lmac

Self fulfilling prophecy. Macs are not upgraded because demand is low. Demand is low because Macs are not upgraded. Apple doesn't care about its 20 billion dollar Mac business, because it has a 150 billion dollar phone business. But I think this is short sighted. Apple could gain a lot of respect and r&d experience by continuing to advance the most powerful and easiest to use computers in the world. That's worth more than just money.

I won't buy an Apple laptop with the butterfly keyboard. Never could see much difference with a Retina display, but keys that get dust under them and stop working is a major design flaw that Apple has yet to acknowledge publicly.

If this comes to pass, I'm writing a big fat check to the ACLU, putting my phone in my checked bag, and disabling the fingerprint activation. And no, I've got nothing to hide.

Android Zero! Sounds about right.

lkrupp said:

So how about import duties on Apple products imported into the United States? Would that encourage Apple to manufacture in the USA also? Harley Davidson announced it will move manufacturing overseas to avoid foreign tariffs. Why is it always a one way street for us in the U.S.? Foreign countries can level all sorts of taxes and tariffs to encourage manufacturing in within their borders. But let the U.S. try the same thing and all hell breaks loose. When we do it it’s a trade war. Canada, for example, levies a 250% tariff on milk imported from the U.S. for the express purpose of protecting its dairy farmers from vastly more efficient and productive American dairy farmers.

Again, why is it a one-way street?

It's not a one way street. For example, the Canadian tariff on milk is 0.8%, and the 250% tariff only kicks in after the U.S. imports go beyond the agreed upon (by both sides) quota. Beyond the quota (how much milk do 30 million people need?) is considered dumping, and is designed to kill the Canadian dairy industry, just as the Chinese have been dumping below cost solar panels in the U.S. to kill the American solar industry. We should and do protect our local industries with tariffs too. It's not a one way street. We are not suckers, and we are not being taken advantage of, despite what some politicians would like you to believe in order to get you riled up.

However, your idea that the phones for a region should be made there (including the U.S.) is an interesting way to solve this problem and create local jobs. But Tim Cook would never go along with that because phones made in the U.S. for U.S. purchases would cost double or triple what they do now because of our higher standard of living.

GeneralBrock said:

This is a PR battle Apple cannot win. Heads they side with the protesters and China takes it out on them. Tails things get increasingly worse in Hong Kong and Apple appears to be helping and authoritarian regime beat up on protesters. 

I think you state this well. Heads, you stand by your principles and lose money. Tails, you sacrifice your principles and keep the money. Apple chose the money.

One of DED's favorite forms of storytelling is rewriting history to make Apple and Jobs seem to have thought of everything, but let's remember that we don't write articles about flops. You never see DED defending the genius of Ping, the iTunes social network, or the Apple HiFi. Still, there are lots of things in this article that qualify as spin, or that are just plain false. 1) When the iPad came out, people were stunned that it was just a scaled up phone that couldn't make phone calls, and not a more capable device. They were correct about its early limitations. 2) The product name almost sunk the launch, with people comparing it to feminine hygiene products. 3) The predicted dominance of the eBook and magazine industry never came to pass. 4) Jobs totally missed the importance of the App Store and 3rd party apps, which came later, and really had much to do with the success of the device. 5) Job's insistence that a stylus and keyboard were unnecessary have since been reversed, so which is it? Is Apple on the wrong track today, or did Jobs get it wrong in the beginning? 6) The iPad push into the K12 classroom as a textbook replacement is over. Schools are replacing aging iPads with Chromebooks that cost less, are more rugged, easier to manage, and simply do more. 7) The one big thing Apple got right was to make the iPad the best tablet money can buy, and to keep making incremental improvements. Staying above the low-end competition is what Apple always does, but it paid off because the low end Android and Amazon tablets are clunky, sluggish, and non-intuitive in comparison.

Apple should run each division like its own company. Then they might be more interested in some of their projects that aren't as high profile.

Have any of you read the HG Wells short story, The Country of the Blind? A sighted person discovers a valley where everyone is blind, and thinks to himself, "In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." The reader begins by thinking the sighted man will have an advantage over them, but the story cleverly turns it around, in a number of examples where, for example, the blind are proficient at something that happens in total darkness and they think the new guy is incompetent because he can't do the thing without his sight.

Funny nobody is stealing Jony's butterfly keyboard design.