"Any product" being very specific products from Samsung.
There are a ton of Android handsets and makers, and Apple is not blanket suing all of them. They did go after the one who ripped off the iPhone design to such an extent that almost every review site commented on it. In that sense, they have a case - Samsung practically photocopied the iPhone. All the frothing by slashdot about "zomg rounded corners! they patented the rounded rectangle!" misses the point; it's not a single design element in isolation (there are plenty of products before and after the iPhone that feature rounded corners of a particular radius), but a whole slew of design elements that when combined together, form the iPhone. Arranging your icons in a grid: not unique. Arranging a very specifically coloured set of icons and graphics in a grid using rounded edges on a black background: iOS. Samsung's choice of icons was pretty blatant, especially when combined with the design of their phone.
Had Samsung had the same physical shape of the phone and gone with a different UI: no problem, or gone with a different phone shape with a similar UI to the one they used: still no problem. They didn't do that though - they made a phone that everyone looking at went "hey, looks nice, but exactly like the iPhone"
There are many, many more Android handsets that have not raised the ire of Apple's litigation department because *they don't look exactly like an iPhone*.
I'm as fed up as the next person with frivolous lawsuits and patents, like "once click shopping" or "arranging music in a list", "specific multi touch gestures", but in the case of Samsung copying the iPhone... it's pretty cut and dried.
Apple weren't refusing to cross license, they were simply disagreeing over the value of their patents - that's the reason for the Nokia lawsuit in the first place. They were attempting to cross licence, but neither side could agree on what Apple's patents were worth and it's necessary to know that since part of the RAND requirements for Nokia's GSM patents mean they have to be licensed at the same price to everyone involved. Apple's claim was that Nokia were asking for too much in exchange for the GSM patents. Hence, lawsuit, since neither side could agree.
It's never been the case that Apple refused to licence, or refused to pay Nokia (as many here have claimed).
Oh I'm sure it was excellent for some people (I'm ambivalent - I didn't need the features, but I can see how a non-advertising-funded service would be very nice), but not enough people paid for it to make it worth Apple's while to keep running in its current form.
Oh so original, going for the lewd humour. I was hoping you'd at least try to raise the bar. You clearly care enough to try to craft those daringly original and cutting comebacks.
Pity. You've not come off well here at all, have you?
You've just nailed it very succinctly - the GGP was severely generalising with the demographic of who buys a tablet (and all the reasons why they're "stupid" for doing so) when it's really not so cut and dried.
Replace the sports car with any other vehicle and it holds. Regardless of what you pick, the Minivan is the best features/storage per dollar and anyone who buys anything without going for the best features to dollar ratio, and ignores the form factor, is "beyond [his] understanding".
Keep moving forwards in time, that's how life works.
This is even more hilarious that you felt compelled to respond rather than slinking off, defeated. It's that urge that you just have to try and save face by getting the last word in! I suppose it was inevitable, since your *first* debate technique is going right for "scrotum" and the ad hominem. Still funny though, keep it up.
No, I've certainly heard of it - but it was pointed out to me today that it was $400 and not more like $450-499 that I had previously believed it was, thus rendering my argument moot - since it clearly if for sale at $100 less (more in fact, since Amazon has a further $6 discount on it).
The question why isn't it selling in droves to all the slashdot crowd who claimed they'd buy a spec-comparable-iPad-killer for $100 less? Suddenly $200 is meant to be the "real" cost of tablets? HP demonstrated (at least they claim) that the TouchPad cost $318 in component cost alone.
If you think payment processing is easy - especially microtransactions, then you are underestimating the cost. Your 5% optimistic figure just isn't matched by reality, and it's not just Apple charging 30% for their handling of all of the hosting and payment - the android market works exactly the same way. You think that if it were a gratuitous amount that Google would want to "one up" Apple by making it much (or even a little) smaller on the Android market, since there's certainly no love lost there.
The question about the Transformer is why isn't it flying off the shelves? (In the same way that comparable Android handsets are vs the iPhone). If it's that $400 is still too much, despite a lot of armchair 'I'd buy an android tablet with the iPad's specs without Apple's 'crazy' markup' talk on slashdot, I have to assume that people simply don't realise what it costs to make a tablet. It seems that they certainly are out there.
