That be true for the screen MS is using but any brand new tech can be more easily obtained by companies buying less quantity if production has yet to scaled up to meet demand. We've already seen this in action with HP, Dell, Sony and others having selling PCs with new Intel CPUs well before Apple can get the hundreds of thousands they need to have ready in stores with distributors and online all at the same time. This is Apple fault for having such a limited product line and using so few varying components when compared to other PC makers, who sell bulk of older tech with many different setups and their comparitive machines are often build to order and don't have the unit sales that Apple has for a single model. A bit off topic, but I think Apple's growth will force them to expand their Mac platform to more models.
That's not always true, and your own examples aren't even true. Apple has, at least twice, gotten the newest, most advanced chips from Intel months before any other manufacturer got them. It started with the Yonah chips.
Small OLED screens aren't a new, production limited Technology. They haven't been for years. It's just that they were too expensive. The price has been dropping, so more companies have been using them.
Bigger ones are still too expensive for most purposes right now, though Apple's massive buying per would bring those prices down.
Anyway, MS fanboys/apologists are good at one thing: bullying. As long as they can leverage platform dominance into a sneering contempt for Apple users as some kind of fatuous tribe of posers, ganging up at the average tech site like of crowd of drunk frat boys, they have a high old time.
When obliged to defend a minority platform, I swear to God, MS fanboys are the whiniest, shrillest bitches on the internet.
None of that's true though. Don't let people tell you that. There are no production problems for the small OLEDs used for phones and such. They were being used in car audio units for years before, and made in the millions.
The problems were with quality and reliability.
Most of those problems have been solved.
If Apple wanted 40 million screens from a big manufacturer, they could get them. The problems are with big screens.
Those problems are twofold. One is that as with other displays, costs go up disproportionally with size. Two is that rejections go up disproportionally with size.
Getting 3.5" screens is easy. Getting 10" screens is hard.
Apple is not the cause of NAND shortages. I've made this clear in another thread. It's just a result of memory production cutbacks from manufacturers. Apple is ordering bit more than before, where last year there were no shortages, but manufacturers are producing much less to get memory prices up, which is happening, and causing shortages this year.
I would like to hear more information about OLED availability in this form factor. One thing in wading through 300+ posts of fanboy vitriol is that nobody around here seems to know anything about building a consumer electronic device this sophisticated, and what it means to the supply chain you depend on. One of the reasons why Apple gets the flash RAM it wants is because twice now they have handed large checks to manufacturers to expand existing production facilities or build entire new ones.
When I heard that Sony's Walkman was going OLED, my first reaction was "Oh great, it looks like OLED might be ready for primetime". But then I thought again on the supply chain issues that someone like Apple would face. If Sony made 1 million Walkmans this year, they would be brimming with happiness. But Apple sells that many iPhones/iPod Touches in a 2-3 weeks. If the unit costs of OLED vs. LED aren't close or if the supply chain can't handle an order like that, what's the purpose of doing it? Remember the bad old days of Apple's supply chain problems? I do. Then Tim Cook came and that sillyness ended. And if Apple thought it could solve it by prepaying someone $500 million, I'm sure they would.
Prince does one one thing right about the whole HD Radio thing. The international standard issue is a big problem. Apple likes to make one hardware sku if they can...it lowers their cost dramatically. In order for Apple to implement terrestrial digital radio in all markets, they would have to support all three standards and do it in a manner cheap enough to keep unit costs low. There's another problem...I doubt that anyone has actually chipped their "standards" into one available chip. There's also power considerations and the aformentioned codec issues. Digital terrestrial radio has lots of upsides, like metadata tagging so that songs played can be purchased through iTunes. But I suspect the other issues haven't been solved yet.
But Apple becoming lazy and relying more on an established platform instead of continually innovating is not going to be healthy for Apple in the long run.
We'll see though come early 2010 when Steve Jobs debuts the next type of portable computing device.
The question should be; How much can they innovate from year to year?
The lack of a camera in the Touch is apparently really due to problems encountered from faulty sensors, from what I've read. Jobs's attempt to write it off as a price thing is to be expected. It's what all companies have to do. Maybe we'll see camera laden touches later this year, or surely, next year.
The Nano is definitely a highly innovated device, esp. this year.
