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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."'
Lets call this what it is. . .Apple products SOLD in 2010.
I never bought into Applethink, and after every product annoucement I falsely predict they've finally blown it and nobody will "fall for it" this time. Meanwhile they're approaching $100e9 and probably wouldn't give my resume a second look. You win.
Why wouldn't you release the iPhone, a beefed up iPod + phone service, which gives you much larger profit margins, and having everyone who bought an iPod upgrade for a significant extra outlay? I'm confused.
Again, how does the iPad, which can't connect to a printer, run multiple apps at once, connect to most peripherals easily cannibalize your laptop sales? It's like saying when Sony introduces a new netbook or ultralight laptop model they are cannibalizing their other sales. This sounds like apple worship. Give credit where it is due, don't start acting like they are doing things no one else does with their business lines.
and where do they get 65 billion from? the market value is 250 billion+.
Do you know why they "don't care"? MARGINS!
Big, fat, juicy margins...nothing to do with start-ups.
Apple openly acknowledges that the iPhone is cannibalizing its iPods — and they don't seem to care
Should they care or should they celebrate? The iPhone offers a superset of iPod functionality and the iPhone generates greater profits.
No, it's an admission that most people buy laptop computers to access the Internet, play music and films.
Computer ownership accelerated when the Internet became popular. Hence it is the "killer application" for most users.
To stay extremely profitable you can't be in the race to the lowest price. This is where most other tech companies epically fail as they march forward on thinning margins until they go broke "making it up in volume".
As margins decline, you end up with capacitors that are substandard and covering up that fact as your customers leave in droves (DELL). Apple's success has always been about standing out from the rest of the Tech crowd, which allows them the comfort of profits most other companies would kill for. But most other companies love resting on their laurels (Microsoft) or attacking their customers (Oracle, SCO) in the drive to create margins.
What Apple does better than anyone else is taking existing ideas and making them better than anyone else. Slashdotters make fun of iPods, iPads and iPhones for being "lame", and not having the greatest specs, but they aren't Apple's customers, and Apple doesn't listen to them, and it shows up in the bottom line. For every slashdotter that cries "lame" there's a couple hundred average people saying "cool".
Before iPods, MP3 players existed, but Apple did it better (and held the price). Before iPhones, "smart phones" existed, but Apple did it better (and held the price). Before iPads, tablet computers existed but Apple did it better (and beat price expectations) (No table exists that is better even now).
Apple will find some other area that is lacking a polished product, introduce a iWhatever with a polish that is missing, and the slashdot community will cry "lame" once again. The price will be higher than "comparable" whatever, and Apple will sell gazillions in spite of what slashdot community thinks.
Apple knows how to make a profit where none seems to exist, in a market that looks like it is wallowing, in an economy that sucks. Apple will become the largest market cap company in the next 12 - 18 months. And slashdotters will say "lame" and still not get it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There are already a few "office" equivalents in the App store...one of them written by Apple called iWork... You can buy the individual apps for $10 each. There are also a couple of 3rd party equivalents.
If MS decided to write an office varient for iPad, they could certainly put it in the App Store.
Same for Photoshop. There is already a version of Photoshop in the app store. It really only supports very very basic photo manipulation and isn't the full photoshop suite, but there is nothing about photoshop itself that would prevent it's inclusion in the App Store if Adobe decided to put it there.
Industrial product design matters. Marketing too. I'm not a fan of Apple's policies, but they get quite a few things right while the competition seems mired in stupidity and copycat disease land.
- Decent quality control (iphone4 attena aside)
- Great marketing/PR/Hype
- Extremely nice looking products
Apple does these things well and makes great devices. They now even have an army of good developers thanks to a platform that caters to people willing to spend money. In the meantime, the competition seems to sometimes innovate, and other times gets stuck copying, confused, and greedy. Looking at the Nexus S -- it looks to be almost a clone of an IPhone 3G? What is Samsung thinking? At the same time Samsung has the tablet which looks to be pretty nice and more original. Verizon is a great example too: first they hyped the Droid to huge success, but then they decided to start putting Bing on phones and open their own app store.
