How Apple Had a Spectacular Year 504
Hugh Pickens writes "John Boudreau writes in the Mercury News that during its just-completed fiscal year, Apple broke four consecutive quarterly revenue and profit records and amid the worst recession in decades, hired thousands while others cut jobs, but what most distinguishes Apple is that while other tech titans spent 2010 cutting costs and acquiring new technology through mergers, this $65 billion company has been relentless in innovating like a startup and ruthless in promoting technologies that disrupt its own product lines. '"It's been an awesome year. The frequency of new stuff just boggles the mind," says Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. "There is no company that is remotely close to what Apple is doing. They are the Energizer Bunny." In September 2005, Apple killed off the popular iPod Mini to make way for the the iPod Nano; Apple openly acknowledges that the iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods — and they don't seem to care; and the iPad tablet could ultimately threaten its core laptop business. "[Apple] has a different cultural mind-set," concludes Wolf. "They are acting like a startup, though they are becoming a $100 billion company."'
New Technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets call this what it is. . .Apple products SOLD in 2010.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely subjective view here, but the new iPod nano was impressive enough to elicit a 'holy crap' reaction when I first saw one
Same here .. except it also included a WTF about all the stuff they dropped that was in the previous edition of the nano. You didn't see Steve on stage saying "oh yeah, we removed the camera, and the Contacts App and ..."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've seen the iPod nano in person, you'd know why those things don't make much sense. If you want those features, they make the iPod touch. If you want a highly portable music player, that's the nano (and the shuffle if you are on a budget).
Just you wait... (Score:2)
You think THAT was something, wait till they release iPad nano. It's gonna blow you away.
Re:Just you wait... (Score:4, Funny)
You think THAT was something, wait till they release iPad nano. It's gonna blow you away.
It was due for release a few months back, but there were problems with the stickers intended to cover up the old "iPod Touch" nameplate.
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The new nano has a small screen and I'm sure has made a lot of people go wow! But has completely lost the point of the old nano. It requires more button presses to use and forces the user to look at the screen. Most people seem to use nano's in places like the gym or the car. Adding a touch screen is a disadvantage in those locations. They would have been better off keeping the old nano form factor and increasing the storage.
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But has completely lost the point of the old nano.
You mean to be a small flash-based iPod?
It requires more button presses to use and forces the user to look at the screen.
Not really. It has volume buttons, and play/pause and track forward/backward are big and easy to hit even without looking at it. You can also use headphones with remote buttons.
Most people seem to use nano's in places like the gym or the car.
That's a fairly strange assertion that seems cherry-picked to make a point rather than something rational.
Adding a touch screen is a disadvantage in those locations.
I don't see why. iPod touches and iPhones get used in those locations. The only thing that seems like even a mild advantage is the ability to pause or skip a track. Everything else requires
iPhone 4 features (Score:3, Insightful)
The typical flare for styling present in apple devices doesn't seem to exist in that phone. It's all retinal display, megapixels, video calling, etc..
Retina display really means something though. A high quality display is great for reading text and viewing photos. The ease of reading text alone makes it a very solid feature, not just something tacked on for a checklist (which is where I think you're going with the whole HTC thing).
On megapixels - actually Apple didn't go there. They didn't stuff a 12MP
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The new nano has a small screen and I'm sure has made a lot of people go wow! But has completely lost the point of the old nano. It requires more button presses to use and forces the user to look at the screen. Most people seem to use nano's in places like the gym or the car. Adding a touch screen is a disadvantage in those locations. They would have been better off keeping the old nano form factor and increasing the storage.
Buy an iPod Shuffle.
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But that is not new. Smaller? Yes, but still an incremental upgrade, nothing is new in that product.
Just what are you expecting? Mr. Fusion in your pocket? A portable transporter? A flying car? (OK, we've been expecting that for years).
You all realize that Apple is a consumer hardware company, do you not? They don't make 787's, Space Shuttles or nuclear weapons. The do seem to make computer related consumer gizmos better than any of their competitors? Yeah, it would me neat if they made a mid sized tower, but it doesn't look like. Yeah, the iPad is ridiculously crippled for everyone hear who wants
Re:New Technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is a software company that sells most of their software inside custom hardware. The hardware isn't special, its pretty much the same as anything else, but what makes it better than everything else is the software inside. In fact, the main reason they sell hardware is to ensure the software works perfectly.
No, the hardware is special (Score:5, Insightful)
And, no one else makes things remotely close.
But let's make it clear: Apple is a systems company.
The fact that you are trying to figure out whether it's a software or a hardware company means you don't understand systems-level design.
They don't make Silicon, they make CPU's. The don't make CPU's, they make motherboards. They don't make motherboards, they make the computer. They don't make computers, they make a system. Etc..
Thank you. Not only that, but they are (Score:5, Insightful)
a systems company that manages to reach demographics that most other technology companies (systems or not) don't target and/or don't reach, making them uniquely profitable.
So often the discussion on Slashdot is simply a matter of comparison: "The Apple ____ is similar to the Microsoft/Sony/HP/YouNameIt ____ but with a very narrow focus, therefore it is insufficiently flexible, particularly at a premium price point."
This kind of logic is often couched in "objective" terms but in fact represents a very particular value seen primarily in the technology/hacker community: general applicability/maximal flexibility. In this community these values are claimed to be "objective" goods, while other values like ease of use, system(s) integration, industrial design, simplicity, and even inflexibility (which is often, frankly, a need) are openly mocked as "objective" negatives.
In fact, what's at work here is a difference in users' value orientations. Apple often care less about flexibility/generality than other things, and there's nothing wrong with that just as there's nothing wrong with Slashdot geeks caring more about flexibility/generality than other things.
But it is not a stretch to say that the rest of the world doesn't see it as particularly "cool" that a single handheld device can (a) multi-boot four operating systems, (b) provide a remote login for multiple root accounts textual and graphical, (c) act as a remote control for multiple household entertainment systems, (d) be dropped into a Toyota as an engine ECU with real-time wireless reprogrammability, (e) be used as a logic probe and oscilloscope by plugging in optional cables, (f) receive HAM radio signals and run a version of KA9Q, (g) simulcast FM and Internet radio on/from user-chosen frequencies/addresses, (h) provide access to IMAP email and the mobile web, (i) act as a flashlight by turning the screen white, (j) offer a built-in high-resolution CCD capable of being programmed to operate as a scanner, as a camera, or in AI research for visual perception experimentation, and (k) with the addition of a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, act as a complete general-purpose computing system capable of playing all of the latest FPSes available to the operating systems mentioned at the start of this list in (a), all while fitting in a shirt pocket and light enough to be put on a keychain.
