I’m not sure that “What others have on the market is worse”

Re-reading some of the quotes curated by Michael Tsai in the already-discussed Rotten commentary round-up, I noticed this bit by Om Malik, which had escaped my attention for some reason:

I have my own explanation, something my readers are familiar with, and it is the most obvious one. Just as Google is trapped in the 10-blue-link prison, which prevents it from doing something radical, Apple has its own golden handcuffs. It’s a company weighed down by its market capitalization and what stock market expects from it.

They lack the moral authority of Steve Jobs to defy the markets, streamline their product lineup, and focus the company. Instead, they do what a complex business often does: they do more. Could they have done a better job with iPadOS? Should Vision Pro receive more attention?

The answer to all those is yes. Apple has become a complex entity that can’t seem to ever have enough resources to provide the real Apple experience. What you get is “good enough.” And most of the time, I think it is enough – because what others have on the market is worse. They know how to build great hardware; it’s the software where they falter.

I agree with this almost completely, save for the part I have emphasised in bold.

From a hardware standpoint, the gap between Apple and the competition isn’t as wide as it was when the first generation of Apple Silicon CPUs debuted in 2020. Intel chips have got better, but AMD has especially upped their game. The AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 (codename: Strix Halo) delivers impressive performance, as shown in this video by Dave2D reviewing the Asus Flow Z13 — which is, in turn, an impressive gaming 2‑in‑1 ’Surface-like’ device.

Design-wise, there are brands like Lenovo or Asus which, on the one hand offer home and business laptops with austere, iterative designs, but on the other hand get more creative in other lineups (Asus with their gaming laptops, Lenovo with their convertibles). Then there are brands like Framework: their laptops may not win industrial design awards, but what they’re doing on the modularity and repairability fronts is perhaps unmatched at the moment. And they, too, have recently upped their game with their new offerings.

Apple’s hardware design is still remarkable, but increasingly more on the inside than the outside of their machines. MacBooks haven’t changed much since the unibody chassis was introduced in 2008, and what seems to characterise them today is a notch on the top centre of their displays, which is among the most idiotic hardware design choices I’ve seen in more than 30 years.

Software-wise, well, I have a bit of a bias, having used Macs since 1989. I clearly know the Mac (and iOS/iPadOS) ecosystem and software selection far better than any other platform. But in recent years I’ve been familiarising myself with Linux (mainly Ubuntu and Crunchbangplusplus) and have been using Windows 10 and 11 on my ThinkPads, my Surface Pro, and my Lenovo Legion 7i gaming laptop. And overall it’s been a pleasant experience. With hiccups here and there, but again, mostly deriving from lack of habit or familiarity. I think Windows 10 and Windows 11 have been good examples of UI improvement on Microsoft’s part. And as far as reliability goes, I’ve been using my Legion 7i gaming laptop for more than a year now, and I’ve had zero issues with Windows 11. No weird crashes, no instability, no misbehaving apps, nothing.

I’ve also recently discovered the probably-still-niche world of e‑ink tablets, devices that are mostly used for note-taking, sketching, and reading. These devices may not compete with iPads in terms of versatility, but the fact that they don’t want to be jacks-of-all-trades is also their core strength, in my opinion. Which means they are more focused devices not suffering from identity crisis like the iPad, and in my experience (owning one of them) they actually offer a better user experience when it comes to handwriting ‘feel’, and an e‑ink display still looks more natural to me when writing and reading, especially during long sessions. Other advantages are the much reduced eye-straining, of course, and the exceptional battery life.

I know that, from a financial standpoint, suggesting you actually, extensively try different platforms may be unfeasible. I’ve done it largely by acquiring second-hand devices and computers, and even by receiving generous gifts from readers of this blog who wanted to get rid of stuff without increasing e‑waste. Of course we all ultimately have our preferences, but I think it’s healthier to have preferences without prejudices. I’ve been guilty of this myself until circa 2016. Before that, I was using Apple devices and software 95% of the time; the rest was superficial knowledge, mostly gathered through hearsay and sporadic usage of non-Apple platforms.

And yes, coincidentally Apple had also the best UI during Jobs’s tenure, along with some striking industrial design. But it’s important to understand that the ‘good enough’ Apple offers today isn’t necessarily better than what the competition offers — everyone is ‘good enough’ in tech now, though this ‘good enough’ for some is a step up from their previous mediocrity. For Apple is a step down, especially in the UI and UX departments, where they inarguably used to excel.