Still, it's great that Google seems to be adding serious competition to this market, but they seem to fail to grasp that they CAN'T hand control back to carriers and win this race. Giving up on the Nexus One right out of the gate was a bad move. Consumers dont want to go back to the flip phone days with $2.99 30 second vcast ringtones.
Apple will see continued success due to all these issues regardless, at least in the near future. However if Google steps up it's game and does the following:
1) Streamlined patch/update process
2) Making manufacturer skins removable
3) limitation on how manufacturers and carriers can lock down devices. (ie no forcing specific apps on the user).
That's when things will get interesting. If Google can silence the fragmentation trolls, and keep the carrier greed in check, there is hope for this market, and especially a bright future for consumers. There is even room for carriers to still add value. But if they FORCE it on people, they will all lose to Apple.
meep
Apple's success is not about new technology (tablets and smartphones already existed before the iPad and the iPhone, respectively); it is about creating a new market -- they transform a niche market into a maintream market. They have been incredibly successful in doing that because: 1) they make technology accessible and, more importantly, 2) they create awareness. They manage to create awareness not only with excellent marketing but, and this is their very unique advantage over any other company, because all eyes are on Apple. Whether it's tech media or maintream mass media, whether it's the Web, TV, newspaper or radio, every media is following and reporting Apple's every move. Any company can make technology accessible, very few, if any, can create awareness like Apple can.
I am a Opensource promoter, RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) and an all around techie. Awhile ago, I wrote a sensible article on my four month experience as a MacBook Pro user and received viscous comments like, "The almighty doesn't even get reviews like this from the pope."
I feel very vindicated by this article and have but one thing to say, "IN YOUR FACE, I TOLD YOU SO!"
ok... sorry, that was immature, but the Apple stuff is innovative, solid, and amazing. If you are still not convinced, go down to your local OfficeMax and spend some time with a droid tablet or try to edit AVCHD Video on WIndows 7 PC. Really, I am not an Apple fan-boy. I am just really busy and need my technology to work NOW!
You think THAT was something, wait till they release iPad nano. It's gonna blow you away.
It was due for release a few months back, but there were problems with the stickers intended to cover up the old "iPod Touch" nameplate.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's better for you to cannibalize your own products, than for your competitors to do it for you. There was a recent quote from El Jobso (can't find off hand, sorry) saying that (in his absence) Apple just sat on the top end of the market with the Mac, got greedy, failed to innovate, and suffered. Their success with the ipod seems to support this. They cover nearly the whole market while still remaining the high end brand.
That is Apple's biggest innovation with the iPhone, and they know it (see Mac App Store). The App Store is why the iPod touch has such high appeal, why people put up with AT&T's horrible service with the iPhone, and why the iPad is so versatile.
On the flip side, Android Market is crippled by the requirement for 3G service devices (ie, no Android iPod Touch competitor any time soon), a drive to push free/ad-driven sales model and a lack of curation (see DVD Jon's appeal to Google to put some quality/curation into the Android Market). As a consequence numerous other Android app markets are cropping up, adding confusion and complexity to the act of developing and buying apps for that platform.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I rode aapl from less than $100 to $200 in 2007 and stuck with aapl all through the crash to $89 in 2008, and even used it as an opportunity to load up. It was a great ride, but the time has come to reduce my exposure. I am not a smart investor, I just got lucky. It's finally time to cash in the chips and walk out of the casino. Apple may continue to rise, but a wise investor once said, "a dollar not made is still a lot better than a dollar lost."