For a Slashdot user, this description is of a kind of "holy grail" device. For a non-Slashdot user, this is an incredible constrictive description of a device that likely requires extensive programming, extensive management, long and detailed user interface interactions to accomplish even simple tasks, low task parallelism, and a risky concentration of many functions into a single, no doubt highly expensive, device.
The goals are different. Apple is amazingly able to grok and fulfill the particular goals of one class of very productive user that does not happen to be the Slashdot user by designing fully integrated, high-usability, cost-effective systems to suit their needs.
Re: (Score:3)
But it is not a stretch to say that the rest of the world doesn't see it as particularly "cool" that a single handheld device can (a) multi-boot four operating systems, (b) provide a remote login for multiple root accounts textual and graphical, (c) act as a remote control for multiple household entertainment systems, (d) be dropped into a Toyota as an engine ECU with real-time wireless reprogrammability, (e) be used as a logic probe and oscilloscope by plugging in optional cables, (f) receive HAM radio signals and run a version of KA9Q, (g) simulcast FM and Internet radio on/from user-chosen frequencies/addresses, (h) provide access to IMAP email and the mobile web, (i) act as a flashlight by turning the screen white, (j) offer a built-in high-resolution CCD capable of being programmed to operate as a scanner, as a camera, or in AI research for visual perception experimentation, and (k) with the addition of a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, act as a complete general-purpose computing system
My non geek acquaintances seem to think that c g h i and k are important and or neat.
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For a non-Slashdot user, this is an incredible constrictive description of a device that likely requires extensive programming, extensive management, long and detailed user interface interactions to accomplish even simple tasks, low task parallelism, and a risky concentration of many functions into a single, no doubt highly expensive, device.
I don't see how that description could be considered constrictive at all. Overwhelming, maybe. If it's highly flexible, that's the opposite of constrictive.
I don't get the "low task parallelism" thing either, what do you mean by this?
Does the Average Joe user who makes little to no backups even see the risk of putting many tasks on one device? In my experience they expect things to work flawlessly all the time.
It sounds like you're saying that when the Average Joe user hears that a device is highly capable,
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that's not what he's saying, but he did describe the type of person you are in his post though, the Slashdot user that sees many of Apple's products' features as "objective negatives". It's no surprise that once you negate all the things that makes Apple's products appealing to the vast majority of people, all you can see remaining is a fashion accessory.
To understand his point, you don't have to have to find those negatives as positives for you, but you do have to realize that they are subjective value
Re:Thank you. Not only that, but they are (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't have said it better myself. In the end, the primary things that are important to a typical end user are ease of use, quality of features, customer support, and design excellence, all of which Apple excels at producing.
A simple example is product activation. There is none for OS X. Its something that many end users of Windows will hit at some point in their day to day use and upgrades of a Windows OS. They are treated suspiciously, and in short, like criminals if too much of their hardware has changed. Apple treats their customers like customers in this respect. There are no limits to your install, no activation keys, no phone numbers to call, and no tedious 16 digit keys to input.
Another example is simple hardware reliability.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/189986/report_gives_apple_top_honors_for_reliability.html [pcworld.com]
Apple consistently performs at the top spot for reliability, and that makes for happy customers. These are things that they don't need to check the web reviews for, or ask their geek friend for advice. Simple word of mouth carries this sort of appeal to new customers. They are obviously doing something different if they consistently get top grades in product reliability. All hardware is not created equal, even if it comes from China. Apple has a good reputation with it's customers, plain and simple.
Last but not least, is ease of use. There is a simple expectation that products from Apple are fuss-free. As a general rule, those hold true. They spend a great deal of time and money getting things 'right' so that their customers don't struggle with technology, which in turn also benefits from word of mouth.
There are many things that a techie can dislike about Apple, but there are many things that they should appreciate. It's willingness to advance new tech even if it is potentially risky in the market place, it's willingness to open source and contribute to open source, it's stance on privacy (google Apple Facebook), and it's basic ability to get people excited about technology in general.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
so the sub-standard parts inside an apple computer are a good thing to some people?
Oh, please elaborate on this! Even the least powerful Apple products have parts that are not even close to substandard. The two that come to mind are the Core2Duos and Nvidia 320Ms in the lower end Macs. Even those parts are above average in the PC world, and those are the worst Apple offers!
despite the fact that jobs has said on at least one occasion that his products are about marketing more than anything else.
Since he's said this so many times, surely you can dig up a link? There's absolutely no way possible he said anything like that.
I would say this is a more likely explanation, and that apple customers have that rare combination of technical ineptitude, elitism borne out of insecurity
Elitism borne out of insecurity describes more Apple-haters than Apple fanboys. Using a ter
Re:Thank you. Not only that, but they are (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, please elaborate on this! Even the least powerful Apple products have parts that are not even close to substandard. The two that come to mind are the Core2Duos and Nvidia 320Ms in the lower end Macs. Even those parts are above average in the PC world, and those are the worst Apple offers!
Er, no. An average PC today would come with a Core i-series processor and, if the purchaser had any interest in gaming, a discrete GPU.
Those parts were average in the PC world a year or more ago, not today.
No, those parts aren't average. You need to spend some time at Best Buy or Fry's. There are still far too many PC's these days sold with Celerons and Pentiums!
And don't forget, this is Apple's low end.
Even discrete GPUs aren't average (which you are well aware of, since you had to qualify that with "if the purchaser had any interest in gaming", which you know is a very small minority of PC buyers). The vast majority of PCs sold today have integrated graphics, and the Nvidia 320M is the top of the line. It's even sufficient for mid-range gaming, including recent games like SC2.
Re: (Score:3)
This has always baffled me about our country's planners. I mean, didn't they foresee that their decision to set a "wage floor" would result in manufacturing and other low-skilled jobs moving off shores? "Minimum wage laws" only create a new class of citizen, the welfare class, because their skills are worth less than employers are forced at gunpoint to pay no less than.
If your skills are worth a few cents less per hour than the minimum wage, then you will never be employed. Ev
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The hardware isn't special, its pretty much the same as anything else
Glass and aluminum is far from common. The batteries in the current notebooks, magsafe, A4 cpu, the new Air's flash drives, glass trackpads, unibody cases, even something as simple as the integrated graphics Apple uses are far from ordinary.
That's not to say some of these things aren't available or won't available from other sources (although some certainly aren't), or that there aren't other products with similar but different features. My point is simply that their hardware is far from "pretty much the sa
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The hardware isn't special because it’s made by other people.
Non sequitur. Just because someone else makes the hardware doesn't mean it's not special. The 320M was made specially for Apple. The A4 is designed by Apple, even though Samsung manufactures them. I don't know who makes the retina display, the glass trackpad, their new notebook batteries or the unibody aluminum cases, but these are all unique to Apple.
