sacto joe

My wife and I attended this meeting. As regards the “inclusiveness” proposition, the inclusiveness of conservatives has been strangely absent when they held all the US seats of power in their iron grip. Besides the group behind this (National Center for Public Policy Research) being capable of any despicable act to push their agenda (see https://m.sfgate.com/news/article/The-fear-merchants-3105103.php ), the specious arguments they came up with were simply laughable.

If it’s that bad for iOS, it must be hell on Android.

Man, what a bunch of jaded cynics. Very cute commercial.

In this second of a two part series (for part 1, see http://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/23/apple-in-2019-surviving-iphone-challenges-like-the-1990s-microsoft ), DED focuses on so-called "PC's". That's Personal Computer, to you and I, or computers that individual consumers can find useful. In the comments section, we see at least a couple that protest linking iPads with "PC'S". Slow N Easy's 2nd post here says "What makes an iPad not a PC [is] the lack of a real file system and peripheral support with actual ports you can plug into....". Gbdoc says "... this article has it that "the future of PCs" has nothing to do with computers. COMPUTERS (remember?), not almost-computer-like smart devices".

I don't know who these two think they're trying to kid, but the term "personal computer" has zip to do with anything but the concept of a computer for personal use. It is thus only differentiated from a non-personal computer. Hence ANY personal computing device, including "pocket computers" like smartphones or wearables like the Apple Watch, is, by definition a "PC".

Still, what they're striving to get to is that, in the classic world of the past, a "PC" was essentially a personal desktop computer, as opposed to a VAX or some other distributed yet centralized computer system, typically employed by large businesses. To say that that definition of "PC" no longer applies is an understatement, albeit some "wiggle room" is still given it, by Windoze supporters and such, by calling computers that can be folded up and carried about "portable computers" (hence "PC's"). This allows them to assert that the Microsoft Surface is in fact a PC while the iPad isn't.

How convenient! And how utterly laughable. OF COURSE the iPad is a "PC". Doesn't matter if it can't run all Microsoft's software, even in emulation mode. The iPad is no more different from the old desktop PC's than a "portable computer" is. It reminds me of when they used to say an iPad wasn't a PC because it didn't have a separate keyboard and mouse. Well, with the proper software, it doesn't need a mouse, and even if some particular software required them, it would be simplicity itself to attach a mouse or a trackpad/trackball via bluetooth. And if a virtual keyboard wasn't good enough for you, iPads now have perfectly good physical keyboards they can connect to.

So why on earth would people  be so insistent on saying the iPad isn't a "PC"? DED has made that abundantly clear; "IDC, Gartner and other firms have valiantly tried to minimize Apple's real position in the PC industry." Why? AS DED also said, "Over the past four quarters, Apple sold 61.74 million iPads and Macs, making it the leader in PC unit shipments, ahead of second-place HP's 57.16 million PCs shipped". IOW, if these people didn't try to minimize it, then they'd have to acknowledge that Apple is literally the number 1 producer of PC's in the world. And we can't have that, now can we?

Several other posters here have also talked at length about areas where Apple is not doing all, in their opinions, that it can. But that's looking at the individual trees, and ignoring the forest. No company, not even Apple, is going to be all things to all folks. And they're going to make their fair share of bonehead moves. I consider their not having been far more conservative in their initial guidance for Q1 '19 to be a classic bonehead move that cost Apple stockholders a ton of value, when Apple had to halt it's December buybacks in the teeth of a major attack on it's valuation. So no, Apple's not perfect. But it's far closer to that goal than any other company presently out there.

Bottom line: The Apple forest, as these two DED articles make very clear, is doing quite well, thank you. It's a shame that so many people have been bamboozled into not recognizing that.

As I said on an article on ped30.com today (https://www.ped30.com/2019/02/24/iphone-replacement-rate-apple/), Apple’s share of the smartphone market measured by “market share” is about 15%, but Apple’s share of the smartphone market measured by “installed base” is twice that, and increasing.

And that doesn’t count peripherals like AirPods (where Apple is still struggling to match demand) and the Apple Watch (which is now both an accessory and a stand-alone device).