This is just plain weird.
http://www.cultofmac.com/130432/apple-wants-to-give-your-iphone-screen-protecting-airbags/
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So how many parents are going to become goats by saving some bucks on a Kindle Ash (fail).
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A post just for @rastard.
My take is like MDN. He thought that Apple Retail Stores would flop. In reality they are the single biggest factor in Apple’s growth. We don’t need Jimmy Carter as chairman of the bored (spelling purposeful).
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Birra
Oh oh, just remembered I met this guy while doing a security review for Genentech. Milk toast personified!
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Birra
Sorry, that was Amgen, mind is slowly eroding. My son worked for Genentech before he decided to spend his life playing video games. Finally made better money with the latter after starting as a lowly hourly tester. Was tough to give up the monster dollars for awhile.
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rastard
Heh, I actually don’t think of Apple (the company) as being arrogant. Nor do I find their employees to be (I know loads of engineers who work there, and while they’re all *very* good (and justifiably would have reason to be arrogant), they’re all generally pretty humble and balanced).
The “pretentious, arrogant and supercilious douchebags” I previous referred to tend to simply be hardcore Apple fanboys — who unlike the Apple employees, generally have no foundation or accomplishment to justify it.
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Birra
Not guilty, I did something worthwhile once, I think.
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Richard
This is indeed a bit worrisome. We had a Professor who was a genius: whatever you proposed, he could spell out detailed valid reasons why it would not work. He was very, very, good, and never supported anything. Such people are dangerous. I hope AAPL is not in trouble with a wet blanket.
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rastard
Before we continue to assassinate Levinson’s suitability for Apple based on 1 single position of his, it might be worth looking into what his other positions have been. Here’s one:
“He was one of the key people pushing for Apple to open up the iPhone to an App Store. “I called [Steve Jobs] a half dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps,” Levinson told Isaacson. Jobs was reluctant to do an App Store because he didn’t want people mucking around with the iPhone.”
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“An August report from McAfee found that Android had become the most-targeted platform for malware while iOS was untouched.”
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/16/android_malware_has_jumped_up_472_since_july.html
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Birra
Substantiation of the quote above.
Apple’s iOS unaffected by malware as Android exploits surge 76%
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Nicu
Android is winning, iPhone didn’t have that kind of growth ever, in any aspect of it
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rastard
Clever!
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GotWake
Well of course it’s because the iPhone has such a low market share. Isn’t that the normal reason?
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“This patent is so basic that it would be hard to get around it. Just about any location-based system at its heart has to transmit a local location and receive information in return. That leaves the question of what Apple will decide to do … and to whom.”
“patent originally dating back to 1998″
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57325995/apple-gets-killer-location-services-patent/
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JPWatkins
Doesn’t a patent that isn’t enforced become unenforceable down the road?
So they’ll need to sue others or lose their patent protection.-
Birra
You are correct sir. Who’s on first?
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Sure leaves a lot of room to grow and growing it is doing.
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Just think how many more iPhones Apple could sell if they kowtowed to carriers like DoCoMo and China Mobile.
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GotWake
Yamada may be a little more receptive when…… revenue continues to slip.
“Japan’s second largest mobile carrier, KDDI Corp., recently joined Softbank Corp. in carrying Apple’s popular smartphone. Both companies reported increases to net profits during the second quarter thanks in part to strong iPhone sales, while NTT DoCoMo saw a decline the same period as voice revenue continued to slip.”
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Nicu
Yes, many of these “orifices” need to be abused hard before they get it
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GotWake
LOL. I think you are right. Unless Yamada has been living under a rock, there’s just no way he didn’t know that Apple isn’t going to budge on terms. The carriers just don’t get that they are just “dumb pipes”. I just wish that Apple could have started their own service like Steve wanted to. The carriers better be glad because Apple would have ate their lunch.
