No, I's saying employers shouldn't expect people to be on call 24/7/365. And if they do, people should try and get a different job. And if all else fails and they have to take such a job with the abusive employer, then they should do things outside of work where it's acceptable to have a phone ring.
How many more times: It is socially unacceptable to have a phone switched on in a theatre or cinema. Every person there paid for a ticket, and they have a right to see the entire show without being disturbed by people with their phones. Just because someone chose to have a job that denies them permission to turn their phone off, doesn't give them the right to ignore the rules of the theatre or cinema, and have a phone switched in whilst there.
Who's unreasonable? The people using phones in theatres. If you are amongst them, then you are one of the unreasonable ones.
You'd be surprised at just how many people with jammers get caught. People will gladly inform their carriers of deadzones, moreso if they know there's supposed to be service where they are. A few complaints, an inquiry, and they'll establish the pattern. Once that happens, you're busted.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. You're just making it up. A google search for people caught with jammers turns up virtually nothing. Radar jammers, sure. But not cellphone jammers.
Over and over again there's the report of a guy being caught with a jammer on a bus. But he was caught by journalists, not law enforcement, and only because he was stupid enough to use it regularly on the same bus, and he would take the jammer out of his pocket to crew the antenna on.
The other category of people that get caught are the vendors of the equipment. Obviously they have to advertise, so they're easier to catch, and more important as a target.
Again, using a jammer at the movie theatre, is pretty safe. There probably wouldn't be a pattern - unless you happen to be one of the few that go to the same single screen movie theatre same time every week. And trying to work out which of the hundreds of people there had the jammer would be impossible. Obviously, a sensible person would just reach into their pocket to switch it on, not get the device out.
But frankly, the leadership at Apple since Jobs died has been pretty shocking and if you think they are going to demand the same perfection as Jobs did, which is what made Apple distinguish itself in the first place, remember the Maps fiasco.
You're mythologising Jobs. Jobs had products that were not perfect too. Famously the Mac Cube and the antenna problem on the iPhone 4. But more recently, and more similarly to Apple Maps in being a data services: MobileMe and the Ping social network.
Apple has done with Apple Maps pretty much exactly what Jobs would do. Accept the failure, sack the people responsible, and start work on the replacement. There's no discernible difference there.
It doesn't require Apple coming up with a new product category any time soon.
I said "when cheaper iPods were first rumoured". At various points Apple introduced the Mini, Nano and Shuffle. Cheaper iPods, but the same margin. And because they sold in even greater numbers, no loss of profits either.
The iPods outstanding growth run was only stopped when Apple themselves introduced the iPhone with iPod functionality included.
Now, you wonder what what new product Apple has in the wings to replace the growth of iPhone, when it eventually reaches saturation. It's already there. The iPad. The tablet market only started in 2010 with iPad. It's very, very early in the technology adoption cycle.
Apple sells their phones and tables for a hefty profit margin, but there are market pressures for hardware at cost. It happened with consoles, and nobody tries to sell console clones anymore (e.g. Sears Tele-Games). Even PC gaming has taken a hit in market share. With hardware like Kindle Fire and Nexus, the shift is likely to be starting in phones and tablets, so the market for selling smartphone and tablet hardware at a profit could be shrinking.
People said that every single year of the iPod. And yet no competitor ever succeeded with their so called "iPod Killer". The only thing that eventually stopped iPods growth was incorporating the iPod functionality in the iPhone, and that iPhone continued the growth where iPod left off.
What did happen is that Apple released various cheaper iPods - The Mini, Nano and Shuffle. But they kept their margin.
... I hit submit too soon. I was going to say that obviously the tablet market is still in it's early growth stage. It only really started with the release of the iPad in 2010. It's at least a decade or two from saturation.
I can't see an annual figure of tablet growth anywhere. But you can see from the chart here how much it's growing.
Most of the people in the world don't yet have a smartphone. Now you could suggest that everyone that can afford one has one. But that would be like suggesting that people in China can't afford one, when in reality China has the largest smartphone growth rate in the world.
China is massive, with 1300 million people. But it's not just China, there are many countries in Asia that are progressing from mobile phones to smartphones. And after that, there's still Africa.
Not only is the market for smartphones not shrinking it's not saturated either. It's still growing. In fact the latest figures are that it's growing 45% per annum.
