Apple has an ability to drive change that other computer manufacturers don’t.

The simple reason is that Apple is the only manufacturer in a specific market. The market for MacOS (or in the case of iDevices, iOS) users.

What that means is that Apple can introduce a pretty shitty change and not lose too many customers to other manufacturers because switching from Apple to another manufacturer is much harder than from Dell to HP.

So, for example, if Dell were to introduce those shitty butterfly keyboards, that were nearly unusable and got spoilt so easily, they would have to change back to their old keyboards within months, unlike Apple, which managed to stick to that design for years and generations of devices without suffering too much.

I use that example because it was an unambiguously worse option, so it nicely illustrates how Apple has a lock-in that others don’t. But Apple can use that lock in to then introduce what are potentially more useful changes (USB2) and/or changes that are not fully baked yet (USB-C), and not suffer the consequences other manufacturers would.

As a customer, my buy-in is built on the trust that the majority of the time the company is going to make the right call.

If they make the wrong call, they’ll handle it. Or they won’t and you’ll get burned a little bit.

When Apple makes an obvious error, like with the keyboard, or something external is holding back the quality of the product (recent pre-Apple silicon laptops) you do have to sort of pay attention and if possible steer around the problem.

As an example I largely sidelined the weak 2018 MacBook Air and instead invested in maxing out a Mac Mini. That turned out really well for me.

Sometimes, like with the butterfly keyboard, it feels like Apple does not take enough responsibility for screw ups and take greater measures to make customers whole.

This happened recently for me with the iPhone 12 Magsafe Silicon case, which is a good product but flawed in the context of the iPhone upgrade program.

In that way, I think Apple could and should be much more generous about returning value to its customers instead of to shareholders.

If there were any existential threat to Apple, I’d say it’s the need to reward shareholders instead of customers.

> it was an unambiguously worse option

Speak for yourself. The butterfly keyboard is the only laptop keyboard I have ever encountered which I can type on for a full day without flaring RSI. Despite having a fully-loaded 16" with the replacement keyboard, I still use the 4.5-year-old butterfly model for almost everything.

Yeah, I personally prefer the typing feel of the butterfly keyboard: I'm just a bit hesitant about its reliability.

> What that means is that Apple can introduce a pretty shitty change and not lose too many customers to other manufacturers because switching from Apple to another manufacturer is much harder than from Dell to HP.

I totally get this interpretation, but I genuinely cannot work out how to tell the difference between this explanation and the alternative explanation that this actually just is what the smartphone market prefers and when given the choice they will choose it.

That would also explain why essentially all competitors copy the change one product cycle after the first company makes the change. Unless you’re suggesting that Apple’s competitors are actually colluding with Apple to remove the headphone jack despite strong market opposition, I really don’t see how you can definitively say that Apple and its competitors aren’t simply making products that most people prefer.

As someone who has mostly had android phones (but not now), I watched the wireless charging thing unfold in a hilarious way.

A bunch of android phones had wireless charging years ago, including one of the nexus devices IIRC. Great! I'll buy a couple of wireless charging pucks and use them. No more flakey USB ports that give up before the phone does.

Apple didn't pick it up.

Android phones all dropped the feature.

Apple picked it up, hyped it, rolled it out.

Android phones started appearing with it again.

It's like Apple has to lead the way, and even useful features can't survive in the android ecosystem without Apple's blessing.

Afaik Samsung phones had wireless charging since 2016 and kept that, didn't they? I'm an iPhone guy, but my colleagues were using wireless chargers around that time.

Interesting ... looking up the specs the site I use tells me that was "market dependent", I wonder if that has impacted my experience.

The motorola Nexus 6 had Qi charging in 2014, then that manufacturer seemed to back away from it. Huawei only picked the feature up in 2019 AFAICT, my P20 pro didn't have it.

But yes, it does look like the galaxy phones have had it all along. I wonder why I discounted those?

It wasn’t status or prestige. It was developing battery conditioning software and integrating it in the OS so the batteries could last years before replacement.

And when Apple did this, they were able to pack more wattage on their MacBooks, making them last substantially longer on a charge than competitors. Competitors had to do same to eventually catch up.

> these companies could point out that "Apple does this, so it must be an acceptable idea".

Friends and jumping off bridges and all that.

I get that Apple has immense sway in these marketplaces but I've never gotten a good explanation for why it's Apple's fault when another company makes that same anti-consumer decision. Headphone jacks being the most prominent example.

I didn't blame anyone, I was just saying it couldn't have happened without Apple doing things first.

And not even all the things I listed really annoy me, I have listed examples for things where Apple had to be the first from the established manufacturers. For example the audio jack, I basically never used wired headphones in the last 6 (?) years (since the first time I bought Beats with Bluetooth), so I don't even care.

> I do think it couldn't have happened without Apple doing it first from the big manufacturers.

Well sure nothing “could have happened” without the first company doing it and then the rest of the companies also doing it. But you can’t blame just Apple for an industry wide change. Sure they where the first major company to push a single button mouse, but you can’t blame them for there being no two or three button mice on the market today. That’s not something they made happen, that was an entire industry adopting their practice, and the consumers backing that decision.