My two cents analysis that Apple has a lot of potential, but Apple carries a lot of risk. I am not sure if the market can sustain an Apple valued as highly as Exxon for example. Apple is a very difficult company to value because it is very difficult to predict future earnings. A lot of it depends on the public's reception of Apple's latest gadget. If the gadget is a new type of device, it is very difficult to accurately predict its acceptance. I had doubts about the iPad, but am glad it is selling like gang busters.
I am neither a fan boy nor an Apple hater. I am just an ordinary guy trying to get a good return on his savings after the banks cut interest rates to nil. Apple seemed like a good investment at the time. Which brings to mind another risk. If interest rates on savings rise again, expect people like me to take money out of the market, which will reduce share prices. I will keep an eye on Apple though. If it has another sharp drop in the next couple of years, I may use it as an opportunity to load up again.
And, no one else makes things remotely close.
But let's make it clear: Apple is a systems company.
The fact that you are trying to figure out whether it's a software or a hardware company means you don't understand systems-level design.
They don't make Silicon, they make CPU's. The don't make CPU's, they make motherboards. They don't make motherboards, they make the computer. They don't make computers, they make a system. Etc..
I dunno. What will a Mac do if that AVCHD video did not come straight from the camera?
I can tell you what it does with MPEG2 that touched any sort of intermediate source. It BARFS.
Unix indeed...
I am a Certified Solaris Admin. That doesn't mean that I am not a Linux Zealot. ...and I am not sure I would want to edit video on ANY laptop.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just a quick comment from a former Apple employee; most people are familiar with the old saw, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." I.e., instead of trying to get something perfect, you should get it good enough and then ship it. Within Apple the perspective is slightly different. There, it's more along the lines of, "Good enough is the enemy of great." I.e., good enough isn't acceptable -- for an Apple-branded product we're going to look for the next level of polish and care that differentiates our stuff from everybody else's.
I think this comes from the fusion of NeXT and Apple engineers. Most people recognize that NeXT brought a heckuva foundation for Apple's next generation operating system to the table in 1997. However, few people recognize what Apple brought to the table -- an engineering culture that regards rough edges as anathema. There was plenty of NeXT software, but much of it was very rough; it wasn't easy to pick up for the new user, was missing essential features, crashed often, or all of the above. This was a direct consequence of the fact that Foundation and AppKit allowed you to create apps quickly and easily, but then as a software developer you still have to trap errors, check for corner cases, add documentation, tweak the UI design so that common tasks are easy to accomplish, etc. This can easily take three to four times as long or more as standing up the initial core functionality. Most NeXT apps never went through this stage and so they lacked the polish for mass market users. Once the NeXT technology went through the polishing process (and it took four years before the first consumer release, really five years and 10.2 Jaguar before it was truly ready for my mom!), the new OS was a completely different animal from OpenStep 4.2 -- much more polished and suitable for mass-market consumers.
--Paul
Enron lied their way to success. Apple created products which were successful. By lying, you normally mean that Apple didn't sell what they claim they sold, or a product doesn't have an advertised functionality that Apple claimed. As far as I can tell, those were real customers who bought real products, and aside from a few minor glitches, the products generally do what they are advertised to do. Apple certainly isn't any worse than other tech companies on failing to deliver advertised functionality.
If you don't like Apple's products don't buy them and stop worrying about all the lemmings.
You're sort-of right, but I think you're missing the point really. I can buy a designer shirt for silly money, but find just as good a shirt for cheaper else where. Same quality fabric, same quality stitching, nice designs etc. etc.. Most Apple hardware can't be found for the same quality elsewhere - really. Most of the time, if you pick a popular Apple product and try to find a match with equal design desirability, equal software features, equal durability etc., you might come up with something marginally cheaper, but not a difference worth worrying about.
Well, yeah. It's news that, in the middle of a recession, one of the major tech companies is experiencing amazing success and behaving like a startup. Are people not supposed to report on Apple's success because you expect it?
Just because your grandma can figure it out does not make it better.
Um, yes it does, when you are in the business of selling widgets you want Grandma to be able to use.