Speeding's illegal - people speed. Piracy is illegal - people pirate. Weed is illegal - people smoke it.
People chose what laws they'll obey based on how likely they are to get caught, what the penalty is, and whether they personally believe it to be wrong.
The possible maximum penalties for jamming sound serious. But then they are for drugs and plenty of people disregard that.
Chances of getting caught? Quite likely if you have a permanent jammer in operation. But if you have a mobile jammer that you only use when in a cinema, the chances of you being caught are extremely slim. There simply aren't teams of enforcement officer with direction finding equipment available at an hours notice. And even if there were, finding the person with it in a crowd of hundreds would be hard. Especially as they will turn it off if they realise it's being tracked down.
If I was a regular cinema goer, and was having a lot of spoiled movies due to this problem, I'd have no qualms about getting a jammer and using it. No one deserves to have a phone signal inside a movie auditorium.
How DARE someone want to be reachable in an emergency and still have a life?
People managed just fine before mobile phones came along. Don't be so spoiled.
Yes, I'd sure hate, as a performer, to have someone in the audience texting something like "Am seeing awsome performer, you gotta come see the act..." to their friends while I'm performing. How dare they!
Are you really that dumb? Yes, of course any performer would hate people to be doing that whilst they're performing.
Slashdot, if you want to know the kind of jerk that doesn't have the common sense and curtesy to use his mobile phone appropriately, Obfuscant is a prime example. Kick him next time you see him at the cinema/theatre/concert hall.
Then anyone that was foolish enough to take that job should never go to the cinema or theatre. The world doesn't revolve around them and their jobs. The hundreds of people at the theatre deserve to watch their film uninterrupted by people who think it's an extension of their place of work.
Reasonable on-call jobs have more than one person, and thus it's only some days that people are on call. Not every day.
You're so spoiled. Mobile phones have only been commonplace about 15 years and already people talk about them as if they have an inalienable right to be connected everywhere at any time.
People were able to cope with leaving their kids with a babysitter in the 1990s and earlier you know. Without going all prima donna and threatening lawyers.
You could have done all that same speculation when cheaper iPods were first rumoured. And if you'd played the market based on those assumptions you'd have lost your shirt.
I've said before that the world's love affair with Apple is slowly eroding
Sure, you've been saying it for years. And year after year Apple's results have proved you wrong.
In part it's because you foolishly accept any rumour as fact without considering that time and time again these rumours turn out to be false. Click trolling or market manipulators.
Yes, you are correct. But what I believe the poster was trying to say is that while Apple would be profitable, in the sense they make more money then they spend, they would not be as profitable, in the sense that they do not make as much total profits.
No company would be AS profitable if you took away their two most profitable products. It's just a truism, and not worth saying. The point that Apple would still be profitable without them is worth saying. And proves that your accusation of not being diversified enough is false.
Without iPhone/iPad, Apple is back to where they were in 2007. Mac hasn't grown much since then
In 2007 they sold 7.2 million Macs. In 2012 they sold 18.2 million.
they've all but killed their enterprise efforts, and iPod is no longer what is once was.
Their "enterprise efforts" never counted for very much. So no loss there. And the iPod is mostly sold as part of the iPhone these days. It's silly to imagine "without iPhone" for now and contrast "with iPod" for then.
There's now talk of a less expensive iPhone coming out. This is what the original poster you replied to is referencing as margins coming down.
A cheaper iPhone does not imply margins coming down. You can have exactly the same margins on a car and a paperclip.
There is nothing new about Apple offering cheaper alternatives. With the iPod market, they offered Mini, Nano and Shuffle. And at no time did that ever indicate they were struggling in the MP3 player market. Quite the contrary, no one ever beat Apple on MP3 players.
And of course they also offered a cheaper Mac. The Mac Mini.
In all these cases, note that they weren't made cheaper by reducing margins. They were made cheaper by making a cheaper to manufacture device with fewer features.
The ones I'm seeing on Walmart.com are without contract. But here's the thing: They are exactly the same price as the Apple Store sells them for. Walmart is offering 26 months interest free credit terms to sweeten the deal. But there's no lowering of the price.
But clearly it's price that matters here. That's the only part that's paid at Walmart. The rest is monthly payments as banking transactions with a carrier.
