user experience is EVERYTHING...

/begin rant

ill give apple this one, they sure know how to design for the lowest common denominator.  now EVERYBODY, AND THEIR CHILDREN, have a reason to give apple a small fortune... so they can update their facebook status from anywhere too.

i knew nokia, palm (the company), and the entire rest of our species were in trouble, when somebody told me they bought iphones for their whole family because they were so easy to use that nobody would have to READ a manual.

because reading is so last century.  people are becoming pathetically complacent...

is apple truly ingenious, or just opportunistic and good at market research?

in my personal opinion, apple is inflicting great disservices on the average joe and the future, by lowering end user standards to such a degree that the user interface is basically a marketing tool.  education, (ie. barrier to entry), is not a bad thing.  struggle breeds strength.  we have much better things to spend our time on than facebook, and much better things to spend our money on than ipad games.

apple  =  wall-e

but, the chinese (apple) dont make up the majority of our population for nothing.

/end rant

...without focus, mechanics are meaningless.

Nokia would do better if they dump Windows and use Android.

they probably would have sold more units. at least i would have bought one.

that does not mean they would have done better. i believe they lose money on every high-end device sold. so selling more units would mean burning more money.

they also would not have gotten the billions of dollars MS threw at them.

i think one of the main mistakes those phone manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, HTC) make is that they act as if they produce pc peripherals. people do not buy lifestyle products because of hardware specs. look at the cameras in those Nokias, they are great, they have better hardware specs than the cameras in the iPhones. and it must have cost Nokia a fortune to include them in their devices.

but still, almost every professional photographer who is featured with mobile phone photos in the National Geographic Magazine or elsewhere is using an iPhone. even those folks do not care about hardware specs on a phone. they are not pc geeks.

Android is just a generic OS every other handset maker uses.  The Lumia line has done well for them.

We have had to look at phones. My wife is still using the Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy I) and it's just too old to keep up anymore with the apps and games, etc., it's constantly freezing on her.\

She wants an iphone but has NEVER had one. The 'change' scares her, learning to use it, etc.

Second choice is either the Galaxy 3 or 4 (depending on the deal she can get) Her biggest issue with either is the size of the thing. She thinks it's too bulky to carry around.

I tried to steer her towards the HTC One but no dice.

THEN- I mentioned the Nokia running Windows. The 'salesperson' at BestBuy shot it down for 'her'. He said it was hard to learn how to use it, how it all works, but that once you learned it was easy. Now, honestly...when smartphones and the like first came out, wasn't that basically the case for all of them. We all had to learn.

Because of our finacila situation, I told her to get what she wants and I will get whatever I can for free (both our contracts have been up for a while). I have been looking at lesser praised phones that run Android AND at the Nokia. I like the Lumia but for the life of me don't know which version to go with. As much as I might miss Android, I am more keen on trying a WIndows phone than an iphone of any kind.

I think a lot of it comes down to fear of the unknown or change for some people.

@Moshi, good points!

Jafo, from a reader's perspective, concluding your posts with that smiley face makes it nigh impossible to determine whether or not you're being serious.  If the underlying gist of my posts is still eluding you(?), I will better explain the context behind the line you quoted.

Well put.

Apple products are blatantly designed for the consumption of information, not the creation of it.  I can say with almost certainty that had I grown up with ipads instead of command lines - the rapid advancement of technology would be much more daunting.

For some weird reason, few are able to link the current international socio-political-economic crisis to this rapid advancement, mainly: money + internet.  Countries don't exist anymore, actually haven't for a long time, since banking went multi-national; and the values of goods, services, and PEOPLE are completely askew now... based solely upon whether or not a business takes advantage of the internet.

Last time I checked it was only like ~35 percent of the world that actually used the net, and at the same time, ~65 percent that didn't have clean drinking water. We're talking about the divide between people that can read or write and those that can't on a much larger scale.  From my personal experience, very few Apple afficionados can "write".

Wall-E (or Idiocracy) really isn't that far off.

Additional thoughts:

Basically, internet users = STYLISH, CAPABLE consumers.  Now that everybody with money is easy to target, marketing (user experience / psychology) has become the only industry; everything else, including quality, has become secondary.

...To me this is the undertone of the article in the OP.

STYLISH so that even more people strive to buy access (now via an idevice, modems are last decade).  Another self-serving capitalist loop (pyramid scheme) hindering true technological progression, thanks Apple.  Ask the telecom industry, they will tell you Apple is the new boss.  I say this as someone who has probably spent more time thinking in marketing terms throughout their career than anything else, and not by choice.  I'm a philosopher and an engineer.  Unfortunately, Plato saw this coming a couple thousand years ago: eventually one must learn to just ride the wave.

...displaced paternality, what are you talking about?

i obviously got much more out of the article, as i wrote much more, including a very clear statement that i was not attempting to be obtuse.  it appears you have difficulty deriving meaning from a string of sentences, because the thought did not end where you originally quoted.  did you read anything else, or just get stuck on that 1 sentence?

this ease-of-use that youre referring to is nothing more than the result of targeted marketing and product design into a demographic that knows practically nothing of the digital world, because they have little need to.  all decreasing the barrier to entry does is increase the available market for sales; and ultimately stifle consumers from developing into producers.  education is the solution, not dumbed down consumerism.  kids shouldnt be playing with cell phones, and technological innovators shouldnt be targeting them as such.  apples parade of contracts across the united states education system is disgusting.  the whole world doesnt need an itunes account and a facebook page at their fingertips.  hell, the whole world doesnt need a cell phone with the internet shoved in their culture.

does anybody even read the warnings that cell phones should be held at least 2 inches away from your head when in use, or that 3d glasses should only be used in short spurts, especially by children with developing eyes?

oh, right, reading...

honestly i cant figure out why you reply to my posts.  your tone always comes across as a snide attempt at self-indulgence, and rarely feels constructive.

a good conversation is a sharing of ideas, its a wonder a forum admin wouldnt know this.

hint: you should really work on relating with your customers. *wink

ok, im done being snarky now if you are.

There are times when he could use a bit more tact.

That could be said of each and every one of us, even the Frog-in-Chief.

I don't have an opinion of Jafo, I just know how they come across to me; and as a paying customer and strong supporter of their company, and somebody who knows how to treat my own customers, I do deserve more tact.  How long I've been a member of these forums is irrelevant.

All I did was offer to better explain myself if I wasn't being understood clearly, and basically got unjustifiably berated as an idiot in return.  Personally, I don't really care what Jafo thinks of me, as much as I dislike being misunderstood.

Except me.

I'm going to guess that your pay check relies in no way on your interaction with your customers.

I started typing more, but honestly I have much better things to do.

Good day.