Even if Apple didn't have unique individual components (but they do), and even if all the parts were simply standard off-the-shelf components (they aren't), e
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A disruptive technology is more along the lines of stuff described in The Innovator's Dilemma [businessweek.com]
Re:New Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody invented the transistor. Somebody invented the microchip. Somebody invented the cellular radio. Somebody invented the LCD screen. Somebody invented the speaker. Somebody invented the touchscreen. Somebody invented headphones.
Are you saying that everyone else is releasing old technology?
Then perhaps the electric car is old technology. We've had batteries, electric motors, wheels, brakes, etc. for years. Maybe the flying car is old tech. We've had the basic components for years, but have had trouble combining them into useful, compact flying transport.
It doesn't have to be completely new, to be novel or innovative. Nearly every useful new technology is the result of applying innovation to combining existing technologies.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The electric car *is* old technology; the first electric cars were built 2-3 years before the first internal-combustion cars!
And how powerful were they and how far could they run on a single charge? The ability to make a car run on electricity is old technology, but the current electric car (which is clearly what bondsbw was referring to, cars like the Leaf and the Volt) is only feasible due to modern technology.
And you're really making his point. Are you saying the Leaf and Volt aren't new technology simply because electric cars existed over 100 years ago? That's like saying the Saturn V rocket wasn't new technology because the
Re:New Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
sold, released, whatever, the point is the same. They had products in the pipe the people BEGGED to PAY for. In a time when most OTHER tech companies couldn't sell a paper bag, Apple released a whole new product and updates to all its others. In fact you would be correct, Apple didn't "innovate" in 2010, they innovated on products like iPad in 2008 and 2009 when the stock market crashed, banks failed, and automakers went bankrupt..... most companies were in severe layoff mode. Apple was chugging away spending money on NEW products.
Rethink that statement again, and awe in their ability to manage and grow their business even when chips were terrible.
Part of this year's sales is just that, Apple had NEW products on tap and people are just starting to loosen their purses a bit. They get one "treat" product this year and Apple was ready for them. You'll notice only the makers of "cheap crap" and "impulse buys" are still having a bad time, makers of BMWs Apples, etc are doing great, people aren't spending as much on crap, but they finally have enough to spend on something nice.
Re:New Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, how do you explain the fact that there have been tablets for maybe ten years, yet it's suddenly it's a new, desirable, market after the iPad? How do you explain the fact that, time and time again, Apple can create a product that many people actually want to use? (hint: it's not hypnotism)
The iPhone 4 antenna issues was unfortunate, but once you use a case or other protector, it's a very nice device. If the iPhone 4 had a bumper in the box with it, with advice along the lines of "If you experience reception issues, please install the bumper." no one would have thought twice about it.
Re:New Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
They "innovated", you know, by making a new version of an iPod (with a broken antenna this time), by making a little bit better net-book, and by remaking the HP tablet PC from 2001, except without all those bothersome functional ports and things, but with less memory and computing power. Yup, real innovation. They did put the prices up a lot though. But just now they put them "down" about 8%.
How quaint. Somehow these "inferior" products are outselling by orders of magnitude those things you seem to think are better...
One possible explanation is that people are just really stupid. Not just really stupid once, but repeatedly so. They buy an iPod, see some superior product (I'm not sure what though. Zune?) but then go out an buy a new iPod when their old one breaks down. And not just a few people, but millions upon millions do this? It's strange that Apple somehow happens to be the only company that manages to do this.
Another explanation is that those aspects which you see as negatives which make Apple's products inferior in your eyes actually make the products superior in most other people's eyes. You mention the memory computing power of the iPad vs old HP Tablet PCs. Do you think the average consumer knows or even cares specifically how much memory or what CPU their devices have? All they care about is how well it works. And an iPad with 256MB RAM and a ~1GHz A4 CPU running iOS 4.2 runs better for them than any Tablet PC with any CPU or RAM running Windows 7. That's because the problem with Tablet PCs isn't the computing power or capacity, it's the form factor and the software.
Why do you think HP's Windows 7 Slate (the current top of the line Windows tablet) only sold a few thousand units? Do you think people are really so stupid that over 10 million have bought an iPad but only an embarrassingly miniscule fraction of that bought an HP Slate?
Since clearly there's no way people can actually prefer the iPad over other products like the Slate, we must all be incredibly stupid on a ratio of about 1000:1. It must be excruciatingly painful for you to have to live amongst such inferior minds.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in full agreement with your post - Apple products aren't "inferior" unless the only thing that matters to you is performance bang for buck, or sheer number of features. But for many people, these simply AREN'T the things that matter. They are looking for quality, reliabilty and ease of use. But not everyone who buys Apple does so for the same reason.
For me, even though I'm a geek and generally against locked down hardware/software ecosystems, it comes down to hardware quality. How it looks and feels. Si
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Her friend ended up selling her iPod and picked up the same mp3 player my wife had.
Yeah, I'm sure this is a typical anecdote...
Three hours to download and install iTunes? Even on dial up that's dubious. Surely you can't expect anyone to believe this story, right? What you're trying to say is that iPods are so difficult to use that a normal experience is that after three hours a person won't be up and running, but with another brand, drag-and-drop and bam, music! Do you realize how absurd that is when you consider how many people have iPods and how many buy them again when they need a new
Props to Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are willing to submit yourself to Apple like that, just because they have been successful and made lots of money, then you will make an excellent Apple devotee.
No one is questioning their success now. Not buying into Applethink doesn't mean predicting their doom - it means being able to question ridiculous, sycophantic articles like this one.
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor thing. Seek therapy. You have issues.
Here is your first clue...most people who bought iPads have no idea who Jobs is and could care less.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how many things they could care less about?
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Apple's stock plummeted because Jobs was sick?
That had nothing to do with fandom. Rightly or wrongly, Jobs is identified with Apple's success; the company's fortunes started declining shortly after he left, and it was only after he came back that it became possible to read a news story about Apple without seeing the word "beleaguered" immediately preceding the company name. Personally I think that at this point, the company would probably keep going fine without him, but the market is understandably jittery about the prospect.
Even Bill Gates never had that kind of recognition - his was solely limited to the tech and business communities.
Bullshit. There was a period in the late 90's and early 00's when Gates was almost universally lionized, pretty much the same period when "beleaguered Apple" was a stock phrase. The mass media has yet to give Jobs that kind of quasi-deification, which is probably a good thing.
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
It's marketing, backed up with often exceptional products.
