but amazon's ebook division was profitable on its own merits - something a DOJ investigation confirmed.
And how did that "investigation" look? They kindly asked Amazon. Not to mention that apart from the loss leaders and the low profit ebooks from classic publishers, Amazon not only had the Kindles with their (at the time) high markup, they also had Kindle Direct Publishing, with a healthy 65% margin from the selling price at almost zero cost to them. It's easy being profitable with margins like that - even when you make massive losses on your bestsellers.
If the richest 20% had all their annual incomes confiscated (100% tax rate at all levels) it would fund the government by itself for a year and a half.
In other words, the rich are not the potential piggy banks Hollywood makes them out to be.
If you want to fund just our existing government programs (not counting the welfare pipe dreams, etc) the non-rich are going to have to pay dearly.
This was entirely predictable as soon as Apple allowed user expectations to settle on buying any app, no matter how useful or entertaining, for almost no money.
Are you actually blaming Apple for the pricing decided by the app developers?
You know, publishers did have negotiation options other than "form a price-fixing cabal".
Not really, because we have an n-prisoners dilemma here. Standing up against Amazon in negotiations only works if all publishers do. And the only way to make sure of that is breaking the law.
Recent month's show exactly hat happens if you stand up against Amazon on your own.
and they were filed because Amazon pays a hell of a lot more bribe money in Washington than Apple ever will.
It is unclear what you mean by 'bribe' money, but both Amazon and Apple spent huge sums of money lobbying over the last 15 years or so.
Amazon spends more, but not 'a hell of a lot' more. Both organisations do their absolute best to influence policy in their favour. The idea that Apple is somehow pure in this way is fantasy that could only come from the most delusional fanboy.
Bribe money is the money that doesn't show up in official records like your cite uses.
It's hard to find out exactly how many eBooks are sold annually, but best estimate I can find is around 400,000,000 copies annually in the USA alone. Apple has 30% of that market
We don't have to go any further to know you are full of shit.
Apple's being truthful here; The typical buyer of any random low-success indie app is also likely to have bought many apps from the top ten lists... and it's an absolute for the composite of typical buyers. If Apple wanted to foster an "App Store Middle Class" they'd have to take a patently dishonest approach and rig the system to stop promoting apps that are already highly successful.
It wouldn't be dishonest. Right now, a lot of the recommendations are things you've probably already heard of anyway. A policy of "discovery" recommendations would be no bad thing.
So they should have "people who bought this also bought this - but nobody else did" lists.
You do realise the fact you have to explain all these things to people means they're not as game-changing as you seem to think they are? It's like trying to explain why a joke is funny - if you have to, it's not funny.
Yeah, "it's just not funny" - that's what the people who lack humor and/or are too dumb to understand the joke always say. And they also say "it was no game changer - every product hat came after it was exactly like it, so what was so special?"
Apple claims developers have made $15B since 2008. That's 6 years. If you divided it out equally, that $2.5B per year. In contrast, Adobe alone takes in $4B a year in revenues. Even if you assume that the market has grown substantially and 2013 developer payouts were half, that's still $7.5 billion.
The iOS marketplace is still a lot smaller than the general software marketplace in terms of revenue thanks to the ridiculously low prices Apple has pushed on app developers.
I guess Apple can't win here - either they don't have enough free apps, or they are too cheap.
Really? I'll be the first to admit ignorance here. I don't know much about Apple and I won't pretend otherwise. I was under the impression that Apple bought components from Samsung, TMSC, etc. Out of genuine curiosity, can you point me to an IC that Apple recently designed?
There are plenty of smart engineers working for Visa. How much would $CLEVER_IDEA cost? How much does this sort of fraud cost? You can bet someone did the math.
Ohh, I see. It's not a flaw because fixing it would cost more money than it would save. Well make that: It would cost VISA more than it would save them, because they are never affected by the fraud, only the merchants, so VISA's cost is always zero.
Are we talking "design" as in which logic gates go in which circuit, or are we talking "design" as in rounded corners? Because I thought Apple doesn't do IC design.
So in other words: Apple, unlike almost all other "hardware makers" does make its own hardware. Because they sure as hell do their own IC design.
Visa/MasterCard make $0 off of interest. They charge a fee for the convenience of not having to use cash. They're not in the "loaning money" business at all, and of course TFS talks about debit cards, not credit cards.
BULL-FUCKING SHIT.
I have NEVER been charged a fee "for the convenience of not having to use cash". That fee is the couple of percent cut they take from each transaction, and the merchant has to eat the cost.
IOW it's not a fee you have to pay, it's a surcharge every customer has to pay, including those who pay cash. Because the merchant sure as hell won't eat the cost, thank you very much.
a lot of times legit charges get denied due to some fraud alert when travelling or some other algorithm being tripped
you need a system to override it if you call your bank and prove who you are
And that system should have no security at all, because?
Slashdot Mirror
but amazon's ebook division was profitable on its own merits - something a DOJ investigation confirmed.
And how did that "investigation" look? They kindly asked Amazon. Not to mention that apart from the loss leaders and the low profit ebooks from classic publishers, Amazon not only had the Kindles with their (at the time) high markup, they also had Kindle Direct Publishing, with a healthy 65% margin from the selling price at almost zero cost to them. It's easy being profitable with margins like that - even when you make massive losses on your bestsellers.
If the richest 20% had all their annual incomes confiscated (100% tax rate at all levels) it would fund the government by itself for a year and a half. In other words, the rich are not the potential piggy banks Hollywood makes them out to be. If you want to fund just our existing government programs (not counting the welfare pipe dreams, etc) the non-rich are going to have to pay dearly.
Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/...
This was entirely predictable as soon as Apple allowed user expectations to settle on buying any app, no matter how useful or entertaining, for almost no money.
Are you actually blaming Apple for the pricing decided by the app developers?
How do you sell an ebook below cost? Do you pay a customer to take it?
Is this a serious question?
You know, publishers did have negotiation options other than "form a price-fixing cabal".
Not really, because we have an n-prisoners dilemma here. Standing up against Amazon in negotiations only works if all publishers do. And the only way to make sure of that is breaking the law.
Recent month's show exactly hat happens if you stand up against Amazon on your own.
and they were filed because Amazon pays a hell of a lot more bribe money in Washington than Apple ever will.
It is unclear what you mean by 'bribe' money, but both Amazon and Apple spent huge sums of money lobbying over the last 15 years or so.
Amazon spends more, but not 'a hell of a lot' more. Both organisations do their absolute best to influence policy in their favour. The idea that Apple is somehow pure in this way is fantasy that could only come from the most delusional fanboy.
Bribe money is the money that doesn't show up in official records like your cite uses.
Yes, it's not as though Apple consipred to increase the prices that consumers paid when buying elsewhere. Oh wait ... yes Apple did just that!
Yeah, if by elsewhere you mean Amazon, and then only for those ebooks Amazon sold far below cost.
Money like this could change the world.
No.
It's hard to find out exactly how many eBooks are sold annually, but best estimate I can find is around 400,000,000 copies annually in the USA alone. Apple has 30% of that market
We don't have to go any further to know you are full of shit.
Just add a social component, and bamm! they are back https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...
Nice to see the fanboy glossing over the issue...
Yes, you did gloss over the issue of Google being a Hipster marketing company.
The most profitable apps are web browsers? What are you smoking?
Well, some of the "non-existing" web browsers on iOS cost money, so he may be right in his drug-addled delusions.
Apple's being truthful here; The typical buyer of any random low-success indie app is also likely to have bought many apps from the top ten lists... and it's an absolute for the composite of typical buyers. If Apple wanted to foster an "App Store Middle Class" they'd have to take a patently dishonest approach and rig the system to stop promoting apps that are already highly successful.
It wouldn't be dishonest. Right now, a lot of the recommendations are things you've probably already heard of anyway. A policy of "discovery" recommendations would be no bad thing.
So they should have "people who bought this also bought this - but nobody else did" lists.
Yeah, let's compare a company to a market that includes the company - and declare the market the loser. I couldn't have put it better myself.
You do realise the fact you have to explain all these things to people means they're not as game-changing as you seem to think they are? It's like trying to explain why a joke is funny - if you have to, it's not funny.
Yeah, "it's just not funny" - that's what the people who lack humor and/or are too dumb to understand the joke always say. And they also say "it was no game changer - every product hat came after it was exactly like it, so what was so special?"
Apple claims developers have made $15B since 2008. That's 6 years. If you divided it out equally, that $2.5B per year. In contrast, Adobe alone takes in $4B a year in revenues. Even if you assume that the market has grown substantially and 2013 developer payouts were half, that's still $7.5 billion.
Interesting statistics you present there. Too bad they are a little out of date: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2014/07/22/apple-earnings-live/ - "developers have now made $20 billion from the App Store, nearly half in the past 12 months"
The iOS marketplace is still a lot smaller than the general software marketplace in terms of revenue thanks to the ridiculously low prices Apple has pushed on app developers.
I guess Apple can't win here - either they don't have enough free apps, or they are too cheap.
Isn't that an ARM chip?
So? Are you claiming they didn't develop the chip because they made it compatible to an existing API?
Really? I'll be the first to admit ignorance here. I don't know much about Apple and I won't pretend otherwise. I was under the impression that Apple bought components from Samsung, TMSC, etc. Out of genuine curiosity, can you point me to an IC that Apple recently designed?
The A7.
There are plenty of smart engineers working for Visa. How much would $CLEVER_IDEA cost? How much does this sort of fraud cost? You can bet someone did the math.
Ohh, I see. It's not a flaw because fixing it would cost more money than it would save. Well make that: It would cost VISA more than it would save them, because they are never affected by the fraud, only the merchants, so VISA's cost is always zero.
Are we talking "design" as in which logic gates go in which circuit, or are we talking "design" as in rounded corners? Because I thought Apple doesn't do IC design.
So in other words: Apple, unlike almost all other "hardware makers" does make its own hardware. Because they sure as hell do their own IC design.
Visa/MasterCard make $0 off of interest. They charge a fee for the convenience of not having to use cash. They're not in the "loaning money" business at all, and of course TFS talks about debit cards, not credit cards.
BULL-FUCKING SHIT.
I have NEVER been charged a fee "for the convenience of not having to use cash". That fee is the couple of percent cut they take from each transaction, and the merchant has to eat the cost.
IOW it's not a fee you have to pay, it's a surcharge every customer has to pay, including those who pay cash. Because the merchant sure as hell won't eat the cost, thank you very much.
Amazingly simple scam, but also amazingly simple to prevent if the stores involved had even rudimentary procedures in place.
Well, too bad the article only mentions how many times the trick worked, not how many times it failed.
a lot of times legit charges get denied due to some fraud alert when travelling or some other algorithm being tripped you need a system to override it if you call your bank and prove who you are
And that system should have no security at all, because?
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nj/Press/files/McDonald,%20Temeshia%20Sentencing%20PR.html
Surely they don't have all those in the store?
Why wouldn't they? Unless they already sold all of them of course.
iPhones aren't build at Samsung factories.