I pay cash to websites which actually provide useful content to me. If you aren't willing to pay cash money to the website then it probably isn't worth much to you.
I don't quite understand the argument of people who don't want adblock to move in this direction. If you don't like it, switch to one of the many other adblocking plugins. Im sure there will always be one adblocker-like plugin that will aim to block all ads.
To me it is adblock selling out. They're basically offering advertisers a protection racket. I want no part of that. I don't need an ad blocker whose interests are not clearly aligned with my own. Obviously others feel the same way.
I see this as a healthy development, one that could finally rid us of annoying ads while making sure content providers get compensated.
Who says they deserve compensation? Their bad business model is not my problem. Provide value or go away.
Sadly, you started exporting the same coffee back to us and now they put cup holders in our cars too. Sadly, you started exporting the same coffee back to us and now they put cup holders in our cars too.
So you're really saying that your coffee actually sucked worse than ours and that you couldn't get a date. Got it.
That is why for a VERY long time there were no cup holders in the car. You shouldn't be drinking your coffee - you should be *driving*.
That wasn't a Porsche thing. That was a German thing. I owned several VWs which were decidedly NOT "drivers cars" which didn't have cup holders either. Hell I owned an '85 Sirocco which was sporty but utterly lacked cup holders.
And in my opinion it's MY freakin' car and if I want to drive it and drink coffee then Porsche can take their opinion and shove it.
Why would any poor benighted fool pay money for a Porsche that didn't need to be driven?
Self driving technology is orthogonal to whether or not the car has controls for a humans to use. You can have a car that is primarily driven by a human with self driving tech available OR you can have a car that is primarily self driven with controls for human override OR you can have a vehicle without human controls at all. For a Porsche I would see the first option being used. The car is primarily human driven but self driving tech is there to keep the human out of trouble and (someday) to be available for taking over the controls if desired. If you're driving your car 300 miles on the highway in traffic are you REALLY getting a lot of driving enjoyment? Self driving options would be nice to have at that point. Or sometimes people driving fast cars drive them faster than is objectively prudent and self driving tech could help keep them from wrapping the car around a phone pole. Some people who buy Porsches and drive them fast aren't as good of drivers as they believe they are. The 911 has a well deserved reputation for punishing drivers who don't really know what they are doing.
So yeah, if Porsche isn't looking into this stuff then they are being Luddites. The utility of self driving tech goes well beyond turning cars into taxis without human drivers.
If you actually think that Porsches' position on so-called 'self-driving' cars is a Luddite attitude, then you don't at all get what Porsche is all about in the first place. It's a driver's car, not just transportation.
Being a driver's car doesn't mean self driving tech would be useless. So instead of actually steering the car you have the self driving tech as a sort of careful watcher to help insure the driver doesn't crash the car. Think of it like stability control or traction control or ABS on steroids. Hell, Porsche developed a rear drive sports car which is a ridiculous thing to do and they put all kinds of electronic driving aids to keep the car pointed in the right direction. What would be bad about self driving tech that helps you avoid crashes when you are driving said ridiculous rear engine car faster than is objectively prudent?
It wouldn't make any economic sense for Porsche to pursue a path that doesn't intersect with their goals and customer wishes.
Just remember Henry Ford saying. "If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse". You can't ignore your customers but customers are in many cases demonstrably poor at figuring out what they really want particularly when we are talking about new technology. Porsche customers might say they want a driver's car but NOBODY really knows what self driving tech will bring to the party so in truth they really don't know if they want it or not. It might be that some of the tech will hugely appeal to people who want to drive their car but do it better and safer. Nothing wrong with driving the car but having a computer to help keep you safe and alive.
If you stick self drive in a porsche you have pretty much lost 99% of its bragging rights.
Umm, you are aware that having self drive in a car and actually driving it yourself are not mutually exclusive options, right? You can put self drive technology on a car intended to be primarily driven by a human.
