I totally understand, but my point is that Apple will be poaching from the Linux community; if Apple hadn't been around, you might have been able to hook your wife up with an Ubuntu laptop, in theory. They would also appeal to those slightly less technically able than you, or those with less time (they got me in 2001 when I got sick of installing different distros).
Today Linux is 100x better than Linux from 2001... but likewise, so is Apple's Mac OS X.
Apple's OS sits in a very happy middle ground between Windows and Linux.
But Apple has every opportunity to introduce OTHER iPhone models that aren't under contract with AT&T.
And this isn't about "technology", everything in the iPhone, like everything in the Wii or iPod, is current technology. It's in the design, usability, and functionality.
Nothing right now exists that is ANYTHING like the iPhone. When the iPhone adds more technical features to catch up, it's usability will leapfrog past any other competition.
Except it's doing 10x better so far. 1m iPhones in 74 days vs 1m iPods in 20 months!
The Zune, in comparison, did 1m in 6 months; the iPhone certainly isn't a flop, either. And I think Apple reported 125,000 iPods sold by January of 2002.
Apple sold 3 times as many iPhones in their first 24 hours than they sold iPods in 3 months. And you think this holiday quarter won't be gangbusters for Apple?
Hmm, Apple making billions a year, switching to Intel, and growing at 30% a year is somehow bad?
The difference and problem with your analogy is that Google doesn't get a cent off Android unless it is through ads, software sales, or some other licensing agreement. Also wrong with your analogy is that all of the PC manufacturers are suffering from razor thin margins while Apple has nice healthy ones. So Google can't be Microsoft and the handset manufacturers don't want to be Dell, Compaq, or IBM, they want to be Apple.
Finally, anything developed for Android can be trivially ported to the iPhone, thanks to the Apache license and the fact that OS X is fundamentally similar to Android!
In the end I think what will happen is Android will be #1 in sheer volume, but iPhone will be #1 in pure profit. Apple will copy the best features of Android and Android will copy the best features of the iPhone. Microsoft will be relegated to a very distant third.
It was at least the 3rd HDD player. Creative and Compaq both had ones out before Apple.
And you misunderstand Google; they aren't promoting server services... they are promoting another platform from which they can collect data, package it to advertisers, and sell ads.
That, and everything Google accomplishes with Android, Apple can port to the iPhone! Thank you Apache license.
And yet doesn't that sound exactly like the iPod in 2001? 1) Lot of MP3 players with more features (bigger battery, more storage, FM radio, flash, support for Windows, drag and drop support, WMA support, etc). Yet here we are. 2) The iPod was only available for Macs and used Firewire instead of USB. Somehow Apple managed to add support for Windows, port iTunes to Windows, AND support for USB2. 3) Cheaper MP3 players could not displace the iPod; somehow I don't think cheaper phones will displace the iPhone; we need BETTER phones.
I hope you have better choices in two years too. My AAPL stock hopes the iPhone will suit you (3G, GPS, extensive Bluetooth support, etc)
The iPod was originally Mac only, for the first 9 months. That didn't seem to stop it, either.
The AT&T bundle works to both parties advantage, for now. Don't think the landscape won't change in six months; Apple is probably working on a 3G phone as we speak.
You compare four months of iPhone availability against six years of iPod availability and think the iPhone is a failure?
The iPod was released in October of 2001 and didn't hit 1 million iPods until June of 2003, almost 2 years later. Conversely the iPhone hit 1m only 3 months after release, and you somehow thing iPhones are a flop? Or did you run around in 2003 saying, "I have yet to see an iPod, and the consensus is lame"?
I'm not decrying Google's Android at all. I have high hopes for it (especially since I own GOOG), but where we disagree is that I think the iPhone has a great impact AND it will benefit from Android.
What makes you think the Google SDK and iPhone SDK are incompatible?
Regardless, your point is irrelevant. Apple has an incredibly successful and profitable niche without directly addressing the business environment, yet.
