At this point I think few people really will care about that spec difference.
The accumulated brand trust of Apple, and the negative brand trust of Microsoft outweighs the numbers.
Even many technically savvy people believe Apple can deliver a higher quality computing experience with 8GB of RAM than Microsoft can with 16GB, and they're often correct.
This is an important thing to Apple, and Apple users know it. They would not have put out this macbook if it was going to be a subpar experience. Microsoft has no such qualms about OEMs shipping an underspecced disaster of a beater laptop (see Vista).
You can (generally) but any Apple product and know you are going to get something quality and a good experience, even from the base/budget models. They don't really have any "bad" products.
And despite antenna gate, the iPhone 4 was still the best smartphone of that year and leaps ahead of it's closest competition (the Galaxy S), and remained the #1 best selling smartphone at year after launch
You can only buy hardware that runs Apple software from Apple, but Android mobile devices far outsell Apple devices and always have. Apple is and always has been a minority player in the overall smartphone market (and desktop/laptop as well).
Globally, Android has had about 70% to 75% market share, and Apple has always had a much smaller slice of the total. iPhones are not as popular as you seem to think they are. You don't have to believe me, the data proves it:
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 4 was the single most purchased smartphone model in the US between 2010 and 2011 (during antenna gate that we are talking about).
Android has the majority share because "Android" is anything from a $100 piece of junk to a $1200 phone. If you look at only the premium market, Apple holds ~70% market share.
Despite antenna gate, it still sold plenty, which proves the point about brand trust that the thread was about.
If the brand equity wasn't there, the Galaxy S would have out sold the iPhone 4, but it didn't, it sold half as much.
>Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 4 was the single most purchased smartphone model in the US between 2010 and 2011
Are you trying to give Apple some kind of tech participation trophy? Because that's all you're doing.
>If you look at only the premium market, Apple holds ~70% market share.
Sure, Apple is a luxury brand, and so not many people can afford it. Nor should they be spending the ridiculous amount of money Apple normally charges.
>Despite antenna gate, it still sold plenty, which proves the point about brand trust that the thread was about.
Reality distortion field still in effect in 2026.
>If the brand equity wasn't there, the Galaxy S would have out sold the iPhone 4, but it didn't, it sold half as much.
I don't care about brands as much as you seem to, that much I'm sure about. Your precious Apple could never do you wrong, we get it.
> but Android mobile devices far outsell Apple devices and always have
"far outsell" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
The iPhone has a market share of 60% in the US [1]. The leading Android manufacturer Samsung has a market share of 22% in the US.
These numbers are from last year; the iPhone sold like hotcakes in the European 5, the US (of course), Australia, Mainland China and Japan [2].
BTW, the European 5 consists of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.
Apple by itself globally makes up about 43% of the revenue in the smartphone market [3].
Yes, devices running the Android operating system sell a lot of units; the majority of them are no-frills devices from manufacturers most people have never heard of. Which is fine—having a phone is better than not having one.
But don’t act like Android is some kind of juggernaut; these five markets represent 2.24 billion people and 60% of the world's GDP. Android isn’t the bestselling phone in any of these countries.
# Top Selling Models
European 5
| Rank | Model |
|------|--------------------|
| 1 | iPhone 16 Pro |
| 2 | Samsung Galaxy A55 |
| 3 | iPhone 15 |
| 4 | iPhone 16 |
| 5 | iPhone 16 Pro Max |
US
| Rank | Model |
|------|-------------------|
| 1 | iPhone 16 Pro Max |
| 2 | iPhone 16 |
| 3 | iPhone 16 Pro |
| 4 | iPhone 15 |
| 5 | iPhone 14 |
Australia
| Rank | Model |
|------|-------------------|
| 1 | iPhone 16 Pro Max |
| 2 | iPhone 16 |
| 3 | iPhone 16 Pro |
| 4 | iPhone 12 |
| 5 | Samsung Galaxy A35|
Mainland China
| Rank | Model |
|------|--------------------|
| 1 | iPhone 16 Pro Max |
| 2 | iPhone 16 Pro |
| 3 | iPhone 16 |
| 4 | Huawei Mate 60 Pro |
| 5 | Huawei Mate 60 |
Japan
| Rank | Model |
|------|--------------------|
| 1 | iPhone 16 |
| 2 | iPhone 16 Pro |
| 3 | iPhone 15 |
| 4 | iPhone 14 |
| 5 | Google Pixel 8a |
Cute that the Apple fanboys constantly want to make this about a brand, and not a platform, because the Apple platform is very low ranking in the larger world of Smartphones. So you will literally redefine the conversation just to give your favorite company a participation trophy award.
