A Joel Watson comic from 2012, the guy must be psychic or something and I’m sure Ballmer is pissing himself laughing but still should be ready to strangle anyone involved with marketing at Microsoft as really Microsoft’s marketing bunch couldn’t sell a glass of water to someone lost in the desert for a year.
Fact is I’m pretty sure whoever is heading up Microsoft’s retail stores has an Apple email address.
Classic - (written on a Surface Pro 3 with cover and not with a Lemon 
)
But you can bet Apple with sell loads of the $99 pencil for the iPad because they need one.
I am no fan of Apple products as I don’t like their ecosystem but I do admire their ability to sell ice cubes to the Eskimos (translate as iPhone to iSheep). 
Apple’s marketing is nothing more than showmanship. These people are paying $500 to “see the show”.
I’m one of those people who is utterly bewildered by the iSheep. I find myself going into a rant every time I have too help the wife out with her iPod. What was wrong with simple drag and drop Crapple??? :wall:
Couldn’t the sheep mentality be applied to anyone who favors a specific product from a specific vendor? And what makes that person right or wrong for liking the product they like? Are Arduino users or .NET users, simply sheep following their product master?
@ Gary - So true, so true. Use critical thinking skills. Make decisions based on facts, not emotions. See that there is always room for improvement, and one size never, ever fits all.
ETA: when AOT comes to NETMF, all other embedded platforms will wither away :whistle:
@ Gary - No, in Apple’s case those who blindly buy and use Apple products, claiming it’s the best thing out there are the IGoats (not Sheep but Goats).
Sprigo - Apple designs their products that way because they primarily target a non technical audience. i.e. people who don’t really know how to use computers.
@ Mr. John Smith - Some of the smartest people I know use Apple products. Technical people, high level and low level. The products are polished, well integrated, and beautiful.
@ godefroi - So is a Ford Focus.
[quote=“Mr. John Smith”]Apple designs their products that way because they primarily target a non technical audience. i.e. people who don’t really know how to use computers.
[/quote]
And now I know why I use Apple products 
@ Mr. John Smith - Indeed, which is why the Focus was the #1 selling car in the world in 2012 and 2013, and was #4 in 2014. Quite popular, just like Apple’s products. Seems consumers like good products.
@ godefroi - My point exactly, just because it sells well, does not mean it’s the best car/computer.
@ Mr. John Smith - Subjective ratings like “best” are subjective.
@ godefroi - Correct, so people should not blindly say that Apple products are the best without giving a proper contrast and comparison. hence the isheep (igoat) mentality 
@ Mr. John Smith - Usually, what they mean is “it is the best for me” and that is not necessarily the best for you.
@ iamin - They tend to say that because they haven’t given the time to explore the options. Most people just clone the decisions of other people. Being the best for them because it’s the only they they know, means nothing.
#endregion
Apple does make some nice products.
I think the problem people have with them (and their die-hard fans) is that they have this unwarranted attitude as an innovator, and leverage that to charge a premium.
It may have been true at one time, but since 2010 or so (when the iphones became more or less second tier to more powerful and more featured phones from other manufacturers) they’ve been playing constant catch-up. And each time they adopt a feature that the previous mocked as being “unneeded” or “inferior” and then go from that, to suddenly “Apple invented this! it is awesome!” it rubs people with any sort of memory the wrong way.
But each time they take something common, like “haptic feedback” and rename it “taptic feedback™” and act like it is an innovation, or give some sort of marketing mumbojumbo name to something common like calling a watch button a “digital crown” it just causes eye-rolls for people not swept up in the marketing.
Combine that with insistence on using non-standard ports (to fleece customers) and not allowing you to change your own battery (to fleece customers) and charging extra fees to develop apps on their platform (to fleece customers) and charging huge markups and premium for accessories and peripherals just to have the apple approved logo on them (to fleece customers) while giving silly excuses for those behaviors, and it just comes to a point where they just seem like a company worth avoiding. But - like Fox news - they have a core of fans that swear everyone else is crazy and they are the only sane ones, many of which (not all obviously) get angry when you even hint that there are other choices just as good or better.
I remember bringing a droid Bionic to work in 2010… my ceo at the time was a former vp of mac development at apple - and there was a strong apple culture there… and the Bionic’s bigger screen, much faster processor (first dual core), usb host capabilities, and hdmi out (plug a keyboard and mouse and monitor into it and you had a tiny computer) and was by most metrics vastly superior to any iphones, and there was open hostility from some co-workers… who went to absurd lengths to find a reason to not like it. I think they realized that it was the end of “iphones are the top end of the spectrum” days, and it struck them weirdly personally. My son was playing some 3D video games on the Bionic, using a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a large screen tv, in our dev area one day, and attracted a crowd in awe of what you could do with a phone these days.
I then showed them how I could remotely log into my desktop PC, and run visual studio from the phone, and one guy got furious at it all, and started mumbling about “thats not how you use phones” and stormed off.
The latest iphone6 and 6s are putting some really nice cameras in their phones. That’s pretty much their only obvious strength I think in the current marketplace, but it doesn’t really make up for all the other crap you’d need to put up with to join the apple ecosystem at this point.
But if you are already invested in the ecosystem, and need to stay there for whatever reason, I imagine it would be a nice phone, especially if the camera is the main feature you are interested in. And there’s nothing wrong with enjoying being in that ecosystem and using those phones. But you do have to put up with crap that other people dont have to put up with, and people are going to point that out, so you should have a thick skin.
As a Lumia (Windows Phone) user, I actually found that announcement hilarious. They still have half the resolution of the higher end Lumia phones (from 2-3 years ago…).