If it were just marketing, anyone could do it. If the products were junk people wouldn't buy them again and again. They do. If the products were junk then the rest of the tech industry wouldn't be falling all over themselves trying to get their own "me too" products into the market.
Or are you saying that no other company in the world has a marketing department?
I'm getting really tired of hearing otherwise educated people tell me that Apple's success is "just" due to marketing.
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just marketing, it's making products that work and do feel and look good. In spite all the limitations that any itemized feature check-list of apple products vs the competition will show, I have chosen apple products a couple of times.
The last istuff i bought was an iphone to replace my Motorola razr. I wanted a nokia N900, until a saw it had the thickness of a pack of cigars with a proce tag close to the iphone. I could have fun with linux on the nokia, but fun only lasts for a while especially for a thick heavy phone. Size does matter for a phone and a thick heavy phone would lay forotten most of the time in my backpack.
Why is there no serious competition? Are all competitors secret Apple fan boys? Why is it the the apple line of laptops look cool and sober and PC laptops have 10 stickers, a miss-match of random useless applications pre-installed and blinding leds and chrome all over? I am writing this on a 6 moth HP elite book that I quite enjoy and is not that bad, but it still looks like a farm tractor next to my wife's macbook pro.
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I think this is the serious contender that the iPhone needed on AT&T after owning both for a while. Before this phone, nothing even came close to an iPhone on AT&T.
BS. Apple products are no better than others (Score:4, Interesting)
it's making products that work
This whole Apple-products-just-work spiel is plain marketing BS.
Two months ago my sister bought my dad an ipad. Guess who got to spend 5 hours this past weekend helping him try to get it working in various ways. That's right, me.
First he wanted to update the OS. So I read the instructions:
Hook your ipad to a computer and then run iTunes. Follow the instructions from there.
That's it. Well iTunes is a program on my father's ipad, it is a web site from which Apple sells music, and it is a program that one can get for their desktop machine. WTF are they talking about? In their effort to simplify everything for stupid people, Apple has named everything "iTunes", creating substantial confusion. iTunes is a program that gets music from Apple, it syncs your device's content, and it is used to update your device's OS. Of course.
So after my father realizes he forgot his "Apple ID", we play 20 questions to get a new password. ("This is like taking a God damn exam. Why can't I just get the update software?") Then the software starts downloading. An hour later we get "Unknown error 1602." Shit. Disconnect ipad. It won't run. It is foobarred. Our only option is to "Restore" the ipad, which it tells us will wipe all programs, books, videos, photos and music from the ipad. WTF!? Apple didn't put the OS on a different partition from the media? Are you serious? So we wipe the iPad and my dad spends a couple more hours putting stuff back on it.
Then he wants to hook the iPad to my TV set. So we go to a store for a video connector, because the video cable is nonstandard. (Good idea, buy a device with a nonstandard video out, mumble, mumble.) Store is out of them. Drive to another store. Pay an absurd amount of money for a six inch cable. Hook iPad to TV. Nothin'. Check cables, etc. etc. An hour later, read on web. It turns out that only certain programs can be displayed on the TV out. WTF?! Who would buy a device that limits what you can see on an external monitor? Apple is making Microsoft look good here. After another hour of mucking around with the device we finally get it to show the Netflix video on my TV. It looks like shit. The video is only half the size of my screen.
My dad is typing an email. He gripes about the screen not being easy to type on, but says you can get a keyboard for it. I say, I have keyboards! But, hey, there is no USB connector on the device! Are you serious? You can't just plug in a keyboard or mouse? WTF?
People buy Apple products due to hype, marketing, and they think the products make them look cool. That's it. I have fewer problems with my Linux laptop. It just works.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
just think if you'd given your dad a Linux or Windows machine. You'd be getting at least twice the amount of tech support calls about incomprehensible error messages, hardware incompatibilities, etc.
I setup both my non-technical uncle and my wifes non-work computer with Ubuntu.
To say that Linux 'just works' is an understatement.
New printer/scanner combo? Just plug it in.
New updates? Click 'okay'.
It's been about two years in my Uncles case -- I see his wifes windows computer about every two or three months. Every time he brags about how great Ubuntu is (he hasn't had a single problem yet).
I've seen his daughters MacBook twice over the same period for various problems (not that any iFan will believe th
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Oh, I see you want Apple to directly compete with Microsoft in their backyard? Why? Why would should Apple encourage the kind of dirty tricks Microsoft pulls to keep LInux off name box hardware? Apple wants to control the entire box so they are producing precisely what they wish to produce and are not at the whim of geniuses like Michael Dell who appears to change horses for merely a new bag of oats.
You somehow have the idea that software integrated with hardware should be sold at the price of the hardware
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't dump a Core-i into a machine when they first appeared because it didn't work for them as a whole - battery life, heat management, cost (to manufacture) were just too high. They did it when they had something that would work for their design brief. In doing so they have consistently put out some of the better laptops on the market to date. Just because they are not putting in bleeding edge chips at every opportunity doesn't mean they should just give up and start selling software only - designing a computer is not an easy task if you want to hit certain criteria. Their marketing has changed - they are no longer advertising the "fastest, prettiest" computer - are you suggesting that because they did that once, they are beholden to it for evermore? If that's the case, what's the number for the Beyer company, I want to buy some heroin.
If one of those criteria is "must have bleeding edge, 2 month-old Core i7" then "battery life" or "weight" or "heatsink size/fan noise" is going to have to suffer.
Those early i7 laptops, I really can't see them being all that good after a few years of use - hot, noisy, with poor battery life.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hint? How much did it take them to release Core-i based machines? While HP and the rest of the big guys already had even i7 laptops out there, Apple was still lagging behind with their Core 2 Duo line.
Your "hint" is an anomaly caused by the lawsuit between Intel and Nvidia which stopped Nvidia from making chipsets for the Core iX CPUs. Apple is at the leading edge of technology more often than not. Citing an example of "not" does not change this. In fact, the existence of some number of exceptions is not only implied, but explicitly stated.
Why am I making this point? Well, I have a good memory, and I remember 1997 commercials [youtube.com]. They always claimed to have the fastest prettiest bestest machine ever, but the truth is, they're not into that anymore.
The integrated graphics (see above) in their lowest end consumer products are the fastest on the market. Even the CPUs are generally high-end in their lowest end consu
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
HP, Dell, Lenovo and so on earned their positions. All of them sell "me too", mostly interchangeable products. You could take off the Dell or HP logos and swap them around between any of their various POS plastic boxes, and no one would notice. Or care.
Sony, at least, tries to do some industrial design on the hardware side, but still falls down when it comes to executing on the software side. And -- as the article implies and unlike Apple -- they lack the willpower to let one division cannibalize the sales of another.
