I'm writing a paper and am trying to compile some strengths and weaknesses of the Apple company. Anyone have some suggestions to throw out?
Very "clean"?
Could be newbie friendly since it comes with a lot of pre-installed software.
Less support than windows since it came out first.
.exe's?
Edit: Crap, Apple, the company, not macs.
Strengths: Their design and marketing departments.
Weaknesses: Their engineers going to bars.
[QUOTE=EvilZx;22787241]Very "clean"?
Could be newbie friendly since it comes with a lot of pre-installed software.
Less support than windows since it came out first.
.exe's?
Edit: Crap, Apple, the company, not macs.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the overall company since the paper is for a business class, but that also plays into the company since it's a large part.
[editline]06:05PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=blackdenton;22787352]Strengths: Their design and marketing departments.
Weaknesses: Their engineers going to bars.[/QUOTE]
Haha, you know, that's actually being mentioned in the paper. I can't decide if people loosing their products are internal or external.
Pro: high quality built and materials, nice laptops worth the apple tax because of the quality and parts.
Con: OSX
As mentioned before, their marketing is great. An example is the videos they have on their website of people saying it's going to change everything. Another example is them leaving hardware out of their products so they can put it in the next upgrade, so people purchase multiple times.
They also have an incredible design strength, on both hardware and software; everything looks smooth and efficient. They have the strength of popularity too - while it's not really up to them to control, it's still a huge strength they have.
Pro: Advertising, consumer appeal, good quality, user freindly
Cons: Pricing, Support, osx is... Limited
[QUOTE=rathat48;22787423]Pro: high quality built and materials, nice laptops worth the apple tax because of the quality and parts.
Con: OSX[/QUOTE]
How is OS X a con?! People sure as hell don't buy a Mac for the hardware..
[QUOTE=ifaux;22788287]How is OS X a con?! People sure as hell don't buy a Mac for the hardware..[/QUOTE]
The mac I'm buying has better hardware than my PC, which I spent $100 more on
I was ripped off with my PC
[QUOTE=ifaux;22788287]How is OS X a con?! People sure as hell don't buy a Mac for the hardware..[/QUOTE]
They buy it for the software on it. (Such as the iPhone Dev tools.
[editline]05:27AM[/editline]
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Thank you all of you who responded, really helped me compile a list for my paper! Appreciate it!
iPhone dev tools are (in my biased opinion) are the best dev tools for any platform out there.
[editline]12:11AM[/editline]
Aw shucks i'm late :v:
weaknesses, they have high security on their stuff, and a dude in China lost a prototype Ipod or Iphone, and the pressure he was getting from the company made him kill himself, I think there are a couple other cases too
well on a business theme, they have regular new product announcements that drum up public interest and excitement (which is apparently why their market cap is now higher than Microsoft's, because investors say "hey that looks exciting I want some of that")
Pros: Is better than the average pc. OSX (for some people). FCP.
Cons: Steve Jobs, their prices, OSX (in my opinion), upgradeability, limited software and hardware-wise, since they don't support the 5*** and the 3** 4** series and triple-channel DDR3.
Was I just could come up with. The pros are good enough to buy one despite the cons. For some people.
Steve Jobs is a con because he's quite frankly not the nicest person around.
The hypocrisy. Apple was meant to mean "freedom" from the "oppressors".
Nowadays apple cares more about profits than anything else.
For example, the multi tasking and wallpapers that the iOS 4 brings is only available to 3g 32g and 64 iPod touch.
All the other ipod touch are perfectly capable of using those features, in fact, all it takes is to change a few lines of code.
However, apple decided to purposely disable it so that the users have to upgrade to later models.
And this happens to all apple products. For instance, I bet the next iPad generation will include features that could be there in the first place, but aren't so that we need to buy the newest generations.
Pros:
Apple is a trend, therefore they will always have supports from their fans irregardless of what they produce. This means that they'll also always have some clear profit margins irregardless of what they sell. An example of this is the iPad, ie a product with what can be considered to have a very limited audience in the markets. Even though it's limited, people still buy it because it's well, an Apple product. They also provide a medium and system that developers can use, ie the appstore. Because of this they've created a market and a business that people are able to live off successfully.
Cons:
Apple are also a very forward business, ie they're a business that says it's our way, or no way. While this is a good thing for them in some cases, for others it can be quite bad. The reason for this is that they can essentially charge what they want or even force companies to succumb to their will (ie market monopoly). An example of this could be network carriers. Now I'm not sure what AT&T's contract with Apple is in the US, but in the UK, Apple have very much laid down the law with networks. The phone must always be sold for x amount, and in the event of anything such as a fault being any more than a screen scratch, they [B]must[/B] transfer the call to apple, no matter what.
Hopefully that's a few examples for you, I have more if you'd like.
