# Is Apple losing customers fast? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 25, 2011, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033 "2011-11-25T12:31:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/21 "2011-11-27T17:37:46Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Oops. Forgot my last sentence: > > I hope that his business decisions are more prescient. Lovely dodge there. I believe that’s at least two (if not more) logical fallacies in one! ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/22 "2011-11-27T17:44:52Z")
As far as tablets go, there is no reason to hear that anything has changed since [this WSJ article](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576502170114951168.html) of August: > [@](#): > > Tablet War Is an Apple Rout Maybe that will change with cheaper but apparently quite competent devices like the Kindle Fire, using the cloud for more of the heavy lifting of processing … maybe not. But so far all we can say is “not yet.” The fact that [consumers tend to purchase more often using iPads than Google driven devices](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/27/ibm-report-one-in-10-mobile-purchases-on-black-friday-was-done-via-an-iphone-or-ipad/) also bespeaks some of how the market is going. As far as the iPhone 4S goes … we’ll have to wait at least for the quarterly numbers, and more realistically for several of them. From what I understand there is more demand than ability to supply, but that may be because of bottlenecks in their supply chain even more than because of absurdly high demand. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/23 "2011-11-27T17:57:35Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > 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. Here’s a relevant bit from Steve Jobs [Thoughts on Flash](http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/) letter: > [@](#): > > Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. > > In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform? I won’t deny that Apple designs their products with some user contraints, but everything there is true. Flash was a nonstarter for _years_ on the iPhone. If Adobe had had their shit together technically, this wouldn’t have happened. They could have demonstrated it working, and it would have been early enough that lots of places wouldn’t have bowed to the iPhone’s popularity by creating non-Flash versions of their sites. But they didn’t. Even on desktop machines Flash has terrible performance and stability problems. My laptop can run for six hours on battery playing other video. It runs for about 2 if it’s playing flash video. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/24 "2011-11-28T00:03:44Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > 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. This isn’t any kind of proof, because you’ve _not_ seen Flash running on iOS devices. You may have seen ports, but that doesn’t prove anything about Flash at all; it only proves that one can port source code and compile it for iOS. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/25 "2011-11-28T00:44:04Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > 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. Yes, it was an accident. The data they captured were random fragments, not good for much of anything and was so small in quantity nobody noticed anything for quite a while. Once discovered, Google voluntarily disclosed and immediately deleted the data. > [@MsWhatsit](#): > > 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. It’s detailed in Walter Isaacson’s biography of him. Here’s a cite: [Alternative Medicine & The Death of Steve Jobs | Psychology Today](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/food-thought/201110/alternative-medicine-the-death-steve-jobs) > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > 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. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma has a horrible survival rate but Jobs had an islet cell tumor, for which the survival rate was 95% for patients who detected it as early as Jobs. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/26 "2011-11-28T00:55:02Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > 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. [He’s mostly right.](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/) Basically, Jobs had the one type of pancreatic cancer that was mostly curable. Instead, he opted for a bunch of new age type treatments (though not crystals, I don’t think) for 9 months before following the doctors’ recommendations. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/27 "2011-11-28T00:57:07Z")
I just read that biography, and I still take issue with the statement that “Jobs believed that you can cure cancer with crystals.” Clearly not, since he had chemotherapy and surgery to try to cure his cancer. Yeah, he delayed initially, and yes, that initial delay may have made all the difference, but that’s a far cry from completely rejecting Western medicine, which is what **BigT** implied. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/28 "2011-11-28T01:36:55Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > I just read that biography, and I still take issue with the statement that “Jobs believed that you can cure cancer with crystals.” Clearly not, since he had chemotherapy and surgery to try to cure his cancer. Yeah, he delayed initially, and yes, that initial delay may have made all the difference, but that’s a far cry from completely rejecting Western medicine, which is what **BigT** implied. He seems to have believed he could cure his cancer with alternative medicine, and rejected the solution proffered by Western Medicine at least for a while. He apparently changed his mind when the alternative methods didn’t work, but at least for a period **BigT** ’s characterization seems to have been correct. In anycase, his delaying surgery was pretty mind-bogglingly stupid. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/29 "2011-11-28T01:49:27Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > He seems to have believed he could cure his cancer with alternative medicine, and rejected the solution proffered by Western Medicine at least for a while. He apparently changed his mind when the alternative methods didn’t work, but at least for a period **BigT** ’s characterization seems to have been correct. > > In anycase, his delaying surgery was pretty mind-bogglingly stupid. From what I have read, it was a case of a phobia of invasive surgery and a huge amount of arrogance. He got over it pretty quickly though. