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40% of Silicon Valley's Profits (But Not Sales) Came from Apple (siliconvalley.com) 147

Posted by EditorDavid from the step-two-equals-??? dept.
An anonymous reader writes:The San Jose Mercury News reports that last year 40% of Silicon Valley's profits came from one company -- Apple. "The iPhone maker accounted for 28 percent of the Bay Area tech industry's $833 billion in 2015 sales," while "Its profits were a jaw-dropping 40 percent of the region's $133 billion total." Meanwhile, Google's parent company Alphabet racked up $75 billion in sales, representing nearly 57% of the total for all Silicon Valley internet companies, followed by eBay and PayPal.

But while sales grew, internet-company profits fell by 29% as more companies focused on growth. "Profits are nice, sure, but becoming profitable isn't the top priority around here, particularly for younger firms," wrote the newspaper, noting that investors are paying 18 times Facebook's annual sales for its stock. In fact, 29% of Silicon Valley's top companies didn't have sales growth in 2015 (an increase from 17% the previous year), and five of the top 10 companies saw a drop in sales in 2015 (including Intel). "The numbers are telling the story," one analyst tells the newspaper. "There is growth, but it is slowing."
The Mercury News adds that "The question for those with the biggest sales drops is how much time do they have left if the trend continues..."
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40% of Silicon Valley's Profits (But Not Sales) Came from Apple More

40% of Silicon Valley's Profits (But Not Sales) Came from Apple

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  • 50% from tax dodges (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    leaving the masses to make up the missing money the mega-corps, oligarchs and elites avoid paying.

    • Tax the corps and they pass it through as price increases that are net regressive taxes on all customers. Affecting the poor more than the rich. It's not that simple, not that I believe they shouldn't pay.
      All they do (well almost all) is legal. Should I want to hire someone at a PO box in some lax country to assign my income around - it'd be legal for me too. It's just that what isn't even pocket change for these guys is more than my total income (and I'm not poor).
      Anatole France: "In its majestic equ

      • Re:50% from tax dodges TANSTAAFL (Score:5, Informative)

        by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @10:27AM (#51977597)

        Should I want to hire someone at a PO box in some lax country to assign my income around - it'd be legal for me too.

        Actually, Apple's PO box is in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.

        Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company's profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California's corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada's? Zero.

        http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html [nytimes.com]

        • Too bad I commented here or I'd use mod points to mod you up. There are a lot of tricks, and the one you mention is one of them (I believe Apple and others also use Ireland and the Netherlands among others, as havens). The point is, the normal taxpayer can't afford them - it's not gain at the margin for the taxes a little guy saves, but is for the big guys. In a rather long life, it seems nearly every law or regulation passed has favored the big over the small and perhaps disruptive. That's the real pro

          • Re:50% from tax dodges TANSTAAFL (Score:5, Interesting)

            by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @01:19PM (#51978375)

            The point is, the normal taxpayer can't afford them - it's not gain at the margin for the taxes a little guy saves, but is for the big guys.

            The little guy can do a variation of this. For example, start a Nevada corporation and open a corporate brokerage account (day trade or load up dividend-paying stocks) or own rental properties. Once the corporation makes a significant amount of money each year, you can draw a salary and open a qualified retirement to put away $54,000 each year (a combination of salary contributions plus corporate matching). Do that for a few decades, you will have a retirement account that will greatly exceed whatever you can put into an IRA/401K.

            That's the real problem in my mind.

            You need to change your thinking. The tax laws will never change to favor the small guy, so why not use them to your own advantage? The trick comes from converting earned income (taxed at highest rate) to portfolio (stocks) and/or passive (real estate) income (taxed at a lower rate). When portfolio/passive income exceeds earned income, you can stop working for someone else and work for yourself.

            • Oh, I did all that back when I had taxable income. I'm now retired and fairly well off. I just feel for those who aren't doing as well, and never will under the current regulatory regime. FWIW, I 5x'd my retirement account trading from March 2009 to 2014, then got out and am still out. I'd sold after about 20% loss off the previous peak to the protestations of my then broker (who now thinks I'm a genius). That game is now so rigged itself it's better to wait awhile for after the tide next goes out and
            • the small guy doesn't own rental property and stocks. Not really enough to matter anyway. You underestimate just how screwed most of America is. 40 years now of declining wages, a labor market that favors employers and an entire society where job quality and quality of life are the same thing sorta do that to most.

