They can't have tested many then as I'm no audiophile but the Sony Walkman and Creative Zen I used to have both pissed all over my current 4G Touch for sound quality and volume (even with decent headphones and not the crap apple supply) and the only reason I stick with the Touch is 32Gb of storage and I can play a few adventure games on it which I couldn't on the others.

You do realise that most of the things on your list are purely subjective to the individual?

- I think the Apple keyboard and mouse are hideous.
- As to build quality, all the non Apple things I own have very good build quality.
- Better support/service? My boyfriend's HP laptop broke and was picked up from his house on the Friday and was brought back before 10am on the Monday. You cannot argue with that.
- Battery life is one thing we can't argue about. However, as my laptop is never out my house I don't care that it can't run for 6 hours at a time.
- Wireless is another moot point. My wireless recepetion is always near 100% on all my wireless devices, be they Apple, Motorola, HP or Nintendo. Again, another stupid argument.
- A "better OS" - again, subjective. If it does what you want better than W7, than yes. If not, no. The same goes for the software, which I do not like, nor need, at all.
- Integration... Emm, I've not had any problems with my laptops integration - it does it's job rather well. You do realise they all work the same way? Apple's Macbooks aren't magical in that they work differently under the hood.
- And we are back to "style and design". I think their products are quite bland and ugly [especially the Mac Pro]. They chose bad materials to make their iPods with [scratch heaven]. I'd rather the latest Dell all-in-one PC than an iMac sitting on my desk.

And for what it's worth, BluRay is not rubbish. I'm quite sure you have a HDTV at home and enjoy HD broadcasts but wouldn't call them crap? I find the vast improvement over DVD is worth the extra few pounds that a BluRay costs thesedays. If Apple had created it I'm sure it would be the next best thing since sliced bread. I find it quite funny that they don't offer BluRay playback, considering they are always banging on about how good their PCs are at "HD playback".

As for iPhones losing the top spot, who cares? Things come in and out of fashion. Next month it'll be the Samsung Galaxy II that everybody'll be drooling over [which, for what it's worth, I think is an ugly phone with ugly software].

The problem with you, Vallhund, is that if Apple make something it's "amazing, the best yet", but if any other company makes anything it's "crap, and a cheap Apple rip-off". I suppose it was Apple who first created the touchscreen and video calling along with their metal cased computers and phones?

Staying on topic, the iPhone 5 has a lot of firefighting to do, as other smartphones get closer in style, and slickness. It is fighting against features like NFC, AMOLED or similar premium display, dual core CPU, 4G capability, video calls over 3G, dual camera and lots more.

Galaxy SII or Nexus SII would stop me from even checking the specs of an iPhone, as they would probably have every feature I wanted (aside from optical zoom and xenon flash on the camera), at a price I might be willing to pay.

According to the article, the HTC Desire was launched in October 2010. That's funny because i've had mine since April 2010.

Ever used one?


Then why do the OEM products look like they came out of a Soviet Bloc country circa 1981?


Ever hear Molly Wood's rant about HP quality control, support and service?

My MacBook was fixed while I was shopping.


They why do you need a laptop?

There is something stupid here and it isn't my argument - take another look at yours. The MacBook Pro had the best wireless performance of any laptop ever tested by Which? That was my point.


Depends on what you do, that was my response.

Actually they are. The OS and Software are written to very tight hardware requirements and Apple controls the drivers.


Well you have rather bizarre tastes, but you are entitled to your opinions just as some would chose a Yugo over a Mercedes.


Why go for an obsolescent technology?


The thing is they haven't lost it have they?


Not really, I don't particularly like the iPhone for my needs. I use a Nokia E72 and if I didn't have it I would go for a Blackberry. I will probably buy an iPhone 6 as it might meet my needs well by then.

I like some Apple products and some I don't and I don't think that someone who clearly cannot recognise quality should lecture me about imagined "problems".

I had a go on a mates HTC Desire last night.

Aside from the fact it's cheaper, he went for it because he's used to having a spare battery and isn't prepared to get a phone where that's not possible.

Overall I thought it was 'up there' with the iPhone, but a bit like using a PC if you're used to a mac... kind of 'clunky'.

