I can assure you Apple products are NOT high margin items.
I work for an Apple dealer, and the margins are sometimes as low as 7%. The days of 20% margins on Macs are long gone.
(I was talking to a friend in the motorcycle industry the other day - he was complaining about low margins on a line of clothing. The margin he was complaining about was 15%.)
The only way an Apple dealer makes money at all is by selling accessories, and in services. We generally use non-Apple RAM when adding memory, since it's higher margin (no, it's not inferior, we use lifetime warranty RAM - better than Apple's 1 year warranty, and the people we buy from really do back that warranty up.)
It's still not a great money-maker. We just won't sell cheap windoze boxes because we really do believe in selling the best product on the market, not just what makes us the most money.
And hey, the iPod is the best mp3 player on the market. I've got one, and I wouldn't trade my 10GB iPod for a 20GB of an inferior brand.
I recently went to New Orleans on vacation (from Knoxville, TN). I looked at the cost of flying vs. driving.
The flight from Knoxville would have cost nearly $400 (2 people) and the trip would have taken about 6 hours (counting "security" bullshit).
If I drove to Nashville first (cheaper direct flight on Southwest) the trip would only have cost about $300 (including gas and airport parking) and would have taken about 7 hours counting "security" bullshit.
The drive was about 10 hours, in a nice comfy SUV, not airline cattle call seating, no security bullshit, and cost only about $100, including valet parking at the hotel.
Nedless to say, I didn't fly.
The equation might have been different in the old days (when I could show up at the airport 10 minutes before a flight) but until people get over their insane fear of terrorists, I'm not flying unless I absolutely have to. I avoid shoppping at Wal-Mart because I don't like being treated like a shoplifter, and I avoid flying because I don't like being treated like a hijacker.
To return this to a bit of relevance, I'll add that I also investigated taking Amtrak. I would have had to drive to Memphis (6 hours) and then spent another 9 hours on the train. Sounds great, where can I sign up?
Now, if there was a reasonably priced, high speed rail link that would get me from Knoxville to NOLA, I'd likely have taken it. (I'm thinking the price point I'd have put up with would be about $200 for a 200+mph train - and the route I think would make the most sense would be Knoxville-Atlanta-NOLA.)
But there hasn't been any passenger train service in Knoxville in many years.
But what they said is not that "Apple's official response is that the battery is $250."
They said that the battery is "unreplaceable". This is a flat-out lie, and the information to the contrary was easily available to them. Apple never told them that it was "unreplaceable", only that the price was more than they were willing to pay to have Apple replace it.
By the time they published the website, it was well known that Apple's official price had been reduced to $99.
By now, they have certainly been informed of Apple's price reduction for the battery replacement, and have certainly been informed that the batteries are available for far less than $99 from other sources.
They have not updated the website with this information, and it is extremely irresponsible of them to have not done so.
It did have a few quality issues - the antenna connector would break off, and I had to replace it more than once. Also, the power connector had to be rebuilt a few times, and the LCD broke.
The final death was pretty complete, though - it wouldn't power on at all, it wasn't any fuse I could find, and the power connection was good.
I'm thinking I've likely only got another 2 or 3 years with my current phone - but I've managed to pick up a few identical phones (for free) so I can swap parts as they die.
And my current phone doesn't have the same sound quality as the bag phone - or even the other two analog handhelds. I consider digital to have been a huge step backward in sound quality - and I'm not too happy about that.
My first cell phone lasted a bit over 10 years. I wanted it repaired, the company couldn't get parts for it, so they gave me a new one for free.
The second phone was stolen from my car after a month. They gave me a "loaner" - free again.
The third phone I kept about a year before getting the fourth phone - which I still have. it's my first digital, and it's about 3 years old now. The only reason I'd consider replacing it is when fast data connections become cheap enough for me to justify one. ($80/month for 128K isn't there yet in my opinion.)
It's not "locked" into a carrier at all - but it's an 800MHz model, so I'm limited to the choice of the two cell carriers in any given city. Here, that's US Cellular and Verizon.
It's even got a user-selectable carrier switch - I can use either the A or B carrier at my choice. I use the default when I'm in town, I pick whichever gives me the better signal when I'm out of town. With my current plan, it doesn't matter which network I'm using, as long as I'm in my region (10 state aread) it's a local call.
