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by jpxxx 5061 days ago
So tedious.

Apple is extremely well positioned in front of almost every mass trend happening in consumer electronics. They are sitting on a tenth of a trillion dollars in cash. They have content deals with more companies in more places than almost anyone else on Earth. They are ending investment in unfruitful markets. They have a rapidly converging consumer platform that has essentially no identifiable competitive weaknesses. Investor confidence is thunderingly high. They're headquartered in an extremely pro-business nation and feted as the last great American wonder business with all that implies politically. They have a global retail arm that defies everything known about retail. Their manufacturing pipeline shames former industry leaders. Their litigation is top-notch. Their customer goodwill is limitless and serves to smooth over many failures in execution and experience.

They are, even if all goes dark tomorrow, one of the greatest successes in our industry that we will see in our lives. So as someone put above: if Apple can survive iPod Socks and the G4 Cube, they can probably survive whatever some stringer for Time is reading in the tea leaves.

Does anyone have any actual concerns about actual Apple as it pertains to the actual real world? I'll start:

- Their push for a tax holiday is going to go over extremely poorly in an election year

- Their extremely slow iPhone hardware update cycle leaves them vulnerable to fast-evolving competitors and a single bad product will poison the well for years

- The colossal amount of value stored nowadays in a single Apple ID means the damage from a security breach or intrusion is astronomical

- Apple has nothing interesting or heartening to say about their law enforcement policies vis a vis the data they collect

- Stitched leatherette Contacts

3 comments

Looks like someone owns some Apple stock.
Not a dime. I'm just tired of listening to willfully obtuse dilettantes try to calculate the exact instant they should be "over" Apple so they don't get caught looking uncool.
Stitched leatherette Contacts?
An evolving trend in OS X and iOS is to rework various applications into little faux leatherette items - Contacts and Calendars have both received this treatment.

Reaction is almost universally negative, even among tech uninvolved customers. It appears unprofessional and unbusinesslike to them and tarnishes the image of Apple software as being elegant and industry-best. Apple's made small retreats lately but the idiom is still riding high.

That's the most worrisome of the list.
> Their push for a tax holiday is going to go over extremely poorly in an election year.

Apple is not the only company requesting this and most of the discussions have been behind closed door. It hasn't been an issue previously and won't be an issue in the future.

>Their extremely slow iPhone hardware update cycle leaves them vulnerable to fast-evolving competitors and a single bad product will poison the well for years.

The update cycle has been in place for a number of generations now and every successive update has been more successful than the last. So this is factually baseless. Also many people like the fact that Apple supports their devices a lot longer than Android OEMs.

>The colossal amount of value stored nowadays in a single Apple ID means the damage from a security breach or intrusion is astronomical.

No different than if your online banking, Amazon, Google login was compromised. And infinitely more 'value' can be obtained by simply stealing a person's laptop or phone.

> Apple has nothing interesting or heartening to say about their law enforcement policies vis a vis the data they collect.

No evidence that this is an issue for most people. Telcos you would argue have a longer and deeper history of compliance with federal enforcement agencies and there hasn't been much of a uproar about it.

> Stitched leatherette Contacts.

Again factually baseless that this has impacted Apple in any way. Overwhelming popularity of recent iOS and OSX updates discredit your belief that it is an issue. Not to mention Apple has had 'unique' UI metaphors in place since 10.0 beta with Aqua, Pinstripes, Brushed Metal etc.

I only brought up Contacts as a joke. :) It's a little crass for my tastes but meaningless in the greater scheme.

I agree that the law enforcement issues and tax holiday aren't really registering in the public consciousness, but they're important to me and the PR downsides for Apple could be significant.

I'm not backing down on the phone cycle or the security issues. A poorly received iPhone loses Apple the substantial market for "status" phones, poisons the next two years of 'budget' iPhones, and takes them months to a year to recover from. Those aren't small stakes.

And the security thing could be an apocalypse. Think bigger than just a single ID: someone finds out a way to silently break their way into Apple's infrastructure and start pulling databases. It's not just your Gmail or easily reversible banking information walking out the door: it's every text conversation you've ever had with a loved one. It's your voice, it's your passbook, it's your email settings, it's your contact book, your calendar, your billing address, you name it. It's all tied to a single ID and password. And there's hundreds of millions of them. That's incredible value, and there will be those who will go after it. The consequences for a major breach are severe.