If anything these analysts have been fanbois #1 for the last year. Any sensible valuation of the Apple stocks will tell you they are overpriced but nonetheless they all have the stock on hold or buy.
NO SHIT...right now, apple is a sell for anyone with common sence...Buy LOW, sell HIGH...
If you must buy Apple now, buy it before a keynote and sell afterwards, if you would have bought the monday before the MWSF keynote and sold the following afternoon, you would have made a cool 10% over night, the ride up is over, play Apple short for a while
If Apple has all this money coming in, why don't they simply attempt to create three times as many new products as they were before when they were just breaking even? Unless you claim they are somehow doing three times as much as before with the same amount of money, it is just natural to do more.
There is a such thing as being too conservative in your approach. Why doesn't Apple develop more products and take more risks? They have little to lose by spending $30 million on a project, but a lot to gain.
Microsoft obviously took the other approach. They had so much money coming in from their monopoly with DOS that they took over markets just by throwing enough money at them.
I think I know the reason, though. Very simply, Steve Jobs takes part in all the development, and he is a necessary component of development with limited time. It is well known he tests and plays around with products like the iPod, iDVD, etc. He may not come up with most of the ideas, but he makes the choices of what moves forward, and he comes up with lots of critical things that need to be improved about a product. He is the glue that holds everything together and gets the magic out of everyone else's ideas.
If Apple has the magic touch with products, obviously from the point of view of the shareholders they should be attempting more products. Why wouldn't they?
I think Apple looks at each project on its merits, not on whether it grows R&D or not. From Apple's patents, we can see that Apple is engaged in a wide variety of R&D work. Expanding too quickly (because you need to keep R&D pegged to a certain percentage) can lead to doing low ROI projects, hiring less qualified people, etc. R&D needs to be managed, just like everything else, on its merits.
All that being said, Apple is using other companies to do a lot of this work such as PortalPlayer, Broadcom (wide variety of chips), Samsung (flash), Hitachi/Toshiba (hard drives), Intel, etc. For a good deal of hardware, Apple can just use parts from others. Why? Because Apple adds value with software and design. (However, Apple did move the touch/click wheel stuff from Synaptics in house. I suspect it either has to do with software integration with the wheel or Synaptics heading in a different direction. Remember the story with Cornice?)
And by the way, Apple is already expanding into the living room (front row, remote, hi-fi, rumored TV, rumored video store and infrastructure), and most think it's working on a cell phone and tablet. Maybe they could do more car-related stuff but do they have to move into kitchen appliances (remember the iPod toaster) as well?
There is a such thing as being too conservative in your approach. Why doesn't Apple develop more products and take more risks? They have little to lose by spending $30 million on a project, but a lot to gain.
Due to Apple's unique place in the market, they can't just throw things at the wall & see what sticks. There are Apple-bashers a-plenty just waiting for them to stumble so they ban go "AHA!" JOBS HAS LOST TEH MAGIC! Apple is teh BELEAGUERED!!"
Think of all the media attention that a barely-perceptible crease in the finish of the Cube got, now multiply that 10X if they release a real dud of a gadget.
Apple has been very good over the last 5 years at not only finding a hole in the biz, but taking the time to do it right.
I think Apple looks at each project on its merits, not on whether it grows R&D or not. From Apple's patents, we can see that Apple is engaged in a wide variety of R&D work. Expanding too quickly (because you need to keep R&D pegged to a certain percentage) can lead to doing low ROI projects, hiring less qualified people, etc. R&D needs to be managed, just like everything else, on its merits.
All that being said, Apple is using other companies to do a lot of this work such as PortalPlayer, Broadcom (wide variety of chips), Samsung (flash), Hitachi/Toshiba (hard drives), Intel, etc. For a good deal of hardware, Apple can just use parts from others. Why? Because Apple adds value with software and design. (However, Apple did move the touch/click wheel stuff from Synaptics in house. I suspect it either has to do with software integration with the wheel or Synaptics heading in a different direction. Remember the story with Cornice?)
And by the way, Apple is already expanding into the living room (front row, remote, hi-fi, rumored TV, rumored video store and infrastructure), and most think it's working on a cell phone and tablet. Maybe they could do more car-related stuff but do they have to move into kitchen appliances (remember the iPod toaster) as well?