But Apple's idea is to make a general purpose device, and let the software define what it is and does. That's very smart.
Despite some smarmy remarks from people occasionally stating that there are just 20 good apps and such, there are really an amazing amount of great apps. Apps that no other phone or player will ever get because of the platforms' popularity.
I have some apps that work on my 3G about as well as hundreds of dollars of specialized equipment. Amazing! And I know of others in the same situation.
These devices are becoming ubiquitous. We're seeing programs I never thought to see on a portable phone or player.
Will the Zune HD ever reach this status? No. No matter how good the mechanics and electronics of the HD may be, it will never happen. MS has seen to that.
A good music and video player? Sure. But what else? Not much. We can just look to their software plans to see that.
No offense, but the primary function for both of these devices is to listen to music. Nowhere in the 400+ comments did I read a single mention of this important feature. I am not an Apple fanboy. I am not an MS fanboy. I have been reviewing DAPs on-line for several years now, and I can honestly say that IMHO the Apple sound quality has become sub par. The line out is wonderful, but when using the headphone out, the sound is not nearly as full as other players out there. The Zune is not the best either, but it is better then the last several generations of all types of iPods. I have listened to them with many different types of headphones as well from Klipsch, Denon, etc. As a side note, I have found that the Sony players offer ME the best listening experience of all of the DAPs I have reviewed. I am not saying the Zune is the best overall either. Every DAP out there has there strong suit. The iPod has many, the Zune has others, Sony has it's, etc. For this battle though, I would give the SQ to the Zune if it sounds the same as the last gen.
P.S. I agree that the subscription service is wonderful for those who like to dabble in all different genres. I think it would be a great experience for anyone who has not tried one to give it a trial period of at least 2 months. I guarantee you will find artists and songs that you love which you never would have found otherwise.
I don't know what you review for, but to say that the output is lower quality is just wrong. Apple's earbuds are crap. That's true, and it's puzzling. but line output, and headphone output is just as good as anything out there, and I'm someone with a mid five figure audio system who has owned a company that designed pro audio equipment.
I would like to hear more information about OLED availability in this form factor. One thing in wading through 300+ posts of fanboy vitriol is that nobody around here seems to know anything about building a consumer electronic device this sophisticated, and what it means to the supply chain you depend on. One of the reasons why Apple gets the flash RAM it wants is because twice now they have handed large checks to manufacturers to expand existing production facilities or build entire new ones.
When I heard that Sony's Walkman was going OLED, my first reaction was "Oh great, it looks like OLED might be ready for primetime". But then I thought again on the supply chain issues that someone like Apple would face. If Sony made 1 million Walkmans this year, they would be brimming with happiness. But Apple sells that many iPhones/iPod Touches in a 2-3 weeks. If the unit costs of OLED vs. LED aren't close or if the supply chain can't handle an order like that, what's the purpose of doing it? Remember the bad old days of Apple's supply chain problems? I do. Then Tim Cook came and that sillyness ended. And if Apple thought it could solve it by prepaying someone $500 million, I'm sure they would.
Prince does one one thing right about the whole HD Radio thing. The international standard issue is a big problem. Apple likes to make one hardware sku if they can...it lowers their cost dramatically. In order for Apple to implement terrestrial digital radio in all markets, they would have to support all three standards and do it in a manner cheap enough to keep unit costs low. There's another problem...I doubt that anyone has actually chipped their "standards" into one available chip. There's also power considerations and the aformentioned codec issues. Digital terrestrial radio has lots of upsides, like metadata tagging so that songs played can be purchased through iTunes. But I suspect the other issues haven't been solved yet.
If you look at my bio, you will see that I was a partner in a firm that designed and manufactured pro audio equipment. I know about manufacturing, I keep up with this. I know people in the industries.
The only thing that needs to be done to produce 40 million of one screen a year right now is for a company to actually put an order in for them. Small OLEDS are no more difficult to manufacture than LCD's.
Some of the problems in OLED production have to do with the bendable OLEDS that we keep hearing about, but never seen in a product. Those devices have moisture problems from the fact that the bendable substrates have permeability that is too high for long term use, and the OLEDs short out after a while.