I don't know what point you're trying to make, but plenty of people are quite happy to buy smartphones at Walmart. Why is it you believe Apple should refuse to supply phones to Walmart?
Apple sells iPhones outside of the US. What is their global marketshare? (Hint: It's lower than you want it to be, and it's falling.)
That isn't down to any underperformance on Apple's part. iPhone sales continue to have two digit YoY growth. It's simply that the ultra cheap market is Android, and the third world has lots of people in it. Apple does not and doesn't need to serve the ultra cheap market. There's no profit in it. That's why there's only Apple and Samsung that are making profit in the smartphone business. And Apple's making more of it than Samsung.
The GPs point is good. In the top end market which exists in the US, the iPhone's market share has never been higher, and is in fact larger than all other smartphones added together.
Neither the smartphone market nor the tablet market is shrinking.
The PC market is shrinking, but that's largely because of Apple's iPad. But within that market Macs are still in growth. With lots of room for moregrowth as their new customers come from the 90% who currently have Windows PCs.
You do understand, don't you, that the reason the user interface has to wait isn't because developers think our processes are more important than the users.... but because the user interface DEPENDS ON THOSE PROCESSES TO BE ABLE TO DISPLAY!
Where there are systems where that is true, then that only confirms his point. There should be nothing holding up the UI between a user interaction and the display of some feedback to that interaction. Whatever processes are necessary to that should be loaded at startup, never unloaded, and never have a delay of more than a single video frame. 8 bit computers could provide instant feedback to any user interaction. What went wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I's saying employers shouldn't expect people to be on call 24/7/365. And if they do, people should try and get a different job. And if all else fails and they have to take such a job with the abusive employer, then they should do things outside of work where it's acceptable to have a phone ring.
How many more times: It is socially unacceptable to have a phone switched on in a theatre or cinema. Every person there paid for a ticket, and they have a right to see the entire show without being disturbed by people with their phones. Just because someone chose to have a job that denies them permission to turn their phone off, doesn't give them the right to ignore the rules of the theatre or cinema, and have a phone switched in whilst there.
Who's unreasonable? The people using phones in theatres. If you are amongst them, then you are one of the unreasonable ones.
You'd be surprised at just how many people with jammers get caught. People will gladly inform their carriers of deadzones, moreso if they know there's supposed to be service where they are. A few complaints, an inquiry, and they'll establish the pattern. Once that happens, you're busted.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. You're just making it up. A google search for people caught with jammers turns up virtually nothing. Radar jammers, sure. But not cellphone jammers.
Over and over again there's the report of a guy being caught with a jammer on a bus. But he was caught by journalists, not law enforcement, and only because he was stupid enough to use it regularly on the same bus, and he would take the jammer out of his pocket to crew the antenna on.
The other category of people that get caught are the vendors of the equipment. Obviously they have to advertise, so they're easier to catch, and more important as a target.
Again, using a jammer at the movie theatre, is pretty safe. There probably wouldn't be a pattern - unless you happen to be one of the few that go to the same single screen movie theatre same time every week. And trying to work out which of the hundreds of people there had the jammer would be impossible. Obviously, a sensible person would just reach into their pocket to switch it on, not get the device out.
But frankly, the leadership at Apple since Jobs died has been pretty shocking and if you think they are going to demand the same perfection as Jobs did, which is what made Apple distinguish itself in the first place, remember the Maps fiasco.
You're mythologising Jobs. Jobs had products that were not perfect too. Famously the Mac Cube and the antenna problem on the iPhone 4. But more recently, and more similarly to Apple Maps in being a data services: MobileMe and the Ping social network.
Apple has done with Apple Maps pretty much exactly what Jobs would do. Accept the failure, sack the people responsible, and start work on the replacement. There's no discernible difference there.
It doesn't require Apple coming up with a new product category any time soon.
I said "when cheaper iPods were first rumoured". At various points Apple introduced the Mini, Nano and Shuffle. Cheaper iPods, but the same margin. And because they sold in even greater numbers, no loss of profits either.
The iPods outstanding growth run was only stopped when Apple themselves introduced the iPhone with iPod functionality included.
