"the top features consumers say they want in a PC are a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad."
But the iPad never was about features and specs.
What I love about the iPad success story is that tons of pros/geeks simply did not get. But wife/girl friend/daughter immediately did. I barely manged to keep our house free of iPadS in 2010 (Initial un-availability helped a lot).
So I will order one iPad2 the moment it is available for "testing". The next steps are easy to predict ....
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
... "Consumers didn't ask for tablets," Epps wrote in her summary last June. ...
I love this line. A perfect example of why you should never listen to an "analyst." Consumers didn't ask for the iPhone either, or ask for the iPod, or to have the optical disc removed from their laptop, or mice, or ....
Most consumers are idiots and have a very limited imagination. If a company only gives the people what they ask for they'll be shovelling out inefficient crap by the ton.
I am curious about Verizon offerings if they materialize. Our iPhone 3Gs are over 2 years with AT&T so could switch if better plan without penalty. Also tethering might be better deal, since AT&T don't offer a very good deal (I understand you give up the grandfathered unlimited data plan). We have FiOS here so everything else is Verizon so I am also hoping there may be some bundle deal for iPads and iPhones in with that. I hope we will know soon .. I am dying for an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 also being an Apple junky
Yep! That was a major factor...not losing the unlimited data plan. It will be interesting to see how Verizon handles the iPhone....I was not too impressed with how they handle an iPad 3Gs. Seems expensive but perhaps I didn't read it correctly.
Verizon has a rep for charging for everything they can think of. But, perhaps they will be more aggressive than ATT and we all win!
Best!
PS. You will love the iPhone 4 over the 3Gs...the Retina Display, improved battery life and camera with a flash and on and on. You may be getting close to just upgrading to the iPhone 5 though. Oh well as usual with Apple, "decisions, decisions!"
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
If they are, "crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone," how can you be sure the hardware is so great?
I don't really pay attention to Nokia (they are irrelevant as far as smartphones go at this point) but I haven't seen any Android phones with hardware that, "simply blows the iPhone out of the water."
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
Yes, they well if the upgrade is in any way compelling. There is a great used market on ebay for the used apple idevice. Prices do not go down but you get better specs and more features in he new model.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
I think the magic here for Apple is that they have designed an OS that works well on lesser hardware making Nokia's 'better' hardware not important. This allows Apple to make a device for less money that actually performs better then one that costs more. I don't care how many Mhz the CPU is, I care how fast it responds.
So far all of the IOS devices i have used blow away Android ones in terms of usability and apparent (not actual) speed.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
the hardware on most android phones is the same as the iphone. they all use A8 ARM based CPU's.
the new phones being announced at CES are supposed to be A9 dual core based. but the OS with the virtual machine and java is a hog compared to iOS
I actually sold my iPad in hope for a better second gen one. If you had an iPhone 4 with the first gen iPad, the iPad seemed a little behind (mostly cause iOS 4) but i hope Apple adds more than just a camera for the next one...
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
I don?t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it?s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we?ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We?ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple?s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I?d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
I actually sold my iPad in hope for a better second gen one. If you had an iPhone 4 with the first gen iPad, the iPad seemed a little behind (mostly cause iOS 4) but i hope Apple adds more than just a camera for the next one...
Just a guess, Techa... but I don't think you will be disappointed! Hang in there!
I don’t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it’s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we’ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We’ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple’s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I’d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
Well said Solipsism. I'd go a little further, I think Apple is years ahead in the OS design, "integration" of the all important Apple ecosystem, and the actual materials of the hardware...you mentioned the A4. But there is also the Retina display, plus the stronger than blue sapphire but also "rubbery" glass! And the alloys Apple is using for the antennae. And then there is the unibody manufacturing of the laptops.
Apple is years ahead on these fronts. Yes the competitors can copy the "form" factor of the iPhones and iPads...but it reminds me of Ford's 1979 Grenada when Ford said it was as good as a Mercedes because basically it was about the same "size!" And that was the extent of the similarities! I wouldn't have a BB Storm as a paperweight or a dell laptop as doorstop or an HP tower as an anchor for my boat!
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
Mm. The price has kept me from being tempted even to get one. If you could get 64GB for the price of the 16GB, it might be a different story, but I don't see paying £439 for a device with half as much onboard storage as my smartphone (Which cost £199) and which is intended to be more productive than a phone as being a particularly good value equation. So it's especially hard to see that as an annual purchase.