[QUOTE=Destroyertf;22795050]The hypocrisy. Apple was meant to mean "freedom" from the "oppressors".
Nowadays apple cares more about profits than anything else.
For example, the multi tasking and wallpapers that the iOS 4 brings is only available to 3g 32g and 64 iPod touch.
All the other ipod touch are perfectly capable of using those features, in fact, all it takes is to change a few lines of code.
However, apple decided to purposely disable it so that the users have to upgrade to later models.
And this happens to all apple products. For instance, I bet the next iPad generation will include features that could be there in the first place, but aren't so that we need to buy the newest generations.[/QUOTE]
No. They disabled it because the hardware it too weak to support it. Try running any other sort of backgrounding app on a 3G, and you'll see it absolutely kills the performance. Even adding a wallpaper to the springboard makes it lag. Apple above all want to make a good user experience, and if feature X ruins that, it won't be added. I admit some things are gay like video recording not being on the 3G, but for pretty much everything else, they have a good reason to not include a feature.
OSX is actually quite good in my opinion, letting users get a nice operating system experience without having them need to really tinker with anything just to get it right.
The hardware upgradability is quite deliberate - the machine like the iMac is targeted towards the user that just needs a simple machine that just works but still give users to upgrade their RAM and in some cases, their hard drive if they want to. Everything else can be handled by a technician that is actually qualified to do repairs, so people don't need to worry about going to some dodgy computer shop that doesn't know what they're doing or uses cheap-ass parts
Support is another thing brought up here, which is also quite damn good. The service providers as mentioned provide a one stop shop for people to get their machine upgraded or repaired if needed. The AppleCare technical support is great if you need a software issue resolved quickly over the phone and then you have the Genius Bars and the Apple Support site that give free help to the customer that are outside of support, so they're not left out in the cold.
A real con is their secretively. Apple make it out to be a marketing tool to "surprise" everyone, but it doesn't always work out the best as we've seen with Foxxcon employees and even that Apple employee that was fired for showing Woz an iPad 3G. Besides, if people know something awesome like the iPhone 4G is coming out in X months time, it gives them more of a chance to save up for it.
One of Apple's strengths is that they (where possible) try to be very user-friendly.
One of their weaknesses is that they are very restrictive in what you can do with their devices.
Apple has amazing designers, engineers, and R&D.
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs insists on squandering the company's resources by listening only to his own opinions and ideals.
S: Precise attention to detail.
W: There way or bust (though looking at sales and whatnot most people tend to not care).
Pros: Strong marketing via lying
Weakness: While saying how bad other company's stuff is they don't mention their own weakness in their products, and no one wants to buy something that is incredibly virus vulnerable and crap.
[QUOTE=Dr Egg;22796296]No. They disabled it because the hardware it too weak to support it. Try running any other sort of backgrounding app on a 3G, and you'll see it absolutely kills the performance. Even adding a wallpaper to the springboard makes it lag. Apple above all want to make a good user experience, and if feature X ruins that, it won't be added. I admit some things are gay like video recording not being on the 3G, but for pretty much everything else, they have a good reason to not include a feature.[/QUOTE]
Shouldn't I make that choice? Why won't they give me the option? They could just put warning that says that multitasking and wallpapers might reduce the performance. But instead they decide to not had those features, which are there, but aren't enabled because of a line of code. Why? Greed. There's nothing wrong with greed, every company needs profits, but doesn't giving the costumer a bad experience also reduced their profits? You know, unsatisfied costumers don't tend to buy things from the same company?
The vast, vast majority of people would rather have performance over some useless aesthetics. Just because you want to dick around doing things your phone is incapable of doing doesn't mean they'll add in an option just for little Destroyertf.
[QUOTE=Destroyertf;22837057]Shouldn't I make that choice? Why won't they give me the option? They could just put warning that says that multitasking and wallpapers might reduce the performance. But instead they decide to not had those features, which are there, but aren't enabled because of a line of code. Why? Greed. There's nothing wrong with greed, every company needs profits, but doesn't giving the costumer a bad experience also reduced their profits? You know, unsatisfied costumers don't tend to buy things from the same company?[/QUOTE]
Apple is about the user experience. Just because you know what you are doing doesn't mean everyone does, and it isn't you Apple is focussing on. And how is it greed? iOS doesn't take away in functionality in the older devices. Either your phone/touch acts like it always did, or you now have this extra option. Apple aren't forcing you to upgrade to the new device, you can carry on using whatever you want.
And like I said before, by disabling multitasking and wallpapers on the 4G, they are maintaining the user experience, not making it worse.
Strength: Advertising to a specific market.
Weakness: Inconsiderate business model. Release a new model every 6 months with 1 new feature to make people keep spending money. Instead of releasing a new device that solves several issues or requests and let it run for a bit.
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