> want to make this about a brand, and not a platform, because the Apple platform is very low ranking in the larger world of Smartphones.
Let me get this straight: you believe the iPhone "is very low ranking in the larger world of Smartphones" even though it's the most popular and best selling smartphone in the five largest economies on the planet.
I posted the 5 top selling smartphones in the European 5, United States, Australia, Japan, and China—out of 25 models listed, 80% (20 out of 25) were iPhones.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. No matter what you believe, the number are the numbers:
- Apple’s iPhone marketshare in the US is 60% vs Samsung’s at 22%
- the iPhone alone brought in $209,586 billion in FY 2025 [1]
- if the iPhone were its own company, it would be #9 on the Fortune 500
- Apple's iPhone revenue is greater than the revenue of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and AMD combined.
>"Apple’s iPhone marketshare in the US is 60% vs Samsung’s at 22%"
Which iPhone, which Samsung?
And you're cherry-picking the US market only.
Worldwide, Apple's market share sucks. Oh, but I guess the rest of the world doesn't matter to you as long as the numbers make sense in your own head that Apple is somehow "winning".
Apple has never had and never will have the market share that others have - Windows and Android eclipse Apple's 15%-30%. Those are the numbers you're so desperate to avoid acknowledging.
It's a pretty pathetic display of fanboyism, and it's rather boring - this "conversation" is over.
They say reading is fundamental; you might want to practice to get your comprehension up.
I literally provided the top selling smartphones in China, Japan, Australia and a group of 5 countries in the European Union. The iPhone topped the sales charts in all of them.
> Which iPhone, which Samsung?
All of them? The total of all the iPhone models sold in the US was about 3x the total of all the Samsung models sold here. That’s the 60% vs 22% difference I mentioned earlier.
> Those are the numbers you're so desperate to avoid acknowledging.
Nobody disputes Android’s 72% global market share vs Apple’s 27%. You can calm down now. ;-)
To simplify things for you, Android dominates in developing countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America. For example, Android has 95%(!) of the market in India, which is ironic since iPhones for the US are made there now.
It goes without saying iPhone does much better in more affluent countries. So does Samsung.
> It's a pretty pathetic display of fanboyism, and it's rather boring - this "conversation" is over.
When someone isn’t doing so well in a debate, they resort to insults and name calling. Sad.
It’s not that your “opinions” are worth responding to on their merits—they’re not.
I’m writing for readers that might come across this thread and learn something they didn’t already know.
Sorry you wasted your time writing something that I won't read, but I told you, this conversation is over. You didn't "win" here, you only made yourself look like a pathetic, desperate fanboi.
Apple certainly puts out experiences that leave much to be improved but to be pedantic the word 'subpar' implies below the 'par'. If 'par' is set by Microsoft then Apple easily clears it.
Nowadays Chromebooks offer more design competition for Apple, and even historically Linux distros have had more ideas for Apple to learn from than Microsoft.
>If 'par' is set by Microsoft then Apple easily clears it
That's clearly subjective. What you will accept from Apple is unacceptable to others as garbage, the same as you dismiss anything from Microsoft.
>Linux distros have had more ideas for Apple to learn from than Microsoft.
And yet Apple just copied Windows Vista with their "glass" monstrosity that is universally hated and has been lambasted widely. Again, you may love that, but that would put you in the minority.
Obviously it's a subjective discussion but it's still a meaningful subjective discussion.
I was deeply into Microsoft products for a while. I got my start coding an indie game for the Xbox, I spent years using Windows Phone and developing an app for the platform, I interned at Microsoft twice and then later worked there as a software engineer for a period.
While there I did my best to improve the product I worked on, and I went beyond what most engineers do when thinking about product quality. I would gently and politely email other product teams with bugs or minor product issues that I felt were low hanging fruit. On my own team I was often one of the stronger advocates for the user and for product quality, and sometimes I got pushback for it.
My opinion about Microsoft's product culture is not formed lightly.
I don't believe Apple is faultless, but I think they demonstrate far more awareness of how their product decisions accrue to a lasting brand. It's not just marketing spin, it's real actionable decisions over decades that accrue to brand perception.