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Birra
Guess it’s no different than Verizon turning down the original iPhone for the same reasons, after all who wouldn’t want Rhapsody. AT&T has come from way behind and is still preferred by iOS customers. I still don’t own a cell phone but used my iPad 2 3G on a recent road trip. Loved being able to pay just $15 to use AT&T for a month and then deactivate it. Perfect way to have maps and a big cell phone with no contract. Thanks for holding the line Apple.
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Apparently this is a reincarnation of RIMs failure. But many customers will waste $200 before realization sets in. Meanwhile AAPL will have to wait until Apple quarterly results arrive.
An aside are the predictable stories that battery life is still a problem. If you actually go to the Apple discussion forum you’ll find that very few folks were having problems to begin with and even fewer now. I won’t provide a link since bloggers are now using the numbers of views as their criteria as opposed to posts.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/amazon-kindle-fire-review/
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Birra
I should have noted that the Kindle Ash is US only thus even less significant.
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Birra
Oh, a telling moment will be Amazon’s quarterly report. The revelation that loss leaders seldom work will further take the PE from the rarified to the ridiculous.
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Birra
The killer announcement will come along with the intro of the iPad 3. The iPad 2 will continue starting at $399. The Kindle Ash has set a losing price point for Android tablets. These two events will be huge.
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Birra
Most complete review of the Ash and yes that’s the gist. Fun to read the Apple hateboy comments. Someone recently analyzed comments regarding the iPhone 4S battery life and concluded that 2/3rds came from Android fanboys, no surprise there.
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Nicu
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rastard
There are actually *some* positive reviews in there, that don’t agree with Birra’s assessment. Did you actually mean to post that?
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Nicu
I do not mind when Apple’s competition does a good thing. The only good thing Fire achieves is a low price. And that will appeal to many people. But Amazon will suffer in the short term because they sell it at a loss. And many users are cheapskates (if not freetards) and Amazon will not recover their losses with those people. AMZN’s P/E is more than eight times that of AAPL’s. Apple’s profits grew more than 80% y/y and Amazon’s are shrinking and they may incur a loss this quarter.
I do not have enough margin right now (I own only calls and one sub-$1 stock and have been investing hard in those lately so not much cash left), but 2x short AMZN + buy AAPL is the closest you’ll ever get to an arbitrage (make money with no risk), if you can wait for it 6m-1y.
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Birra
Further evidence that the Kindle Ash is really the Android Killer. Developers will gravitate to volume. But as @nicu indicated, these customers cheapskates, they will not pay for apps let alone Amazon Prime. Never were potential iPad buyers.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/11/14/kindle.fire.tops.in.android.devs.ios.still.ahead/
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Birra
BTW, I buy a lot from Amazon, just got my wife a new sewing machine, she loves it and I love the price, no sales tax, and no postage. But never bit on Amazon Prime, offers me nothing except Amazon surpressing other sellers from their searches.
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Birra
“All eyes are on the Amazon Kindle Fire to provide fresh competition for Apple’s iPad 2, today’s dominant tablet,” Melissa J. Perenson reports for PCWorld. “Not so fast: Beneath the Kindle Fire’s slick veneer and unparalleled shopping integration lies a tablet that fails to impress as either a tablet or as an e-reader.”
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JPWatkins
I think the Kindle fire will be very successful in its own right, just not against the iPad.
They just aren’t competitors. as they are very different and occupy very different niches.-
Birra
Interesting that the Fire is a US only play as is the Nook, yet it seemingly is having world wide ramifications. Seems that the stock market hasn’t figured that it’s a net positive for Apple.
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Birra
@JP you might want to rethink the possible success of the Ash. The developer of Instapaper reviews it and it’s not pretty.
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JPWatkins
@birra,
No, I think you misunderstand me. It will be successful as a Kindle Fire, but probably not as a tablet. It’s just not a tablet. It’s in a separate class of some kind—”Reader +”(?)—but definitely not a real tablet. If it works well as a reader and does a few other things decently, while still being cheap, I see a lot of Kindle users going for it. (For a power reader though, it seems like it would be a sacrifice to give up that crisp, monochrome, e-ink screen.)
