stantheman

Both the WinTel experience and Android-Samsung demonstrate that open standards lower production costs and therefore device prices, while Apple's closed system promotes more rapid innovation. It does not appear that mobile computer technology has matured to the point yet where Apple's future is imperiled. By pushing innovation forward every year, Apple is making it impossible for Android phone makers to standardize (commoditize) costly components, or share new application features. Its R&D activities will both preserve Apple profitability going forward and generate some amazing new products.

It should have a flexible OLED display wrapped around its exterior so that it can display messages, images and video.

Don't do evil: "In 2015 the ACLU described the way Google leaves Android open to data collection and surveillance as a 'digital security divide' and a human rights issue."

Yesterday a Chinese official was in the newspaper threatening that the US is more vulnerable to a trade war than China. That's like Trump talking about his big hands and the historic size of the crowd at his inauguration. Reveal your deeper insecurity by insisting on the opposite, loudly and repeatedly.

When Foxconn-Apple finally has plants outside of China filled with robots and domestic (Indian?) workers, it will have more options for resisting Chinese meddling-sabotage than it does today. It would be terrible if (hypothetically) China banned new iPhone sales in that nation, but even worse if Chinese regulators impeded iPhone manufacturing at Chinese-based plants. That would block iPhone sales everywhere.

In the long run, a trade war with China may be the only way to get its leaders to moderate their views. No bully will stop bullying until circumstances force him to reconsider the error of his ways.

The Australian banks want detailed transaction data plus ApplePay fees, but those fees are tiny and therefore only a sideshow.

Australia has a very small number of banks, and in this instance they are attempting to behave as a cartel (group monopoly) both to pressure local politicians and (if successful) to use consumer data for marketing-advertising purposes.

Collusion is difficult to manage successfully, except in small groups. If Australian banks are able to collude on this issue, they may be colluding on others, too.