That is a valid point but gravity is lower as well. You'd only need the abilty to move 38% the weight you would on earth right? It wouldn't be glamorous work but given a winch and a few men...
And space suits and food and oxygen and habitats and tools and tools to make tools and water and communications gear and construction equipment and the list goes on and on and on. You are taking SOOO many things we have here on earth for granted. I'm as big a fan of working towards colonizing other planets as you'll find but I don't think a lot of people appreciate the difficulty of the endeavor unless you intend it to be a one way suicide mission.
Living on the moon isn't that interesting, because there is almost nothing useful up there except for solar energy.
Think so? The moon has no atmosphere so it is potentially awesome for astronomy. The moon could provide a useful base for deep space exploration as its gravity well is much smaller than Earth's. It could be a source of raw materials. It may be possible to produce propellant on the moon. The moon consists of more than moon dust and reflected sunlight.
The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars.
A fine goal but how do you get there? It's not hard to make a reasonable argument that colonizing the moon (which is much closer) could be a useful stepping stone to the goal of Mars and beyond. Putting an entire infrastructure to support human habitation on another planet is a monumental undertaking and we don't even have a fraction of a percent of the technology needed to do that. The Moon could be very useful in development of some of that technology.
If you can do that, you can make real progress towards colonizing the solar system because you don't have to bring everything from earth.
I could make the same argument regarding moon colonization.
Corporations are not people and should not ever be offended
Corporations are staffed by people who routinely are (and often should be) offended by rude and self important customers. There is no such thing as being rude to a corporation because corporations as you rightly point out are not people and you can only be rude to people. If you interact with a corporation you are interacting with the people who work there and it is quite possible to offend those people with your behavior. If you think it is acceptable to be rude to someone merely because they are a representative of that company then you are a jerk.
Being rude to a company should not affect the way the company does business or whom it does business with.
Clearly you have never had a business relationship. Most people are fine and when they have issues they can be reasoned with. Some small percentage customers cannot be pleased no matter what you do. Sometimes the right thing to do is to (figuratively) fire the customer. I've had customers of my company that were excessively difficult, demanding, expensive and sometimes extremely rude. I once fired a customer for making lewd remarks to one of my female employees. One of the dumbest things ever said in the business world is that "the customer is always right". Believing that is a great way to go out of business.
I am that guy. I don't go to hospitals, dentists, walk in clinics, family doctors, mental health providers. I haven't gone to any healthcare establishment unless it was in regard to pre employment screening since my father's military insurance stopped covering me about 20 years ago.
No you aren't "that guy". Sooner or later you will create a financial cost on the medical system. Avoiding medical care usually ends up in bigger costs down the line. But even if you completely avoid doctors and modern medicine you still will create medical costs by your existence.
At this point, if I become injured or sick in such a way that requires assistance to keep me alive, I'd rather not receive that assistance, and I have all the proper DNR boxes checked.
Oh bullshit. Even if you did have the sort of death wish you claim it doesn't matter. You still will cost the health care system by your mere existence. You think all that paperwork regarding your alleged DNR is free of cost? Do you think that you won't get carted to the hospital if you are in an accident? Do you think end of life care is free even for someone not seeking medical care? Nope. EVERYBODY uses the health care system whether they want to or not. EVERYBODY in society creates costs that others have to share. Only way to avoid it is to go deep into the wilderness and live off the land until you die, away from all humanity. Something basically nobody does.
If you want to be a part of society you get to share in some of the costs. Deal with it.
What about them? They go to hospitals, they use medicines, etc. They require health care just like everybody else. The fact that they try to do it as much as possible within a community does not mean they do not participate in our health care system. Their church acts very much like a private group health insurance program that they all pay into.
Not everyone believes in private insurance.
So what? Ideology regarding private versus public insurance is irrelevant. Everybody uses health care whether they want to or not and therefore everybody needs to pay into the system to the extent they are able. Health care is a basic human right and nobody should be unable to get treatment because they are poor. We all need it sooner or later so we all should pay. Most sensible countries have solved this problem with a public health care system. The US has gone a different route (mostly for idiotic ideological reasons) but the result still needs to be that EVERYBODY pays whether they like it or not.
