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There shouldn't be coercion involved to get you to buy another of their devices.

They are just scared to death that people will "defect" to the iPhone. Because if they do, they will never look back.

Face it. Samsung is already the top-end of the Android world. So if people decide on another Android device this time around, like Huawei, they'll likely be back to Samsung when they realize that the other brand is shit.

But if most people switch from Samsung to Apple, they will never buy another Android phone again.

That's not trolling or flamebait (although I am SURE it will be modded as such), that's market research.

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 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.

Mobile devices typically contain physical hardware decoders built in to the SoC so that they don't have to use their CPU cores, which would be much less efficient or practically impossible in the days of slow, single core mobile devices.

I recall from several years ago when Apple released iMovie for their iDevices, that they could encode videos more quickly than their high-end, vastly more expensive Intel-based computers simply because the dedicated hardware encoder in the SoC could beat the Intel CPUs.

Hardware is hard. Really really hard.

The list goes on, and on.

Even hardware projects with experienced teams can fail. If you see a hardware crowdfunding project, be fully willing to accept that your 'investment' (which is what it really is) is more likely to disappear than result in a finished product.

Based on what Apple's streaming music service has been able to slay competitors, Netflix has nothing to worry about.

I'm not sure what sources you're looking at; but 2 seconds conversation with Google seems to show quite a different picture of Apple Music's success so far.

Dear Apple,

You're making $252 profit per iPhone ($18.8 billion / 74.5 million phones). Quit playing these stupid games and just pay the damn $4.70 for an extra 16GB of NAND to bump up the base model to 32GB. It'll decrease your profit by less than 2%.

It's not about how much you make (revenue) , it's about how much you keep (profit).

Which flies straight in the face of the common (mis)belief that Apple hardware is better because it's more expensive.

Remember the quarterly smartphone sales numbers earlier this year which showed Apple making something like 90% of the profit in the industry? Most of the press spun it as Android phones having a profitability problem (they don't - their profit margin is exactly the same as the rest of the computer industry). Nobody bothered to crunch the numbers. If you do (profit / units sold), you'll find the "Apple tax" for buying an iPhone is $18.8 billion / 74.5 million = $252 per phone. That is, $252 of your purchase price doesn't pay for any better hardware or software or industrial designers or artists or even the guy in the mail room. It goes straight into the bank accounts of Apple and its stockholders as profit.

Yes and no. There is no way Microsoft will stay in the market with only 3% of the market (yes, share) in the long term. Their Windows Phone division is currently not profitable enough and will never be except if they can get a significant share of the market. With 3%, their platform will continue to be avoided by developers. In 2011, analysts projected that Microsoft would be at arround 20% by 2015. And that's why Microsoft invested in Windows Phone. They beleived they had a chance to win. The problem with 3% is that the competition will have much larger economies of scale and will drive you down to 0.

SMB streaming is a pain because you have to deal with whatever formats you might encounter, plus you have to maintain a local index of content etc if you want to provide any decent kind of UI. Every SMB based streaming device I've used (including very expensive ones) has sucked. DLNA is a much better bet as the server can abstract away all the complexity, and there are a bunch of dlna client apps for ios.

Thanks, I'm glad someone replied, and more so at seeing something to look into. http://www.dlna.org/consumer-h... says: "DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance®) strives to provide more convenience, choices, and enjoyment of digital content through DLNA Certified® devices."

It seems this misses the point. Obviously it requires NEW hardware, and from your own response, clients are not very well known or built in (like say, fat32 disks and SMB shares). I do not blame you or the industry around it. What I fail to see is how there is not even a shadow of a niche to re-use even the most basic format --our own home mp3s:
1) every major mp3 player since Winamp 2 in the nineties has had streaming decoders, (including the OSS Linux players, which would translate to Android ports being just a few code ports away)
2) The world runs on Windows by sheer numbers, SMB is already there holding our music collections. AND it works seamlessly from one Windows PC to the next.

Whatever clever ideas did come up turned into cloud solutions. It is horrible to (pay|lose-privacy) to be forced to reach out with our metaphorical arm all the way around the internet just to bring that arm around to touch our own noses.
The fact that nobody talks about Windows 7+'s' weird "Homegroup" shares and other "Discovery" daemons built around Windows Media Player is a tell-tale that something is forcibly wrong with our expectations even for those half-assed non-mobile solutions. Since we need third party streaming software, boxes like chromecast and clouds to use our own stuff, it's almost like a reality distortion field was erected before we realized we SHOULD be able to enjoy our own music or pictures without duplicating our giant collections.