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.
Good points mel. Again I wonder what costs more to develope, software or hardware? This may tell you where Apple is headed. Certainly by moving to Intel they can reduce R&D costs on some aspects of hardware developement and frankly this is probably good. Do you really want to keep up with Intel in chip and motherboard design?
Good points mel. Again I wonder what costs more to develope, software or hardware? This may tell you where Apple is headed. Certainly by moving to Intel they can reduce R&D costs on some aspects of hardware developement and frankly this is probably good. Do you really want to keep up with Intel in chip and motherboard design?
Some things matter more than others. Apple had a lot to do with the early development of the PPC chip line. They were responsible for many of its features. This held them in good stead for years. Much of this broke down when Jobs refused to allow Moto to continue their clones.
There are now rumors on some PC tech sites that Apple and Intel are working on chip features that will, at first, only appear on machines that Apple produces. This may, or may not, be true. But it shows the interest that even the PC community has in Apple's part in any research. This tells us something, does it not? The belief is that if Apple gets involved, good things will happen.
Apple has developed designs that were farmed out, such as the touch pads for the laptops, that Apple is now producing in-house. That says something as well.
I'm not sure if mobo designs are as important when the chips being used are from Intel, as Intel is the worlds largest high quality mobo manufacturer. Intel will build to Apples' specs. Since no one knows as much about their chips as they do, they have been producing very good mobo designs for a long time.
It's the area of new ideas that Apple must keep in-house.
Both software and hardware can be expensive to develop. It depends on the scope of the project.
If Apple has all this money coming in, why don't they simply attempt to create three times as many new products as they were before when they were just breaking even? Unless you claim they are somehow doing three times as much as before with the same amount of money, it is just natural to do more.
Not exactly, Apple had dozens of products and iterations in the "dark ages" but they were still hurting because everything they made was utter shit. Now, they are spending plenty in R&D but a cut seems in order, the intel ramp-up was a clandestine R&D project for at least a few years before WWDC '05, because for the transition, they needed more than just the OS, they needed all of its components, like QT and core* to be perfect on intel, and PPC, not a cheap thing to do. Now that the intel groundwork is laid, the intel versioning becomes part of the standard OSX R&D cycle, thus cutting costs, allbeit an unknown, or under-specified cost
I would say, he is dead wrong. It was a silly article because it offered no tangible evidence that Apple is really slipping behind but merely offers an opinion--- in fact it contradicts itself by stating that "actual" funding has increased, even if the percentage has slipped and trying to make something out of both those observations. Tying a fixed investment percentage of income as a benchmark is out-dated thinking and exposes the writer's lack of understanding of how an innovative company like Apple, operates. Indeed, NO ONE outside the inner circle knows the reasoning behind Apple's thinking and this author most certainly doesn't. Clearly, he must think they are about to tank otherwise he would not have written the article with that slant- well, join the ranks of Enderle and Dvorak mate---and they have been right, er, let me think......
Apple's inflated stock price is predicated on them inventing "the next iPod".
Well, now it's been several years, and we've got U2 iPods and iPod cases and iPod boomboxes, but no new consumer electronics device. Public is getting skeptical. So the analysts look and see, well well well, looks like Apple is not spending that much money developing the "next iPod".
So, at the next conference call, Apple responds by hinting they're investing more in R&D and/or have new products in the pipe, and the stock shoots up to even higher levels.
In other words, the analysts are driving the price up, not down.
(And the old Apple spent gazillions on speculative R&D, and the only thing that came out of it was QuickTime and the Newton.)
This "analyst" misses the most basic point in his analysis - that Apple is a much larger and more diverse company since 2001. With iTMS, iPod, Shake, iWork, iWeb, Apature, XServe, Mini, iSight - the list goes on, Apple has much more to spend R&D dollars on and is spending *far* less on its core products then it did in 2001.
