Google shovels billions into these absurd projects that never go anywhere and nobody blinks because it's Google. They announce projects and then cancel them just before they hit store shelves, or worse, after they've sold some and then decide to arbitrarily brick them. It's just Google being Google. Nobody cares.
Apple removes a single connector on their product and everyone goes apeshit. "Apple's doomed!" "Apple profits are going to suffer! Sell!" Doesn't matter that their device sold in record numbers. It's about perception.
Apple has to tread carefully. They too unbelievable amounts of shit on the Cube, a computer that in retrospect was just one stepping-stone on the path towards the very successful Mini, and on other "failures". They're allergic to public humiliation like that, and a desktop computer that sells only in low volumes is a failure.
Google treats their real product pretty well (such as the Google Pixel), it's just that Google has a lot of "beta" products NOT actually meant for consumers.
And concerning Apple, their connector choices have been really stupid for the past 10 years, only the magsafe was nice.
Google will kick their "real product" to the curb pretty fast. How many people bought a flagship Android phone only to find updates dried up after two years? How many people committed to various Google services only to have them abruptly shut down?
Apple might have stubbornly stuck to their 30-pin connector for way too long, but at least people who bought accessories for it weren't frozen out when the latest incarnation of USB Mini/Micro/Whatever caught on.
"Really stupid" is shit like the Nexus Q (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_Q) discontinued before launch, or the half-assed effort to get Android vendors to update their software more often. It's Microsoft's utter failure to capitalize on any meaningful market share in the mobile space when they were a leader in mobile/PDA/tablet applications for years.
Google shovels billions into these absurd projects that never go anywhere and nobody blinks because it's Google. They announce projects and then cancel them just before they hit store shelves, or worse, after they've sold some and then decide to arbitrarily brick them. It's just Google being Google. Nobody cares.
Apple removes a single connector on their product and everyone goes apeshit. "Apple's doomed!" "Apple profits are going to suffer! Sell!" Doesn't matter that their device sold in record numbers. It's about perception.
Apple has to tread carefully. They too unbelievable amounts of shit on the Cube, a computer that in retrospect was just one stepping-stone on the path towards the very successful Mini, and on other "failures". They're allergic to public humiliation like that, and a desktop computer that sells only in low volumes is a failure.