Posts by Mark . 1810 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009
If you say so. The only reason an iphone would be worth having for free, is so you could sell on to some mug at a ridiculous price. Personally I'll stick with my Samsung Android.
(And I've lost track of the absurd number of "Win a free ipad" - seems it is a case of having to give them away, after all.)
Indeed - given how Apple users seem to walk around holding their iphones in front of them all the time, it doesn't seem surprising. Another thing I note is how Apple laptops users seem far more likely to carry their laptop everywhere they go, where as most people usually leave them at home, or keep them carried in a bag if they're travelling.
Not to mention that Apple products are plastered in obvious logos (in some cases light up!), which helps advertise that you have a product. And that Apple products are only ever in the expensive range of the market. Personally I prefer my phones, laptops etc to have as subtle or unobvious a logo as possible (plus it just looks better that way - same reason I don't wear Addidas clothes).
Though it's great for Apple because it's yet more free advertising from the media. Just check out stories on thefts - it's always "laptops and Ipads" or "Macbooks and phones" or "Iphones and tablets" - if there's an Apple product stolen, it'll always be mentioned by name, like some kind of product placement ad, whilst other products are just mentioned generically.
"dominating the markets it was in"
Not even that - they don't dominate in computer operating systems, and they're third place in phones behind even Nokia (or by mobile OS, outsold by Android 6 times over). Which makes it even worse.
He's the CEO of a multinational. The media can harp on about Apple's "success", but the fact is it's nothing more than the success of many other multinationals (you have to be successful in order to get to being a multinational, basically).
It's sad to see the Apple bias in the media continues after Jobs - it's sad to see their pathetic attempts to try to personify Apple with the new CEO (what's-his-name), just like they did with Jobs - it's far easier to make a company look friendlier or different when you see them as a person, and just look at the overblown hoo-hah when Jobs died. Do we think most of those overemotional Apple fans even know the name of the CEO of larger and more successful Samsung is, let alone know if he died?
(I suppose the counter example is that being Time Person of the Year isn't necessarily a compliment, but also covers negative aspects, e.g., obvious example being Hitler - so this could cover the negative actions of Apple such as trying to lock the most successful smartphone platform out of the market. But even there, it's ludicrous to say he's the most influential person, or anywhere near it)
Who cares. Never in the most heated Windows vs Linux/etc debate did an MS fan go "But look at how much money Bill Gates has". No one cares (unless you're a shareholder).
But if we're looking at what people are buying, it's market share.
"They can't ramp up licence fees without either damaging their market or getting investigated."
Which is a good thing! Why on earth, as an Android user, should I be wishing that Google suddenly be able to make things more expensive?
And "MacProBookAir" (or whatever they call it) isn't a marketing trademark?
Apple are just yet another PC OEM, and all PC manufacturers, Apple included, use trademarks to sell their products.
As for "bad copy", I disagree. The Apple Air's have crap specs too (e.g., Intel integrated graphics). Personally I prefer to have a powerful laptop like a Clevo for main use, and a lower cost portable with better battery life (what used to be called a netbook) for travelling, rather than a device that does a bad job of either. I'll also take the laptop without a tacky light up logo.
There are certainly plenty of ultra-portable laptop/tablet hybrids being planned that are based on Clover Trail, the next generation SoC Atom, that will be a lower cost lower powered (and also better battery life) alternative to the i3/i5/i7 devices. It will be interesting see if we also get Clover Trail devices that are pure laptops - anyone know?
Part of the problem is, what is the definition of a "netbook"? If we define it as a machine with Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, 1024x600, then I'm glad that spec is finally dead - but that makes no more sense than saying a tablet is a device with 512MB RAM, and saying tablets are dead. If we define it as a low cost ultra-portable, then is it still true that netbooks will disappear?
If in 2013, I can still buy a lower end portable laptop, I don't care whether it's called a netbook, ultrabook, ultra-portable or whatever else - it's still the same thing. But if lower end portable laptops no longer exist, and the only choice is tablets, much more expensive (and poorer battery life) high end ultra-portables, or the remaining stock of old netbooks, that's a bit sad.
I love my Samsung N220, and have no desire to replace it with a less functional tablet. What will the upgrade path for it be?
