Liberty

This is from Samsung's own website: http://i.imgur.com/toksRTI.jpg That's on par with the iPhone? What's build quality to you? Number of defects? To me it's use of materials, tolerances, how it feels in your hand, how it gives an impression of quality, how it looks, how it works. Maybe you're looking at it super narrowly and I'm looking at it more broadly. What's I've seen of Android L in that super long, super boring Google keynote certainly didn't shake my confidence in which OS the buying public will prefer for their high-end phones... And by the time 50% of android users are on Android L, Apple will have 90% of its customers on iOS 10 or 11... Pretty sure Macs are making more profits than the rest of the PC industry combined right now, and have for a while. They're also growing while others are shrinking. That hasn't always been the case, of course, but what matters is the future, and I don't see HP and DELL competing very effectively with Macs going forward, especially after they get more integrated with iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, etc. Most PC makers don't even make money on the hardware anymore, they get paid to put crapware on their products. Shameful, really.

Of course the Macworld piece is written in a partisan way, but the point that the iPhone gets compared against the best feature of every Android phone out there is still true. People can't go the salad bar approach and pick the best feature from 5 different phones, they have to buy just one, and Apple is still ahead. You think the mostly plasticy phones have the same build quality as iPhones? Maybe "build quality" doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me. And it's inferior in more ways that matter to most people, who aren't techies. And iOS 8 was a major, major step ahead, making iOS clearly superior right now. Not to mention that like 2/3 of Android users are a few versions behind anyway... What matters is what people actually use, not some idealized scenario. Yes, I'm sure it's about to show up in Mac computers any day now, after 30 years...

Just to split hairs: I don't think Pearson's model has to be right for the whole pharma industry, just for the subset of it that he focuses on.

I don't know if you saw this, but I think it's pretty on point: http://www.macworld.com/article/2687069/unfair-comparisons-stacking-the-iphone-against-every-android-phone-feature.html What's the one phone that people can actually buy that is competitive with the iPhone 6 on all aspects of hardware? And we haven't even gotten into software and the ecosystem... That's the main differentiator. Commoditization is a problem for Android, because they all use the same OS and services, and so compete with each other mostly on price, which leads to lower build quality and smaller margins to reinvest, etc... You can clearly see that by the fact that the whole hardware ecosystem isn't making money despite shipping huge volumes, except for Samsung, and even they are doing worse all the time lately and only have a fraction of Apple's profits. It's the same as windows PCs being commoditized but Macs being differentiated, still making superior profits decades later.. Not sure why it's so hard to understand, the facts clearly show it. If you want iOS, there's only one place to go. That's not commoditized. I'll let Android rush to be the first doing all kinds of stuff, good and bad, for bragging rights and gobble unprofitable market share if Apple can have the profits and take its time to do things right so its customers can have a better experience...

he was very vocal on this the last time down. he's been very silent on this at his gone up. for the life of me I don't get his thesis. it seems to me he believes non gaap earnings are suspect and a sign of faulty accounting. For the life of me, I don't get him. Once you have analyzed his thesis, and you disagree with him, I would not pay any more attention to him. He's good, but just not good enough to listen to. It's personal for him. He hates Ackman. It affects his judgement. That's my theory, anyway...

The facts show that they are not easily bent. They are just not operating outside the laws of physics, so like all other phones, it is possible to damage them and it is possible for QC to miss defects. Apple said iOS 8.0.1's bug affected 40,000 people. They have over 800 million iOS devices sold. They had to pull a point update for a day because of a bug that affected a tiny fraction of their customers. What a debacle... That's certainly worth removing tens of billions from the market cap. Without the media echo chamber, we'd never even know about this since it appears to be affecting so few people. If that's a fiasco, I wonder what shipping something like Windows Vista is... Now I'm just waiting for some dude to bend and iPad on YouTube to get millions of views and make tons of ad money. Should happen any moment now...

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6845611/inside-apples-iphone-6-torture-building http://recode.net/2014/09/25/inside-apples-secret-testing-labs-where-phones-are-bent-all-day-long/ The best thing about these 'scandals' is they allow us a peak inside Apple. The antennagate showed us some amazing anechoic rooms and testing gear...