There are lots of articles on this, and I'm surprised that people won't take the time to Google it, and read some before commenting.
Bingo! Free??? Why make something if you can't sell it. When you can go over to the App store and SELL it. Sounds like someone over at MS has taken a play from the socialist playbook.
That's not always true, and your own examples aren't even true. Apple has, at least twice, gotten the newest, most advanced chips from Intel months before any other manufacturer got them. It started with the Yonah chips.
What chips were these? I recall the Mac Pro Xeons and MBA?s SFF ULV C2D. Those are from the common CPUs that I think are being mentioned. The ones that were in the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs all at the same time. Apple isn?t the niche boutique company it once was, a diversified Mac line seems like a given with their growth.
What chips were these? I recall the Mac Pro Xeons and MBA?s SFF ULV C2D. Those are from the common CPUs that I think are being mentioned. The ones that were in the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs all at the same time. Apple isn?t the niche boutique company it once was, a diversified Mac line seems like a given with their growth.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
Weren?t those the very first Intel chips Apple used? There unit sales have been increasing every year-over-year quarter since, even while in the recession. I don?t think it changes the fact that if a chip still isn?t being produced at full throttle yet, that Apple simply won?t be able to get the excessive numbers it needs in one lump sum whereas other vendors only need a very small number in comparison to start advertising for their top end.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
2006 Q2 Apple sold Apple shipped 1.11M Macs. In 2009 Q2 Apple sold 2.22M Macs. That is double, and that doesn?t account for the fact that many of those Macs in the 2006 quarter were still PPC-based Macs. You just can?t keep growing and expect that supply will not outreach demand, especially when you are trying to grab the latest and greatest before production has ramped up.
An option proved to be a failure. The current music subscription model will not succeed.
+1.
I like to own my music and rent movies, which is why I remain disappointed in the inability of and MPAA to come up with better terms for rentals on movies. Mostly selection is my biggest gripe, hopefully they can get the movies to us faster in the near future. I feel 30 days is too long to wait to rent a movie that's out on DVD. Seems like it is just TV users that get screwed with that time delay.
I would, however, like to see a distinct selection of subscription based new artists, almost in a different "section" or storefront. For indies, home studio recordings, etc. That would be cool for like $5 a month or so. That way you could still get to check out new tracks, and they wouldn't interfere with the established artists with contracts.
Weren?t those the very first Intel chips Apple used? There unit sales have been increasing every year-over-year quarter since, even while in the recession. I don?t think it changes the fact that if a chip still isn?t being produced at full throttle yet, that Apple simply won?t be able to get the excessive numbers it needs in one lump sum whereas other vendors only need a very small number in comparison to start advertising for their top end.
Yes, they were. scale had nothing to do with it. Once production starts, thousands of chips are produced every day.
And no one builds all of their products in one day, or week. Apple needed a stream of chips, and Intel could supply them.
None of that's true though. Don't let people tell you that. There are no production problems for the small OLEDs used for phones and such. They were being used in car audio units for years before, and made in the millions.
The problems were with quality and reliability.
Most of those problems have been solved.
If Apple wanted 40 million screens from a big manufacturer, they could get them. The problems are with big screens.
Those problems are twofold. One is that as with other displays, costs go up disproportionally with size. Two is that rejections go up disproportionally with size.
Getting 3.5" screens is easy. Getting 10" screens is hard.
Apple is not the cause of NAND shortages. I've made this clear in another thread. It's just a result of memory production cutbacks from manufacturers. Apple is ordering bit more than before, where last year there were no shortages, but manufacturers are producing much less to get memory prices up, which is happening, and causing shortages this year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
If you look at my bio, you will see that I was a partner in a firm that designed and manufactured pro audio equipment. I know about manufacturing, I keep up with this. I know people in the industries.
The only thing that needs to be done to produce 40 million of one screen a year right now is for a company to actually put an order in for them. Small OLEDS are no more difficult to manufacture than LCD's.
Some of the problems in OLED production have to do with the bendable OLEDS that we keep hearing about, but never seen in a product. Those devices have moisture problems from the fact that the bendable substrates have permeability that is too high for long term use, and the OLEDs short out after a while.
There are lots of articles on this, and I'm surprised that people won't take the time to Google it, and read some before commenting.