But it IS indicating that it's available for public use. With an unprotected access point, the client IS asking permission. It requests and is granted access to the network, it requests and receives an IP address, it can then request and receive internet content.
By your logic, it would be illegal to access an unprotected web page without obtaining permission by some other means first. As that's patently absurd, I don't see how your logic applies here either.
Oh, and it's generally illegal to leave your keys in an unlocked car - it's creating a public nuisance. What if a child opened your car and drove it into something?
That notwithstanding, if you put a sign on the car that indicated it was available for public use (as an unprotected access point IS DOING) it would not be a criminal act to take the car. (Why you'd want to do that with your car is beyond me, but I can't see that any court would find someone guilty of auto theft in that circumstance...)
And the house example certainly doesn't apply here - If you've got a key that opens the house without my permission, it would be like using a sniffer to grab the WEP key. And I never said that should be legal.
The network is advertising its presence, has no indication that it isn't available for whoever wants to use it. And I think that's the key - IT IS ADBERTISING ITS AVAILABILITY to anyone who is listening.
It's very simple to add a password to a WLAN, and I see anyone who doesn't do so as intentionally making the network available to the public.
If they don't mean to do that, they should restrict access to the network.
And yes, accessing a protected network should still be a prosecutable offense.
You mean somebody is handing out free MP3 players these days?
Seriously - yeah, I got it on sale, but I paid $200 for mine.
And they really are that much better. I have a friend who bought an Archos because it was cheaper. He traded it in - on an iPod with half the drive space. He's much happier now.
I don't know about that - I just wasted your bandwidth. I'm not a potential audience member, as I'm not in your area. I'm not really even sure where Laurel, MD is, though I could find out if I were anywhere close.
It would be like me trying to advertise <a href=http://www.knoxgothic.com/">KnoxGothic.com</a > on slashdot - most of the readers aren't anywhere near Knoxville, TN, and are likely not interested in the Knoxville goth scene. The few who are, of course, are welcome to check out the site - but it's got a very small pipe, and would slashdot quite easily, so if you don't care, don't click, please.
If it's been done properly, they'll never question it.
If a tech opens up an iMac and sees a damaged heatsink, it'll get questioned. If the heatsink has not been properly cleaned before being greased, it'll get questioned. If the wrong kind of memory has been installed, it'll get questioned.
Oh, and if you're an ass to the tech when you need a warranty fix done, the tech is likely to look for things to void your warranty.
But I'd never void a warranty based on properly installed memory when it's obviously an unrelated issue.
The "special seals and tools" consist of torx drivers, a "black stick" (plastic screwdriver) and heatsink grease.
I'm reasonably confident that most slashdot readers would be capable of adding memory to the internal slot of an iMac.
And I'm an Apple certified tech.
(Oh, and if you read the Apple phrasing, you can see that the warranty voiding only happens if you fuck up...)
And yes, the iBook has only one slot - the currently shipping models have 128MB soldered on the logic board. Trying to upgrade the soldered memory WILL void your warranty.
OK, I really don't understand. A simple criticism of.mac like "It isn't worth the money" automatically gets modded to flamebait?
I think that for most people, it really isn't worth the money. I set up a large number of iTools accounts when it was free, and of those, only 2 actually paid for the.mac subscription when Apple started charging. I personally kept mine only as long as it was free (Apple gave me a year of.mac as part of one of their sales programs - I work for an Apple dealer.)
Since it went to a pay service, I've sold zero.mac accounts, and I've never had anyone express interest beyond a "what's that?" in reference to some menu items. When I explain it, they generally say "that's neat, how do I get it?", when I tell them it's $100/year, they say "forget it".
Now, most of my customers already have their own domains, so the web hosting and email are pretty pointless for them, and the "extras" usually don't matter to them at all.
So, I'd say that for most business customers and most geeks the service is fairly worthless.
For the 2 users who did keep it? It probably wasn't worth the money - except that they would have had to have business cards re-printed, and it was cheaper to keep it than print new cards - and so they were forced to pay for a service that they understood was free with their new computer.
Any fee on a software patent is onerous, and I would suggest that the best solution is to make it not legal for the patent to exist. That would certainly prevent the patent holder from disagreeing as there would be no patent holder.
So, you've altered the term "firmware" to include both processor and disk-based operating systems? That would mean that my G4/400 processor and Mac OS X are "firmware" then.