Perhaps because the tablet is offering them.... shock horror, a user experience that is *not* like a tiny laptop?
To use a car analogy, why would I buy a sleek, 2 seater sports car as a single guy with no kids when I could buy a Minivan - not only is the Minivan cheaper than the sports car, but it has more storage space, more features, more cup holders, more 12V power sockets, a cool sliding side door that makes it easy to get in and out of in a crowded parking lot and it can carry 7 people!
So much better than a 2 seater sports car that can't do any of that! Why on earth would I buy anything *other* than a Minivan - it has the most features per unit value so it is obviously the only vehicle anyone should ever consider buying. It's time some sensible company realised that only yahoos buy anything other than Minivans and that the rest of us will not give our hard earned money for a sub-par car.
Just the screen and touch assembly in the HP Touchpad came to $132 and that's purely the raw cost of the parts (no assembly or profit margin or any other components at all).
It's not as cheap as all the armchair quarterbacks seem to think it is, otherwise we'd already have cheaper-than-iPad tablets out there that cost much less.
But that market already exists - the original Tab is selling for about that now, and it has very similar specs to this new tablet. There's really not much new ground being broken here for those who can't see the value in buying a tablet at iPad prices (and spec) - I can't justify it myself, for instance.
That "refurb outdated product" is feature comparable to this thing, except with a 9.7" screen (the really expensive bit) - that's the point here. This brand new product is competing with... "obsolete refurb products", and it doesn't even do that very well.
Leaving the troll bait final paragraph aside (your intellectual superiority is near impenetrable, I'm amazed you can even post on slashdot since people have obviously heard of it, so it's clearly too mainstream for you).
This $249 tablet is blazing a trail..... by costing the same as the first Galaxy Tab does right now, with the same specs. "Woot" indeed.
By "rake off a nice think 30 points" you mean "handle all the hosting, payment processing and promotion" for the content and software in the store, then sure that's "raking in a nice thick 30 points". Those Apple statements you like to 'get your figures' mention specifically that the iTunes Store is not a large source of profit for apple (not even in the same ballpark as their hardware), so your whole post just looks like uninformed nonsense.
So, I will say it again - if Apple is making an outrageously large profit on the iPad then where are the many, many companies would can undercut the iPad with the same specs?
You say that Apple is making "at least 50 points" on the iPad, so where are the competitors coming in at even $50 to 100 less? They just do not exist, because they have realised that they simply cannot do it right now - the closest we had was the Xoom (in terms of hardware specs) to the iPad and it was pretty much exactly the same price (and a little bit more expensive) than the iPad.
We'll be generous and say that you can put that slight imbalance (that the iPad was still cheaper for 5 of the 6 models of iPad you could buy) down to economies of scale, but even then the Xoom was only equivalent in price.
If an iPad-comparable tablet could be sold for $100+ less or more by someone else, it would already be on the shelves - it's not rocket science.
So, either we accept that *every* company (including those trying to lure people away from the iPad and buy their tablet) just won't budge on a "50 point" profit on their unproven-but-upstart tablet competitor and remain confident that costing more than an iPad will really encourage people to buy, *or* tablets with the iPad's specs cost a little more to make than armchair quarterbacks on slashdot seem to think they do.
I am certain that people who make these things for a living have also done the same calculations, since that is.. what they do for a living.
If Apple were making a huge profit on the iPad (in the region of what pie in the sky percentages/. seems to think Apple is making per unit) then there would already be iPad-comparable tablets for much less and there simply aren't. It's certainly not because no one can see any money in making one though, since the launch of the original iPad.
If it were possible to make something to "beat" the iPad for less than the iPad sells for (and still be profitable), someone would have done it by now.
This whole hilarious "a tablet at sensible 'non-apple' prices...." thing is just not getting through to anyone here, is it? The iPad costs what it does because *that's close to what it costs to make*. Apple are not making a 300% profit on those things. Everyone seems to think that the parts set Apple back about $200 and then they slap a massive profit margin on the top.
