change, this is a sound strategy, but in technology, building a company churning out garbage (relatively speaking) I think tends to catch up to you since you won't attract craftsmen to help create the next big thing.

If it wasn't obvious already, I'm an Apple shareholder, and I am not worried about Samsung. Samsung has made it very clear over and over that there is very little element of craftsmanship in their corporate culture, from the output of their work (like laggy animations and stock installs reminiscent of Windows 98 crapware) and the Onion-seque internal slide decks where they robotically ripped off every element of the iPhone they legally could, likely without asking themselves why those things were designed the way they were. I'm far more worried about Google, who have shown that they both can and want to get better at design, and have a unparalleled capability to build services to power well-designed products. And Microsoft has shown they have the will to change, and are swinging the bat, even though they haven't hit the ball yet.

Comparatively speaking Samsung is kind of a joke and when a new paradigm comes along (wearables, a dramatic shift in smartphones, etc) unless they can xerox their way to keeping up they will be left behind. They caught this particular wave perfectly, and are leveraging a very unique situation (Google being a free remote engineering department) to their advantage. I'm pretty sure the cat is out of the bag and Google is going to ensure Samsung is not riding their coattails to profits when the next wave hits.

I don't think you can really say this. They throw a lot of stuff against the wall that is original, and some of it does stick. The Galaxy Note was ridiculed by everybody but turned out to be a hit. The large size and stylus turn out to be a big selling features to people you wouldn't expect (eg: small women seem to love galaxy notes - because they were never able to fit a phone in their pocket in the first place, and many are used to carrying around a paper diary that is almost the same size anyway). They certainly copy a lot of stuff from Apple (and others) where they think that's the right path, but it's unfair to say they add nothing new.

> I'm an Apple shareholder, and I am not worried about Samsung

I'd go so far as to say that your kind of viewpoint might well be dominant inside Apple itself, and the "blind spot" it creates might be a major reason why Apple has struggled to compete against Samsung.

Bingo. Samsung doesn't have the same kind of refined, surgical design discipline that Apple does but that doesn't mean that they're incapable of coming up with interesting new features. They just arrive at them in a different way.

Honestly after using iOS 7 for a while I'm worried that Apple has seriously lost its way. There are so many instances of simplistic design ideology trumping usability in iOS 7 I'm not even sure where to start listing them. iOS < 7 was visually cheesy in some respects but it was extremely polished and usable.

If you call the s4 garbage relative to the iphone,then I'm sorry to say it's either you don't know the meaning of garbage or relative or you must be one desperate shareholder. I hope you didn't buy them at $700 apiece.

Samsung is already investing and developing its own wearable devices and other stuff anyway but I guess it doesn't matter to you. If I were you, I wouldn't buy stocks in both companies since they are all making money anyway.

ps: I neither use Apple or Samsung phone and I enjoy my phone very much

Did you buy at $700, at $400, or at $30?

This is false. Apple has banned applications for dubious grounds, such as competing with Apple. Extremely useful apps like Swype and its alternatives have been banned.

The app store is not just about protecting users from shitty apps, it is also about total control over the iOS platform, often to the detriment of users.

Honestly, I agree with about 99% of the 'pro-apple' arguments here, because it is frustrating that companies aren't stepping up their UX game, but that's just peanuts compared to this type of nonsense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092875

Luckily, my Nexus 4 has given me a smoother experience than even my old ipad 2 so far (can't say the same of my nexus 7 unfortunately), so it isn't that bad either way.

Swype however is kind of an obvious example of something they likely are not allowing not because of fear of competition but because Swype, if successful, would effectively fragment the text input mechanism on iOS. I can respect the argument that on iOS Apple wants to maintain control of the experience of entering text. Regardless if you feel this is an ethical thing to do, I think you have to acknowledge that in that case it is less about anti-competitive behavior and more about maintaining consistency, which is a core tenet of good design. I think overall the App Store process is largely about maintaining things like quality, consistency, and performance, and if you don't believe me you can look to examples like the Facebook platform where the element of human-screening was ignored and the place filled up with garbage.

They simply don't care about the segment and would rather support a good-enough solution than a best-of-breed.

It's a pity too because the primitive stock keyboard is easily my #1 frustration as an iOS device user. Once you've gotten used to something like SwiftKey or Swype on Android it's hard not to get angry at Apple when you're forced to go back to their 2007 keyboard. How is this putting the user first?

