Apple: Too successful to really care anymore
Before we go wallowing about in our Schadenfreude over Apple's apparent missteps, let's all take a moment to reflect upon the following important fact concerning Apple: in July 2010 Apple reported fiscal third quarter net income of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, on revenue of $15.7 billion. Woah!
No matter how much Apple is disliked in certain quarters, or how disenfranchised you may feel over not being able to do with your iToy as you see fit (and I raise my hand to signify my displeasure), Apple is so popular right now they can't make product fast enough to satisfy demand, especially in the portable device market, especially with their iPhone 4 and iPad devices. And Apple is on track for an even bigger blowout forth quarter and fiscal year.
Kind of makes your moaning and groaning about Apple seem a bit irrelevant, doesn't it?
Just one final comment. Being able to legally jailbreak your iDevice doesn't make it any easier. If anything, it will motivate Apple to double down and create firmware updates that make it even more difficult in the future, and I'd bet serious money that Apple will release new hardware that locks their devices down even further. This is what Jobs has wanted all along, stretching back to the physically locked-up nature of the Mac Classic. Oh, by the way, the decision to sanction jailbreaking is good for the next two years. At that time this decision will be revisited and it could be rescinded. Enjoy your new-found legality while you can.
Of course the argument to grumps like me is to not buy Apple, but to buy something else, something equivalent. So I await, with morbid interest, the release of tablets later this year running some version of Android. I have my doubts about Android and it's ability to compete effectively against iOS-based devices from Apple. In the mean time, my money stays firmly in my pocket.
Update
I didn't catch this earlier. Times Newsline (who are they?) posted an article "Antennagate Aftermath: 57 Percent Customers Likely To Do Away With iPhone 4." The article is poorly written and does not contain a link to the Opinium Research... er, research, cited in the article. I would accept this article with copious amounts of salt.
Update 2
Found this while slumming through /. "Digital Copywrongs" does a good job of disabusing the joyous celebration of folks like the Electronic Freedom Foundation by pointedly reminding everyone that no matter the color of this particular lipstick, the DMCA was and continues to be a particularly ugly pig.
The 'Antennagate' item is perhaps the most interesting for me, because it looks like the most dominant Apple technology has finally failed: Steve Job's RDF.
ReplyDeleteThe Reality Distortion Field has made every announcement into a good announcement, and made each product that wasn't a smash success fade from everyone's memory. Go into one of the shiny GAP-esque computer stores and ask for an iPod HiFi. See if those Geniuses even know what that is.
Compare the reaction to the iPod Phone v.4 to the massive love-fest of the iPad speculation, and it seems like there's been a fundamental change in how Apple is treated by the news media. It's still a long way from a revival of independent investigative journalism, but at least we're not simply getting promo pieces and press releases any more.