              Our tax laws were fairly progressive for a long time. That 90% rate was marginal and prevented capital and resources from gathering at the top where they sat and did nothing. Then Regan happen

              • You underestimate just how screwed most of America is. 40 years now of declining wages, a labor market that favors employers and an entire society where job quality and quality of life are the same thing sorta do that to most.

                I want to introduced you to Ronald Read, a 92-year-old Vermont man who worked as a gas station attendant for most of his life and a janitor at J.C. Penny towards the end. He passed away last year leaving behind an $8M fortune in dividend-paying stocks that he bought with a little bit of cash from each paycheck since the early 1970's. He lived such a modest lifestyle that most people thought he was poor. The only outward sign of his wealth was a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. He left the bulk of we

                • One example. Right. I can find single examples of a lot of things.

                  There's also the fact that he didn't make $8M by setting aside a little from each paycheck and investing at a reasonable rate of return. Figure 8% rate of return, assume it all happened 40 years ago, and we find he dumped in something like $20K/year (wild approximation, but not that wild), pretty impressive for a guy with a low income investing what he can after taxes.

                  Somebody can run the real numbers, but the fact is that they just d

                  • Figure 8% rate of return, assume it all happened 40 years ago, and we find he dumped in something like $20K/year (wild approximation, but not that wild), pretty impressive for a guy with a low income investing what he can after taxes.

                    CNBC did a break down of the numbers.

                    For example, to reach Read's $8 million fortune, Hogan calculated that investors would have to invest about $300 a month at an 8 percent interest rate over 65 years.

                    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/heres-how-a-janitor-amassed-an-8m-fortune.html [cnbc.com]

                    • The article talks about the 70s, a maximum of 46 years ago, and suggests that Read was saving cash in the 1970s, which I don't remember as being good for 8% interest. 65 years would mean starting in 1950, and I don't know how any small investor was supposed to get 8% back then. The stock market was much harder to get into than it is now, with considerably higher brokerage fees, particularly if the investor traded in something other than units of 100 shares.

                      There's also the fact that nobody with a low-l

                    • Something is seriously wrong about this account.

                      Yeah, you misread the account. If someone today wanted to duplicate Read's $8 million fortunate, it would take $300 per month for 65 years at 8% per year. Read put away a modest amount of each paycheck into dividend-paying stocks that reinvested dividends into additional shares throughout the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's and 2000's. Since he had a five-inch stack of stock certificates in a safe deposit box, he was playing for keeps and didn't get skittish when the markets went up and came down.

                    • $300/month for 65 years at 8% annual interest produces the same result no matter whether it starts in 1800 or 2100, although the practicality is going to be different. Lowering any of those numbers is going to result in less than $8M.

                      Specifically, either he invested considerably more than $300/month or he got considerably greater than 8% return or he had outside money or stock coming in somehow, or some combination. I still can't see a person with a low-level job being able to sock away $3600 a year in

              • Declining wages? Man, people spend a larger percentage of their income on junk and *healthcare* now than they did in 1970; they spend less of their money on food, clothing, and housing (per square foot; they buy much bigger houses and rent larger apartments). The middle- and lower-class are overall richer today, with a greater amount of buying-power income than people of 40 years ago; don't sit there and bullshit that wages are going down.

            • The point is, the normal taxpayer can't afford them - it's not gain at the margin for the taxes a little guy saves, but is for the big guys.

              The little guy can do a variation of this. For example, start a Nevada corporation and open a corporate brokerage account (day trade or load up dividend-paying stocks) or own rental properties. Once the corporation makes a significant amount of money each year, you can draw a salary and open a qualified retirement to put away $54,000 each year (a combination of salary contributions plus corporate matching). Do that for a few decades, you will have a retirement account that will greatly exceed whatever you can put into an IRA/401K.

              That's the real problem in my mind.

              You need to change your thinking. The tax laws will never change to favor the small guy, so why not use them to your own advantage? The trick comes from converting earned income (taxed at highest rate) to portfolio (stocks) and/or passive (real estate) income (taxed at a lower rate). When portfolio/passive income exceeds earned income, you can stop working for someone else and work for yourself.

              The problem is this "trick" actually requires a ton of work and a bunch of risk, you've basically designed your life around working the tax laws and it requires enough wealth to invest in things like rental properties. Personally I'd be better off just doing my own business on the side and actually contributing to the economy.

