Ben Thompson, emphasis mine:

The old hoary chestnut that “Apple only wins because its advertising tricks people into paying too much” was raised in my Twitter feed last night, and while the holders of such an opinion are implicitly saying others are stupid, my take runs in the opposite direction: it’s not that people are irrational, it’s that human rationality is about more than what can be reduced to a number. Delight is a real thing, as is annoyance; not feeling stupid is worth so much more than theoretical capability. Knowing there is someone you can ask for help is just as important as never needing help in the first place.

Apple spends an inordinate amount of time and resources on exactly these aspects of their products. Everything is considered, from the purchase to the unboxing to the way a webpage scrolls. Things are locked down and sandboxed, to the consternation of many geeks, but to the relief of someone who has long been conditioned to never install anything for fear of bad actors. Stores – with free support – are just a few miles away (at least in the US), a comfort blanket that you ideally never need. All of this is valuable, even though much of it is priceless, only glimpsed in an average selling price nearly triple the industry average.

Nailed it.

Marketing and having a strong brand will only get people in the door and maybe buy your product once; but it's good user experience that keeps people loyal. You can buy sales with a fat marketing budget, but you cannot buy customer loyalty.

Definitely check out the rest of his piece articulating the two other bad assumptions that people make about Apple.

Killian Bell, Cult of Android (emphasis mine):

Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface for Android is universally mocked for being bloated and slow, but it would appear the South Korean company is finally set to do something about it. Sources say it won’t just be overhauling its hardware for the upcoming Galaxy S6, but also its software as well as it aims to deliver an experience as smooth as pure Android.

TouchWiz isn’t just a skin on top of Android; almost every element of the user interface has been modified by Samsung in some way, and it comes with a whole bunch of Samsung apps and features — the vast majority of which are never used by the average consumer.

It doesn’t just make for a poor user experience, but it means that even on the latest hardware, TouchWiz can be slow and inefficient. Many Android fans — including me — will avoid Samsung devices just because of the software, or use third-party ROMs like CyanogenMod to provide a better experience.

Looks like Samsung's Next Big Thing is backtracking on all the gimmicky crap that they used to promote as The Next Big Thing.

More doesn't always mean more, folks. Samsung is learning this the hard way.

Out of all the first-gen Android Wear devices, I like the Moto 360 the best because it actually looks like a watch (albeit a big, masculine watch that looks good on big guys like me but not for most mainstream consumers). But what I find interesting about Motorola's two ads is how they're promoting the not-so-silent vibration mode as a marketable feature.

I think a vibration sound is annoying. Just ask my puppy who freaks out every time he hears my Pebble vibrate.

Apple Watch's "Taptic Engine" is completely silent and according to bloggers with first-hand experience, it literally feels like someone is tapping you.

John Gruber:

I also understand the product marketing angle. That there are a lot of people who will look at the 16 GB models, see that they can get four times the storage for just $100 more, and buy the 64 GB model instead — when they would’ve bought the base model if it were 32 GB. I get it. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s good short-term business sense to go with a 16/64/128 lineup instead of 32/64/128. But Apple is not a short-term business. They’re a long-term business, built on a relationship of trust with repeat customers. 16 GB iPads work against the foundation of Apple’s brand, which is that they only make good products.

Apple has long used three-tier pricing structures within individual product categories. They often used to label them “Good”, “Better”, and “Best”. Now, with these 16 GB entry-level devices, it’s more like “Are you sure?”, “Better”, and “Best”.

Using the 16GB as a decoy price to make the 64GB more attractive is a great business strategy, but this only hurts customers and Apple in the longrun.

The biggest reason why people don't upgrade their iOS is because they don't have enough space on their devices and they have no idea how to manage it. Telling them, "just install via iTunes" is not enough. I know a lot of people that have never synced their devices with a PC. In fact, in many cases, they don't even have a PC to sync with in the first place. So what do they do? They don't upgrade. Ever.

The negative effects only grow from there. This Apple ecosystem becomes fragmented for developers because customers are spread out across different versions. This gives customers a fragmented experience because they have multiple Apple devices running different versions and can't take advantage of the killer integrations.

This is the exact opposite of Apple's "it just works" mantra.

Seriously, Apple. Don't turn into the greedy consumer electronics company that Apple-haters say you are. Don't sacrifice the ecosystem and user experience just to make more money in the short-term.

Customers like me are loyal to you for a reason. Please don't fuck it up.

Techinch, March 2011:

Looking just at the specs, a microwave didn't make sense to many. So manufacturers bundled them with cookbooks that detailed the many things you could cook in a microwave. Look, you can make this great Chinese dish in a microwave! Our microwave lets you bake a cake! Need a hot cup of this complicated spiced cider? It'll only take 15 steps in our microwave! They thought the microwave needed to be a full oven, and more.

But, wonder of all wonders, people started buying microwaves and using them regularly. In the store, a microwave didn't seem like a must-have item to many, but once you incorporated it into your daily life, it was irreplaceable. [...]

The microwave isn't easier for every cooking task, and perhaps it takes longer to prepare a complicated meal in a microwave. Perhaps no award winning meal will be created in one, unless it's a special contest for microwave cooking. But it simplified simple cooking, and consumers around the world saw it as a necessary piece of equipment within in years of it becoming popular. It didn't need to be an oven, and didn't need to be better than an oven. It just needed to be the best for some certain cooking scenarios, and that was enough to win the hearts and minds of people around the world.

Last year, Apple introduced the iPad, a computing device many have struggled to classify. It's bigger than a smartphone or iPod, smaller than a computer, but can do some things you'd otherwise do on both of these. You can type a document in Pages or find your way with GPS and Google Maps. So what makes it so special? From a specs perspective, tablets don't make sense. It cost just under $500, but if you've already invested in a computer and a smartphone, it's just another expense. Plus, netbooks only cost $300, right?

In 10 years, young adults will look at the tablet the same way we look at microwaves.

Google did it first. Apple does it better. These are the important details that you'd never see in a tech spec sheet. These are subtle differences that separate an Android feature from an Apple solution.

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Scott Hurff:

Apple's iMessage upgrades show how the company is embracing the ways people have evolved their use of iMessage, and shows a bold willingness to adapt the “most frequently used app on iOS” to the new daily habits of its customers.

This update shows that Apple is keenly aware of the changing habits of their customer base, and I think this is going to be the most important change in iOS since Apple added “swipe up” access to the Camera in iOS 6.

These design details are so, so good.

On top of this, there are two more great additions that I love:

• temporary location sharing, which makes coordinating nights out with friends a lot easier.
• the ability to send/receive text messages on my Mac.

For the first time ever, I'm considering giving up on Google Voice/Hangouts and committing to the new iMessage.