I think this shows - Panther and Tiger were good but modest incremental improvements, largely bug fixes and code optimizations over Jaguar (plus obligatory eye candy). We never got Home on iPod, we never got the Cocoa Finder, we never got always-unmountable disks, we never got the new-hotness filesystem and the dpi-independent UI is still MIA (they talked about that in 1998). From Rhapsody to Jaguar Apple was like a ballistic rocket, then the rocket settled into orbit. See also security updates for Jaguar.
We'll see what comes with 10.5, but I'm not expecting to be astonished. I'd like to see some new virtualization-oriented security features that Apple has the underpinnings to pull off, but I'm expecting the Linux guys will get there first, and maybe even Microsoft.
So Apple's R&D spending might have increased in raw numbers but without accounting for the number of projects being worked on (and inflation) the analysis isn't terribly helpful.
I'm with Melgross. I think this is a concern for Apple. Imaginative leadership, which Apple has, would work best with solid R&D. The amount seems low.
Does development of OS X get list as "research" with Apple accounting, or development? Not at all sure. There is some real question as to what a compnay counts as "research".
Wasn't Apple spending crazy amounts in R&D before the return of Jobs? On everything from Copeland/Gershwin/Rhapsody to Newton to the manufacture of dozens of models of the Mac.
Yes... in the mid 90's Apple was one of the top-10 patent applicants each year, and spend a huge % of their revenue on R&D, most of which never turned into products. Apple's R&D now seems much more focused an applied, which analysts usually love. Microsoft has taken the reigns in spending gobs of R&D cash with nothing to show for it. I personally am not sure of the best balance between "pure" research and applied research at the corporate level, but it's hard to argue with Apple's financial results so far.
In my opinion and judging Apple behavior, I think Apple its more worried consolidating reals state for infrastructure than putting $$$ on R&D cause that department simply do their job, Apple its not Sony or Panasonic that have hundreds and hundreds of products. Its streamlined aproach by all departments assure Apple very good feedback and outstanding products, the follow up of the products its even better.
What we have here its another analyst trying to fill his pocket speculating with Apple again.
Almost all products from Apple get excelent reviews, the VALUE of them its always on top and we still have more products to come in the year, probably a few surpises with new hardware.
Simple its better, that overwhelm the mind of many not only with a top notch OS, it does also cause most companys dont know how to work the way Apple does with that kind of succes.
Thank God our OS its only $129.00 and we have one and only one solution of it.(we have 2 flavors os OS X, regular and the server one, but people care more for regular than the other)
That shows the commitment Apple has with their consumers to provide them with the best "all in one solution". Not as windows that has a normal/pro/beginer/NT/etc. version and MS put an ultra high price in its software that lacks everything a consumer/pro want, no matter what kind of thing they do, if its personal or business.
Botton line: Apple always have been creative cause the people who works in its the root of all, not the money, its cause they think different!
1. The article implies that companies should peg a certain percentage of sales for R&D. In other words, all projects that could be funded within that amount, should. I disagree.
2. No company funds R&D in everything (except maybe Microsoft!!). A company decides what's important to its future - what differentiates it from others and focuses its attention on those things, including hiring people in those areas. Why should Apple continue funding basic CPU development, which it may have been doing under PowerPC? Apple may choose now to fund more OS stuff instead of CPU stuff and just stay in touch with what Intel is researching and planning for the future. Does Apple need to develop another drive design (remember the Woz floppy drive), ADB, or Firewire? That doesn't mean a company isn't aware of where basic technology is headed. Has Apple funded R&D in power supplies or battery development in the past? Doesn't seem like it - they've just kept abreast of what others are doing because it hasn't been a point of differentiation.
Apple has said what its core competencies are - computing, networking, software (OS and certain types of applications), user interface, and design. Computing is defined broadly so as to include iPods and devices like it, and networking includes not only LAN stuff like Bonjour, but WAN stuff that makes iTunes/.Mac, and Mobile Maybe there are more that haven't been made publicly known. In any case, SJ has said the consumer electronics business is moving into these areas of Apple's competence. Apple is clearly funding R&D in these areas, and not just going off willy-nilly to fund R&D in things that aren't related to its competencies.
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.
Comments
Originally posted by Anders
BULL!!!!!!
If anything these analysts have been fanbois #1 for the last year. Any sensible valuation of the Apple stocks will tell you they are overpriced but nonetheless they all have the stock on hold or buy.