The screen was bigger, which is a plus point for some, and Android seems more suitable for people who like configuring and customising stuff.

Another friend got the iPhone 4 this week and it's a whole other class... limitations to one side, just as a 'thing' it's beautiful.

Yes, I am aware I'm a saddo.

The Desire is not quite up there though. Newer Android phones like the Nexus S, and upcoming Galaxy SII and Nexus S replacement are slowly closing the 'clunkiness' gap.

I wonder what Apple will do when other premium smartphones have similar slickness and high-quality feel, and better specs on top?

I guess they'll just carry on improving too.

There's no clear leading manufacturer to challenge Apple in the mobile market really. Much like in the home computer market, Apple win out through a combination of all round quality and performance coupled with a very healthy market share and brand image.

To date, I've yet to see the PC that matched a Mac for sheer all-round slickness... I'm not saying they don't exist, just that if they do, they're not particularly noticeable in a market awash with crap.

I suspect the same will be the case for the mobile market for the foreseeable future.

I beg to differ....

Samsung's Galaxy S and S2 look pretty convincing alternatives to the Apple product and LG are catching up fast too.

As for PCs. I installed a new Acer laptop yesterday for folks who did not have a PC or internet at home previously. It was so easy to do. With 4GB RAM, and i5 2.4Ghz dula core CPU and 500GB HDD, nice bright crystal screen, slim with decent build quality (perhaps not quite as nice as a MacBook) but at £499 a great bargain compared to an Apple. I took the machine out the box and after it booted up it found the WiFi and within 2 minutes i was surfing the net. How much slicker can it get?

All manufacturers have been improving their products and many now come very close to the same ease of use that Apple offers but at a fraction of the price. One look at the profits Apple have published tells you all you need to know about why their products are priced as they are.

Yes, that is why Apple is able to offer superb service and support (often extended beyond the warranty period) and research and development. They put that into the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Macs and helped develop Thunderbolt. The OEMs have come up with ........... .

Android certainly is sharing the market with Apple, but it will be largely split along these lines. The premium part of the market will go to Apple while Android will succeed in the low end.

But really what you're saying is: 'here are some examples of cheaper, slightly inferior products'.

All the iPhone alternatives that I've seen fall into this category, the same with laptops and desktops.

You can do all these things cheaper and some people get a kick out of that... some people like apple stuff because they enjoy the quality and overall experience.

My brother bought an iMac a few months back - after years of using PC's he was blown away by the ease and speed of it. He's not into the brand or tech or anything, it's just a family computer - he felt it was a good value purchase for the quality it offered.

I'm sure that 'better' choices exist, but they can't be particularly visible in the market.

Apple do a good all round job with most of their products, and their marketing reflects that... hence the profits.

Frankly, I'm glad I don't have to deal with windows and PC's, the whole experience can be summed up in three words: control, alt, delete.

I strongly suspect Android will fall into this category of operating system - cheap and functional but ultimately glitchy.

In your dreams.
Those of us that are fortunate to have a choice don't always pick the Apple product. Our cell contracts at work have been renewed recently and nobody went for the iphone option it was either Blackberries or HTCs.
Thats 40 plus people that don't wear the same green tinted glasses as you.

That'll be why for every Apple PC sold there are at least 10 Windows models sold!

Windows 7 does everything Apple's OSX does and you get the same performance at less than half the price in many instances. Those who have not installed a PC for years have simply lost track of the improvements and my recent experience of both Windows 7 and Apple's OSX has convinced me more than ever that there is now very little difference in terms of user friendliness. Of course if you want to spend and extra £600-900 on some brushed aluminium thats fine.

Meanwhile on mobiles the Koreans and HTC are now forging ahead. Apple's iPhone 5 will have to play catch up with Samsung's Galaxy S2 and it will be interesting to see how the Nokia/Windows Phone 7 alliance develops over the next 12 months.

Apple did a fine job developing the smartphone but their greedy high pricing looks set to relegate them to a specialist mobile phone maker within a short time. Still they have done not too badly out of that business while it lasted.

HTCs don't sell nearly as well as iPhones in spite of their cheaper prices and I don't see RIM having a rosy future.

Our organisation has 100,000+ employees and the premium end of the market goes to either the iPhone or Blackberry. Some have bought Android phones, but when the contract is up many intend to go elsewhere.


And 7 of the 10 go to Enterprise buyers who buy white Vauxhall vans in quantity. Your point is?



Your figures are a bit wonky as is the rest of your assertion.
I got a 13" MBP for less than £1,000 in September and that came with a Wireless 3 in 1 printer, an iPod Touch and 3 years of AppleCare. I priced the same on a Sony and came up with £1,300 and the Sony wasn't as good.

Oh dear, can I write my dissertation on Scrivener 2 on Windows 7? No I can't.

Can I do a presentation with Keynote on Windows 7? No, I can't.

Mind you, you can spend hours fiddling with your anti-virus.

One of the things I was commenting on to senior management the other day was on how many employees were now showing their presentations on their own MacBooks and MacBook Pros without a hitch. The presentations done on Windows almost always go wrong.



.

The iPhone still is topping the reviews for the best Smartphone at any price and Apple is selling more and more each day without reverting to move product by slashing prices or offering two for 1 deals. The iPhone 4 is still there at the top and iPhone 5 will be here soon, perhaps it will be announced on Thursday. More shock and awe for the OEMs.

I do have to use a windows 7 pc at work for one specific task. I find it just as clunky as any other windows pc, not a patch on OSX. But if you're happy with that, that's fine.

Apple of course have a different approach to windows, taking an interest in hardware and software... Hence the more reliable results.

I'd expect that to continue in the mobile market too, with competitors being somewhat at the mercy of the software developers.

I'm not sure I agree with your overall predictions about iPhone 5... My impressions of the HTC range are that they're going for a bells and whistles approach, whereas apple seem to lean toward overall product design.

I think the mass market prefers a sleek design to bells and whistles... Mobile phones ultimately being as much to do with fashion as functionality.

If the iPhone is so good, why don't you own one?

Also, in your 'services' section under your name, why have you removed reference to your Nokia phone (which happened, possibly coincidentally, after Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft)?

The #1 presentation software is Powerpoint and it has been for years. The latest version in Office 2010 has all of the facilities any presenter could wish for and it's easy to use.

Your MacBook 13" at £956 gets you:
Dual-core Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600 (2.4 GHz)
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Memory: 4GB
250GB

Meanwhile you could have:

HP Pavilion dv3-4050ea 13" at £597
Dual-core Intel® Core™ i5-450M (2.4 GHz)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Memory: 4GB
500GB

Saving = £359 and the HP has a better processor and more HDD space.

Both machines priced at www.currys.co.uk and both come with free 3 USB Dongle + 5GB of data.

There are clearly plenty of comparable PCs to the MacBook Pro that are far cheaper and you don't need to look far!

Oh yes and of course Windows has 1000s more programs designed for it than MAC OSX which is why so many MAC users have dual boot machines nowadays.

Meanwhile the iPhone sales are falling. Blackberry is the favourite of the teens because of its keyboard and free IM and Android is now the favourite mobile OS on Smartphones.

There are plenty of good alternatives to Apple products costing a lot less. The only way Apple will keep the dollars rolling in will be to find a new product to deliver high profit margins. They have that now with the iPad but I suspect it's unique format will have plenty of competition before the end of 2011 so Cupertino folks had better look at what comes next. Hopefully they will come up with something more successful than Apple TV!

Can I just remind people this is the mobile phones section. Whilst a MacOS Vs Windows 7 peeing contest makes a nice change of pace from an iOS vs Android peeing contest, it probably belongs in the computing and networks section of the forum

I prefer a hard keyboard (the Nokia had a better build quality than the Blackberry) and I have made no attempt to remove Nokia phone from my services, I don't believe it was there in the first place. I also like the 4 day battery life of the E72. Sometimes on exercise I'm in the field with little or no opportunity to charge the phone. Neither the iPhone nor Android phones have sufficient battery life for me.

