Ask HN: Why are there not more Apple-quality products?

If you want the disappointing answer, it's because the United States government implicitly forces a smartphone manufacturing duopoly where both options are under their control. If you want the slightly-less-disappointing answer, it's because there aren't any other tech companies with 200 billion dollars in liquid cash sitting in their bank account. If you want the bluepill answer, it's because Tim Cook has a secret vault deep within Cupertino HQ that contains the secret, unique texts that describe the highly-guarded technology of Retina Displays and unibody frame manufacturing.

Honestly though, quality is subjective. My measure of quality comes from how well the software I use runs on these devices - and unfortunately, it doesn't work well. GNU software is too much of a hassle on MacOS, setting up my sync system isn't even an option on iOS. The phone could feed my cat and make me dinner, but it still wouldn't be a daily driver unless it makes my life easier as a user. Neither one really does,

Maybe the most realistic answer is that everyone else has seen what Apple made, and doesn't want to build a locked-down vertical ecosystem. People get frustrated dealing with SMS/iMessage bridging and MacOS/iOS deciding which software they get to run. These people want to innovate beyond what Apple has done, and I think that's a pretty amicable goal. Trying to sell a device as locked-down as the iPhone in 2022 will rightfully get you laughed out of the room.

Barrier to entry is very high (lots of expensive man hours to design and program device), and the people with sufficient money are not willing to bet they can sufficiently outcompete Apple and existing Android phone makers on cost to quality ratio to make a sufficient return in investment.

Microsoft was halfway there, opened up retail stores, had a working product they could keep improving, and then pulled the plug. Not sure why leadership was not interested in risking a little bit more to have a piece of the Apple pie, in addition to the rent they get from Office/Azure/Windows.

Because most people buy Androids that are much cheaper than iPhones. Buy an Android phone that's priced similarly as iPhone (e.g. Samsung Galaxy S series) and the quality is just as good.

> one polished Linux-based operating system

This one is more clearly related to an area I know a lot about (expressions of personality dynamics in products and organizational philosophy), so I'll start there.

Linux as it stands today is more about a divergent, possibilities-first engagement with big-picture concepts.

What you are looking for, in that realm, would be a specific _distro_ and its maintainer, not a Linux-wide decision. That is the closest you will get (and it's a pretty amazing state of things at that, tbh), and I would recommend you reach out to some distro maintainers that seem to think like you do. For example, (what was that James Bond villain again? ah yes) Zorin OS is similarly minded, but,

and this is important,

your post raises the "I'm a critic" flag in terms of personality archetype leanings, so it's more important at a stage like this to look for _possibility_ than _where things stand_ with a given distro. I'm sure you could find plenty of ways in which Zorin _currently_ sucks, for example!

If you want to budge the needle, so to speak, you will either have to find people who will not wither under your eye for quality as voiced through critique, as Jobs did, or find a constructive way to be open and amenable in your work.

Also, regarding Linux in general, look at the opposite of some of those terms, too, like the opposite of divergent and possibilities-first: Linux as a whole is not "about" the convergent probabilistic conceptual work you are describing. (i.e. let's aim at the single, refined collection of things we are pretty sure would be really appealing to a lot of people)

On the other hand, Jobs' personality was way more closely geared to that. Steve Jobs had an inner mandate to create the puck everyone else would wish they had skated to.

What you are expressing in your question is about your personal preference for a mindset that is similarly concept-focused, which seems very close to Steve's.

However, one thing we know about conceptualizers is that they are, especially in early stages of being disappointed with things (the start of their typical hero's journey, that's their equivalent of the village that's been ransacked and torched), vulnerable to the illusion that others either must see things the same way they do, OR those other people lack an eye for quality, taste, and vision. They have access to both the auteur's gifts and the liabilities that come with them.

However, to take on such a long-term goal, the fact that not everyone buys or wants Apple products should be evidentiary, instructional, or hopefully at least a constructive curiosity.

For example, I don't think of "quality" when I think of Apple, these days, even though I have used their products for a long time.

Just some thoughts, good luck to you in gathering ideas.

PS Watch the "Z Channel" documentary if you want another story that's similar to the Jobs-Apple mindset in a lot of ways.

Apple makes mistakes too with it's many hardware-related and boot loop issues. The iPhone X was practically a lemon.

Maybe try... a good Android phone?

This question is silly. The Pixel or any top-end Samsung is equivalent or better than the iPhone in hardware. The Android and iOS user interfaces are similar enough that it's mostly personal preference and familiarity.

Hardware sales like smartphones only work at scale. Besides you need distribution.

Honestly I think it is because there is a real disdain, or at least disrespect, toward the arts amongst many technologists and at many technology companies. They treat art and design as just an extra thing you do at the end, rather than a key philosophy that informs the entire product design process. This applies to graphic design, product design, even fashion.

This is very much unlike Apple (under Jobs at least.) Jobs talked repeatedly about the importance of the arts, of typography, and so on. You rarely hear the same comments from other hardware company CEOs.