If, on the other hand, you are so mired in zealotry that you can't see that if Grandma can't get a widget to work, a widget that is intended for the mass market, it puts a serious limitation on that widgets eventual success, well, then, we don't have much to discuss.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The first time Steve Jobs left Apple the company still managed to survive, but barely, it was a different market after all. Today computers really are for everyone, so I'm not sure if it would have gone the same way.
However I doubt you understand the nature of Apple, its products and customers. Steve Jobs is an icon, but very few customers actually know or care about him. He's not the one that makes Apple products cool and interesting. The designers and marketers make Apple what it is. Steve Jobs is a great leader obviously, but he's not alone, and he has a lot of people on his team.
When he got sick and took leave the company did just fine, the transition was handled flawlessly, and you probably don't even remember it happened. Timothy Cook, executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations, oversaw day-to-day operations.
Apple's board of directors has discussed the issue and they have a list of people of at Apple that could and will replace Steve Jobs the day he leaves. It's no secret.
To conclude; it's not a "cult of personality" as you claimed, if anything the cult is the brand.
Thank God for Apple stock (for me at least :).
I remember in ~October of 1998 thinking of buying AAPL. It was floating around $5/share I believe.
Everyone was telling me to buy Microsoft. By this point I was becoming a "ABM" system administrator. They're stock was floating right about where it is today (~$25/share)...
The only stock I'm interested in is companies I believe in that produce something I like. Day trading in some chemistry company I know nothing about does not Interest me.
I hesitated (and was second guessing myself in those days). I could have tripled my money in that one year with AAPL.
In that same year there was a MSFT split AND they nearly doubled their price. They've been dead since...
Bottom line -- a decade later and both companies have each had two splits. My $15 APPL stock is worth over $315 (today) while MSFT is still at ~$25/share. There is a reason for this. Microsoft has forced people to use their crap and those days are seriously numbered. Apple, OTOH, gives their customers what they want. Thus they become foaming at the mouth Apple loyalists like myself. I understand now (and am laughing all the way to the bank).
In looking at these two companies Apple has pretty much always been innovative and led the pack. No floppies with a Mac? People laughed. See many floppies today? Microsoft has historically always been a "me too" company (with very few exceptions).
The ONLY product that Microsoft has done that makes me shake my head and wonder why Apple didn't do it is the KIN. Cool idea. Problem: WHERE is Apple's gaming console???
a systems company that manages to reach demographics that most other technology companies (systems or not) don't target and/or don't reach, making them uniquely profitable.
So often the discussion on Slashdot is simply a matter of comparison: "The Apple ____ is similar to the Microsoft/Sony/HP/YouNameIt ____ but with a very narrow focus, therefore it is insufficiently flexible, particularly at a premium price point."
This kind of logic is often couched in "objective" terms but in fact represents a very particular value seen primarily in the technology/hacker community: general applicability/maximal flexibility. In this community these values are claimed to be "objective" goods, while other values like ease of use, system(s) integration, industrial design, simplicity, and even inflexibility (which is often, frankly, a need) are openly mocked as "objective" negatives.
In fact, what's at work here is a difference in users' value orientations. Apple often care less about flexibility/generality than other things, and there's nothing wrong with that just as there's nothing wrong with Slashdot geeks caring more about flexibility/generality than other things.
But it is not a stretch to say that the rest of the world doesn't see it as particularly "cool" that a single handheld device can (a) multi-boot four operating systems, (b) provide a remote login for multiple root accounts textual and graphical, (c) act as a remote control for multiple household entertainment systems, (d) be dropped into a Toyota as an engine ECU with real-time wireless reprogrammability, (e) be used as a logic probe and oscilloscope by plugging in optional cables, (f) receive HAM radio signals and run a version of KA9Q, (g) simulcast FM and Internet radio on/from user-chosen frequencies/addresses, (h) provide access to IMAP email and the mobile web, (i) act as a flashlight by turning the screen white, (j) offer a built-in high-resolution CCD capable of being programmed to operate as a scanner, as a camera, or in AI research for visual perception experimentation, and (k) with the addition of a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, act as a complete general-purpose computing system capable of playing all of the latest FPSes available to the operating systems mentioned at the start of this list in (a), all while fitting in a shirt pocket and light enough to be put on a keychain.