"Meanwhile, the original netbook concept of a compact, ultraportable PC has reemerged in the form of Ultrabooks, Intel's attempt to encourage PC makers to develop devices to compete with Apple's extra-slim MacBook Air."
Well high end ultra-portables existed long before Apple joined the market late (as always). The key new thing about netbooks was the lower cost (and better battery life). Ultrabooks were nothing to do with Apple, they were a continued trend of ultra-portables, with Intel making up a trademark for better marketing. Ultrabooks are falling in price so could well eventually fill the place of netbooks anyway.
"by 2016 virtually every notebook will resemble an Ultrabook, leaving the netbook era as little more than a quaint and whimsical memory."
Or rather, the netbook was the immensely successful revolutionary device that later evolved into the devices we'll be using in 2016. By 2016, I suspect ultrabooks will be at the same price as netbooks - the reason for calling them ultrabooks will simply be a matter of marketing ("ultrabook" is an Intel trademark; netbook is simply a generic name, and one that's now become old fashioned).
Not to mention Chromebooks, effectively netbooks too (low cost, portable, good battery life). Ironically Chromebooks used to be viewed as pointless as you could just get a netbook, but soon Chromebooks might be the only thing in that market you can buy!
My Amiga 1200 booted in 5 seconds on a much slower PIO 0 IDE drive - is that therefore better than Linux?
Comparing boot times is pointless, and the idea of Windows being slow to boot is pretty much a myth, or a leftover from the NX/2000 days. I don't remember if Linux boots faster on my system - maybe it does - but then, I also note that my Clevo boots quicker than my Android Galaxy Nexus, so is Android crapper than Windows? (Same with the myth that Windows always needs rebooting for updates - Ubuntu seems to have far more updates, and also needs rebooting. Same with the myth that Windows is unstable - all modern OSs are pretty stable, but Windows 7 even survives graphics driver crashes that take down Linux and OS X, and I've had black-screen-on-boot when upgrading Ubuntu due to driver problems.)
I like Windows, Linux and Android (and Amiga back in the day), so I'm not taking sides. The idea that GNU/Linux isn't ready for ordinary users is also nonsense.
Yes it's not like Apple are using patent attacks against Android. And all their i-devices are open and don't require jailbreaking to root at all. Oh wait.
Apple do their utmost to prevent fair competiton. Just look at how we've ended up with vast amounts of audio devices only connecting to ipods and iphones - I know people who'd rather use their Android phone for music, but have to keep an ipod due to the locking. And that's before we consider the lock in of itunes.
Do you have a reference to recent Halloween Documents and Android?
How do tax payers fund MS, and not Apple? (I mean, I'm sure the Government use MS, but that's probably true of Apple too to some extent, and loads of other companies.)
You're right, Apple's OSs are minor players compare to Windows on desktop, or Android on mobile, so in that sense MS are the better target.
*However* I think there is a problem that it becomes hard to criticise MS, for what Apple have got away with doing - or even praised for doing. On top of that, they unfairly get vast amounts of hype and positive biased media coverage. MS can just say they're only doing similar things, and to a _lesser_ extent, than Apple do with IOS. (Sure yes, there's OS X, but most people don't care about that, that's not what gives Apple their hype.)
So I do think criticism should be targetted at Apple, in response to all the hype they get for IOS.
And even if one is using OS X, that's still giving money to Apple, to support their IOS development. And it's not just about locked-down IOS - there's the point of them attempting to destroy the most successful open source operating system, using software and design patents in the courts.
But Samsung Android alone outsell Apple (at least they have all through 2012, by a factor of 2 to 1 in Q3 - of course a contrived survey 12 weeks right after the iphone 5 launch, when Apple's sales are known to be highly seasonal, is going to show Apple in a better light).
And only selling a few models (which isn't just one, as you concede) isn't a reason to make it more impressive - that's Apple's choice. There are potentially advantages to having fewer models (e.g., it means developers can focus on it more easily. I might as well say "Well the only reason Apple sold more is that they have fewer models, so it's easier to support - it's quite impressive that Android sells well, despite having lots of different models to support". If it turns out that offering more choice to consumers is what is more popular, then that's tough luck to Apple.
Given that the S3 alone outsold Apple's flagship, it's clear that Samsung etc do fine at the high end too.