I don't think commercial jets have any internal combustion engines
Umm, what do you think propels the plane? Unicorn farts and pixie dust?
Planes are propelled by burning jet fuel (combustion) within a turbine (internal). You might consider learning what an internal combustion engine actually is before saying something so dumb publicly.
Nobody has to own a car. Obamacare is a tax on existence.
Please find me a single person who never uses health care and incurs no cost to the system. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Actually no I won't because there is no such person. EVERYBODY uses the health care system whether they want to or not and therefore everybody should have some skin in the game whether they want to or not. Every other civilized country in the world has figured this out. Auto insurance and health insurance are not and never will be the same because not everybody needs to drive or own a car.
Microsoft is forcing people to update, which makes these numbers meaningless.
No it doesn't. The numbers are what they are. It's not a measure of voluntary vs involuntary use. Market share is an objective fact regardless of the reason for it.
The fact that despite these strong-arming efforts, they're *still* only just now surpassing XP and Win8, says a lot about how much people don't want this latest and not-so-greatest OS.
No, it says a lot about how people shop on the Windows platform. Most people upgrade their OS when they buy a new machine. If what you have works then there is little reason to upgrade. I still have Windows XP machines here in my shop that will only get upgraded when they die. No reason to replace them as they work fine for their intended purpose. Windows 10 could be the most amazing operating system to ever grace the earth and I still wouldn't upgrade these machines because there is no gain to be had.
It's like claiming more people have health insurance when you force them to hand over their money to a private company whether they want to or not.
Do they have health insurance? Then it is true regardless of your political feelings on the matter. Forced or not is a separate issue.
I'm about as thrilled as most people around here regarding Windows 10 but the market share numbers are what they are. Frankly I don't really see anything in Windows 10 that is truly better than Windows 7 as far as I'm concerned, though it is a damn sight better than Windows 8/8.1. Hell I still use some XP machines and other than some security concerns I'm mostly fine with XP.
Their money is and that's the bit that matters. Apple does it's business substantially in dollars so exchange rate risk is a big deal for them like most multi-nationals.
as well as all of that money they've been refusing to bring into the US because they don't want to pay taxes on it. They're really taken it in the poo over that, with exchange rates taking such a dive. Guess they should have brought it home and paid those taxes, eh?
You are conflating two issues. Yes Apple has been incentivized to keep their currency reserves in other countries to a substantial degree. That has little to do with this problem. 2/3 of Apple's sales come from outside the US and their base currency is the dollar. When the dollar gets strong people in other countries can afford to buy fewer Apple products for the same money because their currency buys fewer dollars. Apple is effectively a net exporter of their goods and a strong dollar hurts exporters whose base currency is dollars. Whether or not they repatriate that money is irrelevant. They are getting fewer dollars per unit of goods sold whether or not they bring that cash back to the US. Exchange rates affect companies regardless of where the currency is actually held.
No actually people don't. Many people aren't in fact sociopaths and are happy to simply earn a normal living and pay taxes in the normal way without attempting to jump through vast hoops with offshore accounts and etc to avoid contributing to society.
Most people don't do that because they can't, not because they wouldn't. Some because they don't know how, others because they lack the resources to pull it off. If you think for a moment that most people are "happy" to pay a dime more in tax than they can get away with then you are delusional.
Many people actually understand that civilsation is built on taxes and can think beyond MINE...
Evidently none of these people you refer to are republicans.
Software development and engineering are not marginal expenses (they don't vary with the number of items sold).
Software development and engineering account for a tiny fraction of Apple's costs. Something like 10-15%. Look at any software company's financial statements. You'll find that their development costs are always somewhere between 10-20% of total cost. It's true for Microsoft, Oracle and any other software company. You are correct that they are fixed costs but their effect on the bottom line in this case is relatively minor.
Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia (where costs have fallen in dollar terms) but Apple's development is mostly done in America.
Look at Apple's financial statements. You'll find that Apple's Cost of Goods Sold is almost 10X their SG&A and 15X their R&D costs. Cost of Good Sold is the direct cost attributable to making the physical products Apple sells - direct labor and materials. Engineering falls under SG&A and/or R&D. The costs aren't even close.
What you are missing is that even though Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia, what is important is that at the end of the day Apple's revenues and costs are in dollars. Since 2/3 of their sales are outside the US, a strong dollar hurts Apple on a net basis because it makes Apple's products more expensive outside the US.
A strong dollar also reduces manufacturing costs, since manufacturing is overseas. This improves margins. I'm not seeing the issue.
Foreign exchange is often counter intuitive. In crude terms a strong currency helps importers but hurts exporters. If Apple in this case is the exporter. The stronger the currency gets the less units per dollar Apple's customers can buy. Since 2/3 of iphone sales are international Apple customers are unable to buy as many iPhones for the same amount of money.
It doesn't have anything really to do with manufacturing costs. Apple's manufacturing costs are mostly contracted well in advance for large volumes. This means their costs are close to fixed. So if the exchange rates move significantly after the contract is signed and Apple isn't hedged against currency movement then Apple will sell less product or have to accept worse margins.
As a lab manager I had to institute a rule that ANY cable that didn't have a label was going to be removed when found with no warning.
Back in the day of floppy disks we had a similar rule. If the disk wasn't important enough to justify a label it was to be considered blank. I feel the same way about labeling cables. If you aren't disciplined about this stuff it can get really out of hand really fast.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind supporting websites I like
I pay cash to websites which actually provide useful content to me. If you aren't willing to pay cash money to the website then it probably isn't worth much to you.
I don't quite understand the argument of people who don't want adblock to move in this direction. If you don't like it, switch to one of the many other adblocking plugins. Im sure there will always be one adblocker-like plugin that will aim to block all ads.
To me it is adblock selling out. They're basically offering advertisers a protection racket. I want no part of that. I don't need an ad blocker whose interests are not clearly aligned with my own. Obviously others feel the same way.
I see this as a healthy development, one that could finally rid us of annoying ads while making sure content providers get compensated.
Who says they deserve compensation? Their bad business model is not my problem. Provide value or go away.
Sadly, you started exporting the same coffee back to us and now they put cup holders in our cars too. Sadly, you started exporting the same coffee back to us and now they put cup holders in our cars too.
So you're really saying that your coffee actually sucked worse than ours and that you couldn't get a date. Got it.
What? Who told you that?
I meant rear engine not rear drive. Typo.
Rear wheel drive is still best for sports cars.
Rear drive is great. Rear engine is mostly stupid outside of drag racing.
That is why for a VERY long time there were no cup holders in the car. You shouldn't be drinking your coffee - you should be *driving*.
That wasn't a Porsche thing. That was a German thing. I owned several VWs which were decidedly NOT "drivers cars" which didn't have cup holders either. Hell I owned an '85 Sirocco which was sporty but utterly lacked cup holders.
And in my opinion it's MY freakin' car and if I want to drive it and drink coffee then Porsche can take their opinion and shove it.
Nissan GT-R already does that. It is boring on the track.
If you believe that they you are either an incredibly jaded Formula 1 driver or you have never actually driven one on a track.
Why would any poor benighted fool pay money for a Porsche that didn't need to be driven?
Self driving technology is orthogonal to whether or not the car has controls for a humans to use. You can have a car that is primarily driven by a human with self driving tech available OR you can have a car that is primarily self driven with controls for human override OR you can have a vehicle without human controls at all. For a Porsche I would see the first option being used. The car is primarily human driven but self driving tech is there to keep the human out of trouble and (someday) to be available for taking over the controls if desired. If you're driving your car 300 miles on the highway in traffic are you REALLY getting a lot of driving enjoyment? Self driving options would be nice to have at that point. Or sometimes people driving fast cars drive them faster than is objectively prudent and self driving tech could help keep them from wrapping the car around a phone pole. Some people who buy Porsches and drive them fast aren't as good of drivers as they believe they are. The 911 has a well deserved reputation for punishing drivers who don't really know what they are doing.