Now, you wonder what what new product Apple has in the wings to replace the growth of iPhone, when it eventually reaches saturation. It's already there. The iPad. The tablet market only started in 2010 with iPad. It's very, very early in the technology adoption cycle.
Apple sells their phones and tables for a hefty profit margin, but there are market pressures for hardware at cost. It happened with consoles, and nobody tries to sell console clones anymore (e.g. Sears Tele-Games). Even PC gaming has taken a hit in market share. With hardware like Kindle Fire and Nexus, the shift is likely to be starting in phones and tablets, so the market for selling smartphone and tablet hardware at a profit could be shrinking.
People said that every single year of the iPod. And yet no competitor ever succeeded with their so called "iPod Killer". The only thing that eventually stopped iPods growth was incorporating the iPod functionality in the iPhone, and that iPhone continued the growth where iPod left off.
What did happen is that Apple released various cheaper iPods - The Mini, Nano and Shuffle. But they kept their margin.
... I hit submit too soon. I was going to say that obviously the tablet market is still in it's early growth stage. It only really started with the release of the iPad in 2010. It's at least a decade or two from saturation.
I can't see an annual figure of tablet growth anywhere. But you can see from the chart here how much it's growing.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3381215&op=Reply&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=42588063
It's ludicrous to suggest it's saturated.
Most of the people in the world don't yet have a smartphone. Now you could suggest that everyone that can afford one has one. But that would be like suggesting that people in China can't afford one, when in reality China has the largest smartphone growth rate in the world.
China is massive, with 1300 million people. But it's not just China, there are many countries in Asia that are progressing from mobile phones to smartphones. And after that, there's still Africa.
Not only is the market for smartphones not shrinking it's not saturated either. It's still growing. In fact the latest figures are that it's growing 45% per annum.
Speeding's illegal - people speed. Piracy is illegal - people pirate. Weed is illegal - people smoke it.
People chose what laws they'll obey based on how likely they are to get caught, what the penalty is, and whether they personally believe it to be wrong.
The possible maximum penalties for jamming sound serious. But then they are for drugs and plenty of people disregard that.
Chances of getting caught? Quite likely if you have a permanent jammer in operation. But if you have a mobile jammer that you only use when in a cinema, the chances of you being caught are extremely slim. There simply aren't teams of enforcement officer with direction finding equipment available at an hours notice. And even if there were, finding the person with it in a crowd of hundreds would be hard. Especially as they will turn it off if they realise it's being tracked down.
If I was a regular cinema goer, and was having a lot of spoiled movies due to this problem, I'd have no qualms about getting a jammer and using it. No one deserves to have a phone signal inside a movie auditorium.
How DARE someone want to be reachable in an emergency and still have a life?
People managed just fine before mobile phones came along. Don't be so spoiled.
Yes, I'd sure hate, as a performer, to have someone in the audience texting something like "Am seeing awsome performer, you gotta come see the act..." to their friends while I'm performing. How dare they!
Are you really that dumb? Yes, of course any performer would hate people to be doing that whilst they're performing.
Slashdot, if you want to know the kind of jerk that doesn't have the common sense and curtesy to use his mobile phone appropriately, Obfuscant is a prime example. Kick him next time you see him at the cinema/theatre/concert hall.
Then anyone that was foolish enough to take that job should never go to the cinema or theatre. The world doesn't revolve around them and their jobs. The hundreds of people at the theatre deserve to watch their film uninterrupted by people who think it's an extension of their place of work.
Reasonable on-call jobs have more than one person, and thus it's only some days that people are on call. Not every day.
You're so spoiled. Mobile phones have only been commonplace about 15 years and already people talk about them as if they have an inalienable right to be connected everywhere at any time.
People were able to cope with leaving their kids with a babysitter in the 1990s and earlier you know. Without going all prima donna and threatening lawyers.
Not according to the USPTO
United States Patent 8,254,902
Bell , et al. August 28, 2012
That's the date it was granted. Look closer:
Filed: June 26, 2008
You could have done all that same speculation when cheaper iPods were first rumoured. And if you'd played the market based on those assumptions you'd have lost your shirt.
You can discount it as a rumor if you want, but this is not the first time slowing demand for the iPhone 5 has been reported.
We will find out for sure when Apple reports earnings next week.
Just before earnings. Yes, it's a rumour.
He's right this time.
That's what you thought every other time.