And whilst Apple may get all the IOS sales, Samsung Android phones alone outsell Apple (throughout 2012 - by Q3, this was as much as 2 to 1).
The phone networks give vast amounts of marketing for Apple's phones, and it's available and offered to people on loads of contracts.
"BMW do not care if they sell as many cars as Ford."
*shrugs* So if sales don't matter, why do Apple fans bleat on about it all the time in the first place, trying to spin Apple sales as being high? You're right, it doesn't matter. Lots of people buy Addidas on Burberry, but it doesn't mean that I have to. I'd rather buy what I like. Which is Android.
So wait - Android is bad because people only get it "free" on contract, and it's bad because its users are on PAYG? Which is it?? And why don't either of these criticisms apply to iphones, is there some magic third way? (Well, I guess there's buy outright, and have a SIM only contract, but I don't see why that's better, nor is there any evidence that people do this more with Apple, and on any platform, a minority of people do it this way.)
My observation is that many people buying Apple phones just do so because they have no idea that other phones are available. Even more so for ipads, where 10" Android tablets are unheard of, whilst the entire media hyped the ipad even before it was announced.
And virtually everyone buying iphones are just getting them "free" on contract. My experience is that Android, aside from being far more popular anyway, is also full of users who know about the different kinds of smartphones - considered Apple, and turned it down.
Most people I know in Cambridge have Android.
Note that iphones often seem more widespread, but for some reason Apple users seem far more likely to walk around holding their iphone or ipod in front of them, where as everyone else sticks in in their pocket. Also it's far more easier to recognise, due to the fewer models, and the ridiculous obvious Apple logo all over it. So you notice the one or two iphone users when walking somewhere, but you don't notice the 100 Android users.
With the S3 alone outselling the Apple flagship, it's clear that it's a myth that Android sales are mainly coming from cheaper sales. Also consider that these days, many Apple sales come from cheaper models, because many of their sales come from older models still available (even the ancient 3GS I've still seen on sale).
Plus, being cheap doesn't mean junk. It's well publicised how Apple has massive profit margins. Other manufacturers deliver what people want *and* do it at a lower price. Apple just pocket the profits for themselves.
J2me phones are called feature, not dumb. But it's not as simple as running native apps. WP can't do native, nor could android in the earlier days, and still most apps aren't native. Why is native code better?
Then there's a certain phone that couldn't do apps at all, but got counted as a smartphone...
Basically it's just a marketing term.
Look again. S40 phones have either full qwerty keyboard, or touchscreens. They've had this for years. They are smartphones by any sensible definition, albeit low end, but they don't get included in the stats. Meanwhile the iphone got counted, even when it couldn't run apps. It means that 100% of apple sales get compared to only some of Samsung and Nokia's. Complete spin.
Comparing who gets what updates is pointless, when they run entirely different OSs. If a dumb phone always had the latest updates, that wouldn't make it better. What matters is how the features compare. And it seems apple users needed those updates to get things like maps and copy paste, that android 2.2 already had.
The things that are new in android 4 do seem to be things that need the newer hardware, all the simpler features are already there.
If a product holds its value, it's a sign that there isn't much progress being made in the newer models.
I wish I knew these tactics back in the last days of the Amiga - "£2000 for an Amiga 4000? Actually that's much cheaper than your Mac, because it keeps its value longer".
Not really. I've never seen people making those comments of the Apple stories. The problem is when the media concentrate on endless vapourware and rumourware only about Apple all the time. The Register doing it for many companies is less a problem. (Alternatively, perhaps it would be nice to focus on actual news rather than vapourware, but I don't see what that's got to do with your moaning about "fandroids".)
"Bollocks, Samsung rtipped off the iPhone 4s , which is why the s3 differs so much"
Which phone did Samsung rip off the 4S with? The Samsung S2 was released 6 months before the 4S! Looks like the "ripped off" came the other way round...
(Unless you're talking about a phone that was neither the S2 nor S3, but I'm not sure which one?)
"but it takes style to make it sell, thats why they are always following apple , never leading !"
Flagship iphone 5 features are 4" screen (Samsung Galaxy S, 2.5 years ago) and maps (with Android for years, presumably since the beginning). Who's following who?
