People pay for Apple products, so they expect something that works well and looks good.

The switching costs are also much higher with hardware than software. You don't want to pay for a phone and find out it's half-baked, while if a 'free' web service doesn't work, it's easy to switch.

It's also about branding and culture, people expect different things from each company. That has pros and cons.

Just staying with the Google example, I don't remember any major Google product having a major failure. The new Google Maps may be. I know many people complain about the new GMail but it's just about choices of design they made and not about some bugs in the product. So again, Google products are iterative and not buggy irrespective of whether people pay for them or not.

Start watching a YouTube video. Pause it. Come back hours later. Hit play. It'll play a few more seconds and then fail to continue. I'd call that a major Google product with a major failure, though our definitions for major may differ.

Google Chrome for iOS crashes on a regular basis. It also fails to start YouTube videos a lot. Again, I consider those major products with major failures.

Gchat-in-Gmail has issues on a regular basis.

Also, non-major Google products have plenty of bugs. Google Groups digest emails have been broken forever. Once in a while one randomly trickles into my inbox, and I think for a second it may be fixed. Nope, still borked. Despite quite a bit of effort, I've never managed to communicate with any actual human Googler about it.

I've often had to authenticate twice, for unknown reasons, while getting into Gmail from Chrome, when trying to get in via their Gmail app icon.

I like plenty of Google products and services, and use them daily, but they seem to have their fair share of bugs.

For Gmail, the prime example of "major failure" is not the redesign, but Google Buzz. See the HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1120145

Google buzz exposing all your contacts to the world.

>so if Google can iterate, than why can't Apple?

Google is known for no customer service because you are the product, Apple while not being perfect, it is clear that their users take precedent over advertisers and even developers.

"Google has more market share than Apple in just about every software category, so if Google can iterate, than why can't Apple?"

This seems like the wrong way to understand each companies motivations. Google got into the maps market because Google's ambition is to be the worldwide leader in (among other things) mapping software. Apple got into maps because Google maps product for iOS was shitty and that was being held against the iPhone.

Apple doesn't want to be in every software category, much less be the leader. Google does.

>Apple got into maps because Google maps product for iOS was shitty and that was being held against the iPhone.

Wait, really? Was this an actual thing, for anyone? Because I _never_ was disappointed by any Google Maps related product on the iPhone. Serious question here.

The whole saga is fairly well documented. Go to any comparison of iOS and Android in 2010-11 and you'll see Google Maps for Android held up as one of the biggest Android advantages. Maps for Android had turn by turn. Maps for iOS didn't.

Apple was excited to partner with Google for Maps on the iPhone launch and it was excited to partner with companies like Garmin on expensive third party turn by turn solutions. Once it became obvious that free turn by turn nav was a fundamental OS level checkbox Apple was forced to rush out their Maps product.

The iOS 5 Google Maps app was very dated and lacking in features compared to the Android version at the time - probably the biggest thing it was missing was turn-by-turn navigation.

It wasn't terrible, it just hadn't been updated in a long time and had fallen behind the other options.