On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 11:28:41 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>> It would either be you and Jobs, or just you, letting them rebel. I would keep the line.
>>>
>>> That's funny, as I was responding to your statement above, "So, let them rebel." :D
>>
>> "Let them rebel" was with regard to your point of view. As demonstrated by the sentence I put after it: "You said that they would like to see it go away, and/or they want to milk it." You said that Apple would be happy to see it go away. Then you added that they were "milking" the line while they could. Satisfying rebelling users doesn't jive with either position. They rebel and you want to get rid of it - and you get rid of it. They rebel wanting changes, and you only want to keep milk it while you can - then you get rid of it, because you can't milk what you have.
>
> Your logic is extremely confused.  Let me spell it out for you: the Mac is all but dead, particularly when compared to the mobile computing tidal wave, since they sell 10 iPhones + iPads for every Mac, according to the sales link I gave you before.  They have cut investment in that legacy Mac product, but they would like to keep selling a lower-quality product at high prices to the few chumps that still maintain the old Mac aura in their heads.

You have little company in thinking the Mac line is a "low-quality product". The computer magazine writers gush about the Macbooks.

As far as "all but dead", in the most recent quarter, that line did have declining sales from the previous year, but it was "5.6 billion in revenue in Q3 — over 12% of Apple’s total for the quarter".


> So that is what they do, milk the suckers still paying high prices for a rarely refreshed product with a lot more bugs.  I don't know what's hard to understand about this for you.  When the Mac userbase rebels, they try to calm them down and say they're coming out with a new Mac Pro _next year_, five years since the last one!

Your logic seems extremely confused. If they aren't changing the product it won't have a "lot more bugs". With no changes you get less bugs over time.

>
> Apple is a business.  As long as the Mac faithful are still willing to pay a lot of money for lower-quality products, they will gladly take their money, even though it's now just a sideline for their real business, the iPhone.  Of course, they'd rather just focus on the iPhone, but if they can take a lot of devs off macOS and still milk those suckers, why wouldn't they?

What does "take a lot of devs off macOS" refer to?

>
> Apple is all about making money, which is why they're the largest company in the world, with some forecasting that they will soon be the first company to have a market cap of... one trillion dollars!!! insertDoctorEvilPinkie();
>

Very few companies are not "all about making money". That is why Americans were laid off by the millions and replaced by workers in countries with much cheaper labor rates. Bad for the workers, good for "making money". Apple isn't unique in making all it's products outside the USA.

I don't see where it makes sense to call people who buy Mac products suckers (they seem especially popular with software developers) who pay extra for what you call "low-quality equipment" without saying the same thing about the people who buy iPhones. Your mantra is "people need so much less than they are buying". Well, that applies as much to iPhone users as it does Mac users. People don't need $1,000 phones and they don't need to upgrade a phone every two years.

>>>> The large Apple profit comes from offering quality products and then pricing them at the highest gross profit margin in the industry. In order to get people to pay a premium for their products it helps to have a mystique or following, and the macOS line helps to maintain their mystique and it is small potatoes next to their phone business.
>>>
>>> I've already said repeatedly that they're not going to drop the Mac line anytime soon, so I don't know why you want to write a paragraph justifying keeping it.
>>
>> My post was in response to this statement of yours "Simple, they see the writing on the wall, ie much smaller sales than mobile, SO THEY WANT THE LEGACY PRODUCT TO GO AWAY, which means they can focus on the much bigger mobile market." That seems to be a contradiction to "they're not going to drop the Mac line anytime soon".
>
> No contradiction: they want the Mac to go away, but are happy to keep supplementing their bottom line while pulling engineers off of it, just like the iPod Touch.

If somebody wants something to go away and they can make it go away, they make it go away. It is most certainly a contradiction to say "they want it to go away" and they "want it to not go away so they can milk it".
>
> You seem to be confused by the fact that a business sometimes has contradictory goals- should we focus exclusively on the iPhone and make more money there or keep the Mac limping along too?- and tries to balance the two as long as it makes sense.
>

That doesn't look like contradictory goals. It looks like two choices. Only iPhone or iPhone + macOS. They chose the latter. What exactly would Apple do, if it didn't make Macs, with regard to iPhone development, that would allow it to make more money from the iPhone? Their revenue from iPhones is 10's of billions of dollars a quarter. I doubt that there is any focus that the iPhone is missing.


