I am spoiled by Apple. Steve Jobs, with his tight regiment and focus on product usability, has made Apple one of the highest valued companies in the world (recently overtaken by Exxon again, after a totally inexplicable drop of stock quote). My employer equipped me with my first two Apple products about four years ago: a MacBook Pro, and an iPhone. While it took me some time to adjust, having been a Windows user all my life, I have quickly adapted and do not want to go back. The iPhone, a revolution in the smartphone market 6 years ago, has not ceased to set the standard for usability and product design until today.

I am spoiled by Apple, as it made me expect no less now than functioning, fast, intuitive electronics from ANY vendor now. When I bought Samsung’s Smart TV, I was disappointed by its voice control feature. Even though I do use it, it could be so much more than what it currently is. And I use almost none of the other features (the “apps”), as they work much better and faster on my iPad, which I can mirror to the TV screen via my Apple TV.

When I bought the Nexus 7 from Asus, I had somewhat high expectations based on the reviews. Again, I was disappointed. Compared to the iPad it is slow, i.e. the UI not as responsive, relatively unstable, the screen is not as accurate, and quite a few of the common apps I use seem less well thought through in terms of their implementation. It does have some nice GUI features, such as the cross-app back button, the predictive keyboard, or the notifications. But overall, it has nothing that would make me go “wow”, or miss something on the iPad, with its rich multi-touch gestures and attention to detail overall. I do like its form factor, but I can get that with the iPad mini, too, which I’ll probably own once it has the resolution called “Retina” that the iPad 3 introduced.

Apple has set the standards, and they continue to impress me with that. However, they do make mistakes (see my post here), and they do have competition. But if they stick to what made them great, which is taking an existing product and making it usable, they will continue to lead.