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Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#511

Post by seti0Cha »

asdff wrote: post #356
seti0Cha wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Status seeking is a fundamental motivation for people and catering to it has always been a source of wealth. In the past it was gold, silver, gems, ivory, beaver pelts, or purple dye. Now at least it's a device that performs a function.

On the other hand if you had a hunk of gold, in 20 or 200 years that's still a valuable hunk of gold. Buying an iPhone for the status symbol is like buying a hunk of gold, and every six months you chisel off a huge chunk of it and lob it into the ocean to simulate depreciation on technology.

It's more like a potlatch thing (an America Indian status ceremony where people destroy or give away things to prove how wealthy they are) Spending money on perishable items is a power move in the status game.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#512

Post by scarface74 »

seti0Cha wrote: post #510
scarface74 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a “status symbol” is something that is owned by 50% of smart phone users in the US? Besides, Apple has been selling electronics more expensive than competitors for 40 years.

You're right, not much status in just owning an iPhone. You need to own the latest iPhone, preferably the "pro" model to gain status. However, you can lose status by having cheap or old gear. When I was a kid if you wore off-brand sneakers other kids would make fun of you. Now I understand that kids feel some pressure to appear with the right colored chat bubbles in iMessage. The status game is pretty complex.

In the US almost anyone can afford the “latest phone” on a no interest payment plan from either Apple or the carrier. T-mobile doesn’t even run a credit check if you have been with them for a year.

Apple has kept the same design for 3 years. You can’t tell whether it’s the “latest” or not. You definitely can’t tell whether it’s pro or not if you have a case.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#513

Post by IshKebab »

skc wrote: post #422

I actually like that Apple completely obliterates the fiction that people don't want a walled garden. It's such a minority as to be utterly irrelevant. These insane numbers prove it.

No it doesn't. That's like saying they obliterate the fiction that people want cheap phones, or 10 day battery life, or easily repairable phones.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#514

Post by silisili »

catach wrote: post #446
silisili wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes the best phone hardware, in best class of cameras, best battery life, best update policy. I can totally see why anyone would buy one. But I just can't stand using the thing. So, I'm an Android user. But you'd have to be really misinformed to not be able to admit on paper, they are superior devices.

I am curious, what are your biggest pain points?

Probably battery life and processor. Apple smokes everything Android, with a battery not nearly as big. Then there's cohesiveness - watching Android chat apps come and go is laughable.

That aside, it feels certainly like Android leaves you with Goldilocks syndrome. You -can- buy phones with great battery life, great cameras, and great software/ui, but not all 3. Pixel has middling battery life. Samsung's UI/software is slow and bloated. Moto has terrible cameras.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#515

Post by RC_ITR »

dillondoyle wrote: post #398
RC_ITR wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Apple books revenue gross and a lot of it is from components they buy from other people in other countries, which would be excluded from a GDP calculation. An extreme similar example of this is Mckesson [0], which does $260bn of revenue a year (mostly buying pills from pharma companies and re-selling them to pharmacies) but only $11bn of gross profit, since they spend $250bn/year just buying those pills. [0…

'only' for a middleman, who doesn't even do the bare minimum job of saying: hey, we're shipping more opiate pills to this zip code every month than there are people x 100

Of all the links in the chain for the Opiate Crisis, you're going to blame the distributor of the pills?

I get it, hindsight in 20/20 etc., but those pills were prescribed by highly-trained doctors and fulfilled by highly-trained pharmacists who thought they were doing the right thing and you expect some non-M.D. to have the foresight and understanding to say 'Sure, CVS is ordering this amount from us because they have this many pharmacist-approved scripts (keep in mind, this is one of thousands of items CVS is ordering), but I think something is fishy.'

It just seems like that expectation diffuses blame from the actual villains here (the pharma companies that specifically worked to manipulate pharmacists and doctors into writing/approving those scripts).

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#516

Post by tomxor »

tomxor wrote: post #165
grecy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And making the best Macs of all time (and best laptops in the industry), and the best wireless headphones, and the phone with the biggest market share (one measure of best). I think Tim Cook’s Apple is doing very well

We have very different definitions of "best".

wow what a fucking applefanboy fest it is in here... grow up guys, people have different opinions.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#517

Post by alpaca128 »

e12e wrote: post #287
alpaca128 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I need a mouse and multiple screens I can't feel productive, that usually means the software doesn't have enough support for keyboard shortcuts and window management has too much friction. > I don't know why developers are so infatuated with laptops I need a laptop now and then either way, and having two computers means double the cost and more work to keep everything between them in sync. And I switched to a cons…

> ... and window management has too much friction. So, you don't use macos?

I use it with a couple tools like Rectangle which make it usable enough for me. Half the time I'm managing "windows" in Vim and tabs in the browser, and in those the OS doesn't really matter.

The thing that annoys me most is that there's no global shortcut for new terminal windows. It's possible with some weird hacks but never really reliable or fast.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#518

Post by amai »

jldugger wrote: post #399
trap_goes_hot wrote: post #191

I think I paid off a few monthly payments for an executives BMW with my Apple purchases. :)

Nah, Phil Schiller is a Porsche driver, and Eddy Cue is on the Board of Ferarri. The only one driving a BMW is the frugal minded Tim Cook.

Disappointing, that they own outdated combustion engine cars. They should have the money to by the fastest electric car on the market: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Nevera

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#519

Post by amai »

A PDF? That is so 1990, when we were still printing out the Internet. Why can't this be a interactive HTML Table? Or some other machine readable format. Even an MS Excel sorry Apple Numbers sheet would be better.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#520

Post by _aavaa_ »

raydiatian wrote: post #466
kingboss wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the walled garden. It's one of their competitive advantage. I don't want it dismantled. I don't want to androidify apple. And I am fine paying a premium to keep that walled garden and people who want it dismantled off the platform :)

The hidden premium is that you either pay for planned obsolescence (your hardware going to 3mph after 4 OS upgrades) or you stop upgrading your OS. It makes everything 3x as expensive as you think, I bet we all replace our Apple hardware more frequently than we’d like to admit. Unless one of you winners is still rocking that iPhone 4S.

> The hidden premium is that you either pay for planned obsolescence (your hardware going to 3mph after 4 OS upgrades) or you stop upgrading your OS.

I don't think that's a real hidden premium. The android scene does worse on this front, and used to do significantly worse.

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