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Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

wired.com

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Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#101

Post by Confusion »

nochiel wrote: post #59
buro9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is going to burn my karma, but having watched the personality cult of Jobs grow to dominance, and now observing the mantle being handed over to Cook in a way that the cult appears just to have adapted to follow the new leader... it's a very disturbing sight. Apple are a great company for sure, but I'm extremely uneasy reading things that make any individual such an icon, let alone with Apple where it's ha…

"I'm extremely uneasy reading things that make any individual such an icon...Please can we let this personality cult dissipate..." Personality cults are much more important than you realise. The post-modernist approach seems to be to downplay the significance of individual visionaries in favour of diffuse accolades attributed to the group or larger corpus. It's nonsense. Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous,…

  Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous, anonymous, 
  amorphous collective)
Not that it matters concerning the point you make, but that may not be the best example, as the question of whether Shakespeare was an individual genius is a matter of some serious, although somewhat fringe, debate [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#102

Post by tastybites »

psykotic wrote: post #55
iwwr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a time when Left-leaning people knew some history. Terrible as the worker conditions might have been at the dawn of the Industrial Age, they were a vast improvement compared to the past. Equally so, unpleasant as Chinese factories may look to a Westerner, they are an improvement over the past. Have people actually asked those workers if they were willing to quit or had better prospects elsewhere?

> There used to be a time when Left-leaning people knew some history. Everyone tends to view history from an angle that supports their preconceptions. You don't seem to be any exception. > Terrible as the worker conditions might have been at the dawn of the Industrial Age, they were a vast improvement compared to the past. How are you defining worker conditions? A family with a small plot in the countryside could not…

Sure, what you said is all true. And guess what? The only cure for it is to move further along the line of industrialization.

Guess how you get there.

It's always hilarious to see rich white people talking about how the poor asian people need to be living their lives.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#103

Post by blinkingled »

Cadsby wrote: post #99
blinkingled wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Even if you compared it as "half the iPad at half the price" - it still is a touch based tablet computer with similar hardware to the iPad, albeit a smaller screen. Nook color full specs: Processor: ARM Cortex A8-based Ti OMAP 3621 @ 800 MHz (same processor as Droid 2 and Droid X) GPU Processor: PowerVR SGX530 Graphics Rendering: Open GLES1.1/2.0 Hardware Scaling: 854x480 scaled to 1024x600 Video Formats: .3…

I think your comparison is more than a little narrow. The Nook and the iPad are marginally similar but not really comparable devices. There's a reason why one has been far more successful than the other, and no, I'm not referring to any sort of "magic" or ephemeral voodoo. But there's a larger point to be made in that I think your comments reflect a common attitude among many nerds - this obsession with specs. Most c…

I am not denying the "experience" factor. You are right that most consumers don't care about specs at that detailed a level - they do care in general at high level about it, i.e. screen sizes and storage space etc. but that is besides the point.

What I am pointing out is that it is possible to produce and sell a device that can compete with the iPad on specs and experience - the original article said nobody else could sell a device matching the specs of the iPad at $500. It clearly is possible and with Honeycomb improving the experience the software part is also covered - mostly for free to Android tablet device makers.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#104

Post by iwwr »

_delirium wrote: post #76
iwwr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you suppose making more money, or wanting to, is somehow evil?

In many cases it wasn't really a voluntary choice to change lifestyle in order to make more money; a lot of the mass-urbanization periods happened when previous ways of making money collapsed. In the U.S., two big periods of rural flight were the late 19th century, when industrialization of farming lowered prices enough that family farmers were no longer competitive; and the 1930s, when the dust-bowl put another larg…

The industrialists were not responsible for the conditions of late medieval agriculture. Again, would the rural folk have been better off without the factories altogether?

An alternative way to look at things was that industrialism saved Europe (and later the rest of the world) from waves of famine. It allowed, for the first time since centuries, the possibility for ordinary people to travel to work and to move up in society. Conditions were not agreeable to a modern eye, but compared to the past were a great improvement.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#105

Post by iwwr »

psykotic wrote: post #78
iwwr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you suppose making more money, or wanting to, is somehow evil?