So yeah, if Porsche isn't looking into this stuff then they are being Luddites. The utility of self driving tech goes well beyond turning cars into taxis without human drivers.
If you actually think that Porsches' position on so-called 'self-driving' cars is a Luddite attitude, then you don't at all get what Porsche is all about in the first place. It's a driver's car, not just transportation.
Being a driver's car doesn't mean self driving tech would be useless. So instead of actually steering the car you have the self driving tech as a sort of careful watcher to help insure the driver doesn't crash the car. Think of it like stability control or traction control or ABS on steroids. Hell, Porsche developed a rear drive sports car which is a ridiculous thing to do and they put all kinds of electronic driving aids to keep the car pointed in the right direction. What would be bad about self driving tech that helps you avoid crashes when you are driving said ridiculous rear engine car faster than is objectively prudent?
It wouldn't make any economic sense for Porsche to pursue a path that doesn't intersect with their goals and customer wishes.
Just remember Henry Ford saying. "If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse". You can't ignore your customers but customers are in many cases demonstrably poor at figuring out what they really want particularly when we are talking about new technology. Porsche customers might say they want a driver's car but NOBODY really knows what self driving tech will bring to the party so in truth they really don't know if they want it or not. It might be that some of the tech will hugely appeal to people who want to drive their car but do it better and safer. Nothing wrong with driving the car but having a computer to help keep you safe and alive.
If you stick self drive in a porsche you have pretty much lost 99% of its bragging rights.
Umm, you are aware that having self drive in a car and actually driving it yourself are not mutually exclusive options, right? You can put self drive technology on a car intended to be primarily driven by a human.
We know how to build ships that can reach 0.2c
Until we actually build one and it travels that fast that is not true.
Problematic is it to scale that for humans ... however I'm pretty sure most of us will witness the first probe going to an other solar system.
Not in my lifetime. Not in yours either.
That is a valid point but gravity is lower as well. You'd only need the abilty to move 38% the weight you would on earth right? It wouldn't be glamorous work but given a winch and a few men...
And space suits and food and oxygen and habitats and tools and tools to make tools and water and communications gear and construction equipment and the list goes on and on and on. You are taking SOOO many things we have here on earth for granted. I'm as big a fan of working towards colonizing other planets as you'll find but I don't think a lot of people appreciate the difficulty of the endeavor unless you intend it to be a one way suicide mission.
Living on the moon isn't that interesting, because there is almost nothing useful up there except for solar energy.
Think so? The moon has no atmosphere so it is potentially awesome for astronomy. The moon could provide a useful base for deep space exploration as its gravity well is much smaller than Earth's. It could be a source of raw materials. It may be possible to produce propellant on the moon. The moon consists of more than moon dust and reflected sunlight.
The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars.
A fine goal but how do you get there? It's not hard to make a reasonable argument that colonizing the moon (which is much closer) could be a useful stepping stone to the goal of Mars and beyond. Putting an entire infrastructure to support human habitation on another planet is a monumental undertaking and we don't even have a fraction of a percent of the technology needed to do that. The Moon could be very useful in development of some of that technology.
If you can do that, you can make real progress towards colonizing the solar system because you don't have to bring everything from earth.
I could make the same argument regarding moon colonization.
Corporations are not people and should not ever be offended
Corporations are staffed by people who routinely are (and often should be) offended by rude and self important customers. There is no such thing as being rude to a corporation because corporations as you rightly point out are not people and you can only be rude to people. If you interact with a corporation you are interacting with the people who work there and it is quite possible to offend those people with your behavior. If you think it is acceptable to be rude to someone merely because they are a representative of that company then you are a jerk.
