Lets be frank, if jobs didn't bring out the idevice apple would be gone by now. They have run out of innovations right now. ..they better invent something new awfully quickly.
Apple was doing just fine building Mac market share before the "idevice," unless you include the iMac as an "idevice," and they continue to do so, even winning Mac platform support from major enterprise IT departments. Apple's iOS platform is and continues to be the preferred platform in the enterprise space, relative to Android. And iOS is still strongly preferred by developers, despite having to subject their apps to Apple's review and revenue sharing arrangements.
Who sells the most phones is mostly irrelevant. Platform market share is important, but Android is so fragmented that an aggregate number really doesn't provide an accurate picture of available market share for developers. There are many factors that go into a business decision to support a particular platform, not the least of which are the risks and costs associated with doing so. If I have an application that will only run on certain parts of the platform, or on certain hardware, the aggregate marketshare isn't available to me at any given time. Apple for the most part does not have this problem with iOS.
I believe that the quick proliferation of Android devices is the result of a combination of Google giving the platform away to anyone willing to build an Android device, and an abundance of cheap hardware vendors willing to do so. Carriers much prefer the Android platform because there is greater margin potential attached to Android devices, but there is a reason why carriers who don't have the iPhone are still scrambling to carry it. That is not the sign of a dying platform.
Although I use Google cloud services, I don't especially trust Google. Apple makes money on hardware and software, but Google makes money on big data mining; specifically, prying into every area of my electronic life, collecting my information, and selling it to others. However, Google and Amazon both crush Apple when it comes to delivering cloud services, despite Apple dumping billions into iCloud (and still partly relying on Amazon and Microsoft to help deliver it). I believe Apple's failure to right the ship with their cloud service is perhaps the first major failure of leadership without Steve Jobs. Cloud is essential in an increasingly mobile world, and a key value proposition for mobile devices, and Apple been sitting on its hands for far too long.
Although not perfect, the ForeFlight guys still do what they do better than anyone else, and I've tried most of the competition. There is no substitute for quality, and ForeFlight is certainly the quality leader, despite not being the leader with features. Particularly in aviation, quality is more important than features, and it would be a shame if ForeFlight would ship half-baked software because they chose to engage in a features war. Choice is a great thing, but not if it's a choice between mutiple mediocre products.
JKG
