Tim Cook critiquing competing tablets from Samsung and Microsoft

Tim Cook talking about tablets from the competition.

What I see, for me, is that some of these are confusing, multiple OSes with multiple UIs [user interfaces]. They steer away from simplicity. We think the customer wants all the clutter removed. We want the customer to be at the center of everything. I think when you start toggling back and forth between OSes and UIs, etc., I don’t think that’s what customers are looking for. I think that customers want tablet-optimized apps. You know, we have 275,000-plus apps that have been optimized for the tablet. If you just stretch out a smartphone app on a tablet, it’s an awful experience. It’s not what customers want. I think it’s another reason that usage is so low on these other tablets.

I don’t doubt that there will be units sold in other tablets. It’s happening today. It will happen in the future. But what I strongly believe is that many people that are doing so might feel good initially if they pay a low price, but will bring it home and start to use it, and they’re no longer satisfied. That good feeling is gone. And those people don’t repeat purchases.

Let me give you an example of this. I was thinking about this the other day. Look at netbooks. Many people thought netbooks were the coolest thing ever. Many companies hyped them. In fact, the sales boomed, and then what happened? They crashed, because they were awful! They were flimsy products with crappy, cramped keyboards. They were underpowered. They were just awful.

So we never went into that category. We never put any time into it. A great product doesn’t mean an expensive product. It means a fair price. The iPad mini is all the way down to $329. This isn’t an expensive product. So when we can do great products and achieve a great price, we feel great. But what we wouldn’t do is say, “We’ve got to have something for this price, and then let’s see what we can do for it.” That’s not how we think. We think about the product and making a great product that we want to use. When we can do that and achieve another price point, that’s great. But our customers have a high expectation, and we’re not going to try to pass off something—we would never do that. That’s not how we think.

You can read the entire article on Mashable.