It’s all about scale. You’re not going to get the same deal from TSMC and Corning from Apple. Market dominance and value-from-scale make for a positive feedback loop that only considerably-risky ventures can threaten.

Consider how so many cutting-edge non-Apple laptops are misery to live with, from dead pixels to janky touchpads to horrific heat issues. Meanwhile high end Android phones are OK…for a year. Then you’ll want to get a new one.

Same dynamic can play in other sectors. Other stroller manufacturers have more novel features, but Uppababy strollers are tough and are a pleasure to use.

Now, there are lots of ways to ruin this dynamic. Usually companies can’t help put fritter away any inkling of this kind of advantage as they frantically try to saturate all accessible niches. (Apple of the 90s.)

I'm not being facetious here but I have no idea what you mean by "apple quality".

I've been using Macbook Pros for a long time. In my opinion "Apple Quality" died way back in 2013, possibly 2015. After that, they started introducing user-hostile phones, laptops, etc. The touchbar is a travesty and now you have to pay more money to have a normal experience.

The feeling of the laptops and aesthetics are nice but the parts are garbage. When (not if) your mainboard finally goes out you may as well buy a new laptop. 2018 model Macbook Pros had horrendous keyboard issues that they finally were forced to issue a warranty (however, there are big caveats). Darwin is an abomination with all sorts of edges to cut yourself on. It's unix enough on the surface but the second you need to do anything really unix-y it's not there. OS X itself is a very cleverly disguised walled garden you cant break out of.

Let's not even talk about the phones. Every phone just simply adds more gadgets. The operating system's only benefit is it is more "privacy first" than Android. However, in exchange for that you get the most walled of gardens. You can't even get a decent browser installed and it still sends all your data home. They are also far more fragile than androids and infinitely less serviceable. I have an iPhone from 5 years ago. I refuse to buy another one. I also will not buy an android. They're all terrible. Unless, I guess, you like handing over your entire life to a faceless corporation for some real neat-o gadgetry. The spying seems to get worse with every iteration.

Apple produces garbage products. The reason companies prefer them is the consistency across models. If you want actual quality there is better for far, far cheaper.

Well-designed products look and feel much simpler than the complexity they hide.

> After all these years, Android phones still feel like cheap plastic to me, and the interface feels cheaply put together.

This feels like a horribly dishonest sentence to start with. There are loads and loads of quality, well-built products in this world and many of them are even Android phones.

It will take you minutes to find them if you just use Google.

My current phone, that I'm very happy with, was 120€ while an iPhone 14 starts at 1009€ so I'm not exactly worried about lack of more Apple-like options.

I have an old Air and frankly, although the battery life, weight and hardware in general are fine, I didn't find the software so much better than Windows. Even in the hardware side, there are other brands catching up.

The problem with Linux is another entirely different story.

It's been tried, but you need a very large scale to pull this off. So it often just fails. Think RIM, Jolla, Microsoft, even Symbian as an ecosystem.

To make something that has a consistent quality (or look and feel) you'd need to be in control of both the appliance and the ecosystem, and most companies do not have the money or knowledge to do that. It's also hard to make money that way, which is why only a single-digit amount of brand names actually manage to do it long-term.

The only reason we have two choices at all is because there is Apple and there is everything-that-is-not-Apple. The second one is also using a different model (separate hardware and software vendors, and OS forks in varying degrees), but at least the commercial variant has Google behind it with plenty of in-house specialists and money to throw at it. Without Google, Android (as a technical thing) could have been constructed (since it already has been: Maemo, Moblin, MeeGo, Tizen), but has the same problem that all the other non-duopoly attempts had:

  1. The content simply isn't there
  2. The network effect doesn't catch it
  3. There isn't enough similarity and consistency (too much internal differentiation is bad)

This isn't really much of a technology problem as people might think, and inversely, the technical arguments matter a whole lot less than what people tend to attack or defend positions with. The mass market doesn't care how many floating point operations a phone can do, but an insignificant technical fact like that is what is usually used as measurement of 'quality' or 'value'.

Regarding smaller scale ecosystems, those exist, but mainly outside of Western Europe and outside the North America. There are billions of people that live elsewhere in the world that do not use iOS or Android, and instead might simply rely on feature phones or significantly reduced smartphones that run a handful of 'apps' and aren't user-managed. Some of those operating systems never make it out of the local markets, and others (like KaiOS) might be available on a broader scale but not really sold retail anywhere outside of their local markets.

It depends on what you consider important. The wired audio output from my LG G8 phone is better than anything I can get from an Apple device.

I also much prefer the fingerprint sensor on the back than Apple's methods.

Microsoft has been making pretty great hardware and even the OS has made significant strides. That said, the applications don’t have anywhere near the consistency of polish that I find in the App Store.

