This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually).
Yeah, but for Huawei it stands for Robbery and Deceptiveness. Paying off people to steal IP isn't cheap.
Just guessing. You are not in the InfoComm industry, esp. networking. Well, during early days of my career, I believe Hua Wei has 'learnt' or 'forked' from other networking giants like 3Com and Cisco. I think I recall networking colleagues were saying (10+ years ago) that the CLI is almost like an exact imitation of Cisco's IOS, even product lines. 3Com simply 'disappeared' after the joint-venture with Hua Wei (pardon me if I remember wrongly). Hua Wei then started penetrating telcos cause their backhaul equipment is 1/3 or 1/4 price of other giants like Alcatel, Ericsson, etc. In today context of FTTx, many telcos are simply using Hua Wei ONTs/ONRs due to price and willingness to write custom firmware for each telco.
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually).
Yeah, but for Huawei it stands for Robbery and Deceptiveness. Paying off people to steal IP isn't cheap.
Just guessing. You are not in the InfoComm industry, esp. networking. Well, during early days of my career, I believe Hua Wei has 'learnt' or 'forked' from other networking giants like 3Com and Cisco. I think I recall networking colleagues were saying (10+ years ago) that the CLI is almost like an exact imitation of Cisco's IOS, even product lines. 3Com simply 'disappeared' after the joint-venture with Hua Wei (pardon me if I remember wrongly). Hua Wei then started penetrating telcos cause their backhaul equipment is 1/3 or 1/4 price of other giants like Alcatel, Ericsson, etc. In today context of FTTx, many telcos are simply using Hua Wei ONTs/ONRs due to price and willingness to write custom firmware for each telco.
Stealing EIGRP was not the result of coincidental learning or the forking of an open-source or licensed protocol.
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually). Meanwhile Apple spends around 20 times that buying back its own stock rather than investing in the company ($75-$100B annually).
Yeh, they're doing good. But they could do a LOT better!
American companies didn't become powerhouses by making stockholders rich but by investing and growing themselves. Yes, Apple is doing a good job growing themselves. But they could be doing much, much better if their resources were utilized to grow and future-proof their company.
It isn't a 1:1 compare. Huawei's R&D numbers also includes manufacturing automation, 5G infrastructure, and the like.
I'm sure! As a former accountant I learned that much depends on what you count and how you count it.
How about just getting Siri to do the most basic of things within the languages currently available. With so much criticism regarding Siri's current performance, maybe focusing on the basics should be the focus...
We can talk about Music later
I'm guessing you gave up on both after a few tries?
I use Siri everyday and it works great - rarely does it not understand what I've said.
You must be the exception to the rule. Siri is as dumb as a bag of rocks. And Apple Music is low quality lossy crap.
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually). Meanwhile Apple spends around 20 times that buying back its own stock rather than investing in the company ($75-$100B annually).
Yeh, they're doing good. But they could do a LOT better!
American companies didn't become powerhouses by making stockholders rich but by investing and growing themselves. Yes, Apple is doing a good job growing themselves. But they could be doing much, much better if their resources were utilized to grow and future-proof their company.
Pardon my limited knowledge on stock and how it should be managed. What I think is buying back own stock is also important. Look at Daimler (parent company of Mercedes Benz) which is now having a largest shareholder from China. I think swedish car maker Volvo is another example. In short, managing those stock in the open market is also important, otherwise one day Apple may no longer be an 'American' firm overnight.
Share buy backs from American companies over the past 10 years have little to do with managing their stock and are mostly simply to boost stock prices, And Apple is FAR from being the only one. But, while Asian companies reinvest profits in their companies, American companies hand it out as stockholder welfare.
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually). Meanwhile Apple spends around 20 times that buying back its own stock rather than investing in the company ($75-$100B annually).
Yeh, they're doing good. But they could do a LOT better!
American companies didn't become powerhouses by making stockholders rich but by investing and growing themselves. Yes, Apple is doing a good job growing themselves. But they could be doing much, much better if their resources were utilized to grow and future-proof their company.
