AAPL - Apple Inc.

[fareastwarriors]

Months After Buying Beats, Apple’s Plans for Its Music Service Remain Unclear

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/business/media/months-after-beats-purchase-apples-plans-for-music-service-are-still-unclear.html?ref=business

[Liberty]

iPhone 6 apparently close to final regulatory approval in China:

 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102024788

[fareastwarriors]

Teardown Shows Apple’s iPhone 6 Cost at Least $200 to Build

 

 

 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102025720?trknav=homestack:topnews:3

[Liberty]

Tim Cook memo to Apple employees:

 

Team,

 

This month has been one for the record books.

 

Just two weeks ago, we launched the biggest advancements in iPhone history with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which our customers absolutely love. We introduced Apple Pay, a new service which will make mobile payments easier, more secure and more private. And we previewed the next chapter in Apple’s story with Apple Watch, our most personal device ever and one which has already captured the world’s imagination.

 

Our customers are enjoying new ways to use their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 8’s intuitive new features, and the ground-breaking security of iOS 8 has demonstrated our strong commitment to protecting users’ privacy. Coming up this fall is OS X Yosemite, with continuity features that deliver an even more fluid experience across all our iOS devices and Macs.

 

Each of these introductions represents years of innovation and hard work by teams all across Apple. Many of you have put the best work of your lives into these amazing new products, which bring together world-class hardware, software and services in the way only Apple can. This is what we do best, and the result transforms people’s lives. It’s simply inspiring.

 

I am also incredibly inspired and proud of all of our work to protect the environment, advance human rights, and change the way teachers teach and students learn.

 

Without you, none of these accomplishments would have been possible. Our people are the soul of our company, and we all need time to refresh and renew. To provide that time, and to recognize all of these achievements — as well as your boundless talent and dedication — I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We will shut down with pay on November 24, 25 and 26 so our teams can enjoy the whole week off.

 

Retail, AppleCare, and several other teams will continue to serve our customers over those days, but will receive the same amount of time off at a date that’s best for them. Please check with your manager for details. International teams will schedule vacation days when appropriate for their country.

 

Enjoy the extra time off with your families and loved ones. You’ve earned it!

 

Tim

[fareastwarriors]

#Bendgate

#Bendgahzi

 

;D

[Liberty]

#Bendgate

#Bendgahzi

 

;D

 

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/

[txlaw]

Hopefully, the Yosemite roll out next month doesn't go as disastrously as the iOS 8 roll out.

 

I've learned to never update my hardware on a new Apple software release until waiting for at least a few weeks' worth of reports.

[hardincap]

No, this is a real problem. In the real world phones undergo a non trivial amount of physical pressure. If it can't withstand this like 5s clearly did, it's a design flaw. Change the manufacturing process.

 

It was unbelievably stupid for apple to put a number on bend complaints, implying that this is a nonissue. A quick look on reddit makes it clear this is a real problem.

 

#Bendgate

#Bendgahzi

 

;D

 

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/

[Palantir]

http://www.product-reviews.net/wp-content/uploads/iPhone-6-bend-test-with-funny-pictures.jpg

[Liberty]

No, this is a real problem. In the real world phones undergo a non trivial amount of physical pressure. If it can't withstand this like 5s clearly did, it's a design flaw. Change the manufacturing process.

 

It was unbelievably stupid for apple to put a number on bend complaints. A quick look on reddit makes it clear this is a real problem.

 

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.

[hardincap]

 

I only read through top 15, but far majority of these report bending, after just a few days of use. Imagine how it will be in months, years of use.

 

and no, not all of these people are sitting on their phones. theres enough pressure it in the front pockets to bend it.

 

 

No, this is a real problem. In the real world phones undergo a non trivial amount of physical pressure. If it can't withstand this like 5s clearly did, it's a design flaw. Change the manufacturing process.

 

It was unbelievably stupid for apple to put a number on bend complaints. A quick look on reddit makes it clear this is a real problem.

 

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.

[Liberty]

 

I only read through top 15, but far majority of these report bending, after just a few days of use. Imagine how it will be in months, years of use.

 

and no, not all of these people are sitting on their phones. theres enough pressure it in the front pockets to bend it.

 

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

[txlaw]

I honestly don't think Bendgate will be that much of an issue for Apple. 

 

If anything, the iOS 8 flub plus iCloud brute force attacks will be more reputationally damaging.  But still probably not enough to really make any dent whatsoever in actual consumer behavior.

[TorontoRaptorsFan]

If the stock drops Cook will direct the finance team to do more share buybacks.  ;D

 

These are temporary setbacks. The new phones are terrific. New iPads and possible new AppleTV being announced next month.

 

[Liberty]

People will stop buying iPhones because of this, obviously. This is what they will do:

 

Look, all you need to do is get an Android phone from HTC for build quality. Then get an Android phone from Sony because their cameras are so good. Then get a Galaxy Note from Samsung for the largest screen. Then get a Nexus from Google to get a decent software experience. Finally, get a phone from Hauwei because they’re cheap. Then mash them all together and you’ve got one phone that’s better than the iPhone!

