schwabsauce

You guys seem a bit oblivious about what's important to Apple's executives (and likely most of the rest of the employees). They don't care about getting an extra billion dollars. The do what they want to do. And what they want to do is alleviate some of the unspeakably insane BS that we are all inflicting upon each other.

Incidentally, doing that also happens to make them billions of dollars. It's not the other way around.

Those interested in the benefits of the Beats acquisition might also note that Beats was probably one of the strongest brand identities of any company from the last decade. Look at all the young athletes who will wear colorful Beats headphones to interviews and photo shoots simply as a fashion statement. Beats is resonant with communities and demographics that Apple has yet to strongly connect with. And when you look at all of the marketing videos Apple has produced in the last 24 months it is very clear that they are ready to reach out to those underserved communities.

Music and musicians have been the primary driver of Apple's overall business for a long time. The functionality of iPod and iTunes were what first caught mainstream attention; the prevalence of ProTools probably had a lot to do with the decent hardware that became available, and the glowing Apple logos emanating from every DJ booth in the world gave the youth a clue that spending $2000 every year on a laptop was a good way to turn your passion into a high-paying job. Not to mention that the iTunes Store was the predecessor of all "cloud services" and the technology developed therein has been leveraged to excellent effect.

People love to say that Beats headphones aren't the best at that price, but they do sound great, and they have the durability, portability, and comfortability to edge out just about anything else when the wearer is going out in public. It's a beautiful brand that refuses to compromise on either form or function - much like Apple. When you can create high-grade hardware in incredible quantities, just a few years after entering a saturated market, and generate unmatched visibility for your icons and logos and colors and ad-hoc spokespeople, while filling a series of needs that has exponentially ratcheted up (as people listen to more music and have access to high-definition stuff on the go), I don't think you need to really fret about the price of the acquisition.

This woman sounds really great. And I see no reason to be cynical about this new direction. Steve was prickly towards stuff like this but execs who are grounded in a different form of reality can understand that business and government have to work together in many ways.

Apple's cash could play a role in relevant campaigns. And hopefully once that begins to happen, we won't have quite as many fiascos like the Amazon ebooks ruling.

1 - decrypting one phone would demonstrate the possibility of decrypting others - ruining Apple's business. Of course "Bill Gates" supports it.

2 - FBI could have gotten the data but instead they changed the password. There's no chance that was lost on them. What they want is not data, they want backdoors.

3 - Bill Gates is not a smart person. He invented spam. He has ruined 100x more value than he's created and he's probably causing irreparable damage with 95% of his charity projects - because of exactly the brand of cluelessness that would lead him to think complying with FBI is a good idea.

Are these bankers ignoring the iPhone Upgrade Program? It might only be a couple years before billions of people are getting a new iPhone every September.