Pardon my limited knowledge on stock and how it should be managed. What I think is buying back own stock is also important. Look at Daimler (parent company of Mercedes Benz) which is now having a largest shareholder from China. I think swedish car maker Volvo is another example. In short, managing those stock in the open market is also important, otherwise one day Apple may no longer be an 'American' firm overnight.
Share buy backs from American companies over the past 10 years have little to do with managing their stock and are mostly simply to boost stock prices, And Apple is FAR from being the only one. But, while Asian companies reinvest profits in their companies, American companies hand it out as stockholder welfare.
Given the available evidence that Huawei is a SOE(State Owned Enterprise), I'm not surprised that Huawei do in fact have to answer to their only stockholder, the CCP. That's quite a difference from the operation of any American corporation listed on a public stock exchange, given the lack of financial transparency of Huawei.
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe. OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Desktop only ! If you can’t imagine the iPad used by small businesses you’re right in your vision limited to desktop. Designing an expo flyer or a restaurant menu no longer requires Office 365 subscription and a PC.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually). Meanwhile Apple spends around 20 times that buying back its own stock rather than investing in the company ($75-$100B annually).
Yeh, they're doing good. But they could do a LOT better!
American companies didn't become powerhouses by making stockholders rich but by investing and growing themselves. Yes, Apple is doing a good job growing themselves. But they could be doing much, much better if their resources were utilized to grow and future-proof their company.
Pardon my limited knowledge on stock and how it should be managed. What I think is buying back own stock is also important. Look at Daimler (parent company of Mercedes Benz) which is now having a largest shareholder from China. I think swedish car maker Volvo is another example. In short, managing those stock in the open market is also important, otherwise one day Apple may no longer be an 'American' firm overnight.
Share buy backs from American companies over the past 10 years have little to do with managing their stock and are mostly simply to boost stock prices, And Apple is FAR from being the only one. But, while Asian companies reinvest profits in their companies, American companies hand it out as stockholder welfare.
Given the available evidence that Huawei is a SOE(State Owned Enterprise), I'm not surprised that Huawei do in fact have to answer to their only stockholder, the CCP. That's quite a difference from the operation of any American corporation listed on a public stock exchange, given the lack of financial transparency of Huawei.
LOL... That evidence only exists in Trumplandia... The truth is: Huawei is entirely owned by its employees (with it founder owning 1%), and that no outside
organizations, including any affiliated with the Chinese government, own
shares. So, instead of throwing profits away to stock holders, it reinvests in itself -- which they attribute as a main reason why they have become the world leader in telecommunications, etc.
And in parallel, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi announced that there is a "somewhat strong correlation between R&D as a percent of revenue and gross margin," and concluded that "Apple could double its R&D and be relatively inline with peers," again confusing the spending of money with the creation of valuable products.
Maybe there was context in the original report that would help, but as quoted the two statements from Sacconaghi seem like basic facts that have little bearing on the issue of product value—the first just means that low R&D costs tend to lead to better margins, the second sounds like he’s saying that Apple could double their R&D expenditures without seeming outrageous compared to their so-called “peers.”
This is good. $4.3 Billion is a lot of money. But, Huawei spends 4-5 times that on R&D each year ($15-$20B annually).
You're mixing pineapples and oranges. Apple is spending ~$4.3B per quarter. That's ~$17.3B per year - right up there with Huawei PLUS share buybacks. Get the facts right.
Yeh, that was a good catch. But, the flip side is: Apple JUST got to that point -- and it's only one quarter's worth. Huawei has been there for years -- which is probably one of the main reasons why they are a world leader in telecommunications and other technologies.
... In the 1990s, Apple's Advanced Technology Group burned through money developing concepts and working on prototypes that largely went nowhere. Apple invented email protocols and search systems and mobile ideas, and created the forerunner of RSS and consumer hypermedia and VR surround video and advanced typography, only to lose out to faster innovators or others who acquired its work and ultimately brought products to market.
The failure of the ATG's R&D to generate sustaining revenues capable of supporting future research made it a money pit on the order of Xerox PARC or Bell Labs before it, where advanced technologies were developed at extraordinary cost but effectively monetized elsewhere. Apple's previous era of ineffective spending is now being replicated at Google, where today's tech media cheer on impractical concepts like the modular Project Ara phone or the wildly experimental Google Glass, and scores of other expensive moon shot projects that either fail to take off or burn up tons of money never actually making it to the moon.
