Leaders of the New School

In my daily talking to people, I occasionally find myself ending up in discussions defending Apple as a superior company to all other electronic companies.

My question always remains the same and I have yet to get definitive answer: How are Apple products not the best? The answers I get in response to this question range from "the iPhone is limited compared to a droid", "Apple only has only ten percent of the market", to "I hate Apple". All responses given, fail to indicate that Apple, no matter what their percentage of the market is, runs the market. I'm not sure if you all quite remember the mass hysteria that was caused when the very first iPhone was released. And if you don't remember that, due to whatever rock you were living under, then surely you remember the pandemonium the iPad debut caused. Oh yea, I almost forgot, how many of you reading this have iPods? Thought so.

I say that to say this, Apple products might not be considered the best(even though they should be), but they are undoubtedly the leaders of the consumer electronic industry. The purest definition of a leader is someone that sets a standard that others follow relentlessly. So yes, I can get a zune, an Evo, or a Samsung Galaxy. But would these companies be pursuing the routes in technology that they currently. No. Or else, wouldn't they have already. And even if they were thinking about it, or had it on the drawing board, Apple had enough gumption to put out there. Then again, Apple knew it would work, they didn't have to think about it.

I do give credit to BlackBerry, but not a whole lot. I can say that have tried their best to stick to their guns and have continued to be successful. I'm not really feeling the PlayBook, but they weren't going to be left out. Which brings me to my next point in Apple's superiority. Some of you may, some of may not remember the Palm Pilots. But Palm at one point was the leader in the tablet industry, but it never really caught on. Not quite like the iPad caught on. Thus, Apple revitalized an entire industry that had been written off.  Apple in one hand invented the wheel(iPhone, iPod) and in the other hand reinvented the wheel(iPad). Sidenote I wrote this on an iPad.