For the record I have a 4G iPod Touch and a wireless hotspot nearby most of the time - I use it a lot. On the other hand I do a lot of texting so like a hard keyboard and the Nokia E72 fills the need fine at £9 a month. I bought my eldest daughter an iPhone 3G in 2009 (will upgrade to iPhone 5 later this year) and my youngest is getting a Blackberry in June (she has a 2G iPod Touch). So I am not quite the Apple guy that exists in some peoples imaginations. If I was buying a top end phone, I'd go for the iPhone, but at the moment something on the thriftier side suits my needs.

The microsoft update barely affected anyone. 1 in 10 users apparently. How many times have apple flunked their updates and bricked phones/alarms not working?

Anyway the 2 for 1 offer on android phones was at the beginning of last year for a few weeks and only included Motorola droids/Eris. It had nothing to do with its worldwide surge in sales. The reason for the surge in uptake now is simply because its bloody good.

I went from a 3gs to a Desire and it was much better. When the iphone 4 came out i ditched the desire and got the iphone 4. Within a few months i had changed to the DesireHD which is miles ahead of the iphone 4 (my opinion) apart from the screen but to be honest with my eyesight it doesnt bother me And best of all i dont have to rely on itunes.

This i kind of agree on. RIM seem just now seem to be very popular with teens because of its BBM but most buisiness people i know either use Android or iOS.


i thought from one of your early posts on here you were in the army?


From an offer that isnt applicable to most people?


No, but can do on a plethora of different suites perfectly easy.


Not with keynote no obviously being apple only ,but once again, many other programs to use which in fact more people use than keynote.


Hours? 20 seconds to install and never touch it again? Where do you get this rubbish from?


.

Dont beleive you. Funny how no one else apart from you ever see this and some of the worlds biggest companies like Boeing/NASA/Airbus etc build and design most of the worlds complex machines on windows, do presentations daily and nothing ever goes wrong yet in your organisation things go wrong with windows machines daily.


Actually, its not.

As always with any new phone, it will sit on its perch for a few weeks/months then once again something better will pop along.

Given the poor sales, it wouldn't have been many.

Bricked iphones are usually jailbroken iPhones and how many people use their phone for an alarm clock?

We have 4 iOS devices in the house and none have had upgrade issues.


Low price and a lack of competition at the low end of the market are two reasons. As hardly any Android phones sold initially, a surge in sales isn't remarkable. After all if you sold one phone last month, two would be a 100% increase.

The android maketplace still does poorly and android traffic is still low.

Apple iOS Dominates European Smartphone Usage



I don't think we are ever going to have one phone that is right for everyone. Your choice could be right for you and mine for me and isn't it great that we can have a choice.

I am.


I was in the right place at the right time.


And you could drive to London on square wheels.


And more people drive Corsas than Mercedes. It doesn't make it better. Scrivener 2 is Apple only also.


ROTFLMAO
Problems happen every minute in those organisations and they have an army of support personnel to keep the whole house of cards going - that is until it grinds to a halt by malware (ie Siemens). There was a company that ran equal numbers of Macs and Windows PCs. It took 12 guys to keep the Windows boxes going and one guy used 50% of his time to keep the Macs going.


The iPhone has been on top since 2007, nothing has remotely come close. (finally back on topic )

Fair point well made there lol

In saying that, i tried it the other day and it is very good indeed. Well polished and finished. Joy to use. Whether i would buy one, im not sure.


Without causing a huge row in here pretty much everyone i know and myself use their phones as alarm clocks so more than you think i would guess lol


My 3gs bricked on upgrade. No idea why but got it sorted in the end so wasnt that big a deal but these things happen sadly.


Not sure if that maybe has anything to do with the 'alternative Android Marketplaces' that are becoming very common with its users.


No, thats true.

lol yeah so with risk of having this topic closed i wont answer the above but will this.

The iphone was an absolute revelation in mobiles when they first announced the first iphone. It opened up a new way of doing things with your phone. Over time as apple brought out their new devices, other manufacturers, HTC namely took the idea and sorry to say, but made it better thanks to Android.

Just because apple brought all this to the table doesnt mean they have to stay at the top. Someone will always make something better and i think HTC have done this.

For speed, ease of use, looks, interface i think the desire HD is much better than the iphone 4. I do believe that when the iphone 5 comes out apple will pop back to the top for a while again.