I think I paid off a few monthly payments for an executives BMW with my Apple purchases. :)
Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
191–200 of 541 posts
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their numbers seem utterly unreal to me. How on earth do you sell $205 billion worth of just a single product (iPhone) every year? This is simply the greatest business to have ever been created. I can't imagine anything else ever topping it. The margins AND the volume are both insane.
I don't know if the number comes anywhere near the truth, but if for the sake of the idea imagine that the average iPhone costs $750 USD then $205 billion USD worth of iPhones is around 273,000,000 units. That means there is about 750,000 iPhones sold every day, or 31,250 iPhones sold every hour.
Imagine the environmental impact 31250 phones a hour must cause. All the material that went into them had to be mined, transported, smelted, carried to a factory, assembled, then sent to 1000s of locations by 1000s of vehicles.
Of course it's the same for all physical products.
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's the mystery you do - they make money because they make the very best technology, that makes people who work with a wide range of workloads more effective, and so those people are willing to spend money with them. If Apple is compiling my application 1.5x as fast and lets me work 1.5x as long without recharging, that saves me genuine time in the day, either to do more work, or to work on my hobbies,…
I think he's struggling with the question - why do so many people buy sports cars and SUVs when they drive slowly in a city. Most people don't use a laptop much at home, preferring to consume media on a phone or smart TV. At work, most people use web applications and microsoft office and not much else. So why do they need a fancy car? People like fancy cars. They have been buying them for years, and they aren't going…
Well they said:
> I sometimes wonder what value these people see in this stuff.
And you answered it yourself with your own example:
> Now you are driving your jeep off road on your mountain ranch saying some people need an SUV and you are right, but you aren't rebutting what he is saying.
That's an example of someone seeing value in it right?
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
What can't be emphasized enough here is how much Windows created this. They went from the 95-XP arc, some of the best operating systems from a user's perspective, to 7 (another hit), to now windows 10 and 11, which turn your device into a slow always-connected ad platform that you don't really control. In other words, Windows became one of those toolbars that we all have to remove from our grandmothers' browsers. For…
> They went from 95 and XP, some of the best operating systems from a user's perspective I mean that's some rose-tinted shit if I ever heard it, 95 especially. 98 OSR2 improved quite a bit on the situation, but I don't recall having a great time with 95. It was still a glorified DOS extender in many ways, often slow to start up and shutdown, PC hardware and drivers were a mess and system stability therefore poor. Thi…
> I mean that's some rose-tinted shit if I ever heard it,
I was trying to figure out how to express myself, but I think you got it.
98SE was still pretty bad because pre-NTFS filesystems would decay over time (of course so would ext2, but linux generally crashed a lot less).
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#195The most amazing to me is how Apple reversed its fortunes with the Mac. According to a quick search of Wikipedia (haven't checked further), Mac worldwide market share was 5.7% in 1996 (after years of decline). It then dropped out of the top 5 for the next 20 years -- the page doesn't give numbers other than top 5, but in 2006 Toshiba was #5 with 3.8% so it was below that. Not only did it manage to bring its share bac…
Satya Nadella can pry my MacBook Pro from my cold, head hands.
Not sure Satya cares.
He is the one responsible for Azure and cares far more about Microsoft 365 and getting their services onto as many platforms as possible. So use your Mac long as you're using Word, Outlook, Teams etc.
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#196Numbers: - Q4 wearables of $9.6B, beats est byu close to $1B - Q4 Services Rev fo $19.2B short of Est by $800M - Q4 iphone Rev of $42.6B meets Est - Q4 ipad Rev of $7.2B, short of Est by $600M - Q4 Rev of $90.2B beats Est by $2B, that also means its up 8ish% YoY - Q4 Mac Revenue of $11.5B, beats by $2B, nice, forgot they make computers;) - China Rev of $15.5B, this is interesting, AAPL clearly has alot of China expos…
> AAPLE has $23B in cash, down 1/3 from this time last year. Mostly given back to investors. Probably nothing to worry about here:) This is the lowest cash level since 2014. Actually, concerning going into potentially a recession.
With inflation what it is, don’t you actually want to be holding less cash?
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worry is that the person prying it, rather gently, will be Tim Cook. The only hedge against that is the ecosystem for phone & ipad development is still the macbooks - so it does hurt Apple to take away the ability to write your own apps on a Macbook. I got a new ipad this week and it is pretty clear that 99% of my non-work life can be lived on it - banks, games and all the streaming apps. I don't have any more co…
According to rumours, Apple has been working on a touchscreen-enabled variant of macOS for the iPad, due for release in 2023.
Hasn't some variation on that rumor been going around for a long time?
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Satya Nadella can pry my MacBook Pro from my cold, head hands.
Not sure Satya cares. He is the one responsible for Azure and cares far more about Microsoft 365 and getting their services onto as many platforms as possible. So use your Mac long as you're using Word, Outlook, Teams etc.
Makes a lot of sense.
I wonder how much money Microsoft could save if they simply maintained Windows with the minimum effort possible, instead of spending all this extra effort doing horrible things to it.
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the App Store model is probably still currently the best model for the average user who doesn’t know how to secure a computing device. I know we may be heading towards a future where we’re totally locked down, but what alternative do we have? I’m always hesitant to install software on my desktop because I never know if there’s a trojan hidden in the software. I’m a relatively technical user, but I have no ide…
> I know we may be heading towards a future where we’re totally locked down, but what alternative do we have? Well, Apple could just... let people install other stores. The App Store will still exist for new users and security-paranoid users, but the right to install/manage software needs to be a universal right when you buy hardware from someone. Arguing the opposite is almost insanity. > I’m a relatively technical…
I agree with your point about the 30% tax being somewhat unfair... however, I think your average user would honestly just prefer Apple be the gatekeeper to their phone for them, and not have to worry about which App Stores to trust and which not to.
Apple does not have to be in the business of making phones for the (extreme~!) technical + security conscious crowd.
Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AAPLE has $23B in cash, down 1/3 from this time last year. Mostly given back to investors. Probably nothing to worry about here:) Didn’t they have over a hundred billion in cash reserves a while back? This seems significantly low compared to what it used to be. Mac revenue will be down next year but whenever they release the M3 on the 3nm node I think they’ll have another bumper year. Probably 2024. Also Apple Glas…
> If it’s over a $1000 it’ll flop. If it’s $500 it’ll do well. I think we'll have to wait to see what the capabilities are. If it can replace an iPhone, $1000 would be incredible. $500 is only double the price of AirPods Pro, so functionality would have to be pretty limited.
I agree somewhat, in that if the capabilities are shown to be indispensable to achieving a person’s goals or the product becomes a new social norm like smart phones then people may be willing to spend that much. But the $1000 barrier is a steep one. There’s a lot of push back for that on phones as it is and they’re a practical necessity in modern society.
It’s going to take a lot of time for Apple Glass to build up the ecosystem to the point where it meets that indispensable criteria and that time will only increase if there are less users on the platform due to high entry costs. I bought a 1st gen Apple Watch and ended up selling it shortly after because I just didn’t use it. The first gen was a pretty terrible product. It’s come on a long way but it’s only now with the Ultra watch that I’d consider buying again. That’s seven years and I’m a tech person. Your average guy in the street is less inclined to want to purchase.