              That's the problem with all these corporate subsidies and complex tax laws. Because they're so complex they're only really feasible to exploit once you're a massive organization. A sma

              • The problem is this "trick" actually requires a ton of work and a bunch of risk, you've basically designed your life around working the tax laws and it requires enough wealth to invest in things like rental properties.

                It's called being entrepreneur.

                A small or medium sized business can't afford to open a separate office in Reno just to reduce their tax bill.

                A small business don't need to run a physical office in Nevada. A PO box and a mail forwarding service can do the job for a few hundred bucks per year. Most states won't have a problem with it. California, of course, is always problematic because they're trying to collect revenue from everyone and anything that moves.

                • The problem is this "trick" actually requires a ton of work and a bunch of risk, you've basically designed your life around working the tax laws and it requires enough wealth to invest in things like rental properties.

                  It's called being entrepreneur.

                  Which is the point I was trying to make. You're not actually talking about a normal taxpayer, you're talking about someone who has focused their life into becoming an investor and avoiding taxes.

                  Even then I want real entrepreneurs focusing on building businesses, not structuring their wealth to avoid taxes.

                  A small or medium sized business can't afford to open a separate office in Reno just to reduce their tax bill.

                  A small business don't need to run a physical office in Nevada. A PO box and a mail forwarding service can do the job for a few hundred bucks per year. Most states won't have a problem with it. California, of course, is always problematic because they're trying to collect revenue from everyone and anything that moves.

                  Apple doesn't have an office, they have some sort of subsidy. If nothing else this needs lawyers and accountants to make sure you're following the rules and extra bookkeeping to keep everything straight.

                  • You're not actually talking about a normal taxpayer, you're talking about someone who has focused their life into becoming an investor and avoiding taxes.

                    The normal taxpayer goes to work for earn income and pays the highest tax rate. It's going to to get worst in the next 20 years as retirees outnumber the workforce, the two-thirds of the federal budget will got to Social Security and Medicare, and taxes will go way up to pay for everything else. I don't plan to be a normal taxpayer in the next 20 years, especially when the tax code allows other options that are perfectly legal.

                    I want real entrepreneurs focusing on building businesses, not structuring their wealth to avoid taxes.

                    Real entrepreneurs structure their businesses and their wealth within the framewo

              • The problem is this "trick" actually requires a ton of work and a bunch of risk

                It's not so much that it requires risk, it's that it requires capital. It makes sense if you're a company making a reasonable profit to pay an accountant to work out how to make the most of their tax situation. If you're an individual, then the amount that an accountant can save you might be proportionally more, but is likely to be a similar magnitude to the accountant's fees.

                That's the underlying problem with the system: the more money you have, the smaller the proportional costs of having someone opti

          • Two things I came across recently on this topic: 1) Walmart has recently been taking right around the full corporate tax rate (31% is what they paid in the last year on record, iirc); 2) the guys and some expert types at Freakonomics or PlanetMoney or SomeOtherMoneyNerdBlog recommended reducing the corporate income tax rate to something like 20-25% AND closing loopholes. The consensus was that this would get corporations paying their taxes here, because it would be close enough to what they're saving by che

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by paiute ( 550198 )

        Tax the corps and they pass it through as price increases

        I agree with you, but I also don't think that tax decreases will be passed through to the consumer.

    • leaving the masses to make up the missing money the mega-corps, oligarchs and elites avoid paying.

      Go to the database, and look for the taxes paid. http://www.siliconvalley.com/business/ci_29798925 [siliconvalley.com]

  • The problem with America. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Most of the profits are parked overseas, and the ones that are here aren't taxed very much.
    Most of the work is done by Chinese slave labor and so has no contribution to the US economy.
    I submit that the United States would be better off if Apple simply did not exist. (Or at least, not any worse.)
    • People thrive when government does little, as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington told us. When government handles roads and military defense, society thrives; when government bleeds people by taxation and regulation, life becomes frustrating and boring like in the Soviet Union, although not quite as bad yet. With our technology, we should be working four hours a day and spending the rest on meaningful activities (inb4 the usual bragging about "meaningful jobs": you're just tools). Instead, we work more

      • Re:We are overtaxed (Score:4, Informative)

        by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @08:19AM (#51977155)

        People thrive when government does little, as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington told us.

        If they did, they were idiots.

