Unfortunately the operating systems and all the additional tools have become more and more complicated. It isn't as simple as saying that they have lost their shine. They need to innovate because we expect them to. Being innovative generally means being at the head of the curve and with that you can expect some pain. Just remember what it was like when your devices were not all in sync with your computer. Remember how you used to have to plug everything in all the time. How about when you had to have some monster of a laptop to work away from home or the office (I am writing this from my iPad).
Samsung
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Companies like Samsung choose to rip off other companies innovation rather than doing their own. They don't have their own OS, they use Googles Android so how innovative do they need to be. Note also that Samsung is being sued in other business areas for ripping off other technologies, not just in the mobile arena.
Mail Oddness
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Now for the really interesting part and back to the topic at hand. I have multiple email accounts for personal and business uses. One, like everyone else here, is a Gmail account, another hosted by an ISP, and another that is for a company I own and is hosted by Google. With all the issues you would expect the first and the third account to have the same problems right? They are both hosted by, and connected to gmail, Google. Here is the strange part though. The third one works perfectly where as the first has all the problems that everyone else here has. The only difference between the two, as I can understand it, is the domain name at the end of the address.