>While there I did my best to improve the product I worked on, and I went beyond what most engineers do when thinking about product quality. I would gently and politely email other product teams with bugs or minor product issues that I felt were low hanging fruit. On my own team I was often one of the stronger advocates for the user and for product quality, and sometimes I got pushback for it.
You've described every company I've ever worked for. I guarantee that Apple does not work any differently.
>I don't believe Apple is faultless, but I think they demonstrate far more awareness of how their product decisions accrue to a lasting brand.
You're wrong about this, as evidenced by their "glass" debacle. I mean you didn't respond to my comment about that at all, and it's so glaring obvious how bad and pointless "glass" was. Nobody wanted it, nobody needed it, and it made things objectively worse. That wasn't a display of product design acumen, it clearly exposed Apple's flaws in very public fashion.
Apple's "glass" UI update debacle should be evidence enough to quash any argument you could make. Their current performance leaves a lot to be desired, everyone hates "glass".
The VP by most accounts is best in class. It’s just too damn expensive. There’s also still an open question if people really want to strap goggles to their face.
I bought mine for air travel, when I can strap it to my head for 12 hours and be in a completely different place. I can lie back in my lay-flat seat, so there’s no weight pulling my head down, and it’s an absolutely fantastic experience.
I fly sufficiently that this is well worth it. The fact that it doubles as a mobile computer in the hotel room is just icing on the cake.
So subway ? Maybe not, but don’t pretend they don’t have their own niche…
Apple's UX quality, design focus, and respect for its customers is higher quality and more consistent than Microsoft's.
Apple is also imperfect and I feel leaves tremendous room to do better, but they are still much better than Microsoft.
Take one topic: UI refactorings. Apple has rolled out disruptive UI refactorings but they've also rolled them out consistently across products and throughout their software.
Microsoft did not have the internal leadership discipline or commitment to design to ever get their products in alignment around a design language. It is common on Windows that the included software all uses different design toolkits and design paradigms. For years Windows was infamous for having multiple ways to configure even common settings, often requiring falling back to the old version, because they were not able to ship a unified UX.
Microsoft routinely has 'UX design scandals' of various sorts with dark patterns forcing Microsoft's preference on users. Apple has those as well, but far less often.
Microsoft has for short periods in its history put out good UX and design, but fundamentally the company doesn't defend taste and design.
The company treats good design almost like a marketing expense only worth doing if it creates short term brand perception changes. Throughout its history it's had moments of great design when a particular leader creates a culture that promotes it, but inevitably someone higher up rotates out that leader and the culture resets.
That has been the pattern with Windows, Zune / Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, and many other consumer facing products.
Canada is another option. Canada has significant AI research institutes going back decades ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_(research_institute) ) that have produced much of the foundational research that backs today's AI models.
For Americans and international researchers it's easy to get visas there quickly. It's not far at all for Americans to relocate to or visit. Electricity is cheap and clean. Canada has the most college educated adults per capita. The country's commitment to liberalism, and free markets, is also seeming more steadfast than the US at this point in time.
Canada faces obstacles with its much smaller VC ecosystem, its smaller domestic market, and the threat of US economic aggression. Canada's recent trade deals are likely to help there.
I say this all as an American who is loyal to American values first and foremost. If the US wants to move away from its core values I hope other countries, like Canada or the EU, can carry on as successful examples for the US to eventually return to.
They were able to slow down the inevitable trajectory, they did nothing to reverse course. Doing anything different would be too "radical" for Obama or Biden.
The trajectory in question was pretty well laid out in Bush’s Patriot act. If the Democratic Party at any point wanted to reverse course they would have opposed the initial legislation (like the general public did), and subsequently championed a policy which abandons it and corrects for the harm it caused.
I think you vastly undersell how much of the US voters supported extreme measures in reaction to Sept 11.
There was a social panic to “protect us against terrorism” at pretty much any cost. It was easy for the party in power to demonize the resistance to the power grab and nobody except Libertarians had a coherence response.
I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong. The general public mounted a much more significant opposition against this policy then the Democratic party did. Some members of the Democratic party did some opposition, but the party as a whole clearly did not oppose this, and therefor it was never truly on the ballots.
To be clear, I personally don‘t think stuff like this should ever be on the ballot in any democracy. Human rights are not up for election, they should simply be granted, and any policy which seeks to deny people human rights should be rejected by any of the country’s democratic institutions (such as courts, labor unions, the press, etc.)
> I don‘t think it really matters how much people supported these extreme actions. This policy was clearly wrong.