Personally, I think all of them fell prey to the idea you suggested: that consumers are stupid, and as such, will buy all of the least common denominator crap we can sell.
Well. Some will. And some won't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice how Jobs almost always says 'we think this solution is the best' and 'we think this phone is the best ever'. The whole manipulation of words is amazing to watch.
Um ... how is that manipulation, exactly? Most companies just say "this product is better than everything else" without the "we think" qualifier. In this respect, at least, Jobs is being unusually honest by CEO standards.
Re:Props to Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
And other companies? I'll bet Google engineers have thought that about their products. But Dell? HP? Hell, HP even sold branded iPods a few years back, because they couldn't make a music player that would come anywhere close to the iPod's popularity.
It's mostly going to lawyers.. (Score:2)
Some of the patent trials will eventually go south on their part and the compensations are calculated in billions.
Re: (Score:2)
cannibalizing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why wouldn't you release the iPhone, a beefed up iPod + phone service, which gives you much larger profit margins, and having everyone who bought an iPod upgrade for a significant extra outlay? I'm confused.
Again, how does the iPad, which can't connect to a printer, run multiple apps at once, connect to most peripherals easily cannibalize your laptop sales? It's like saying when Sony introduces a new netbook or ultralight laptop model they are cannibalizing their other sales. This sounds like apple worship. Give credit where it is due, don't start acting like they are doing things no one else does with their business lines.
and where do they get 65 billion from? the market value is 250 billion+.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, granted it only works with *some* printers but iOS 4.2 adds AirPrint and you can indeed print from an iPad.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Um, granted it only works with *some* printers but iOS 4.2 adds AirPrint and you can indeed print from an iPad.
And, at least for Mac users, a $10 utility (or a free, but slightly dubious, hack) will let it print to any printer on your Mac.
The real problem at the moment is that Apple have totally stuffed up file exchange between Pages/Keynote and the desktop.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems you are nearly a week out-of-date. On the 22nd Apple released iOS for iPad. Among its banner features are printing and multitasking. While your point about Apple benifiting from moving its customers around in its product line is probably correct, it does help to have your facts straight.
Re: (Score:2)
how does the iPad, which can't connect to a printer, run multiple apps at once, connect to most peripherals easily cannibalize your laptop sales?
Because households which might be considering a second laptop to augment a computer they already have are considering iPads instead.
Ha! "Don't care" (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you know why they "don't care"? MARGINS!
Big, fat, juicy margins...nothing to do with start-ups.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple openly acknowledges that the iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods — and they don't seem to care
Should they care or should they celebrate? The iPhone offers a superset of iPod functionality and the iPhone generates greater profits.
Re:iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods (Score:5, Insightful)
Should they care or should they celebrate? The iPhone offers a superset of iPod functionality and the iPhone generates greater profits.
Dumb comment in TFA - they surely make more on an iPhone than an iPod. Also, Apple had to produce the iPhone - other phone manufacturers were including music players and that would have hit iPod sales.
The iPad vs. laptop "cannibalization" might be more serious, but the iPad is fairly well pitched to be a supplement to a laptop, not a replacement. I use mine mainly for comfy-chair web and email browsing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dumb comment in TFA - they surely make more on an iPhone than an iPod. Also, Apple had to produce the iPhone - other phone manufacturers were including music players and that would have hit iPod sales.
Other manufacturers have been including music players in their phones for most of the last 10 years. The number one music play in Asia is a Nokia phone. Ride a subway in China, South Korea, or Japan and you'll see it for yourself. Dedicated music players are dead. Apple's iPods are a dying product because the rest of the market already moved past them; Apple just decided to do what every other manufacturer was already doing - replacing a music player with a phone - but declare it magical and innovative
Oh Brother! (Score:2)
I'm a fan of Apple - but this submission is embarrassing. C'mon - it's news that Apple had a good year? That's like saying it's news that Windows Phone 7 has failed to garner much interest.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, yeah. It's news that, in the middle of a recession, one of the major tech companies is experiencing amazing success and behaving like a startup. Are people not supposed to report on Apple's success because you expect it?
Price point new products (Score:5, Insightful)
To stay extremely profitable you can't be in the race to the lowest price. This is where most other tech companies epically fail as they march forward on thinning margins until they go broke "making it up in volume".
As margins decline, you end up with capacitors that are substandard and covering up that fact as your customers leave in droves (DELL). Apple's success has always been about standing out from the rest of the Tech crowd, which allows them the comfort of profits most other companies would kill for. But most other companies love resting on their laurels (Microsoft) or attacking their customers (Oracle, SCO) in the drive to create margins.
What Apple does better than anyone else is taking existing ideas and making them better than anyone else. Slashdotters make fun of iPods, iPads and iPhones for being "lame", and not having the greatest specs, but they aren't Apple's customers, and Apple doesn't listen to them, and it shows up in the bottom line. For every slashdotter that cries "lame" there's a couple hundred average people saying "cool".
Before iPods, MP3 players existed, but Apple did it better (and held the price). Before iPhones, "smart phones" existed, but Apple did it better (and held the price). Before iPads, tablet computers existed but Apple did it better (and beat price expectations) (No table exists that is better even now).
Apple will find some other area that is lacking a polished product, introduce a iWhatever with a polish that is missing, and the slashdot community will cry "lame" once again. The price will be higher than "comparable" whatever, and Apple will sell gazillions in spite of what slashdot community thinks.
Apple knows how to make a profit where none seems to exist, in a market that looks like it is wallowing, in an economy that sucks. Apple will become the largest market cap company in the next 12 - 18 months. And slashdotters will say "lame" and still not get it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Price point new products (Score:5, Insightful)
Personality? (Score:3, Insightful)
The first time Steve Jobs left Apple the company still managed to survive, but barely, it was a different market after all. Today computers really are for everyone, so I'm not sure if it would have gone the same way.
However I doubt you understand the nature of Apple, its products and customers. Steve Jobs is an icon, but very few customers actually know or care about him. He's not the one that makes Apple products cool and interesting. The designers and marketers make Apple what it is. Steve Jobs is a great
Re:Price point new products (Score:4, Interesting)
iPods we only for Mac users at first. I saw one and saw what Creative had and iPod was better. I almost bought a Mac just to have it handle my MP3s. I know a few people who did.
