Like it or Not, Apple is Usually Right (Premium)

Apple is a divisive company, but it makes some of the best hardware in the industry. Why? Because it almost always makes the right decisions.

I poke fun at Apple—as I do with Google and Microsoft, a point the more thin-skinned Apple fans neatly ignore—because of its hubris, pretentiousness, and hyperbole. The company’s live product announcements have turned into quasi-religious love-fests, hours of self-promotion and self-congratulation and video highlight reels, all wrapped up in a mock humbleness that would make a TV preacher blush.

How does the thinking person deal with such a monster?

My own coping mechanism is to mock that which deserves to be mocked. And Apple is certainly a target-rich environment for that kind of thing. I find great comedy in all of the tech giants’ various product announcements, but Apple often makes it too easy.

But there is another side to my relationship with Apple. And while I don’t recommend the mocking thing to everyone, I do recommend that we collectively acknowledge the reality of what Apple is doing. That Apple usually makes the right bets. The right decisions.

No, not always. There are mistakes, both big and small, that anyone could point to. There is, likewise, some element of chance and timing to Apple’s rise in the industry, a combination of circumstance and skill. But as with the New England Patriot’s stunning and historic comeback in the most recent Super Bowl, one doesn’t simply get that chance. You have to put yourself in that position in the first place. You have to have the pieces in place, and the confidence in your own ability to pull it off. You have to be nearly perfect.

Yes, I just compared Apple to the Patriots. Equally divisive, I know.

But as we chart our way forward, we will individually and collectively be making bets of our own. Your choice of a smartphone, for example, says as much about you as it does about the company that makes it.

I recently discussed my decision to switch to Android after having used an iPhone, primarily, for the previous few years. This decision was greeted with the usual and expected range of responses, which ran from outright contempt to abject agreement.

Truth is, this decision wasn’t particularly momentous. I’m surrounded by gadgets of all kinds every single day, and I routinely switch back and forth between different phones and platforms. When I was using the iPhone, I still used some Android phone, and other non-Apple devices, very regularly. Today, I still use an iPad every day, mostly for reading, and my iPhone is still here for testing, and for the odd job. (For example, when I need to take a picture of the phone I’m normally using.)

So why even write about it? Well for you, of course. This was really a discussion about the decision-making process. And we all have different needs. We all approach things from our own angles, and even if you aren’t even remotely considering, in this case, Android, I feel like it’s still interesting to understand why someone else might go in a different direction.

Anyway, that’s how I approach it, and my decision, such as it is, to use Android primarily isn’t really a refutation of anything that Apple is doing per se. It’s just an acknowledgment that the Android side of the fence is more interesting, to me, more dynamic and fast-moving. It’s also more chaotic. Less reliable. And less consistent.

Which is, of course, why Apple—and more specifically, the iPhone—is so important.

When it comes time for you to buy a new phone—or a tablet, or a computer, or whatever device—Apple will almost certainly be a consideration.

As they should be, because Apple almost always makes the right decisions. Those decisions—in product design, or in the adoption or dropping of certain technologies—are made on behalf of its customers. We may not always agree with every single one of those decisions; that’s what makes us thinking people, not lemmings. But, broad strokes, Apple is a safe bet.

Some don’t see it that way, I know.

Looking at the iPhone 8, for example, I see what is very clearly the fourth rendition of a somewhat bland hardware design that first debuted with the iPhone 6 back in 2014. And it’s easy to dismiss the device on those grounds. Here’s Apple, milking the same tired design, over and over again. As it always does.

But you might also view the iPhone 8 in a different light, and point out that its design was, in fact, nicely updated with glass on both sides and elegant new colors. That the technology baseline was raised significantly by wireless charging, True Tone display capabilities, and an improved camera with enhanced Portrait mode functionality.

Both of those views are at least defensible. But the former assertion doesn’t negate the fact that the iPhone 8 is a great upgrade, especially for someone who isn’t using its direct predecessor, the iPhone 7. Or for someone who simply cannot afford an iPhone X or accept some of its changes. Point being, we can debate individual choices with the new device, but Apple, overall, made the right decisions there.

This is what it always does. And you can have this same discussion about any Apple product or service, or even about individual feature choices. Some are more polarizing than others, like the firm’s decision to kill off the headphone jack. Some decisions seem to make little sense at first, like the Apple Watch, which is now edging into an actual success, or the notch on the iPhone X display, which looks horrible in photos but isn’t at all distracting in real life usage. And, yes, some are just wrong, of course. Those decisions are well-documented elsewhere.

The beauty of the Apple model, when you think about it, isn’t “innovation,” at least not as we’d traditionally define it. Instead, Apple’s strength is implementing the right features at the right time. Apple rarely does anything first. But when Apple does go down a certain path, it tends to formalize features and technologies. You know it’s right when Apple does it. Again, because Apple tends to make the right decisions.

This is a power that Microsoft once wielded, and while I long feared what the world might look like had their roles ever been reversed, today’s Apple is neatly balanced by Google, Samsung, and others. Yes, it has created a lock-in monoculture. But the reward is surety, reliability. It’s working. It’s hard to argue with. If you want something that just works, in particular whatever iPhone, it’s not just a safe bet, it’s a great decision. Because Apple’s been doing right by you for years.

So go ahead and buy that iPhone. I may mock Apple for the way it presents the product to the world, but I’d never mock a person for making such a great decision.

(But God help you if I ever see you out in the world taking a photo with an iPad. That is not a good decision.)