I'm not questioning your credentials. If anything, I was asking you to elucidate on some of the points you made earlier since few people posting here seemed to have any idea about what's practical in supply chain or manufacturing. What metrics might be ok for one company may be insufficient for another. For example, the article AI just posted "Apple, Microsoft trade places selling iPod touch and Zune HD" talks about the fact that the new Zune OLED screen is expensive. Microsoft & Sony might be willing to make a sacrifice in per-unit profit margin in order to gain marketshare against Apple. Apple might have looked on the decision as "do we sacrifice significant profit margin here in order to have the latest screen technology"? Apple's profit margins are the envy of the industry for a hardware company and accounts a lot for that P/E ratio approaching 30. It may have been one in many factors that made the difference in what screen technology they went with.
As far as your audio experience, I'd be curious to find out which company and what's in your rack right now.
2006 Q2 Apple sold Apple shipped 1.11M Macs. In 2009 Q2 Apple sold 2.22M Macs. That is double, and that doesn?t account for the fact that many of those Macs in the 2006 quarter were still PPC-based Macs. You just can?t keep growing and expect that supply will not outreach demand, especially when you are trying to grab the latest and greatest before production has ramped up.
Intel isn't AMD, they have vast capacity. That's one reason why Apple went with them.
Intel supplies hundreds of millions of computer cpu's a year. That's just for laptops and towers. They produce tens of millions more for netbooks and other smaller devices, and a hundred million or more for embedded use.
They have a large number of chip manufacturing plants around the world.
Comments
You fanbois are all clueless if you don't see the unlimited potential for Zune software sales. Here's just a few examples off the top of my head:
That be true for the screen MS is using but any brand new tech can be more easily obtained by companies buying less quantity if production has yet to scaled up to meet demand. We've already seen this in action with HP, Dell, Sony and others having selling PCs with new Intel CPUs well before Apple can get the hundreds of thousands they need to have ready in stores with distributors and online all at the same time. This is Apple fault for having such a limited product line and using so few varying components when compared to other PC makers, who sell bulk of older tech with many different setups and their comparitive machines are often build to order and don't have the unit sales that Apple has for a single model. A bit off topic, but I think Apple's growth will force them to expand their Mac platform to more models.
That's not always true, and your own examples aren't even true. Apple has, at least twice, gotten the newest, most advanced chips from Intel months before any other manufacturer got them. It started with the Yonah chips.
Small OLED screens aren't a new, production limited Technology. They haven't been for years. It's just that they were too expensive. The price has been dropping, so more companies have been using them.
Bigger ones are still too expensive for most purposes right now, though Apple's massive buying per would bring those prices down.
Anyway, MS fanboys/apologists are good at one thing: bullying. As long as they can leverage platform dominance into a sneering contempt for Apple users as some kind of fatuous tribe of posers, ganging up at the average tech site like of crowd of drunk frat boys, they have a high old time.
When obliged to defend a minority platform, I swear to God, MS fanboys are the whiniest, shrillest bitches on the internet.
.....
None of that's true though. Don't let people tell you that. There are no production problems for the small OLEDs used for phones and such. They were being used in car audio units for years before, and made in the millions.
The problems were with quality and reliability.
Most of those problems have been solved.
If Apple wanted 40 million screens from a big manufacturer, they could get them. The problems are with big screens.
Those problems are twofold. One is that as with other displays, costs go up disproportionally with size. Two is that rejections go up disproportionally with size.
Getting 3.5" screens is easy. Getting 10" screens is hard.
Apple is not the cause of NAND shortages. I've made this clear in another thread. It's just a result of memory production cutbacks from manufacturers. Apple is ordering bit more than before, where last year there were no shortages, but manufacturers are producing much less to get memory prices up, which is happening, and causing shortages this year.
I would like to hear more information about OLED availability in this form factor. One thing in wading through 300+ posts of fanboy vitriol is that nobody around here seems to know anything about building a consumer electronic device this sophisticated, and what it means to the supply chain you depend on. One of the reasons why Apple gets the flash RAM it wants is because twice now they have handed large checks to manufacturers to expand existing production facilities or build entire new ones.