If you compare the basic functionality only, there was no difference. The "marketing" was that it was easier than all the others. It still is. If you buy a MP3 player that is not iPod, what do you get to manage the tunes? WMP? WinAmp? How does it sync? Push button automatic or do you have to mount it like a drive and copy the tunes over manually? Honestly, I don't know. I just know that iPods just work, and no worries about having to learn how to get stuff done.
iPhones are the revolution in smartphones for the rest of us. Sure Blackberries existed, but they were (and still are) mostly for Corporate. iPhones made the Smartphone market. Droids are close behind.
iPads have made the Tablet market. Now everyone wants to make a tablet, and they all are copying Apple's design. And iPad is still a better tablet than exists elsewhere. Android Tablets may compete with them, but I don't see Acer, HP, Dell or any of the others that are making tablets that don't suck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How the heck is the ipod easiest to use? I bought an mp3 player and it just mounts as a volume when I plug it into whatever computer i happen to be using, just like my last few phones have done. If i had an ipod (which would cost more than my £20 mp3 player), I would have to install itunes on every damned computer ( and maybe an OS that supported it ). I don't know about your tunes, but mine are binary files. They are managed like any other binary file.
Re:Price point new products (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why nerds are baffled by the success of Apple. You and I have no problem with storing our music files in a hierarchical tree of folder and copying them onto something that mounts as a storage device.
Now think, how many people do you know who store all their document in the default folder for whatever program they're using and have a zillion icons covering their desktop? How many people call you in a panic when they can't find an important document because it's in a folder called "Important Documents"?
Re:Price point new products (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true geek who just doesn't get the fact that there are people out there that aren't geeks.
Everything you said is true, and yet, you are either too smart or too stupid to realize that iTunes manages all of that for your average person, so they don't have to.
About the only thing you didn't say that would have been geekier would be to say that you manage your tunes with emacs you compiled yourself.
Re:Price point new products (Score:5, Insightful)
How the heck is a pack of Salt and Vinegar flavour crisps the easiest thing to use? Why pay all that extra money for ease of use? I can just rustle up some chips myself with a knife and a frying pan, then make the sodium acetate I need in a brainlessly simple reaction using household chemicals. You know the ones, and how to obtain the pure product right, that you can then put on your home made chips?
Why pay for someone to handle that sort of thing for me? I can do it all myself!
Now, I might be able to manage an mp3 player that required me to move binary files around, but it doesn't mean I want to. I love the fact that I can plug in my iPhone and have it handle all that for me (especially with the automatic handling of new music as my moods change with smart playlists keeping track of everything - including what I have played on the iPod since it was last synced).
My mother, on the other hand, is just about getting around the concept of having a Home folder, and a USB memory stick, and attaching files by email. Deeper folder trees (despite their clearly simple extension to the Home folder concept to you and I) are not really intuitive to her. The iPod/iTunes is excellent for her - it keeps track of her music, organises it and syncs and manages the iPod for her. She's a smart person, but computers are a new thing for her, and the iPod gives her access to something that she doesn't have to learn all in one go to get enjoyment out of (the level of ease/competence with a computer would have to be much better for a third party mp3 player).
This is consistently a thing that slashdot does not understand, and that Apple understands *extremely well*. That even if a person can compile their own OS from source, and manage everything by hand, that *they don't always want to*, or in the case of less technical people, just cannot do easily on their own, without vast frustration, regardless of how easy it seems.
Which is one of the reasons why Apple is selling products hand over fist, and a large portion of slashdot is going "huh? but why?" or "this product will fail!" while completely missing its redeeming features for a large portion of the population who aren;t them.
I'm not going to laugh derisively at you, or call you a moron because you can't do a retrosynthetic analysis on the flavour in your curry, and then be able to whip that up from relatively simple starting materials, or laugh when you can't tell me what happens to certain spices if they are overheated. I mean, it's pretty basic functional group chemistry - it's handled just like any other basic organic mechanism. I don't know about you, but that's an easy one!
They were trying to copy (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you seen how many tablets were at CES last year?
Yes, most of them were reactions to the rumored tablet Apple was working on (a rumor that had been going for some time). It's telling that we don't talk about any of them now, because they were building something to compete against an OS X tablet, not a tablet that people wanted to use.
Industrial product design matters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Industrial product design matters. Marketing too. I'm not a fan of Apple's policies, but they get quite a few things right while the competition seems mired in stupidity and copycat disease land.
- Decent quality control (iphone4 attena aside)
- Great marketing/PR/Hype
- Extremely nice looking products
Apple does these things well and makes great devices. They now even have an army of good developers thanks to a platform that caters to people willing to spend money. In the meantime, the competition seems to sometimes innovate, and other times gets stuck copying, confused, and greedy. Looking at the Nexus S -- it looks to be almost a clone of an IPhone 3G? What is Samsung thinking? At the same time Samsung has the tablet which looks to be pretty nice and more original. Verizon is a great example too: first they hyped the Droid to huge success, but then they decided to start putting Bing on phones and open their own app store.
Still, it's great that Google seems to be adding serious competition to this market, but they seem to fail to grasp that they CAN'T hand control back to carriers and win this race. Giving up on the Nexus One right out of the gate was a bad move. Consumers dont want to go back to the flip phone days with $2.99 30 second vcast ringtones.
Apple will see continued success due to all these issues regardless, at least in the near future. However if Google steps up it's game and does the following:
1) Streamlined patch/update process
2) Making manufacturer skins removable
3) limitation on how manufacturers and carriers can lock down devices. (ie no forcing specific apps on the user).
That's when things will get interesting. If Google can silence the fragmentation trolls, and keep the carrier greed in check, there is hope for this market, and especially a bright future for consumers. There is even room for carriers to still add value. But if they FORCE it on people, they will all lose to Apple.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Apple is going to have to go through a ton of unnecessary work to build a cloud infrastructure, when Google has it already done and ready to use. Google + Apple would be an unstoppable force for good and innovation.
Google needs to rev their Android Market (Score:4, Insightful)
That is Apple's biggest innovation with the iPhone, and they know it (see Mac App Store). The App Store is why the iPod touch has such high appeal, why people put up with AT&T's horrible service with the iPhone, and why the iPad is so versatile.
On the flip side, Android Market is crippled by the requirement for 3G service devices (ie, no Android iPod Touch competitor any time soon), a drive to push free/ad-driven sales model and a lack of curation (see DVD Jon's appeal to Google [nanocr.eu] to put some quality/curation into the Android Market). As a consequence numerous other Android app markets are cropping up, adding confusion and complexity to the act of developing and buying apps for that platform.
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design [wikipedia.org]
"Industrial design is a combination of applied art and applied science, whereby the aesthetics, ergonomics and usability of products may be improved for marketability and production...."
