Apple v. Samsung

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Literally everything in this comment is demonstrably false.

Apple was never marginal, they created the first mainstream consumer focused computer. Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop, and virtually every other industry standard software was released first and exclusively on the Mac.

Windows was a straight rip off of the Mac GUI. This isn’t even disputed. Bill Gates/Steve Jobs arguments over this are well documented. (“I broke in to steal (Xerox PARC’s) the TV set and you already stole it” etc).

Windows is literally called Windows because it has windows - like the Mac. Microsoft used their position as a major software developer for the Mac to rip it off and create Windows. Rendering circles, being about to move the mouse diagonally as opposed to just up, down, left, right being notable examples off the top my head they reverse engineered from the Mac.

Apple has always been a walled garden. Vertical integration between hardware and software (a la the Mac) has always been core to the company, this didn’t start with the iPhone. It started in the early 80s. And now the other two operating system makers are trying to do it too - Microsoft’s Surface line and Google Pixel.

Apple had a slump in the 90s and its brand recognition has obviously increased by orders of magnitude among average (non-tech) people since the iPhone, that product made it the most valuable corporation on earth, but Apple has always been culturally dominant in computing, no one in the industry has ever not been aware of them or what they’re doing.

The iPhone didn’t coup the music industry, that was the iPod. (Do you think Microsoft would have done the Zune if there was no iPod?).

Samsung has been straight copying Apple since the iPhone launched. They lost a lawsuit over it with the Galaxy S. This can’t be disputed in good faith. Samsung stores, SamsungCare, it’s all modeled off Apple. Apple goes back to using Titanium again (first time in about 20 years since the PowerBook) with the iPhone 15 and then a few months later Samsung is marketing the S24 based on it titanium. Apple launches a new watch, called it “ultra” uses an orange colour scheme, Samsung releasing a galaxy watch called “ultra” with an orange accents lol. This is shameless. It’s not a coincidence.

Samsung has innovated in hardware in many cool and interesting ways (foldable screens, etc) but these are all, while often novel and interesting, are mostly gimmicks and of limited commercial value or utility to consumers, and they’re never polished because Samsung’s DNA is hardware and they can’t do software or design.

Apple’s innovations are often less groundbreaking and more incremental, Apple acquires smaller companies with cutting edge tech, or waits for a new technology to become cheaper, then rolls it in en masse in the best designed and most functional implementation on the market (multi touch, Touch ID, Face ID, etc).

Samsung (and basically anyone who isn’t Apple) can’t do this because they don’t have the vertical integration (walled garden as you called it) that Apple has. If Apple wants to do something, they can. They can include hardware security processors in their iPhone and Macs for example and then use this for hardware accelerated cryptography and iCloud Activation Lock for example. Or they can include infrared dot projection cameras and back this face unlock deep into the OS for passwords and payments etc. (Android phones were unlocked with photographs for years). Samsung can’t do this. Samsung has to wait for Qualcomm to support a given functionality in their SoC, and then for Google to support Qualcomm’s hardware feature in the Android OS and they provide an API before Samsung can do anything with it. Samsung can’t even roll out updates in a timely fashion because they feel the need to skin Android to make it look and feel unique to them.

Finally the iPhone really wasn’t that ground breaking on a technical level, there wasn’t even third party app support, other than multi touch and pinch to zoom, there really wasn’t anything I could do on the first iPhone that I hadn’t already been doing for years on other phones. The groundbreaking part was the design of the product and the UI/UX (and the vertical integration, registration software updates, straight from the manufacturer, no carrier involvement). It was easy to use and worked better. This has always been core to Apple.

They sold the first iPhone as an iPod + email device + internet browsing device (all in one device). You could already do all of these things on pretty much any other phone. None of these things was ground breaking, it was how Apple designed and packaged into the best implementation on the market of these existing features that was ground breaking. And they’re still doing that today.

Also on a personal note, having worked for both, on a company level Apple doesn’t give a sh*t what Samsung is doing. They obviously keep tabs on Android and copy its best features when it makes sense, like the pull down notification centre for example. Or all the BlackBerry 10 gestures (swipe up to go home and all the others) they straight up stole and baked into iOS when they phased out the Home Button on the iPhone X. But on the whole they aren’t obsessed with what Samsung or Google or Microsoft (except for AI) are doing. Whereas at Samsung, they are completely obsessed with what Apple is doing, it’s deeply ingrained in the company culture. So much so that it hurts them, instead of playing to their strengths they just try to do whatever Apple does even though they usually physically can’t because they don’t have the vertical integration, ecosystem, software capabilities or design chops.

For many years they did have a powerful ecosystem they could have built on (their leading position in TVs, fridges and washing machines) they could have deeply integrated all Samsung products and had the Galaxy as the centrepiece of it all. But they didn’t, because Samsung Electronics is completely independent and none of the business units talk. About a decade after I started suggesting leaning into this strength they have finally done a half-assed version of this (Smart Things). But it was a day late and a dollar short. The overwhelming majority of people with a Galaxy S series phone and a Samsung TV never connect the two. Samsung has more customers using Smart Things to control and monitor Samsung TVs, washing machines and other appliances on iPhones than they do on Samsung handsets.

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