I also think it's too heavy, but that's beside the point.
I don?t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it?s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we?ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We?ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple?s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I?d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
Sorry if I did not go into detail but you are spot on in regards to what you stated. I was talking about the main consumer items, i.e. camera, HDMI out, USB to go features, etc.... On the internals, processors, GPU, etc... Apple is leading the pack. Could it be that we were both right?
So in the top part of the post you are quoting one Forrester analyst on how Apple do well like its gospel but.....you wrap it up by telling us how other Forrester analysts were wrong.
My 2 year old son already owns my iPad. He took it off my hands literally and I never got it back since. Thought about getting another one but decided to hold off for iPad 2.
My 10-year-old grandson was the last to get a push-down iPhone:
iP4--> me iP 3GS --> My Daughter --> iP 3G --> grandson (SIMless)
His sister and brother each have a pushed-down iP 1s (SIMLess).
Then, my granddaughter was fooling around and flung her Mom's 3GS against the floor smashing it.
My daughter traded her WiFi iPad to the 10-year old in exchange for his (her previous) iP 3G.
So my grandson is the envy of his bro & sis and all his playmates. He takes the iPad everywhere and is very protective of it.
His sister, soon to be 15 is saving for an iPad -- she should have most of the money when the 2 G is announced.
So, we'll push down the iPads as follows:
iPad Gen 2 --> me iPad Wifi + 3G --> my daughter
This approach seems to work quite well. I will buy the iP5 and push it down to my daughter and she will push the iP 3G back to the grandson.
We are trying to teach the middle child to save money, & he will be the only one in the family w/o an iPad. If we can get him to show good saving habits, we will, likely, help him buy an iPad for himself.
They have all had gameboys, peps,etc, and they have lost or broken these.
iDevices have a longer life, are (usually) better taken care of, and have a wide variety of uses: games, movies, apps -- that are purchased once and run on all devices.
It's a pretty good bang for the bucks (and buckettes).
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
I agree that Apple is way ahead, but I think it's more like 10 years. In terms of hardware, yes, even iPad 1.0 is ahead of all competition. Apple doesn't cut corners, even if it means that their hardware component and manufacturing costs are slightly higher than their competitors'.
But hardware is easy. It's just the first baby step. That's why the HPs, Dells, Samsungs, and Cobys of the world think they can compete against iPad. And since Apple only updates its hardware once a year, a few of the best iPad clones will start to catch up to iPad's specs each year. Just before the new iPad is released, which starts the race all over again.
It's the software that's hard. Because it's the major component of the user experience. Especially now that you can literally touch it. There's nothing between you and your apps any more because iOS gets out of the way, and that's one of the reasons why Apple's iDevices are so successful.
But it's the infrastructure that's the hardest to get right. iTunes for example. It's been around since 2001, before the first iPod was released. It is the reason why iPod took over the portable music player market. And now there's the App Store, which has contributed hugely to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad popularity.
The infrastructure needs to support multiple hardware devices, multiple OS platforms, and function across many generations of hardware and software. iTunes has done that. Nobody else's music store or app market has done anywhere near as well, and that has badly hurt the competition. They may realize this, but it hasn't stopped them from dumping hopeless wannabe products onto the market.
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
I'm with you on that one. I think the $500 device is at least a two year purchase, especially if you plan on updating you laptop every three years. Will some people buy one every year, sure, but it won't be at the same rate as the iPod/Phone.
Comments
But the iPad never was about features and specs.
What I love about the iPad success story is that tons of pros/geeks simply did not get. But wife/girl friend/daughter immediately did. I barely manged to keep our house free of iPadS in 2010 (Initial un-availability helped a lot).
So I will order one iPad2 the moment it is available for "testing". The next steps are easy to predict ....
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
... "Consumers didn't ask for tablets," Epps wrote in her summary last June. ...
I love this line.
Most consumers are idiots and have a very limited imagination. If a company only gives the people what they ask for they'll be shovelling out inefficient crap by the ton.
