Apple has offered products with little value over competitors for a long time now, but they still get to command a large premium on their products because "the vibes are right".
When engineers analyze things they look at the specs, stats, and metrics. When consumers analyze things they look at what others are doing, feel for vibes, roll into the convenience, and stick with the familiar.
> The overwhelming volume of Apples sales comes from people who wouldn't notice if their device was running 2016 level hardware.
How could we possibly know this? This is just an argument from elitism, as though the plebes should be happy playing Farmville on their gateway computers, while us haughty developers sit in our ivory towers and herald in the end of the anthropocene using machines we can actually appreciate.
They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding.
Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. The desktop market share isn't going up, the Mac's lifeline is depreciation of old hardware to force Mac owners into the upgrade cycle: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
> They make a good point. Apple's most-popular device is a smartphone that doesn't handle workloads any heavier than Snapchat or Instagram. The value prop of the iPhone is not rooted in the performance or battery life (as Liquid Glass showed us) but just the branding.
It's not a good point, it's an assumption based on elitism, just like your assumption that nobody is doing anything other than Snapchat or Instagram on their phones, or that they're only buying an iPhone because of the branding and not also the performance and battery life. In your head, what do you think the average iPhone user looks like? Are they drooling simpletons?
> Apple makes more money selling iPhone accessories than they make selling Macs. You look at the desktop market share in 2026 and it's very apparent that the Mac's regular upgrade cycle is driving Apple's sales, not direct competition: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
What point are you trying to make here? People like the iPhone, the iPhone makes a shitload of money, so therefore people who have Macs don't appreciate the hardware? Or what?
Almost nobody is doing anything other than Snapchat or Instagram on their iPhones. That's the point, "the overwhelming volume of Apple sales" was the original claim and they're absolutely right. Compare every single Apple product on volume and you will not approach the volume of iPhones being sold. Even cult-classic product lines like the Mac cannot hold a candle in comparison to Airpods sales volume.
If the iPhone was a branded Android device, then sure, maybe this would be an elitist argument. But the iPhone is a proprietary platform with a locked-down browser, locked-down store, locked-down GPU drivers and OTA updates that decide how long your battery lasts. It is not elitist to point out that Apple customers by-and-large ignore these facts, it's the objective circumstances of the smartphone market.
> For example, I thought there was universal sentiment that apple silicon / M-series computers are pretty unmatched.
5 years ago, sure, but the x86 world has come a long way since Apple dumped Intel. I'd certainly take a 2026 Intel machine over something with an M1-M3.
I think the point was supposed to be default
apps in an OS, similar to default search
engine.. What I am missing is that OpenAI
is in no way that default. Every OS, browser,
etc should be able to find a more profitable
default than sending someone to OpenAI.
Apple is one of the very few companies committed to (hardware) quality. They make sure their entry level models are very decent. You can't buy a apple product that is complete shite.
Yes, the software side is getting worse in recent years but is it at least slightly better than the competition for average consumers.
Plus being a tech monopolist they can offer a whole ecosystem of software and hardware that works great with each other. So the value proposition is greater than the sum of its parts.
That is the problem with OpenAI, they have only one thing. Google can bleed money all day long and they don't need to care because they have other profitable business ventures.
The way to make money with LLMs is to either be technically superior which only works short term until the competition catches up or create a monopoly. The second option is dead in the water with the advent of the Chinese models. I guess they can lobby to have them banned and create a cartel with their other US based competitors. Otherwise they are screwed. That is why they are allowing military use of their model now. They need that sweet government money to survive. Also they keep talking about AGI so the government gets scared about the Chinese reaching it first and supports them. Complete scam.
it's a very different world when you switch from an iphone to an android phone or vice versa. However, Claude.ai and chatgpt.com are not very different at all. If one has ads and the other does not, it's easy to switch.
When engineers analyze things they look at the specs, stats, and metrics. When consumers analyze things they look at what others are doing, feel for vibes, roll into the convenience, and stick with the familiar.