Instead of taking on Apple and Dell and Acer in making a better PC. They made mediocre/cheaper ones.
You're a bit fuzzy on your history there. HP made very high-quality PCs for several years, and then Dell and Gateway had their race to the bottom, and nobody would pay the difference to get higher quality machines. HP held out as long as they could, but the writing was on the wall.
The cowardly thing to do is pretend that everything is just fine, and hope that nobody notices the decline. This decision may or may not prove to be a good one, but it sure isn't cowardly.
>If they're so eager to try and fix the problem, why have they been conspicuously ignoring all the complaints, even Parliamentary demands for comments?
Since when does talking to governments solve private contractual issues?
Take it up with the music publishers in Australia. Apple has to negotiate the distribution rights in each country individually. Believe me, they'd like nothing better than to be able to offer the same iTMS everywhere in the world.
Screening pilots was always idiotic. If they're at the controls of the plane and they want to kill everyone on board, they don't need to blow it up, do they?
I love the idea of massively decentralized power generation. It could free up gigatons of metals that we're currently using in high-tension lines, towers, tranformers, etc, etc. Not to mention, without transmission lines, your power doesn't have to fail anytime you have a massive snowstorm.
if it starts going into cars, demand will go up, and so it will be more expensive.
You're not taking into account that economies of scale will come into play as well. Oil got a hell of a lot cheaper when people started using it to power cars back around 1900-1920.
The XServe never had a business case, it existed just because Steve wanted Pixar to be an Apple-only company.
No, Pixar really didn't have much to do with it, and it was pretty much Rubinstein's idea. The Xserve existed because there was a demand for a dedicated machine for OS X Server. It did pretty well, just not well enough to remain interesting for a company of Apple's scale. Alex Grossman went and started his own company selling a replacement for the XServe RAID, and he's doing very well.
>Never encountered anyone yelling? Do you work in credit risk?
No, The risk analysis I worked on was more along the lines of balancing the firm's global exposure like being long on a given currency in Zurich, but having that hedged by offsetting positions in Chicago. I also worked on derivatives pricing, soft-dollar accounting, and order clearing.
> a random trader who angrily demanded that I fix something to do with Word Perfect-
Heh. I've have told him to go pound sand up his ass.
I've heard stories like this, but I never encountered anyone yelling at me in all the time I spent in the financial industry. This was over several years in NYC and Chicago, at Salomon, UBS/Warburg, JP Morgan, and Phibro energy. The only time anyone ever did yell at me at work, I just turned my back on him, went to my desk, and calmly packed up my stuff while he and his boss were frantically apologizing and begging me to stay.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of taking on Apple and Dell and Acer in making a better PC. They made mediocre/cheaper ones.
You're a bit fuzzy on your history there. HP made very high-quality PCs for several years, and then Dell and Gateway had their race to the bottom, and nobody would pay the difference to get higher quality machines. HP held out as long as they could, but the writing was on the wall.
-jcr
HP's duty is to earn a profit for their shareholders, not to pursue whatever nationalist goals you think they should.
-jcr
he cowardly axes the entire division
Cowardly?
The cowardly thing to do is pretend that everything is just fine, and hope that nobody notices the decline. This decision may or may not prove to be a good one, but it sure isn't cowardly.
-jcr
That doesn't explain why their hardware is so much more expensive here.
How much are your import duties?
You think you have it bad, in Brazil they have to pay double the US price.
-jcr
Knowing when to cut your losses is a pretty rare skill among computer industry management. Apotheker might turn out to be HP's Lew Gerstner.
-jcr
>If they're so eager to try and fix the problem, why have they been conspicuously ignoring all the complaints, even Parliamentary demands for comments?
Since when does talking to governments solve private contractual issues?
-jcr
Take it up with the music publishers in Australia. Apple has to negotiate the distribution rights in each country individually. Believe me, they'd like nothing better than to be able to offer the same iTMS everywhere in the world.
-jcr
Hear, hear!
He's the only anti-war candidate in the race, and he's the only one who doesn't equivocate about the fact that the PATRIOT act is unconstitutional.
-jcr
They're also lower than every American state.
-jcr
No idea where you are, but I've seen them all over the place in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and San Diego.
-jcr
Someone remind me... Isn't PyPy the implementation that's based on LLVM?
-jcr
So, Apple's setting out to solve the print driver problem right when they're making tablets so popular that we don't need hard copy anymore.
-jcr
or maybe the Xanadudes would have shipped something better.
-jcr
Screening pilots was always idiotic. If they're at the controls of the plane and they want to kill everyone on board, they don't need to blow it up, do they?
-jcr
Better by what criteria?
I love the idea of massively decentralized power generation. It could free up gigatons of metals that we're currently using in high-tension lines, towers, tranformers, etc, etc. Not to mention, without transmission lines, your power doesn't have to fail anytime you have a massive snowstorm.
-jcr
if it starts going into cars, demand will go up, and so it will be more expensive.
You're not taking into account that economies of scale will come into play as well. Oil got a hell of a lot cheaper when people started using it to power cars back around 1900-1920.
-jcr
Nope. Lots of countries tie their exchange rate to the dollar.
-jcr
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "sweating bullets", I guess.
-jcr
So your value-add is filtering?
Could you explain the economics of it a bit? What kind of revenues are you seeing against what kind of costs?
-jcr
From what I can tell, all kinds of porn is available without paying for it. Whatever the niche you're serving, can't they just google it?
-jcr
the demand for them was small
Not really. It just wasn't big enough for Apple.
-jcr
The XServe never had a business case, it existed just because Steve wanted Pixar to be an Apple-only company.
No, Pixar really didn't have much to do with it, and it was pretty much Rubinstein's idea. The Xserve existed because there was a demand for a dedicated machine for OS X Server. It did pretty well, just not well enough to remain interesting for a company of Apple's scale. Alex Grossman went and started his own company selling a replacement for the XServe RAID, and he's doing very well.
-jcr
Who cares what some manager at the next Geocities has to say about it? Facebook is a fad, it too will pass.
-jcr
>Never encountered anyone yelling? Do you work in credit risk?
No, The risk analysis I worked on was more along the lines of balancing the firm's global exposure like being long on a given currency in Zurich, but having that hedged by offsetting positions in Chicago. I also worked on derivatives pricing, soft-dollar accounting, and order clearing.
> a random trader who angrily demanded that I fix something to do with Word Perfect-
Heh. I've have told him to go pound sand up his ass.
-jcr
I've heard stories like this, but I never encountered anyone yelling at me in all the time I spent in the financial industry. This was over several years in NYC and Chicago, at Salomon, UBS/Warburg, JP Morgan, and Phibro energy. The only time anyone ever did yell at me at work, I just turned my back on him, went to my desk, and calmly packed up my stuff while he and his boss were frantically apologizing and begging me to stay.
-jcr