I am curious about Verizon offerings if they materialize. Our iPhone 3Gs are over 2 years with AT&T so could switch if better plan without penalty. Also tethering might be better deal, since AT&T don't offer a very good deal (I understand you give up the grandfathered unlimited data plan). We have FiOS here so everything else is Verizon so I am also hoping there may be some bundle deal for iPads and iPhones in with that. I hope we will know soon .. I am dying for an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 also being an Apple junky
Yep! That was a major factor...not losing the unlimited data plan. It will be interesting to see how Verizon handles the iPhone....I was not too impressed with how they handle an iPad 3Gs. Seems expensive but perhaps I didn't read it correctly.
Verizon has a rep for charging for everything they can think of. But, perhaps they will be more aggressive than ATT and we all win!
Best!
PS. You will love the iPhone 4 over the 3Gs...the Retina Display, improved battery life and camera with a flash and on and on. You may be getting close to just upgrading to the iPhone 5 though. Oh well as usual with Apple, "decisions, decisions!"
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
If they are, "crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone," how can you be sure the hardware is so great?
I don't really pay attention to Nokia (they are irrelevant as far as smartphones go at this point) but I haven't seen any Android phones with hardware that, "simply blows the iPhone out of the water."
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
Yes, they well if the upgrade is in any way compelling. There is a great used market on ebay for the used apple idevice. Prices do not go down but you get better specs and more features in he new model.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
I think the magic here for Apple is that they have designed an OS that works well on lesser hardware making Nokia's 'better' hardware not important. This allows Apple to make a device for less money that actually performs better then one that costs more. I don't care how many Mhz the CPU is, I care how fast it responds.
So far all of the IOS devices i have used blow away Android ones in terms of usability and apparent (not actual) speed.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
the hardware on most android phones is the same as the iphone. they all use A8 ARM based CPU's.
the new phones being announced at CES are supposed to be A9 dual core based. but the OS with the virtual machine and java is a hog compared to iOS
Hmmmmm... buy her a Zune!
Thanks for the suggestion, Island. But after using my Macs for the last few years, she is an Apple fan now.
She comes home from work and just bemoans about having to use Windows at work.
I think I will buy myself a t-shirt instead that says, "my girlfriend is out of town!"
Best
Their sales forecast is way off.
80M in 2015 and not 44M is my belief.
And, no people won't buy a new iPad (and some other tablets, LOL) EVERY year, but they will do it EVERY OTHER year.
I don't buy a new iMac every year, but I do buy one every 2-2.5 years as the new features are cool and I justify it for my business.
Not everyone is you. Just saying.
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
Plain wrong with fanboy blinders one. The hardware on Nokia phones simply blows the iPhone out of the water as do most Android phones, however they are crippled by an OS that is well behind the intuitiveness of the iPhone. While they are behind from an OS or software prospective, they are up to date and even surpasses the iPhone on the hardware front.
I don?t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it?s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we?ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We?ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple?s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I?d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
I actually sold my iPad in hope for a better second gen one. If you had an iPhone 4 with the first gen iPad, the iPad seemed a little behind (mostly cause iOS 4) but i hope Apple adds more than just a camera for the next one...
Just a guess, Techa... but I don't think you will be disappointed! Hang in there!
I don’t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it’s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we’ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We’ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple’s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I’d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
Well said Solipsism. I'd go a little further, I think Apple is years ahead in the OS design, "integration" of the all important Apple ecosystem, and the actual materials of the hardware...you mentioned the A4. But there is also the Retina display, plus the stronger than blue sapphire but also "rubbery" glass! And the alloys Apple is using for the antennae. And then there is the unibody manufacturing of the laptops.
Apple is years ahead on these fronts. Yes the competitors can copy the "form" factor of the iPhones and iPads...but it reminds me of Ford's 1979 Grenada when Ford said it was as good as a Mercedes because basically it was about the same "size!" And that was the extent of the similarities!
Best
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
Mm. The price has kept me from being tempted even to get one. If you could get 64GB for the price of the 16GB, it might be a different story, but I don't see paying £439 for a device with half as much onboard storage as my smartphone (Which cost £199) and which is intended to be more productive than a phone as being a particularly good value equation. So it's especially hard to see that as an annual purchase.
I also think it's too heavy, but that's beside the point.
I don?t think his comment is off. Surely most of the HW in these devices can be had by any vendor, but for a device to be competitive it?s the entire device that needs to be competitive, not just a single aspect.
