Fulfilled Promises, User Interface, Build Quality, Price. Apple dominated the mp3 player market, not because it had the best specs, not because it was cool but because it delivered what it promised. The interface was easy to use, a few minutes and you knew all you needed to know. When you pick up one of the early $500 ipods, you knew you could kill a hobo with it. My 10GB 2nd Gen Ipod lasted 6 years 4 continents and dozens of countries and three hobos that got out of line. A lot of people say Itunes is crap, but nobody has mentioned a better music management system.
My Droid X, it's pretty good except Motorolla tells me I should reboot it once a day, the buttons might react when I touch them, the battery won't last 10 hours and sometimes the phone doesn't work. My work issued iphone 3G had none of those problems.
The Xoom was shipped with a worthless SD Slot, broken 4G and who knows what else. The positive reviews of the Touchpad used words like "cheap" and "bulky." And reviewers of Android and Touchpad tablets all mentioned about the unusually high number of freezes, crashes and reboots.
You know if I wanted a multi-tasking device whose battery dies out after 6 hours of use, I'd get an Android phone. Oh wait I already have one. Yes, I have a startup killer running. Yes, I have wifi, bluetooth and GPS turned off. No, I don't want to buy a second battery to carry it around. Friends with Iphones are able to do the same as me and their phones don't die in the middle of the day.
What this sounds like is a Major Retail Chain moving into a new city and selling their products at a loss to drive the Mom and Pop shops out of business. Google is effectively shutting down the OS Market to new competitors and innovation. HTC, et al are able to sell their phones at the same price as Apple because they don't have to pay for their OS.
So the question becomes when MS & RIM leave the smartphone market, what will Google do?
... If you're wanting to tell the story of a web slinger who just happens to be mixed race so you appeal to a broader audience, that's political correctness. It's too early to tell which way they'll go with this.
Oh those b@stards trying to sell more of their product to a larger audience.
You must really love Aryan Man.
But if the hardware isn't lighter or thinner then it's not superior. One of the important requirements of a tablet is portability.
And you only have to worry about ram and processor speed if your OS is a bunch of crap. Apple is able to get away with "Lower Specs" because the OS runs insanely efficient when compared to windows and android. For example the Ford F150 has a 390 horsepower engine, A BMW 328 has a 230 horsepower engine. Which vehicle has the better specs?
Before the iPad and the iPhone there was the iPod, it was an underpowered device, expensive, tethered to itunes a bloated software that could only be described as pure evil and it controlled almost 90% of the personal music player market, the Consumer Electronics Manufactures turned their sights on Apple and launched a full out assault on the ipod. Almost every week there seemed to be another ipod killer, Cheaper! Bigger HD! FM Radio! Video! Recording! After the barrage by the entire consumer electronics industry against this Apple, this afterthought of the computer market, Apple's share of the MP3 market declined to 80%. The usurper apple computers were shown their place in the world, no more than 80% of the market. A line is drawn.
The only reason for Microsoft's massive success was it leveraged it's advantage in the enterprise market to dominate the consumer market. "With a PC, you can work at home." Now, with Virtualization, Web based applications, etc... that sales pitch doesn't hold as much water as it used to. Apple products don't look or feel cheap. When you buy a new apple product, you know you are getting the latest and greatest from them. Android? Windows? Good luck.
Apple's main advantage, they don't annoy their customers.
But has the android user shown a willingness to actually buy the apps?
IDK, the last data I heard was from last summer and I'm willing to bet that was due to the small installer base. But I haven't heard anything lately.
I think having the responsibility to set one's own metric is great in two ways. The boss is giving you control over what you consider success and failure. 1) You can lower the bar. 2) You can have a quantifiable tool to get more money for projects.
If you make it a user-centric metric, you'll have a much easier time. Instead of focusing on system uptime, choose user downtime. So you can say to the boss, "Our users were down for N hours for a total loss to the company of $XXX,XXX. Now for (1/3)XXX,XXX we can reduce this issue to (1/5) N..."
The boss is trusting you, it's your responsibility to take advantage of that trust.
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Fulfilled Promises, User Interface, Build Quality, Price.
