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Microsoft Passes Apple to Become Most Valuable U.S. Company
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You moved the goalposts. I didn’t Mention ASP, you did. A very specific question was asked.
If an iPhone 5 in 2012 was $849 what is an Xs max in 2018(with different tech inside) supposed to sell for? $849? $749? $949?
A price hike is literally a sudden and considerable price increase—the opposite of a gradual or incremental increase. So no, a dollar increase on an item that was historically ~$600+ doesn’t qualify. That’s only a 0.002% increase.
Now look at iPhones. As you mentioned before, the earliest models were subsidized by carriers. Regardless, you could get the latest 4, 5, 5s, and 6 for $199. When subsidies were replaced by financing, the 6s and 7 sold for $649. For all we know, the prior phones may have been valued at a similar price. So far, the prices remained unchanged for their respective purchase options. Later came the 8 at $699. An 8 percent price increase ($50). Not unreasonable.
Then came the X. $999! That’s a whopping 42 percent increase!
It doesn’t matter what justifications Apple has for the enormous increase. You can’t expect a market that already bemoans the cost of their “Toyota” to splurge on a “Lexus”.
It actually does matter that Apple upgraded their tech. The cost of the iPhone 5 was $849. So a phone 6 years later sells for $999 with the xr selling below that. Neither is unreasonable. Cars increased in cost and we’ve been manufacturing cars for 100 years. My cable bill went up, milk went up, eggs went up. Old tech goes down in value but newer products generally sell for price points higher than the products they supersede.
So again this entire “raising the prices “ is nebulous at best.
It's about services, and MSFT is killing it with their cloud services.
Apple iCloud can barely handle your notes and a photo stream, let alone corporate cloud
Apple iCloud can barely handle your notes and a photo stream, let alone corporate cloud
Yes, Microsoft-free IT. Like the people who get all-Chromebook setups (usually for schools) or deploy Macs in businesses without Office or Windows and the cost and long-term pain that comes with it. It's pretty common.
It is the IT people who decide what tech a business will use. 90s-2000s they've all been buying Microsoft. This has been in steady decline since.
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The last time I checked, iCloud runs off Google Cloud. It used to run off Azure. So all this means is Apple doesn't have their own cloud services for iCloud. Not sure why it performs as poor as it does for delivering static content. I can only blame the Apple devops and infrastructure team for this.
Is the performance bad? If there was a hiccup around 11/11, there was that issue where GCP Kubernetes clusters were getting killed (mine stayed dead for 3 days!). Other than that, yeah, probably Apple's fault.
My complaints about iCloud have always been about confusion. Some things like contacts work great, but notes is the perfect example of a disaster. Many victims have had their notes erased trying to set that up; pretty unacceptable.
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I stopped using the new Linux workstation they gave me at work when I found out they still haven't figured their **** out when it comes to UI. Starting with the inability to copy-paste in a terminal with the universal copy-paste shortcut. I just SSH into it now; less wasted CPU anyway cause then Cinnamon isn't there to hog things.
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I've worked in Fortune 100s and 20 man startups. The Fortune 100s don't have any long term pain with Office. My current company used to be a company of 1000 before acquisition, and they don't have many problems with Office. I will say though that many of us sw engineers prefer to do things via Google Drive/Sheets/Docs over Office equivalent apps. However, I personally prefer Powerpoint over Google Slides for the speed.
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I think most people are complaining about the stability of the cluster when they talk about performance.
It is actually not a nebulous concept at all. People have been buying new top of the line iPhones for over a decade now. So there are certain expectations how much an iphone should cost. Apple tried to change those expectations last year and reports suggest they are struggling to convince a good portion of the customer base. And it makes sense. A new product always incorporates new tech. Why else would there be the need to release a new product? Let‘s say BMW has a loyal customer base for their 3 series which sells for about 40000$ upwards. Now if they suddenly decide the new car is so much better than last generation that we can ask a starting price of about 55000$ Part of the customer base will not accept that as well. It is a lot more and they rightfully expected a replacement of the car at approximately the same price. Now some people will have to downgrade to a lesser model or switch brands if they do not Want to spend significantly more on their car. Both options are not great causing dissatisfaction and that is what Apple has done starting with the X but even more so this year.
(1) I would advise you to to study then because you seam to lack knowledge of basic concepts. The same basic concepts that allow you to conclude that Apple smartphones are generally more expensive than the competition. The same basic concepts that allow you to say that Apple sells high end products. It's all related to comparing the price and value of goods at a given level of abstraction.
(2) What Apple can do or not is not is not what people are arguing. But what Apple is doing.
Apple has increased the price of new gen products, when compared to last gen products, then when compared to previous year, so on and so forth. Very simple, not fuzzy.
Have fun. Cheers.
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Threw an insult and then proceeded to move the goal posts?
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Your example of bmw is perfect. The price msrp or retail reflects value of the product as well as r&d and other direct and indirect costs. When a dozen eggs go from 3 to 4 dollars that’s a price increase.
When this years m5 puts out 100 more hp, shaves a second off of 0 to 60 and costs $5k more, that’s a price increase also, but it’s based on the r and d and development of an improvement in the car and value of a faster model. No reason bmw shouldn’t increase the price for its development costs. If bmw made a marketing error and customers don’t buy the product there might be some incentives or to get rid of the cars bmw eats the difference.
It’s difficult to tell with any certainty where Apple is, this is all conjecture. But Apple value priced its new phones, which I don’t personally have a problem with as these aren’t eggs.
IT people need to keep their jobs, so they pick something that requires a lot of IT support.
