There's no doubt that Apple has a ruthless marketing machine. However, consumers and tech journos have been grappling with a simple question for years; Where does the line sit that splits marketing hype end and genuinely good products that sell on their own merit? Like them or hate them, Apple's products not only sell well, but they're generally very good too. The iPhone may not match the latest Android devices in terms of features, but no one can doubt its raw selling power. Perhaps more importantly, Apple's anti-laptops, namely its range of MacBooks, have an edge over nearly all of the competition too.
It's not just marketing hype that sells Apple products. The fact that they're often just better or easier to use has huge appeal. The iPhone is probably Apple's biggest success story, coming from nothing to a massively enviable smartphone market share in just a matter of years. I owned smartphones long before Apple came on the scene, and prior to this they were dire. Yes, you could surf the Internet, use GPS and access your emails, but the designs and interfaces were often terrible.
HTC's TyTN II smartphone was one of the precursors to the iPhone
This was even true for the early Android-based smartphones and up until the launch of the first iPhone, I'd been using mostly Windows mobile operating systems as far back as 2003, which looking back now, were equally tragic. Then along comes the iPhone and the capacitive touch screen interface takes off, as well as a renewed focus on design that had been entirely missing up until that point. Smartphones were suddenly sexy and everyone wanted one.
It was Apple that instigated this, not HTC, Samsung or any of the other smartphone manufacturers that were around at the time. Personally I wasn't convinced by the iPhone at the start. Its lack of 3G support was one issue but I'd had such terrible experiences with touch screens up until that point that the thought of having no buttons or a stylus sounded like my worst nightmare.
It took me until the 3GS was launched two years after the release of the first gen model in 2007, for me to jump ship. I'm still using an iPhone today and it's anyone's guess how long it would have taken Samsung, HTC and Google to reinvent the smartphone experience had Apple not decided to join the smartphone market. Maybe they'd have done a good job, maybe we'd still be squinting and using a stylus while staring at a bland, smartphone.
The MacBook is another good example. It's a product that has an edge in nearly all reviews, even on respectable review sites that are well-regarded as being unbiased. Tim Cook did a good job of selling the new MacBook earlier this year, but the brand has already established itself as a leading player in the screen+physical keyboard market. In fact, despite the fact I've always owned Windows-based laptops, I too am considering converting to a MacBook, simply because Apple consistently offers great products.
Admittedly, laptops still have an edge in the gaming department; the dual GPU-wielding 4kg monsters from the likes of Asus and Alienware can literally replace a desktop PC, albeit for double the price, but for nearly everything else - from battery life to ergonomics Apple is hard to beat. Dell comes close with its XPS models, especially the 2015 XPS 13, but again, battery life isn't as strong as Apple's offerings.
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This is for several reasons. Specifically with MacBook, it's keyboards are excellent - with all current models as far as I can tell being backlit too. This isn't the case with laptops. Only gaming or premium models offer backlit keyboards and the keyboard quality varies wildly. Its Retina displays, admittedly not present on every model and also while being a point of contention with those that believe you only need 1080p in a 15in or smaller screen, do look superb and for a long time they left laptops in their dust. Even now, you have to spend a fortune to obtain anything more than 1080p in a laptop screen.
MacBooks are generally lighter than laptops too and have class-leading battery life. These two features really bug me - there's no reason why laptop manufacturers can't do this, but they seem resigned to offering 3kg lumps that are also much larger than MacBooks, despite sporting similar-sized screens. Sub $700 laptops often sport woeful battery life and keyboards by comparison too.
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It's not just MacBook where Apple has dominated with successful, cutting edge design. All the way back to one of its first successful portable products, the iPod, Apple was again not first on the scene with high capacity MP3 players. PC speaker and sound card manufacturer Creative, already had hard disk-based MP3 players available and unlike the early iPods, they weren't locked into iTunes, which was far less streamlined and intuitive than it is today.
Creative also offered higher capacity players than Apple but aside from the fact that Creative failed miserably on the marketing front despite having a superior product in many ways, Apple still seemed to come up with the goods. In the end, the iPod reigned supreme, thanks to its simple, compact design, as well as the steadily growing iTunes library.
The company does seem to obsess over design. Its products are often dated too, or at least lack some features that the competition already has. However, maybe spending a bit more time on the esthetics is the key. Even in the keynote speeches, Jobs and Cook have spent a huge amount more time talking about the design than other manufacturers do and each time they do this, they usually have something new or different to talk about as well; they're not just spinning the same old story such as a faster processor or graphics card.
The new MacBook, for example, makes excellent use of Intel's low power Core M CPU by using a tiny circuit board inside the chassis and filled the empty space with batteries. The result is still a device that weighs less than a kilogram, is insanely thin and lasts as long, if not longer than any other similar device on the market in terms of battery life. I don't remember any laptop manufacturer boasting about how many batteries are squeezed into their products.
This makes me wonder, why other portable tech companies haven't taken the fight to Apple, at least not convincingly. Samsung is its nearest competitor in terms of smartphones but it's still using the mostly capacitive touch screen and app design that Apple implemented with the first iPhone. Very little has changed, which is why Apple still holds a huge market share. Laptop manufacturers are perhaps the most guilty of this.
The Windows vs OSX debate aside, MacBooks are generally better in terms of ergonomics and style. You can buy laptops that are faster for less of course, but that's beside the point - you only have to look at reviews of MacBooks to see just how much more refined they are. For me the keyboard, touchpad and screen are just as important as the raw specifications - this is something many laptop manufacturers seem to forget, even in the face of the fact that consumers are willing to pay extra for them, as MacBook sales show.
Why do you think the competition struggles to topple Apple? Have you swapped a laptop for a MacBook or vice versa? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @antonyleather
