Apple demands $707 million in additional damages from Samsung

3. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/20...

4. Yes, I qualified this with a "possibly". Their public statements have seemed to indicate that they are willing to change. But progress has been "mixed": http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57516945-37/watchdog-group... Then, there is the question of why they only seemed to realize there was a problem after a NPR expose.

5. Yes, "nothing" was hyperbole. But they lag companies of similar size: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/03/apple-charity-donat... When Exxon is giving more than you on a per-market-cap basis, you might have a problem.

Overall, I think Tim Cook is moving the company in a better direction. But they have a long way to go.

Not talking about tablets and mobile devices. I'm talking about the way they bundle their PC hardware and software. And specifically about the way their TOS forbids installing OSX on non-Apple hardware.

They've shown how profitable the high end sector is with lower sales.

Kind of like how nobody really makes netbooks, only ultrabooks. That also has a bit more to do with Intel/Microsoft threatening/bribing manufacturers, but even without that the manufacturers don't like dealing with that low-end sector.

I would happily pay for Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu would have to charge quite a bit of money in order to make even remotely as much per user as Apple is making by being a high-margin hardware company (where the OS is almost nothing more to them than an incentive to buy more hardware).

Even so, I'd happily pay for that as well; but, I can't, as Ubuntu won't take my money [1]: they don't sell anything I can actually buy; AFAIK, the only thing they accept money for is sending people to my business to give talks about how to better use Ubuntu.

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/why-is-it-free

Now, that said, a lot of the value that Ubuntu brings to the table is actually thanks to the people working on Debian: Ubuntu just takes their packages. I would also quite happily pay for things from Debian; I'd probably be even happier doing so than paying for things from Ubuntu.

However, they also do not charge for things, so I cannot pay them for things. I can donate money to them[2], but now we are talking about something much more complex (involving physical mail and checks or money orders) at a much higher mental cost of deciding "well, now how much?".

[2] http://www.spi-inc.org/donations/

I personally don't even think that I'm rare: a lot of people are quite happy to pay for things that provide them value, and Ubuntu is not just helping me personally, it helps my business. I run all of my servers using Ubuntu: I'm paying Amazon to run the machines, I'd happily pay Ubuntu for the software.

I thereby don't think it is quite fair to put the blame for this on the "very few hackers [that/which/whom/omgdunno] are willing to put their money where their mouths are": Ubuntu is much like the business that is undercharging for their services, and thereby cannot satisfy the customer [3].

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555062

(Though, I can totally see the argument that the reason that they are able to even do what they do is that they do not charge: that if they charged there would be tons of internal community arguments about what the money was for and who would get it; or, quite simply, the direct monetization could undermine the charitable aspects.)

Ubuntu never gave me the option to purchase hardware and an OS of Apple-level quality. So I haven't. I would like to.

Apple controls what I can install or not install on hardware that I already bought and which is mine, Apple does all it can (which is a lot) to make it close to impossible for me to run any software I have not got from them on hardware I own.

Even if I write the software myself I'm supposed to pay Apple for the privilege of running software I wrote on hardware I own!

If that is not insanely outrageous, I don't know what is.

walmart doesn't forbid you from walking into another store and buying it though.

You cannot compare percentages between physical and electronic books. Amazon's costs for a physical book are substantially higher than anybody's costs for an electronic book. You have to compare apples to apples here. Doing so, you won't find Amazon to be any better than Apple, but neither will you find them to be any worse. Their percentages for physical books are substantially worse because their costs are substantially higher. That's the cost that comes from selling paper: you're obligated to give a lot of money to middlemen because the material is inherently expensive to create and sell.

seems like more people are in the same boaat as you but unfortunately apple is targeting mainstream consumers and not the hardcore users who know what they are buying and also tend to be much less in numbers to affect apple's revenues.

if all developers stopped buying apple hardware tomorrow would it really hurt apple ?

xeon :)

As George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". It seems Apple is becoming the biggest bully in the market and the last time, that didn't end very well for Microsoft.