For a Slashdot user, this description is of a kind of "holy grail" device. For a non-Slashdot user, this is an incredible constrictive description of a device that likely requires extensive programming, extensive management, long and detailed user interface interactions to accomplish even simple tasks, low task parallelism, and a risky concentration of many functions into a single, no doubt highly expensive, device.
The goals are different. Apple is amazingly able to grok and fulfill the particular goals of one class of very productive user that does not happen to be the Slashdot user by designing fully integrated, high-usability, cost-effective systems to suit their needs.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Once these technological initiates (Apple users) become more knowledgeable about what is out there, i.e.: the Reality Distortion Field wares out, the honest ones will see the error of their ways and pick another platform, probably Android and the house of cards that Apple has built its empire upon (the ignorance of the masses) will collapse. And IMHO it cannot happen soon enough.
If the requirement for Apple's downfall is for the 'ignorant masses' to become educated, then Apple is destined to be the most successful company in the history of the world.
This is just bullshit. Final Cut may be popular but it's not the only NLE product on the market. There's plenty of work done on Avid, Premiere, or even Vegas. All of which run fine on any mid-range to high-end PC laptop. There is no magic secret sauce that Apple products have here.
As for 'droid tablets' (presumably you mean 'Android tablets', since 'Droid' is a brand used only by Verizon for their Android products), there is no doubt that the $200 tablets on the market suck. Of course they suck. Google hasn't even released a tablet version of Android. The fact that some manufacturers have chosen to release products prematurely is no surprise.
I briefly owned a 11.6" MacBook Air, which I returned. It was a beautiful piece of hardware. But:
- I can't deal with clickpads. They make simple operations like dragging or right-clicking far more complex and error prone. Forget something like middle clicking unless you feel like doing some crazy multi-finger tap. It's also noisy, which can be annoying when you're trying to use it in class. My T400 has real buttons - left, right, and middle - with real tactile feel and quiet operation.
- The keyboard is annoying. With a T400 I get buttons like Page Up and Page Down, Home, End, and Delete. These work consistently and don't require FN shortcuts. On Mac laptops, Home and End are FN+Left Arrow and FN+Right Arrow. Unfortunately they aren't consistent at all. Sometimes they take you to the beginning or the end of the line, sometimes they take you to the beginning or end of a document. Sometimes you can use Command+Left Arrow/Right Arrow for cursor movement on the line, but then sometimes (e.g. the terminal) it doesn't work.
- Apple wants $80 for a MagSafe power adapter and sues anyone who tries to make a compatible adapter. You can get genuine ThinkPad power adapters for $30 or less on eBay, which means I can have 4 (couch, bedroom, desk, one for on the go) without breaking the bank. It's a hell of a lot more convenient to just plug in than it is to pull out and uncoil the adapter every time.
- Mouse acceleration is totally screwed up in Mac OS X. The curve is not really a curve - it starts out extremely slow and then abruptly jumps to very fast. This makes cursor control with a high-resolution mouse (like my Logitech G5) extremely difficult.
- X-buttons (back/forward) on a non-Apple mouse don't work. The only way to get them to work is to install third-party software, most of which costs money.
- Scroll wheel acceleration. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but it seems to be impossible to disable.
- You can't make the machine stay awake with the lid closed without kernel extension hacks or plugging in a monitor.
- There's no full disk encryption. Home directory encryption is not the same thing.