If it were that simple, there would be a ton of comparable spec tablets out there for "netbook prices" a long time ago.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what they did in Manhattan. Some stations are at a higher level than the track to provide gravitation potential energy storage that assists the trains when slowing down and helps when speeding them up.
It's done on the London Underground too, where it saves something like 5% in energy costs compared to 'flat' stations (ie, 95% power use).
If you're going to try to "pwn" someone, perhaps you should actually check some facts first. It tends to help when attempting to not look like a fool.
But you really don't have to go to Apple for your replacement - there are several third party sources for batteries, some that will do the swap for you, others that just supply the battery.
Or there is Apple, who do charge more but also offer things like discounted upgrades on new hardware (ie, for the cost of the battery replacement) if your device is too old to be part of the programme.
It's hard to see them as "embracing" planned obsolescence when new models are *more* upgradable than older ones - for example, the new iMacs all have socketed CPUs (standard sockets too, that work with bog standard intel CPUs), and providing firmware upgrades for 6GB/s SATA despite not selling any drive that has that capability (ie, purely to assist self upgraders who are putting SATA 3 SSD drives in).
Sure, they have some strange moves, like the temperature monitoring on the new iMac (using a custom firmware and repurposing the LED activity pin as a temperature probe saved them having to use a different cable for each different HD manufacturer, but there are instructions for bypassing it when installing non-compatible drives), or the use of non-philips screws on the iPhone 4 (presumably for strength, since it is easy to strip a philips head when the screw is that small. Either way it's no barrier to opening the phone).
A battery swap costs $20 for a new battery, and takes a few minutes to do - it's hardly "designed to have an expiry date" as much as it was designed to be thin and light, with as large a battery capacity as possible. You're looking for ulterior motives
Slashdot Mirror
"Any product" being very specific products from Samsung.
There are a ton of Android handsets and makers, and Apple is not blanket suing all of them. They did go after the one who ripped off the iPhone design to such an extent that almost every review site commented on it. In that sense, they have a case - Samsung practically photocopied the iPhone. All the frothing by slashdot about "zomg rounded corners! they patented the rounded rectangle!" misses the point; it's not a single design element in isolation (there are plenty of products before and after the iPhone that feature rounded corners of a particular radius), but a whole slew of design elements that when combined together, form the iPhone. Arranging your icons in a grid: not unique. Arranging a very specifically coloured set of icons and graphics in a grid using rounded edges on a black background: iOS. Samsung's choice of icons was pretty blatant, especially when combined with the design of their phone.
Had Samsung had the same physical shape of the phone and gone with a different UI: no problem, or gone with a different phone shape with a similar UI to the one they used: still no problem. They didn't do that though - they made a phone that everyone looking at went "hey, looks nice, but exactly like the iPhone"
There are many, many more Android handsets that have not raised the ire of Apple's litigation department because *they don't look exactly like an iPhone*.
I'm as fed up as the next person with frivolous lawsuits and patents, like "once click shopping" or "arranging music in a list", "specific multi touch gestures", but in the case of Samsung copying the iPhone... it's pretty cut and dried.
Apple weren't refusing to cross license, they were simply disagreeing over the value of their patents - that's the reason for the Nokia lawsuit in the first place. They were attempting to cross licence, but neither side could agree on what Apple's patents were worth and it's necessary to know that since part of the RAND requirements for Nokia's GSM patents mean they have to be licensed at the same price to everyone involved. Apple's claim was that Nokia were asking for too much in exchange for the GSM patents. Hence, lawsuit, since neither side could agree.
It's never been the case that Apple refused to licence, or refused to pay Nokia (as many here have claimed).
Oh I'm sure it was excellent for some people (I'm ambivalent - I didn't need the features, but I can see how a non-advertising-funded service would be very nice), but not enough people paid for it to make it worth Apple's while to keep running in its current form.
Oh so original, going for the lewd humour. I was hoping you'd at least try to raise the bar. You clearly care enough to try to craft those daringly original and cutting comebacks.
Pity. You've not come off well here at all, have you?
You've just nailed it very succinctly - the GGP was severely generalising with the demographic of who buys a tablet (and all the reasons why they're "stupid" for doing so) when it's really not so cut and dried.
