sirozha
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Apple Maps, Weather app now shows Crimea as Russian territory
I’m not a fan of Tim Cook (to say it mildly) and neither am I a fan of Putin. However, for all those self-righteous ignoramuses who decry the takeover of Crimea by Russia, please be advised that Crimea was part of Russia (not just USSR, but the Russian republic within the USSR) until Nikita Kruschev gave it to Ukraine without conducting any referendum to find out if the Crimeans were OK with it.Nikita Kruschev was the same guy who almost started a nuclear war with the US. So, the Ukrainian possession over Crimea was illegitimate from the standpoint of the International law. Additionally, the Russian Black Sea Navy was stationed in Crimea evem before the Bolshevicks overthrew the monarchy in 1917. It continued to be stationed there throughout all these years even when Ukraine and Russia seceded from the USSR in 1991. So, the Russian Black Sea Navy was suddenly stationed in a foreign country. Add to all of this that the absolute majority of Crimeans hated being in Ukraine for many decades since Crimea was given to Ukraine, and you will have a better understanding what happened with Crimea in 2014.
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Apple is world's largest PC vendor with $47B in iPad & Mac revenue
The PCs without a mouse didn't use a GUI. I used those PCs too with DOS. A mouse was not required.StrangeDays said:
So you don’t consider all the old PCs of the early days PCs, since many of them didn’t ship with pointing devices? That’s nuts. I used spreadsheets and games on my early Apple and DOS machines without a pointing device, and it was a PC then. Logic dictates they’re still PCs today.sirozha said:
I will consider the iPad a personal computer when Apple starts supporting a mouse and a trackpad with it.ralphie said:I can't wait for the asshats to come here that think the iPad is a personal computer.
Did you ever try to do any work on the iPad? Not email kind of work. The real work. I tried to replace my computer with an iPad for many years. I ended up ditching the iPad because I could do work 10 times faster on a Mac or PC than I could on the iPad.
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Apple is world's largest PC vendor with $47B in iPad & Mac revenue
I will consider the iPad a personal computer when Apple starts supporting a mouse and a trackpad with it.ralphie said:I can't wait for the asshats to come here that think the iPad is a personal computer.
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New Apple Card feature offers users no-interest iPhone installment plan
I’m not saying that Apple is doomed or that they are going to run out of their cash reserves. I’m only pointing out that letting millions of customers pay for their new phones over the course of 24 months without charging interest is not a sign of strong confidence in the sales numbers for the immediate future.22july2013 said:
That's a fair point but you are neglecting to note that Apple is sitting on hundreds of billions in cash reserves and the money is otherwise not earning much. This could be a good way to tap those reserves. Most auto companies aren't sitting on hundreds of billions in spare cash.sirozha said:I don’t know if this can be considered a sign of strength. From the automotive perspective, when a company does 0% financing, its usually a sign of weakness via-a-vis consumer demand for the cars. When there’s strong demand, automotive manufacturers usually don’t offer 0% interest deals.Apple is basically lending money to their customers for free, which is not something that any manufacturer would ever do unless they are expecting sagging demand for their product.The more I think of that, the more I see this as a desperate measure to prop up sales.Additionally, as it was pointed out earlier, Apple recognizes profits on the subscription accounting method over the course of 24 months (pure coincidence?). So, the ever-decreasing quarterly sales (year-to-year) must be taking an increasingly larger chunk out of profits, which is the opposite effect to how profits were snowballing a decade ago, when this accounting principle was introduced. The effect on the profits that the sagging sales are causing that we are witnessing today is the result of what happened 2 years ago. So, in the past two years, we have seen a dramatic drop in the sales numbers, which means that the effect on the profits of those lower numbers of phones sold year to year is yet to show up in the reports.
It seems that Apple is now trying to stop the bleeding that this accounting method caused once the sales peaked a few years ago and then started gradually decreasing.Apple is not a charity. They understand that they have painted themselves in the corner with the 38% profit margins. To maintain the profit margins, they have to price their phones high, which lowers the sales once the phone price approaches $1,000. If they lower the price to boost the sales (as they tried with the iPhone 11), they will bring down their profit margins. We haven’t seen this happen yet because the iPhone 11 was on sale for only 2 weeks in the quarter for which they have just reported. So, you are right. They decided to leverage the cash they have on hand to encourage more people to buy more expensive phones by letting them spread out the payments over 24 months with no penalty for doing so. It’s a smart move to prop up sales but it’s not a good sign of strength in projected sales numbers.Incidentally, Americans and iPhone buyers in other developed countries have been able to pay for their phones monthly without any interest charged through their carrier’s financing. So, the sales numbers that we are seeing today are mostly propped up by similar no-interest financing schemes. It appears that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make people keep buying new phones. Pretty soon, people will have to be incentivized to buy these phones (perhaps free 2-year 1TB iCloud storage plan with the purchase of a new iPhone every 2 years).Someone will have to cough up the incentives to keep the folks interested, and because carriers are brand agnostic, the burden will fall on the phone manufacturers.
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New Apple Card feature offers users no-interest iPhone installment plan
A scheme doesn’t have to have a negative connotation.raybo said:
It’s not a scheme - they’re giving a discount, much like when they pay you for your trade-in. They’re building brand loyalty for the iPhone and for their card. It’s brilliant.sirozha said:
When they do it via third-party providers, Apple gets paid 100% upfront. The third-party provider lends the money to the customer and charges an interest on the loan.mattinoz said:sirozha said:Who will be paying for it? If Apple sells a $800 phone and gets paid 1/24 of the total price per month, they won’t bag the entire price until after 2 years. This will take more than two years to ramp up until Apple starts collecting the same amount per month as they would if they sold the iPhone outright.I don’t know if this can be considered a sign of strength. From the automotive perspective, when a company does 0% financing, its usually a sign of weakness via-a-vis consumer demand for the cars. When there’s strong demand, automotive manufacturers usually don’t offer 0% interest deals.Apple is basically lending money to their customers for free, which is not something that any manufacturer would ever do unless they are expecting sagging demand for their product. The 0% financing is a way to stimulate demand. Apple pays to manufacture the iPhone upfront, but doesn’t get to recoup its costs for over a year and doesn’t make all the profit until after two years.
The more I think of that, the more I see this as a desperate measure to prop up sales.Apple has this deal already using 3rd party credit providers so may not be getting all the sales value upfront anyway. So they are moving it in-house and getting a bigger slice of the pie as they cut out another middle man.Bonus they get additional revenue out of each customer from general spending on card.This is totally different. With this new scheme, Apple doesn’t get paid the whole amount upfront. Instead, they get paid 1/24 of the amount after a month, and 1/24 of the total amount every consecutive month until they get paid the entire amount in 2 years.