And while Apple's current R&D budget is its highest ever-- currently about five times the pace of its spending when Steve Jobs was alive-- it's relatively low compared to other big-spending peers. That includes Amazon, Alphabet, Samsung, and Intel, all of which spent significantly more money on R&D than Apple last year while delivering less valuable technology incapable of keeping up with Apple's valuable innovations.
Apple's ability to turn R&D into immediately practical applications-- from paid hardware and Services to free apps, OS upgrades, and development tools that enhance its ecosystem and attract and retain buyers-- is earning the company so much money that its efficient R&D budget remains an extremely small percentage of its revenues.
...
I do not think it fair or accurate to compare Apple's R&D today to that under Steve -- partly because under most of his tenure Apple was a struggling but rising star. Today it is a mature, stable corporation.
And, while " its efficient R&D budget" has generated some truly great breakthroughs from meager spending -- and that is good for stock holders -- there is another thing called social responsibility which American corporations used to feel obligated to -- but today has become a dirty word in corporate lingo. Regardless, that is a way for Apple to give back to the world that helps every year to make it what it is... Essentially, without PARC there would be no Apple, no Mac, no iPhone, no iPad and no Apple Watch. (But then I hear Tim say that Apple will make its contribution in healthcare -- so I have wonder... Maybe...)
But, as a former accountant, I also have to wonder just how meager that R&D budget really is? As an accountant I learned that much depends on what you count and how you count it. I suspect that Apple fosters a culture of employee initiative and creativity that produces some great breakthroughs -- even though those employees are not counted as specifically R&D..
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Desktop only ! If you can’t imagine the iPad used by small businesses you’re right in your vision limited to desktop. Designing an expo flyer or a restaurant menu no longer requires Office 365 subscription and a PC.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
I can use a low cost PC o Chromebook with the free versions of MS Office Online and Google Apps to design the flyer and restaurant menu too. I already knew that you don't need O365 or a PC for simple tasks, but neither I need an iPad or iWorks apps for that.
Second, I have zero issues with individuals with small business, but there is no way I'll recommend them. What option does Apple offer to an individual that want to host a private domain with an iCloud mail account? That means that individuals with small business that want something as simple as a private domain have to move from iCloud to G Suite, Office 365 or other cloud service. Plus iWorks files have to be converted to Google or MS files loosing details and formatting. Compare that to MS and Google, where you start with a simple email account and then grow in users and features as you business need changes.
Now you see why I think Apple cloud application are not a good option for individuals or small business?
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Desktop only ! If you can’t imagine the iPad used by small businesses you’re right in your vision limited to desktop. Designing an expo flyer or a restaurant menu no longer requires Office 365 subscription and a PC.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
I can use a low cost PC o Chromebook with the free versions of MS Office Online and Google Apps to design the flyer and restaurant menu too. I already knew that you don't need O365 or a PC for simple tasks, but neither I need an iPad or iWorks apps for that.
Second, I have zero issues with individuals with small business, but there is no way I'll recommend them. What option does Apple offer to an individual that want to host a private domain with an iCloud mail account? That means that individuals with small business that want something as simple as a private domain have to move from iCloud to G Suite, Office 365 or other cloud service. Plus iWorks files have to be converted to Google or MS files loosing details and formatting. Compare that to MS and Google, where you start with a simple email account and then grow in users and features as you business need changes.
Now you see why I think Apple cloud application are not a good option for individuals or small business?
Apple is not an ISP. You can purchase a private domain from any ISP for a few bucks and you can forward email from one account to another or you don’t. iCloud is not web hosting. There is no other cloud platform which provides so seamless integration between all devices of a user mobile or desktop in so big a scale as iOS. I have seen no data loss when converting iWork files to Office and the format issues are not worse than the internal incompatibilities of Office versions. At least iCloud does not destroy your PDFs like Google who needs to disassemble them because they read your email to sell you ads. When you mentioned Chromebook for business I left reading your post.
