It's called not cutting corners and doing things right. It's long term thinking where profits don't immediately follow - but in Apple's case, thankfully they did.
The history of both Apple and Pixar has the companies dangling very close to the precipice of failure, only to be turned around because of love. Love for their products, users, whatever. And it shows, now.
Note that I am not an apple fanboy. The only apple product I own is an iPod - but I like the way they operate.
It's called not cutting corners and doing things right.
You haven't seen Quicktime's H.264 encoder...
Personally I think they have just managed to convince people that if something looks and feels good nothing else matters. That and playing with the media and building up hype machines.
As the grandparent alluded to, Apple's H.264 encoder is the very worst one around. There are MPEG2 encoders that are competitive bitrate-wise!
Not everything Apple releases is gold. The AppStore is a perfect example -- a pile of total shit in every way, that only Apple could get away with because they are so ridiculously competent at everything else that touches it.
If Apple is all about hype, when have most of the developers I know switched to using Macs for their laptops, running OS X? Because they believe the hype or because the user experience, even for a developer, is better than the alternatives?
A big part of the hype machine is producing a product that people are satisfied with and will recommend to others. Word of mouth is better than any amount of TV advertising. For example, as an easy way to avoid being free tech support to my friends and family my default response for the last few years is "I dunno... I use a Mac. Maybe call tech support?" and suddenly most of my friends and family have Macs.
The first thing Apple would do is not put any stock in "what would Apple do".
Sure, an 'Apple-like' startup would study Apple's approach along with everyone else's. But they'd draw their own conclusions and make their decisions based solely on what's right for their customers at that time.
I did about one year ago... Now with the debacle around the iphone app registration process and the tightening of warranty rules (with water detectors that set off in tropical countries and void the warranty), I'm not so sure...
I think that now that apple is successful again, they have turned back to being arrogant...
Now I love mac OS X and I really like most of apple products but I've got a feeling that for apple the customer or developer service is not all that high in the priorities if they can get away with it
Keep in mind that Apple has made a lot of mistakes and missteps with the iPhone since its debut. How many of those mistakes haven't been corrected?
At first there was no 3G support.
There was no GPS.
There was no SDK or store ("Just write web apps!")
Built-in apps like Maps lacked fundamental features like placemarks.
Other core features like landscape keyboards were arbitrarily unavailable in many apps.
You couldn't listen to the iPod on Bluetooth headsets.
You couldn't record video.
The SDK, when it did arrive, came with an obnoxious NDA that kept developers from being able to talk to each other.
There's probably a few dozen other points I could make.
Basically, while I think Apple's SDK licensing requirements and the App Store's approval process are both giant, poorly-thought-out clusterfucks, I have no reason to think their worst shortcomings won't be fixed. My iPhone has received better post-sale support -- for free -- than any other device or software package I've owned. So I'm slow to add my own voice to those of the complaining masses.
Give it a year. If there are still arbitrary goofy rules about no "frameworks" being allowed, and if apps from everybody from Trent Reznor to Google to Joe Nobody are still subject to the approval whims of some random anonymous minimum-wage outsourced troglodyte, then I'll agree that Apple has taken their eye off the ball. But as things stand, they get a lot of slack from me, based on previous willingness to fix their mistakes.
The App Store is not only not getting better, it's actively getting worse (see M17 ratings for anything with UGC).
I thought they were temps at first too, but apparently the AppStore reviewers are full Apple employees in Cupertino. My current theory is that they were the same cretins that review submitted music + video, and the management in the chain above them is a poisonous combo of MBA + hideously-stupid + overly-powerful. Maybe they were recruited from a MAFIAA member...
Oh I do agree that it's hard to get it right for the first time and that there has been an improvement for the iphone.... But while there has been a lot of improvement feature wise (which makes complete sense by the way, release the simplest thing that work and iterate from there is great in my book), I didn't see a lot of improvements on the application approval process after almost one year...
And as someone living in a tropical country, I'm concerned with their warranty policy. I have a friend in Singapore whose iphone was not repaired under the warranty because of supposed water damage to the phone which didn't happen save for the normal condensation you get when living in such a country and going from a building with aircon at 20 degrees to outside with 32 degrees and 80+ % humidity.
I gave my Windows PC away four years ago after buying my first iPod. I now have three Macs, other members of my family account five more, and we all love them. They're not perfect, mind you, but they're much more reliable and easier to use than our PCs ever were. Whatever Apple's doing, I hope they keep doing it.
Ok, I know it's violently tangential and pretty silly, but I noticed this in the article too. I thought it was interesting because (I'm guessing) it's not a case of the author not knowing the grammatical rules you've just described, but of his not knowing the saying he's quoting.
The phrase is "no wine before its time." Not as in "before it is time", but as in "before that wine's appointed time." It was the slogan of the Paul Masson winery, though I can't find a great source for that. (Maybe this one: http://wineeconomist.com/2009/02/10/no-wine-before-its-time/)
So we do want the possessive here, not the contraction.
The history of both Apple and Pixar has the companies dangling very close to the precipice of failure, only to be turned around because of love. Love for their products, users, whatever. And it shows, now.
Note that I am not an apple fanboy. The only apple product I own is an iPod - but I like the way they operate.