Are Apple products worth buying in 2020?

 

What is the place of Apple in the technological world of 2020?

In terms of revenue and smartphone sales apple is without a doubt one of, if not THE leading name in the tech world of 2020 and was the first company in the world to reach a global net worth of one trillion dollars back in 2018.

But, even with all those big numbers and almost everyone in the world owning an iphone, ipad or an imac, there is still a debate among people that android offers better value than IOS or Windows is an easier operating system to use than mac and apple users constantly have to defend apple products that they are worth the money.

Are they? Is it really smart to spend 1100$ for an Iphone 11 pro or 6000$ for a mac pro in an age where smartphones can be bought as low as 200$ and gaming PCs can be customized at less than 2000$?

Well let's look at some facts and find out

Presentation:

First of all let's have a look at the way apple presents its products externally. Right half of the above picture is of an iphone 11 pro released in 2019. If I show it to a person who has never seen an iphone and only knows about android phones and ask him to guess the year in which this phone was released, he would probably look at the gigantic notch on the front display and lack of finger print scanner and would probably guess like the year 2015 or 2016 and, I wouldn't blame him.

Apple still don't bother to add a finger print scanner, still uses gigantic notches in an era of full screen displays and still has 60Hz refresh rate display where much cheaper phones are offering 120Hz or even 144Hz refresh rate display and even after all these spec cuts, the Iphone 11 pro max can cost up to 1500$. That is a ludicrous amount of money even by apple standards.

Let's take a look at another apple product, the MAC pro and let's take a look as to why it costs 6000$ whereas a custom PC having an RTX 2080 ti, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, with a 144Hz refresh rate monitor will cost only about 4500$ and the MAC pro doesn't even include the monitor, the apple pro XDR display will cost you another 5000$, the stand for the display will cost you another 1000$ and the wheels for the MAC pro will cost you another 700$. You do the math, the complete apple setup will cost you 12700$ and will still be not the beast that your custom made 5000$ PC will be with a 144Hz display. 

Similarly if I compare Macbook with any of the Asus or Razr laptops or Ipads with the Samsung galaxy tabs the apple products will almost always have the highest price and comparatively less features and lower specs. So we see that apple is never the one to present it's products very flashy that have big numbers on the spec sheet.

So why does so many people use apple products and defend apple in any and every way even after all these faults and blistering prices?

Well there are Two main factors contributing to the success of apple products and earning apple a trillion dollars per year.

1. Marketing:

There's a term in marketing which goes as 'No publicity is bad publicity', and apple uses this technique expertly to gain attention of people, media, youtubers to just keep itself in the conversation between it's big releases.

Let me explain using an example:

These are apple wheels for the mac pro and apple released it almost a month ago for a price of 700$. You can literally buy an average gaming PC for less than 700$ and apple knew this. Apple knows that not many people are gonna pay 700$ for just a pair of wheels and only some youtubers or ultra rich people are gonna buy these. But, this keeps apple in the conversation, people who forgot about apple were again talking about the mac pro and apple was again in the headlines and when they launch their next product people will want to see what apple is doing this time, so this gives them exposure and keep them in headlines between their big releases.

2. Software:

The biggest reason without a doubt because of which billions of people are using apple products is their software. IOS is considered to be a clean and very optimized software compared to android. Mac is a hard operating system to use but when mastered offers a lot more accessibility and features than windows hence using the software Apple has created an Ecosystem which allows its users to share their stuff from one apple device to another almost too easy.

Apple continued to build out this Ecosystem by changing the way its products interacted with one another. Apple added the ability to use iMessage and FaceTime from an iPad, for example, allowing you to carry on your iPhone conversations on a tablet. Then it introduced a similar feature to Macs, also adding in support for full phone calls. The more Apple devices you used, the better they worked together. Siri launched on iPhone and iPad and eventually on Mac and Apple TV and even the Apple Watch. It became a familiar voice to answer your questions, no matter where you were.

Conclusion:

From all of the above discussion we can conclude that apple products are not for everyone in 2020. Till 2015 apple always launched the best product which was the fastest smartphone and had the best camera and people were crazy just to buy an iphone. Nowadays things have changed quite a lot, the smartphones in the android side of things have gradually overtaken apple in terms of hardware and design, but apple still holds the crown for the giving its users the best software experience.

So it all comes down to preference of the user. If they value good hardware and software then companies like Samsung and Oneplus are for them and if they want to enjoy the treat that is the Apple Ecosystem then it is almost guaranteed that you won't be able to leave that ecosystem once you've entered regardless of the year or price of products.