- Window organization is annoying. There are no snaps (like in Windows 7 or KDE) and you can only resize windows from one corner. The zoom button is supposed to 'fit contents' or 'fit screen area', but in reality it seems to be completely arbitrary depending on the application. Maximize is useful and consistent.
- Lots of screen space is wasted. Panels (in GNOME or KDE) or the Taskbar are usable with under 30px of height. The Dock is useless at that size and realistically needs to be more like 50-60px. Most people get around this by hiding it, which drives me nuts because it's too easy to inadvertently activate and not there to notify you when you need it. Then there's the menu bar, which takes up more of your screen space, even in applications that don't need menus (like Google Chrome).
- You can hide a menu by clicking in it. There is 'dead space' between menu items that not only does nothing, it also closes the menu. This is another thing that makes absolutely no sense to me.
- OpenGL performance SUCKS. I know that Apple has been working on t
The products really aren't that "revolutionary", and certainly not magical. In fact, they're pretty ordinary. What separates Apple from the rest (and a lot of people's money) is the cult-like status they've built amongst a small but big-spending segment of the population. You HAVE to have the latest because it's the greatest thing that will ever be and ever has been.
There is certainly a good amount of marketing and hype going on, but assuming that this is all is just silly. There's an awful lot of otherwise perfectly intelligent people who manage to ignore all the really good ideas Apple has by thinking there is nothing but marketing and hype and "cult".
The thing is that "ordinary people" attach quite a bit of importance to things like elegant industrial design on the front *and* the back of devices, to lids you can open with one finger without overturning your laptop, to good large touchpads, to ports lined up right side up on one edge of the thing, to batteries that last a good while, to chargers that won't have destroyed the battery after half a year, to not having silly feet under your laptop to give the exhaust grilles room to breath at least as long as you don't try to use the thing on a bed or a soft carpet, to cases and screens and keyboards you can actually keep clean...
The point isn't that Apple is insanely great or "magic". The point is that most others are insanely bad. There is no "magic" in Apple products, there's just the most mundane cheapness and thoughtlessness in the majority of all products and every exception to it gets *noticed*.
Hell, my MacBook is two years old now, I use it 10 to 12 hours a day, carry it around and treat it like a good friend (that is not very careful). It looks as new and it still has 100% battery capacity. If this is just cult I would love to see this cult applied to more things. It works great and surely it must be much cheaper than trying to reach the same results by decent engineering and design.
Again? Why has slashdot become a marketing platform for apple? They sell overpriced, inferior products to idiots that don't know any better.
Steve Jobs really, really hopes that you get a top job at any of its competitors.
In reality, the clueless idiot is you. Apple products are more expensive than crap products that match them in the superficial check list of the under average geek; they compare very well in price with any quality product. And they are far superior where it counts; to make it possible for average people who actually have a life to _use_ the product.
I sometimes think that the under average geek is someone who feels proud to be able to use products that are hard to use; the worst of them like you look down on people who don't fall for that stupidity. The above average geek is someone who feels proud to make products that are easy to use.
it's making products that work
This whole Apple-products-just-work spiel is plain marketing BS.
Two months ago my sister bought my dad an ipad. Guess who got to spend 5 hours this past weekend helping him try to get it working in various ways. That's right, me.
First he wanted to update the OS. So I read the instructions:
Hook your ipad to a computer and then run iTunes. Follow the instructions from there.
That's it. Well iTunes is a program on my father's ipad, it is a web site from which Apple sells music, and it is a program that one can get for their desktop machine. WTF are they talking about? In their effort to simplify everything for stupid people, Apple has named everything "iTunes", creating substantial confusion. iTunes is a program that gets music from Apple, it syncs your device's content, and it is used to update your device's OS. Of course.