This is something Apple is particularly good at, making end products and not prototypes. The car industry does the opposite: only producing prototypes and not innovating its products. One example recently is Peugeot that introduced a very exiting new car concept, but actually isn't producing it, because its a prototype:
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Desktop only ! If you can’t imagine the iPad used by small businesses you’re right in your vision limited to desktop. Designing an expo flyer or a restaurant menu no longer requires Office 365 subscription and a PC.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
I can use a low cost PC o Chromebook with the free versions of MS Office Online and Google Apps to design the flyer and restaurant menu too. I already knew that you don't need O365 or a PC for simple tasks, but neither I need an iPad or iWorks apps for that.
Second, I have zero issues with individuals with small business, but there is no way I'll recommend them. What option does Apple offer to an individual that want to host a private domain with an iCloud mail account? That means that individuals with small business that want something as simple as a private domain have to move from iCloud to G Suite, Office 365 or other cloud service. Plus iWorks files have to be converted to Google or MS files loosing details and formatting. Compare that to MS and Google, where you start with a simple email account and then grow in users and features as you business need changes.
Now you see why I think Apple cloud application are not a good option for individuals or small business?
Apple is not an ISP. You can purchase a private domain from any ISP for a few bucks and you can forward email from one account to another or you don’t. iCloud is not web hosting. There is no other cloud platform which provides so seamless integration between all devices of a user mobile or desktop in so big a scale as iOS. I have seen no data loss when converting iWork files to Office and the format issues are not worse than the internal incompatibilities of Office versions.
Forward email messages is a workaround because something as simple as using a private domain is not available in iCloud. Again, iCloud is not a business service, period. If an individual starts to grow, it has to move to a business service like O365 or G Suite because Apple has zero offerings for business. And the integration of iOS devices have nothing to do with this. This is a limitation iCloud have. If I start my business using Google Apps / GMail or Outlook.com / Office Online, I'll have zero problem moving to a business plan. As today, this is impossible with what Apple offers.
At least iCloud does not destroy your PDFs like Google who needs to disassemble them because they read your email to sell you ads. When you mentioned Chromebook for business I left reading your post.
From what I know, G Suite don't read users content or files. And my point about using Chromebooks was about simple tasks as creating menus or flyers, as your post mentioned. You don't need an iPad for this.
iWork and iCloud need to be scaled up for small businesses. They’re currently not much of an option to Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive...
They are already scaled up for small businesses. First of all, they are the only truly working cloud. Apparently the team implemented it in a very robust fashion once they faced the fury of Steve Jobs on MobileMe.
Maybe iCloud may offer things small business can use, but as soon as you start to grow, you'll start to notice that it was designed for individuals and not even small business. I can't even use a private domain. G Suite and Office 365 definitely are better options for business, even small ones.
OneDrive sometimes works, mostly out of sync, Office 365 is nothing more than ridiculously crippled apps on iOS. I cancelled my subscription within one hour a couple of days ago when I discovered that iOS Word doesn’t allow to edit styles and to define new styles. In contrast iWork offers the same features and experience on macOS, iOS and web.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Desktop only ! If you can’t imagine the iPad used by small businesses you’re right in your vision limited to desktop. Designing an expo flyer or a restaurant menu no longer requires Office 365 subscription and a PC.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
I can use a low cost PC o Chromebook with the free versions of MS Office Online and Google Apps to design the flyer and restaurant menu too. I already knew that you don't need O365 or a PC for simple tasks, but neither I need an iPad or iWorks apps for that.
Second, I have zero issues with individuals with small business, but there is no way I'll recommend them. What option does Apple offer to an individual that want to host a private domain with an iCloud mail account? That means that individuals with small business that want something as simple as a private domain have to move from iCloud to G Suite, Office 365 or other cloud service. Plus iWorks files have to be converted to Google or MS files loosing details and formatting. Compare that to MS and Google, where you start with a simple email account and then grow in users and features as you business need changes.
Now you see why I think Apple cloud application are not a good option for individuals or small business?
