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My answer to this is WRONG!!!!

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

I am not saying that you can throw your DLSR away but quite simply when phones are good enough for what this guy says then they are good enough for 99% of people who take pictures. That doesn't leave much audience left except for snobs and a few pros. Thus if they want to get any of that 99% they can't only be screwing around with ISO type features and need to find some wins for the average person even if it somehow involves ISO in the background.

A simple test would be to walk around grabbing everyone in a 10 block radius and asking them to define ISO as it relates to a camera. That will then be the true test of what features are important.

"Belfiore also showed a new notification center for Windows, which puts a user's notifications in an Action Center menu that can appear along the right side, similar to how notifications work in Apple OS X"

Yosemite's revamped Notification Center

Windows 10 Build 9860 - Notification Center, Animations, PC

I've been a Mac user for 20+ years now and an iPhone user since 2007. Quite frankly, the hardware and software has never been better from my own experience. Go do a Google search and you'll quickly find that every new software release Apple has put out is "the worst ever." Same goes for hardware. Every time Apple has had a keynote, there have been torrents of negative reactions about how they're losing their way and going downhill. "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." Remember that?

• MobileMe (2008): outages for days at a time, push services not working, and a formal apology. Keep in mind, people were paying for this service.
• iPhone 4 and "antenna-gate"
• Mac OS X 10.2.8, which killed networking entirely for a lot of users and was quickly pulled (this was 10 years before iOS 8.0.1)
• The Snow Leopard bug that wiped all your user data.
• iPhone power adapter prongs breaking off (2008)
• The hockey puck mouse

Those are just a few. The point is, over all Apple's QA is improved dramatically. The problem is that the iPhone is far more popular than anything else Apple has ever made. It's not that the software has gone downhill; it's that there is far more scrutiny on it -- particularly in the media. "It just works" is truer today than it ever has been.

""Chromebook's have had a good run thus far in the history, and most-recently they've had a stellar year of sales – famously beating out Apple's iPad."

That's great except that the claim that Google Chromebooks "overtook" Apple in U.S. education is false.

You lost all credibility when you quoted a link to that rag called apple insider. That site is a cesspool of apple fanboi's stroking each other.

""Chromebook's have had a good run thus far in the history, and most-recently they've had a stellar year of sales – famously beating out Apple's iPad."

That's great except that the claim that Google Chromebooks "overtook" Apple in U.S. education is false.

Based on IDC's reported numbers, Apple's U.S. education sales of Mac and iPads were not only larger than the corresponding, combined shipments of Android and Chrome OS products, but the "slight lead" Apple had over Google was a margin 172.6 percent greater than the unit differential that Garrahan and Bradshaw directed attention to in their article.

Additionally, Chromebooks are not even Apple's most significant competitor in eduction, nor are Chromebooks a fledgling new initiative; Google's Chromebook initiative originated before the iPad, it just has never gained any real traction as a product.

You are correct. However Apple developed the CarPlay spec with QNX's assistance. Basically Apple copied the MirrorLink API and made their own version but they had to make sure QNX had a CarPlay plugin since the majority of cars today run on QNX. So to dismiss the QNX base is to deny that without QNX's help CarPlay would still be a concept instead of a shipping product. While the phone is handling the interface QNX is still coordinating the connection. Ford is likely switching to QNX at least partly to get CarPlay into their cars.

microsoft should buy blackberry. MS has lots of marketing ability

Sure, I mean it worked so well when they bought Danger.

Uh.. I thought companies making profits was evil. Shouldn't we be applauding Intel for not making any money?

There's not making any money, and then there's hemorrhaging billions in a vain effort to break into the market.

And for the record, I don't happen to think that making profits is inherently evil.

I'd much rather live in a world with a made-up "Intel monopoly" that doesn't exist where Intel is literally the largest contributor to the Linux kernel that isn't a Linux-specific company (look it up, Intel is usually #3 right after the Linux foundation & Red Hat) vs. the very real ARM monopoly of intellectual property minefields, backdoored binary firmward blobs, opaque drivers, and poor support.