>
>> If people ever get so cost-conscious that they decide to buy a $150 companion for their phone, instead of a $400 laptop, it's unlikely they will be using iPhones. You can get a nice Android phone with plenty of RAM/ROM for half the price of an  iPhone.
>
> Sure, the hypothetical iPhone with multiwindow/dock and the iPad Pro replace the expensive Macbook or Surface Pro, while the Android phone you already have along with something like Dex/Sentio replaces cheaper Windows PCs.  I already made this point earlier.

So Apple users need a tablet and a phone but Android users just need a phone? There are Android phones just as expensive as iPhones, in addition to the ones that are 1/10th to 1/2 the price.

Why are you talking about iPads? Why would a $649 and up iPad Pro be something people need when you say they can use their phone instead of a $400 Windows laptop? That is something I would expect Tim Cook to claim.

On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 12:55:24 UTC, Tony wrote:
> Very few companies are not "all about making money". That is why Americans were laid off by the millions and replaced by workers in countries with much cheaper labor rates. Bad for the workers, good for "making money". Apple isn't unique in making all it's products outside the USA.

I understand what you mean, but I don't think it is a scientific fact that companies are all about making money. They are run by humans with a set of beliefs and desires which they operate under… Anyway, even companies that are all about making money need to think long term, meaning to take care of their long term reputation. Microsoft was not all about making money in the 90s, but they were all about growing and retaining market share using bad business practices and that cost them their reputation among IT professionals. IBM also failed in the PC market by trying to profit on their brand. Apple might face a similar destiny, but maybe there are too many non-techies in their camp for that effect to kick in. Hard to tell.

Companies like Amazon are more about growth than making money… Some banks are more about being big than making money long term… Too big to fail and the government will save your ass. Etc.

Family owned business often have their own set of ethics related to the company history and ethics. Same with gründer-owned businesses. I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs had a clear vision for what kind of company Apple should be and what kind of products they should make. I am not sure if the current Apple management has such clear visions…

> I don't see where it makes sense to call people who buy Mac products suckers (they seem especially popular with software developers) who pay extra for what you call "low-quality equipment" without saying the same thing about the people who buy iPhones.

I don't know. I use a mac daily, but there is not a single product in their line today that is anywhere near good value compared by what you get by building your own Linux/Windows box or buy a quality non-Apple product from Samsung or Asus…

Apple's best desktop offer is a modest 2-core i5 at $1000 (with no screen, keyboard or mouse) Want a 2-core i7 instead? Add $350… You have to be a sucker to do that… Sorry. 2-core i7? WTF? Why is Intel even producing those?

Ok, so Apple want developers to buy Mac Pro instead… Let's see, here in Norway the entry level price for Mac Pro is… $4200, for a 6-core CPU. Uhm, for that price you could build a 18 core rig…

Yes, one have to either be a non-tech sucker or locked into the Mac eco system to buy at those rates.

Oh wait, I forgot. The have a new 8-core model that is expected to sell for $5000… Right… So that would bring the 18-core model at… $15000?

At what pricing-point is it reasonable to call Apple customers for suckers? :-)

On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 12:55:24 UTC, Tony wrote:
> On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 11:28:41 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Your logic is extremely confused.  Let me spell it out for you: the Mac is all but dead, particularly when compared to the mobile computing tidal wave, since they sell 10 iPhones + iPads for every Mac, according to the sales link I gave you before.  They have cut investment in that legacy Mac product, but they would like to keep selling a lower-quality product at high prices to the few chumps that still maintain the old Mac aura in their heads.
>
> You have little company in thinking the Mac line is a "low-quality product". The computer magazine writers gush about the Macbooks.

lol, your own paste of what I wrote says "lower-quality product" above, yet you do not get it right in your quote below and go off on your own error.  While you make a few decent points elsewhere, your post is mostly filled with such mistakes, so I'm not going to sit here and argue with stuff you made up or explain basic business concepts to you, like market segmentation or legacy support.