When I heard that Sony's Walkman was going OLED, my first reaction was "Oh great, it looks like OLED might be ready for primetime". But then I thought again on the supply chain issues that someone like Apple would face. If Sony made 1 million Walkmans this year, they would be brimming with happiness. But Apple sells that many iPhones/iPod Touches in a 2-3 weeks. If the unit costs of OLED vs. LED aren't close or if the supply chain can't handle an order like that, what's the purpose of doing it? Remember the bad old days of Apple's supply chain problems? I do. Then Tim Cook came and that sillyness ended. And if Apple thought it could solve it by prepaying someone $500 million, I'm sure they would.
Prince does one one thing right about the whole HD Radio thing. The international standard issue is a big problem. Apple likes to make one hardware sku if they can...it lowers their cost dramatically. In order for Apple to implement terrestrial digital radio in all markets, they would have to support all three standards and do it in a manner cheap enough to keep unit costs low. There's another problem...I doubt that anyone has actually chipped their "standards" into one available chip. There's also power considerations and the aformentioned codec issues. Digital terrestrial radio has lots of upsides, like metadata tagging so that songs played can be purchased through iTunes. But I suspect the other issues haven't been solved yet.
Yes, understood.
But Apple becoming lazy and relying more on an established platform instead of continually innovating is not going to be healthy for Apple in the long run.
We'll see though come early 2010 when Steve Jobs debuts the next type of portable computing device.
The question should be; How much can they innovate from year to year?
The lack of a camera in the Touch is apparently really due to problems encountered from faulty sensors, from what I've read. Jobs's attempt to write it off as a price thing is to be expected. It's what all companies have to do. Maybe we'll see camera laden touches later this year, or surely, next year.
The Nano is definitely a highly innovated device, esp. this year.
But Apple's idea is to make a general purpose device, and let the software define what it is and does. That's very smart.
Despite some smarmy remarks from people occasionally stating that there are just 20 good apps and such, there are really an amazing amount of great apps. Apps that no other phone or player will ever get because of the platforms' popularity.
I have some apps that work on my 3G about as well as hundreds of dollars of specialized equipment. Amazing! And I know of others in the same situation.
These devices are becoming ubiquitous. We're seeing programs I never thought to see on a portable phone or player.
Will the Zune HD ever reach this status? No. No matter how good the mechanics and electronics of the HD may be, it will never happen. MS has seen to that.
A good music and video player? Sure. But what else? Not much. We can just look to their software plans to see that.
No offense, but the primary function for both of these devices is to listen to music. Nowhere in the 400+ comments did I read a single mention of this important feature. I am not an Apple fanboy. I am not an MS fanboy. I have been reviewing DAPs on-line for several years now, and I can honestly say that IMHO the Apple sound quality has become sub par. The line out is wonderful, but when using the headphone out, the sound is not nearly as full as other players out there. The Zune is not the best either, but it is better then the last several generations of all types of iPods. I have listened to them with many different types of headphones as well from Klipsch, Denon, etc. As a side note, I have found that the Sony players offer ME the best listening experience of all of the DAPs I have reviewed. I am not saying the Zune is the best overall either. Every DAP out there has there strong suit. The iPod has many, the Zune has others, Sony has it's, etc. For this battle though, I would give the SQ to the Zune if it sounds the same as the last gen.
P.S. I agree that the subscription service is wonderful for those who like to dabble in all different genres. I think it would be a great experience for anyone who has not tried one to give it a trial period of at least 2 months. I guarantee you will find artists and songs that you love which you never would have found otherwise.
I don't know what you review for, but to say that the output is lower quality is just wrong. Apple's earbuds are crap. That's true, and it's puzzling. but line output, and headphone output is just as good as anything out there, and I'm someone with a mid five figure audio system who has owned a company that designed pro audio equipment.
Will the Zune HD ever reach this status? No. No matter how good the mechanics and electronics of the HD may be, it will never happen.
Wow, you have power to foresee the future. Can you tell me the winning Super Lotto number for this week?
I would like to hear more information about OLED availability in this form factor. One thing in wading through 300+ posts of fanboy vitriol is that nobody around here seems to know anything about building a consumer electronic device this sophisticated, and what it means to the supply chain you depend on. One of the reasons why Apple gets the flash RAM it wants is because twice now they have handed large checks to manufacturers to expand existing production facilities or build entire new ones.
