Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery:

I do believe that Apple’s products — their devices anyways — are superior, particularly if you value the finer details of industrial design, build quality, and little UI details like scrolling and responsiveness that seem so simple but are so hard to get right. And, frankly, it’s not surprising that Apple is good at this stuff for the exact reasons laid out above: everything about the company is designed to produce integrated devices that don’t sacrifice perfection for the sake of modularity.

But…

The problem is that everything that goes into creating these jewel-like devices works against being good at services.

Apple is set up to share their expertise across product lines, in what’s called a unitary organizational form. Knowledge is centralized in functional areas, such as marketing, finance, engineering, with this expertise spanning all products. Great for creating products that integrate well. Not so great for running services, like iCloud or advertising.

The strength of integration is its mass of specifics, building for an incredibly complex tangle of devices and demands. Services, on the other hand, tend to be more general purpose. To succeed, a service should serve the widest possible customer base.

As you make your way through the post, ask yourself whether Apple is an integrated product company or a services company. Interesting post.