Yup, because 15 minutes looking at a shiny new interface really lets you figure how good something is in its day to day useage.....
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Apple's US Market Share Slips in 1Q 2009
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Yup, because 15 minutes looking at a shiny new interface really lets you figure how good something is in its day to day useage.....
Sure. However neither does reading some of the bollocks posted by some of the less able tech journals and their followers.
Vista was a mess when it came out. It's fine now as long as you don't try to run it on an underpowered system.
It's still a mess reputation wise. It got a just deserved beating when it came out and pretty much ruined it's reputation from that point forward. The whole Vista Capable debacle was a large part of it too. How can you tell what an underpowered system for Vista is when underpowered systems come with a "Vista Capable" sticker on them? Confuses customers to no end, makes them bitter, and makes them hate their first (and sometimes last) Vista experience.
OSX, the full 10.5 OSX, runs, beautifully, on £300 netbooks. I've done it myself on my Samsung NC10. It ran fast, smooth, no problems at all ( apart from a few hardware bugs which are to be expected. ) There are videos showing a Dell Mini booting faster than an MBA.
They are small laptops, and they work BEAUTIFULLY. Given the trouble with the economy, and the simultaneous increase in mobile broadband, they are absolutely of their time.
That Apple has totally missed the boat is unforgivable - if I were a shareholder, I would be asking serious questions. Apple have always been about over-priced hardware, and now it's burning them. Please, don't anyone tell me they didn't see this coming.
Doug
Sorry - you're talking complete crap.
Dell take an Intel CPU, an Intel chipset, design their own Motherboard to house it all, a heatsink, a case, put it all together, put a Dell badge on it and sell it,
Apple take an Intel CPU, an Intel chipset, design their own Motherboard to hosue it all, a heatsink, a case, put it all together, put an Apple badge on it and sell it.
The list of tasks involved, the challenges, the cost of manufacture - they're going to be the same. You can pretend a Mac is in someway special - but it isn't - really - it isn't. The iMac isn't innovative anymore. The Mac Pro is the opposite of innovation.
It's obvious OS X runs great on netbooks (see MSI Wind and the Dell Mini 9, and so forth). What I'm wondering if is Apple releases a netbook, will it actually help?
The answer will come in time... and how much Apple charges for the netbook. I think $699 is the maximum they can charge if they want real results.
The answer will come in time... and how much Apple charges for the netbook. I think $699 is the maximum they can charge if they want real results.
Windows 7 runs fine on an average netbook (1 GiB/16 GB). Expect a big push from Microsoft on this front. (Think of the "Netbook Hunter" ads - "I went into the Mac store, and they only had this huge 13" for over $1000". No way...)
If you read the OSX on Mini 9 stories, most of them recommend 2GiB RAM and 32 GB SSD or more. Those "recommended" configs for OSX will run Vista just fine.
By the way, Newegg has 64 GB SSD's for the eeePC for $129.
Yeah we see all the bucketloads of money companies are making of netbooks, the likes of Dell struggle just to turn a profit despite all their netbooks they selling, meanwhile Apple is smiling to the bank with over 30 billion in the bank, yeah those guys Apple are real idiots.
If I were a shareholder, I would be asking questions:
Why are you holding $30B, and not sharing that with the owners of Apple in the form of dividends?
Why are you holding $30B, and not sharing that with the owners of Apple in the form of stock buybacks to push up the share price?
Why are you holding $30B, and not taking advantage of a strong cash position to invest in new markets and increase market share during a weak economy? [mini-towers and netbooks come to mind right away]
Expensive products include higher profits, but that doesn't mean that cheaper products has to be sold at a loss. Profits in cheaper products aren't as high, but they can make profit.
What does that have to do with companies make scraps of cheap netbooks, no wonder why some companies are trying to bring higher priced netbooks, they are making no money off the cheap ones, LOL.
As for what Apple does with the 30 billion, that's up to them.
Who told you the profits are up because of netbooks:
http://www.microscope.co.uk/hidden/...ofits-up-but-revenues-dip-in-market-slowdown/
http://news.google.ca/news?um=1&ned=ca&hl=en&q=acer+profits
Netbooks aren't making profits for these companies. They may be selling more netbooks but they ain't making no money off it, what's important in business is to make money, a lot of people seem to forget that. Netbooks are driving sales but coming at the expense of profits and margins. This is what people are telling Apple to do, go and lose money:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/17/gartner_pc_sales/
I agree. There comes a point where a product becomes a bit of a lost cause and Vista hit that back in 2007. Although it's actually a pretty good OS now the public - and most businesses - just aren't going to forget that.