Apple dominated the mp3 player market, not because it had the best specs, not because it was cool but because it delivered what it promised. The interface was easy to use, a few minutes and you knew all you needed to know. When you pick up one of the early $500 ipods, you knew you could kill a hobo with it. My 10GB 2nd Gen Ipod lasted 6 years 4 continents and dozens of countries and three hobos that got out of line. A lot of people say Itunes is crap, but nobody has mentioned a better music management system.
My Droid X, it's pretty good except Motorolla tells me I should reboot it once a day, the buttons might react when I touch them, the battery won't last 10 hours and sometimes the phone doesn't work. My work issued iphone 3G had none of those problems.
The Xoom was shipped with a worthless SD Slot, broken 4G and who knows what else. The positive reviews of the Touchpad used words like "cheap" and "bulky." And reviewers of Android and Touchpad tablets all mentioned about the unusually high number of freezes, crashes and reboots.
You know if I wanted a multi-tasking device whose battery dies out after 6 hours of use, I'd get an Android phone.
Oh wait I already have one.
Yes, I have a startup killer running.
Yes, I have wifi, bluetooth and GPS turned off.
No, I don't want to buy a second battery to carry it around.
Friends with Iphones are able to do the same as me and their phones don't die in the middle of the day.
What this sounds like is a Major Retail Chain moving into a new city and selling their products at a loss to drive the Mom and Pop shops out of business. Google is effectively shutting down the OS Market to new competitors and innovation. HTC, et al are able to sell their phones at the same price as Apple because they don't have to pay for their OS.
So the question becomes when MS & RIM leave the smartphone market, what will Google do?
... If you're wanting to tell the story of a web slinger who just happens to be mixed race so you appeal to a broader audience, that's political correctness. It's too early to tell which way they'll go with this.
Oh those b@stards trying to sell more of their product to a larger audience. You must really love Aryan Man.
But if the hardware isn't lighter or thinner then it's not superior. One of the important requirements of a tablet is portability.
And you only have to worry about ram and processor speed if your OS is a bunch of crap. Apple is able to get away with "Lower Specs" because the OS runs insanely efficient when compared to windows and android. For example the Ford F150 has a 390 horsepower engine, A BMW 328 has a 230 horsepower engine. Which vehicle has the better specs?
Before the iPad and the iPhone there was the iPod, it was an underpowered device, expensive, tethered to itunes a bloated software that could only be described as pure evil and it controlled almost 90% of the personal music player market, the Consumer Electronics Manufactures turned their sights on Apple and launched a full out assault on the ipod. Almost every week there seemed to be another ipod killer, Cheaper! Bigger HD! FM Radio! Video! Recording! After the barrage by the entire consumer electronics industry against this Apple, this afterthought of the computer market, Apple's share of the MP3 market declined to 80%. The usurper apple computers were shown their place in the world, no more than 80% of the market. A line is drawn.
The only reason for Microsoft's massive success was it leveraged it's advantage in the enterprise market to dominate the consumer market. "With a PC, you can work at home." Now, with Virtualization, Web based applications, etc... that sales pitch doesn't hold as much water as it used to. Apple products don't look or feel cheap. When you buy a new apple product, you know you are getting the latest and greatest from them. Android? Windows? Good luck.
Apple's main advantage, they don't annoy their customers.
When you really want to show the computer who's boss, you move the bits physically. Physical intimidation always works.
But has the android user shown a willingness to actually buy the apps? IDK, the last data I heard was from last summer and I'm willing to bet that was due to the small installer base. But I haven't heard anything lately.
I think having the responsibility to set one's own metric is great in two ways. The boss is giving you control over what you consider success and failure.
1) You can lower the bar.
2) You can have a quantifiable tool to get more money for projects.
If you make it a user-centric metric, you'll have a much easier time. Instead of focusing on system uptime, choose user downtime. So you can say to the boss, "Our users were down for N hours for a total loss to the company of $XXX,XXX. Now for (1/3)XXX,XXX we can reduce this issue to (1/5) N..."
The boss is trusting you, it's your responsibility to take advantage of that trust.