Valid points
I agree with what you say here. It's a darn shame Apple, the largest company in the world now (or most profitable, richest?) has stopped to such anti-competitive crap to try to keep it's throne. I can't imagine how many lawyers are needed to roll through tens of thousands of patents. It sickens me though that they were able to actually stop Samsung based purely on that it looks similar to the ipad. It has different hardware, different screen, different OS.. but because it looks similar.. not even exactly..but similar, they won. I don't understand how that is possible. I wish someone could explain to me the specific points how Apple defeated Samsung in this case? As well, there are several other tablets including the Xoom that look very similar too.. so are all those automatically banned now too?
I too agree apple makes good products.. but because of their business practices, at least from what I've been reading and/or talking to people, more and more people are shunning apple. Not everyone of course.. but many that would be buying their products are. As a developer, I will not develop for iPhone, period. I don't like that I must buy a Mac, must pay $100, and then hope after potentially months of development using Objective-C of all languages, that apple likes my app enough to approve it. Then if they do, I have to hope they decide not to ban it for no apparent reason and if they do, just suck it up and live with it. It's pure crap. I don't want to support a company that acts like an 800 pound bully.
More so, I continue to see article after article about various tablets, how they are ok, but aren't near as good as an ipad. I have an Asus Transformer and I gotta say, this thing works. I also own an iPad (the last apple product I'll buy until they change their ways). It's a great product. But all the articles and posts that say how difficult Android 3 is.. I don't get it. My wife, my dad, my mom, my kids, have no problem at all using it. They turn it on, and touch an app to run it. Is it any different than an ipad? Well..yes.. it offers a lot more in some areas, like notifications, live widgets with real-time updates and such that you can make use of. Do you have to do these things? Nope. You can use an android tablet just like an ipad.. barring a few things (like netflix, hulu and skype). Android tablets have been out for what.. 4 months now, in one year from now let's see where things are with apps.
The last thing I'll say is all the banter about how hardware does not sell which is why iPhone 5 is rumored to be only a dual-core phone while quad-core phones are coming out on Android around the same time. I recall a war with Mhz (then Ghz) between AMD and Intel. AMD for a while was kicking Intel's butt in speed and price. When they switched to a non-Mhz naming scheme, they went down hill. People liked that Intel was 1Ghz, 1.5Ghz, 2Ghz, meanwhile AMD was not specifying speeds but a naming scheme that was "comparable" to the Intel chip speeds. These were every day customers that were not geeks, but just liked the idea of owning a 2Ghz cpu because it was "faster". Even if the AMD was cheaper and faster, it didn't come across that way. My point is, there is a lot of talk now that Apple is not releasing more powerful hardware than Android devices, that they don't need to..it's not about the hardware, it's about the experience. To some degree I agree with that.. but when more capable games and apps come out on Android because they are easier to code (Java is after all easier to work with than Objective-C and there are way more Java developers) and much more powerful devices coming soon so how long will an out dated ipad 2 (or ipad 3 if the rumors are true) last compared to quad core or more, with more ram and all the extras like SD, HDMI, USB and more?
There are always going to be fans of both products, and frankly, I wish all the "apple is best, google will die" and vice versa would stop. It's ridiculous. The only way Apple could win is to do what they are doing now with all the patent lawsuits, but these will probably take years to play out and by then Android will have proliferated far too much to just ban it completely. I'd much rather see innovation.. let them compete on features.. functionality.. design. I am really looking forward to NFC and Barometer sensors on my devices, something from what I can tell none of the apple devices will have, although rumors about iPhone 5 indicate NFC.. we'll see. But new APIs, new functionality.. that's what we need and we need it from both sides. Let's get back to making the devices really cool and "I can't wait for it." attitude instead of trying to use lawyers to completely stop or at the very minimum worry potential manufacturers like Samsung about using Android.