NO SHIT...right now, apple is a sell for anyone with common sence...Buy LOW, sell HIGH...
If you must buy Apple now, buy it before a keynote and sell afterwards, if you would have bought the monday before the MWSF keynote and sold the following afternoon, you would have made a cool 10% over night, the ride up is over, play Apple short for a while
If Apple has all this money coming in, why don't they simply attempt to create three times as many new products as they were before when they were just breaking even? Unless you claim they are somehow doing three times as much as before with the same amount of money, it is just natural to do more.
There is a such thing as being too conservative in your approach. Why doesn't Apple develop more products and take more risks? They have little to lose by spending $30 million on a project, but a lot to gain.
Microsoft obviously took the other approach. They had so much money coming in from their monopoly with DOS that they took over markets just by throwing enough money at them.
I think I know the reason, though. Very simply, Steve Jobs takes part in all the development, and he is a necessary component of development with limited time. It is well known he tests and plays around with products like the iPod, iDVD, etc. He may not come up with most of the ideas, but he makes the choices of what moves forward, and he comes up with lots of critical things that need to be improved about a product. He is the glue that holds everything together and gets the magic out of everyone else's ideas.
If Apple has the magic touch with products, obviously from the point of view of the shareholders they should be attempting more products. Why wouldn't they?
All that being said, Apple is using other companies to do a lot of this work such as PortalPlayer, Broadcom (wide variety of chips), Samsung (flash), Hitachi/Toshiba (hard drives), Intel, etc. For a good deal of hardware, Apple can just use parts from others. Why? Because Apple adds value with software and design. (However, Apple did move the touch/click wheel stuff from Synaptics in house. I suspect it either has to do with software integration with the wheel or Synaptics heading in a different direction. Remember the story with Cornice?)
And by the way, Apple is already expanding into the living room (front row, remote, hi-fi, rumored TV, rumored video store and infrastructure), and most think it's working on a cell phone and tablet. Maybe they could do more car-related stuff but do they have to move into kitchen appliances (remember the iPod toaster) as well?
Originally posted by spindler
You guys seem to be missing something.
There is a such thing as being too conservative in your approach. Why doesn't Apple develop more products and take more risks? They have little to lose by spending $30 million on a project, but a lot to gain.
Due to Apple's unique place in the market, they can't just throw things at the wall & see what sticks. There are Apple-bashers a-plenty just waiting for them to stumble so they ban go "AHA!" JOBS HAS LOST TEH MAGIC! Apple is teh BELEAGUERED!!"
Think of all the media attention that a barely-perceptible crease in the finish of the Cube got, now multiply that 10X if they release a real dud of a gadget.
Apple has been very good over the last 5 years at not only finding a hole in the biz, but taking the time to do it right.
Originally posted by mark2005
I think Apple looks at each project on its merits, not on whether it grows R&D or not. From Apple's patents, we can see that Apple is engaged in a wide variety of R&D work. Expanding too quickly (because you need to keep R&D pegged to a certain percentage) can lead to doing low ROI projects, hiring less qualified people, etc. R&D needs to be managed, just like everything else, on its merits.
All that being said, Apple is using other companies to do a lot of this work such as PortalPlayer, Broadcom (wide variety of chips), Samsung (flash), Hitachi/Toshiba (hard drives), Intel, etc. For a good deal of hardware, Apple can just use parts from others. Why? Because Apple adds value with software and design. (However, Apple did move the touch/click wheel stuff from Synaptics in house. I suspect it either has to do with software integration with the wheel or Synaptics heading in a different direction. Remember the story with Cornice?)
And by the way, Apple is already expanding into the living room (front row, remote, hi-fi, rumored TV, rumored video store and infrastructure), and most think it's working on a cell phone and tablet. Maybe they could do more car-related stuff but do they have to move into kitchen appliances (remember the iPod toaster) as well?
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.
On the verge of bankruptcy, Apple was able to innovate or buy, not only OS X (NeXt) but the ipod.
No, I think that the money Apple spends on R&D they expect to return.
Microsoft just throws money at a problem and hopes for a solution.
