Is Apple losing customers fast?

In other forums I frequent it seems like former loyal iphone and ipad customers are moving to Android devices.

Many saw the new 4S as a half assed upgrade. Also there have been several issues with battery drain and the transition to iOS 5 wasn’t very smooth as there were several problems on some devices.

Also apple has several hangups. For example they still do not have flash support and the main reason cited is that is a resource hog and it won’t work smooth enough. Truth is that it works flawlessly on all modern android phones, as it did work very well on older top-of-the-line phones like my HTC Desire.

Another thing is that other phone makers have moved to 4+ inch screens while the iphone still has a 3.5 inch screen. Again the same hand waiving about how 3.5 inches is ideal and bigger phones are too unweildy, etc.

What is your opinion? Is apple starting to lose customers?

I just heard a blip about this on CBS News. Seems that Apple’s core base, is as loyal as other. But Apple had a lot of new people try, there new items like iPhone and iPad. These newer customers are proving not loyal to Apple. But the old guard base of users is just as solid as ever.

According to CBS News that is

Haven’t heard anything at all like that. Wasn’t it just last week that Adobe itself admitted that mobile flash was a failure? I find that turning off flash on my desktop increases performance to such a great degree that I can’t imagine it being welcome on my mobile. I don’t miss it at all.

There’s occasionally issues with Apple devices, but they seem reasonably responsive.

I don’t see any mass exodus.

How was the iPhone 4S a “half assed upgrade”? Because it didn’t get a new form factor? Is the new standard of smart phone design the plastic and metal that holds the thing together? What about a 4" screen? 4 is greater then 3.5, so a four inch screen must be better, right? No, the iPhone 4S was only a disappointment to the media who needed a story to drive in ad viewing traffic. (More after the break…)

<insert revenue generating flash ad here>

As for iOS 5, Maybe Apple should have done what most of the Android phone makers do, and shipped it with a 6 month old version of the operating software, promise a few marketable features in an upgrade, and then fail to deliver anything more then a couple security updates. The truth is, that Apple keeps it’s software up to date and rolls out new versions to all devices simultaneously. When Google releases a new version of Android, you could have to wait months to see the upgrade, if you ever see it at all. Many android devices still under 2 year contracts as of right now will never be upgraded again.

You say that flash works “flawlessly” on all modern android phones? If by “flawlessly” you mean “is a resource hog” and “won’t work smooth enough” then you are absolutely correct! What can Flash do that HTML 5 can’t? (If you reply “such-n-such website”, or that “that propretary web app”, then you really don’t understand the big picture. Apple doesn’t give two shits about the obscure corners of the internet). Mobile Flash is dead, and even Adobe admits it.

If Apple is losing customers, they are gaining more than enough to make up for it. Apple continues to post huge profits and the stock keeps going up, while other phone makers are struggling to stay in business. HTC is slipping. Motorola is bleeding money. RIM is barely hanging on. Nokia completely missed the bus. Samsung is the only other phone maker that is doing well, but their profits are about half of Apple’s. And Apple releases one new phone a year.

And yet it still doesn’t work in that manner on my 3.4 GHz Intel i7 Macintosh. :rolleyes:

Considering that Adobe is completely abandoning Mobile Flash, that part of the OP is a little off.

Apple “won” that battle not because they refused to support it, but because they were right. It’s a buggy, unstable resource hog and at the end of the day, even the developer was forced to admit that it was a piece of shit that was never going to work right.

I have an iPad and an iPhone 4S. I’m very very happy with both because they do what I want them to do. The iPhone, in particular, is a hell of a lot better than my old BlackBerry.

The only time the absence of Flash is an issue is… never. I don’t miss the Flash-intensive creepy dancing-whatever ads or the silly splash screens that some websites have.

When I went laptop shopping, there were two reasons I didn’t go with a Mac. The first was cost, and the second is the relative unavailability of some kinds of industry-specific software. That’s it. Were it not for these two things, I’d have a Mac.

I’m still going to trade in my blackberry for an iPhone soon. I had a Mac once upon a time, I never want to do that again.

My friends ask me why I wouldn’t do an android phone instead, and I admit that my reasonings maybe aren’t amazing. I think Siri is really cool, and better than Vlingo. I’m used to the iOS because I bought an iPad last spring, and I’m going to be able to share my paid apps and music among my devices. The iPhone also has built in tethering features for a wifi iPad, which I don’t think (correct me if I’m wrong) the android or BB phones do. And that little phone looks very slick. Yes, I go for aesthetics. It doesn’t have the biggest screen, but the phones with the bigger screen look, well, I don’t know…clumsy, somehow. I can only judge this based on playing with them at the Rogers store, but the larger profile just doesn’t look like it could fit in a coat pocket comfortably, or anywhere else I’d put my phone.

I was very happy to hear Adobe was killing Flash for mobile apps, and can’t wait for them to announce the sunset of Flash everything, everywhere. I’d turn it off, but I play Facebook games that are based on Flash. That is, I play Facebook games when Flash decides to let my computer operate for a few minutes without grinding to a halt and tossing up “the plugin ‘unknown’ is failing to respond. Quit?” and then it takes five minutes of grinding for the OS to untangle itself enough to restart.

