Another solid quarter for Apple. “The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.” The official Apple Money Pile: $110 billion. That’s where those 47% profit margins you pay go to!
I am a Linux fanboy, but I can’t advise anyone I love against mac products. Any of them.
Android 4 (on my Galaxy S II) is nice enough that I feel no Apple lust. Apple laptop hardware is still singularly glorious, and the price difference is negligible. Touch pads are a bugger to use under Linux though, at least they are the way I have configured them.
Tell me about it. Linux doesn’t even *recognise* the Sentelic touchpad on my ZenBook (only as a regular ps/2 mouse).
Hopefully that won’t be a problem in the near future. Kernel 3.2, that will be available on the new Ubuntu tomorrow, will support my work laptop’s trackpad and, if I’m not mistaken, your. Rolling-release distributions have this problem solved for months now.
Ooh that would be quite welcome. I have Ubuntu 12.04 running right now (the beta or RC or whatever it was), but it’s not on 3.2 yet.
I’ve got a 2008 Macbook, and Ubuntu 11.10 support for the touchpad is really poor. I’ve hacked away at it for hours using forums & knowledgebase for support but it’s still a real horrible thing to use.
OS X on the same machine gives perfect control over the pointer. It’s a damn shame.
Edited 2012-04-25 16:14 UTC
No good. Supposedly 3.3 works… Which won’t be in Ubuntu for a while. Ugh.
Depends on who your loved ones are
I can not advise non-tech users against Apple products, but I can advise them against Apple itself. It also seems like most are already starting to be pretty suspicious of Apple without nerd advise.
But for people with similar requirements as me, there are many things wrong with Apple products that just makes them useless or simply overprices toys.
Edited 2012-04-25 08:19 UTC
Could you expand on that…what are your requirements?
As an Amiga refugee, it’s somewhat comforting to know my chosen technology provider won’t keel over and die any time soon
I guess that’s what one pays the premium for 
Despite all the analysts that predicted that Apple will fail, that the Mac market has peaked, that no one wants an iPad and that iOS stands no chance against Android.
Disclaimer: I hate Apple.
That aside, the idea that the will be replaced is born out of pure economics. There is just too much money for someone not to come along and do what Apple does, only better. That or they will become popular enough (seeing a lot of this lately) that they will be targeted by all the malicious software makers. While Apple may lock down its store, you still sync your devices to either a PC or a Mac. They still sit out on wireless most of the time. They make a really good target. And Apple has a really bad history with security.
Except that what Apple does is sell shiny products as a premium price. Part of the transaction involves status. For someone to come along and sell similar products at a lower price does not work – the user loses the status factor. I don’t think anyone will be challenging Apple in the premium device section any time soon. Someone will have to come along and be able to “out-status” them. It will happen, but I can’t think of a current company that can do that.
Where’s the stockholder’s dividends?
I think Tim Cook said they will be paying about $2.50 per share in June… So just be patient
Edited 2012-04-24 23:52 UTC
Do you have shares?
More like units shipped, I work in China and in many of the Apple stores and authorized resellers there are tons of them in stock, the shelves are full. People are looking at them on display, but are signing up for the new HTC OneXs’ and Samsung Notes.
Cool story bro. Here’s another anecdote for you: I visited China for business less than a week ago. I more brand-spanking new iPhones and iPads than anything else. Nearly everyone from managers to staff had one; even the courier had one!
From New York Times, April 24, 2012:
That’s a lot of shipped units for a country that is supposedly more interested in HTCs and Samsung Notes.
The interesting figures would be how much of them were first time purchases, and how many of them were switches from one to the other. I find it highly amusing with all the voodoo reasoning surrounding sales figures. The numbers are too opaque (we don’t know what different kinds of sales they are composed of) to make any meaningful prediction about how these quarterly sales figures would contribute to the next quarter, or even the next two years.
