Holy shit how clueless are you? They give you a free application BECAUSE you are the product. If you are getting it for free by fucking DEFINITION you are not their customer! We're talking business definitions and you are writing like you are in Jr High...

I know this will make no difference, but: http://www.apple.com/privacy/

Apple does not use your personal information or track your email content or web browsing to target ads. Their CEO has publicly stated it. Are you saying he's lying? Why would he, there is no upside and it would be trivially easy to prove him wrong if he lied.

Citation? No, because there is none, Apple doesn't "sell your info", you are just making this shit up.

Until you do the slightest amount of research into these things YOU have no business talking about it. All of your posts are either made up or quoted conventional trolls without a single actual verifiable fact to back them up.

Eh, your points are valid but I consider them all part of the holistic fuck up that was Google's NFC solution.

It's amazing how Google can innovate technology and then completely and utterly blow its introduction. Chromecast is another great example. They had the chance to take over the streaming hardware & software market but they put out a beta-quality device, completely shit the bed on the launch, and then just practically abandoned it. Now they have given everyone else plenty of chance to catch up - there will be dozens of similar devices that do more and do it better coming out soon.

Not sure all of the reasons that this keeps happening, but I have seen first hand one big one is arrogance. Apple is arrogant, but they still actively reach out and try to make relationships and deals with as many companies as they can before launching a product. Google puts out something and expects everyone to come begging to them to use it.

Yes, intentionally failing to be a competitor in order to try to sue for anti-trust regulation is an awesome strategy.

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up. The NFC part of it is practically incidental to the feature as a whole.

Sadly the Google NFC implementation will eventually be seen as the irrelevant version, even though it came out 2 years before Apple's... because they totally fucked up the UI, launch, and marketing, things Apple has nailed.

Yes, in a way that's true: though technically they didn't try as hard because they don't read every email you send and receive to target those ads, etc.

And if Apple is a "one product wonder company" (which is kind of silly) Google is just as much a one-product wonder company, since ads are almost all of their revenue. The rest of their apps are just ways to target ads better. Again, not that I fault them for that, as they are more or less upfront about it and offer a ton of value for free. Different business models, both highly successful. Only an anti-Apple troll like you would think there is fundamentally different about their basic goal of making money as a for-profit company.

None of the points you or anyone else have made address the original comment at all, which is the fact that Google's primary customer is advertisers, and Apple's primary customer is hardware purchasers. When > 90% of Apple's revenue is hardware and > 90% of Google's is ads, that's not d debate, it's a fact. It drives the direction of your research and development, as it SHOULD. Again I am not judging, just confirming a fact. And it so shows in the direction of the priorities of the two companies.

Everything you have been saying is just Apple-hating (vs objective fact, as I do not hate either Apple or Google) and irrelevant and misleading to the simple assertion originally made.

And to your latest comment: neither Google nor Apple "sells your info". They use your info internally to target ads. It's just that Google uses every last scrap of info they have on you (ie. they read your email, etc), while Apple uses a lot more limited set of data. Again, different models. Google's stuff tends to be free so using your personal data is their model. Apple doesn't need to do that since their revenue is from hardware.

What are you talking about? Do your research, iAd has been a huge failure for Apple, and accounts for a minuscule fraction of their revenue and the mobile ad market as a whole.

http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...

Probably part of the reason it's not nearly as successful as Google is the very fact that they don't read all of your emails, messages, posts, pictures, etc. to target you.

Oh give me a break with the semantic bullshit. I'm not even making a judgment call here, I'm just stating facts that companies who's business model is based on ads (Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and many thousands of other companies are the same) consider their user base (eyeballs, whatever you want to call it) their product. And, yes, they are sitting around in meetings discussing this fact and figuring out how to monetize it.

Are you or have you ever even been in this industry? I have, and I have no problem with the model, but I'm not going to pretend that's not the way it is, and if I did I wouldn't be very good at my job. I assume you aren't or wouldn't be making these silly posts.

Well obviously they don't put it on billboards. But their employees freely admit it's true. And why shouldn't they? It's been the cornerstone of advertising-based business for a LONG time. Denying it to themselves would not be in the best interest of maximizing revenue and profit, the primary goal of a public company.

Come on, you can do better than ad hominem. You have made three posts with zero content so far. Explain it to the rest of us reading the thread, then, I'm curious.

Especially since Google and all other ad-based businesses freely admit the advertisers are their customer and the users their product. That's the whole way ad-supported companies work.

If you were going to argue the OP's point, you quoted the wrong line. "They [Apple] see you as a customer, not as a product" is completely correct. But that doesn't necessarily make it better, just a different business model.

That has nothing to do with the very valid original point that Apple's hardware buyers are their customers and the phones are their product, while Google's advertisers are their customers and the users are their product. In fact you pretty much restated that in your post.

Except it is better in the only way that matters: many people prefer it - especially those who can afford the premium over Android phones. The fact is, convenience and ease of use most definitely IS a feature, and for many it's the most important one. Calling 500M+ people worldwide "zealots" is something only a zealot would do.

Perfect example: Apple Pay. Google has had NFC payments via Google Wallet in Android for years. They could have built a huge business there, but they completely fucked it up. They put out the feature with almost no retailer support, minimal bank support, even worse CE vendor support, only in the US, and a half-assed marketing effort even for Google's usually low standards.

Apple waited until the feature was relevant (secure credit cards are coming to the US this year), they could design a much more convenient UI (iTunes/Passbook/Thumb ID), launched their solution with dozens of major retailers, bank deals, service beyond the US, and the usual insane Apple marketing hype. Rumor has it they even negotiated a small transaction fee from banks - that alone could make it a multi-billion dollar business very quickly.

Technical innovation is not everything, and it's often not the most important thing. Timing and execution are often the difference.

Of course it's who they approve of - because the point of carpool lanes is to effectively remove significant traffic and air pollution, and they felt that Uber doesn't qualify.

Also, "ride-sharing" is such a bogus term for Uber, since "ride-sharing" = carpooling = picking up passengers to go where you are already going. Uber is 99% a taxi service with the drivers specifically going to pick people up and transport them, not some guy splitting gas money while commuting to work.

Sure it does. Even with the new rules that for-profit "ridesharing" (i.e. independent taxi service) can't use the carpool lane, ANYONE with more than one person in a car not charging the passenger gets to use the lane, which makes it pretty silly to pretend it's some "protected class".

Sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. You are now speaking for all computer users? That only takes one counter example to prove false.

And it's easy to provide an example that affects a lot more than 1 person: iTunes. As crappy as it is, it's used by several hundred million people - and it doesn't run on Linux. (And please don't try to start explaining how you can do it with Wine, because that already goes WAY beyond everything you just said about "able to the things they know how to do")

And it you are talking some philosophical "if people can't tell what OS it is they don't care" - sure, but that will never be the reality, and is about as useful and practical an argument as hypothesizing we are all living in The Matrix...

I use Linux on a workstation for many things at work, and as a server at home. I also use a Mac (with OSX, Linux, and Windows installed) because their hardware is really nice and Parallels works well. And I also have a Windows machine because I do like the occasional PC game, and Windows is the only OS that supports all of the mainstream games. I absolutely care which OS I am using for each because the reality is, they all have their strengths and will never be 100% interchangeable.