So who have the upper edge?

When I was younger, I always wanted the white macbook. To me, back then, it was the most beautiful looking laptop ever. When I got into Poly, we had to buy a laptop for school and they were selling the MacBook as one of the option. But because it was not compatible with the softwares that I needed for school, I was forced to buy a PC instead. The level of disappointment was so high. Why did i wanted a MacBook? Well the answer is rather simple really. It was so sleek looking and the interface was so beautiful. Not to mention it always seem very exclusive. No other laptop runs the Mac OS and owning a Mac just feel so elite. Of course this is one of Apple's strategy to sell that products. By making it scares and limited, it makes people want to get it more. This is in line with one of the weapons of influence that I learnt this semester. People do not like to have their freedom restricted. And when their freedom is restricted, they would want to get rid of that restriction. By making the product scares and limited, Apple is making people want it because they cant get it anywhere else.

They did this with the iPhone as well. when the iPhone first came out, so many people when to buy it. Why? Because it was the only phone on the market that offers such a sophisticated interface. No other phones out then were close to the iPhone. I remember my first iPhone was the 3G model and it was the most phenomenon thing to me. There were no buttons and the touch screen was incredible. Unlike the pressure touch screens that were dominating the markets back then, the iPhone had one of the most smooth and effortless touch screen capabilities. Not to mention that the marketing was created to portray the iPhone as one of the sleekest and simple smartphone around that can do everything that a user requires. The interface was so easy. There were no complicated folders and sub-folders that users have to navigate to get to the things that they want. There were no complicated steps to get something done. Everything was on the scree, and the already existing app store boost so many apps that users can download and use to make their lives so much more simpler.

Their commercial event boosts its app for everything function. It was targeting people who needs and wants all these functionality in their phone and need I say that they succeed? Not really. Everyone knows and a lot of people in the world has an iPhone. There are more iPhone sold in 2012 than people born. 

Of course following the success of Apple, other brands start churning out phones with better and better specs to rival that of Apple. Google created android in their attempted to rival Apple. Recently Nokia created a whole series of Windows phone that are set to compete with Apple. 

However, what put Apple as the leading in phone production was a very simple strategy. They had the app store BEFORE the iPhone came out. It was just a matter of putting the ability to call people into an iTouch. All the apps were already available for the iTouch and all they had to do was put the ability to make phone calls into the iTouch and TADA a new phone. So the success of the iPhone was due to their already established app store. Google had to bump it up and make their play store compatible with the app store and this they did so very beautifully. Now most apps that are on the app store are available on the play store. But windows is struggling a bit behind because their app store is a bit short of apps at the moment. 

To me, personally, the app store is one of the main reason I stayed with an iPhone for so long. Another being its simplistic approach to phone design. But ever since I got a android phone, I personally prefer an android over an iOS. The simple reason is because the android allows modification to be done without bridging the license of the software. Unlike iOS where once jailbroken, the license is void. I love the ability to modify my launcher on my android and use different SMS applications or experiment with different keyboards. And there are many phone companies that uses android platform. They even allow their buyers to unlock or root their phones. This is something I personally find enticing about an android phone. The ability to modify and change something that we might not like about the phone. I spend a lot of time modifying my phone to suit my need. As you can see, the above images are how my launcher looks on my android. It is no longer the one that comes with the phone. its something that i choose and edited to suit my taste and needs. 

And this one is how the original launcher looks like. I do not like it at all. 

I highly doubt I would return to an iOS anytime soon even though I do like the simplistic approach of the phone. I use a Mac though and am truly in love with the interface of it. As compared to a window, I find the OSX have a much more elegant and sophisticated approach that has yet to be rivalled.