Apple's (fomer) Underdog Advantage
Being an underdog an advantage in the diminished expectations department. Your failures are diminished because you're the underdog. You're expected to fail. Your successes are magnified into even bigger successes because you're the underdog. You're beating the big guys at their own game. It's win-win.
For years, Apple has enjoyed the privilege of being the underdog. On one hand it wasn't exactly easy to live in the shadow of Microsoft and their often anticompetitive practices. On the other hand this gave them a big leg up in the PR department. Anything that failed was part of the expectations. The little guys can't win 'em all. Anything that succeeded was an even bigger success. OSX was (and still is) a great operating system, made even more successful by the fact that it's beating Microsoft at its own game. It's lighter, more stable, more cross-compatible, and more forward-looking in many aspects. It's not exactly taking over the market but why should it? They're the underdogs.
This was true until earlier this year when Apple became bigger than Microsoft. Apple is also a hardware company and they're still not bigger than Microsoft, Gateway, Asus, and the rest of the Windows ecosystem, but I think this is still a good data point. Recently Apple is enjoying less of the advantages of being the underdog, especially in the mobile market where they're most dominant.
I think this is a major contributing factor to the iPhone4 antenna fiasco. They've always had a penchant for out-of-the-box design and an unusual attention to detail resulting in occasional problems. But this time generally and in phones specifically they're not the underdogs anymore. People are saying "You know you're gonna sell ten jillion of these things by saying how good they are. You didn't check that?" They've still got the detail-obsessed customers, but they can no longer leverage the underdog advantage like they once did. Market dominance means dealing with expectations you didn't have to deal with before.
(Of course it doesn't help that their responses have been either indecipherable PR-speak or hand-waving doublethink. To improve the illusion of better reception they're "making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see". That's not a fix, it's a Spinal Tap punchline.)
For years, Apple has enjoyed the privilege of being the underdog. On one hand it wasn't exactly easy to live in the shadow of Microsoft and their often anticompetitive practices. On the other hand this gave them a big leg up in the PR department. Anything that failed was part of the expectations. The little guys can't win 'em all. Anything that succeeded was an even bigger success. OSX was (and still is) a great operating system, made even more successful by the fact that it's beating Microsoft at its own game. It's lighter, more stable, more cross-compatible, and more forward-looking in many aspects. It's not exactly taking over the market but why should it? They're the underdogs.
This was true until earlier this year when Apple became bigger than Microsoft. Apple is also a hardware company and they're still not bigger than Microsoft, Gateway, Asus, and the rest of the Windows ecosystem, but I think this is still a good data point. Recently Apple is enjoying less of the advantages of being the underdog, especially in the mobile market where they're most dominant.
I think this is a major contributing factor to the iPhone4 antenna fiasco. They've always had a penchant for out-of-the-box design and an unusual attention to detail resulting in occasional problems. But this time generally and in phones specifically they're not the underdogs anymore. People are saying "You know you're gonna sell ten jillion of these things by saying how good they are. You didn't check that?" They've still got the detail-obsessed customers, but they can no longer leverage the underdog advantage like they once did. Market dominance means dealing with expectations you didn't have to deal with before.
(Of course it doesn't help that their responses have been either indecipherable PR-speak or hand-waving doublethink. To improve the illusion of better reception they're "making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see". That's not a fix, it's a Spinal Tap punchline.)