Try to stay on topic.

Seriously, Apple sold 5.5 million intel-pc's.... It's nothing on total pc sales.

It's enough to put them in the top five PC makers, worldwide. If you count iPads as computers, Apple is the largest computer manufacturer in the world with a 14% share.

Am I the first to point out iOS8 fixes this.

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

Apple products are designed using focus groups

They've testified under oath to the contrary during some of the recent patent litigation. Your whole comment is predicated on an untruth.

Because no one has ever lied to a court under oath before.

Apple products are designed using focus groups

They've testified under oath to the contrary during some of the recent patent litigation. Your whole comment is predicated on an untruth.

But it is.

Apple has owned the profit margin for years. It's not only this one quarter.

The memo you missed is that after some fracturing among the various open versions, they got together and formed the OpenZFS group, which does some sharing of plans and code as updates are made. Since that time, the open-source versions have matured from promising curiosities into really great implementations. The older open-source version for OS X has died, and been replaced by a derivative of the Linux version, which is a strong piece of work.

You're right, of course.

When I looked into ZFS on OS X as a way to do an ultra-fault-tolerant RAID for a friend's massive media collection (after I painstakingly recovered the data on his Buffalo RAID, as per my original post), the state of the state wasn't very promising, and so I ultimately punted on the idea. But it most certainly looks like the situation has MUCH improved, thanks in large part to the efforts of the OpenZFS Group.

Maybe now Apple will come around and take another look at full-support of ZFS, like what was going to happen in Snow Leopard Server, before Apple got cold feet.

Fortunately, Apple tends to listen to its Userbase pretty well, and there appears to be renewed interest among Users for full-on ZFS Support in OS X. At least we can hope...

At least OpenZFS is now compatible with the newly-released OS X 10.10 (Yosemite).

a couple corrections to your inaccuracies (intentional?):

You tell me. Are you intentionally ignoring the claims from this security researcher? Or was your ignorance unintentional?

* iphones back up automatically to icloud.

This point needs some explaining. Which parts get backed up? Plus, I'm not sure how it contradicts what I've said already. Are you implying that the default is not to continue to upload pictures to iCloud once you've uploaded at least one?

* the exploit in #celebgate #thefappening was taking advantage of weak passwords and/or reset questions. it's not that the infrastructure was insecure, it was user error in selecting weak passwords / reset questions.

That's a pretty lame defense. Can you point to an analysis or an explanation to back that up? I've heard the same denial by the CEO of Apple on Charlie Rose, but I didn't believe it. Our infrastructure is secure, is not enough of an explanation. Security is not some binary concept. Security is a very layered concept.

For example, weak passwords can be prevented at the input level (although obviously, not all weak passwords can be prevented, that is why you rely on multiple layers). Accounts can be notified when someone else is trying to get into your account with an incorrect password. Accounts can lock out untrusted ip addresses or untrusted applications when there is the suspicion of a targeted brute force attack on that account. Back up email addresses can be used for password recovery. Even reset questions can be crafted very carefully, and then only unlock an account through the cell phone number of the person in question (after all, all those users who were compromised were iPhone users, so Apple knew their phone numbers).

* in response apple has widely rolled out two-factor. some people will always set their passwords to be '12345', but at least with 2FA being very easily accessible then people have less and less of an excuse.

Didn't they already have two-factor authentication already? If not, the problem is worst than I had thought. Even Twitter, a company widely known for its lack of security, deployed two factor authentication last year (not that everybody is going to use it, but like you said, people will have less of an excuse at least).

Are we good now? kthx.

Security is about hardening the weakest links in the chain. Again, you have nothing to brag about if your phone has the best encryption with all the latest buzzwords that go with it, if all your naked pictures end up on an insecure cloud infrastructure as soon as you take them.

"Especially when it doesn't perpetuate 'gates' scandals for each iPhone release for a brand that I dislike.". FTFY...