I suppose, said or insinuated no such thing. What a childish comeback. Of course it isn't evil. If you're starving then making money is not only not evil but a necessity. Beyond meeting your immediate needs, working endless hours at a repetitive, unhealthy job to support your family or further your children's future is commendable. That does not mean worker conditions improved with industrialization as compared to wo…

A standard of living is not made by just the raw hours of leisure. Industrialization also brought security from famine and allowed for hygiene, sewage and medicine. It also allows people to chose to work very little, just to support their bare necessities (although very few chose to).

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#106

Post by teyc »

Steve Jobs had already warned that margins are going to be down. It was a strategic decision to not earn Apple-sized margins on the iPad, but rather outflank the PC industry by introducing a new computing product.

Wired.com is right though on the ability to suck the air out of the touchscreen supply. It is an acknowledgement to the artificial gravitational field Apple exerts on the hardware components market.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#107

Post by nazgulnarsil »

nhangen wrote: post #77
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #39

nook color is $250 (sold at a loss, but available nontheless) xoom is $600 Archos 70 and 101 are $300 notion ink is $425 I call shenaningans

Are you really comparing a Nook to the iPad?

features that someone never uses aren't really a selling point.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#108

Post by ZeroGravitas »

apl wrote: post #89
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet if you ask a hundred Apple fans why their competition is struggling you'll get a hundred different reasons. You seem to be claiming that planning ahead and buying in bulk to produce a cheap, boring looking, plastic tablet with a half-finished, linux-based phone OS and stylus interface would be enough to destroy the competition. Others would disagree. And not only do you credit this one factor with decisive vi…

What? > And yet if you ask a hundred Apple fans why their > competition is struggling you'll get a hundred different > reasons. I'm not an Apple "fan." Also, given that success is usually a fairly complex phenomenon, varied opinions are hardly surprising. Ask a hundred so-called "Apple haters" why the company "sucks" and you'll get even more incongruent answers. > You seem to be claiming that planning ahead and buyin…

I'm not angry. I'm genuinely interested in myth-making, whether it's conspiracy theories or religion. The Tim Cook thing is too nebulous to argue about, but the A4 thing is the exact same from this perspective.

It's a chip designed and built and sold by Samsung, Apple's chief rival in smartphones (and soon, tablets) and yet the storyline around it is that Apple's competitors can't compete with it because it is Apple's special sauce. That's bonkers. Even more so when you realise that even the Samsung built chip is just a commodity. Samsung's own Galaxy S II phone will replace the next generation A4 with Nvidia's Tegra2 in some territories, that's how interchangeable a commodity it is. (Some speculation why they don't have enough of their own chip, either manufacturing teething troubles, or Apple's already put in a big order).

Yet Apple can put a logo on it, give it a cool codename and stand up and sell a commodity and have people believe it is something special. I'd love to know if this is something Apple marketing understands and intentionally manipulates, or if Apple just reflexively takes credit for the work of others (which by the way is the original meaning of the Reality Distortion Field if you look it up on folklore.org).

Given that the A4 story can thrive in the face of objective reality, you can understand why I'm amused and intrigued that the average time between people finding out what a COO does and deciding that Tim Cook is the best at it in the world is about 2 seconds. After all, even commodities are better when Apple uses them.

Re: Why Nobody Can Match the iPad’s Price

#110

Post by nochiel »

Confusion wrote: post #101
nochiel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm extremely uneasy reading things that make any individual such an icon...Please can we let this personality cult dissipate..." Personality cults are much more important than you realise. The post-modernist approach seems to be to downplay the significance of individual visionaries in favour of diffuse accolades attributed to the group or larger corpus. It's nonsense. Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous,…

Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous, anonymous, amorphous collective) Not that it matters concerning the point you make, but that may not be the best example, as the question of whether Shakespeare was an individual genius is a matter of some serious, although somewhat fringe, debate [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question

I am aware of the serious debate on the issue. But that's sort of the point I am trying to make: One approach seeks to recognise individual genius for what it is: the gift of a singular person; another approach seeks to discount those achievements by attributing them to a diffuse, sometimes ancillary but oft ill-defined group.

The latter approach has become prevalent in recent decades (in my opinion). Now, it is fashionable to question the legitimacy of an individual's greatness, to downplay it and instead award yellow stars to everyone who participated, no matter how tangential their contribution.

The new idea is that no one man could be so smart, so gifted or so diligent as to produce all that Shakespeare did; no one man could be so clairvoyant and visionary as to define the face of technology for a decade; no on man could have all that innate power.

I reject that view.

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