        When government handles roads and military defense, society thrives; when government bleeds people by taxation and regulation

        How the hell do you imagine the government handles roads and military defence other than by taxation and regulation?

        • No practical society thrived without its members contributing. By being drafted, dying in wars, by building defensive buildings, by giving away some of the crops, or fruits of their labor. That is beside the point, because some contribution to common good and to others is a long tradition. Discussed in Bible, discussed in koran, I assume other religions have it too.

          The problem is when dual intercrossing taxation kicks in:

          - For a professional, marginal income tax rate in united states i

          • Re:Let's call taxation as contribution (Score:5, Informative)

            by Xabraxas ( 654195 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @10:53AM (#51977675)
            No offense but I don't think you know how taxation works. You can't just say well i'm in the 33% tax bracket federally and 10% locally so add those together and that's 43%. Throw in some Medicare and Social Security and that should be about 50% right? Wrong. First you're not paying an effective tax rate of 33% or 10% either because tax rates are only effective on income over the threshold. So say you make $189,301, the minimum amount for the 33% tax bracket, you will pay an effective rate of something like 22%. Just quickly looking at a tax calculator online it looks like California would be a little less than 8% effective rate. So that puts you at 30% without Medicare and Social Security. From the calculator that is about another 5%. So without ANY deductions for anything your effective rate would be about 35%. Considering the wealth of deductions available and your salary it shouldn't be hard to find an accountant that can probably get you under 30% or lower.

            • Please review original post. For the record, I do know really well how finance and taxation works, no need to hire tax professional.

              I have clearly stated that marginal tax rate is 50%. That means any additional efforts that would benefit society will be taxed at 50%.

              I do understand the concept of effective tax rate. Reality is that even remaining revenues have significant allocation to the property taxes. Further, first time you are attempting to spend you are likely to hit to approx 7% sales/excise tax, in

              • That means any additional efforts that would benefit society will be taxed at 50%.

                The tax benefits society too. Win win.

                As to the Laffer curve is a long standing theory that has never been shown to be true. Doubt it? Then tell me what percentage the supposed maximum tax take is at. After all if the Laffer curve was true, it would have been found by now and every country would be using it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Does little doesn't mean does nothing. And what our military does today is not defense by a reasonable measure.

        • If they did, they were idiots.

          They weren't idiots (well, Jefferson definitely wasn't. The jury's still out on Washington), but they lived in a very different world. The industrial revolution started in the UK around 1760. The US declaration of independence was in 1976, when most of the USA still hadn't been touched by it. Colt didn't start making guns and railroads didn't hit the country until the 1830s. Most people would have owned very few things made of iron (or any other metal). Contrary to popular belief, most people did not

        • English may not be your native language, so it's understandable you missed the question of degree. "Overtaxed" means too much taxation. The point of the post was that if government taxes for roads and military, we do OK, but anything more than that and things go bad.

          • Given that I am English it's certainly my native language.

            Now, what's so special about roads and military? Why should they be collectivised and not police, fire brigade, education and health?

            "Over" seems to be your particular extremist priorities and not any kind of arguable threshold.

            The idea that if government controls more than roads and military, "things go bad" is complete nonsense, that isn't demonstrated by the real world. Amongst the happiest nations in the world are the Scandinavian countries that

      • Instead, we work more than ever.

        I do IT support contract work. All my employment contracts for the last 12+ years have prohibited me from working more than 40 hours per week. None of the Fortune 500 companies want to pay for overtime anymore.

        As an antiwork conservative [...]

        Just because the Republicans in Congress are sitting on their hands and collecting a paycheck for not working doesn't mean that everyone else should emulate them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Well, if Apple isn't paying U.S. taxes, and they aren't building anything here, then their effect of failure to exist would have no impact on the U.S. Now, what point is it that you are trying to make? That you hate Apple. Then just say so.

    • Re:The problem with America. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @08:44AM (#51977255)

      Most of the work is done by Chinese slave labor and so has no contribution to the US economy.

      But most of the profits go to the US.

      • They stash their money in tax havens for what purpose I have no idea. Seriously the amount of cash on hand they have is obscene. If I were a shareholder I'd be pissed and demanding they paid out dividends. Yes, repatriating the money to pay it out would incur tax, but I'd rather have some of it than none of it.

        As it stands Apple just hoards cash so they don't have to pay taxes on it and sits on it.