On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 22:16:55 UTC, Jerry wrote:
> Indeed, you could contact Microsoft for support and know you are talking to professional and not some rabid fanatic that will split hairs over the differences between linux and freebsd.

Well.. if MSFT stop making stupid design decisions, they could invest their money in more innovation, instead of investing it into supporting and correcting their stupid design decisions.

Since Windows XP, what have they done:

- they release Vista (people lost their jobs over that, and MSFT had to go back to drawing board and actually consider what their customers want for a change).

- have you ever compared opening Event Viewer on windows xp, to opening it on every windows version since xp...it just gets bigger and slower to open.

- then they release Windows 7, with its fancy aero interface (which i really liked).

- then they took it away.

- then they added all this so called 'intelligence' into the o/s, that just bloated it and made it slower.

- then they took the start button away

- then they thought tiles are a better way to find your programs.

- then they though preventing users from customising their system, is something that should be done.

- then they thought the boring, plain metro interface - is innovative.

- then they thought preventing users from stopping the automatic installation of updates was a good idea

- then thought treating the desktop like it's a mobile tablet, is a good idea.

- then they thought they'd make it so hard for anyone to find anything, that users would have to revert to using their new little wiget that tracks everything the user does and sends it off to MFST for big data analysis.

..oh man... i could just go on and on.....

The only innovation in software in the last decade or more, has come from open source projects.

So anyone that suggest we look  to MSFT for design decisions, better think again.

When I joined the forum a little while back, I dared to suggest that D should be able to compile a 64bit binary on Windows, without having to relying on gigabytes of proprietaty, closed source, bloat from MSFT.

I stand by that comment, despite the harrassment from the many MSFT fanboys on these forums.

I've also noticed, that since I made that comment, there's been an increase in attempts to do just that. Which is great.

On Sunday, 12 November 2017 at 10:18:09 UTC, Tony wrote:
> But those humans at the top, working for public companies, are monitored by a board and stockholders who place "making money" as the main, and normally only, measure of their job performance.

Sure, when you get a leader that is weak on vision then he or she might opting for milking the customer base to satisfy stock owners and over time erode support… So there most certainly can be radical changes when the original «gründer» or a strong «visonary» is displaced. I think it would have been very difficult to displace Steve Jobs though.

You could probably make the same argument about IKEA. As long as the original vision is strong (good value affordable-DIY furniture) then it will be difficult to displace, with weak leadership that could erode and profits would outweigh vision and they would erode their brand (what-we-are-all-about).

> "growing and retaining market share" is a part of "all about making money", to me. My definition of "not all about making money" is when a company does things to benefit the environment or citizens or employees that they could have legally avoided, which gives them lower profits than they would have had from the other course of action.

It all depends. Are the stock markets fully rational? Probably not, many invest based on what they think other investors will like and not by analysing objective measures of profits.  Some companies are not even on the stock market (i.e. IKEA is a foundation). Will stock markets only reward companies that have good objective profits to show to or will they also reward companies that have low profit margins but are insanely big?

IBM were insanely big in terms of market dominance. Silicon Graphics and SUN were big in high-performance computing. Where did that go? There is a perception that being big will necessarily mean large profits in the future. That may be the case, but it could also mean that you've got a juggernaut that is difficult to steer…

However, I think it is very difficult for a company over time to retain a strong brand vision if they only care about short-term profits. With weak leaders that are not capable of projecting visions then the share owners will take control and perhaps send the company in the wrong direction… With good communication of strong visions it is harder to get a majority behind such changes.

> I see Amazon as foregoing profits now for growth - and also wiping out the competition - in order to reap massive profits in the future.  At least, I haven't heard of them foregoing profits in order to benefit employees, citizens or the environment. Their stock price has a very high valuation (PE ration of 285.1), reflective of investors expecting massive profits in the future.