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/2687069/unfair-comparisons-stacking-the-iphone-against-every-android-phone-feature.html

[Liberty]

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...

[Guest wellmont]

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...

 

they've got state of the art testing.  you wonder how phones can be so easily bent. and why ios 8.0.1 was such a debacle. must have something to do with being a BigCo.

[Viking]

What are the facts? Apple received 9 complaints about bending. Probably 15 million phones sold in the past week. Apple, thank you for providing an answer. Thank you for also confirming it is NOT indestructible.

[Liberty]

they've got state of the art testing.  you wonder how phones can be so easily bent. and why ios 8.0.1 was such a debacle. must have something to do with being a BigCo.

 

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...

[Guest wellmont]

the media echo chamber cuts both ways. :)

[ni-co]

the media echo chamber cuts both ways. :)

 

This might be a net benefit after all. Even with the insane attention Apple gets, there are always plenty of people out there who have not heard of large screen iPhones. Now at least some of them have. I don't think that many people are going to refrain from buying one simply because it might get bent. That's silly.

[txlaw]

the media echo chamber cuts both ways. :)

 

This might be a net benefit after all. Even with the insane attention Apple gets, there are always plenty of people out there who have not heard of large screen iPhones. Now at least some of them have. I don't think that many people are going to refrain from buying one simply because it might get bent. That's silly.

 

I also doubt that people will refrain from buying the large phones (or return them) because of the possibility of bending. 

 

However, one negative that we haven't discussed is the way that ordinary people are really starting to compare iPhones and Android phones.  We all know that Android partisans immediately scoffed at the iPhone, saying "Welcome to 2012," implying that iPhone not only isn't more innovative than anything else, but is also behind the times. 

 

That sentiment is starting to trickle down to non-geeks and even regular people.  Seeing the bend comparison between a Samsung (or Moto) phone and Apple phone only reinforces the "innovation gap has closed" belief.  So it's a bit of a brand/design mystique hit.

 

But I doubt sales will really be hit that much in the next two quarters because of Bendgate.  The major threat to Apple sales continues to be the commoditization of mobile hardware.

[Liberty]

However, one negative that we haven't discussed is the way that ordinary people are really starting to compare iPhones and Android phones.  We all know that Android partisans immediately scoffed at the iPhone, saying "Welcome to 2012," implying that iPhone not only isn't more innovative than anything else, but is also behind the times. 

 

That sentiment is starting to trickle down to non-geeks and even regular people.  Seeing the bend comparison between a Samsung (or Moto) phone and Apple phone only reinforces the "innovation gap has closed" belief.  So it's a bit of a brand/design mystique hit.

 

But I doubt sales will really be hit that much in the next two quarters because of Bendgate.  The major threat to Apple sales continues to be the commoditization of mobile hardware.

 

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...

[txlaw]

However, one negative that we haven't discussed is the way that ordinary people are really starting to compare iPhones and Android phones.  We all know that Android partisans immediately scoffed at the iPhone, saying "Welcome to 2012," implying that iPhone not only isn't more innovative than anything else, but is also behind the times. 

 

That sentiment is starting to trickle down to non-geeks and even regular people.  Seeing the bend comparison between a Samsung (or Moto) phone and Apple phone only reinforces the "innovation gap has closed" belief.  So it's a bit of a brand/design mystique hit.

 

But I doubt sales will really be hit that much in the next two quarters because of Bendgate.  The major threat to Apple sales continues to be the commoditization of mobile hardware.

 

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...

 

To me, that Macworld piece is quite partisan -- just like the pieces that take digs at Apple for still being in 2012.  (I would also count Gruber, stratechery, and Dediu as Apple partisans.)  In any case, the point in my post above was that, regardless of what you believe reality is, the narrative of "innovation gap closing" is beginning to take hold with the mass media/consumer.

 

On balance, I personally would still go with iPhone over Android after having looked at both iPhone 6 and the latest high end Android phones (Moto X and the new Galaxy, in particular).  However, I do believe that the gap continues to close and, in many ways, has reversed.  I think that build quality is now a non-issue for Android handsets.  And Android, the OS, is still superior in many ways to iOS.  But, again, when I weigh the two, I tend to go with Apple -- for me, the overall determinant has been the privacy and security issues I see with Android.

 

We've had this debate before, but the issue is not that Apple becomes non-premium all of a sudden, it's that the growth expectations for unit sales * ASP (i.e., revenue) for Apple is unrealistic or asymmetrically positive, leading to a valuation that has more downside risk than possible upside return.  Now, if you don't believe the competition is strong enough to have an effect on Apple's revenue lines, then you won't agree with that risk assessment. 

 

I would note that the commoditization effect isn't going to show up all at once.  It will be something that happens over time, so we can really only validly judge today's risk assessment in the future and not based on near term results.

[Liberty]

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.

 

I think that build quality is now a non-issue for Android handsets.

 

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 Android, the OS, is still superior in many ways to iOS.

 

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.

 

I would note that the commoditization effect isn't going to show up all at once.  It will be something that happens over time, so we can really only validly judge today's risk assessment in the future and not based on near term results.

 

Yes, I'm sure it's about to show up in Mac computers any day now, after 30 years...