AntennaGate. Watergate. ScuffGate. MapsGate. It would be amusing if it wasn't so embarrassing to see how each 'side' falls over themselves to do this each release cycle.

The actual number of people who reported a problem to Apple? 9.

BendGate

Streisand Effect

US is a corporatocracy - and Apple has very deep pockets and very loyal customers (who often also have deep pockets) with long memories - nobody in D.C. wants that combination against them.

fact: apple makes money when you buy the product. they do not make money by tracking how you use the product.

yes they do, iAds uses targeted advertising. here is just one example of where they leverage user data for targeted advertising.

fact: goog

yes we all know what google does, and that is irrelevant for this discussion. you mentioning them is an attempt to deflect from what apple does so you can point to them and say "but google is worse", we already know that.

Then you'll love Apple's iOS 8 random MAC plans Wonder why this isn't on Android yet? (Other than apps that require root, etc) Yes, I'm aware of Apple's Beacon network that is in competition with those that run MAC tracking software. That can be turned off.

Though even in the smartphone area they are waning in popularity which was inevitable

Well, except for the fact the are waxing instead...

I wonder if releasing lager phones which have been popular, will increase or decrease iPhone sales? HMMMMMMM.

If the NSA wants your credit card number they're not going to get it from your phone. If law enforcement has a warrant they'll just ask your credit card company.

In the particular case of the TouchID data, the actual fingerprint image is only stored in RAM,and while it's in RAM, it's AES encrypted with a one-time session key known only to the TouchID hardware, the CPU does not have this key and cannot read it, it's stored in a secure enclave and made available only to the TouchID hardware. The collection of approved fingerprints is stored, encrypted, in a reduced and vectorized format that cannot be used to reconstruct the original fingerprint image.

The TouchID hardware does the actual work of fingerprint comparison, on an ASIC that doesn't share memory space with the CPU and only communicates with the CPU through the secure enclave.

I predict it will be less than a year before law enforcement decides to shut down all cell phones of people they disagree with (like protesters).

They'd have to go through all of the trouble of identifying the individuals and gaining cooperation of the carriers/vendors. When they're close enough to identify individuals by name, why go to the trouble of locking phones? They'll just do what they do now and arrest them.

I predict it will be less than a year before hackers figure out how to brick or otherwise damage cell phones.

This depends on how the lock is implemented. iOS and Android already have some remote lock/wipe features that haven't been heavily hit by hackers. Mass phone wipes haven't been a thing yet. I'm sure people will try and I'm sure some will succeed (likely in controlled circumstances), but identity establishment and crypto are both well-known in the industry.

Because, as usual, when you try to pass a legal solution to a technical problem, you will introduce new technical problems, and if law enforcement can abuse something they will.

This is hardly a technical problem, as it's been solved and implemented in various forms for years (e.g., iOS7). This is a policy problem, and a legal solution is quite appropriate. For example, carriers have blocked Samsung from including an activation lock. This kind of thing is what the legal solution solves by taking the decision out of the vendors' (who care about products and reputation) and carriers' (who care about profits) hands. The decision seems pretty reasonable, as existing legislation/policy has resulted in measurable drop in device theft for those devices.

This will be misused, it's only a matter of time. And, since manufacturers will decide to make the phone the same for everywhere, we're all fucked because of a decision in California. And I don't trust that the carriers won't brick a phone you own if your bill is late, instead of just cancelling your service they'll kill your phone.

Existing lock options are done through the phone vendors, not the carriers. If the carriers did this to your personally-owned device, it is property damage. And if the government wanted to deny an individual cell service, they can do it now (and have been able to for all of cellular history) with a warrant through the carrier. The government/carrier has always been able to shut off your service.

back then it wasn't. other phones at the time might have had better specs on specific items, nobody was making a similar item, particularly with those physical dimensions.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/27/rim_thought_apple_was_lying_about_original_iphone_in_2007.html

or google for other articles.