Not new technology but new market (Score:3, Insightful)
To all those that bashed my 4 months as a Mac User (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel very vindicated by this article and have but one thing to say, "IN YOUR FACE, I TOLD YOU SO!"
ok... sorry, that was immature, but the Apple stuff is innovative, solid, and amazing. If you are still not convinced, go down to your local OfficeMax and spend some time with a droid tablet or try to edit AVCHD Video on WIndows 7 PC. Really, I am not an Apple fan-boy. I am just really busy and need my technology to work NOW!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno. What will a Mac do if that AVCHD video did not come straight from the camera?
I can tell you what it does with MPEG2 that touched any sort of intermediate source. It BARFS.
Unix indeed...
I am a Certified Solaris Admin. That doesn't mean that I am not a Linux Zealot. ...and I am not sure I would want to edit video on ANY laptop.
Re:To all those that bashed my 4 months as a Mac U (Score:4, Informative)
This is just bullshit. Final Cut may be popular but it's not the only NLE product on the market. There's plenty of work done on Avid, Premiere, or even Vegas. All of which run fine on any mid-range to high-end PC laptop. There is no magic secret sauce that Apple products have here.
As for 'droid tablets' (presumably you mean 'Android tablets', since 'Droid' is a brand used only by Verizon for their Android products), there is no doubt that the $200 tablets on the market suck. Of course they suck. Google hasn't even released a tablet version of Android. The fact that some manufacturers have chosen to release products prematurely is no surprise.
I briefly owned a 11.6" MacBook Air, which I returned. It was a beautiful piece of hardware. But:
- I can't deal with clickpads. They make simple operations like dragging or right-clicking far more complex and error prone. Forget something like middle clicking unless you feel like doing some crazy multi-finger tap. It's also noisy, which can be annoying when you're trying to use it in class. My T400 has real buttons - left, right, and middle - with real tactile feel and quiet operation.
- The keyboard is annoying. With a T400 I get buttons like Page Up and Page Down, Home, End, and Delete. These work consistently and don't require FN shortcuts. On Mac laptops, Home and End are FN+Left Arrow and FN+Right Arrow. Unfortunately they aren't consistent at all. Sometimes they take you to the beginning or the end of the line, sometimes they take you to the beginning or end of a document. Sometimes you can use Command+Left Arrow/Right Arrow for cursor movement on the line, but then sometimes (e.g. the terminal) it doesn't work.
- Apple wants $80 for a MagSafe power adapter and sues anyone who tries to make a compatible adapter. You can get genuine ThinkPad power adapters for $30 or less on eBay, which means I can have 4 (couch, bedroom, desk, one for on the go) without breaking the bank. It's a hell of a lot more convenient to just plug in than it is to pull out and uncoil the adapter every time.
- Mouse acceleration is totally screwed up in Mac OS X. The curve is not really a curve - it starts out extremely slow and then abruptly jumps to very fast. This makes cursor control with a high-resolution mouse (like my Logitech G5) extremely difficult.
- X-buttons (back/forward) on a non-Apple mouse don't work. The only way to get them to work is to install third-party software, most of which costs money.
- Scroll wheel acceleration. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but it seems to be impossible to disable.
- You can't make the machine stay awake with the lid closed without kernel extension hacks or plugging in a monitor.
- There's no full disk encryption. Home directory encryption is not the same thing.
- Window organization is annoying. There are no snaps (like in Windows 7 or KDE) and you can only resize windows from one corner. The zoom button is supposed to 'fit contents' or 'fit screen area', but in reality it seems to be completely arbitrary depending on the application. Maximize is useful and consistent.
- Lots of screen space is wasted. Panels (in GNOME or KDE) or the Taskbar are usable with under 30px of height. The Dock is useless at that size and realistically needs to be more like 50-60px. Most people get around this by hiding it, which drives me nuts because it's too easy to inadvertently activate and not there to notify you when you need it. Then there's the menu bar, which takes up more of your screen space, even in applications that don't need menus (like Google Chrome).
- You can hide a menu by clicking in it. There is 'dead space' between menu items that not only does nothing, it also closes the menu. This is another thing that makes absolutely no sense to me.
- OpenGL performance SUCKS. I know that Apple has been working on t
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately, the keyboard drains do nothing when you spill it in the vent holes. I've never tested the keyboard drains but I've seen videos of them working. I would imagine that the keyboard is screwed, although it's pretty easy and cheap to fix.
I use the touchpad actually, not the trackstick. And I do like ce
Apparently innovation works (Score:5, Insightful)
It's better for you to cannibalize your own products, than for your competitors to do it for you. There was a recent quote from El Jobso (can't find off hand, sorry) saying that (in his absence) Apple just sat on the top end of the market with the Mac, got greedy, failed to innovate, and suffered. Their success with the ipod seems to support this. They cover nearly the whole market while still remaining the high end brand.
Investment Thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
My two cents analysis that Apple has a lot of potential, but Apple carries a lot of risk. I am not sure if the market can sustain an Apple valued as highly as Exxon for example. Apple is a very difficult company to value because it is very difficult to predict future earnings. A lot of it depends on the public's reception of Apple's latest gadget. If the gadget is a new type of device, it is very difficult to accurately predict its acceptance. I had doubts about the iPad, but am glad it is selling like gang busters.
I am neither a fan boy nor an Apple hater. I am just an ordinary guy trying to get a good return on his savings after the banks cut interest rates to nil. Apple seemed like a good investment at the time. Which brings to mind another risk. If interest rates on savings rise again, expect people like me to take money out of the market, which will reduce share prices. I will keep an eye on Apple though. If it has another sharp drop in the next couple of years, I may use it as an opportunity to load up again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with everything you are saying with some caveats. Apple's P/E has historically been higher than it is now. This could mean that Apple has a lot of potential upside, and a lot of investors are betting on this. But betting on Apple at $300 + is really betting on the broader market. The market will need to also hit an inflection point in order to sustain a larger Apple. I believe Apple has already hit an inflection point at $190 last year. Betting on another inflection is risky.
I am not a smart investo
Good vs. Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a quick comment from a former Apple employee; most people are familiar with the old saw, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." I.e., instead of trying to get something perfect, you should get it good enough and then ship it. Within Apple the perspective is slightly different. There, it's more along the lines of, "Good enough is the enemy of great." I.e., good enough isn't acceptable -- for an Apple-branded product we're going to look for the next level of polish and care that differentiates our stuff from everybody else's.
