The electronic market today is flooded with iPads, iPhones, iHomes, Apple TV, Apple this and iThat. Apple has become a dominating force in the electronic industry, and now they are using that position to play on people’s gullibility and sell sub-par equipment at outrageous prices.
Now, I have an iPhone 4 and have generally been happy with its performance the past year and a half I have had it. It is a good phone compared to the two Androids and Blackberry I used to have. I am not saying Apple products are bad, people just need to realize that their iDevice is not a revolutionary product, no matter how much Apple says it is and that they are paying double what the device is worth.
The iPhone 5, compared to Android’s leading smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S III, has a smaller screen, shorter battery life, less storage space, a slower processor, less RAM and a lesser quality front-facing camera.
The GS III has a voice feature called S Voice that is on par with Siri and costs only $250 for the high-end model versus the low-end iPhone 5, which retails at $200. Droids are no longer lagging behind in the smartphone race. They have actually jumped in front of Apple, but people do not realize that.
The new lineup of Mac computers are the most over-priced electronics of the Apple lineup.
For $1,000, consumers can get an 11-inch MacBook Air with 64 GB of flash storage, 4 GB of RAM and an Intel i5 processor. Sounds all fancy and high-tech right? To put that into perspective, my 15-inch Sony Vaio with an i5 processor, 500 GB of storage and 4 GB of RAM cost me $500.
Apple also prevents their users from upgrading their computers. If an Apple owner wants a better computer they have to spend another $1,000 to get an upgraded model. PCs allow users to really control and access their machine. That means that to double the performance of my laptop, it would still cost less than a base model MacBook Air.
The iPad lineup is the same way. Compared the new Microsoft Surface or the ASUS Transformer Infinity, the iPad 4 base model feature’s just cannot compete. I do not even want to talk about the iPad Mini that even dared to try and take on the seven-inch market that’s already dominated by the Kindle Fire HD or the Google Nexus 7.
The upside for Apple products is that they are great for design and they have a very user-friendly operating system.
Apple is also fantastic at their iPod lineup and the simple but elegant design of their products is what makes them so appealing.
But what ruins their image for me is their buisness model.
They build up their products to be revolutionary, when the tech on them has been around for years, the devices are overpriced and they limit users on what they can do with the product they paid for. They also purposely hold back features from their products so they can release a new model the next year and charge another $300 so users can take a panoramic photo.
People buy these products thinking they are getting the most for their cash when they are not. If processor speeds, RAM, display quality or any of that other jazz does not matter to you and you just like Apple for the look and don’t mind spending a lot of money, by all means, go buy Apple products.
But if you want the most bang for your buck, research and compare before you buy.
Malik Rahili, a freshman computer science major from Durham, is the graphics editor.