I think a bug is more forgivable than a deliberate decision to make things broken (closed app store).

Apple has had a string of shitty products. It's just that people are too busy talking about their good ones and block out the bad ones, for some reason giving Apple a free pass that they don't give other vendors.

I once got a video ipod. The marketing was "You can watch movies on it!". Yes, if those movies are shorter than 45 minutes in length. It was actually a substandard bit of kit - the video screen was mostly useless, and the windows version of iTunes that I had to load it with was unmitigated shit - and famously so.

I mean what about comparing an animation lag - an annoyance - to the 'death grip' phone that didn't work as a phone?

Apple make nice kit, but the idea that they only do good work needs to die. They are superior designers and astounding marketers, but they're certainly not perfect.

It's likely that in time we'll see a native of manually memory-managed runtime in Android, at a huge development cost; I can hardly see Apple providing an open ecosystem, ever.

That aside, Samsung is the most successful company with the worst design aesthetic I can think of. I don't know why people buy their devices, even if one is an Android fanatic there are devices that lag less and look much better at better prices. I'm shocked they are doing as well as they are.

That's legit.

>I'm going by YouTube videos of the s4.

That is not.

Scrolling web pages was noticeably nicer and less laggy than in my Nexus, but still imperfect.

My iPhone OG was quite responsive until about iOS3, when it got kind of slow.

I've never had problems scrolling in non-web-based apps.

Of course, the equivalent operation on a similar-year Android or Blackberry makes you wonder why anyone bought those phones.

I am still yet to see these on my Nexus 4. Maybe some devices have the problem, but it was blown out of proportion? I don't know..

Samsung does make the Nexus 10 though, but even on 4.3 it stutters pretty regularly. Of course my iPad 3 stutters a bit too, I assume the extreme resolution plays a big role there.

The remaining goal posts by the way are where apps get built first and general app quality. The time that developers move to Android after first making their app on iOS is probably shrinking. The disparity of where apps get made first is also probably shrinking.

Another point about why is Android doing so well: Apple seriously needs to get better at services. They are amazing at hardware, they are great at software that runs on devices, but they have bombed again and again on software that runs as a service in the cloud. This severely limits them. Maps, mobile me, icloud syncing, they have trouble keeping their developer portal up, etc. I believe this is a problem with Apple's culture and what they value. Server software isn't pretty, and it's iterative. That is you bring up something that works, then make it better. Apple's culture is to wow with the first try, but they've been disappointing when it comes to software as a service.

I think that's one of the reasons Scott Forstall was forced out. It seems he was backing a lot of Apple's Data / AI / Cloud products, and may have wanted to keep Google out of iOS, in order to give his products an advantage. But Apple doesn't make money on Maps, it makes money selling the phone (and OS, and App store), and it's silly to hamstring your platform simply to give a few second-rate Apps an unfair advantage. (And they were second-rate - anyone who competes with Google's killer apps is taking a crazy risk).

Now, as i already said here, the problem isn't that they need to get better at service, the problem is that they need not to be absolute crap, and get some culture. If Apple Maps was only just as good as bing map, they could have made it. If iCloud was only just as good as dropbox, they could have made it. If "Ping" was only as good as... just any social network you could think of, then it could have leverage the other great apple system.

The problem is that their server side is so bad, it can't even leverage other Apple strengths.

They may care now that they own an Android phonemaker (Motorola.)

There are people who have tattooed the Apple logo on their body. There aren't that many people who have tattooed Samsung's logo if I had to guess.

Apple cultivated and created their brand (rebuilt it really, as it did go through a rough patch in the past were only true believers were left following it). But now it is the brand people worship.

That is very important to consider when these articles are written. Most likely the writer is a tech savvy enough to personally either be in the Apple cult or not. And people will most often than not defend their own camp against the other camp. Those from the Apple camp who invested thousands of dollars in products will consciously and unconsciously defend it regardless of whatever the market is doing (as we've seen they've managed to twist and reinterpret the news in every possible to still make Apple come on top).