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Nicu
I usually find MDN a bit childish in their comments, but here they got the best excerpts and reasonable observations
http://macdailynews.com/2011/12/05/usability-expert-jakob-nielsen-tests-amazons-tiny-screen-kindle-fire-a-disappointingly-poor-user-experience/
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A relative of mine recently replaced her dumb phone with a smart phone. Even though the iPhone was available she chose an Android since the sales person said they were pretty much identical and the Android was cheaper. She considers herself a technical person since she had a government job where she had to enter Unix commands. I never argue with folks like this since it tends to further lock their minds. So I started wondering whether the sales person was incompetent or just an Android fan. Then it dawned on me (a real duh moment).
Why would any carrier push an iPhone and pay Apple a big subsidy when the can get the dumb customer to accept an Android with no subsidy?
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Birra
This anecdotal story does have a happy ended. Her husband who admits to hating computers played around with a friend’s iPad. Guess who now is having a great time with their new iPad and guess who now has developed Apple envy.
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rastard
Another possibility is that to a large population of buyers, ‘they actually are pretty much identical and the Android is cheaper’.
But no, that couldn’t be it. Anyone who buys Android must be dumb and salespeople must be incompetent — that’s the only possible explanation.
And despite that kind of mindset, we still wonder why there’s a backlash against Apple?
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Birra
Quote from above, “I never argue with folks like this since it tends to further lock their minds.”
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GotWake
“And despite that kind of mindset, we still wonder why there’s a backlash against Apple?”
Maybe you could provide some citation about this “backlash”, you speak of.
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rastard
I’m not going to waste my time answering a ridiculous question. If you don’t already realize that a reasonably large population of people buy Android (and other non-Apple products) simply out of reaction to Apple fanboys’ pretentious and arrogant stance that owners of non-Apple owners are idiots, no amount of citations will change your mind.
Sure, they may be cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but it nonetheless reduces the sales of Apple products…
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Birra
Where @ratsturd is concerned keep this in mind.
Quote from above, “I never argue with folks like this since it tends to further lock their minds.”
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rastard
If the best you can do is continue to call me ratsturd, then you’re clearly not worth listening to anyway…
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GotWake
What’s ridiculous is assuming that there’s a “backlash” against Apple because people are buying Android phones. There have always been people that hate Apple. The iPhone 4s just sold out in 10 minutes in Hong Kong. It set record sales the opening week. If that’s a “backlash”, I really want to piss people off.
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GotWake
And it’s really funnny how you always want a citation or play on one word in someone’s statement. But, you never really feel the need when someone calls you on the BS you post.
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Birra
You’re right very few purchases are based upon negative emotions. Heck, I’d buy a product that competes with Apple if I could find a better one, as long as th
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rastard
“There have always been people that hate Apple”
That’s exactly my point. Unless you want to assert that it’s because they actually don’t like Apple’s products, there must be another reason. My leading theory is that “people hate Apple because hardcore Apple fanboys are frequently pretentious, arrogant and supercilious, douchebags, and don’t want to be associated with them. Do you have an alternate theory that you would attribute the Apple hatred to?
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GotWake
I thought you were referring to a backlash towards the iPhone.
For some reason, people think we are suppose to sit meekly as they berate us about the evils of the Mac, iPhone, iPad or iAnything. If we don’t, then we are the typical fanboy.
Right before last Christmas, I was talking to my buddy that’s at one of the Best Buy Kiosk. Some guy comes over to attack him about how viruses were going to get the Mac in the next year. We just looked at each other after he leaves. He says people come up to him all the time on the attack. When I go on forums, Apple haters are on Apple related websites attacking Apple fans. I don’t like Microsoft products, hence, I never visit websites about Microsoft. Case in point, you don’t seem to like Apple very much or invest in aapl, yet, here you are on a finance forum under aapl trashing Apple most of the time. But, hardcore Apple fanboys are “pretentious, arrogant and supercilious douchebags.