Being rude to a company should not affect the way the company does business or whom it does business with.
Clearly you have never had a business relationship. Most people are fine and when they have issues they can be reasoned with. Some small percentage customers cannot be pleased no matter what you do. Sometimes the right thing to do is to (figuratively) fire the customer. I've had customers of my company that were excessively difficult, demanding, expensive and sometimes extremely rude. I once fired a customer for making lewd remarks to one of my female employees. One of the dumbest things ever said in the business world is that "the customer is always right". Believing that is a great way to go out of business.
I am that guy. I don't go to hospitals, dentists, walk in clinics, family doctors, mental health providers. I haven't gone to any healthcare establishment unless it was in regard to pre employment screening since my father's military insurance stopped covering me about 20 years ago.
No you aren't "that guy". Sooner or later you will create a financial cost on the medical system. Avoiding medical care usually ends up in bigger costs down the line. But even if you completely avoid doctors and modern medicine you still will create medical costs by your existence.
At this point, if I become injured or sick in such a way that requires assistance to keep me alive, I'd rather not receive that assistance, and I have all the proper DNR boxes checked.
Oh bullshit. Even if you did have the sort of death wish you claim it doesn't matter. You still will cost the health care system by your mere existence. You think all that paperwork regarding your alleged DNR is free of cost? Do you think that you won't get carted to the hospital if you are in an accident? Do you think end of life care is free even for someone not seeking medical care? Nope. EVERYBODY uses the health care system whether they want to or not. EVERYBODY in society creates costs that others have to share. Only way to avoid it is to go deep into the wilderness and live off the land until you die, away from all humanity. Something basically nobody does.
If you want to be a part of society you get to share in some of the costs. Deal with it.
The Amish
What about them? They go to hospitals, they use medicines, etc. They require health care just like everybody else. The fact that they try to do it as much as possible within a community does not mean they do not participate in our health care system. Their church acts very much like a private group health insurance program that they all pay into.
Not everyone believes in private insurance.
So what? Ideology regarding private versus public insurance is irrelevant. Everybody uses health care whether they want to or not and therefore everybody needs to pay into the system to the extent they are able. Health care is a basic human right and nobody should be unable to get treatment because they are poor. We all need it sooner or later so we all should pay. Most sensible countries have solved this problem with a public health care system. The US has gone a different route (mostly for idiotic ideological reasons) but the result still needs to be that EVERYBODY pays whether they like it or not.
I don't think commercial jets have any internal combustion engines
Umm, what do you think propels the plane? Unicorn farts and pixie dust?
Planes are propelled by burning jet fuel (combustion) within a turbine (internal). You might consider learning what an internal combustion engine actually is before saying something so dumb publicly.
Nobody has to own a car. Obamacare is a tax on existence.
Please find me a single person who never uses health care and incurs no cost to the system. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Actually no I won't because there is no such person. EVERYBODY uses the health care system whether they want to or not and therefore everybody should have some skin in the game whether they want to or not. Every other civilized country in the world has figured this out. Auto insurance and health insurance are not and never will be the same because not everybody needs to drive or own a car.
Microsoft is forcing people to update, which makes these numbers meaningless.
No it doesn't. The numbers are what they are. It's not a measure of voluntary vs involuntary use. Market share is an objective fact regardless of the reason for it.
The fact that despite these strong-arming efforts, they're *still* only just now surpassing XP and Win8, says a lot about how much people don't want this latest and not-so-greatest OS.
No, it says a lot about how people shop on the Windows platform. Most people upgrade their OS when they buy a new machine. If what you have works then there is little reason to upgrade. I still have Windows XP machines here in my shop that will only get upgraded when they die. No reason to replace them as they work fine for their intended purpose. Windows 10 could be the most amazing operating system to ever grace the earth and I still wouldn't upgrade these machines because there is no gain to be had.
It's like claiming more people have health insurance when you force them to hand over their money to a private company whether they want to or not.