In any case, the iPod OS isn't really firmware. As I understand it, the iPod uses an ARM processor without an FPU which is the main issue with ogg playback - though the iPod linux project says that one is currently running at 80% of realtime. Take a look at iPod Linux for more information.
As far as playback, sure, that works fine. I'm not asking for playback, I'm asking for encoding.
I'm not sure what you mean by non-onerously. They require payment for encoders, and I consider that pretty onerous...
Oh, and what firmware? the iPod loads its OS from its hard drive, from what I understand...
Not being a programmer, I'm not sure how easy the coding of the codec would be on the iPod hardware, but I'm really hoping it wouldn't be difficult.
As far as iTunes support goes, though, it would be zero challenge for Apple to add full ogg support. All they would have to do is allow all QuickTime codecs to be used in iTunes.
That's just plain not true. Plenty of people care about ogg vorbis.
I'd be thrilled if my iPod supported it, and if iTunes supported it as a native format. I'm not at all interested in AAC, which in turn is more than I'm interested in wma.
I think a patent-free audio codec makes an amazing amount of sense. (I think a ban on software patents is a better idea, but that's a different thread...)
They've had the number Dave Berry published disconnected, but here is the current contact information from their website (including toll-free numbers):
Legislative Office:
1666 K Street, NW, Suite 1200 Washington, DC 20006 Toll Free: (866) 500-4272 info@ataconnect.org
Administrative Office:
3815 River Crossing Parkway, Suite 20 Indianapolis, IN 46240 Toll Free: (866)) 500-4272 info@ataconnect.org
Actually, a jury has the same power to declare a law unconstitutional that a judge does, and while a conviction can be set aside by an appeals judge, it's very difficult for a judge to set aside an aquital.
The jury is virtually never informed that they have this power, but it is there.
Slashdot Mirror
you know, there are such things as music degrees...
I can assure you Apple products are NOT high margin items.
I work for an Apple dealer, and the margins are sometimes as low as 7%. The days of 20% margins on Macs are long gone.
(I was talking to a friend in the motorcycle industry the other day - he was complaining about low margins on a line of clothing. The margin he was complaining about was 15%.)
The only way an Apple dealer makes money at all is by selling accessories, and in services. We generally use non-Apple RAM when adding memory, since it's higher margin (no, it's not inferior, we use lifetime warranty RAM - better than Apple's 1 year warranty, and the people we buy from really do back that warranty up.)
It's still not a great money-maker. We just won't sell cheap windoze boxes because we really do believe in selling the best product on the market, not just what makes us the most money.
And hey, the iPod is the best mp3 player on the market. I've got one, and I wouldn't trade my 10GB iPod for a 20GB of an inferior brand.
Yeah, sounds about right.
I recently went to New Orleans on vacation (from Knoxville, TN). I looked at the cost of flying vs. driving.
The flight from Knoxville would have cost nearly $400 (2 people) and the trip would have taken about 6 hours (counting "security" bullshit).
If I drove to Nashville first (cheaper direct flight on Southwest) the trip would only have cost about $300 (including gas and airport parking) and would have taken about 7 hours counting "security" bullshit.
The drive was about 10 hours, in a nice comfy SUV, not airline cattle call seating, no security bullshit, and cost only about $100, including valet parking at the hotel.
Nedless to say, I didn't fly.
The equation might have been different in the old days (when I could show up at the airport 10 minutes before a flight) but until people get over their insane fear of terrorists, I'm not flying unless I absolutely have to. I avoid shoppping at Wal-Mart because I don't like being treated like a shoplifter, and I avoid flying because I don't like being treated like a hijacker.
To return this to a bit of relevance, I'll add that I also investigated taking Amtrak. I would have had to drive to Memphis (6 hours) and then spent another 9 hours on the train. Sounds great, where can I sign up?
Now, if there was a reasonably priced, high speed rail link that would get me from Knoxville to NOLA, I'd likely have taken it. (I'm thinking the price point I'd have put up with would be about $200 for a 200+mph train - and the route I think would make the most sense would be Knoxville-Atlanta-NOLA.)
But there hasn't been any passenger train service in Knoxville in many years.
But what they said is not that "Apple's official response is that the battery is $250."
They said that the battery is "unreplaceable". This is a flat-out lie, and the information to the contrary was easily available to them. Apple never told them that it was "unreplaceable", only that the price was more than they were willing to pay to have Apple replace it.