As we?ve seen with Android (and likely with PlayBook) you need faster, better HW just to do the same thing as with an iDevice. A couple examples are the UI and GPU of Android. Android has made leaps and bounds in the graphics area and the JS engine in Android browser clearly beats the default JS engine in WebKit used in iDevices, but by how much and are those gains enough to ignore their other loses.
We?ve seen a ≈800MHz iPhone 4 boot, open apps and execute tasks faster than Android phones running 25% faster. So do we say that the Android phone is better for that faster CPU or that the iPhone is better for being more efficient with the OS and drivers on the HW?
Surely Apple is behind in some areas, especially their notification system, but in the overall device I think the competition is trying to catch up to Apple a lot more than Apple is looking to catch up to them. Then there is the A4, Apple?s first attempt at optimizing an ARM CPU. How much more can we expect them to optimized this for their iOS in the next iPad or iPhone? What vendor also has ability, time, economics of scale, and profit margins to making optimized CPUs economical? For these reasons I?d say Apple is netting more than a year ahead in HW and SW.
Sorry if I did not go into detail but you are spot on in regards to what you stated. I was talking about the main consumer items, i.e. camera, HDMI out, USB to go features, etc.... On the internals, processors, GPU, etc... Apple is leading the pack. Could it be that we were both right?
I call that SPIN
My 2 year old son already owns my iPad. He took it off my hands literally and I never got it back since. Thought about getting another one but decided to hold off for iPad 2.
My 10-year-old grandson was the last to get a push-down iPhone:
iP4--> me iP 3GS --> My Daughter --> iP 3G --> grandson (SIMless)
His sister and brother each have a pushed-down iP 1s (SIMLess).
Then, my granddaughter was fooling around and flung her Mom's 3GS against the floor smashing it.
My daughter traded her WiFi iPad to the 10-year old in exchange for his (her previous) iP 3G.
So my grandson is the envy of his bro & sis and all his playmates. He takes the iPad everywhere and is very protective of it.
His sister, soon to be 15 is saving for an iPad -- she should have most of the money when the 2 G is announced.
So, we'll push down the iPads as follows:
iPad Gen 2 --> me iPad Wifi + 3G --> my daughter
This approach seems to work quite well. I will buy the iP5 and push it down to my daughter and she will push the iP 3G back to the grandson.
We are trying to teach the middle child to save money, & he will be the only one in the family w/o an iPad. If we can get him to show good saving habits, we will, likely, help him buy an iPad for himself.
They have all had gameboys, peps,etc, and they have lost or broken these.
iDevices have a longer life, are (usually) better taken care of, and have a wide variety of uses: games, movies, apps -- that are purchased once and run on all devices.
It's a pretty good bang for the bucks (and buckettes).
Apple is 1 year ahead of the competition in both the tablet and smartphone market.
The simple fact of the matter is the competition cannot compete on hardware or software.
I agree that Apple is way ahead, but I think it's more like 10 years. In terms of hardware, yes, even iPad 1.0 is ahead of all competition. Apple doesn't cut corners, even if it means that their hardware component and manufacturing costs are slightly higher than their competitors'.
But hardware is easy. It's just the first baby step. That's why the HPs, Dells, Samsungs, and Cobys of the world think they can compete against iPad. And since Apple only updates its hardware once a year, a few of the best iPad clones will start to catch up to iPad's specs each year. Just before the new iPad is released, which starts the race all over again.
It's the software that's hard. Because it's the major component of the user experience. Especially now that you can literally touch it. There's nothing between you and your apps any more because iOS gets out of the way, and that's one of the reasons why Apple's iDevices are so successful.
But it's the infrastructure that's the hardest to get right. iTunes for example. It's been around since 2001, before the first iPod was released. It is the reason why iPod took over the portable music player market. And now there's the App Store, which has contributed hugely to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad popularity.
The infrastructure needs to support multiple hardware devices, multiple OS platforms, and function across many generations of hardware and software. iTunes has done that. Nobody else's music store or app market has done anywhere near as well, and that has badly hurt the competition. They may realize this, but it hasn't stopped them from dumping hopeless wannabe products onto the market.
Unless there's some sort of price drop, it doesn't seem likely that people will jump to replace a $500-800 device every year.
I'm with you on that one. I think the $500 device is at least a two year purchase, especially if you plan on updating you laptop every three years. Will some people buy one every year, sure, but it won't be at the same rate as the iPod/Phone.