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New iPod Shuffle Contains $22 Worth of Parts
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the one reason apple was able to drop the price by $200 was because apple started to get a subsidy from AT&T for every iPhone apple sells. If apple didnt get any subsidies, apple would lose massive amounts of money on the iphone.
True. Still, the whole debacle was interesting to watch because if there's one thing that Apple apologists all agree on, it's that the price doesn't matter, it's all about the interaction of hardware and software creating an experience you can't put a pricetag on, and that Apple's products are worth every penny. When the price was dropped, the exact same people said "GIMME BACK MY $200 DAMMIT!!!" But... I thought you said the experience was worth $599 yesterday?
Well, that depends on whether there are any alternatives or not. In the case of Macintosh computers, Apple seems to think that they are allowed to be the only player in the OS X hardware market and can "legally" stop others from entering it. You cannot have it both ways. If you are FOR Capitalism, then you MUST compete. If you want to play protectionist, then you are not for Capitalism. Apple continually wants its cake and to eat it too.
Not the corporate system. The government is the one that needs the overhaul. Corporations are legal entities. They should not be treated as humans. They should not be allowed to lobby the government as a person would (or have someone do it for them). It is in fact the lobbying that is the problem. Our government is supposed to represent its people, not its corporations. Yet the reality is that it does the latter most of the time because that's where the money is. Lobbying has become a code word for "legal bribe" because that is EXACTLY what it has become. Petitioning your congress to listen to you is one thing. Spending MILLIONS or even BILLIONS to push your company's agenda over the general populace isn't right. This is rule for and by the people, not for and by the corporations. It's a sad day when so many on this forum do not and cannot tell the difference. The basis of capitalism is that competition is good for the consumer and brings about better choices and lower prices. Monopolies are bad for the consumer because it brings about higher prices and few or no choices. When Capitalism becomes about companies joining together into loose federations to protect each other from consumer rights, freedoms and choices it has lost its way.
Everything Apple does anymore is anti-competition. They do not want to compete with Dell directly because it means their profit margins will go down and the consumer will see lower prices. So they maintain that they DO compete with Dell even though Apple is free to ship Macs with Windows but Dell is not free to ship OS X with its hardware. Essentially, if you want OS X, you HAVE to buy your hardware from Apple even though it's the SAME HARDWARE you get from Dell. Apple is tying their OS to their hardware to prevent you from buying your hardware elsewhere if you want to maintain your software library (nobody wants to dump all their software investment to run Windows exclusively; If you're coming from Windows you don't have to do that since the Mac can run Windows, even virtually, but you are not allowed to run OS X virtually)
The sad sad part is that the Apple fanatics think that's perfectly OK. Apple doesn't have to compete with anyone because they're smaller? They're often the #3 hardware seller out there. That's not small. We're talking about hardware sales here, not OS sales. Their OS sales have NOTHING to do with their hardware ranking. Hardware and software are not the same thing and are not the same market.
I'm not a huge fan of the greed that is often behind capitalism, but capitalism itself is supposed to be beneficial to the consumer by promoting competition to keep choices high and prices low. When that no longer functions because companies are trying to cheat the system then capitalism is no longer an effective economic system.
Pure socialism lacks incentive to do well, but a hybrid system may be what's needed to promote creativity while also maintaining basic living standards for everyone. I find it amazing that so many people out there claim to believe in a religion like Christianity and yet the eschew its basic tenants of charity and treating your neighbor like your own family and avoiding greed and worshiping money. To me, it only proves that most people are in fact hypocrites and have a long way to go on a spiritual level. So no, I don't much like the way capitalism has ruined this country on so many levels. Greed in government (lobbying), greed in corporations, greed at the market place, greed in daily life. It all adds up to misery for all in the end. No I'm not claiming to be any kind of traditional Christian either. I'm simply using it as an example given its #1 status in world religions. Most religions teach similar values. Most people ignore them and still lie, cheat, murder and steal.
You say it's irrelevant but in fact both are based on GREED and so they are much more closely related than you would have people believe. You might find it amazing how well things could run in this world if people weren't trying to constantly cheat or rip off each other any way they can to get ahead.
In any case, like I said, let's see some figures for parts from other companies. Maybe $19 in parts isn't so ridiculous, but how are we going to know if we don't have a frame for comparison?
True. Still, the whole debacle was interesting to watch because if there's one thing that Apple apologists all agree on, it's that the price doesn't matter, it's all about the interaction of hardware and software creating an experience you can't put a pricetag on, and that Apple's products are worth every penny. When the price was dropped, the exact same people said "GIMME BACK MY $200 DAMMIT!!!" But... I thought you said the experience was worth $599 yesterday?