If the SDK is constructed such that all programs are "encrypted", digitally signed as it were, and iPhones crafted that they would only run signed code, then third party unsupported software would have to be hacked to run on an iPhone, no different than today.
Isn't that like arguing, in 2001, that the iPod was a single device while the PlaysForSure platform was hundreds of MP3 players made by dozens of companies spanning both the high end and low end... that ultimate got killed by the iPod Classic at the high end, the iPod nano in the middle, and iPod shuffle on the low end?
You don't think Apple will repeat history in 2007 with the iPhone what they did in 2001 with the iPod?
Funny, I would have said: Apple makes hardware that works Google makes software that works
You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser).
All the iPhone does (for now) is: Phone Internet Media A light smattering of accessory applications
And I only paid $300 for mine. $600 was so four months ago. The 8GB iPhone is only $399.
And at the things it does, meaning phone, internet, and media, I have never seen another phone nearly as good. And as time goes on, Apple will be adding more and more features with, I presume, the same usability and polish that the first three applications shipped with.
There is significant overlap between Google and Apple, in this case, in that Apple provides the ultimate prototypical platform for a gPhone while Google provides the ultimate framework for developing the applications and UI that the iPhone OR gPhone would need.
I hear from my coworkers who switched data plans to get their iPhones that it was cheaper to get the iPhone data plan on Cingular (in the US) than it was to use competing data plans for competing smartphones.
In other words: The iPhone was priced competitively after the price drop, negating your point on full price+markup, and the data plan at $20 a month is cheaper than the $36 a month that Blackjacks and Treos had to do with, negating your second point on extra high monthly payments.
My guess on a fully unlocked iPhone? At least in the US in US dollars, I bet an 8gb unlocked iPhone will be $599.
I bet some bad blood exists because Sun has taken so long to port OpenOffice to native Mac status. By the time they finish, Apple will have a full fledged office competitor themselves in iWork!
So essentially because Sun has decided Apple is not worth the resources to support OpenOffice on the Mac, Apple has decided Sun is not worth the resources to support Java on the Mac.
My completed save games allow me to start new games with the stats or equipment from the previous incarnation, which usually unlocks a whole new series of areas I was previously unable to enter due to low stats or poor equipment.
Then there is the value of playing a game without having to grind.
Huh? The iPhone and the Treo model is identical. The difference is that Apple provides a download manager called iTunes to facilitate the distribution. You still have to go through hoops to install the update (IE, click yes to download, click yes to install, click yes to confirm install).
I also suspect they did not lose many phones at all, though, or we would have heard about it in the earnings... in other words the returns/repairs would have hit them (much like the XBox 360 repair/returns hit Microsoft).
It does qualify. Your baby doesn't know, yet, right?
My daughter, at 16 months, is already learning about what is edible and not. At 14 months she was still putting inedible things in her mouth because she didn't know they were inedible.
No, not at all. We are also talking about restoring systems. Not all backup systems like you restore per file independent of snapshots. Some systems only allow you to restore an entire image from last week (which may be several gigabytes in size) when all you need is yesterday's phone numbers.
The ThinkPad only requires one screw to replace the harddrive, but several for the ram. The MacBook only requires three screws to replace either the harddrive or the ram.
I think the story is the same for the iMac. I wouldn't be throwing blame around unless you've actually researched the process. The Macs are as simple to repair, for user replaceable parts, as a ThinkPad. It's the non-user servicable parts (like CPUs, heatsinks, etc) that are a bear.
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I totally understand, but my point is that Apple will be poaching from the Linux community; if Apple hadn't been around, you might have been able to hook your wife up with an Ubuntu laptop, in theory. They would also appeal to those slightly less technically able than you, or those with less time (they got me in 2001 when I got sick of installing different distros).
Today Linux is 100x better than Linux from 2001... but likewise, so is Apple's Mac OS X.
Apple's OS sits in a very happy middle ground between Windows and Linux.
I don't think it will happen soon, but...