I serve a city of over 15k so i think my anecdotes are a little more weighted than your single office of 11 employees. I also have headlines on my side since, just as i said, even Apple sales are down and I would argue the why is obvious, those that want one already have one and see NO point in getting another because it either 1.- Does what they need it to, since I have found tablet users needs do NOT require much in the way of hardware, or just as likely 2.- its gathering dust somewhere because they can't find a good use for it.

Not to long ago i thought I would die laughing as i saw a hipster chick struggling to drive a shopping cart while using an iPad as a grocery list and I called out "trying to justify that several hundred you spent on that thing aren't ya?" and the look of anger mixed with foolishness told me I nailed it. Tablets are good for a few niches...medical, where its "check the box and sign your name" forms, inventory management, and of course being a glorified video player. Those jobs it does quite well, problem is not a whole lot of the public requires those jobs very often, even the video player doesn't get used much as they are either at home where there is a big screen or out where they are busy doing other things. But at the end of the day numbers don't lie and even Apple is seeing slumping sales because like the netbook its a fad.

Why was I modded troll?

I too thought Apple was "buying" clean energy. But it turns out they have actually built a solar plant at their datacenter along with fuel cell backups.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/05/17/apples_icloud_data_center_to_use_100_renewable_energy_by_end_of_year

http://www.cleanenergyactionproject.com/CleanEnergyActionProject/CS.Apple_Maiden_iCloud_Data_Center___Hybrid_Renewable_Energy_Systems_Case_Studies.html

This article peaked my interest though:
http://www.imore.com/apple-google-microsoft-come-out-clean-greenpeace-cloud-rankings-amazon-dirty

How exactly do they measure energy consumption from a particular power source? If the data center is grid connected the current will flow based on path of least resistance, loads and other factors. How can they be sure a load used 20% coal 30% nuclear and 50% natural gas? Did this information come from the power companies who can estimate the demands and current flows based on grid load? I read the linked Greenpeace report and nothing was made clear about how this was done.

using secret ink so the paper blank until you hold it over a candle. We used to do that as kids.

I suggest, since they are going back to "old school tech" they should use the "Mission impossible" reel to reel taprecorder that catches alight once played. Maybe Apple are working on a digital version.

"What he means, I think, is that most computer companies make "consumer grade" machines and "commercial grade" machines. I've not has an Asus or Lenovo, but I've had Toshiba, HP, and Dell. With respect to Dell, I've had both consumer and commercial grade machines, built to higher specifications."

i have owned and used packard bell, HP, dell, compaq(before hp bought em), and a lenovo. the first computer i bought with my own income was a packardbell 80486 dx2 75mhz. that was built like a tank, and was about as useful as a paperweight. it took the thing about 40 minutes to encode a 4 minute song to mp3. and yes i did that on that machine. anyways that was the most reliable piece of hardware i ever owned. it spent 4 years as a desktop and about 11 years as a server, though the hdds failed on it 3 times in the same timeframe. my laptop a compaq pentium 120, ran for 13 years until i hid it in a dumpster, but it had the F00F bug so was never reliable. from there on all my parts lasted less long, the quality went down. my first dell laptop lasted about 5 years less than the pentium120 and my recent alienware rig had a motherboard failure in 3 weeks and a psu issue another month later. that makes it qualify as my least reliable pc ever. alienware laptops aren't even designed by the main fab producers for dell, and still a bad MB. anyways consumer and commercial grade isn't real at dell, and i doubt it is real elsewhere. if you research parts you can build a desktop that is fast and will last a decade, and for only a little more than the 'fast enough for windows8/debianwheezy' laptop. seriously the default WM for debian wheezy is slower than windows 8 i timed them. on the same computer.