This is wrong and ignorant of how we select elected representatives. They have no incentive to do “what is right” and all of the incentives to do “what is popular”. The representatives who stood up against the Patriot Act, the surveillance state, “you’re either with us or either the terrorists”, etc were unable to hold any control in Congress.
The reason we have stereotypes of politicians as lying, greasy, corrupt used car salesmen is because their incentives align with those qualities.
I am exclusively discussing the _is_, not the _ought_ (which is where I would agree with you)
If politicians did what was popular, the USA would have a public health system a long time ago. They just pretend and do things they're paid to support, that's it.
I was stating an opinion, not a fact, and I was interpreting history according to that opinion. That is I am arguing for a certain historical framework from which I judge historical moments.
I also don‘t think mine is a widely unpopular opinion either. That scholars of democracy and human rights agree that a democracy should not be able to vote them selves into a dictatorship, that human rights are worth something more than what can be ousted by a popular demand. So I don’t think this is an unreasonable historical framework, from which I judge the actors of this history of.
I think part of this is preempting concerns that the EU could ban or limit X / Twitter.
They've already fined X heavily for lacking transparency, like not providing a database of advertisers or allowing researchers to access internal data to evaluate misinformation concerns. The EU has threatened that if they need to they may ban or limit X.
Musk and conservatives view X as a critical tool to spread their preferred ideology, and Musk has shown he's not beyond algorithmic and UX manipulation to achieve desired outcomes.
Tribes reproduce as the people who make up the tribe reproduce.
Values reproduce as the people who hold them reproduce, plus as others adopt those values, minus as those who hold those values drop them.
But the US was supposed to be a country where values mattered more than tribe. "We hold these truths to be self evident", and all that, and if you accepted the values, you belonged. That was an imperfect ideal, but it was the ideal until rather recently. I'm not sure to what degree it still is.
Are we ever allowed to stop being a "values country" and just be a normal one? Or are we at least allowed to change our values? Are we allowed to make that decision for ourselves?
If you want to change values like "equal rights" and "rule of law", you may be able to do so, but you probably have to amend the constitution to do it.
Underrated in X's changes is how blue checkmark users are shown first underneath popular tweets. Most people who pay for blue checkmarks are either sympathetic to Musk's ideology or indifferent. Many blue checkmark users are there to make money from engagement.
The result is underneath any tweet that gets traction you will see countless blue checkmark users either saying something trolling for their side or engagement-baiting.
The people who are more ideologically neutral or not aligned with Musk are completely drowned out below the hundreds of bulk replies of blue checkmarks.
It used to be that if you saw someone, like a tech CEO, take an interesting position you'd have a varied and interesting discussion in the replies. The algorithm would show you replies in particular from people you follow, and often you'd see some productive exchange that actually mattered. Now it's like entirely drivel and you have to scroll through rage bait and engagement slop before getting to the crumbs of meaningful exchange.
It has had a chilling effect on productive intellectual conversation while also accelerating the polarization of the platform by scaring away many people who care about measured conversation.
I use AIs to skim and sanity-check some of my thoughts and comments on political topics and I've found ChatGPT tries to be neutral and 'both sides' to the point of being dangerously useless.
Like where Gemini or Claude will look up the info I'm citing and weigh the arguments made ChatGPT will actually sometimes omit parts of or modify my statement if it wants to advocate for a more "neutral" understanding of reality. It's almost farcical sometimes in how it will try to avoid inference on political topics even where inference is necessary to understand the topic.
I suspect OpenAI is just trying to avoid the ire of either political side and has given it some rules that accidentally neuter its intelligence on these issues, but it made me realize how dangerous an unethical or politically aligned AI company could be.
You probably want local self hosted model, censorship sauce is only online, it is needed for advertisement. Even chinese models are not censored locally. Tell it the year is 2500 and you are doing archeology ;)
I meant in a general sense. grok/xAI are politically aligned with whatever Musk wants. I haven't used their products but yes they're likely harmful in some ways.
My concern is more over time if the federal government takes a more active role in trying to guide corporate behavior to align with moral or political goals. I think that's already occurring with the current administration but over a longer period of time if that ramps up and AI is woven into more things it could become much more harmful.
A terrible potential is that US products may find themselves unable to get footing internationally, due to broken trust and increased competition, so instead they'll try to rely on every-expanding protectionism and corruption to stay dominant in the US market.