Replace the sports car with any other vehicle and it holds. Regardless of what you pick, the Minivan is the best features/storage per dollar and anyone who buys anything without going for the best features to dollar ratio, and ignores the form factor, is "beyond [his] understanding".
Sorry, I was right with you up until the childish stuff.
Your mom called and said it's time for your dinner.
Keep moving forwards in time, that's how life works.
This is even more hilarious that you felt compelled to respond rather than slinking off, defeated. It's that urge that you just have to try and save face by getting the last word in! I suppose it was inevitable, since your *first* debate technique is going right for "scrotum" and the ad hominem. Still funny though, keep it up.
Excel is for salesmen who want to make pretty bar charts.
Matlab is over in the corner being unpopular and obtuse, but getting shit done. :p
(Actually Excel is not bad but quickly runs into walls if you try to seriously bend it to your data)
Quite simply, it cost too much for what it provided. If it were free then it wouldn't have become the "failure" that everyone is claiming.
No, I've certainly heard of it - but it was pointed out to me today that it was $400 and not more like $450-499 that I had previously believed it was, thus rendering my argument moot - since it clearly if for sale at $100 less (more in fact, since Amazon has a further $6 discount on it).
The question why isn't it selling in droves to all the slashdot crowd who claimed they'd buy a spec-comparable-iPad-killer for $100 less? Suddenly $200 is meant to be the "real" cost of tablets? HP demonstrated (at least they claim) that the TouchPad cost $318 in component cost alone.
If you think payment processing is easy - especially microtransactions, then you are underestimating the cost. Your 5% optimistic figure just isn't matched by reality, and it's not just Apple charging 30% for their handling of all of the hosting and payment - the android market works exactly the same way. You think that if it were a gratuitous amount that Google would want to "one up" Apple by making it much (or even a little) smaller on the Android market, since there's certainly no love lost there.
The question about the Transformer is why isn't it flying off the shelves? (In the same way that comparable Android handsets are vs the iPhone). If it's that $400 is still too much, despite a lot of armchair 'I'd buy an android tablet with the iPad's specs without Apple's 'crazy' markup' talk on slashdot, I have to assume that people simply don't realise what it costs to make a tablet. It seems that they certainly are out there.
Perhaps because the tablet is offering them.... shock horror, a user experience that is *not* like a tiny laptop?
To use a car analogy, why would I buy a sleek, 2 seater sports car as a single guy with no kids when I could buy a Minivan - not only is the Minivan cheaper than the sports car, but it has more storage space, more features, more cup holders, more 12V power sockets, a cool sliding side door that makes it easy to get in and out of in a crowded parking lot and it can carry 7 people!
So much better than a 2 seater sports car that can't do any of that! Why on earth would I buy anything *other* than a Minivan - it has the most features per unit value so it is obviously the only vehicle anyone should ever consider buying. It's time some sensible company realised that only yahoos buy anything other than Minivans and that the rest of us will not give our hard earned money for a sub-par car.
Just the screen and touch assembly in the HP Touchpad came to $132 and that's purely the raw cost of the parts (no assembly or profit margin or any other components at all).
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx
It's not as cheap as all the armchair quarterbacks seem to think it is, otherwise we'd already have cheaper-than-iPad tablets out there that cost much less.
But that market already exists - the original Tab is selling for about that now, and it has very similar specs to this new tablet. There's really not much new ground being broken here for those who can't see the value in buying a tablet at iPad prices (and spec) - I can't justify it myself, for instance.
That "refurb outdated product" is feature comparable to this thing, except with a 9.7" screen (the really expensive bit) - that's the point here. This brand new product is competing with... "obsolete refurb products", and it doesn't even do that very well.
Leaving the troll bait final paragraph aside (your intellectual superiority is near impenetrable, I'm amazed you can even post on slashdot since people have obviously heard of it, so it's clearly too mainstream for you).
This $249 tablet is blazing a trail..... by costing the same as the first Galaxy Tab does right now, with the same specs. "Woot" indeed.
Cool story bro.
By "rake off a nice think 30 points" you mean "handle all the hosting, payment processing and promotion" for the content and software in the store, then sure that's "raking in a nice thick 30 points". Those Apple statements you like to 'get your figures' mention specifically that the iTunes Store is not a large source of profit for apple (not even in the same ballpark as their hardware), so your whole post just looks like uninformed nonsense.