When I heard that Sony's Walkman was going OLED, my first reaction was "Oh great, it looks like OLED might be ready for primetime". But then I thought again on the supply chain issues that someone like Apple would face. If Sony made 1 million Walkmans this year, they would be brimming with happiness. But Apple sells that many iPhones/iPod Touches in a 2-3 weeks. If the unit costs of OLED vs. LED aren't close or if the supply chain can't handle an order like that, what's the purpose of doing it? Remember the bad old days of Apple's supply chain problems? I do. Then Tim Cook came and that sillyness ended. And if Apple thought it could solve it by prepaying someone $500 million, I'm sure they would.
Prince does one one thing right about the whole HD Radio thing. The international standard issue is a big problem. Apple likes to make one hardware sku if they can...it lowers their cost dramatically. In order for Apple to implement terrestrial digital radio in all markets, they would have to support all three standards and do it in a manner cheap enough to keep unit costs low. There's another problem...I doubt that anyone has actually chipped their "standards" into one available chip. There's also power considerations and the aformentioned codec issues. Digital terrestrial radio has lots of upsides, like metadata tagging so that songs played can be purchased through iTunes. But I suspect the other issues haven't been solved yet.
If you look at my bio, you will see that I was a partner in a firm that designed and manufactured pro audio equipment. I know about manufacturing, I keep up with this. I know people in the industries.
The only thing that needs to be done to produce 40 million of one screen a year right now is for a company to actually put an order in for them. Small OLEDS are no more difficult to manufacture than LCD's.
Some of the problems in OLED production have to do with the bendable OLEDS that we keep hearing about, but never seen in a product. Those devices have moisture problems from the fact that the bendable substrates have permeability that is too high for long term use, and the OLEDs short out after a while.
There are lots of articles on this, and I'm surprised that people won't take the time to Google it, and read some before commenting.
http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Wow, you have power to foresee the future. Can you tell me the winning Super Lotto number for this week?
Well, smart one, its pretty simple. MS has said that all apps will be free. Hows that for an incentive?
Do you really expect MS to sell these in the numbers required for major app development to occur, even if developers would get paid for their work?
I don't think anyone does, even MS. They's already made official comments that there wouldn't be a lot of apps available.
Go argue with their predictions.
That's not always true, and your own examples aren't even true. Apple has, at least twice, gotten the newest, most advanced chips from Intel months before any other manufacturer got them. It started with the Yonah chips.
What chips were these? I recall the Mac Pro Xeons and MBA?s SFF ULV C2D. Those are from the common CPUs that I think are being mentioned. The ones that were in the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs all at the same time. Apple isn?t the niche boutique company it once was, a diversified Mac line seems like a given with their growth.
What chips were these? I recall the Mac Pro Xeons and MBA?s SFF ULV C2D. Those are from the common CPUs that I think are being mentioned. The ones that were in the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs all at the same time. Apple isn?t the niche boutique company it once was, a diversified Mac line seems like a given with their growth.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
Weren?t those the very first Intel chips Apple used? There unit sales have been increasing every year-over-year quarter since, even while in the recession. I don?t think it changes the fact that if a chip still isn?t being produced at full throttle yet, that Apple simply won?t be able to get the excessive numbers it needs in one lump sum whereas other vendors only need a very small number in comparison to start advertising for their top end.
I already mentioned the Yonahs. That was almost three months before anyone else got them.
Sometimes Apple chooses to skip a chip, or waits for other reasons to delay a newer device because they are waiting for something in addition to the new cpu, so it may seem to some that they may get some chips late.
2006 Q2 Apple sold Apple shipped 1.11M Macs. In 2009 Q2 Apple sold 2.22M Macs. That is double, and that doesn?t account for the fact that many of those Macs in the 2006 quarter were still PPC-based Macs. You just can?t keep growing and expect that supply will not outreach demand, especially when you are trying to grab the latest and greatest before production has ramped up.
An option proved to be a failure. The current music subscription model will not succeed.
+1.