Threw an insult and then proceeded to move the goal posts?
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Your example of bmw is perfect. The price msrp or retail reflects value of the product as well as r&d and other direct and indirect costs. When a dozen eggs go from 3 to 4 dollars that’s a price increase.
When this years m5 puts out 100 more hp, shaves a second off of 0 to 60 and costs $5k more, that’s a price increase also, but it’s based on the r and d and development of an improvement in the car and value of a faster model. No reason bmw shouldn’t increase the price for its development costs. If bmw made a marketing error and customers don’t buy the product there might be some incentives or to get rid of the cars bmw eats the difference.
It’s difficult to tell with any certainty where Apple is, this is all conjecture. But Apple value priced its new phones, which I don’t personally have a problem with as these aren’t eggs.
It was not intended as insult. I was really being honest. You should study more basic concepts such as prices increase at a level of abstraction rather than the gift of argumentation. You can do it if you want.
Otherwise it’s a waste of time. I have no problems learning from you. I do have problems when I smell artífices just to push the argument as forward as one can mixed with a lack of will to understand the other point of view even at the basic level. There is always reasons for a given price.
If you don’t have a problem with the current prices that is fine. No one is arguing you should, eggs and all.
Just because I can pay for products of a particular Brand or Make it does not mean that is not increasing or decreasing.
I have more gladly payed the price they have asked than I do today. And I do really like our iPhones X and MacBook Pros, Apple TV, iPads, Apple Watches and all. But all things considered .... feeling a bit drilled. And I bet a great lot of us that have sustain families do ... Because that is what I see around the people I know in Europe that use Apple products. A lot are now looking for other options in a scale I have never seen, especially those that like to pay pronto! Don't know, how it is in your place, it sounds like "latest gen more expensive, yayayay its better, go fetch go" ...
What is wrong having more people and families able to buy the cutting edge products while having large profits? For someone that looks to have such strong humanitarian point of view all in the sudden it’s seams that TC has a problem with that. So much so it’s already hiding unit sales numbers.
I guess Apple it’s no longer about making the best products for the people but how people perceive their value. Because being the best product, the most transformative, the one that delivered more with less does not need to be the most expensive in the market, the one that less and less people can afford.
Case in case, the iPhone 3GS at $599, less expensive than many smartphones at the time, such as the Sony Xperia X1 (Windows Mobile) at $799. Not only was the 3GS far a better product at that time than the XS is now, it had the price to reach far more people, far more families.
“Think different” forever.
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Ok, so I always like to base things on facts, I have no agenda...so make what you will of the following...
I hunted down the historic figures in AUD and the exchange rate at the time, probably best to do it in AUD because us prices were not always unlocked pricing until the iPhone 5 or something...
These are the AUD price, less 10% converted to USD at the time so they will differ in the "Apple Tax"/hedging or what ever you wish to call it...
This will take currency fluctuations out of it.
I have only listed the lowest storage capacity for each
Phone AUD - 10% GST -> USD (AUD)
3gs 681 (929)
4 688 (859)
4s 718 (799)
5 697 (799)
5s 742 (869)
6 727 (869)
6+ 836 (999)
6s 685 (1079)
6s+ 780 (1229)
7 734 (1079)
7+ 863 (1269)
8 783 (1079)
8+ 891 (1229)
X 1098 (1579)
XS 1079 (1629)
XS Max 1192 (1799)
XR 790 (1229)
And the two 'special' models
5c 631 (739)
SE 384 (549)
So the prices have gone like
using the lower priced/smaller models:
681, 688, 718, 697, 742, 727, 685, 734, 783,790/1079
using the higher price/larger models
681, 688, 718, 697, 742, 836, 780, 863, 891, 1098, 1192
So I see a trend starting at 681 and ending at 790/1079 depending on if you choose the XS or XR
and 681 to 1192
So iPhones have at the bottom of the range, increased by $100 USD
and at the top of the range increased by $511 USD.
This is also bourne out in the ASP increasing.
You're on the money my friend. I love apple, use my iPad more than I use my laptop and been a loyal iPhone user since 2009. That said, I can't help but notice that they sometimes overengineer solutions , which either delays them to reach market (home pod), costs them a ton of unnecessary money (Apple Music match), and/or like you said slows down the process (delivery of static content)
There's no disputing the fact that PC sales and market share is in decline, but it's really not a cause for serious alarm. Microsoft environments are still Microsoft environments.
PC's are so good now the refresh cycle has changed. Years ago it was a miracle if your PC made it to the 3 year refresh period. Now a standard corporate laptop should last for anything up to 6 years. Enterprises are buying less hardware because they can.
The average home user no longer needs an up-to-date PC to get things done. Most of the things a person does can be done on their phone. The rest their older clunky laptops can handle or a tablet device.
Microsoft isn't reliant on the sales of Windows licences to exist. They've adapted, moved on & have become very successful at being the core of most people's lives. Microsoft have morphed into a services company, something Apple are trying to be now the arse has fallen out of the market of flogging hardware.
Apple's answer to cloud services is iCloud which is a festering stinking turd compared to all their rivals offerings.
Apple were at $1 trillion not long ago. That's your headline.
About MS:
1. Surface Book: You get a tablet and a laptop.
2. Surface Studio: An all-in-one and also a drawing canvas.
3. Surface Laptop: I believe it is overpriced.
4. Surface Pro: A tablet with full Windows. I'm not a fan of Windows in a tablet for daily common task.
5. Surface Go: Windows on a smaller screen.
So for me, the first 2 products justify the price. In terms of power they may be similar, but you get more functionality.