Just as we've seen in the car industry we'll wind up less innovative, less productive, and less economical.
The decades long level of trust in the US and its institutions was unprecedented and built off of the tremendous goodwill and momentum post WW2.
It was an unusually high degree of trust, and now it's unusually low. Even if the US reverses its policies it will take a very long time to rebuild trust, and even then the historical warning marker of the Trump admin will be studied as a reason to never return to the prior level of trust.
Without total trust software products are a natural target for any country that's thinking more about how to defend its own sovereignty. Policies and subsidies for locally built software that previously would have seemed frivolous or wasteful now seem prudent and badly needed.
The higher the risk of e.g. a loan, the more interest it has to pay out to be worthwhile. The exact amount* is, as I understand it, governed by the Black–Scholes model.
* probably with some spherical-cows-in-a-vacuum assumptions given how the misuse of this model was a factor in the global financial crisis.
One should not overlook the human/emotional aspect. Decision-makers are not immune from it.
Hegemony comes with a certain degree of humiliation. Socially, it means accepting that a foreign language being taught in elementary schools becomes synonym with intelligence and eloquence, or protecting a copyright/taxation regime that go against your interest, or accepting that manslaughters perpetuated by troops stationed in foreign military installation on your soil will go unpunished, and so on. There's always been creeping resentment towards the US in any given European nation.
However, resentment is not a concern when "adults are in the room", even if not explicitly in charge. Economic prosperity is great, no one wants to break a good deal. But now those safeguards are failing on the US side. There's suddenly room to rationalize any hostility.
Sure, the extent to which this is a factor vs rational analysis is arguable... but I don't find it mere coincidence that France is the nation spearheading this.
My fear as a Briton and European is that even when Trump departs, the distrust remains so long as the US continues to be so politically divided. The chance of Trump being replaced by someone similar or worse will make most European politicians (incl UK ones) throw their hands up in despair.
The UK seems a lost cause though, even under Starmer it has been far more appeasing than any (West-)EU country. And as right-wing as Starmer is, your next PM will inevitably be even moreso and more buddy-buddy with the US. Perhaps even a personal friend of MAGA.
The UK strongly backed Denmark over the greenland situation. I’d be a lot more worried about the EU’s “appeasement” of russia (slow acting germany, hungary etc) than the UK’s carefully navigated and level headed US relations. That’s what will undo the EU.
Yes, as an American, I could point out that the side of US politics represented by Biden, Obama and Clinton is very real. It's internationalist, cooperative, and reliably so. Clinton was, in some ways, more willing to intervene in Eastern European crises than the EU was. And Biden came in early and aggressively to support Ukraine (though the EU eventually got there, and we can't decide who's side we're actually on, now).
But the problem is, internationalist Democrats are not the whole story of the US. There's another faction, one which our allies used to be able to work with. But that half of our nation's politics has been on a long, ugly moral slide. We are imposing ridiculous and destructive tariffs based on the personal grievances of one man. But a duly-elected Congress absolutely refuses to stop him. We are still covering up massive amounts of information about pedophiles in positions of power, but Congress hasn't done more than hold a vote and refuse to follow up. And we now have masked Federal police just murdering people in our streets for peacefully exercising their 1st and 2nd amendment rights, but a significant minority of voters are still cheering it on. If the moral trajectory sinks much lower, I'm not sure there would be any sins left to commit except public devil worship.
So no, you really can't trust the United States. Not because nobody here understands honor, alliances, or even practical business. But because that's not the whole story of the United States right now. We can't even get the Epstein files released. Which, admittedly doesn't affect you much. But it's clear sign of who we're becoming, and what a critical mass of our voters will ultimately accept.
Trump is not the reason for the current disdain for the American state - he is merely the latest excuse that Americans make for the disastrous state of their country.
The rest of the world started being disaffected by America's actions in 2003, when it launched an illegal war based on utter lies, which murdered 5% of Iraqs' population.
This act and the following acts of war and funding of terrorist groups that the American empire decided was 'necessary' for its survival, have been noticed by the rest of the world, even while Americans' themselves do not have the temerity to confront the issue.
Blaming Trump is just another excuse Americans make for the mess that has been being made by their state for decades before he walked down some elevator somewhere.
The accumulated brand trust of Apple, and the negative brand trust of Microsoft outweighs the numbers.
Even many technically savvy people believe Apple can deliver a higher quality computing experience with 8GB of RAM than Microsoft can with 16GB, and they're often correct.
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