Again totally agree. That was a stupid, stupid move and one for which a lot of senior MS management quietly paid the price for.
That's absolutely incorrect.
What Apple does with its cash balance is ultimately up to the owners of Apple.
If I were one of Apple's owners - I'd want some of that $30B in my pocket. So I'd be asking some questions.
Because it is up to the owners of Apple, not Apple themselves. Apple is not a private company.
A quick search shows no mention of hardware makers "losing money" specifically due to netbooks. I guess some people forget there is a MAJOR (as in world record breaking) world wide recession going on right now and maybe just MAYBE *that* is the reason companies are losing money right now, not because netbooks are selling like hotcakes.
In fact, the only news articles I see offhand that suggest netbooks are bad for anyone is one that says it's bad for Microsoft because their current operating system flop "Vista" is too slow and crappy to run on a netbook. When your current product that you bet the farm on sucks and everyone is using your old product at reduced prices or flocking to another platform, yeah, you could have a problem. Here, though, the problem is not that netbooks don't make profits for hardware sales, but rather Microsoft was counting on selling Vista for $200, $300, $400, even $500 a pop. That's a little hard to do when the netbook you're selling goes for $300 to begin with. Maybe Microsoft is getting a little too big, too bulky and unable to adapt to consumer trends?
The other article I saw that mentioned someone losing money specifically due to netbooks is Apple and that's only because THEY DON'T OFFER ONE. They're trying to sell towers at $2400+, laptops at $1400 and $2000+ and iMacs from $1200-2400 and a little joke of a computer that should go for $400 for $900. Now you tell ME what Apple's problem is and why their sales are starting to slip despite the ENORMOUS CACHET of the iPhone. I say it's because they're freaking GREEDY. If they do introduce a netbook, you can be sure it'll cost at least $600 when everyone is selling at $300. That's simply the Apple way. And it's why Apple is still and always will be a niche market instead of controlling the world (unless a judge does them a favor and allows reasonably priced Mac clones, at which point Macs will fast grab 20-30% of the market, IMO).
Netbooks aren't bad. Greed is bad.
In fact, the only news articles I see offhand that suggest netbooks are bad for anyone is one that says it's bad for Microsoft because their current operating system flop "Vista" is too slow and crappy to run on a netbook. When your current product that you bet the farm on sucks and everyone is using your old product at reduced prices or flocking to another platform, yeah, you could have a problem. Here, though, the problem is not that netbooks don't make profits for hardware sales, but rather Microsoft was counting on selling Vista for $200, $300, $400, even $500 a pop. That's a little hard to do when the netbook you're selling goes for $300 to begin with. Maybe Microsoft is getting a little too big, too bulky and unable to adapt to consumer trends?
The other article I saw that mentioned someone losing money specifically due to netbooks is Apple and that's only because THEY DON'T OFFER ONE. They're trying to sell towers at $2400+, laptops at $1400 and $2000+ and iMacs from $1200-2400 and a little joke of a computer that should go for $400 for $900. Now you tell ME what Apple's problem is and why their sales are starting to slip despite the ENORMOUS CACHET of the iPhone. I say it's because they're freaking GREEDY. If they do introduce a netbook, you can be sure it'll cost at least $600 when everyone is selling at $300. That's simply the Apple way. And it's why Apple is still and always will be a niche market instead of controlling the world (unless a judge does them a favor and allows reasonably priced Mac clones, at which point Macs will fast grab 20-30% of the market, IMO).
Netbooks aren't bad. Greed is bad.
Who doesn't know that, the people who own shares and really matter know what's best and right now it ain't about giving money back to know shareholders, which is why the money is in the bank.
Oh you want to talk about greed, what do you know about greed. Companies can price their products at whatever they want, if you don't like it, don't buy it. The market decides whether that company is right or wrong and with more than 30 billion in the bank the market has decided that Apple is right.
I'm sure some people could say your current salary if you're working might greedy compared to how much they are making. Should you all of a sudden take a salary cut because of your greedy salary. What if you were offered a higher salary, would you turn it down because you're being greedy by taking a high salary. What is wrong with a company deciding to price their products at the prices they feel their products are worth. People stay with their current jobs because they feel their salaries go with how much they are worth.
