How would you market one product over another without admitting their differences?
Subjective experience. Most people don't compare horsepower & engine volume & torque & etc. in cars, they just walk into a showroom, try out a few, and go "I'll take that one."
Apple is winning despite not "admitting their differences" in speed, capacity, etc. vs HP vs Dell vs Dell. Apple's opposition have to resort to mutual fights over specifications precisely because they don't have anything better to appeal to; give the user specifications so good they don't care, refine the end-to-end experience, cut costs without cutting quality & experience, and buyers will flock.
Anecdote: I loved Sony products. Raved about them for years. Finally gave up because enough corners (hardware, software, UX) were cut that my enthusiasm was shredded.
Let me put it another way: Ignore Apple for a minute, consider just the market for Windows laptops. The subjective experience will always be, at its core, the experience of using a vanilla install of Windows 7.
To use a car analogy, imagine all car makers built their car on a Toyota Camry chassis. They can put in any engine they like (that's your CPU and whatnot), they can paint it and add aftermarket body kits (that's your keyboard, trackpad and plastic screen bezel) and they can hang an air freshener from the rear view mirror (that's your preinstalled software like the 30 day McAfee trial). The Toyota Camry chassis is Windows.
Ultimately, all those Camry-based cars are going to have a very similar driver experience because, at it's core, it's a Camry. When one Camry-based-car maker is competing with another they talk about paint job and engine because the paint and the engine are the only differences between their products.
Apple, in this analogy, is the only major car maker that isn't building on a Toyota Camry chassis.
Subjective experience. Most people don't compare horsepower & engine volume & torque & etc. in cars, they just walk into a showroom, try out a few, and go "I'll take that one."
Apple is winning despite not "admitting their differences" in speed, capacity, etc. vs HP vs Dell vs Dell. Apple's opposition have to resort to mutual fights over specifications precisely because they don't have anything better to appeal to; give the user specifications so good they don't care, refine the end-to-end experience, cut costs without cutting quality & experience, and buyers will flock.
Anecdote: I loved Sony products. Raved about them for years. Finally gave up because enough corners (hardware, software, UX) were cut that my enthusiasm was shredded.