People will stop buying iPhones because of this, obviously. This is what they will do: http://www.macworld.com/article/2687069/unfair-comparisons-stacking-the-iphone-against-every-android-phone-feature.html

I'm not saying it's impossible or nobody's having issues. There are all kinds of problems with phones, and out of millions of them, you'll find a number of people with bad experiences. I just doubt it'll amount to much over time, like all the previous "scandals". Here's the "conclusions" from the very link you posted, btw: http://i.imgur.com/KTBtvmG.png

I bet this turns out to be as much of a real-world issue as antennagate was for the iPhone 4 (how many of those were sold without changing the design? Heck, they still sell them in india). The naive thing is to think that Apple didn't test for this. Have you seen how much force is needed to bend one of these? In other news: Don't sit on your thousand-dollar glasses... The 6 seems to do very well in durability tests: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/190698-apples-iphone-6-is-more-durable-less-breakable-than-galaxy-s5-and-one-m8 As someone on reddit wrote: "Something like this happens with every iPhone release. When 10 million people buy a product a few will have a problem. Then the news jumps all over that because Apple "failing" would be a great story. Antennagate, purple lens flare, scuff gate, and now bend ghazi" Apple news sell. The media get huge readership and viewership from these.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1056831/000091957414005383/d6106261_13d-a.htm

Canada is almost a 2D country, though. Most people live in the South, along the US border. Not that many people want to live in the Yukon or Northwest Territories... The US is smaller in total area, but a lot more of it is pleasant to live in. But the whole "running out of space" thing isn't a very convincing argument. China has over a billion people and still has a lot of space to build new cities (which they do, many of them are even empty).. The earth's carrying capacity depends more on our sources of energy and food than on actual living space for people. If we had 100% clean energy and very efficient sources of food that don't require too much arable land, we could probably fit 100 billion people on Earth easily.

http://ir.valeant.com/investor-relations/news-releases/news-release-details/2014/Bausch--Lomb-and-Nicoxs-Glaucoma-Candidate-VESNEO-latanoprostene-bunod-Meets-Primary-Endpoint-in-Phase-3-Studies/default.aspx More great news.

Extrapolating population numbers is hard. Iran used to have like 7 kids per women a few decades ago and now I think they're below replacement rate (2.1). Things change fast. Latest numbers I've seen show us plateauing under 10 billion, but that could change too... Not that I would base in any way my thinking on Canada's RE on this...

I like this tweet about this whole nonsense: "My window shattered after I threw a brick at it, table caught fire after I set it alight, and my neck hurts from sticking my head up my ass" And this: "Metal bends, plastic cracks, light refracts, and objects block radio waves. Collectively, these iPhonegates have been like a mini lesson in physics." https://applespotlight.com/2014/09/23/a-brief-history-of-iphonegates/ Also, some interesting speculation on the future of the Apple Watch, eventually being the Digital Hub 3.0: http://stratechery.com/2014/now-apple-watch/

As if this thing wasn't complex enough already, there's now some whispers that Actavis could go directly against Salix, which would pull the carpet from under Allergan:

Tim Cook memo to Apple employees:

Got the album. Listening for first time. Can't comment on quality yet, as these types of albums need to grow on me for a while before I'm sure how much I like them.. But it's funny how on some tracks he's starting to sound more like Tom Waits while on others ("My Oh My" for example) he sounds just like he's sounded for a couple decades..

http://nypost.com/2014/09/24/allergan-must-prove-it-isnt-thwarting-acquistion-expert/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/valeant-switches-to-sugar-but-allergan-still-not-biting/?smid=tw-dealbook&seid=auto

He seems to agree with you:

Thanks, I love Cohen. Had no idea he was working on anything new so quickly after Old Ideas. My fave is probably still The Future from 1992, but I often listen to the Live in London double live album from a few years ago and a many of his other albums. Cheers Gio :)

LOL. So Pfizer has approached Actavis who has approached Allergan who has been approached by Valeant before approaching Jazz and Salix. ???

iPhone 6 apparently close to final regulatory approval in China: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102024788

http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2014/09/stock-buybacks-they-are-big-they-are.html Aswath Damodaran takes a closer look at buybacks.

Looks like that might be the case : http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/ackman-threatens-to-sue-if-allergan-proceeds-with-salix-deal/