applesnoranges

christopher126 said:

Why Americans allow CEO's to fire workers willy-nilly to make their short-term bottom line look better is beyond me.

Yep, lay them off and put them on the dole. Great.

In Germany, for example, BMW is not allowed to layoff and send them to the unemployment line for the government to pay. First, they have to go on 3/4 time, then half time, then 1/4 time and into a retraining program. Now that's how a responsible company should operate. 

Case in point, Germany was the last country to go into the Great Recession of 2008 and the first to come out! 

Oh well. 

lkrupp said:

Oh look! Another pundit telling Apple it must go after the low end market to survive and compete. It’s all about going cheap isn’t it. Cheaper is better by definition, right? So along with a $150 iPhone, a $149 iPad, a $399 Mac with slots, now Apple must come up with a $180 digital assistant to compete with the Echo Dot, a $30 gadget. I’m truly sorry to be responding with extreme sarcasm but we’ve been listening to this go cheap drumbeat every tine a new product category becomes popular. Apple can’t survive without eventually going cheap.

1. Apple is not the largest manufacturer of PCs.

2. Apple is not the largest manufacturer of smartphones.

3. Apple is not the largest manufacturer of tablets.

4. Apple does not have the largest music and video streaming service.

5. Apple is not the largest manufacturer of digital assistants.

Yet Apple has managed to amass a $250 Billion pile of cash, and Apple has managed to rise to a market capitalization of around $900 Billion, all without competing at the low end of any of the markets it is in. And it did this by sticking to its principles of making high quality products that people love to use. So tell me again why Apple must go low to survive?