You didn't also think it was possible for Macs to switch to Linux, did you?
Do you also think it's unlikely that Apple will integrate Wine into Mac OS X?
Everything you say is true about Linux also applies to Mac OS X. Linux needs to keep an eye on Apple, too.
But Apple has every opportunity to introduce OTHER iPhone models that aren't under contract with AT&T.
And this isn't about "technology", everything in the iPhone, like everything in the Wii or iPod, is current technology. It's in the design, usability, and functionality.
Nothing right now exists that is ANYTHING like the iPhone. When the iPhone adds more technical features to catch up, it's usability will leapfrog past any other competition.
It could also be a nightmare sequence :)
You mean the Chinese clones like this that won't be out for another month?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_miniOne
Except it's doing 10x better so far.
1m iPhones in 74 days vs 1m iPods in 20 months!
The Zune, in comparison, did 1m in 6 months; the iPhone certainly isn't a flop, either. And I think Apple reported 125,000 iPods sold by January of 2002.
Apple sold 3 times as many iPhones in their first 24 hours than they sold iPods in 3 months. And you think this holiday quarter won't be gangbusters for Apple?
Look at Apple's recent quarterly reports.
Over 56% of their income is Mac related.
Macs are growing at 30+% a year
Those Macs cannot be ignored in Apple's growth.
Hmm, Apple making billions a year, switching to Intel, and growing at 30% a year is somehow bad?
The difference and problem with your analogy is that Google doesn't get a cent off Android unless it is through ads, software sales, or some other licensing agreement. Also wrong with your analogy is that all of the PC manufacturers are suffering from razor thin margins while Apple has nice healthy ones. So Google can't be Microsoft and the handset manufacturers don't want to be Dell, Compaq, or IBM, they want to be Apple.
Finally, anything developed for Android can be trivially ported to the iPhone, thanks to the Apache license and the fact that OS X is fundamentally similar to Android!
In the end I think what will happen is Android will be #1 in sheer volume, but iPhone will be #1 in pure profit. Apple will copy the best features of Android and Android will copy the best features of the iPhone. Microsoft will be relegated to a very distant third.
It was at least the 3rd HDD player. Creative and Compaq both had ones out before Apple.
And you misunderstand Google; they aren't promoting server services... they are promoting another platform from which they can collect data, package it to advertisers, and sell ads.
That, and everything Google accomplishes with Android, Apple can port to the iPhone! Thank you Apache license.
And yet doesn't that sound exactly like the iPod in 2001?
1) Lot of MP3 players with more features (bigger battery, more storage, FM radio, flash, support for Windows, drag and drop support, WMA support, etc). Yet here we are.
2) The iPod was only available for Macs and used Firewire instead of USB. Somehow Apple managed to add support for Windows, port iTunes to Windows, AND support for USB2.
3) Cheaper MP3 players could not displace the iPod; somehow I don't think cheaper phones will displace the iPhone; we need BETTER phones.
I hope you have better choices in two years too. My AAPL stock hopes the iPhone will suit you (3G, GPS, extensive Bluetooth support, etc)
The iPod was originally Mac only, for the first 9 months. That didn't seem to stop it, either.
The AT&T bundle works to both parties advantage, for now. Don't think the landscape won't change in six months; Apple is probably working on a 3G phone as we speak.
You compare four months of iPhone availability against six years of iPod availability and think the iPhone is a failure?
The iPod was released in October of 2001 and didn't hit 1 million iPods until June of 2003, almost 2 years later. Conversely the iPhone hit 1m only 3 months after release, and you somehow thing iPhones are a flop? Or did you run around in 2003 saying, "I have yet to see an iPod, and the consensus is lame"?
I'm not decrying Google's Android at all. I have high hopes for it (especially since I own GOOG), but where we disagree is that I think the iPhone has a great impact AND it will benefit from Android.
What makes you think the Google SDK and iPhone SDK are incompatible?