Given their Android phones alone outsell Apple two to one, not to mention all their other phones which make them the world's number one phone manufacturer, I think it's clear they know what makes things sell.
My LG smart TV has to occasionally reboot for updates[*], and I note my Android Galaxy Nexus phone now takes longer to boot than my Windows laptop. People sometimes criticise PCs saying they should be "more like electronic appliances", but the reality is that as the latter become computers, they acquire all of the annoyances of computers too.
(And as much as I love Android, the crash count is still higher than with Windows 7 these days, not to mention desktop Linux; similarly with other phone OSs too, they still seem less stable.)
[*] - It does let you choose when to do so.
I find Symbian and Android fine, each have their advantages and disadvantages - I don't see what makes the former a "joke". Unless you're comparing to older versions of Symbian, which isn't fair - we should compare like with like (e.g., Symbian^1 to older Android, Symbian^3 Belle to Android 4 - and there were no Android or iphone smartphones at the time of S60 3rd edition or before).
S40 meanwhile is intended at low end hardware - so probably not that good, but it should be compared to the dirt cheap Android phones (which also aren't very good), or the much older iphones (a joke compared to today).
And as for an OS that couldn't even run apps originally, and took years to get basic features like copy/paste, multitasking, and doesn't even support homescreens - and you say that isn't a joke? Each to his own, this kind of thing is subjective - but there's no objective measure that puts iphone above other platforms.
The point is about growth. WP has long had the problem that it struggles to get past 4 million a quarter (and often less than that) for all manufacturers. 4 million from one manufacturer, in half that time, is a significant sign of growth.
The same for Apple - for years the sales were terrible, less than 4 million per 6 weeks even for a while, but it showed steady growth. Indeed, I've got to laugh - the media and fans praised Apple for its supposedly good sales, whilst moaning about Nokia because their share was steady or falling (even though sales were actually increasing faster than Apple's).
Well now it's the other way round - Apple's share is falling, and WP shows growth. If you believe that relative growth is a good measure, then that should apply now. If you don't, Apple should never have got all that attention in the years from 2007.
(And I own Android, so don't care about WP. Indeed, it's a bit comical seeing iphone and WP fans argue about who isn't the most unpopular - "iphone, not as unpopular as WP!" - meanwhile, Android goes onto sell hundreds of millions all year round.)
"I think it clear, instead, that if you have a wide range of phones covering a wide range of features, then you'll appeal to a wide range of demographics within the public and therefore sell more phones. Consumers don't prefer choice"
Well that's exactly what I mean :) If I end up buying Samsung model 23 because that suits me perfectly, where as Apple model 2 doesn't, then I'm glad that Samsung offer the greater range of choice. (Sure, pedantically speaking if Samsung _only_ had model 23, I'd have still have bought it, but that would be luck - I still prefer that they offered me the choice of models.) And it's also clear that that's the stategy that's more successful.
iphone once had poor sales - a million in 76 days for example - yet that was hailed as a great success, even though companies like Nokia sold more than that _every single day_ (not just in the first weekend of a new release).
But when it's someone else selling a few million, that's poor. Right. Same old double standard.
"The only people I see buying it are people who do not care if it's Android, iOS or Windows - i.e. they just want a phone and they happen to like the look of that one."
Which describes most people, then.
"It's like the titanic - well made but a fatal flaw - it runs Windows in a market where people are buying iOS and Android."
If you're going to simplify things, people are buying Android full stop - or Android, and a few other minor OSs. With Android at 75%, iphone on 15% and falling, it's misleading to put them on the same level.
Indeed, it's interesting to note that the gap between WP and iphone is much less than the gap between iphone and Android (either by proportion, or absolute numbers of sales). Android really is that much way ahead. Even Samsung Android phones alone outsell iphone by two to one.
"Windows phone and Blackberry are probably going to account for less than 10% between them within 12-18 months."
And iphone are barely above that, so again it's odd to portray iphone on the same level as Android, but write off 10% of nothing.
"it's already a 2 horse race."
No, it's a race won by Android. The only question is how iphone, WP and Blackberry will do competing for the remaining shrinking share. (And it was _never_ a 2 horse race, btw - the "Android and iphone" is a myth; iphone only came 2nd place as late as a year ago, with the demise of Symbian, and at that time, Android was already way ahead and the clear winner.)
