karmadave

I do not support Elizabeth Warren's candidacy, but believe she is fostering an important discussion. EW has been a tireless advocate for consumers vs. big, powerful corporations. Before being elected to the Senate she was a law professor and has studied issues such as monopoly and concentration of corporate power and its effects on consumers. My initial reaction was to dismiss her comments as bombastic and naive, however upon listening to a more recent interview, she does raise some excellent points. I suggest people open their minds and consider what she is really saying. Namely that large tech companies have too much power and often use this power to squash smaller, upstart competitors. It's really about the business practices, some of these companies use, that should be more closely examined. I fundamentally disagree that companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc. should be broken up. However, certain business practices these companies use should be examined and if necessary should be prohibited by law. By giving these companies 'cart blanche' to squash smaller competitors it actually discourages new business generation. EW is not against success, just business practices that are unfair and fundamentally anti-competitive. 

P.S. Please keep this discussion civil. I have tried to avoid politics and certainly would NEVER wage ad hominem attacks on those with whom I disagree ;-)

In my opinion, Apple should work with an existing PC manufacturer to bring a Macintosh Professional Workstation to market. The problem is that a) it's a low-volume product for Apple, b) it takes years and multiple product cycles to refine such a product and c) other PC OEM's have existing, mature workstation products that could be easily adapted to suit the need of Apple's user base. 

I know others might find this heresy, but quite frankly Apple's view of this market differs significantly from the wider PC Workstation market. Dell, HP, and Lenovo have very well refined engineering workstation lines that Apple could adapt for the needs of their users. Most of Apple's hardware resources are focused on iOS devices anyway, so investing in another 'one-off' expensive product doesn't seem like a winning strategy. Flame away...

I was working at Apple, in Higher Education Sales, when NeXT launched. NeXT was busy poaching Apple HE Sales Reps so on a moment's notice we were flown to NYC and wined and dined for a couple days. It was basically a big party to remind people why the worked, at Apple, and Scully even showed to give us a pep talk. He needn't bother as most of our customers found the NeXT 'cube' to be too expensive and under-powered to run the object-oriented NeXTStep OS. Many of these machines ended up running various internet applications (www was even 'invented' on NeXT) or as they say 'expensive doorstops'. NeXT had a big booth, at Educom, in 1989 and Steve was giving demo's dressed in an expensive Italian suit. Good times...

Corporations are not benevolent organizations dedicated to the welfare of their employees. They are profit-seeking enterprises that will take whatever steps necessary (usually within the law) to maximize revenues, profits, and shareholder value. Yeah. The timing of this sucks, especially for those affected, but the reality is that AT&T is managing in it's own self-interest. Tax cuts have very little influence since most large corporations already employ various techniques to minimize taxes. Apple being one of the most creative tax avoiders...

I worked at Apple when we introduced the Macintosh Portable. It was big, clunky, slow, and had a horrible display. Not bad for $7,300 ;-)