" Most recently I purchased a Dell Latitude 5000 series laptop--in Dell's explanation of this computer in comparison to the 7000 series, it gave the 5000 series a build quality of 3 out of 4 stars, it gave the 3000 series 2 out of 4 stars (still Latitude--which implies the consumer grade stuff is 1 out of 4 stars for build quality). The consumer grade machines seem to be designed to last about 2 years or less. The commercial grade machines are designed to last more like 4 years."

i have a laptop that was built like trash grade and it has been more reliable than alienware. of course its running linux with a lighter wm than the default one in wheezy... but it is going to last me another 6 years, as all it does is internet when main rig is in install/update/backup discs mode, and is used as a second layer of virus detection and removal for windows machines not all of which belong to me, and i have no say as to the os on those windows machines.

"The problem is, you have to pay a premium for the commercial grade machines."

there was a day when a computer was $5,000 and was a calculator at massive size. remember the dx2 75mhz? it was about 100 times faster than the $5000 machine i am thinking of and can't recall the specs or useful links right now.

"With Apple, there is no "consumer grade" and "commercial grade"--they're all made to high specifications."

apple products are all one grade of materials. however, they are not any more immune to faulty boards caps etc. their parts are notorious for being high profit, http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/24/iphone-5s-5c-teardowns-suggest-199-183-build-costs-for-apple they buy $183 worth of parts sell it for $1,000 $600 of which the cell phone has you pay over 12 months roughly. the mac lineup is in a similar situation and really if apple gets the chips for that price i doubt samsung pays higher ditto with dell. apple gets by on reputation. they wouldn't have that reputation if they hadn't been in schools or have numerous graphics stuff like photoshop, and the new ipad commercial where they make a whole symphony from one ipad. windows can't buy that reputation. they are the 'buggy, but just works and can game too even if the people you game with

They did try and replace the file system around the time of the Intel switch. Got killed by licensing problems.
http://appleinsider.com/articl...

Yeah, that definitely shouldn't be overlooked. Apple has a bunch of web-facing apps of their own, implemented in a variety of technologies, including some WebObjects/Java stuff, and some SproutCore/JavaScript stuff. Both of those are essentially clones of portions of (and different generations of) Cocoa (fka NeXTSTEP, which is relevant to recall here, because the WebObjects clone is that old, despite the fact that one of the largest stores on the Internet, iTunes, is built on it).

Here's an interesting political history of WebObjects around the time we last heard from it. As strange as it may seem, there's still an active WebObjects development community despite it being essentially self-supported for nearly a decade, now. Many of the developers in that community were, previously, Objective C developers, and the ones that survived the transition to Java are language agnostics. I suspect they might welcome the opportunity to migrate to a Swift/Cocoa web stack.

It will take some while, but Apple has just made the first step to a "language mindshare" play in the web application space.

Motorola because having Jobs launch it would make big news, as it did. Jobs maybe wanted more licensees, or had something to prove to record companies

Please correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Apple claim that they had already started working on iphone concepts in 2005? If so, what were they doing looking for licensees? Also, what did Jobs have to prove to the record companies? By this point in time the ipod was almost synonymous with music players.

I mean the patents that they won with in a court of law. Leaving your opinion worthless.

Oh you mean like in Netherlands where the Dutch Supreme Court limited the applicability of that design patent, claiming prior art? Or maybe you meant UK where as a result of a High Court ruling Apple had to run ads saying Samsung had not infringed its rights? Apple's claims were also denied in several other courts across the globe but I'm not feeling like looking up all the references for you. The only courts which have ruled in favor of Apple are German and American (tbh that particular fiasco should have been classified as a mistrial what with the jury foreman's vested interest and the jurors getting manipulated). So which court of law were you talking about? I think I'll go with the British court, if that's alright with you.

The G1 iPhone wasn't even a smartphone. As it didn't have third party apps, there was no such thing as a bar on multitasking. iOS certainly was a multitasking OS even back then, and the in-built apps certainly multitasked.