Do they have health insurance? Then it is true regardless of your political feelings on the matter. Forced or not is a separate issue.
I'm about as thrilled as most people around here regarding Windows 10 but the market share numbers are what they are. Frankly I don't really see anything in Windows 10 that is truly better than Windows 7 as far as I'm concerned, though it is a damn sight better than Windows 8/8.1. Hell I still use some XP machines and other than some security concerns I'm mostly fine with XP.
What part of this company is American anyway?
Their money is and that's the bit that matters. Apple does it's business substantially in dollars so exchange rate risk is a big deal for them like most multi-nationals.
as well as all of that money they've been refusing to bring into the US because they don't want to pay taxes on it. They're really taken it in the poo over that, with exchange rates taking such a dive. Guess they should have brought it home and paid those taxes, eh?
You are conflating two issues. Yes Apple has been incentivized to keep their currency reserves in other countries to a substantial degree. That has little to do with this problem. 2/3 of Apple's sales come from outside the US and their base currency is the dollar. When the dollar gets strong people in other countries can afford to buy fewer Apple products for the same money because their currency buys fewer dollars. Apple is effectively a net exporter of their goods and a strong dollar hurts exporters whose base currency is dollars. Whether or not they repatriate that money is irrelevant. They are getting fewer dollars per unit of goods sold whether or not they bring that cash back to the US. Exchange rates affect companies regardless of where the currency is actually held.
No actually people don't. Many people aren't in fact sociopaths and are happy to simply earn a normal living and pay taxes in the normal way without attempting to jump through vast hoops with offshore accounts and etc to avoid contributing to society.
Most people don't do that because they can't, not because they wouldn't. Some because they don't know how, others because they lack the resources to pull it off. If you think for a moment that most people are "happy" to pay a dime more in tax than they can get away with then you are delusional.
Many people actually understand that civilsation is built on taxes and can think beyond MINE ...
Evidently none of these people you refer to are republicans.
Software development and engineering are not marginal expenses (they don't vary with the number of items sold).
Software development and engineering account for a tiny fraction of Apple's costs. Something like 10-15%. Look at any software company's financial statements. You'll find that their development costs are always somewhere between 10-20% of total cost. It's true for Microsoft, Oracle and any other software company. You are correct that they are fixed costs but their effect on the bottom line in this case is relatively minor.
Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia (where costs have fallen in dollar terms) but Apple's development is mostly done in America.
Look at Apple's financial statements. You'll find that Apple's Cost of Goods Sold is almost 10X their SG&A and 15X their R&D costs. Cost of Good Sold is the direct cost attributable to making the physical products Apple sells - direct labor and materials. Engineering falls under SG&A and/or R&D. The costs aren't even close.
What you are missing is that even though Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia, what is important is that at the end of the day Apple's revenues and costs are in dollars. Since 2/3 of their sales are outside the US, a strong dollar hurts Apple on a net basis because it makes Apple's products more expensive outside the US.
Disclosure: I'm a certified accountant.
A strong dollar also reduces manufacturing costs, since manufacturing is overseas. This improves margins. I'm not seeing the issue.
Foreign exchange is often counter intuitive. In crude terms a strong currency helps importers but hurts exporters. If Apple in this case is the exporter. The stronger the currency gets the less units per dollar Apple's customers can buy. Since 2/3 of iphone sales are international Apple customers are unable to buy as many iPhones for the same amount of money.
It doesn't have anything really to do with manufacturing costs. Apple's manufacturing costs are mostly contracted well in advance for large volumes. This means their costs are close to fixed. So if the exchange rates move significantly after the contract is signed and Apple isn't hedged against currency movement then Apple will sell less product or have to accept worse margins.
As a lab manager I had to institute a rule that ANY cable that didn't have a label was going to be removed when found with no warning.
Back in the day of floppy disks we had a similar rule. If the disk wasn't important enough to justify a label it was to be considered blank. I feel the same way about labeling cables. If you aren't disciplined about this stuff it can get really out of hand really fast.