stevewhitemd

This organizing shell also lets us see why Apple is in some hardware business lines for a while, and then bow out of those lines. Printers? Very useful in the beginning (original Laserwriter got me to buy my first Mac), less useful as time went on and the industry adopted universal connection standards and conventions (in part because Apple pushed). So no more Laserwriters and Imagewriters, because there's no software, firmware, or peripheral hardware connection back to core hardware sales to Macs, iPhones and iPads. We're seeing the same thing now with Airport -- universal standards and connections allow us to use whatever we want, and more importantly, Airport (and Airport Utility, the software side) no longer brings a compelling advantage to Apple in incremental sales. Whenever someone says, "why doesn't Apple sell x?", the answer likely is, 'x' doesn't drive hardware sales. If it did, Apple would be there.

A more social question: why does Apple need a substantial tax incentive? They're one of the wealthiest companies in the world. RTP has everything they say they need. So why give them a tax break? I get that Apple WANTS the tax break, and that our feckless politicians are happy to give away other people's money. But in a world where public budgets are under substantial stress, the idea of giving a wealthy, established company a significant tax break to get them to do something they know they have to do anyway is galling.

The App Store isn't the only way for a developer to advertise the app. If their app is being "crowded out" in the App Store, perhaps they could, you know, advertise? Buy some ads on web sites, blogs, etc. It used to be that developers had to know how to sell their product, as well as create it.

Staying within the boundaries that the moderator (fairly) has set, I'll just note that I appreciate Apple's position more and more. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Comey, it's clear that our government and our politics have reached the point where the legal process and investigative agencies have been weaponized (and try putting THAT genie back into the bottle!). In such settings, ordinary people need more protection from government, not less, and having their personal phone less susceptible to both hacking and inappropriate intrusion is much appreciated. I can criticize Apple like anyone else, but on this one they're right.

To borrow from a famous past president, Ronald Reagn, “It isn't so much that tech bloggers like Diaz are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”