[markbyrn]

Despite Oprah Winfrey's best efforts to tout the Surface from an iPad, it was doomed from the start. The choice between an expensive slab that doesn't run any of the millions of existing Widows applications vice a ridiculously overpriced slab that runs the existing Windows applications with half the battery life means that sales will be "modest" at best. Combined with the byzantine Windows 8 and a Windows Phone 8 that Windows Phone 7.x users cant upgrade to, I think the Ballmer error is about to come to a close.

[RipRagged]

Too many commenters mistake reading the score for choosing sides. The score favors Apple at the moment if you keep score the way it's done in business — with money.

[TeaEarleGreyHot]

Quote

According to Charles Sizemore of the eponymous Sizemore Capital, not only...

Aaah, poor Macalope misuses "eponymous" by switching the source & recipient of the name. Unless Charles actually did take the name of his company. As the NY Times is always warning of, the "eponymous" one is the one who is the source of the name.

This post has been edited by TeaEarleGreyHot: 02 December 2012 - 04:16 PM

[ingus]

Quote

Too many commenters mistake reading the score for choosing sides. The score favors Apple at the moment if you keep score the way it's done in business — with money.

How much of that money are you getting? Or are you just a contributor?
A bit Nietzschean no? By that logic M$ was absolutely right and justified in the 90's.

This post has been edited by ingus: 02 December 2012 - 04:26 PM

[RobLewis]

Let's see: utter failure in mobile, declining market share in cash-cow servers, no surge to adopt Windows 8, an Office franchise that is so bloated it doesn't know where to go next: what could possibly go wrong?

[dshan]

Sizemore Capital is doomed!

[paul1969]

[Swift2]

It's not even so much Apple that I care about, it's the principles they espoused when Jobs was there; first time through, the money men didn't understand what they had, and secretly they couldn't figure out how to turn Apple into Microsoft, so they nearly drove it into the ground. Then a more mature Jobs came back. He established, again and again, the ideas of an organic device, that functions in perfect coordination between hardware and software; and it has to include content. No, DRM wasn't his idea, but he needed the content to be available. A really wonderful device, that brings a lot of affordable content to people and makes money for developers and content providers. This is the "walled garden"? The underpinnings of it all are open source, and Apple has come from a time when it needed expensive software and hardware to exist on a Windows network to a time when it's easier to put a Mac in a Windows network than vice-versa.

A certain advertising company writes an operating system it gives away for free, to various hardware manufacturers, who make phones and tablets. Much of it follows Apple for the template, and they've never really made contracts with the people who have the content. And the developers don't make money, the manufacturers don't, as a rule, but the advertising company does, indirectly.

Which of these models is actually monopolistic? I'd say Google's is, Amazon's is. iPhones aren't structured to saturate a market, though I still think Apple's looking for a way to get a cheaper version of everything, just as they did with the nano and the mini iPods. They create a market, then they slowly iterate.

There are good phones in the Android line, but I can't be bothered to investigate which ones I like most. I'm not interested in what this kind of business develops. Think of it: Android gets quad core! Just in time for them to stop being so laggy and herky-jerky. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 is only dual core, but since they make the chip and the software, they've managed to have a faster chip with dual cores than Android gets with four.

With a longer development cycle, sometimes they're behind in this or that for a while. But they always seem to come through.

[ingus]

Quote

Too many commenters mistake reading the score for choosing sides. The score favors Apple at the moment if you keep score the way it's done in business ââ,¬" with money. How much of that money are you getting? Or are you just a contributor? A bit Nietzschean no? By that logic M$ was absolutely right and justified in the 90's. "Keeping score" is measuring success in business terms, monetarily. The poster you quote was differentiating such scorekeeping from choosing sides -- exactly the opposite of what you attribute to him. Reading comprehension and commenting FAIL.

I don't believe this is the Wall Street Journal. The comment suggests profits are the sole measure of score. They may be on Wall Street, they are an easy metric, but are not necessarily the whole picture. Aren't we Apple customers precisely because of the intangibles?

There is all too much of a justification of "winning" based on money (business), including from the commenter to whom I replied. Which is why I assumed that that is the way they see it. I saw it as a validating statement, not as a counterpoint. If I'm mistaken, I apologize. As a user, non-investor, non-supplier, and non-employee, I don't care about the "winning" part because my money is flowing one way. If I were to care, I would have to re-evaluate my purchases since an infinitessimal smidgen of those "winning" profits come from me (and you). So back to my initial comment about sports... If I've misconstrued the posters intentions, it's entirely due to the irrelevance of the premise.