Apple is not an ISP. You can purchase a private domain from any ISP for a few bucks and you can forward email from one account to another or you don’t. iCloud is not web hosting. There is no other cloud platform which provides so seamless integration between all devices of a user mobile or desktop in so big a scale as iOS. I have seen no data loss when converting iWork files to Office and the format issues are not worse than the internal incompatibilities of Office versions. At least iCloud does not destroy your PDFs like Google who needs to disassemble them because they read your email to sell you ads. When you mentioned Chromebook for business I left reading your post.
A perfectly valid opinion to hold, but including a FUD-That-Won't-Die claim that Google still "reads" (machine-scans) your email for ads. They don't, and haven't for a couple of years. Paid enterprise accounts like GSuite never did anyway.
Comments
Just guessing. You are not in the InfoComm industry, esp. networking. Well, during early days of my career, I believe Hua Wei has 'learnt' or 'forked' from other networking giants like 3Com and Cisco. I think I recall networking colleagues were saying (10+ years ago) that the CLI is almost like an exact imitation of Cisco's IOS, even product lines. 3Com simply 'disappeared' after the joint-venture with Hua Wei (pardon me if I remember wrongly). Hua Wei then started penetrating telcos cause their backhaul equipment is 1/3 or 1/4 price of other giants like Alcatel, Ericsson, etc. In today context of FTTx, many telcos are simply using Hua Wei ONTs/ONRs due to price and willingness to write custom firmware for each telco.
Siri is as dumb as a bag of rocks.
And Apple Music is low quality lossy crap.
Share buy backs from American companies over the past 10 years have little to do with managing their stock and are mostly simply to boost stock prices, And Apple is FAR from being the only one. But, while Asian companies reinvest profits in their companies, American companies hand it out as stockholder welfare.
To say that iWorks have the same funcionality in macOS, web and iOS maybe isn't too positive at all, considering how limited web and mobile apps are, specially compared to MS Office. Again, I don't think iWorks / iCloud was designed for business, even small ones. Maybe that's the reason MS Office is the leader in business, small and large.
Besides, I don’t understand how you exclude individuals from small business. Again yours is a very limited understanding of small business.
And in parallel, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi announced that there is a "somewhat strong correlation between R&D as a percent of revenue and gross margin," and concluded that "Apple could double its R&D and be relatively inline with peers," again confusing the spending of money with the creation of valuable products.
Maybe there was context in the original report that would help, but as quoted the two statements from Sacconaghi seem like basic facts that have little bearing on the issue of product value—the first just means that low R&D costs tend to lead to better margins, the second sounds like he’s saying that Apple could double their R&D expenditures without seeming outrageous compared to their so-called “peers.”
And, while " its efficient R&D budget" has generated some truly great breakthroughs from meager spending -- and that is good for stock holders -- there is another thing called social responsibility which American corporations used to feel obligated to -- but today has become a dirty word in corporate lingo. Regardless, that is a way for Apple to give back to the world that helps every year to make it what it is... Essentially, without PARC there would be no Apple, no Mac, no iPhone, no iPad and no Apple Watch.
(But then I hear Tim say that Apple will make its contribution in healthcare -- so I have wonder... Maybe...)
But, as a former accountant, I also have to wonder just how meager that R&D budget really is? As an accountant I learned that much depends on what you count and how you count it. I suspect that Apple fosters a culture of employee initiative and creativity that produces some great breakthroughs -- even though those employees are not counted as specifically R&D..
Perhaps Apple is doing a lot more than we know?
Second, I have zero issues with individuals with small business, but there is no way I'll recommend them. What option does Apple offer to an individual that want to host a private domain with an iCloud mail account? That means that individuals with small business that want something as simple as a private domain have to move from iCloud to G Suite, Office 365 or other cloud service. Plus iWorks files have to be converted to Google or MS files loosing details and formatting. Compare that to MS and Google, where you start with a simple email account and then grow in users and features as you business need changes.
Now you see why I think Apple cloud application are not a good option for individuals or small business?
The car industry does the opposite: only producing prototypes and not innovating its products.
One example recently is Peugeot that introduced a very exiting new car concept, but actually isn't producing it, because its a prototype:
From what I know, G Suite don't read users content or files. And my point about using Chromebooks was about simple tasks as creating menus or flyers, as your post mentioned. You don't need an iPad for this.