Didn't they do this a year ago? I'm sure I remember seeing this story early 2012, if not before.
"Apple, meanwhile, is limited in its range of phones while Samsung has an array of feature and smartphones."
Indeed - whilst focusing on a limited range may have some advantages (as Apple fans often tell us, e.g., making it easier for developers), it's clear that consumers prefer to have choice, and Samsung's (and still Nokia's) model wins out.
As an aside, the whole "feature" vs "smart" phone is rather ill-defined - feature phones are smartphones by any objective technical definition, albeit it usually lower end, not dumbphones. The term was only ever introduced as a marketing distinction around 2004, when Internet and apps became standard, to distinguish them from more expensive phones. (And the original iphone was marketed as a "smartphone" when it couldn't even run apps, when feature phones could!) But now with all the media hype on smartphones, I wonder why Samsung and Nokia still limit their lower end smartphones with the "feature" phone label. As an example, Nokia's new Full Touch Asha smartphone platform sold a massive 6 million in its first quarter earlier this year (iphone only managed 3 million in the first 6 months, despite vast amounts of advertising and media coverage) - more than their Windows Phone sales - but most reports seem to conveniently ignore it in the "smartphone" stats, because heaven forbid people realise Nokia are still more popular than believed (you would have thought "Nokia doing better on unknown platform than Windows Phone" would make a great anti-MS story, but there you are).
It also makes most sales comparisons unfair, as the media usually focus on "smartphones", which compares 100% of Apple sales, to only a fraction of other companies. This article shows the true picture.
Yeah, pursuing profits by innovation and competing in the market, and not the courtroom, unlike a certain other company. Heaven forbid, how dare they!
(And of course, once again we see that making a profit is bad when any other company do it, but when Apple do it, it's a reason to praise them.)
"Retina" is a trademark - it makes as much sense as saying no one else does Pureview cameras. And talking of a "first" makes little sense, when resolution is a quantity with a large number of possibilities - it's not an either/or. (I suppose you could say "first to make a device with a particular resolution", but there are *many* such "firsts".)
For years iphones had low resolution (my Nokia 5800 had 640x360, much higher than most phones of the time) - for some reason, this wasn't deemed a problem, until they made it their single advertising point. My Galaxy Nexus has a higher resolution than a "retina" iphone, and there are phones with higher resolution still. Many much cheaper Android tablets have higher resolution than an ipad mini.
In conclusion, there is no clear winner at all as to who leads on high resolutions.
But that's just it, there are no "Samsonites".
There are people who enjoy using particular products/platforms/etc, and in some cases they get quite fanatical about it. But people don't get fanatical about a _company_ - people don't treat this like football teams where you want one side to win, they don't care about the company success unless you're an employee or a shareholder.
But Apple fans seem to be the exception. I love a good old which-product-is-best debate, but here it's like a tennis match where only one side is serving - rather than arguments about which product is best, it gets deflected with arguments of praise like "Look how much profit they make!", "Look how much valued they are by the stock market!" which leads to absurdities such as praising a company for having overpriced products, because high profit margins are good for the company (where as in any other debate, that would be a reason for consumers to criticise). I remember reading an article about the wonder of some Apple product, but it was only after a while that it hit me - not a single point of argument was about the product, but it was all about things being good from the company point of view, such as profits, shares, etc.
No one is arguing for Samsung for the sake of it. Rather, people enjoy using Samsung products; and also, people dislike the market being stifled due to software and design patents, especially the ones in question here.
I agree there's no point in these super-high resolutions, but that goes for Apple too (I never understood where one is meant to get the media in such high resolutions, given that you can't even fit one Blu-Ray quality film on an entry level 16GB model, and most people won't have the mobile allowance to stream that). The point is that Apple made it their single marketing point, and Google/Samsung beat them at their own game - for those people who think "Retina" is important, the Nexus 10 beats it.
For those of us who think it isn't important, it's not a consideration in the first place - and there are many other tablets to then consider.
"Retina" is just a trademark. What the actual best resolution is is a matter of personal preference and needs.
(I'm also amused that Samsung outdoing Apple is spun as being something to criticise Samsung over.)
"cheap and nasty kit that doesn't compete with the iPhone."