SMB streaming is a pain because you have to deal with whatever formats you might encounter, plus you have to maintain a local index of content etc if you want to provide any decent kind of UI. Every SMB based streaming device I've used (including very expensive ones) has sucked. DLNA is a much better bet as the server can abstract away all the complexity, and there are a bunch of dlna client apps for ios.

The numbers are probably skewed since android can be put on any device by anybody while iOS is only available on iPhone so naturally everyone in china is using android. Even though a iPhone 5s costs more than the average monthly wage in China they're still selling out in hours. Can't ask for better sales than that, the fact anyone spends a month's salary is amazing, that would be like what, $3,000 in the US?

I can use Google.

P.S. Using dick jokes does not make you seem cooler, a mistake many females seem to make at times... it's better if you just avoid them.

Also read my response around activations to the other fellow, even the Android sales there are, do not represent what you think they do. You really need to go into a horribly lit phone store, fight past its clawing denizens and look at what the low end of the Android sales REALLY represent...

And where was the political outrage towards Apple when they opened their own stores, for causing "unfair" competition with the other retailers?

(Obligatory computer analogy in this car thread.)

There were tons of complaints by tons of people; they were unable to buy the laws because the resellers were not franchisees. Here's a short list of pissed off people:

All U.S.: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Apple-dealers-biting-back-Mac-sellers-say-2636871.php
Australia: http://www.macworld.com/article/1027780/australia.html
France: http://www.padgadget.com/2011/12/30/apple-reseller-sues-apple-in-france/
Portugal: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/07/portuguese-reseller-interlog-fails-sues-apple-for-hefty-sum
LA and Boston: http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/22/apple_repair_consultants_upset_over_changes_to_apple_retail_referral_policy

The current Apple pissing contest is over the changes to the repair referral channel. They're going to lose to Apple's wishes there, too, since what Apple sells is a holistic customer experience rather than selling only consumer devices.

Some of us actually need functionality that Apple choses not to allow. For example.. I jailbreak to get encarcerapp. It's an app that allows me to lock out the home button or even the touch screen. Then I can hand the pad to my 3 y/o daughter and she can play a game or watch a movie while I drive the car and she isn't getting herself out of the app and then asking me to get it going again every couple of seconds. Somebody at Apple decided their customers shouldn't have that sort of functionality so... have to jailbreak to get it.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/09/new-feature-in-ios-6-how-to-use-guided-access

I was looking at a few different comparisons and anecdotes when I made that generalization. For instance, the iPhone 5 is nearing the performance of the early-2006 Mac mini in several areas, and I saw a report regarding performance comparisons between the iPad 2 and a contemporary MacBook Pro with regards to handling various tasks in iMovie. Granted, neither of those is conclusive by any means, nor do they even specifically test the processor. As such, I intentionally hedged my statement by leaving it rather broad.

Yes, Windows supports true symlinks, and has since Vista. No, I'm not talking about junctions or kernel-object-only links. The command is "mklink"

The last time I tried using mklink I gave up when I realized most applications couldn't follow the symlink. What good is a symlink if it's only usable by the shell?

Windows developers are NOT expecting symlinks.

My bet is that most WindowsRT applications will break if they encounter a path with a symlink.

There are over 100,000 USB2 (or lower) peripherals.

And the number that Windows RT has drivers for?

you can't make them have a 12" screen

You can if you attach an external display. The iPads can all mirror displays over VGA or HDMI.

then you claim that people don't want file management at all.

Most people do not, but if you really want to you can do that with an iPad using an application like iPhone Explorer. I can place files onto the iPad anywhere, and also take them off.

The iPad supports Windows networking

Yes.

can join Homegroups?

Use SkyDrive or an SMB share.

I expect that it can handle media servers just fine. I expect that it *can't* handle WMA/WMV codecs,

When you have as many applications as the iPad does, you would be pretty foolish to expect that would not be possible.

If the Surface Pro is a MBA competitor, even though the MBA doesn't have a touchscreen, stylus support,

The MBA supports Griffin style pads just like any PC.

the ability to remove or fold the keyboard out of the way entirely, or any of the other tablet features of Surface?

I am dubious how much those features will get used by people that bought the surface because it has a trackpad.