Another point to consider is this. Apple is a luxury product affordable by many. It is luxury because there is not other luxury phone besides it. The riches and most opulent person out there, will probably still have an iPhone or iPad. They'd buy a diamond studded golden case dipped in platinum for it but it will still be an iPhone. And this is the same device that someone who is middle class or below can still obtain. Think about it. What other luxury products are the same. Cars? Nope. Watches? Nope. Clothes? Not really. So that serves to reinforce the cult following. Look I can have the same phone as <myfavoriteactor> or other <famousperson>. That is pretty powerful.

Windows has a 'picture' logo and occupies the same rung as samsung in the 'quality vs Apple' pie fight, but there are folks out there with winlogo tattoos. I've seen photos of a few different ones, but my guess would be that there's fewer than there would be for Apple.

One thing that annoys me more than Apple fanboys are Android fanboys.

Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.

To make my point more clear, why on earth would you or anyone care about how much money the manufacturer of a product you use (or has similar OS to the product you use) make or by how much money its beating its main competitor in this quarter?

I can think of three possibilities:

- You are a market analyst.

- You are an investor.

- You are fanboy.

I am going to go with fanboy.

- You are a developer that has to make some bets about where to focus resources and learning time.

I would also probably categorize this in to "investor", in the sense that your business is investing on that platform, so profit margin of that platform in a relevant information for you.

I am a user concerned with long-term investments into ecosystem: apps, purchases of DRM-d content (as bad as it is), compatibility with peripheral devices (external batteries, fitness and medical etc). I've been burnt before (Palm devices anyone?) so now I pay a great attention to market share, third-party ecosystem, opinions of developers about the platform etc.

- You are randomly interested in the world.

- You are bikeshedding, following Sayre's law

Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".

Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Apple fanboy".

To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.

Goes both ways.

The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have a decent ssh client but that is remedied by the fact it works as a tether and I can use my laptop with it. I don't like running root on a touch screen device either due to the massive danger mistyping as root and shooting something.

By the way, how do the privacy policies of Windows Phone and Microsoft Live services compare to those of matching products from Apple and Google? I have tried and failed to find a systematic comparison (i.e., a table) of how much data about the user the three mobile OSes and their vendors' apps collect and what they say about redistribution the data to third parties. I'd rather not try to perform this analysis myself (IANAL).

Perhaps there's a market opportunity here.

That problem with outlook.com is not related to the phone itself nor the mobile platform so that is moot. I don't use outlook.com - I have an IMAP Server and work exchange server and they bot work perfectly on the device.

WP8 does play well with Linux i.e. it doesn't require Zune any more to access the device. It doesn't however mount any disks on the device if you plug it in though, so I tend to yank out the SD card and poke it in my laptop. Apart from that it is an entirely self-supporting device that doesn't need machine connectivity at all so it's good enough for me.

As I said, I don't use Windows Live services at all. We have a Microsoft Exchange 2010 system at my company. It talks to that perfectly fine.

I did use it for a bit a while ago but SkyDrive has numerous problems where they delete your files so I can't rely on it.

I would disagree that the problem with Outlook.com is not related to the phone itself or the mobile platform, though. It certainly does seem to me that Windows Phone is intended to be used with Windows Live by its average user. For example, using Outlook.com is the officially recommended way of getting Outlook contacts on your phone if you don't have an Exchange server [1]. The camera app is tightly integrated with SkyDrive, too.

I understand that you cannot blame the developers of Windows Phone for this (given the sheer size of Microsoft the teams behind Windows Live and WP may well not share any personnel) but my initial experience as a user makes me wish they had paid as much attention to it as they did to the mobile OS itself.

[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991

My wife uses a Lumia 620 with outlook.com with no problems. As a casual user it's pretty good. She manually added contacts to the people thing and they appear on the phone when you next get a sync with outlook.com. I've not heard her complain at all about it so far.

Edit: just spoke to her and she actually used contacts transfer from Nokia to use BT to transfer it from her (drowned but still working well enough to get stuff off) Asha 302 that she was using before. You can also import contacts from the SIM with it but she didn't know that until afterwards.

This is mostly preaching to the choir anyway.

> Samsung's estimated $5.2bn haul from both its basic models and smartphones in the same period.

I don't thing profits on just their smartphones beat Apple's iPhone profits, even though their global marketshare is over twice that of Apple's, according to the same article. It may happen, and probably will, given time, it just hasn't happened yet.

Basically, Samsung's number includes its phone, tablet and computer sales (including Chromebook sales, which IIRC have been really high), while Apple's number only the estimated iPhone sales.