Given that Apple fans managed to put up with a phone that, over the years, couldn't do video chat, multitasking, copy/paste, homescreens, picture messaging, 3G, apps, or even be a smartphone at all in its first incarnation, that must be some pretty nasty kit to be criticised.
Or perhaps actually, people are buying smartphones that are more than good enough for their needs, and easily compete with the stuff that Apple puts out. Latest flagship feature, the same but slighty bigger?
As for sales, I don't need to dismiss it - it's simply of zero importance to me. I don't see you worshipping Android or Samsung for their massive Apple-overwhelming sales. Even Nokia sell more phones still - but I bet you'll find a way to dismiss that.
Ah yes, copy and paste - the very thing the iphone couldn't do for years, yet Apple fans said this was not only a problem, but it was better not to have it - it was a whole new "paradigm". Oddly that logic didn't work when Apple did add this basic UI functionality, years behind the competition.
I hear these days to use Swype-like keyboards on an iphone, you have to run it as a separate program, then copy and paste it into where you actually want to type. This is an example that its users consider a great UI.
The S3 sold 10 million on release. That's just one of many Samsung phones, and of hundreds of Android phones, which now has 75% share and rising to iphone's 15% and falling.
Apple are like the 9 year old kid who comes third in the egg and spoon race - for some reason they get hyped, even though what they do is nothing special for multinationals. Sorry, most of us are fed up of hearing about them.
A real blinder, it only cost them their reputation, made them a laughing stock in the usually apple loving media, and drew criticism from their previously fanatical users. Brilliant move.
(Apple should know the benefit of having things work ootb, else they wouldn't have hyped things like voice recognition and panorama camera, things previously available as apps anyway.)
Maybe ppl would be buying netbooks if the specs weren't stuck at 2007 1024x600 1gb ram, with no fall in price either. I'd gladly take something with a keyboard that i don't have to hold rather than an oversized phone, but everyone's already got netbooks, and there's no reason to upgrade. The same thing will be true of tablets in a few years, if they do the same thing.
As for shop shelf space, it would be nice if so called pc shops didn't devote half the place to apple laptops - shop space isn't simply about market share, it's who buys the most advertising space in the shop, or gives them the bigger margin. You won't see the low cost tablets in most shops either.
The nexus 7 is made by Asus, a pc company, the nexus 10 by Samsung, so the tablet vs pc company argument doesn't make sense.
"the iPhone brought the smartphone to the masses"
False - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures
"Before then there were a toy for geeks."
The early iphone was a toy for geeks too. And the first iphone wasn't a smartphone anyway (couldn't run applications).
Mainstream usage came with Android, or perhaps Symbian shortly before that in the late 2000s. (Plus the whole "smartphone" definition is ill-defined anyway - phones with Internet and apps, something the original iphone couldn't do, became standard and mainstream around 2005, it's just that only some were arbitrarily marketed as "smartphones" - the change more recently is simply that more phones are now marketed as smartphones.)
As for before and after, we might as well say before the Nokia 5800 the iphone didn't have apps, and afterwards it did; or before the Samsung Galaxy, the iphone was tiny, and afterwards, it had a larger screen.
I love how the consensus here seems to be either that Windows 8 is awful for being more touch friendly because people want keyboards; and also that keyboard/mouse is dead, everyone should throw away computers and use ipads...
Which is it?
(As for desktop market, most PCs are mobile in the form of laptops, not desktops.)
"They will see that it is possible, even enjoyable to move away from the Beast of Redmond. Microsoft ... Or the 30,000 deployed Macbooks at IBM."
Seriously - why are people here so eager to praise and what the success of Apple over MS, a company that's trying to block the most successful open source operating system, with software and design patents?
Not to mention that that would leave us with a company controlling the hardware and OS, rather than just the OS.
I'd love to see more open source success, and more choice in operating systems. But your vision is of a world with less choice.
And I could say the same of Apple - just because they still sell "Macbooks" (why not call them laptops or PCs, like for any other company?) doesn't mean it's important.
And to think people here still criticise MS for lock-in...
You can webcam on Windows btw. And since most people use Windows, most people are better off web-camming with something that runs on multiple platforms, rather than just a minority platform like Apple. I guess you asked an Apple fan - for most people, that really doesn't make sense.