I like to own my music and rent movies, which is why I remain disappointed in the inability of and MPAA to come up with better terms for rentals on movies. Mostly selection is my biggest gripe, hopefully they can get the movies to us faster in the near future. I feel 30 days is too long to wait to rent a movie that's out on DVD. Seems like it is just TV users that get screwed with that time delay.
I would, however, like to see a distinct selection of subscription based new artists, almost in a different "section" or storefront. For indies, home studio recordings, etc. That would be cool for like $5 a month or so. That way you could still get to check out new tracks, and they wouldn't interfere with the established artists with contracts.
Weren?t those the very first Intel chips Apple used? There unit sales have been increasing every year-over-year quarter since, even while in the recession. I don?t think it changes the fact that if a chip still isn?t being produced at full throttle yet, that Apple simply won?t be able to get the excessive numbers it needs in one lump sum whereas other vendors only need a very small number in comparison to start advertising for their top end.
Yes, they were. scale had nothing to do with it. Once production starts, thousands of chips are produced every day.
And no one builds all of their products in one day, or week. Apple needed a stream of chips, and Intel could supply them.
None of that's true though. Don't let people tell you that. There are no production problems for the small OLEDs used for phones and such. They were being used in car audio units for years before, and made in the millions.
The problems were with quality and reliability.
Most of those problems have been solved.
If Apple wanted 40 million screens from a big manufacturer, they could get them. The problems are with big screens.
Those problems are twofold. One is that as with other displays, costs go up disproportionally with size. Two is that rejections go up disproportionally with size.
Getting 3.5" screens is easy. Getting 10" screens is hard.
Apple is not the cause of NAND shortages. I've made this clear in another thread. It's just a result of memory production cutbacks from manufacturers. Apple is ordering bit more than before, where last year there were no shortages, but manufacturers are producing much less to get memory prices up, which is happening, and causing shortages this year.
If you look at my bio, you will see that I was a partner in a firm that designed and manufactured pro audio equipment. I know about manufacturing, I keep up with this. I know people in the industries.
The only thing that needs to be done to produce 40 million of one screen a year right now is for a company to actually put an order in for them. Small OLEDS are no more difficult to manufacture than LCD's.
Some of the problems in OLED production have to do with the bendable OLEDS that we keep hearing about, but never seen in a product. Those devices have moisture problems from the fact that the bendable substrates have permeability that is too high for long term use, and the OLEDs short out after a while.
There are lots of articles on this, and I'm surprised that people won't take the time to Google it, and read some before commenting.
http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I'm not questioning your credentials. If anything, I was asking you to elucidate on some of the points you made earlier since few people posting here seemed to have any idea about what's practical in supply chain or manufacturing. What metrics might be ok for one company may be insufficient for another. For example, the article AI just posted "Apple, Microsoft trade places selling iPod touch and Zune HD" talks about the fact that the new Zune OLED screen is expensive. Microsoft & Sony might be willing to make a sacrifice in per-unit profit margin in order to gain marketshare against Apple. Apple might have looked on the decision as "do we sacrifice significant profit margin here in order to have the latest screen technology"? Apple's profit margins are the envy of the industry for a hardware company and accounts a lot for that P/E ratio approaching 30. It may have been one in many factors that made the difference in what screen technology they went with.
As far as your audio experience, I'd be curious to find out which company and what's in your rack right now.
2006 Q2 Apple sold Apple shipped 1.11M Macs. In 2009 Q2 Apple sold 2.22M Macs. That is double, and that doesn?t account for the fact that many of those Macs in the 2006 quarter were still PPC-based Macs. You just can?t keep growing and expect that supply will not outreach demand, especially when you are trying to grab the latest and greatest before production has ramped up.
Intel isn't AMD, they have vast capacity. That's one reason why Apple went with them.
Intel supplies hundreds of millions of computer cpu's a year. That's just for laptops and towers. They produce tens of millions more for netbooks and other smaller devices, and a hundred million or more for embedded use.
They have a large number of chip manufacturing plants around the world.
Supplying Apple's needs is not a problem.
Yes, they were. scale had nothing to do with it. Once production starts, thousands of chips are produced every day.
And no one builds all of their products in one day, or week. Apple needed a stream of chips, and Intel could supply them.
That is exactly right, but they all have upper limits. This is not a new phenomenon. Nothing can be scaled indefinitely.