tribalogical

lkrupp said:

chasm said:

Thanks for this. I know it’s an economic truism that the public broadly thinks of costs as fixed or getting lower over time.

Everything goes up in price due to inflation. I think the public is well aware that the price of food, energy, goods, services, and the like continue to rise. A gallon of milk costs more today than ten years ago. Food producers give the illusion that prices are stable but you only get 4lbs of sugar instead of 5lbs now, twenty ounces instead of 32 ounces.

It's all relative. Wages should also rise to keep up with inflation (but they don't always do that). When people talk about the cost of things "in 1990 dollars" it's comparing the relative cost of products. The fact is, relative to inflation, those costs have gone down. You can think of it like this (in oversimplified terms): Back when the minimum wage was $3 and change, a gallon of milk cost about $1. Now, the minimum wage is around $8, and a gallon of milk costs about $2.50. Pretty much no change as a percent of income. So the price isn't actually greater relative to inflation and income overall... In most cases however, although the "dollar amount" is higher (but not always), the actual relative cost of things is less compared to what it cost 10 years ago to buy the same thing. Consumer electronics are a perfect example of that. I bought a 60" UHD HDR "smart TV" for $500 and change last year. The higher end models can cost $2,000... but in 1990? A 50" Plasma screen cost $5,000. And that was in 1990 dollars. That would be something like $20,000 now... As long as income rises to match inflation, and the relative cost of goods keep coming down, small increases in things like "fruit and dairy" are easily offset. We feel like we get more for our money. If, if, if... Most people don't feel like their income is keeping up, but that's more a political issue which I'm not going to delve into here...

There is gross margin, which, after the crisis period after Jobs' return to the helm stabilized pretty consistently at just about 38% on average, give or take a bit. It's a very consistent Gross, and has been for well over a decade now. They keep their pricing across all their lines (hardware, software, services, etc.) at levels clearly designed to maintain that +/- 38% gross margin. They've been incredibly adept at keeping it there. I was interested in a similar comparison of Net Margins over the same period. How much did the business cost, how much of that steady Gross did they have to spend to keep it all running, and running profitably? How steady are the Net Profits? That, in the end, is a better measure of whether a company is "gouging" or not. Gross is fine, but Net is where the 'bottom line' sits. If a company manages to keep their net always at or above break even (even in slimmer quarters) then they're doing it right. This chart seems to indicate (for the last 5 years, at least) that they are. Scroll down to see a longer list (uncharted) of margins going back to 2006 when they were at or around 10%. Apple was still recovering, helped in part by the iPod, and just before iPhone. Then the magic happened. They've been in the 20-percentile range for most of the past decade. This is before-tax profit, I believe. So not at all gouging, considering they have a pretty specactular global demand. They see more profit in better quarters, and typically razor thin in slimmer quarters (summer), but they aren't in the red, ever. That's where a company should be to remain healthy. https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/profit_margin So, after-tax profits in the area of 15% ~ 20%, which is still above average but not exactly gouging, especially with products they can't make enough of for a couple of months after they release. Their services are all pretty reasonably priced, none are at all higher than the market in general. iCloud (I pay $3/mo for the 200GB of storage, which is reasonable, and it's extremely secure), Apple Music @ $100/year is basically the same as Prime's annual. I think the $100 ~ $120 annual for unlimited content access is becoming kind of a standard. The rest, Apple Care has been affordable,, and Apple's support is second to none. You get what you pay for... All to say, if anyone accuses Apple of gouging, that's nonsense. You can only accuse them of making "high end" products, that sport a premium price tag, but also have the quality to match. I know of very few people who kept a Samsung "smart phone" for 5 years without a glitch or the slightest decrease in performance (other than battery life)... I've owned iPhone 1, 3GS, 5S, and now X... I had the 5S for about 5 years, and never a single issue. It performed the same from day to the day I traded it in for the iPhone X. Same is true of my 9 year-old iMac (replaced last year as my main workstation, but still going as an "everyday computer"), my soon-to-be-replaced 5-year old MacBook Pro... Problem-free, running strong, and worth every penny I paid for them. This is why the "premium" is so worth it. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is still lower than all the disposable crap in the PC world. So, is it really gouging because we have to pay a bit more up front? Not when it ends up performing better and costing less in the long run... And that's my big fat 2-cents worth on the topic.

It's important to remember that we don't get to impose our own standards and principles on others. If the Chinese People aren't happy with their government, history shows us that they can and will rise up en masse should things get out of hand there. Most don't really care about having unfettered access to the world. My Chinese friends could care less about "missing Facebook". They have their own equivalents anyway, and feel little restriction on their daily lives. We westerners would find it unbearable, but for them, it's a good kind of normal. Familiar, comfortable, and they enjoy a civil, predictable society... Apple wants to do business in the most populous country in the world. That country happens to be very different from us culturally. I don't think Apple would agree to "snoop ware" being installed from the factory, but they're not going to push back on blocking VPNs and so on. Those are simply not OK in China... What would YOU do? Walk away from a hundred billion in business, or just accept their national policies?

I use Spaces as a matter of course. I have 3 always setup for various uses. The rest, I "evoke" using Full Screen in apps. 4-finger swipes left and right on the trackpad scroll through the various Spaces, or 4-finger swipe up to see it all in one place/select manually. I don't expect much from it, and it keeps me super organized. I think it's one of the great unsung features.

I love Apple as a company, its products, and prefer Maps when it gives me what I need. A recent 3 week + trip to Japan, it was Google the whole way. I want Apple Maps to succeed I really do. The less Google in my life the better.... The bigger problem for me is the time it takes to load, especially when using the desktop app. Don't get me started. And Volcan's complaint is (was??) a valid one. I had the same problem when asking directions to Costco when I first moved to Boise a few years back. Got more than one "possibility" (even though I gave the FULL ADDRESS) and the choices were truncated, so I couldn't choose the right one. That was three years ago though. Siri does fine with it now...