      • Nope. Most of the profits go to already-rich who will cache them in offshore havens.

    • I see, so the USA would be better off without Apple products, salaries, investment opportunities. I submit you would be better off without a nose to spite your face.

    • Most of the work is done by Chinese slave labor and so has no contribution to the US economy.

      I'd want to see some evidence of your "slave labor" claim, but I think we can savely assume that you are just full of shit and no evidence will be forthcoming.

  • It's even more pronounced in smartphones ... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... where Apple has 92% of the all global smartphone profits [statista.com].

    • Re:It's even more pronounced in smartphones ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @11:13AM (#51977781)
      1) Why does that chart show Apple at 92% and Samsung at 14% of all global smartphone profits?

      2) It contradicts the common belief that Apple hardware is better. The 4Q 2014 sales figures [appadvice.com] pegged Apple's smartphone profit at $18.8 billion, while iPhone sales were 74.5 million. $18.8b / 74.5m = a staggering $252 profit per phone. For anyone who denies an Apple tax exists, there it is right there.

      In other words, your $650 iPhone isn't a $650 phone. It's a $400 phone that Apple is selling to you for $650. Meanwhile the other smartphone manufacturers operate with a 2%-5% margin (typical for the computer industry). So when they sell you a $650 smartphone, you're getting $625 worth of hardware. You could argue Apple designs their stuff better so is able to get the same performance out of less money. But the only part they design is the SoC. They buy all the other parts - screen, battery, camera, memory, etc. - from the same suppliers as everyone else.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Supply and demand. When sales of iPhones slow down at $650, then Apple will lower the prices if they want to sell more. The price of a successful product is determined by how desirable the product is, not by what the parts cost.

        You also may remember that the current CEO was touted as some kind of supply chain genius, and that Apple invests heavily in this area, buying years worth of components in advance (or so the media has said anyway). Bulk transactions result in lower cost.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Because the other vendors are losing money and thus have negative percentages of the profit share. Adding up all the lossmakers gives -6%; Apple + Samsung together are at 106%.

      • 4Q 2014 sales figures pegged Apple's smartphone profit at $18.8 billion, while iPhone sales were 74.5 million. $18.8b / 74.5m = a staggering $252 profit per phone. For anyone who denies an Apple tax exists, there it is right there.

        You are right, Apple imposes a tax on gullibility.

      • Re:It's even more pronounced in smartphones ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday April 25, 2016 @07:48AM (#51981827) Journal

        In other words, your $650 iPhone isn't a $650 phone. It's a $400 phone that Apple is selling to you for $650

        Not necessarily true. The Apple figure likely also includes Apple's 30% cut on all apps that are sold over the lifetime of the device. In contrast, when Samsung sells a phone, they get the sale price of the phone. That's also the reason that Apple devices keep getting updates for longer. If a new app doesn't work on an old iPhone, then Apple potentially loses revenue from not making a sale of that app. If a new app doesn't work on an old Samsung phone, then Samsung doesn't lose any revenue and might gain revenue from having the user buy a new Samsung phone.

        It's also worth noting that just because Apple can build an iPhone for $400 doesn't mean that anyone else can. Having a huge cash reserve means that Apple often enters into deals with companies where they build the factory for a key part (flash chips, screens) and then get huge discounts on the parts for the first couple of years. They're effectively taking the risk in exchange for lower prices, but there isn't actually much risk because they're going to buy all of the output anyway. For a while, iPod Shuffles were the cheapest way of getting USB flash drives because Apple charged about the same for them as anyone else could buy the flash chips wholesale.

  • That's the sound of the bubble bursting. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 24, 2016 @07:47AM (#51977061)

    In fact, 29% of Silicon Valley's top companies didn't have sales growth in 2015 (an increase from 17% the previous year), and five of the top 10 companies saw a drop in sales in 2015 (including Intel). "The numbers are telling the story," one analyst tells the newspaper. "There is growth, but it is slowing."

    Finally, we're hearing the start of the so-called "Web 2.0" bubble bursting. And you know what? This is probably the best thing that could happen to society at large.

    What has the "Web 2.0" bubble brought us? Not much of value!

