proline

retrogusto said:

Apple is not in a position to challenge the Chinese government. Even the US government has limited options in that respect. But it is probably a lot easier and safer to protest against Apple, even if it’s pointless. 

This is of course total nonsense. Apple is free to move their production out of China any time they want. They'd rather make an extra billion or two in profit and look the other way on human rights, but that's something that can change.

JamesBrickley said:

Apple PR wouldn't be a challenge.  Now Uber? Yeah, that's a challenge.  They have a soiled public image with serious challenges. 

Exactly. I gotta commend this person for going somewhere she has the opportunity to distinguish herself. 

It would be a horrifically bad idea for Taiwan to export their latest process to America, matched only by Ukraine's idiotic idea of giving up their nukes in the 1990s. What incentive would the USA have to protect Taiwan if their tech was already in the USA? 

dasanman69 said:

StCornelius said:

Cornholieo, that agreement specifically does not allow HTC to copy/rip-off the iPhone's look: "it's specified that Apple's design patents and trade dress are still off limits to HTC" http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/6/3734732/apple-htc-settlement-agreement-revealed-redacted

Then why did HTC immediately copy the look of the iPhone without repercussion? 

Apple isn't going to bother suing HTC as long as they remain a barely viable bit player in the phone industry. Apple hardly ever launches offensive lawsuits, and when they do, they have always targeted their largest competitor. HTC was in that position when their lawsuit started, as was Samsung later.

blastdoor said:

proline said:

Any lack of resources at Musk's end is due entirely to the fact that even after 10-15 years his companies don't make a profit and are nowhere close to making one. His most recent manifesto was supposed to justify buying out Solar City, but the more sober truth is that Solar City needed a bailout (and SpaceX had bailed them out earlier this year too). So now Tela will burn an extra few hundred million in cash keeping Solar City running. Elon is depleting his resources rather than growing them and that should scare Apple's board. Everything he makes is sold at a loss in small quantities- also scary. Would Elon stop overpromising and underdelivering (late, over budget, over priced) if we'd throw more cash at him? Maybe, but why risk it? His genius plan "make more types of electric vehicles and try to catch up in self-driving" is friggin obvious and not worth risking Apple's fortune to acquire. 

Meanwhile Apple spends billions on R&D and must have all kinds of stuff in the works. The fact that they aren't wasting their time on mature product lines like the Mac tells me they know how to focus on what matters. So it's time for you to shut the hell up and make some popcorn- Apple's next few years should be good.  

Your arguments are logically inconsistent. You criticize Musk for not making a profit on Tesla, yet Apple's automotive efforts and other R&D projects aren't currently making any money either. You praise Apple's ability to earn a profit, but encourage them to ignore their profitable products and instead focus on unprofitable R&D projects -- projects that we know substantially less about than what Musk is doing. 

Apple could make substantial improvements in the Mac (and other product lines) with just a small sliver of the money spent on dividends and stock buybacks. Apple faces no resource constraints other than management focus. 

Apple's R&D budget is a good investment- it has made Apple shareholders hundreds of billions in profit. Tesla's R&D has never earned shareholders a nickel. Very different. You need to understand that Apple has people a lot smarter than you who've thought of these things. Apple can calculate, for example, that if they invest another billion in the Mac to make it super-fantastic sales will still only go up a couple hundred thousand units a quarter and that investment will not pay off. They allocate their money where it produces the most return, which is why they are fantastically profitable. The PC market simply isn't big enough to justify the kind of spending you're talking about. This isn't to say of course that Apple doesn't have some fantastic Macs built around Intel's next generation of chips waiting in the sidelines, but Apple is going to be careful with how much they spend on PC R&D and making sure any products they do release in that category are on the market a long time (to get a good return). 

Now if you want to see a company with zero vision, let's look at the Tesla master plan

1) Add more cars to the lineup (Musk stayed up late thinking of that one)

2) Try to salvage some value after bailing out Solar City (duh)

3) Try not to get left in the dust by the autonomous vehicles everyone else is working on by making one yourself

4) Finish all the stuff from the first plan that they still can't execute on after 10 years. You know, like the $50,000 Model S, the Model X that they can barely build, and the always next year Model 3

Genius. Pure genius.

Absurd. Yahoo's customers are all white people over 80 and no self-respecting mujahideen would ever go on a site like that. Total waste of money.

You're probably right. It's sad, because with MagSafe half the electricity gets used to increase the entropy of the universe which raises carbon emissions for no reason. It is slow, it makes the phones bigger and heavier, and hardly anyone uses it. And yet, for so many years the only thing reviewers would say every September was "and it still doesn't have teh wireless chargez!". Apple doesn't want the big story in September to be that, so they will include the wasteful and useless thing.