That wasn't just the "Apple tax," that was the "Apple early adopter tax."
Relative values
A human being contains about $30 worth of chemicals. Therefore, a human being should be worth about $30, wholesale.
A human being contains about $30 worth of chemicals. Therefore, a human being should be worth about $30, wholesale.
Yeah. Then again it costs a fortune to house, feed and educate a human in preparation for adult life, so you might wanna add a a few hundred thousand in, um, post-production costs. I don't think they send iPod Shuffles to college.
You have very strange ideas what "competing" means. Apple competes. Their plan for competing: Invest tons of money for the best possible design, invest in the best parts you can get, and invest hundreds and hundreds of millions in the best operating system to entice people to buy their computers.
Dell could have competed that way. Seven, eight years ago Dell could probably easily have outbid Apple when NeXT was for sale with their operating system that became the basis for MacOS X. They could have bid $500 million instead of Apple's $400 million, and then invested the same many hundred million dollars to turn it into what it is now. DellOS X could have been the worlds best operating system, and we could all be posting on DellRumors.com, and you would be whinging and whining that Dell has a monopoly on DellOS X compatible hardware.
Dell chose not to do this. All the other computer manufacturers chose not to do this. They decided to compete on price instead. How idiotic is it to think that when Apple invested probably a good billion dollars into MacOS X, they should let any other company benefit from it?
The first and foremost method for competing is: Find something that distinguishes you from the competitors. Find something that makes you stand out from the crowd. Dell decided that their distinguishing mark is low price and configurability. Apple decided that their distinguishing mark is MacOS X. You don't want Apple to compete. You want them to hand over their hard earned advantage to others, so that you can get computers with MacOS X cheaper from someone else who didn't invest the money. That is truly pathetic.
No, YOU are the one with the strange idea of what "competing" means. I'll tell you what competing means. Competing means not trying to sue everyone that wants to sell hardware that can run your operating system but instead letting your hardware sell itself. If it's as great as the Apple fanatics say it is and has great value then no one will buy those machines from companies like Psystar. Trying to sue everyone who would sell hardware in the same marketplace as your own is not competing. It's just the opposite. It's anti-competition. Apple seems to think they should be the only ones allowed to install OS X on clone hardware. The fact they own and control OS X has "what" to do with the hardware they're selling??? NOTHING anymore.
If they want to compete, then it needs to be apples to apples. OS X is competing against Windows. That's software against software. I'll buy into that argument. But a Mac Pro tower should be competing against a Dell or HP tower. But what is it actually competing against? NOTHING because nothing else is "allowed" to run OS X. That is a virtual monopoly on hardware for OS X. Well, we'll see about that in court.
How idiotic is it to think that HARDWARE has a flipping thing to do with SOFTWARE??? Maybe you think Microsoft should not be allowed to sell Office for OS X because they're profiting from OS X's existence? Dell isn't even selling software for goodness sake so it's not even that close of a comparison. Dell is selling HARDWARE. If that hardware is capable of running OS X, so be it. If it's capable of running Linux then so be it. If it's capable of running OS/2, then so be it. If it's capable of running Windows, then so be it. If it can run ALL OF THEM, so be it! It's HARDWARE! A consumer should be able to choose the best hardware that suits his or her NEEDS (imagine that) and then move on to the software they WANT to use. If that software is OS X, then so be it! They should pay for it and then install it. How freaking hard is that to grasp? Why is it that Apple fanatics seem to think that Apple is somehow *entitled* to monopolize OTHER MARKETS because they wrote an operating system for the software market???? Yes, you should BUY OS X from Apple. What does THAT have to do with being forced to buy THEIR CLONE hardware (thereby eliminating all other avenues of hardware competition) if you want to run their SOFTWARE????
They're artificially TYING their operating system to their hardware and forcing you to buy one to get the other. That is ILLEGAL and it's why they will lose in court. Hardware and software are completely different markets (ask Microsoft and Lenovo if they are in the same markets) and the fact your company may operating in BOTH markets does not mean they can leverage one against the other! Imagine if Philip Morris said you had to buy their cigarettes in order to buy Kraft Macaroni and Cheese! The fact that Philip Morris sells both does not mean they can tie one to the other. If Zippo sold cigarettes, should they be able to force you to buy their lighters in order to buy their cigarettes or vice versa? NO NO NO!