If the iphone 1st gen wasn't a smartphone, how did it set the bar for smartphones like so many Apple fans continuously claim?
There definitely was a bar on multitasking for 3rd party apps and the only apps exempt from this bar were the pre-installed apps. While the OS itself supported multitasking just fine and jailbreaking an iphone gave it the ability to multitask, officially the bar on multitasking was lifted with the release of iOS 4.0 and iPhone 1st gen and iPhone 3G never had multitasking for 3rd party apps.

As for all Symbian phones, you yourself claim that Symbian was almost an embedded system with huge constraints wrt power and memory, with powerful hardware getting cheap enough and becoming a viable alternative as it did, the direction the industry headed in was inevitable. Apple releasing the iPhone was irrelevant since Apple wasn't the only one learning from the mistakes and missteps of every phone manufacturer on the planet, most phone manufacturers were learning and their designs were evolving in pretty much the same direction or did Apple design the iPhone in a vacuum with Jobs pulling a 'let there be light'?

Symbian definitely had some great ideas, every phone manufacturer (including Apple) learned a great deal from the experiments in UI design that went into making smartphones in the late 90s to the mid-2000s, Symbian, WinCE (with all its custom OEM skins) and Blackberry were all pioneers. Learning from others while you sit on the sidelines and then trying to push everyone off the playing field through legal shenanigans when they were the ones who did all the pioneering work is downright skulduggery but since it's Apple doing it and apparently Jobs' reality distortion field is still alive and kicking even after Jobs kicked the bucket so lets cheer the douchebags on!

Where do you get such misinformation? Apple deprecated the use of OpenSSL when it deprecated CDSA back in 2011 for OS X in favor of Common Crypto. At the time there was some mumblings about how Apple didn't like standards. And Apple has never used OpenSSL in iOS.

. . . although OS X provides OpenSSL libraries, the OpenSSL libraries in OS X are deprecated, and OpenSSL has never been provided as part of iOS.

Dunno about that. Keep in mind anything above 40% market share can be considered monopolistic. That is pretty much right where Apple is in the US: http://appleinsider.com/articl...

But hey, if you are okay with it, then that is fine. I was just making sure we didn't have a hypocrisy on our hands. To any publishers who may be reading: get on this!

Actually, Apple has a set of forbidden words. Macs don't crash or hang, they "unexpectedly quit" or "stop responding." Things are not "supported", they are "compatible." However nothing is incompatible--they just don't work with Macs.

Apple and it's users said the same thing when they were getting their ass handed to them in the PC market. Microsoft is the low end crap. It's fragmented over tons of hardware. It has security issues. Apple has a vertical structure that will win in the end. It's hilarious for those of us who suffered through the Apple of the late 90's to read this regurgitation of talking points...

Dude, your comment reads like it's from the late '90s. Since then, Microsoft has been largely stagnant, their tablet and phone offerings largely a failure, the "inevitable" Windows monopoly doesn't look so inevitable any more, and OS X's share has grown. Macbooks are a very large percent of laptop sales, even to enterprise, and if you count tablets as computers, Apple's worldwide market share is about 19.5%, bigger than HP and Dell combined. Not to mention Apple getting the lion's share of profits.

So it looks like vertical structure is doing pretty well. As for mobile, sure, lots of Android phones are being sold, many (most?) to people who are entering the smartphone market. But more people are switching from Android to Apple than the other way around, so despite the drop in smartphone market share, Apple is quite well-positioned to continue growing.

This brings me to another ideological point about the iPad with which I disagree. Google [google.com] and Microsoft [microsoft.com] publish the guidelines of their respective app stores. Apple, on the other hand, treats its App Store Review Guidelines as a trade secret and locks them behind a $99 per year paywall. Is there a public log of important changes to the Guidelines that I should be reading?

http://photos.appleinsider.com...

ow many iPhones have been released with alternate/paid search providers?

Anyone who is willing to outbid Google for being the default search engine for iOS devices is probably welcomed to do so.

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

No it's a bright line. Smart phones make phone calls. PDAs do not make phone calls. If you called a PDA a "smart phone" you would be wrong.