If netbooks are such moneymakers, why are these same analysts saying they are contributing barely nothing to margins and profits. Why are some of these same companies now looking at offering more expensive netbooks, even Dell just brought out a 2000 dollar computers, I wonder why they aren't focusing all their attention on these "money making" $300 netbooks.
Apple's sales haven't slipped, these aren't official numbers. We'll see next week when they release their numbers. The same people have been predicting declining Mac sales since 2007 but Apple keeps reporting record profits and Macs being sold. Even the PC market with all their "money" making netbooks are having their sales slip and the worrying thing for them is their average selling price is also dropping because of these cheap netbooks, we'll see how well that works out for them.
And that SAME market is what seems to be determining what netbooks are selling for. And yet you think that is bad? What happened to letting the market determine the prices, eh? Apple is selling computers right now, yes. But who can say if they'd be selling 2x, maybe even 10x as many computers to switchers if they were more reasonably priced? We may never know because the market can only make corrections if you adjust your price to see what happens. Apple seems to be happy to RAISE their prices to see what happens...in a global recession. Should it be any wonder that some of us think they're completely out of touch with typical consumers? Maybe they only want rich consumers (yuppies were once their target market, maybe it is again).
Having 30 billion in the bank only shows that Apple is hoarding profit and not reinvesting it back into the market place. They delayed the release of Leopard due to the iPhone taking priority INSTEAD of just hiring more employees when they clearly can easily afford to do so. They could have kept production here in America since it is America that enabled them to exist in the first place, but greed lead them to move production to China. Is it any wonder that their quality levels have gone way down as a result? You say Apple is right, but you're looking at the short term and the affects of one massively popular device, the iPhone. This does NOT in any way ensure a smooth future. Apple was very popular in the early '80s and even into the early '90s. Then one product came out that doomed Apple and that was Windows95.
I'm afraid OS X, as nice as it is, could easily become obsolete as soon as someone else releases something better. At that point, NO ONE will buy overpriced hardware from Apple just to get OS X. But if Apple were selling at NORMAL prices instead of hoarding profit by greed they might be increasing their market share from 8% to 20+% and therefore increase the odds that they will survive the next big OS from Microsoft that doesn't suck. Microsoft can afford to have a couple of flop OS releases. They own the marketplace. That gives them a LOT of freedom to fail and still survive.
Apple owns a TINY spot on the giant lawn that Microsoft controls. They may be making hoards of profit right now, but that tiny market share of the OS will doom them the very moment they are abandoned in favor of Windows7...8...9 whatever one it might be. They have no breathing room what-so-ever. GM burned through 16 billion in cash in 3 months. If you seriously believe that a 30 billion buffer will save Apple when the crap hits the fan, you are delusional. Failure is failure and Apple is doomed in the long run unless it continues to stay ahead of Windows consistently and forever OR it increases its market share 4 fold. Apple had as much as 20% of the market around 1990. It didn't take long for them to drop to 4%. Not long at all. I don't think Apple learned a thing from the past, to be honest. They seemed doomed to repeat history all over again. They had super high prices and snobby users at the height of their popularity in the late '80s. Look what happened next as soon as Microsoft released a hit.
As for "greed", I know quite a bit about it. I've read quite a lot about every major religion out there. I've read quite a bit about history as well. I know that greed is the root cause of the current global recession. I know it's the reason those banks took the risks they took. I also know it's human nature. It is not an attribute of a higher more spiritual nature (e.g. you don't see Buddhists worrying about 'things'). Greedy kiddies on this planet cause more harm/pain/misery for the overall human race than anything else. No wonder greed has been called the root of all evil. You think greed is good so long as it makes you money. When the market doesn't work and prices are set to slim margins, you think something is wrong with the system. Sorry, but like it or not, consumers still have a say in that system. Like you said, they don't have to buy overpriced crap.
Vista's failure combined with OS X's strong usability and the wave of cachet tied to the iPod and iPhone is what's keeping Apple flying high right now. Nothing lasts forever, though. Rome lasted 1000 years. It fell from arrogance and greed too. Apple can change its course and save itself right now. If it doesn't, all bets are off. Steve is pretty innovative, but what happens when Steve is retired/gone? Can Apple stay afloat on innovation forever or should they be thinking about market share?