And note that the quarter after that, the 5 and 4s were the two top-selling global smart phone models.

Samsung does not control the complete stack. They have to rely on Google for the OS. They are forced to comply with Google's licensing agreement. Samsung is really trying hard to find an alternative by pursuing Bada, Tizen, etc. Samsung was really clever at creating TouchWiz - an overlay on top of the traditional Android. Users will get use to this interface and Samsung can eventually swap out the stack underneath it (already attempted with Tizen).

Google is a fool for letting Samsung get too powerful - to the point where Samsung can dictate terms and at the expense of Google's other partners. It's clear Google knows Samsung is a problem because most of the Nexus devices are now made by LG, Asus. However, LG also owns WebOS.

Android is proven and the hardware has matured, Google should start producing it's own hardware as its partners are looking at alternatives.

This only works if Samsung allows the user to download/install their purchased apps from earlier phones though. As well as Google Music and other services the user might expect.

> Google is a fool for letting Samsung get too powerful - to the point where Samsung can dictate terms and at the expense of Google's other partners.

When did this happen? Samsung is a huge partner of Android. They make 1 of 3 current Nexus devices and made the previous 2 Nexus phones (more than any other manufacturer). This is a completely unrelated thing.

Also, Samsung is one of the companies with a Google Experience version of their latest flagship (the S4) available on Google Play.

> Google should start producing it's own hardware as its partners are looking at alternatives.

Does Motorola count? The first few Google developed Motorola phones were just announced.

This is true. This is one of the many hurdles they need to overcome to switch to another platform.

> When did this happen? Samsung is a huge partner of Android. They make 1 of 3 current Nexus devices and made the previous 2 Nexus phones (more than any other manufacturer). This is a completely unrelated thing.

It's speculation really. The previous Nexus products were all made by Samsung. Why did Google suddenly start switching to other manufacturers? If Samsung made the best devices, why change?

If your company commands the most profits and market share of a platform - do you not want to use this as leverage to some degree? Better bargaining power gives you a competitive advantage over other players (LG, Asus, HTC, etc).

> Does Motorola count? The first few Google developed Motorola phones were just announced.

It sure does. They need to speed things along though.

Which is why Samsung has layered their own UI and apps atop the core Android experience, and the market has rewarded them for making it more consumer friendly.

Really? Because all the BS press I've seen at the time (and ever since) always mentioned how "iPhone is doomed" because of Android.

>Awhile later when Android took off a bit and all of the Android devices together sold more than the iPhone, people were quick to say how it's just one supplier (Apple) vs many suppliers producing Android phones.

Besides the fact that who the fuck compares the entire mobile industry with a single company, the reason they outsold the iPhone is because they make models that cover a wider price range.

iPhone just is, take it or leave it -- at best you can get the last model on discount (and even that keeps it price well). Android, they make models that a poor piss guy in Southern Banzania can buy too.

>Bit later, Samsung is doing really well with their Galaxy range, and suddenly Samsung alone is selling more devices than Apple. People then say how Samsung sells tons of different devices while Apple only sells one.

Seems like you mixed a bunch of thing nobody said (or merely some fanboys on some sites) and some legitimate concerns that still hold, and you mix and matched them to create a timeline.

The actual story was always "OMG, iPhone is Doomed" or "Android is Winning"

>The real issue is that Google/Android are out competing Apple in features, price and 'freedom'.

Apple never competed in "features" and "price. Heck, they don't do that even on their PC line, and that has been going for like 30 years.

They compete in high end, build quality, overal coherence, ecosystem and design.

By the way thanks for giving us the next goal post: build quality and overall coherence ;-)

"Us"? Let me get this right: I'm a "fanboi" (sic) for talking general business observations, but you are not while identifying directly with Samsung?

As for reaching that "next goal post", good luck.

For a consumer it's the only one that matters, and if you were satisfied before it was reached, why start being more demanding now?

In my view Apple is a premium product and the quality gap is closing in quickly. We've already reached a level where non-experts don't see any real difference or at least not enough to justify the price bump.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-de...

I'm not trying to overlook Samsung's success, but they _do_ sell tons of different devices while Apple only sell one (but 3 different versions), and profits _do_ matter.

I'm not sure about this but I believe Apple still beats Galaxy S4 in terms of profits and iPhone 5 released last year in September.

