Opinion: Why I love Apple products, and am just a tiny bit embarrassed to be seen using them

I love my Apple products. I’ve used Macs since day one. My desk right now has on it my MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPad Air, Thunderbolt Display and iPhone. Oh, and an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, of course.

My friends are convinced that I’m incapable of leaving the house without my iPad, and I have to confess that the evidence is on their side. My car has an iPhone dock so I can listen to music and podcasts. If I’m on a plane, train or tube, it’s a near-certainty that I’ll be using my iPad or listening to music on my iPhone – or both.

I love Apple hardware design. Sleek, minimalistic, beautiful. There aren’t that many other really attractive laptops out there, and most of the ones that are have essentially copied Apple’s designs … 

I love OS X and iOS. Not everything about them, of course: there are glitches and anoyances, and iOS in particular is showing its age a little with the lack of live data on the homescreen, but both Just Work. Windows 8 is pretty good, but just the other day helping a friend update her CV on her Windows laptop, I was reminded of just how many nice touches I take for granted in OS X.

I love the seamlessness of iCloud. Again, we all know it’s not perfect, but it’s still incredibly impressive that syncing is now something that happens, rather than something I have to do. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I can pick up any of my iDevices, and the same, up-to-the-minute information will be on each.

I also really like Apple as a company. The reason the products are so good is precisely because Apple has strong values around quality, attention to detail and refusal to compromise. I love the fact that Apple concentrates on doing a small number of things very well, and doesn’t do what most companies in its position would do and slap an Apple logo on everything from baseball caps to cars.

I love the fact that Apple supports its technology with real people. Admittedly not everyone lives within easy reach of an Apple Store, but for those who do, anyone can wander in, ask the dumbest question and get individual help, free of charge. Compare that to attempting to get help with a Windows laptop or Android phone, and there is just no comparison.

So why, then, would I feel even a tiny bit embarrassed to be seen using them? Three reasons …

I was in a certain well-known coffee store the other day, and I paused from what I was writing to look around. The first thing I noticed was that almost every single customer was using an electronic device, busily immersed in a smartphone, tablet or laptop. Second, out of around 30 devices in use, I think only three or four of them didn’t have an Apple logo. In central London, at least, it seems the default choice.

Perhaps I’m being snobbish, but I can remember when spotting someone else using a Mac was almost an event. We were the unusual ones, the ones who had given the matter more thought, and were prepared to step out of the mainstream and buy something that was, honestly, at the time, a bit eccentric. People would ask you why.

But hey, I can live with being one of the masses (for a certain demographic value of masses, anyway). The second reason is the fashionista thing.

Apple has a lot of discerning customers. People who are perfectly well aware of the alternatives, know full well how the prices of competitor products compare and have made a choice to pay a premium price for a superior product. The type of people you’d find reading 9to5Mac, in fact.

But even I have to agree with my Apple-ribbing friends that there are those … other type of Apple customers. The sheeples, as they are unkindly dubbed. The type of people who buy Apple because it’s expensive and fashionable, and because they have no clue what else is out there.

Perhaps worse than the fashionista, though, are the third reason: the fanbois.

Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t use the term to describe people who love Apple products. I’m one of those. By fanbois, I mean those who are so utterly fanatical about it that they will scream and shout and stamp their feet if anyone so much as dares to level the slightest hint of criticism at Apple, or to say anything even vaguely complimentary about Windows or Android.

I’d rather not be mistaken for a fashionista (though perhaps my dress sense saves me there). I would most definitely not like to be mistaken for a fanboi. It was in that coffee shop when I realised I might, to the casual observer, have given that impression. The wifi was hopeless, so when I needed to google something, I pushed aside my MacBook Air, and got out my iPad Air to do the search. At which point, with perfect timing, someone called me – on my iPhone. I did feel just a twinge of embarrassment about sitting at a coffee shop table simultaneously using three pieces of Apple technology.

I supposed I should just have been grateful I couldn’t yet be wearing an iWatch …

- 9to5mac.com

AAPL stock more than 3 percent up on China Mobile news

After the fall in Apple’s stock value when the China Mobile failed to materialise as expected on 18th December, yesterday’s news that the deal had finally been concluded sent the stock shooting back up again, having climbed more than 3 percent at the time of writing (it was up 4% in pre-market trading but has settled).

With the WSJ having reported that 18th December was the day, the market was clearly jittery when nothing materialized. Everything had appeared to be in place: regulatory approval, Apple putting the handsets on sale in China on the opening weekend, China Mobile posters, a pre-order website, in-store displays – and 4G service up-and-running on schedule … 

One theory suggested that China Mobile wanted to renegotiate its volume breaks with Apple after seeing far greater demand for the iPhone 5s than for the cheaper 5c, while Fortune suggested this morning that perhaps Apple wanted to delay the deal until supplies had caught up with demand elsewhere, and that China Mobile had been applying none-too-subtle pressure on Apple by announcing the date as if it were a done deal.

Either way, there will be a lot of relieved faces that the deal has finally been signed, and Apple can look forward to a bumper quarter once the handsets go on sale in January.

Written by: Ben Lovejoy @benlovejoy December 23, 2013/7:32 am - 9to5mac.com

Two-thirds of Americans will own an iPhone by 2017, calculates analyst

Smartphones will reach saturation point in the U.S. by 2017, and by that time two-thirds of all Americans will own an iPhone – the conclusions Asymco’s Horace Dediu reaches through a series of calculations.

Dediu bases his calculation on three factors. First, that the rate of growth seen in the smartphone market so far will continue at the same pace. Second, saturation point for smartphones will be 90 percent (no technology ever achieves 100 percent). Third, that Apple’s market share will remain roughly constant, Dediu pointing out that iPhone growth has pretty much exactly mirrored the smartphone market as a whole … 

Or, in rather more detailed terms:

One can simply draw a line extending the existing red segment above and read the F/(1-F) figure at any point in time. Solving for F results in a measure of penetration and hence number of users (if population is known.)

An alternative is to use the following formula derived from the linear interpolation of the two measured market shares. iPhone market share is y/(1+y) where y=0.21x and x = F/(1-F) and F is the expected market penetration of smartphones.

So if F = 91%, x = 10, y = 2.11 and therefore the iPhone market share =  68%.

We also know from the plot of the market that F = .91 is reached around February 2017. So we can suggest that at 90% penetration (approximately saturation) the iPhone will have 68% market share of users in the US. Forecasting the addressable market (US population aged older than 13) at about 266 million that implies 180 million US users of the iPhone by early 2017.

Of course, four years is a very long time in the tech industry, and both Nokia and Blackberry prove that past success is no guarantee of future prospects, but it’s certainly a forecast that will put a smile on some faces at 1 Infinite Loop.

Written by: Ben Lovejoy @benlovejoy December 16, 2013/5:07 am - 9to5mac.com