This post has been edited by ingus: 03 December 2012 - 08:29 AM

[RipRagged]

Quote

Too many commenters mistake reading the score for choosing sides. The score favors Apple at the moment if you keep score the way it's done in business ââ,¬" with money. How much of that money are you getting? Or are you just a contributor? A bit Nietzschean no? By that logic M$ was absolutely right and justified in the 90's. "Keeping score" is measuring success in business terms, monetarily. The poster you quote was differentiating such scorekeeping from choosing sides -- exactly the opposite of what you attribute to him. Reading comprehension and commenting FAIL.

I don't believe this is the Wall Street Journal. The comment suggests profits are the sole measure of score. They may be on Wall Street, they are an easy metric, but are not necessarily the whole picture. Aren't we Apple customers precisely because of the intangibles?
There is all too much of a justification of "winning" based on money (business), including from the commenter to whom I replied. Which is why I assumed that that is the way they see it. I saw it as a validating statement, not as a counterpoint. If I'm mistaken, I apologize. As a user, non-investor, non-supplier, and non-employee, I don't care about the "winning" part because my money is flowing one way. If I were to care, I would have to re-evaluate my purchases since an infinitessimal smidgen of those "winning" profits come from me (and you). So back to my initial comment about sports... If I've misconstrued the posters intentions, it's entirely due to the irrelevance of the premise.

The original post (remember that?) is about market leadership. That's measured with money (quite objective and measurable). That was the focus of my comment. Sorry if commenting factually on the original post is irrelevant to pontifications about who's right and who's wrong (quite subjective).

[Sigivald]

Quote

Aren't we Apple customers precisely because of the intangibles?

Not me.

I'm an Apple customer because the very tangible user experience and industrial design is superior to the competition (generally, if not always on the former, and almost always on the latter), and the raw value proposition of the hardware is also excellent*.

No intangibles involved - and I say this as someone who was using Macs alongside Windows and Unix systems back in Ye Olde Days of System 7.

(* When I got my 27" iMac last year, I ran prices for An Equivalent PC, with An Equivalent 27" monitor.

They came out so close to even as to be irrelevant, especially considering the form-factor convenience of not having another damned tower lying around.)

[KPOM]

More "definitive proof" that Apple is going down. Here's a Business Insider "article" about a guy who had a bad experience at the Genius Bar.

http://finance.yahoo...-133300458.html

[ingus]

RipRagged, on 03 December 2012 - 11:42 AM, said:

Quote

Too many commenters mistake reading the score for choosing sides. The score favors Apple at the moment if you keep score the way it's done in business ââ,¬" with money. How much of that money are you getting? Or are you just a contributor? A bit Nietzschean no? By that logic M$ was absolutely right and justified in the 90's. "Keeping score" is measuring success in business terms, monetarily. The poster you quote was differentiating such scorekeeping from choosing sides -- exactly the opposite of what you attribute to him. Reading comprehension and commenting FAIL.

I don't believe this is the Wall Street Journal. The comment suggests profits are the sole measure of score. They may be on Wall Street, they are an easy metric, but are not necessarily the whole picture. Aren't we Apple customers precisely because of the intangibles?
There is all too much of a justification of "winning" based on money (business), including from the commenter to whom I replied. Which is why I assumed that that is the way they see it. I saw it as a validating statement, not as a counterpoint. If I'm mistaken, I apologize. As a user, non-investor, non-supplier, and non-employee, I don't care about the "winning" part because my money is flowing one way. If I were to care, I would have to re-evaluate my purchases since an infinitessimal smidgen of those "winning" profits come from me (and you). So back to my initial comment about sports... If I've misconstrued the posters intentions, it's entirely due to the irrelevance of the premise.

The original post (remember that?) is about market leadership. That's measured with money (quite objective and measurable). That was the focus of my comment. Sorry if commenting factually on the original post is irrelevant to pontifications about who's right and who's wrong (quite subjective).

We could go through the whole boring diatribe that it's mot measured in money, rather that it's measured in market penetration. But still that's an argument over "who wins". My argument is that since all parties have at least ten year survival possibilities, "who cares"?
I guess validation is a powerful motive, and if picking the "winning team" matters, then the problems are deeper than anything we're discussing.