I also don't get this type of discussions. Technology evolves everyday. Apple used to beat other companies in terms of profits and market share, now Samsung is at the helm. Let's see what Apple can do this fall. As long as us, the consumer wins, I don't care who makes more money.

  Profit
  Selling more of 1 device or less of others
  Market Share

  Features/Benefits
  Price
  Experience/'Freedom'

I disagree about not caring who 'wins' though. If Apple wins, all developers have to build to Apple's closed platform. If Google wins, anybody can take Android and run the same apps (see: Amazon). Google winning is good for everyone. Apple winning is only good for Apple. Microsoft winning is also only good for Microsoft - so I wouldn't want them to win either.

You seem to be rooting for some sort of open source monopoly rather than a Google monopoly, but I think even that would be a bad thing. I'd much rather see a world where different business models and different development methodologies (open source vs. proprietary vs. hybrid, walled gardens vs. Wild West vs. everything in between, etc.) are all doing what they do best and competing with each other and learning from each other.

It's absolutely true that Android as you know it now simply would not exist if it didn't originally have the iPhone to draw inspiration from; this is pretty incontrovertible. I'm not saying that to denigrate Android in any way, but rather to point out that different approaches to product development have different pros and cons, and having all of those approaches coexisting and competing and evolving is a much better situation for everyone than having only one major player or one development methodology industry-wide. This is includes the seemingly-positive-but-not-really outcome where some form of "freedom" or "openness" becomes the monopoly.

Also, you should check your facts - Samsung has not exceeded Apple in smartphone profits. They have exceeded Apple in phone profits overall. You might as well throw washing machines into the mix if you are going to include profits from single purpose appliances that are not general purpose computers.

So basically because you "want Google to win" because you believe they are somehow different from any other corporation, you are trumpeting a false statistic in order to convince others that destiny is somehow at work, going in the direction you want.

If this isn't shilling for Google, I don't know what is.

As for your last point, I don't think regular consumers cares about open/closed platforms. They probably don't even know what that means. We're talking about mobile devices, not desktop computers. People want devices that just works, especially if those devices are built to make their lives easier, not harder. Android used to have a lot of problems but now they caught up to iOS (even surpassed it). Android is not where it is today because it is open[1]. Android would've had the same success if it was as closed as iOS.

In the general scheme of things, I agree with you. Android is not completely open and definitely not a free software, but it is better for consumers than iOS (and I'm an iOS user). But as long as there's a competition and either of those companies (Apple and Google) don't get to do whatever the hell they want, I'm saying that the consumer wins. It doesn't matter which company has the more open OS.

[1] Android had a lot of options in terms of devices, so their openness was a factor in their success, but it was not a major one.

Profits matter to the company. Not to you or me (unless you or I work for the company or have stock in them).

On the other hand, market share does affect consumers. The more popular your particular device is, the better it is for you (in terms of app availability, web compatibility, tech support etc...).

Profits matter for consumers as much as market share does, even if they don't realize it. The phone hardware business is a very expensive and difficult market. Companies like HTC demonstrate just how hard it is to stay in the game, and just how expensive it is. Being profitable is a requirement to produce at the massive economies of scale necessary to compete in the smart phone market (or you have to sell less units while charging a lot more for them, but you still require that profit to keep churning out new phones). The only reason Blackberry, for example, still exists at all is that they were so profitable for so many years, and able to build up a cash hoard; without that, they'd already have disappeared.

Absolutely. I wasn't trying to say that profits matter to consumers (Indirectly it may effect them though, because more profits means more freedom for a company to try new things without being too worried about wasting money).

>On the other hand, market share does affect consumers. The more popular your particular device is, the better it is for you.

I agree, but I don't think it matters all that much. Just look at the current situation. Can you honestly say that Windows' ecosystem is better than Mac's, despite the indisputable market share of Windows? Same goes with Android vs iOS (although they're pretty close). An argument could be made that Microsoft only makes the software while Apple does both software and hardware, but Mac support, ecosystem, app quality is miles ahead of Windows, in my opinion.

My point was that market share doesn't exactly translate into better services, better app quality etc. It is certainly a factor though, no point in denying that.

....before the site realized that it was comparing Apple's after tax net income to Samsung Electronics pre-tax operational income.

Samsung DID NOT provide net profit numbers.

:)