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How Apple Had a Spectacular Year
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."'
The ipad, the ipad screen, the ipad power on/off button - these are all new, innovative and revolutionary technologies for slashdot and other apple fanbois.
The reason Apple is hard to predict future wise is because they are a fashion company. For some reason Mac fans hate that idea but it is the truth. They don't just sell technology, they sell FASHIONABLE technology. Their gadgets are cool to own. That's wonderful for Apple and their investors presently because their gadgets are cool. That not only means they sell a lot, but that they can sell them for a higher margin than normal. Fashion doesn't obey the extreme price sensitivity that regular electronics does. Doesn't mean they can charge anything, but means they can charge a lot more than normal, all of which is pure profit.
However the risk is that fashion is one of the most fickle things there is. What is cool now has no bearing on what is cool tomorrow. Something can become cool and remain cool for a decade or more, or it can become cool and then be forgotten about in a month. What that means is that for a company that plays in fashion there are two big things they have to contend with in terms of making high profits:
1) How long a product stays cool. Does it stay trendy long enough for you to make a killing, or does it go out of style before you've recouped your R&D and production costs?
2) Can you successfully introduce the next cool thing? When things shift can you be on the crest of that wave and introduce the next "gotta have" hip, fashionable product and keep making money, or will you miss it?
In Apple's case, well who knows? They've been amazingly successful lately. They've had very few products that haven't done well, and more than a few products that have done extremely well. However not but 12 years ago they were in rather dire straights, having difficulty moving products, needing help from a competitor (MS invested in Apple back in the 90s to keep them solvent). It could go many ways. They could continue to be strong, continue to dictate what is fashionable in consumer electronics. They could stagnate and continue to sell devices, but either not as many or not at the same margins and do fine, but see a big profitability and stock price drop. They could completely miss the boat and get outdone and see their market collapse and be back in to a dire situation again.
There's no way of knowing and it is a more volatile situation than many. While it is true any company can move up or down profit wise, you get some like IBM that are pretty stable and you have pretty good long term indications on. Good chance they aren't going to take off, also a good chance they aren't going to plummet.
"I cannot recall a vendor that has put up as many roadblocks to creating applications as Apple has. They make you buy their SDK. They make you buy a license to publish software on their device."
While ranting at least get the facts straight. The SDK is free. The IDE is free, too, by the way. You have to pay $99 to register for distributing apps on iPhone and iPad but zero for creating desktop applications.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
They managed to get gullible fools to pay a grand for a netbook. Business-wise that's a success.
So you work for Motorola I take it? I've never in my life heard someone say 'I like Motorola better than X'. Never.
Actually, no, its just that you don't realize that most people equate Easier to Better. Anything that makes my life easier overall is better for me. I'm not sure how you can not understand that. I realize you think people need to dick around with their computer all day long, but the rest of us actually want to get shit done. I don't want to spend my day at a sh prompt, I want to get my work done, go home and go fishing/camping with my family. You go ahead and dick around in your moms basement with Linux and your favorite porno site.
No they don't. Get a clue. Everything you need to develop OS X apps comes with every single mac sold. The iPhone/iPad SDK can be downloaded for free and used at no cost. You have to pay to publish to the app store. It is an intentional barrier to entry, it helps slow down a tiny bit of the cruft.
You can also run any app you want on your phone, but I admit, it does cost $99 a year to do so. Sucks for you, $99 for me is about 15 minutes worth of work time so I could really care less, and considering the first app I've made returned that money to me in 3 days, well, once again, I could care less. Sorry your poor/cheap/bitchy/whatever. I'm not, and don't really care.
Wait one fucking minute? You're telling me Apple doesn't do things out of the goodness of its heart? You mean they are running a for profit business? Those fucking assholes.
Yea, you mean like ... when x86 surpassed what they were using? I hate when companies pick the superior product rather than blindly preaching about how great their inferior version is. They just used the best chips at the time, Intel made better chips than anything PPC when the jumped and the future of PPC was getting worse due to the makers backing out of it.
You think using OS X is like using KDE on FreeBSD? Have you ever used OS X? You're comparing a go-kart to a Porsche ... okay, maybe its more like a Pento to an Audi, but they aren't even anywhere NEAR the same class of GUI. One doesn't suck, the other one does, and people pay for the one that doesn't suck, with a smile on their face.
Apple != Dell. NONE of their hardware is cheap in any sense. It is expensive to buy and is quality hardware. If you want cheap crap, buy a Dell, thats fine, but calling Apple hardware cheap is utterly retarded in every way.
For all the rest of your 'nobody does' coments:
Citation needed or STFU.
People use Linux because they like to tinker and use zero cost software.
People use Windows because it comes with their PC and the apps they want to use run on it.
People use OS X because they enjoy it.
Rather than sitting around bashing it, maybe you should figure out why people like it, you'll make MUCH more progress. Your little temper tantrums are not productive for your cause.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager