My Views on Apple

I've been planning to write blogs for a long time now and finally the day is here!!! Since this is my first blog please ignore the mistakes :).

I don't have any specific topic for writing blogs on, I just want to write on stuff that interest me and these are opinions from Chetan Nayak. So you are more than welcome to agree to them or criticize it :).

This blog is about why i feel Apple is so successful and what it could have done better.

Why Apple products are so successful in today's market -

Apple products are amazingly stable and very nicely designed from group up. This is a classic example for two basic things ,Firstly “If you spend a lot of time on your design (both technical and user interface) ,It pays of well” and secondly “Good designs are always simple and people love simple stuff ,they don’t want complicated stuff , The rule is to keep it simple :) and Apple have just done that “.

Although Apple did their best at marketing their products I think it got to a point where the marketing was through word of mouth which is probably the best way of marketing and it’s not easy to reach this point because no one would be talking about a product unless it’s that good.

The iPod changed everything for Apple, There were so many mp3 players that already existed in the market and provided same features that the iPod did and some of them provided even better features but how did the iPod win the market?

Three main things did it for the iPod – Stability, Design and SIMPLICITY in its user interface and the product appearance. Imagine no one ever thought of having around 1000 songs in a device this small and which works FLAWLESSLY.

1000 songs, 10 hours battery, Easy to carry, Great design. No one ever thought we could use an Mp3 player like a clip (So simple yet so useful).

When someone produces a great product ,It buys people's confidence and loyalty(To an extent) , It becomes easy to sell other products because people already trust you. Personally i feel that once the iPod and iPhone became a big hit it was easy for Apple to promote and sell their Mac's as well. The Mac computers existed from a long time but its only after the launch of iPod and iPhone the Mac's started to gain  more popularity in the market.

The effect of Steve jobs on Apple products –

Personally, I feel that there are a set of people would buy Apple products just because they are a big fan of Steve Jobs J. Seriously, I have seen that.

Having an inspirational leader and a public figure like Steve jobs can help in increasing a companies product sales. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest CEO’s and Entrepreneur ever!!!

The quotes and speech made by Steve jobs were so influential that he has a huge fan following for him and Apple which has eventually helped Apple to be what it is today.

Decisions that Apple could have been better at –

Although Apple products are amazing, I feel that Apple was trying to monopolize the market and forcing everyone to use things their way without providing lot of customization.

• Iphone forces you to use iTunes to do anything, not fair and monopoly again. To load a song you need to connect to iTunes and sync your device. With other phones you can just copy paste the files onto a folder.

• At least when I got an iPod/iPhone it was synced to only one computer (Doesn’t make sense as I need to carry my laptop every time I need to reload my songs/videos). Stupid idea, thankfully they didn’t tell you have to connect ONLY to a MAC (Might be in the future they might tell it).

• They developed software's like Xcode (Used to develop iPhone applications) and published other software’s that works only on Mac so that they can fuel Mac sales :). Monopoly again.

• Even to change a Battery you need to go to Apple store.Other phones provide such a easy option to replace your battery.

• Have you noticed that people who send an email with iPhones generally have a message in the end which states something like this "Ignore typo's /Sorry about typo's ".......This is not usability? But people still seem to love it.

From the above points do you still think Apple deserves the hype , There are a lot of other phones that does exactly what Apple does and in fact has better flexibility. Even then Apple seems to be winning.
Android has gained a great momentum and a lot of other mobile phone manufacturers have adopted to the open source operating system for developing smart phones.

      With the recent win for Apple over Samsung it might seem like a lot a other mobile phone manufacturers will be conservative in their approach to do things similar to Iphone which actually means less options for consumers.

      Here is the list of patents that Apple sued Samsung for. After reading this take a minute and think if it was worth it to even patent such things (Probably the multi-touch feature is the only one which seems like it could be patented, the others are not worth it patenting in the first place).

      After being accused for silly things like shape ,color etc i think Samsung will still win the race in the end, In fact now after the recent win for Apple over the silly patents Samsung will get a lot of sympathy's buy in's from consumers :) . 

      You can do more reading here.

      Please note i don't hate Apple products, I still think they are awesome, Its just that Apple could have done some things better.

     Would like to end this blog with a funny image i found on Facebook.

      Hope you enjoyed reading the Blog, Your critics are more than welcome. Let me know what your opinions are, Arguments are always good to have as long as they are healthy :).

Chao ,Until the next blog !!!

     Chetan Nayak