Anyway, I’d like my next computer to be a Mac. I’m not currently in the market for mobile smart gadgets, but when I am, I’m sure it’ll be Apple. That said, my 20-year long loyalty to Apple is sort of on probation. Apple is a huge company now, and Steve is gone, so I’ll be watching for signs of evil. :wink:

I couldn’t be more thrilled that Flash is going the way of the dinosaurs. Good riddance.

I don’t personally know anyone who’s planning to switch from an iOS device to an Android device. My mom is planning to get an iPhone after her current Android contract is up because she bought (against advice) a cheap-ass shitty Android instead of a nicer high-end Android. (No, I don’t remember the make or model, I just remember that it was a cheap discounted phone.)

Although anecdotal reports like mine or like the one in the OP (“I know some people in forums…”) are pretty much meaningless IMO.

Personally I’m happy with my iPhone 4 and as soon as my contract is up in March I plan to upgrade to the 4S, which from the reports I’ve seen doesn’t look half-assed at all. YMMV.

The 4S has been selling faster than any previous iPhone which is saying a great deal. At least in the phone market, Apple is gaining customers like crazy and that has been spilling over into computers. No one is even close to them in tablets which is a market that they basically created. I know that tablets have existed in some form for a very long time but no they are finally mainstream.

Like, MsRobyn I will probably stay on Windows for my PCs because the extra cost doesn’t justify it an Apple for me but for smartphones it does. My 73 year old technophobe Mom finally bought an iPhone and loves it to pieces after having it for a week. If they are gaining in that demographic, they are doing very well indeed.

I’ve noticed a type of person. One that has to convince you their way is the best…the convincer. That’s what the OP is. He’s not debating the end of apple, he’s -convincing- you that Apple is not what you want to buy.

What you want is irrelevant, he has to convince you.

Here’s the deal: Apple is not dying, they have multi button mice, flash isn’t that big a deal, Android sells more phones but Apple makes more money per unit. They may fade to irrelevance after Jobs, but who cares when your allegiance to a phone brand gets renegotiated every two years?

If you don’t like 'em, for whatever reason, that’s fine. But the alternatives aren’t dramatically better. If you truly think they are, your glasses are just as rose tinted.

Well, Android is Google, which totally isn’t evil, right?

I mean, what kind of company does such an immense public service like Google Street View totally for free, right?

Oh, and all that wifi data they sucked up while they did it. Complete accident. It will never be used. They’re just storing it because it’s too much of a hassle to delete it all or never collect it in the first place.

http://www.npdgroup.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_111114a

the two-year-old iphone 3gs still holds 2nd spot over any other phones, losing only to the iphone 4.

The Flash thing has little to do with the actual API, and a lot to do with how Apple chooses to do business–deciding for you what you want and not giving you an alternative unless you figure out some sort of hack and force them into court over letting you do it.

The point is that Flash wasn’t dead when iOS came out, but Apple decided that, if you wanted to use their products, you would not be allowed to use it. That’s what pisses a lot of users off.


And HTML5 still hasn’t caught up with Flash in terms of usability, despite being almost the same thing, just uncompiled. It’s far more likely that the reason Adobe is abandoning it on mobile is that it’s hard to work on such a limited platform, and they know that Flash will eventually die. There’s already usable flash on every current platform that will allow it, so why waste time on it?

Because, otherwise, it seems stupid to abandon Flash when HTML5 hasn’t caught up. Here’s a big one–HTML5 can only handle a small subset of video codecs. Very few people are actually making HTML5 games. HTML5 is still not complete in most browsers. And YouTube, despite trying to change to it forever, still can’t get away from Flash on many videos, particularly those with ads. In fact, HTML5 can’t handle DRM–it has to be built into the codec, and thus each browser has to support it. Can you really see anyone giving up DRM?

And what’s life going to be like without the ability to shut off the interactive, computer intensive crap? Once HTML5 actually reaches parity, you’re still going to face the same slowdowns, barring some fundamental changes to the platform. It is in hardware where the biggest changes will be made.

Oh, and while looking up that last bit, I discovered that the idea that Flash runs slow on iOS devices is false, as proved by the fact that many apps are ported directly from their Flash counterparts. It was and remains a business decision. One made by a man who thought crystals could cure cancer.

Oops. Forgot my last sentence:

I hope that his business decisions are more prescient.

This is a jerkish thing to say and I’d like to see a cite for it, if you don’t mind.

Steve Jobs delayed initial surgery for a few months, but after that early delay, he fully embraced all of the cancer therapies that modern medicine has to offer, including surgery and chemotherapy. And I have no idea what any of this has to do with Flash availability on mobile devices.

Steve Jobs had pancreatic cancer. The only people that live more than five years after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer are… oh yeah, NO ONE lives more than five years after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

The fact that Jobs lived EIGHT YEARS after his initial diagnosis is a god damn medical miracle.

Androids do. At least, my Droid X can, so presumably all the newer models can as well.

I’m no Apple groupie, but I bought a MacBook pro and 3 iPhones in the last week. There are four iPads in my house as I type this. I don’t think the company is dying.