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rastard
“When I go on forums, Apple haters are on Apple related websites attacking Apple fans. I don’t like Microsoft products, hence, I never visit websites about Microsoft.”
The funny part is that I think you actually believe that about yourself. Your posting history here shows otherwise: http://www.traderhood.com/boards/GOOG/
“Case in point, you don’t seem to like Apple very much or invest in aapl”
AAPL is currently my 2nd largest holding. In the past year here, I’ve posted both times I’ve added to my AAPL holdings (yes, only 2 — I’m not a frequent trader). I haven’t posted any sales, because I haven’t made any.
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GotWake
I think I’ll do like you and focus on something obscure:
“When I go on forums, Apple haters are on Apple related websites attacking Apple fans. I don’t like Microsoft products, hence, I never visit websites about Microsoft.”
I don’t see anything in this quote that has anything to do with “Google”.
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rastard
Ah, okay, I misunderstood you. When you claimed that unlike Apple haters who post crap on Apple boards, you don’t ever do that yourself, you were only talking about MSFT’s boards specifically. Got it.
Carry on then, and continue to feel superior to those Apple trashers…
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GotWake
Let’s look at some simple stats for this website. Just looking at the number of topics start:
DIA – 110
NOK – 10
GOOG – 50
MOT – 2
AAPL – 690
TSLA – 50
AMZN – 4
RIMM – 20
BRK.A – 1
BRK – 1
XOM – 2I’m sure I probably missed some, but out of approximately 940 topics, aapl dominates by almost 74 percent. I’m not going to look at every post, but if you did, I would expect that this number would skew even more towards aapl. So, I think it is fair to say that even though this website isn’t an Apple specific site, most here are interested in aapl and/or Apple products.
So no, me posting on a goog sub-forum on a website that is dominated by Apple isn’t the same as someone trolling on Macworld. I know you probably cannot see the difference, luckily others can.
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rastard
Are you now asserting that you only trash Google and Android on websites or articles that are Apple focused?
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GotWake
LOL As normal, you never quite get it.
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Billybob101
When you try to sell crap, you are incompetent.
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chach17
I think people that are unaccustomed to smart phones might be easily persuaded to purchase an Android based upon what you have said – it’s cheaper and it does all the same stuff.
I think the question becomes, how many Android users end up switching to the iPhone because after they become accustomed to it they realize that Android is crap and iPhone is king?
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Senator Gronk
One might say that the best iPhone customer is someone that has already owned an Android phone.
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Birra
Quote from above, “I never argue with folks like this since it tends to further lock their minds.”
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Birra
One of the Android selling points was 4G. Later she found out that their is no 4G is northern Minnesota. Yes, the sales person lives in northern Minnesota.
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JPWatkins
The fact is, there are some people who love or hate any group, brand, idea, etc. with great zeal. The stronger the the target of their emotions is, the greater the emotion. The real desusionals project their own view globally and assume everyone believes at they do.
Rastard could be describing himself or any other fan. Simply change the appropriate words and phrases . . .
“My leading theory is that “people hate Apple because hardcore Apple fanboys are frequently pretentious, arrogant and supercilious, douchebags, and don’t want to be associated with them. Do you have an alternate theory that you would attribute the Apple hatred to?”
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Richard
Well, I thought I was replying to a reply, but … anyway, no one buys a phone because they think bad thoughts about Apple. They buy another phone because they don’t know about Apple.
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Anyone making the switch.
http://banking.about.com/od/creditunions/a/bank-vs-creditunion.htm
Birra 10:55 pm on November 17, 2011 80 days ago Reply
But here’s what I’m getting for my son who’s practically a Mammoth Lakes resident.
http://www.cultofmac.com/130489/ishred-with-this-ipad-turned-snowboard-designed-in-tribute-to-steve-jobs-video/