I think this comes from the fusion of NeXT and Apple engineers. Most people recognize that NeXT brought a heckuva foundation for Apple's next generation operating system to the table in 1997. However, few people recognize what Apple brought to the table -- an engineering culture that regards rough edges as anathema. There was plenty of NeXT software, but much of it was very rough; it wasn't easy to pick up for the new user, was missing essential features, crashed often, or all of the above. This was a direct consequence of the fact that Foundation and AppKit allowed you to create apps quickly and easily, but then as a software developer you still have to trap errors, check for corner cases, add documentation, tweak the UI design so that common tasks are easy to accomplish, etc. This can easily take three to four times as long or more as standing up the initial core functionality. Most NeXT apps never went through this stage and so they lacked the polish for mass market users. Once the NeXT technology went through the polishing process (and it took four years before the first consumer release, really five years and 10.2 Jaguar before it was truly ready for my mom!), the new OS was a completely different animal from OpenStep 4.2 -- much more polished and suitable for mass-market consumers.
--Paul
Re:Good vs. Great (Score:4, Insightful)
... The problem with a lot of people around here is that not only do they not care about rough edges, they don't even SEE rough edges.
Actually, I think a lot people around here see rough edges as a feature. If they use something "easy", then it's not obvious that they are special and smarter than everyone else... God forbid that you point out it's all built on UNIX with a terminal (on the Mac) and has free developer tools, documentation, example code, and training videos.
AAPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank God for Apple stock (for me at least :).
I remember in ~October of 1998 thinking of buying AAPL. It was floating around $5/share I believe.
Everyone was telling me to buy Microsoft. By this point I was becoming a "ABM" system administrator. They're stock was floating right about where it is today (~$25/share)...
The only stock I'm interested in is companies I believe in that produce something I like. Day trading in some chemistry company I know nothing about does not Interest me.
I hesitated (and was second guessing myself in those days). I could have tripled my money in that one year with AAPL.
In that same year there was a MSFT split AND they nearly doubled their price. They've been dead since...
Bottom line -- a decade later and both companies have each had two splits. My $15 APPL stock is worth over $315 (today) while MSFT is still at ~$25/share. There is a reason for this. Microsoft has forced people to use their crap and those days are seriously numbered. Apple, OTOH, gives their customers what they want. Thus they become foaming at the mouth Apple loyalists like myself. I understand now (and am laughing all the way to the bank).
In looking at these two companies Apple has pretty much always been innovative and led the pack. No floppies with a Mac? People laughed. See many floppies today? Microsoft has historically always been a "me too" company (with very few exceptions).
The ONLY product that Microsoft has done that makes me shake my head and wonder why Apple didn't do it is the KIN. Cool idea. Problem: WHERE is Apple's gaming console???
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's an admission that most people buy laptop computers to access the Internet, play music and films.
Computer ownership accelerated when the Internet became popular. Hence it is the "killer application" for most users.
That makes sense (Score:2)
No, it's an admission that most people buy laptop computers to access the Internet, play music and films.
Computer ownership accelerated when the Internet became popular. Hence it is the "killer application" for most users.
I mean porn supposedly pushed sales of VHS so I guess the internet could accelerate computer ownership for the same reason.
no way office or photoshop will be appstore rules (Score:2)
no way office or photoshop will be in the appstore as the rules are now.
The 5 systems per buy and 30% cut will fly with MS or adobe.
Re:no way office or photoshop will be appstore rul (Score:4, Informative)
There are already a few "office" equivalents in the App store...one of them written by Apple called iWork... You can buy the individual apps for $10 each. There are also a couple of 3rd party equivalents.
If MS decided to write an office varient for iPad, they could certainly put it in the App Store.
Same for Photoshop. There is already a version of Photoshop in the app store. It really only supports very very basic photo manipulation and isn't the full photoshop suite, but there is nothing about photoshop itself that would prevent it's inclusion in the App Store if Adobe decided to put it there.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter.
Most people don't care about Office or Photoshop for a home machine. Sure, they'd like both, if available, but that's not why they buy a laptop or netbook. It's to watch films and check facebook.
As it happens, there is already some Adobe software on the AppStore. iWork is "good enough" for the majority..microsoft may wise up, or not. Doesn't really matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Especially so consistently. Most every major product that Steve Jobs has had a hand in has been wildly successful for Apple: iPod, iTunes, OS X, Intel Macs, iPhone, iPad.
The only thing I can think of (off the top of my head) that hasn't been wildly successful is the Apple TV. I do own an Apple TV, and it is a great product. I suspect it's just ahead of it's time. I am sure there are other not-so-hot products out there, but there are more hits than misses for Steve Jobs.
Re:Apple has lied their way to success (Score:4, Insightful)
Enron lied their way to success. Apple created products which were successful. By lying, you normally mean that Apple didn't sell what they claim they sold, or a product doesn't have an advertised functionality that Apple claimed. As far as I can tell, those were real customers who bought real products, and aside from a few minor glitches, the products generally do what they are advertised to do. Apple certainly isn't any worse than other tech companies on failing to deliver advertised functionality.
If you don't like Apple's products don't buy them and stop worrying about all the lemmings.
Re:Apple has lied their way to success (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because your grandma can figure it out does not make it better.
Um, yes it does, when you are in the business of selling widgets you want Grandma to be able to use.
If, on the other hand, you are so mired in zealotry that you can't see that if Grandma can't get a widget to work, a widget that is intended for the mass market, it puts a serious limitation on that widgets eventual success, well, then, we don't have much to discuss.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once these technological initiates (Apple users) become more knowledgeable about what is out there, i.e.: the Reality Distortion Field wares out, the honest ones will see the error of their ways and pick another platform, probably Android and the house of cards that Apple has built its empire upon (the ignorance of the masses) will collapse. And IMHO it cannot happen soon enough.
If the requirement for Apple's downfall is for the 'ignorant masses' to become educated, then Apple is destined to be the most successful company in the history of the world.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The products really aren't that "revolutionary", and certainly not magical. In fact, they're pretty ordinary. What separates Apple from the rest (and a lot of people's money) is the cult-like status they've built amongst a small but big-spending segment of the population. You HAVE to have the latest because it's the greatest thing that will ever be and ever has been.
There is certainly a good amount of marketing and hype going on, but assuming that this is all is just silly. There's an awful lot of otherwise perfectly intelligent people who manage to ignore all the really good ideas Apple has by thinking there is nothing but marketing and hype and "cult".
The thing is that "ordinary people" attach quite a bit of importance to things like elegant industrial design on the front *and* the back of devices, to lids you can open with one finger without overturning your laptop,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Again? Why has slashdot become a marketing platform for apple? They sell overpriced, inferior products to idiots that don't know any better.
Steve Jobs really, really hopes that you get a top job at any of its competitors.
In reality, the clueless idiot is you. Apple products are more expensive than crap products that match them in the superficial check list of the under average geek; they compare very well in price with any quality product. And they are far superior where it counts; to make it possible for average people who actually have a life to _use_ the product.
I sometimes think that the under average geek is someone who feels proud t