Windows 8 tablets (as opposed to Windows RT ones) are definitely still tablets;

Of course they are still tablets. I just don't see them being chosen over an iPad much, but I can see a number of cases where the Surface would be chosen over an Air or other PC laptop.

Here are some links. Overall debt.

Here

And here

Overdraft statistics:

Here

There's more; in fact there was a report just in the last week or two that I'm having trouble finding now about overdraft history (I think in the UK) showing iPhone owners as the most irresponsible spenders. It's really not surprising though: iPhones are trendy. Irresponsible people buy trendy things they can't afford. All iPhone users aren't irresponsible, obviously, but the irresponsible ones will go for the biggest, showiest bling for their buck.

What's funny is that Apple fans want to have it both ways: they want to be the most popular, but don't want to acknowledge that being the most popular always gets you a bunch of bandwagoners on board. I don't really care how popular it is; my beef with Apple lies elsewhere. But the failure to acknowledge the 'faddiness' of iPhones is about like failing to acknowledge that the Nintendo Wii was a pretty huge fad for a while, and lots of people just bought one because everyone else was buying one.

--Jeremy

I've already lived this with iTunes. I bought iFitness (more here. During an iOS upgrade there was some sort of issue and PC backup turned out to be corrupt and couldn't restore the apps. "No problem," I thought, "I downloaded all of these apps from the store, I can just re-download everything."

Nope, despite being one of the five best fitness apps it was pulled from the market for unknown reasons. Some claim it was banned for posting fake positive reviews, but that seems completely unnecessary considering how much praise iFitness received.

Because of that I no longer trust my phone or the "cloud" to keep my data safe.

That might be so, but it doesn't change the fact that it's only Android devices where it's enabled by default.

That's probably because the carriers are not able to enable it in iOS. So Apple - the only manufacturer of iOS devices - doesn't want it enabled in their phone, and the carriers are not able to do this. Android is more open, so either the phone manufacturers like Samsung and HTC can install it, or the carriers. So it's true, but it's only true because of the open nature of Android.

Hate to break it to you, but Apple has their own stuff built into the systems.
But because its closed source its harder to detect, and because it all goes back directly to Apple, embedded in all the other apple traffic, its much harder to spot.

http://theweek.com/article/index/214437/is-your-iphone-spying-on-you
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/04/iphones-camera-spying
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/your-iphone-spying-you-al-franken-questions-steve-jobs-2779484.html

I believe VLC was on IOS, I think it is probably is still possible to get on jailbroken devices. Basically Apple decided that GPL and apples terms and conditions are incompatible. http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/01/vlc-ios-removed-app-store

You are 100% incorrect about HDMI mirroring on the iPad 2.

You're right. I just did some research, and I stand corrected. I had no idea this had changed.

Apparently, Steve Jobs credits teachers for pushing Apple to backtrack on the previous hdmi-drm scheme.

But really? Do you really think it's the teachers that changed his mind? Or was it the fact that some Android phones were coming out with no DRM on their hdmi connection?

And yes, that last statement is another "theoretical claim" on my part. I actually have no way to know what was in Steve Jobs mind at the time. For all I know, Steve Jobs doesn't consider the android tablet a strong contender either

You are 100% incorrect about HDMI mirroring on the iPad 2.

You're right. I just did some research, and I stand corrected. I had no idea this had changed.

Apparently, Steve Jobs credits teachers for pushing Apple to backtrack on the previous hdmi-drm scheme.

But really? Do you really think it's the teachers that changed his mind? Or was it the fact that some Android phones were coming out with no DRM on their hdmi connection?

And yes, that last statement is another "theoretical claim" on my part. I actually have no way to know what was in Steve Jobs mind at the time. For all I know, Steve Jobs doesn't consider the android tablet a strong contender either

Someone missed the news break.

The iPod was designed to sell macs and failed to do so and eventually the Windows iTunes software was released.

The iPhone came out and could do the same things an iPod could do but also had apps and phone service.

Apple realized there were people who wanted to use apps on a non-phone device that was smaller and cheaper and made the iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch, as part of the overall scheme of things, does not need to exist to sell hardware. The iPod covered that already. The only benefit Apple has from the Touch version is to sell apps on it.

Next time you troll someone, check their user ID and note that I actually own two actual working MessagePads. I've followed Apple a long time, thanks.

I trolled nothing. And you have nothing on me. I have an Apple 1, which I have had since I got it in 1976.