    Computers today aren't that much different than computers of a decade ago, in terms of hardware and software. Even smart phones really aren't all that different from the PalmPilots we used in the late 1990s. We've seen little innovation, really. In fact, we've actually seen a lot of regression. So much software, from Linux distributions (thanks to systemd, PulseAudio and NetworkManager), desktop environments (GNOME 3, Windows 8 and 10), web browsers (Firefox, Chrome) are worse than what we had before this bubble started. We even saw regression when it comes to programming languages, with absolutely terrible languages like JavaScript and Ruby becoming widely used, and debacles like Rust created.

    Where we have seen innovation, it has not been positive. For example, advertising has become so much more pervasive and invasive. Along with this has been far more pervasive and invasive data collection. This is culminating with the rise of the "Internet of Things", which is basically all about giving Internet access to every single device in one's home so that advertisers can collect far more personal and private information about consumers than the advertisers could hope to do before.

    Social media has been awful to us. It's pretty much just an extension of advertising, except it isn't limited to commercial entities. We've seen it used for nefarious political means, including but not limited to forcing the flawed concept of "social justice" (which in reality involves bias, racism, intolerance, injustice and bullying) upon our societies.

    Luckily, we're now coming to the end of this bubble. We are beginning to hear it pop. Let's hope that the bursting is swift, because that's exactly what our society needs at this point.

    • Re:That's the sound of the bubble bursting. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Sunday April 24, 2016 @08:03AM (#51977097)

      smart phones really aren't all that different from the PalmPilots we used in the late 1990s

      Well, aside from the full color displays, orders of magnitude more storage, memory, speed, resolution, full fledged multi-tasking operating systems with web browsers that can render sites like desktops, weighing less, lasting a lot longer on a charge, actually having internet connectivity, and some other stuff. But other than that, yeah, not that different...

      we've actually seen a lot of regression

      Whatever the opinion of those things may be, I don't think 'regression' is the right word. Regression would suggest things collapsed and went back the way they were (e.g. people gave up on the concept of 'DE', Gnome devolved into a barely related set of applications, that sort of thing.

      desktop environments

      I'll agree that Gnome has gone off the reservation without any sign of being out there, and I'm not a fan of Unity or Win8, but Win10 is actually a decent step up in functionality (there are problems around their release management and privacy), KDE has gotten their act back together, and all the other DEs have been true to their mission throughout.

      We even saw regression when it comes to programming languages

      Again, not so much a regression as it is, if anything, a weird direction. I'd say while Ruby got a whole lot of attention and loudness, I think in practice it really didn't get as pervasive as the talk about ruby got, and even that has pretty well died down. NodeJS does mean JS has surprisingly seen some use beyond the browser, but in practice I don't think that has staying power. Inside the browser, Javascript is better now than it was in the 90s by a long shot, and those still so inclined may use 90s sensibilities in their site design (incidentally, a lot of Chinese websites I've seen stylistically do remind me of the old geocities/angelfire days).

      Internet of Things

      I think that's all in the name, or rather the lack of direction indicated in the name. It's a lot of companies wishing to manufacture a market from nothing, but without a good specific vision of what might work, so they shotgun crazy ideas that no one asked for nor really want.

    • So much software, from Linux distributions (thanks to systemd, PulseAudio and NetworkManager), desktop environments (GNOME 3...are worse than what we had before this bubble started.

      This is entirely subjective. I think every one of those things is better. I will admit that all of them (except NM for me) caused a little bit of a headache initially but now they are all superior in almost every way. I don't understand this thinking that I see in a lot of people that Linux should just stay stagnant. Before P

    • Even smart phones really aren't all that different from the PalmPilots we used in the late 1990s.

      In the late 1990s, PalmPilots were only PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and not phones.

      The first real smartphone I had was a Treo 600 in 2003; but its MP3 player or camera were such jokes that I still had a separate iPod and camera.

  • The internet is advertising. At least, as far as profits go, unless you're selling physical products like Apple and Amazon. The real products (physical) seem to be doing OK, but the non-product of advertising -- which is weakened because very few people are doing more than wasting time at work on social media and other internet sites -- shows all the signs of an industry in implosion. At that point, the USA is going to have a recession as the market adjust the value of those assets to match reality.
  • Given that they sell goods that would fit best in the "affordable luxury" category?
    • The question is until when will Apple benefit from an image originally created by Jobs. Or, until when will Cook be able to sell expensive products while only making incremental innovation?

    • Given that they sell goods that would fit best in the "affordable essentials" category?

      FTFY

  • How much of that money is not from selling technology competitively but from avoiding taxes by using unethical accounting methods?

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