"Facetime" is just Apple's trademark for something that everyone else did years earlier (flagship feature on an iphone 4? This was standard in 2005 on a feature phone).
"Do I have Windows systems? Yes. Do I plan on refreshing them any time in the forseebale future? No. In fact; I am "Libre Office that works with touch, keyboard and mouse on Android" away from being able to walk away from Microsoft for anything except my collection of older Steam games.
For the actual heavy lifting stuff, I find that all the big apps I need have been ported to OSX."
It's great that you're smug about being free of Windows and supporting Free software - but then we find you're an Apple user! I never understand that logic.
Plus it sounds like you're in agreement with the OP - yes, why not include TVs, along with microwaves and washing machines - that Windows has smaller share when you include the market you're looking at is hardly suprising, and nothing new.
Apple's market share of mp3 players is a lot smaller, if we included all devices that can play mp3s! Or especially, all devices that play music. Why not include all the sales of phones, laptops, tablets, stereo systems, and then see the "True" market share of ipods!
Couldn't agree more.
If we're looking at "any kind of computing device" this is nothing new. I'm sure that the media want to pretend it's something new, as part of some Windows decline, but we've had mobile phones being mainstream for ten years (Symbian was dominant until 2011 - and why stop at "smartphones" when "feature" phones are also mobile computers, just with a different marketing name?), and before that, we also had games consoles. It's also long been obvious that phones will sell more than PCs (phones are intrinsically something one person has, where as many people still share computers; and people upgrade phones more often).
I'm sure people could make the same claim about the popularity of ARM versus Intel - but again, it's nothing new! I remember in the 1990s reading an article pointing out that actually it was ARM that was very popular, on par with Intel, because of all their use in embedded and mobile hardware.
It's also worth noting that this kind of argument makes every platform look smaller. So Windows is only 20% - but OS X and GNU Linux are also a lot smaller. And Android is no longer at 75% in mobile, it's a lot smaller. Let's throw in all those feature phones too, as I say, and watch the share for Android and Windows go even smaller... (Nokia's S40 still probably sells more than Android, for example.)
That's not to say that it isn't interesting to look at operating system share as a whole, on all kinds of devices - but it's nothing surprising to see a different picture, nor is it anything new.
"they can release a 3840x2160 Retina TV"
You mean, 4K TV, which already exists in TVs today (Retina is just a marketing trademark, not an actual standard term for a resolution size).
"Being the only people offering convenient one-click access to quad-HD content ... I would pay $0.99 per half-hour for the BBC Wildlife Film Unit doing what it does best in quad-HD."
I would not be happy if the licence-payer funded BBC programs were only available for users of one company, thus locking out the majority of users who use other products, limiting competition in the market, and letting that company also have a 30% cut of the fee that customers pay. There was an uproar when iplayer "only" supported the 90% of Windows users, let alone this...
"What I can do is outline some of the problems with TVs at the moment that need to be solved."
Great. Nothing to do with Apple though, anymore than it is with Microsoft or Hoover or Debenhams or anyone else who doesn't make TVs.
"The main problem is the vast collection of remote controls and their associated buttons that you need to control the TV and all the other stuff attached to it."
LG Smart TVs have a remote with hardly any buttons. Already solved.
"The second big problem is the confusing array of different user interfaces you have to deal with, depending on where you are."
Not sure what you mean?
"Apple would definitely sort that out ... Apple would make that much more consistent."
It's the "They are better than the competition" argument, based on products that *don't even exist*.
No reason to think that Apple would do anything for the second problem you list, since all the applications on their products can have different UIs too. Even for the first, a touchscreen actually allows UIs to have more buttons etc (just that they're in software, rather than physical) - indeed, that's the good thing about them. But they certainly don't reduce the number things to press. My experience is that older less computer-experienced people prefer to stick with phones with a physical keypad, as it's easy and simple, compared with the multitude of UIs in a touchscreen device. Similarly my parents found the aforementioned LG remote confusing because they didn't like clicking icons, and prefer to stick with a traditional remote with all the buttons on it.
As for your bank balance, probably not - ideas are cheap, it's building the products, bringing them to market, and marketing, that's all the difficulty. You couldn't make money just by thinking up the idea (nor would it stop anyone from later patenting it, based on recent events...)
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