Apple has always been a culture of innovation.
Microsoft has never innovated.
Originally posted by melgross
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.
Good points mel. Again I wonder what costs more to develope, software or hardware? This may tell you where Apple is headed. Certainly by moving to Intel they can reduce R&D costs on some aspects of hardware developement and frankly this is probably good. Do you really want to keep up with Intel in chip and motherboard design?
Originally posted by backtomac
Good points mel. Again I wonder what costs more to develope, software or hardware? This may tell you where Apple is headed. Certainly by moving to Intel they can reduce R&D costs on some aspects of hardware developement and frankly this is probably good. Do you really want to keep up with Intel in chip and motherboard design?
Some things matter more than others. Apple had a lot to do with the early development of the PPC chip line. They were responsible for many of its features. This held them in good stead for years. Much of this broke down when Jobs refused to allow Moto to continue their clones.
There are now rumors on some PC tech sites that Apple and Intel are working on chip features that will, at first, only appear on machines that Apple produces. This may, or may not, be true. But it shows the interest that even the PC community has in Apple's part in any research. This tells us something, does it not? The belief is that if Apple gets involved, good things will happen.
Apple has developed designs that were farmed out, such as the touch pads for the laptops, that Apple is now producing in-house. That says something as well.
I'm not sure if mobo designs are as important when the chips being used are from Intel, as Intel is the worlds largest high quality mobo manufacturer. Intel will build to Apples' specs. Since no one knows as much about their chips as they do, they have been producing very good mobo designs for a long time.
It's the area of new ideas that Apple must keep in-house.
Both software and hardware can be expensive to develop. It depends on the scope of the project.
Originally posted by spindler
If Apple has all this money coming in, why don't they simply attempt to create three times as many new products as they were before when they were just breaking even? Unless you claim they are somehow doing three times as much as before with the same amount of money, it is just natural to do more.
Not exactly, Apple had dozens of products and iterations in the "dark ages" but they were still hurting because everything they made was utter shit. Now, they are spending plenty in R&D but a cut seems in order, the intel ramp-up was a clandestine R&D project for at least a few years before WWDC '05, because for the transition, they needed more than just the OS, they needed all of its components, like QT and core* to be perfect on intel, and PPC, not a cheap thing to do. Now that the intel groundwork is laid, the intel versioning becomes part of the standard OSX R&D cycle, thus cutting costs, allbeit an unknown, or under-specified cost
it is called eating the seed corn.
apple's 'innovation' is a mile wide & an inch deep.
this is the sentiment from those who both care & admire apple.
it is not crazy talk.
most people who havent been on the inside have no idea how much money apple has left on the table because of the on-going self-castration.
dlf
Well, now it's been several years, and we've got U2 iPods and iPod cases and iPod boomboxes, but no new consumer electronics device. Public is getting skeptical. So the analysts look and see, well well well, looks like Apple is not spending that much money developing the "next iPod".
So, at the next conference call, Apple responds by hinting they're investing more in R&D and/or have new products in the pipe, and the stock shoots up to even higher levels.
In other words, the analysts are driving the price up, not down.
(And the old Apple spent gazillions on speculative R&D, and the only thing that came out of it was QuickTime and the Newton.)
I think this shows - Panther and Tiger were good but modest incremental improvements, largely bug fixes and code optimizations over Jaguar (plus obligatory eye candy). We never got Home on iPod, we never got the Cocoa Finder, we never got always-unmountable disks, we never got the new-hotness filesystem and the dpi-independent UI is still MIA (they talked about that in 1998). From Rhapsody to Jaguar Apple was like a ballistic rocket, then the rocket settled into orbit. See also security updates for Jaguar.
We'll see what comes with 10.5, but I'm not expecting to be astonished. I'd like to see some new virtualization-oriented security features that Apple has the underpinnings to pull off, but I'm expecting the Linux guys will get there first, and maybe even Microsoft.
So Apple's R&D spending might have increased in raw numbers but without accounting for the number of projects being worked on (and inflation) the analysis isn't terribly helpful.
Does development of OS X get list as "research" with Apple accounting, or development? Not at all sure. There is some real question as to what a compnay counts as "research".