Right, but how rational is that analysis? I find better deals and better products on dedicated netshops. If Amazon controlled the search applications, then it would look more certain. But as long as there are free price-comparison applications… Who knows if being that generic will be an advantage.

E.g. is it conceivable that Amazon could beat IKEA? And will people in the future buy physical books, music or movies? What is the long term market place for Amazon?

(I like Amazon for convenience though.)

> That is what I see as the Apple way of doing things from their beginning back in the late 1970s. They make premium and/or unique products and then mark them up more than anybody in the industry. Their products have always been unique with regard to the OS (except for a year or two when they allowed Mac clones) making the situation that no other manufacturer can offer an identical product.

Sure, but Steve Jobs understood that they should try to make their products available on the grass-root level also. So they made a line that was affordable enough for people to buy for school class rooms and teenagers. Those are future customers, so even if you don't make large profit margins it is a good investment. iOS is a bit generic and identity-less compared to say MacOS.

Current Apple management does not understand that and schools get good deals on Windows PCs instead…

On Monday, 13 November 2017 at 10:26:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I accurately characterized the tenor of their problem

Uhm… «accurately» ?? LOL!! 8'D

> generalize and point that out, ie he _was_ confused in the points he was making.

I am never confused, but this is dlang.org, I've seen worse…

On Monday, 13 November 2017 at 11:46:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Considering you kept ignoring my evidence of Android and jumping to Apple, I'd say that it was perfectly accurate.

Oh well, I'm focusing on what I am interested in… Anyway, it is rather obvious that subjective ad-hominem statements in a debate hardly will be «perfectly accurate» (you were dead wrong, and that is perfectly accurate, of course ;-)

> I didn't say you were confused, the "confused" comments that Walter pasted were made to Tony.  But thank you for demonstrating that it happens to you too. ;)

I am never confused. Get it? NEVER!!!

After all this flaming about Windows, mobile devices (I personally prefer my desktop PC thanks to its "power", or at least what it used to left, thanks to long unemployment time and lack of income, have a Nokia Lumia which I cannot upgrade to W10 due to BS reasons, and I think open-source architectures will kill off the proprietary ARM and x86 in the long run, not the mobile platform the desktops/laptops(funny story is that my mother tried to ditch desktop multiple times for the mobile, then got back, same happened with one of my cousin after he realized that pay-to-win games suck)), can we get back on rails? While its true that Windows and desktop is losing its place, we need to support Windows on a much higher level as long as there's a large number of PCs out there. Game development would highly benefit from D thanks to its all-in-one approach, probably could cut a few millions off from AAA game development. Also audio-engineers are switching to Windows, thanks to Apple scrapping the IO on their products (I'm also a digital artist, have to stay with Windows due to drivers, software, and ease of use).

Walter Bright: What's the licensing state of DMC and OPTLINK? Can it made open-source? If yes, we should patch in a COFF32/64 support, maybe even port it to D for easier development. I can spend some of my time working on the DLL support if needed.

On 15/11/2017 3:15 AM, solidstate1991 wrote:
> After all this flaming about Windows, mobile devices (I personally prefer my desktop PC thanks to its "power", or at least what it used to left, thanks to long unemployment time and lack of income, have a Nokia Lumia which I cannot upgrade to W10 due to BS reasons, and I think open-source architectures will kill off the proprietary ARM and x86 in the long run, not the mobile platform the desktops/laptops(funny story is that my mother tried to ditch desktop multiple times for the mobile, then got back, same happened with one of my cousin after he realized that pay-to-win games suck)), can we get back on rails? While its true that Windows and desktop is losing its place, we need to support Windows on a much higher level as long as there's a large number of PCs out there. Game development would highly benefit from D thanks to its all-in-one approach, probably could cut a few millions off from AAA game development. Also audio-engineers are switching to Windows, thanks to Apple scrapping the IO on their products (I'm also a digital artist, have to stay with Windows due to drivers, software, and ease of use).
> 
> Walter Bright: What's the licensing state of DMC and OPTLINK? Can it made open-source? If yes, we should patch in a COFF32/64 support, maybe even port it to D for easier development. I can spend some of my time working on the DLL support if needed.

https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/19