Similarly, the Pixel hardware is pretty good. The internals are about as good as the iPhone, but something about the hardware fit and finish isn’t equivalent to me, but it’s very close. Same with the top-end Samsung devices.

The biggest issue with Android for me is the consistency of the available applications. For almost any need I can find a well-crafted iOS app that both works well and looks great. With Android some of the most functional apps look like something from Windows Mobile in the mid 2000s.

There’s also vast differences in consistency throughout the Android experience. For example, anywhere in iOS tapping the top of the screen scrolls to the top. Android still doesn’t have this consistency, some apps offer it and others don’t. Same with the swiping in from the edge behavior. For me, it’s these little things that Apple does well.

This has been getting better but in general it seems to more closely resemble the Linux ethos where many things work, but are ugly or difficult to use.

I think it has a lot to do with incentives and company culture.

Disclaimer: I’m not working right now and taking a lengthy break after a long career at Amazon, so here’s my experience. And I bounced around the non-AWS side of the company for over 10 years, so I’m not speaking to AWS.

Amazon will never make a product anywhere near Apple quality, especially when it comes to fit and finish. Amazon hires a lot of MBAs, fresh out of college, and Amazon’s culture around OP1/OP2 forces organizations to justify their funding and head count. Add in the perverse promotion incentives, and you get outcomes where the company tries 100 different things at any given point in time, and tries to see what will stick. There’s never a holistic vision on delivering one product and making it “insanely great”. Instead, it’s a mess of myriad different things, developed by burned out engineers, layers of management, and MBAs who have all kinds of ideas, though a single 30 minute meeting will provide enough proof these people don’t use their own products.

It’s these endless amounts of processes and “mechanisms”, as Amazon calls them, that you get cringy and ridiculous features such as Alexa trying to sell you garbage when all you wanted to know was the weather. The MBAs are under the gun to deliver “something”, and now you can add in the stress of people having families, depending on their Amazon employment to stay in the country, not to mention the cut throat culture, it’s all a recipe for cheap plastic or things that no one actually needs.

Amazon has a document-writing focused culture, as opposed to using Powerpoint. You’ll find tons and tons of PR FAQs, or in some organizations, product oriented “North Star” vision documents. There’s plenty of corporate speak with phrases like, “delighting customers”, even though it’s some half baked service or product with dizzying amounts of complexity to justify promotions.

I think this is too loaded and subjective to form a useful conversation around. Maybe you can expand and get more specific answers? For example,

> Android phones still feel like cheap plastic to me

I personally think "cheap plastic" is often the dramatically superior choice for phones from a functional perspective. It typically implies easy and low cost to replace, as well as lightweight and durable. Permeability to radio signals is also a solid bonus. There are definitely tons of plastics that are not cheap feeling, unless one is of the mindset that plastic = bad in this context.

I submit that there is a spectrum of product quality in many product categories.

Perhaps your question could be repackaged as: "Why is there generally a standard normal distribution of products in a category?".

Thinking about a market this way leads one to understand that businesses stake out segements of that market distribution, and compete to target those to the left and right in their relentless quests for global domination.

Therefore, the lack of Apple-quality products may be related to the lack of competitors with capability/vision to make a business plan work out there in the right tail of the distribution where Apple hangs out.

I often think that Apple's real innovation with iPhone was how they contracted with Cingular before they were acquired by AT&T, and managed to completely bypass almost everything that was horrible at the time about phones. I think competitors have undervalued that fact, and so you end up with premier Android smartphones for which updates are rolled out at different times for the same model depending on carrier agreements.

Apple either owns or controls the entire pipeline from the mines where minerals are extracted to the palm of your hand, and it doesn't seem like any other company does, or even realizes the benefit of doing so.

"Apple Quality"?

You mean the iMac on my desk which I got because the graphics card was broken? It works again after baking the card for a few minutes but I fully expect it to break again.

How about the "Magic Touchpad" which drops its Bluetooth connection every few minutes? This is the solution for those who run Xmonad:

     ((modm .|. shiftMask, xK_a), spawn "hciconfig hci0 reset")

Resetting the HCI connection speeds up the process of getting it online again but it is still very annoying. Both of these problems are well-known, neither has a real solution. When my daughter got handed an iPad at school we quickly had to return the thing because it simply stopped booting necessitating a replacement. The school eventually replaced these things with Chromebooks. I would have preferred a Google and Apple-free solution but at least the Chromebooks worked. She since moved schools and is no longer burdened by a school-issued computing device, this school uses books made of paper.

While this is all anecdata it does not bode well for "Apple Quality", seeing how 3 out of 3 Apple products in our family have problems ranging from annoying - the disconnecting touchpad - to debilitating - the dying graphics card and the black-screened iPad.

I think at least in part because it’s really difficult and expensive to control the stack from hardware, languages, compilers, OS, App Store etc. the way Apple does.

That and the idea that lacking a feature is much better than having an early but not yet great version of a feature. Apple are very good at pointing at their great features and getting away with lacking some others without that being a problem.