Sincerely,
Henry Ledgard
Originally posted by JimDreamworx
Wasn't Apple spending crazy amounts in R&D before the return of Jobs? On everything from Copeland/Gershwin/Rhapsody to Newton to the manufacture of dozens of models of the Mac.
Yes... in the mid 90's Apple was one of the top-10 patent applicants each year, and spend a huge % of their revenue on R&D, most of which never turned into products. Apple's R&D now seems much more focused an applied, which analysts usually love. Microsoft has taken the reigns in spending gobs of R&D cash with nothing to show for it. I personally am not sure of the best balance between "pure" research and applied research at the corporate level, but it's hard to argue with Apple's financial results so far.
Originally posted by TednDi
So,
On the verge of bankruptcy, Apple was able to innovate or buy, not only OS X (NeXt) but the ipod.
No, I think that the money Apple spends on R&D they expect to return.
Microsoft just throws money at a problem and hopes for a solution.
Apple has always been a culture of innovation.
Microsoft has never innovated.
never mind
Originally posted by davidf01
the article is dead right.
it is called eating the seed corn.
apple's 'innovation' is a mile wide & an inch deep.
this is the sentiment from those who both care & admire apple.
it is not crazy talk.
most people who havent been on the inside have no idea how much money apple has left on the table because of the on-going self-castration.
dlf
What's the 'self-castration' you refer to?
What we have here its another analyst trying to fill his pocket speculating with Apple again.
Almost all products from Apple get excelent reviews, the VALUE of them its always on top and we still have more products to come in the year, probably a few surpises with new hardware.
Simple its better, that overwhelm the mind of many not only with a top notch OS, it does also cause most companys dont know how to work the way Apple does with that kind of succes.
Thank God our OS its only $129.00 and we have one and only one solution of it.(we have 2 flavors os OS X, regular and the server one, but people care more for regular than the other)
That shows the commitment Apple has with their consumers to provide them with the best "all in one solution". Not as windows that has a normal/pro/beginer/NT/etc. version and MS put an ultra high price in its software that lacks everything a consumer/pro want, no matter what kind of thing they do, if its personal or business.
Botton line: Apple always have been creative cause the people who works in its the root of all, not the money, its cause they think different!
2. No company funds R&D in everything (except maybe Microsoft!!). A company decides what's important to its future - what differentiates it from others and focuses its attention on those things, including hiring people in those areas. Why should Apple continue funding basic CPU development, which it may have been doing under PowerPC? Apple may choose now to fund more OS stuff instead of CPU stuff and just stay in touch with what Intel is researching and planning for the future. Does Apple need to develop another drive design (remember the Woz floppy drive), ADB, or Firewire? That doesn't mean a company isn't aware of where basic technology is headed. Has Apple funded R&D in power supplies or battery development in the past? Doesn't seem like it - they've just kept abreast of what others are doing because it hasn't been a point of differentiation.
Apple has said what its core competencies are - computing, networking, software (OS and certain types of applications), user interface, and design. Computing is defined broadly so as to include iPods and devices like it, and networking includes not only LAN stuff like Bonjour, but WAN stuff that makes iTunes/.Mac, and Mobile Maybe there are more that haven't been made publicly known. In any case, SJ has said the consumer electronics business is moving into these areas of Apple's competence. Apple is clearly funding R&D in these areas, and not just going off willy-nilly to fund R&D in things that aren't related to its competencies.
Originally posted by melgross
No company looks at projects to enable them to "grow" R&D. R&D grows as a consequence of establishing new areas of research.
It's a dangerous thing to allow other companies to do your R&D for you. When that happens, you lose the edge that doing it yourself gives you. You also lose control of the research, as well as the results. Just as important is the procedures, people and laboratories you develop when doing it in-house. This can't be stressed enough.
It may seem cool to say that putting this on the shoulders of others saves money for Apple, and that it's great. It's not.
You can never lead when you are dependent on some other company coming up with your basic concepts, and later, products. It's not enough to tell someone else that this is what you want, and to then let them come up with the solution. When you do that, you don't have the deep understanding of your own products, and you have no idea where the R&D will lead in the future.