Regardless, your point is irrelevant. Apple has an incredibly successful and profitable niche without directly addressing the business environment, yet.
If the SDK is constructed such that all programs are "encrypted", digitally signed as it were, and iPhones crafted that they would only run signed code, then third party unsupported software would have to be hacked to run on an iPhone, no different than today.
Isn't that like arguing, in 2001, that the iPod was a single device while the PlaysForSure platform was hundreds of MP3 players made by dozens of companies spanning both the high end and low end... that ultimate got killed by the iPod Classic at the high end, the iPod nano in the middle, and iPod shuffle on the low end?
You don't think Apple will repeat history in 2007 with the iPhone what they did in 2001 with the iPod?
Funny, I would have said:
Apple makes hardware that works
Google makes software that works
You misinterpret the iPhone's initial market if you think it is suitable for business (it isn't), for instant messaging (it doesn't have that feature), or social networking (unless you want to use the built in Safari web browser).
All the iPhone does (for now) is:
Phone
Internet
Media
A light smattering of accessory applications
And I only paid $300 for mine. $600 was so four months ago. The 8GB iPhone is only $399.
And at the things it does, meaning phone, internet, and media, I have never seen another phone nearly as good. And as time goes on, Apple will be adding more and more features with, I presume, the same usability and polish that the first three applications shipped with.
There is significant overlap between Google and Apple, in this case, in that Apple provides the ultimate prototypical platform for a gPhone while Google provides the ultimate framework for developing the applications and UI that the iPhone OR gPhone would need.
$300 for the 4GB model, $40 for the base plan, $20 for the data plan, and you get 24*60+300
Or about $1740.
I hear from my coworkers who switched data plans to get their iPhones that it was cheaper to get the iPhone data plan on Cingular (in the US) than it was to use competing data plans for competing smartphones.
In other words: The iPhone was priced competitively after the price drop, negating your point on full price+markup, and the data plan at $20 a month is cheaper than the $36 a month that Blackjacks and Treos had to do with, negating your second point on extra high monthly payments.
My guess on a fully unlocked iPhone? At least in the US in US dollars, I bet an 8gb unlocked iPhone will be $599.
I bet some bad blood exists because Sun has taken so long to port OpenOffice to native Mac status. By the time they finish, Apple will have a full fledged office competitor themselves in iWork!
So essentially because Sun has decided Apple is not worth the resources to support OpenOffice on the Mac, Apple has decided Sun is not worth the resources to support Java on the Mac.
You're playing the wrong games then.
My completed save games allow me to start new games with the stats or equipment from the previous incarnation, which usually unlocks a whole new series of areas I was previously unable to enter due to low stats or poor equipment.
Then there is the value of playing a game without having to grind.
Huh? The iPhone and the Treo model is identical. The difference is that Apple provides a download manager called iTunes to facilitate the distribution. You still have to go through hoops to install the update (IE, click yes to download, click yes to install, click yes to confirm install).
I also suspect they did not lose many phones at all, though, or we would have heard about it in the earnings... in other words the returns/repairs would have hit them (much like the XBox 360 repair/returns hit Microsoft).
It does qualify. Your baby doesn't know, yet, right?
My daughter, at 16 months, is already learning about what is edible and not. At 14 months she was still putting inedible things in her mouth because she didn't know they were inedible.
Your kid just knows better.
No, not at all. We are also talking about restoring systems. Not all backup systems like you restore per file independent of snapshots. Some systems only allow you to restore an entire image from last week (which may be several gigabytes in size) when all you need is yesterday's phone numbers.
Did you mean like this?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303721
Or this?
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf
The ThinkPad only requires one screw to replace the harddrive, but several for the ram.
The MacBook only requires three screws to replace either the harddrive or the ram.
I think the story is the same for the iMac. I wouldn't be throwing blame around unless you've actually researched the process. The Macs are as simple to repair, for user replaceable parts, as a ThinkPad. It's the non-user servicable parts (like CPUs, heatsinks, etc) that are a bear.