geekmee

anantksundaram said:

tyler82 said:

Instead we got Apple + Beats By Dre


 

(I know this is off-topic, but...) Got my wireless Powerbeats Pro this morning, returned it this afternoon.

Utter POS product from Beats, on multiple levels. Can’t believe Apple put this out.

Apple did not buy what you saw, which was Beats headphones. Beats hardware was NOT the focus of that deal. Beats hardware and revenue was just added icing on the cake. What they bought was what you didn’t see, the cake underneath; Apple bought Instant identification and relationships with icons of black artists and downloads with Dr. Dre and white artists with respected deal maker Iovine.
The purchase was unique in that none of the competition could replicate the deal, that Iovine put together with the benefit of his previous relationship with Apple. Apple bought their way into instant identification with the two largest revenue generators in downloaded music... versus the remaining categories. Too Iovine’s credit; Priceless.
Can you say? Think Differently 

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

― Hunter S. Thompson

FJERINA said:

If I can get 5% rebate using my Amazon charge card for Apple products why would I settle for just 3% using the Apple card.  Come on Apple; get with the program.

Ok, so Amazon has to give away more money to get you to use their card (I have both). I’m reminded of the saying “Some people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”

rob53 said:

Instead of Congress complaining about Apple they should go after all these data stealers aggregators. How is this even being allowed to be a business? This is just as bad as patent trolls. I'd like to see Apple include malware in "sign in with Apple" so every time a data aggregator grabs login information it starts building a massive malware bot that takes down all these companies. I see no problem with this since these companies will be grabbing information about me without my permission.

Data aggregation has been around as long as there has been credit bureaus vacuuming up personal exhaust fumes with ‘investigations.’
Good luck getting past the 3 largest credit bureau lobbyists.

I think the reality is, this was bigger than Bill Gates; Microsoft missed the importance of data becoming mobile. Expecting Microsoft to be serious about the trend away from stationery devices, is like expecting IBM to serious about developing PCs when the trend was data moving from mainframes.