So after my father realizes he forgot his "Apple ID", we play 20 questions to get a new password. ("This is like taking a God damn exam. Why can't I just get the update software?") Then the software starts downloading. An hour later we get "Unknown error 1602." Shit. Disconnect ipad. It won't run. It is foobarred. Our only option is to "Restore" the ipad, which it tells us will wipe all programs, books, videos, photos and music from the ipad. WTF!? Apple didn't put the OS on a different partition from the media? Are you serious? So we wipe the iPad and my dad spends a couple more hours putting stuff back on it.
Then he wants to hook the iPad to my TV set. So we go to a store for a video connector, because the video cable is nonstandard. (Good idea, buy a device with a nonstandard video out, mumble, mumble.) Store is out of them. Drive to another store. Pay an absurd amount of money for a six inch cable. Hook iPad to TV. Nothin'. Check cables, etc. etc. An hour later, read on web. It turns out that only certain programs can be displayed on the TV out. WTF?! Who would buy a device that limits what you can see on an external monitor? Apple is making Microsoft look good here. After another hour of mucking around with the device we finally get it to show the Netflix video on my TV. It looks like shit. The video is only half the size of my screen.
My dad is typing an email. He gripes about the screen not being easy to type on, but says you can get a keyboard for it. I say, I have keyboards! But, hey, there is no USB connector on the device! Are you serious? You can't just plug in a keyboard or mouse? WTF?
People buy Apple products due to hype, marketing, and they think the products make them look cool. That's it. I have fewer problems with my Linux laptop. It just works.
Have you seen how many tablets were at CES last year?
Yes, most of them were reactions to the rumored tablet Apple was working on (a rumor that had been going for some time). It's telling that we don't talk about any of them now, because they were building something to compete against an OS X tablet, not a tablet that people wanted to use.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The hardware isn't special because it’s made by other people.
Non sequitur. Just because someone else makes the hardware doesn't mean it's not special. The 320M was made specially for Apple. The A4 is designed by Apple, even though Samsung manufactures them. I don't know who makes the retina display, the glass trackpad, their new notebook batteries or the unibody aluminum cases, but these are all unique to Apple.
Even if Apple didn't have unique individual components (but they do), and even if all the parts were simply standard off-the-shelf components (they aren't), even then, the unique combination counts as special.
Not only is Apple more technologically involved in their products' development than most Slashdot types seem to think, it's difficult to think of a single company that is more technologically interesting than Apple. Dell? HP? Cisco? Sun/Oracle? Intel? AMD? Nvidia? WD? Acer? Asus? None of these companies come close.
Although of the lot, Asus does tend to make a lot of interesting prototypes which, ironically, tend to be the "neat, but doomed to failure" duds that Slashdotters claimed products like the iPod and iPad would be.
just think if you'd given your dad a Linux or Windows machine. You'd be getting at least twice the amount of tech support calls about incomprehensible error messages, hardware incompatibilities, etc.
I setup both my non-technical uncle and my wifes non-work computer with Ubuntu.
To say that Linux 'just works' is an understatement.
New printer/scanner combo? Just plug it in.
New updates? Click 'okay'.
It's been about two years in my Uncles case -- I see his wifes windows computer about every two or three months. Every time he brags about how great Ubuntu is (he hasn't had a single problem yet).
I've seen his daughters MacBook twice over the same period for various problems (not that any iFan will believe that).
My wife hasn't had a single problem with her Ubuntu machine either -- though I do have to keep the maintenance up on her work computer (which is running windows).
Required reading for internet skeptics
The typical flare for styling present in apple devices doesn't seem to exist in that phone. It's all retinal display, megapixels, video calling, etc..
Retina display really means something though. A high quality display is great for reading text and viewing photos. The ease of reading text alone makes it a very solid feature, not just something tacked on for a checklist (which is where I think you're going with the whole HTC thing).
On megapixels - actually Apple didn't go there. They didn't stuff a 12MP sensor in a phone as others are doing. Instead they jumped it up a bit to a very rational 5MP but are using a sensor that handles low light much better with a back-illuminated sensor.
