Apple's strategy appears to be progressive in releasing new products and conservative in making iterations.

It's particularly obvious on the iPhone. (1) On screen size they've barely budged while competitors have offered options varying widely from 3-7 inches. While some would argue phones larger than 5 inches are ungainly, it's very much a personal preference and where there's clearly demand say for Samsung's Note series, the option should be available. (2) The UI may have also been revamped but compared to the customisability of Android, it's still immensely basic and locked down, (3) File access continues to be restricted through iTunes which keeps transferring files, and sharing them between apps a massive pain. Apple's bandaid solution to this is to stick a 'share' button everywhere, but this is hardly a real solution.

The problem is Apple's slow pace of change means they're losing their competitive advantage. I'd argue the big change that has kept the iPhone successful even as Android was beginning to catch up several years after the first iPhone was the (1) all metal design that came with the iPhone 4 & (2) the smoothness of their UI. Now with phones like the HTC One, the durable/water resistant series from Sony and the rumor that Samsung is going all metal with its next generation, the first advantage is going. The second went with Android Jelly Bean which mostly fixed Android's laginess. I just don't see anything coming along that will significantly differentiate them in the future, both the iPhone 5 and 5S really didn't offer anything as compelling as the build quality of the 4.

The iPhones main remaining advantages are its user friendliness and the relative strength of its app store. I'd argue the first is over-exaggerated, and even if it is such a large factor, the sheer fact that it has already seen sizable portions of the older generation being enticed into smartphones makes the next step of moving to a new UI a relative cinch. Effectively Android phone makers/Google can capitalize on the market Apple helped create. With the build quality gap diminishing and Android device prices coming down, while iPhone prices remain largely unchanged I think the incentive to switch will rise.

The App Store's strength is largely a factor of the revenue that it brings in for app creators. Yes, no doubt iOS apps are generally pricier and it's users more willing to pay. But with the dominance in market share for Android in developing markets, even if their consumers are poorer, it's only a matter of time before at the very least app makers move from the iOS first, Android second model to a simultaneous release. From there I think it will be a steady decline for iOS.

Dumb argument is dumb. We need to regulate internet comments. I propose a competency test. No more comments until you correctly report the number of jelly beans in this jar.

This is great. I am really liking the current drive to make natural language a search function within phones.

I know that Google was rumored to make a product called "Majel", but I am assuming Jelly Bean is not yet using the terminology.

Yea, it's not clever if you know what to assume the average density of the human head. That makes the game a whole hell lot easier.

That's like somebody having you guess the amount of jelly beans inside of a jar, but then telling you it's between 346 and 348.

@dystopianfuturetoday

The points you made about Reagan are correct, but you left out the most insidious--and pertinent to this conversation--action of the Reaganites*.

When they found they couldn't abolish a department, or regulatory body, they appointed a lap dog to oversee that department. Reagan's head of the Department of Education was William (come on number 7!) Bennett (who went on to be the Drug Czar under Bush the First). Bennett implemented "reforms" to the Dept. of Ed. such as:

Competency testing for teachers
Opening the teaching profession to "knowledgeable" individuals who have _not_ graduated from "schools of education"
Performance-based pay
National examination of students
Holding educators accountable for how the children do on tests.
Parental choice of schools

These all sound innocent enough--but are all terrible ideas. These "reforms" are what opened the "teach to the test" mentality and started the decline of American Education.

These actions (not only in the Dept. of Ed.) also set up the guvment=bad meme.

As to @Grimm's statement, "Why do you have a problem with putting that power back in the hands of the states?" What would have been the result of letting Mississippi set it's own standards on letting Black people vote?

BTW, Dr. Paul kicked Schieffer's ass over the, "Nobody is saying Bomb Iran" fuck-up.

*I don't directly blame Ronnie.
At this point he was playing with Jelly Beans and asking, "What day is it, Mommy?"

*promote 288,000 Jelly Beans

>> ^sillma:

I once wrestled 50 polar bears just for a single jelly bean.
who won?

I once wrestled 50 polar bears just for a single jelly bean.

In reply to this comment by GenjiKilpatrick:
It's the little things like this that make life enjoyable.
= D

go buy a bag of Jelly beans, those will really blow your mind.

:Look at the realted videos:
A jelly donut freestyles his way to the top
Lady SOV got owned by a Jelly Donut
How Jelly Beans are made

wtf???! tHAT'S A LOTTA jELLY!

rotflmao I didn't notice it!

I love jelly beans, but we don't have them here in Italy, so I've only eaten them when one of my friends mail-ordered them from the US!

m&m's rule too, so I guess that hitler could've surely been a bad person, but he had a fine food taste. He actually committed suicide when he was informed the yellow m&m supplies were empty and nobody was accepting his credit card anymore.

Would you guys stop having these long, drawn out conversations when I'm at school??! You're driving me insane! I can't keep up. I'm just gonna talk about what I feel like...

Jelly beans are better than M&M's. It's just my opinion. You know who liked M&M's? Hitler. Yea, I read that in Jelly Bean Enthusiast Weekly.

And another thing - why is fire so hot?? I mean, come on! Seriously. Fire just isn't marketable in its current state. How can we package something like that and sell it?? Short answer - You can't. Long answer - You can not.

yeah, disappointment really. And it made me crave for some jelly beans too, bastard.

Hmmph I wanted to know how jelly belly jelly beans were made. I saw a bunch of moving machinery but no first this, then that happens.