What could have been

...before smartphones existed, he pitched an idea to Apple that had in it the basic underpinnings of the now prolific mobile technology: a Newton PDA with embedded Qualcomm radio for cellular communication. The idea was rebuffed and Jacobs took his plan to now-defunct PDA maker Palm, which ultimately partnered with the company to create the Qualcomm pdQ.

Not sure it's luck, since Apple went out of its way to replace OpenSSL in 2011 because they didn't think it was secure enough. (Granted, their own replacement wasn't perfect, either, as seen by both this and the "goto fail" bug.)

Apple toady calls Samsung broken but.

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

Apple is not the problem. The patent system is.

Can't we agree that both are?

If you leave your car with the keys in the ignition, then it is partially your fault when someone climbs in and drives away. However, the person who stole the car is also to blame. It's not a valid defense to say "He left his keys in the car so it wasn't stealing."

If all Apple wanted was to make sure nobody else got patents on all this UI stuff, they simply could have fully published the details of how their phone worked, and nobody filing after that would be able to claim to have invented it. And I'm not a lawyer but I think Steve Jobs's public "one more thing" demos would have sufficed to make all those UI features unpatentable by anyone else.

But that wasn't enough for Apple. "Patented!" crowed Steve Jobs. Apple patented everything they thought they could get away with, including totally obvious stuff like squishing your fingers together to make things get smaller on the screen, and spreading your fingers wide to make things get bigger on the screen. Come on, that is totally obvious and there even was prior art on it. So we return to where we started: the USPTO is a problem because it let Apple patent obvious stuff, but Apple is part of the problem for trying to patent obvious stuff. (Fortunately the "pinch-to-zoom" patent was in fact invalidated, due to Samsung winning in court against Apple!)

Samsung is going to go scorched earth on this new lawsuit. Millions for defense and not one cent for tribute. And Samsung has the millions. I hope Samsung wins big and invalidates all of Apple's patents.

(And then, as long as I'm dreaming, Samsung can go invalidate Microsoft's mobile patents next.)

Ran across this link while poking around:
http://appleinsider.com/articl...

They do this every time. Gartner left out almost 4 million Apple sales. Those were actual sales, rather than 'shipped'. This happens every time, and we always find out later that Shipped from folks like Samsung != Sales from Apple.

Apple reports Sales. The others do not.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/03/03/gartner-ignores-apples-sales-numbers-reports-android-marketshare-doubled-ipad-in-2013

Again they are comparing Apple delivered to customer numbers and Android shipping wholesale numbers. Many of those are junk tablets that are never. In addition Apple reported higher numbers in an SEC regulated report that Gartner used, Apple says 74 million, Gartner used the figure of 70 million.

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

From http://appleinsider.com/articl...
"The most glaring inconsistency is a disconnect between Gartner's 70.4 million iPad sales and Apple's self-reported 74 million unit sales for 2013. From the first quarter — Apple's second fiscal quarter — to the fourth, the company reported iPad sales of 19.5 million, 14.6 million, 14.1 million and 26 million, respectively. The total: 74.2 million iPads sold during 2013. "

Note these numbers are reported by Apple on SEC filings, not on press releases.

They just released the patch for OS X, actually.

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

The problem for Apple management is, how to justify sitting on a vast hoard of cash instead of returning it to shareholders. There is simply no defensible way to spend $160BN developing the next generation of iDevices. Apple is currently getting rid of some of it through dividends and stock repurchases. But most major investors don't really want dividends nor to sell back their shares; they already have capital they don't know what to do with and just want it to grow as fast as possible. I am largely agreeing with your comment, except "don't do anything with the money" isn't really an option, let alone the best option. Personally I think it's endemic to our economy - wealth has become so concentrated that those who have it can't figure out any useful way to spend it, and those who would spend it don't have it, resulting in economic slowdown.

Same thing happened to Samsung. Here's a digital picture frame they made in 2005 and sold in 2006.

FTFY