The video calling is eh to me but the implementation is very good and works well. But more than that people really, really like a front facing camera. I've seen way more people using that than I ever thought I would, basically for a kind of "photobooth anywhere" kind of thing since the camera is very low res. But the wide adoption shows it's not just another feature but something people really value.
Then again I dislike apple products for a host of reasons.
Oh, I guess then that explains the completely irrational analysis of the iPhone 4, especially the design... what were you thinking? Anyone who has held one would call you insane just for that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree with everything you are saying with some caveats. Apple's P/E has historically been higher than it is now. This could mean that Apple has a lot of potential upside, and a lot of investors are betting on this. But betting on Apple at $300 + is really betting on the broader market. The market will need to also hit an inflection point in order to sustain a larger Apple. I believe Apple has already hit an inflection point at $190 last year. Betting on another inflection is risky.
I am not a smart investor, so my opinions are by no means correct; investing is a judgement call. That being said, I plan on keeping Apple in my portfolio, but I plan on reducing my exposure to it. I hope Apple continues to make successful products and provide outsize returns. But I know that no company, not even Apple can go to infinity. At some point I need to get off the ride and let others take a spin.
Unfortunately, the keyboard drains do nothing when you spill it in the vent holes. I've never tested the keyboard drains but I've seen videos of them working. I would imagine that the keyboard is screwed, although it's pretty easy and cheap to fix.
I use the touchpad actually, not the trackstick. And I do like certain gestures, like two finger scrolling. I use a utility called EnvyTouchPad, which ironically was designed to work around the awful clickpad on the HP Envy series (which is far, far worse than the Mac clickpads).
I have three major problems with the Mac touchpads:
1. It's noisy - considerably more so than even the HP clickpads. Some PC laptops have this problem too, but the ThinkPad is actually pretty quiet. It doesn't seem like a huge issue but it is socially awkward when I'm in class, especially considering that my courses are recorded for remote students and the microphones pick up everything.
2. It makes dragging much harder. Attempting to drag with one finger is problematic because of friction and the deadzone at the top of the touchpad. Instead, you have to use two fingers, which is wierd and error prone. Trying to do something like the right-mouse-button drag (which never appears in OS X but does appear in Windows under Boot Camp) is futile.
3. It's more error prone. If you want to right click, you can either use multiple fingers or assign a touch zone. Neither is as consistent as hitting a different button. The touch zone is not demarcated on the pad and even if it were (as it is on HP clickpads) there is no tactile feel. Multiple fingers work great except sometimes you mess up and rest part of your hand on the pad, causing misclicks.
The bottom line is that I just don't know why this is a good design. The only advantage I can think of is that you get slightly more touch room, but I have never found my T400 touchpad to be too small. Gestures are nice but they do not replace the need for buttons in my opinion.
The T400 (as with most ThinkPads) doesn't have the power jack soldered to the motherboard - it's a separate part that's connected via a wire. The part runs about $12 on eBay and takes about 10 minutes to replace.
I have never actually yanked a laptop off of a table due to the power adapter. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but it just doesn't happen often enough to warrant an $80 MagSafe adapter. I have no issue with MagSafe in particular, what I have an issue with is that the adapters are so expensive and the MagSafe patent prevents anyone else from making compatible replacements.
Actually, the new Air (the one I had) doesn't have a backlit keyboard - it was one of the features that was cut, along with the sleep LED, the IR sensor, and the ambient light sensor. None of these things really bug me - I rarely use the Thinklight on my T400 anyway, since I know the keyboard layout by memory.
You just brought up another thing I hate about most Macs (and to be fair, most PCS) - the sleep light. The Air I had didn't have this issue, but a MacBook/MacBook Pro would - LED indicators should not pulsate or blink. Most of the time, I sleep in the same room as my laptop, which makes blinking (or pulsating) LEDs very annoying. I had to disconnect my (custom-built) desktop's power LED to fix this issue, but it's not quite as easy wit