But... software is intellectual property and as long as Apple doesn't offer the option to buy a full license of the OS on DVD, you cannot acquire one. You can't become an OS X licensee without buying a Mac -- any OS X DVD you subsequently buy is an upgrade. The fact that an upgrade DVD technically allows you to perform a clean install (just like a Windows upgrade does) doesn't change the scope of the license agreement. And I very much doubt that it's illegal to tie software to hardware, there must be plenty of legal precedents establishing that it's illegal to extract proprietary software from hardware and use it as you see fit. Software is licensed, not sold, and thus the first-sale doctrine doesn't apply. They sell Mac as an appliance, not hardware with bundled software, so from a legal POV, taking the OS and selling it separately bundled with third-party hardware would be something akin to extracting the OS from some gaming console, or a Nokia cellphone, and loading it onto your own hardware products.
Even if the court feels rebellious and rules in Psystar's favor in the new case that goes to trial on November 9, fine... let's say Apple were to build a kind of hardware dongle into Macs that serve as copy protection for the OS so that it won't run on clones... would that be illegal? Nah, lots of software uses hardware USB dongles for copy protection. A Mac would simply be a software bundle with a really, really, really large physical copy protection key.
I could build my own with old PC components for much more less:
Here is my screen play:
A street person is sleeping on the sidewalk. Commuters and shoppers are stepping around him. He wakes up, pees against the side of a building and starts yelling at people randomly and muttering darkly, casting hostile eyes at frightened children and old ladies.
Next scene he lurches into a nearby Apple store, filled with shiny, privileged people. He spits on a glass tabled display of sleek aluminum notebooks, scattering customers. As a burly security guy starts towards him, he curses unintelligibly and stumbles out the door, yelling back at the wide-eyed people in the store.
He staggers down the street, again yelling at people and threatening them. This time, his dialogue is clear enough to understand: he wants a computer so he can find out how to make a bomb and kill people who mock him and the (muffled, but obvious curseword adjectives) Apples are not affordable.
In despair, he turns into an alley to get his shopping cart, hoping to find enough plastic wrappers and fast food containers to buy a Dell. Instead, he finds this computer in a crate.
His eyes weep as he carts it down the street. In the last scene, he is in a mission, dressed nicely and groomed. His speech is clear and rational. "Apples were too expensive. I don't need no fancy s*** just to look up stuff". The camera pans quickly over the screen. It looks like he has accessed bomb-making, porn and jail-house romance sites, but it is hard to tell.
In the last scene he is happily gazing at the screen, along with several friends with excited looks on their grizziled faces. He looks up at the camera and says "I got just what I needed at a price I can afford. And I got Windows".
even though there is about $20 in parts, it doesn't mean you can go out and make an ipod shuffle. I know most of us probably can't even afford some of the equipment used to make the shuffle.
Agreed.
Unless you're gonna go out and start MANUFACTURING iPods then I wouldn't be complaining. Ya so what if Apple is netting, what $20 profit per shuffle? Does not nearly every other company try and do the same thing? If we were to look at say a car company and apply the same ideas that people are applying to the shuffle profit margin to them there wouldn't be any question that they are in it for the money. Isn't that what a business tries to do? Make money?
no but for $40 bux you can get a sandisk sansa clip that does more than the ipod shuffle and even comes with a display.... (i seriously have no clue why anyone would buy that apple peice of crap)
the sansa does the following
plays MP3, wma, wav, aax, FLAC, OGG (yes i have some songs in OGG and FLAC)
FM Radio
FM Recording
on the fly playlist generation
OLED Screen (do you have any idea how much more convinient it is to have a sceen? for example i have a top 1000 hits of the last 30 years, i dont really remember every single song, but when i come across a song i like, i can just look at the screen to see whats playing, HTF do you do that on the shuffle?)
LONGER battery life
Voice recording (i find the main use for most people is lecture halls recordings)
selectable Auto, MTP or MSC (works on both linux and apple, simple drag and drop)
better sound quality than the shuffle
cheaper with the same warranty (both 1 year)
if your not emo and you can look past a brand name, i would say the Genesis Coupe is WAY MORE fun than a Z5
for about $28ish you can get a 3.8L V6 GT spec Genesis coupe
306HP
13.5" Brembo disc brakes
6spd
Limited slip diff
sport tuned suspension
leather
HID with auto leveling
just about everything the bmw would give you
Maybe I don't want a screen on my clip music player, and I don't give a damn about FM radio. That sansa thing is too big.
So that's the reason for them making everything smaller! Just think of their profit margins on the MacBook Air!
Oh man, this thread is hilarious. Just as good as the Microsoft ad threads. Keep'm coming.
Nothing makes Apple fanatics more frantic than the chance to defend Apple. :O)