If you know Apple as well as you say you do, you would have realized that I was speaking not about a specific product or products; but rather in general terms.

And the iPod started the "switcher" revolution, which continues to this day. Hardly a failure.

Offering it on Windows just fanned the flames (significantly, I'll admit).

And your "Apple realized" comment speaks to your overall arrogance. You are not privvy to Apple's marketing or product roadmaps. How could you presume to know that "Apple realized" that people wanted a non-phone iPhone? I'd say more like Apple had planned the iPod Touch from the beginning, and launched it when it became prudent to do so.

You're pretty fucking stupid (and I meant every virulent word of that) if you have been "following Apple" for any length of time and sincerely believe that app sales are but a blip on Apple's bottom line.

So, it seems that it is you, not I, that needs to watch the news...

First you have to save it to iCrud, then email it to a service, that service converts it into Sanskrit

Ha Ha. Except that in reality I either email a file to myself directly from an application, or I simply pull the file from the application directory when I next sync the device with a computer.

This is hyperbole, but it demonstrates what the GP means, it is difficult and backwards getting data to and from the Ipad

First, I have been emailing files to myself for a long time and using that means is not onerous.

Second, pulling stuff after a sync is only one step removed from the USB approach - and a number of applications provide WebDAV access via Bonjor, so getting files off is as simply as browsing your device. That's also pretty easy.

Wow, in November. I mean my Linux PC has been able to connect to any PnP printer for 3 years now.

That's pretty unimpressive considering how long such things have been around. But it begs the question, why do you and others continue to cling to the past? Building up a new platform right takes time, and time has shown to be healing the problems you raise today. You can't see the forest for the trees, indeed you insist to stop and examine every tree and proclaim there is no way around it for the tree is far too solid to be moved. Apple steps around it and proceeds...

Except if you have Flash, or too much Javascript or a

Hi, you're on Slashdot - as a result I can be as pedantic as I like. And so at this juncture I note that the phrase was "reach any website". I can in fact "reach any website" regardless of content - now some proprietary content may not play, but more often than not it works in iOS because people realize now that many people may be browsing the site using only open technologies. Funny, Linux supporters used to be keen about supporting open technologies - I guess those days have passed, kind of a shame really.

Furthermore, you are behind the times yet again, because yet another of your impassible trees has been stepped around via Skyfire.

As for "Too much Javascript" - Really? Come on, I've never seen a case where that was an issue. Give us a real example of that.

Calling people "haters" does not make your points valid, in fact it makes you look childish and moronic.

I'd say calling people "Childish and moronic" is pointing the brush straight at yourself. Labeling someone an "Apple Hater" is an accurate assessment of a particular form of dementia found online and on Slashdot in particular, where an otherwise rational and technical astute person loses all ability to research facts and posts anything as long as they think it harms Apple's image.

Myself, I prefer to find what is good and bad about a thing and provide an accurate assessment. I am about accurate information, not support for or detraction of any platform just because of who makes it.

Now when can an Ipad connect to my Canon Camera

Um, today? You should really watch out when using the term moron, when you can't get basic facts right yourself. In your response, be very careful not to embarrass yourself further on this point - I gave you fair warning as I already know what your natural response will be. I ask that you look and think before you place that foot again.

load music onto my Creative MP3 player,

From a device that already has a music player and is portable... I see.

Nice laundry list of things 5% of the population want to do. Over time, you'll be able to (or actually you could do about any of it if you jailbreak).

Oh, there's that whole jailbreak thing you Apple Haters utterly forget about, because it destroys any point you have - so you pretend it's not a real option despite the fact millions of people opt to use it that way.

So the 5% of the

They've always had this feature, see?
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/humor-ipad-printing-simple/

I'd rather be able to charge things with standard USB ports, cables, backup batteries, etc, as they were intended, than charge with Apple-approved chargers 2x as fast.

That sounds nice until you consider that it takes almost 8 hours to fully charge an iPad over a USB port. I'd rather plug it in for 5 hours to the Apple charger than wait so long.

This actually exploits the Adobe PDF plugin to accomplish what it needs. It seems Apple's concerns over Adobe are well founded. I don't imagine this will function past the next iOS upgrade however.

Funny thing about it, it’s using a loophole in Adobe’s PDF format. Simply put, the new jailbreak is somewhat courtesy of Adobe, how convenient.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/08/breaking-jailbreakmecom-jailbreaks-idevice/