Unlike the West, the Chinese don’t have any concept of brand loyalty. Value for money is the only thing that matters to the average Chinese. Let’s wait until Apple’s customer service reputation becomes properly embedded in people’s minds and watch their decisions when they make their next purchase.
Android is obliterating iOS in China.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/net-us-android-apple-idUS…
Edited 2012-04-25 08:17 UTC
It would have been fun to put this article in the post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/bad-apple-employ-m…
The article doesn’t mention natural resources. A lot of which Apple needs originates from China.
It would cost a lot more to transport all that to the US to assemble their hardware there.
Not really. The only ressources really tied to China are the rare earth elements, and only traces are needed. In volume (which is the relevant parameter here, as transportation costs scales mostly with weight/volume), most of what makes an iPhone is metal (which the US produces already a lot) and gorilla glass (which was invented by an american company, Corning, which had to migrate to China to put its factories next to Foxconn. Apple actively pushed a major american subcontractor to offshore its production).
Here is a 7-pages article to drive the point home: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-sque…
Here you go: massive government intervention ready to lend (or banks ready to do the same thing, like what could be seen in South Korea and Singapore). Exactly what the Very Important People tell us is very very inefficient, or refuse to do in order to get the only metric they care for (the ROI) as high as unsustainably possible.
All the other reasons given by Apple managers should be taken with a grain of salt: you can organize a logistic as excellent in the USA, and you can find as many skilled workers.
The reality distortion field is working at full power.
Just wait until a disgruntled Chinese factory worker snaps and runs to the front of the assembly lines and smashes the talking face of Steve Jobs with a hammer.
Of all the lame excuses this must be one of the worst. Natural resources?
Well, yeah, if you consider labor a natural resource…
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/04/19/apple-china-rare-earth-elem…
Except the USA also has abundant sources of rare earth elements. The jobs and economic output that would result from having actually mine the minerals and from developing environmentally safe methods of extracting the minerals would be significant.
I’m not doubting that, just wondering why nobody has set up a mining installation up yet.
Considering the booming phone and tablet market one should expect to make some money from a heavy demand of rare materials.
Maybe mining companies can’t find the skilled workers they need? Seems to be acceptable excuse.
Does sound simpler than mining astroids!
Nah, all you need is the capital letter A. Just remember to watch out for the smaller zippier UFO.
Don’t get me in the mood to dust off my Atari 2600.
Actually, could someone who’s more knowledgeable about the electronics industry tell me WHY they need so much of those rare-earth elements ?
If I refer to Wikipedia’s list ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth ), the only one which I believe is commonly used in consumer products is neodymium, because one can manufacture powerful magnets with it.
Why would traditional electronics require something else than Si, Ga, and As, plus B and P for doping, cheap plastics for component cases, and Cu and Au for wires ? Okay, coming from Apple, I guess that there is also an absolute need for Al and “gorilla glass” also, but AFAIK the latter doesn’t contain rare-earth material.
What am I missing ? Batteries ?
Edited 2012-04-26 07:09 UTC
Well, that same list says neodymium is also used for ceramic capacitors, which ” are suitable for moderately high-frequency work … as modern ceramic caps are fairly non-inductive compared to the other major classes of capacitors”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor
Indeed, that could be a good track. I did not find why they need to use Nd specifically, but I guess that’s some kind of trade secret. Thanks !
All these excellent results, from Samsung and Apple, come primarily from the massive retraction of Nokia market share, due to Elop’s decision to Osborne its own product line by calling it publicly a “burning platform”, and then announcing its death without even a solid backup solution in place
Just look at how much Nokia has lost in a single year !
And now, give this market share to its stronger rivals. This makes for outstanding results.
Many thanks Elop for destroying a European company so effectively, in the tiny (and failed) hope to marginally improve the perspective of a US-based one.
Clearly, everyone wants larger screens.
Thanks Apple. I like your products and your shares are highly profitable.
Edited 2012-04-25 21:38 UTC