“Apple is the only major tech gadget company that makes the whole widget, so to speak; hardware and software, fully differentiated by quality components, and iOS and macOS (and watchOS, tvOS; you get the idea),” Kate MacKenzie writes for Mac360. “What of Windows and Android, two of the world’s most used operating systems? They are both crutches for manufacturers.”
“Apple – with iOS and macOS – are the envy of Apple’s competitors,” MacKenzie writes “What’s the difference between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy S-whatever? iOS. What’s the difference between a high end Dell (sorry, there is no such thing) HP or Microsoft notebook and a MacBook? macOS.”
MacDailyNews Take: Well, and also inspired Jony Ive-led industrial design that the rest of the world just tries to ape.
“Now, to cap this off, what’s the difference between a $200 Huawei smartphone and an $800 Samsung Galaxy S-whatever? $600. They both run Android OS. What’s the difference between a $1,000 HP notebook and a $2,000 Microsoft Surface notebook? $1,000. They both run Windows 10,” MacKenzie writes. “See the problem?”
“Tizen [is] Samsung’s attempt to hedge its bet with Android and Google,” MacKenzie writes. “Chinese manufacturers– Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and others have begun to follow Samsung’s lead to be more like Apple by starting a variety of programs to develop their own Linux-based operating systems… Will these attempts succeed?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in August 2013:
The more confusion and disparate crap there is randomly floating around in the smartphone, tablet, vehicle, and other marketplaces, the better it is for Apple.
Even more so, people will flock to the OS that just works, offers a huge ecosystem, that is supported via a vast and growing network of retail stores, and that is owned and deployed solely by one extremely financially secure company. If you have a question about your Apple product, you ask Apple. Simple.
The rest of these companies all suffer from “Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen” syndrome. If you have a problem with your POS clipboard-sized Samsung piece of plastic, who do you call?
Samsung: “Oh, no, we only do the hardware. Try Google.”
Have fun trying to call Google.
Google: “…”
Samsung: “Oh, it’s a Tizen phone? Okay, Try Intel.”
Intel: “Huh?”
There are people who buy genuine Apple products and then there are those who subject themselves to half-assed, upside-down and backwards knockoffs of Apple products (Dell, HP, Windows, Samsung, Android, Zune, HTC, Motorola, Toshiba, Surface, Kindle Fire, Lenovo, etcetera).
It’s like an IQ test. It makes it really easy to decide who’s worth talking to in Starbucks.
SEE ALSO:
Huawei working on its own OS to escape ‘the crutch of Android’ – June 24, 2016
“What’s the difference between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy S-whatever? iOS.
√ That’s the OS software.
The hardware:
Apple A-Series CPUs, which as of A9:
– – Are 64-bit
– – Include 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM
– – Integrate an embedded M9 motion coprocessor
– – Integrate an Apple-designed NVMe-based controller
– – Integrate an image processor
– – Has a per-core L1 cache of 64 KB for data and 64 KB for instructions
– – Has an L2 cache of 3 MB shared by both CPU cores
– – Has a 4 MB L3 cache that services the entire SoC and acts as a victim cache
. . .
Apple A9
Someone else list the non-crapware Apple included apps…
“Tizen [is] Samsung’s attempt to hedge its bet with Android and Google”
And look how successful Tizen has been! 😴💤
. . . or Windows Phone.
. . . or Amazon Fire Phone. Android, but not Android.
Did I wander into the wrong room? Since when has Apple attempted to maintain a lead in raw performance hardware specs? Especially on mobile devices. Most iPhone owners have no idea what’s under the hood, which is the uninformed state in which Apple wants them to be. I can see it now, when the rumored Apple car is marketed, there will be no way to open the hood, and power will not be advertised. Buyers will be encouraged to do a virtual test drive and order it from the website sigh unseen.
But back to the current state of iOS: it’s the underlying security of the apps, not the hardware, that sets Apple apart.
ARM is a licensed chip technology to which Apple does not solely own the technology, and Apple does not chip manufacturing, so Apple’s A-series chips are no guarantee of superiority in the long run. Let’s not forget that Apple’s flagship A9X chip is only 2-core. In comparison, the Exynos 7420 is 8-core. For many tasks, more cores are better.
And let’s not forget that efficiency of OS is significant. iOS needs some cleanup — for one thing, iOS10 needs to drop support for 32-bit. That’s just a start….
2GB RAM is not enough for “Pro” products or any modern tablets.
motion coprocessor, integrated graphics, etc, is not the only way to get things done. nice but not revolutionary. Apple is definitely behind in screen tech and camera options. But the game of leap frog will continue with new entrants differentiating themselves and Apple making incremental updates to a popular design. The market will decide.
Power only becomes strength when you use it properly and Apple’s profits are the undeniable proof of that.
What use would a very powerful car be if you lose control at the first curve in the road ? So, apart from drag racing, raw power is merely one element of a product’s strength. Proper balance and synergy will beat spec sheets any time of the week.