stevewhitemd

Mr. Dilger's article almost makes me feel sorry for Intel. Almost. What's interesting about Intel isn't that they failed to recognize the corner they'd painted themselves into with the x86 architecture -- it's that they DID recognize, and tried to solve it, and failed. They tried to get into other chip fabrications like broadband, and failed. They tried IA-64, and failed. They tried the Atom, and failed. For broadband and Atom it became clear to the industry that Intel's solution wasn't good enough, but for IA-64 and Itanium Intel fell into the classic trap of having a superior product that others wouldn't invest in to use. Microsoft wasn't going for it and neither were the other industry leaders. You'd think that someone at Intel would learn from all this failure -- Apple (well, really, Jobs, and to a fair extent Cook and Ive) certainly learned from failure, which is why we got the iMac, iPod, iPhone, Mac OS X, etc. Failure, if you survive it, is a good teacher. What has Intel learned? Darned if I know.

Daniel correctly points out that Samsung has borrowed a lot (by which we mean, nearly all) of its inspiration for its products from Apple. We have a fair idea what Samsung phones would be if the iPhone had not come along, for example. The idea could be extended back forty years as a way of demonstrating how Apple, many times small in the market, sometimes "beleaguered" and troubled, has influenced what computers, printers, phones, and music players should be. What if there had been no Apple ][? No Macintosh? No Laserwriter? No Mac OS? No ImageWriter? More recently, what if there had been no iPod, no Mac OS X? Care to venture what a Microsoft operating system would look like if Mac OS, and then OS X, hadn't come along? Anyone think that Microsoft would have gotten the idea of a GUI? Would Microsoft, or Texas Instruments, or other giants of the day have figured out how to put a computer into a laser printer (a computer more powerful than what anyone had on their desktop at that time), integrate into a distant computer's operating system, and sell it? Who would have pushed object-oriented programming to the front of the industry and given that industry a market for such wares? We all know what the music players of 1999 looked like with their idiot Timex-watch style key buttons, design and market limitations, and unreliable playing of music. Who other than Apple would have figured out the click-wheel, popularized it, dropped onto a little box with a frigging MINI HARD DRIVE inside to store thousands of songs, and gotten the music industry (that band of robber-baron scum) to go along? Name a company, I'll wait. Take Apple out of the history from 1976 on. What does the world look like today?

"Definers used the NTK Network to disseminate stories hyper-critical of Apple and its CEO Tim Cook." That helps to explain why, perhaps, I've been seeing a fair number of news stories critical of Apple in the tech press, newspapers, and general blogs over the last year. It may be no more than these outlets just using a press release from Definers without any further thought.

Just ordered an XS to replace a 6S Plus. The screen is virtually the same size. I don't need a 'Max', and I like what I see in the XS over the XR (not that the latter is bad, mind you). I suspect a fair number of people will be like me: a formerly Plus user going to the XS because we like that screen size. And if Apple has the proportions of orders wrong a bit, they'll adjust. It's not going to be hard. So Ming is pushing something that just doesn't matter a whole lot.

Mr. Dilger writes: However, after the initial holiday quarter, writers at those papers continued printing stories that suggested they'd done some research or observation into iPhone X sales and found problems with ongoing demand. They also created reports suggesting evidence that Apple was slashing production of iPhone X, creating waves they claimed to have observed among Apple's suppliers. But, those reports were false. And they were repeated anyway. They were not accidents or mistakes. They were false, and they appeared malicious, not mistaken.
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That's about as elegant a complaint about "Fake News!!" as one can find without the usual political overlay. And it's being practiced not just by people in their pajamas but by the largest purveyors of 'news'. Something to remember when one is reading one's favorite news outlet about ANY topic.