Yeah, they still make a huge amount of money, but that's because they achieved a level of market penetration so high that it was almost a monopoly. Companies spent lots of money on MS technologies. People everywhere got used to Windows because it was easy enough and it was perceived as 'the only way'. Most people didn't know that there were alternatives to Microsoft's products, and most of those who did, saw the alternatives as something hard to learn, or too technical. And eventually, the bullying ended up eroding Microsoft's public image so hard that it is still trying to recover from that.

Apple on the other hand, nor is able to achieve the same level of market penetration anytime soon, nor it is seen as something without competition. OK, maybe some people see them as something without competition, but that's because they are so into their iProducts, that they have stopped being objective. But for most people, it wouldn't be that hard to change from iProducts to any other product out there, whether it's Android or Windows or whatever.

--- My 2 cents:

Apple is a strange company, because it can be understood much better as a rock band than as a hardware manufacturer.

As a rock band, they had some world-wide hits. Critics loved them, and people followed them (even sleeping in the streets to buy some tickets!). They have their groupies and a relatively big fan-base that considers Apple as The Best Band Ever. But money and fame gets into your head. And someday, those fans will slowly start to disagree with some of the "new turns" their beloved band is taking. At first, most of the fans will think "ok, it's just a short phase, they will be back on tracks". Then, for whatever reason, one of the main members leaves the band, and it's replaced by someone else (a low blow, I know, sorry), that has been close to the band for a while, but of course, he has it's own style, somehow different from the guy leaving. "It's a band, not just a guy, the band will go on just as always" some of the fans say, but a few more start to look with suspicion. With the passage of time, the band releases a new cheesy album. Their music is starting to be really commercial. This time, the media notices and the critics are not as happy as they used to be with this band. At this point, their fans take a few different paths:

1- Some will admit that the band is not what it used to be, and may start to look for other horizons, becoming more open to new music and maybe, realize that there are other good things under the sun.

2- Others will just get a little more nervous. But maybe not because they are just loyal, but because they're still not ready to let that phase of their lives behind, they keep spending money on buying the band's products (albums, merchandising, tickets, etc), in hopes that the next album will be better, just as it used to be.

3- A few others will take a very similar path as the previous group, but they do consider themselves loyal. They are not very happy with the current situation. The band does not causes the same level of joy on them as it used to cause. But they were there with the band since the beginning and they will be there for the band now.

4- Finally, the groupies, the hardcore fans, will go berserk and will defend the band, the new direction, the new members, the new cheesy album, and at the same time, attack the critics, other bands, and the former fans who leave their rows. They spent so much energy and money following the band, that they are now too vested in it. They enter in total DENIAL. They don't want to feel like stupids, like if they made a mistake supporting the band so much through the years. After all, humans are tribal by nature, and deep inside, they want to keep belonging to that tribe.

Not surprisingly, this can match very well to the Kübler-Ross model (5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance).

The ones in (4) are mostly in denial. Some of them, are in anger, projecting their fury to others.

The folks in (3) are someplace between anger and bargaining.

People in (2) are clearly in the phase of depression, as they are still not ready to move on, but they realize that the band is not what it used to be.

And finally, people in (1) are in acceptance. They've moved on.

-

In their current state, Apple is becoming this band. They are forgetting about their user base, and going full commercial. While this means lots of money in the short term, they still lack a real classic. They lack a Thriller (MJ), A Day in the Life, a Bohemian Rhapsody. Windows is a classic. Office is a classic, Google Search, Google Maps is a classic. Every now and then, almost everyone goes back to those products even if they've switch to something else.

You can make a huge amount of money with a Summer Hit, And Apple has been doing it for a while, just like Gaga. But if you don't have a classic, what stops you to becoming "last year's summer hit"?

Hardware is becoming less and less relevant. And Apple's lack of a classics in the software front is what makes them have a low barrier to exit. And I think that's the very reason of why they are closing their ecosystem more and more with each release. Their walled garden is quickly becoming a prison yard.

And finishing this very very long post (as I doubt someone will read all of this, lol) their attitude is not helping them to maintain the current status quo, with them as the current Summer Hit.

Yes, the battle is nasty and Samsung/Google (both are immensely powerful, and not human) is in no danger of being driven out. Why should I feel bad about it?

I'd like to see 3X damage preferably as an AAPL shareholder.