By the time they published the website, it was well known that Apple's official price had been reduced to $99.
By now, they have certainly been informed of Apple's price reduction for the battery replacement, and have certainly been informed that the batteries are available for far less than $99 from other sources.
They have not updated the website with this information, and it is extremely irresponsible of them to have not done so.
And I'm going to have to disagree.
They STILL don't have a driver that handles video in for Mac OS X.
I'm getting very tired of having to boot into 9 to watch TV.
I can't. Anyone who is capable of making a quicktime movie and putting up a website is capable of doing a web search for "ipod battery".
They've managed to create a huge stir for something that's a non-issue, and has been for quite a while.
Congratulations!
That's absolutely the funniest thing I've read all morning!
Good guess!
It was a Panasonic bag phone.
It did have a few quality issues - the antenna connector would break off, and I had to replace it more than once. Also, the power connector had to be rebuilt a few times, and the LCD broke.
The final death was pretty complete, though - it wouldn't power on at all, it wasn't any fuse I could find, and the power connection was good.
I'm thinking I've likely only got another 2 or 3 years with my current phone - but I've managed to pick up a few identical phones (for free) so I can swap parts as they die.
And my current phone doesn't have the same sound quality as the bag phone - or even the other two analog handhelds. I consider digital to have been a huge step backward in sound quality - and I'm not too happy about that.
My first cell phone lasted a bit over 10 years. I wanted it repaired, the company couldn't get parts for it, so they gave me a new one for free.
The second phone was stolen from my car after a month. They gave me a "loaner" - free again.
The third phone I kept about a year before getting the fourth phone - which I still have. it's my first digital, and it's about 3 years old now. The only reason I'd consider replacing it is when fast data connections become cheap enough for me to justify one. ($80/month for 128K isn't there yet in my opinion.)
It's not "locked" into a carrier at all - but it's an 800MHz model, so I'm limited to the choice of the two cell carriers in any given city. Here, that's US Cellular and Verizon.
It's even got a user-selectable carrier switch - I can use either the A or B carrier at my choice. I use the default when I'm in town, I pick whichever gives me the better signal when I'm out of town. With my current plan, it doesn't matter which network I'm using, as long as I'm in my region (10 state aread) it's a local call.
But it IS indicating that it's available for public use. With an unprotected access point, the client IS asking permission. It requests and is granted access to the network, it requests and receives an IP address, it can then request and receive internet content.
By your logic, it would be illegal to access an unprotected web page without obtaining permission by some other means first. As that's patently absurd, I don't see how your logic applies here either.
Oh, and it's generally illegal to leave your keys in an unlocked car - it's creating a public nuisance. What if a child opened your car and drove it into something?
That notwithstanding, if you put a sign on the car that indicated it was available for public use (as an unprotected access point IS DOING) it would not be a criminal act to take the car. (Why you'd want to do that with your car is beyond me, but I can't see that any court would find someone guilty of auto theft in that circumstance...)
And the house example certainly doesn't apply here - If you've got a key that opens the house without my permission, it would be like using a sniffer to grab the WEP key. And I never said that should be legal.
and I can't type today.
Why is it not OK to use a wireless network?
The network is advertising its presence, has no indication that it isn't available for whoever wants to use it. And I think that's the key - IT IS ADBERTISING ITS AVAILABILITY to anyone who is listening.
It's very simple to add a password to a WLAN, and I see anyone who doesn't do so as intentionally making the network available to the public.
If they don't mean to do that, they should restrict access to the network.
And yes, accessing a protected network should still be a prosecutable offense.
You mean somebody is handing out free MP3 players these days?
Seriously - yeah, I got it on sale, but I paid $200 for mine.
And they really are that much better. I have a friend who bought an Archos because it was cheaper. He traded it in - on an iPod with half the drive space. He's much happier now.
I don't know about that - I just wasted your bandwidth. I'm not a potential audience member, as I'm not in your area. I'm not really even sure where Laurel, MD is, though I could find out if I were anywhere close.
a > on slashdot - most of the readers aren't anywhere near Knoxville, TN, and are likely not interested in the Knoxville goth scene. The few who are, of course, are welcome to check out the site - but it's got a very small pipe, and would slashdot quite easily, so if you don't care, don't click, please.