There's no new product.
You must have your eyes closed. There's new products in every category every year.
Apple doesn't invent entire new product categories every year, but then it never has. And it's competitors don't tend to invent them at all.
If anything Apple's rate of inventing new product categories has accelerated over the years. It certainly hasn't slowed down.
I've said before that the world's love affair with Apple is slowly eroding
Sure, you've been saying it for years. And year after year Apple's results have proved you wrong.
In part it's because you foolishly accept any rumour as fact without considering that time and time again these rumours turn out to be false. Click trolling or market manipulators.
Yes, you are correct. But what I believe the poster was trying to say is that while Apple would be profitable, in the sense they make more money then they spend, they would not be as profitable, in the sense that they do not make as much total profits.
No company would be AS profitable if you took away their two most profitable products. It's just a truism, and not worth saying. The point that Apple would still be profitable without them is worth saying. And proves that your accusation of not being diversified enough is false.
Without iPhone/iPad, Apple is back to where they were in 2007. Mac hasn't grown much since then
In 2007 they sold 7.2 million Macs.
In 2012 they sold 18.2 million.
they've all but killed their enterprise efforts, and iPod is no longer what is once was.
Their "enterprise efforts" never counted for very much. So no loss there. And the iPod is mostly sold as part of the iPhone these days. It's silly to imagine "without iPhone" for now and contrast "with iPod" for then.
There's now talk of a less expensive iPhone coming out. This is what the original poster you replied to is referencing as margins coming down.
A cheaper iPhone does not imply margins coming down. You can have exactly the same margins on a car and a paperclip.
There is nothing new about Apple offering cheaper alternatives. With the iPod market, they offered Mini, Nano and Shuffle. And at no time did that ever indicate they were struggling in the MP3 player market. Quite the contrary, no one ever beat Apple on MP3 players.
And of course they also offered a cheaper Mac. The Mac Mini.
In all these cases, note that they weren't made cheaper by reducing margins. They were made cheaper by making a cheaper to manufacture device with fewer features.
The ones I'm seeing on Walmart.com are without contract. But here's the thing: They are exactly the same price as the Apple Store sells them for. Walmart is offering 26 months interest free credit terms to sweeten the deal. But there's no lowering of the price.
But clearly it's price that matters here. That's the only part that's paid at Walmart. The rest is monthly payments as banking transactions with a carrier.
I don't know what point you're trying to make, but plenty of people are quite happy to buy smartphones at Walmart. Why is it you believe Apple should refuse to supply phones to Walmart?
Sorry, comprehension fail on my part. And thanks for the link, that growth data is just what I was interested in seeing.
Apple sells iPhones outside of the US. What is their global marketshare?
(Hint: It's lower than you want it to be, and it's falling.)
That isn't down to any underperformance on Apple's part. iPhone sales continue to have two digit YoY growth. It's simply that the ultra cheap market is Android, and the third world has lots of people in it. Apple does not and doesn't need to serve the ultra cheap market. There's no profit in it. That's why there's only Apple and Samsung that are making profit in the smartphone business. And Apple's making more of it than Samsung.
The GPs point is good. In the top end market which exists in the US, the iPhone's market share has never been higher, and is in fact larger than all other smartphones added together.
The shrinking market for their products
Neither the smartphone market nor the tablet market is shrinking.
The PC market is shrinking, but that's largely because of Apple's iPad. But within that market Macs are still in growth. With lots of room for moregrowth as their new customers come from the 90% who currently have Windows PCs.
The 'fundamentals' of growth that's less than 100% YOY.
Given that Apple revenue and profits are in double digit growth, that's an imaginary fundamental. Wishful thinking on your part rather than reality.
I bet you wished you had a pony too.
There's nothing in his post to suggest he doesn't.
You do understand, don't you, that the reason the user interface has to wait isn't because developers think our processes are more important than the users.... but because the user interface DEPENDS ON THOSE PROCESSES TO BE ABLE TO DISPLAY!
Where there are systems where that is true, then that only confirms his point. There should be nothing holding up the UI between a user interaction and the display of some feedback to that interaction. Whatever processes are necessary to that should be loaded at startup, never unloaded, and never have a delay of more than a single video frame. 8 bit computers could provide instant feedback to any user interaction. What went wrong?