Quote Originally Posted by FredFogg View Post
This entire thread cracks me up! If MRT had come out with GPS transitter and the pocketlink and their own little display device that cost $500, none of you would be batting an eyelash! What's the freaking difference dropping that $500 for their display device or a used iPhone or iPad? I will tell you why you all make a big stink out of it, you just don't like Apple! Period! Success sure makes folks jealous! LOL
Actually, as I mentioned before, Apple is not nearly as successful as they claim. They do make a lot of money, and have a lot of people buying their stuff. But its a bean counter trick that props up their market. Apple does have about 100% of the market share of iPad users, but that is only ~10% of the market share of tablet users. And this ratio has actually been pretty constant since the iPad hit the market.

And you are absolutely correct that if MRT had a display device I could buy separately, I would be fine with buying it (provided it was obscenely expensive) and I would not question what the underlying OS is on that device. I have many such devices in fact. Where you are incorrect is in thinking that Apple would allow a device that is branded to MRT to run their OS. There are lot of devices like this running the Droid OS (for example, my DJI Drone controller that has a built in screen, my Kindle Fire tablet) and there are a lot of devices like this running a windows based OS (like the hand held scanners used in most big box stores and for that matter, most modern cash registers and 98% of ATM machines).

I have good solid reasons for not buying into Apple's ecosystem or for owning their stock. Not at all because I am jealous of their success.

I have cash set aside for the GPS whenever Marshall wants it from me. All they need to do is a little tiny bit of extra dev work to support my existing device set. I have a smart phone and a tablet already that work great. Its enough to shell out the cash for the GPS without the demand to buy new devices.

What is the real crack up is that there are toolsets out there that will do 98% of that dev work in about 15 minutes or so, all fully automated. So clearly, my money is not worth 15 minutes of Marshall's time. I would say the same thing about Ron's cash, but he was silly enough to buy the GPS and put it on a shelf until non-Apple support came along.

Marshall is not the only company that has bought into that kool-aide that Apple is where to invest exclusive effort on app support.