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/30 "2011-11-28T01:51:46Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > From what I have read, it was a case of a phobia of invasive surgery and a huge amount of arrogance. He got over it pretty quickly though. Not quickly enough, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/31 "2011-11-28T01:56:20Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Not quickly enough, apparently. Harsh! I thought that ultimately his delay in treatment didn’t end up making a difference in the long run. Obviously it’s impossible to know for sure. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/32 "2011-11-28T02:06:31Z")
It is, however, incidental to the point. Frankly, I’m gonna be really interested to see how they are five years from now. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/33 "2011-11-28T02:11:10Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I thought that ultimately his delay in treatment didn’t end up making a difference in the long run. Obviously it’s impossible to know for sure. The article linked above says that they caught the cancer while it was isolated in his pancreas and had a 95% chance of survival but didn’t start using modern methods of treating it until it had spread through-out his body. I’m not an oncologist, but it certainly sounds like the delay had a pretty drastic effect on Jobs chances of survival, and the quotes from Jobs make it sound like he thought so to. Kind of a hijack though, so I’ll leave it at that. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/34 "2011-11-28T02:19:49Z")
Iphones have been the number 1 smartphone since they came out years ago. If apple is losing customers, it’s because when you’re on top, the only way you can go is down. Apple currently sells the number 1, the number 2, and the number 3 highest selling smartphones. The iphone 3Gs is like 3 years old, and android devices still can’t beat it. Of course apple is losing customers. There’s hardly any new customers to get! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/35 "2011-11-28T03:11:54Z")
Yes, the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone. But Android as a whole has about [52%](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-15/tech/30400455_1_ios-iphone-smartphone-market) of the overall smartphone marketplace, while IOS has 15%. It’s kind of like how the various Windows PCs outsell Apple Macs. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/36 "2011-11-28T03:24:38Z")
yes yes yes, and that’s how this topic ALWAYS goes. Let’s whip out iPads, iPods, and iPod Touch numbers too. Lets bring up profit margins, too, while we’re at it. Really, what does this accomplish? What you pick, or I pick, or the SDMB as a whole picks _doesn’t matter_…it’s like debating the best football team. Rah! You just supported a GREAT BIG CASH GENERATING MACHINE. Go team. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/37 "2011-11-28T03:26:38Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#): > > yes yes yes, and that’s how this topic ALWAYS goes. Let’s whip out iPads, iPods, and iPod Touch numbers too. Lets bring up profit margins, too, while we’re at it. > > Really, what does this accomplish? What you pick, or I pick, or the SDMB as a whole picks _doesn’t matter_…it’s like debating the best football team. Rah! You just supported a GREAT BIG CASH GENERATING MACHINE. > > Go team. Huh? Most of these posts aren’t saying anything about iDevices being objectively better. They are refuting the OPs assertion that Apple is quickly losing customers. Save that for the appropriate thread. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/38 "2011-11-28T03:37:16Z")
I think Apple’s _gaining_ traction, if anything. They have a slick combination of nice, usable devices and locked-in, closed ecosystems. For most users, moving from Android to iPhone is an easy transition. The other way…not so much. The marketshare of Android devices is because they’re cheaper and pan-carrier. It’s certainly not because they’re better. And I say that as an Android user who will probably buy another Android device next upgrade cycle. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/39 "2011-11-28T03:45:25Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Yes, the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone. But Android as a whole has about [52%](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-15/tech/30400455_1_ios-iphone-smartphone-market) of the overall smartphone marketplace, while IOS has 15%. It’s kind of like how the various Windows PCs outsell Apple Macs. this gets trumped out every time in these discussions, yet what significance is it suppose to hold? is it supposed to be a take down? but the non-English-speaking countries as a whole number more than 50%, while the British Empire at its height holds sway over 25% of the world. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033/40 "2011-11-28T03:47:42Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#): > > They may fade to irrelevance after Jobs, but who cares when your allegiance to a phone brand gets renegotiated every two years? This, minus the fact that I get tricked into the 3-year contracts. I realized going backwards on my phone history that I’ve never bought the same brand phone twice–Nokia, then Motorola, then Sony Ericsson, then HTC, then my Blackberry. So regardless of whether I get an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy, at least I can’t be accused of being a fanboy. > [@Silophant](#): > > Androids do. At least, my Droid X can, so presumably all the newer models can as well. Do you jailbreak? I know with the 4.5 JB I could get my blackberry to tether to it, but not sans-JB, and I don’t have a JB for iOS 5 yet. Someone also told me that you can simply create a mini wi-fi hot spot with the new smartphones, so that may completely obviate the need to even mention this feature! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-apple-losing-customers-fast/604033.md?page=3)