So, I will say it again - if Apple is making an outrageously large profit on the iPad then where are the many, many companies would can undercut the iPad with the same specs?
You say that Apple is making "at least 50 points" on the iPad, so where are the competitors coming in at even $50 to 100 less? They just do not exist, because they have realised that they simply cannot do it right now - the closest we had was the Xoom (in terms of hardware specs) to the iPad and it was pretty much exactly the same price (and a little bit more expensive) than the iPad.
We'll be generous and say that you can put that slight imbalance (that the iPad was still cheaper for 5 of the 6 models of iPad you could buy) down to economies of scale, but even then the Xoom was only equivalent in price.
If an iPad-comparable tablet could be sold for $100+ less or more by someone else, it would already be on the shelves - it's not rocket science.
So, either we accept that *every* company (including those trying to lure people away from the iPad and buy their tablet) just won't budge on a "50 point" profit on their unproven-but-upstart tablet competitor and remain confident that costing more than an iPad will really encourage people to buy, *or* tablets with the iPad's specs cost a little more to make than armchair quarterbacks on slashdot seem to think they do.
I am certain that people who make these things for a living have also done the same calculations, since that is.. what they do for a living.
If Apple were making a huge profit on the iPad (in the region of what pie in the sky percentages /. seems to think Apple is making per unit) then there would already be iPad-comparable tablets for much less and there simply aren't. It's certainly not because no one can see any money in making one though, since the launch of the original iPad.
If it were possible to make something to "beat" the iPad for less than the iPad sells for (and still be profitable), someone would have done it by now.
This whole hilarious "a tablet at sensible 'non-apple' prices...." thing is just not getting through to anyone here, is it? The iPad costs what it does because *that's close to what it costs to make*. Apple are not making a 300% profit on those things. Everyone seems to think that the parts set Apple back about $200 and then they slap a massive profit margin on the top.
If it were that simple, there would be a ton of comparable spec tablets out there for "netbook prices" a long time ago.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what they did in Manhattan. Some stations are at a higher level than the track to provide gravitation potential energy storage that assists the trains when slowing down and helps when speeding them up.
It's done on the London Underground too, where it saves something like 5% in energy costs compared to 'flat' stations (ie, 95% power use).
If you're going to try to "pwn" someone, perhaps you should actually check some facts first. It tends to help when attempting to not look like a fool.
I'm not the AC, but my goodness this is funniest thing I've seen all week.
You made yourself look like a total fool.
Yeah, people like... my immediate family, and coworkers...
Not everyone just plays farmville on it all day.
Why do you think I have Facebook sandboxed in its own browser, separate from all of my other browsing?
I do not trust them as far as I can throw them.
But you really don't have to go to Apple for your replacement - there are several third party sources for batteries, some that will do the swap for you, others that just supply the battery.
Or there is Apple, who do charge more but also offer things like discounted upgrades on new hardware (ie, for the cost of the battery replacement) if your device is too old to be part of the programme.
It's hard to see them as "embracing" planned obsolescence when new models are *more* upgradable than older ones - for example, the new iMacs all have socketed CPUs (standard sockets too, that work with bog standard intel CPUs), and providing firmware upgrades for 6GB/s SATA despite not selling any drive that has that capability (ie, purely to assist self upgraders who are putting SATA 3 SSD drives in).
Sure, they have some strange moves, like the temperature monitoring on the new iMac (using a custom firmware and repurposing the LED activity pin as a temperature probe saved them having to use a different cable for each different HD manufacturer, but there are instructions for bypassing it when installing non-compatible drives), or the use of non-philips screws on the iPhone 4 (presumably for strength, since it is easy to strip a philips head when the screw is that small. Either way it's no barrier to opening the phone).
A battery swap costs $20 for a new battery, and takes a few minutes to do - it's hardly "designed to have an expiry date" as much as it was designed to be thin and light, with as large a battery capacity as possible. You're looking for ulterior motives
About $360 million if the reports are to be believed, excluding asset sales etc.