It would be like me trying to advertise <a href=http://www.knoxgothic.com/">KnoxGothic.com</
Oh, come on. Tauzin has been in /etc/hate for a rather long time now.
If it's been done properly, they'll never question it.
If a tech opens up an iMac and sees a damaged heatsink, it'll get questioned. If the heatsink has not been properly cleaned before being greased, it'll get questioned. If the wrong kind of memory has been installed, it'll get questioned.
Oh, and if you're an ass to the tech when you need a warranty fix done, the tech is likely to look for things to void your warranty.
But I'd never void a warranty based on properly installed memory when it's obviously an unrelated issue.
I don't know about that... A decent number of projectors have a DVI input...
The "special seals and tools" consist of torx drivers, a "black stick" (plastic screwdriver) and heatsink grease.
I'm reasonably confident that most slashdot readers would be capable of adding memory to the internal slot of an iMac.
And I'm an Apple certified tech.
(Oh, and if you read the Apple phrasing, you can see that the warranty voiding only happens if you fuck up...)
And yes, the iBook has only one slot - the currently shipping models have 128MB soldered on the logic board. Trying to upgrade the soldered memory WILL void your warranty.
OK, I really don't understand. A simple criticism of .mac like "It isn't worth the money" automatically gets modded to flamebait?
.mac subscription when Apple started charging. I personally kept mine only as long as it was free (Apple gave me a year of .mac as part of one of their sales programs - I work for an Apple dealer.)
.mac accounts, and I've never had anyone express interest beyond a "what's that?" in reference to some menu items. When I explain it, they generally say "that's neat, how do I get it?", when I tell them it's $100/year, they say "forget it".
I think that for most people, it really isn't worth the money. I set up a large number of iTools accounts when it was free, and of those, only 2 actually paid for the
Since it went to a pay service, I've sold zero
Now, most of my customers already have their own domains, so the web hosting and email are pretty pointless for them, and the "extras" usually don't matter to them at all.
So, I'd say that for most business customers and most geeks the service is fairly worthless.
For the 2 users who did keep it? It probably wasn't worth the money - except that they would have had to have business cards re-printed, and it was cheaper to keep it than print new cards - and so they were forced to pay for a service that they understood was free with their new computer.
Any fee on a software patent is onerous, and I would suggest that the best solution is to make it not legal for the patent to exist. That would certainly prevent the patent holder from disagreeing as there would be no patent holder.
So, you've altered the term "firmware" to include both processor and disk-based operating systems? That would mean that my G4/400 processor and Mac OS X are "firmware" then.
In any case, the iPod OS isn't really firmware. As I understand it, the iPod uses an ARM processor without an FPU which is the main issue with ogg playback - though the iPod linux project says that one is currently running at 80% of realtime. Take a look at iPod Linux for more information.
As far as playback, sure, that works fine. I'm not asking for playback, I'm asking for encoding.
I'm not sure what you mean by non-onerously. They require payment for encoders, and I consider that pretty onerous...
Oh, and what firmware? the iPod loads its OS from its hard drive, from what I understand...
Not being a programmer, I'm not sure how easy the coding of the codec would be on the iPod hardware, but I'm really hoping it wouldn't be difficult.
As far as iTunes support goes, though, it would be zero challenge for Apple to add full ogg support. All they would have to do is allow all QuickTime codecs to be used in iTunes.
That's just plain not true. Plenty of people care about ogg vorbis.
I'd be thrilled if my iPod supported it, and if iTunes supported it as a native format. I'm not at all interested in AAC, which in turn is more than I'm interested in wma.
I think a patent-free audio codec makes an amazing amount of sense. (I think a ban on software patents is a better idea, but that's a different thread...)
They've had the number Dave Berry published disconnected, but here is the current contact information from their website (including toll-free numbers):
Legislative Office:
1666 K Street, NW, Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20006
Toll Free: (866) 500-4272
info@ataconnect.org
Administrative Office:
3815 River Crossing Parkway, Suite 20
Indianapolis, IN 46240
Toll Free: (866)) 500-4272
info@ataconnect.org
But IT'S NOT THEIR STUFF!!!
It's a COPY of their stuff. Their stuff is still in their posession, on a master disc somewhere.
Actually, a jury has the same power to declare a law unconstitutional that a judge does, and while a conviction can be set aside by an appeals judge, it's very difficult for a judge to set aside an aquital.
The jury is virtually never informed that they have this power, but it is there.