Problems for Apple

[HappyMartin]

I am thinking there must be some sort of quality difference between the pc's we get down here in SA and what is available in the US.

It very difficult to find a quality pc here. pc's tend to be built up out of the cheapest components and sales are driven purely by price. If you want a decent machine it becomes necessary to approach someone who builds gaming machines and then you have to try to explain why you don't need a high end sound card but you do need a FireWire card to tether your 80 megapixel camera.

Quickly becomes expensive and complicated requiring all sorts of support. Easier to have someone drop off a Mac. Plug it in, calibrate the two or three monitors hooked up to it and work. Usually trouble free and without any support needed for at least 5 or 6 years.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I'm only trying to view products in terms of their usefulness.

If we bought clothing that way all anyone would ever wear would be khaki's and blue jeans.

[Prestidigitweeze]

What's interesting is that people would prefer to assume that I, their contemporary -- someone who grew up in the States and Canada -- could have no experience whatsoever with colloquialisms or how branding actually works.

Any reader who's acquainted with political and semiotic theory will know that I've been using ordinary language to make observations that are usually expressed in terminology-weighted academic idioms. The academics who write about this not only understand consumerism and colloquial speech; they make a point of studying them.

Of course I know what people mean by "I'm a Mac person" in the literal sense, and of course I know that, for most people, "[brand] person" = person's preference.

What I refuse to accept -- in my own life, not yours -- is the level of identification that happens when branding becomes personal, because to do so is to conflate individual expression with corporate manipulation. We are not our tools; our tools are the means to our own expression, not the expression of ourselves.

In other words, you can appreciate the design of a Mac or a stylish Chelsea boot -- you can revel in the aesthetics of external fashion -- without conflating them with individual qualities that only you possess.

The linguistic equation is this:

signifier > referent > signification.

Here's how it works:

the word cat (that which signifies an idea)
> the image of the actual cat (the idea to which the word refers)
> the resonant mind-object ("cat") that is created by the idea and the word.

In semiotics, which is partly linguistics and partly sociopolitical theory, the process becomes this:

signifier: any object that seems natural or desirable
> referent: the naturalization of artificial systems, such as corporations and governments
> signification: the illusion created in the minds of consumers that the artificial systems with which they interact are as natural and inevitable as the object with which they are now associated.

This is why, when people talk about politicians they love or detest, or products they hate or enjoy, they often speak in rebuses that even they never examine. In the worst scenario, this can reduce human beings to human megaphones for dead products. Personal insights are not prefabricated slogans.

Corporate branding wars are also a game of Three-Card Monty in which intense sociopolitical frustration, which can be dangerous to the people who run the artificial systems that create it, is misdirected into involvement in teams for various products and/or celebrities. Team PC/Team Mac is a subtler reimagining of the Roman coliseum.

Originally Posted by ApK

It's not that hard. All else aside, if you use a Mac for some stuff and and you use a PC for some stuff, does one of them make you say "I like this, and I'll go get one of these for my personal use, and it will be the machine I prefer when I could choose either."
If so, then your are "that" person.

I understand you, but I am still not a Mac or PC "person." I am simply a person who prefers different tools for different purposes.

You are a "PC person" based on your statement that you like and own PCs, and apparently use mac just because it's the standard for certain particular work tasks.

Again, I appreciate your taking the trouble to explain the terminology, and I can understand why you did so, but I'm actually familiar with it.

Truthfully, I prefer the Mac UI to that of the PC in many respects, but not to the point of internalizing it as my own personal world. Think of gaming for a moment -- if you like survival horror, then you probably enjoy roaming through nightmarish worlds. But are those worlds created by you or do they express someone else's creativity? If the truth is the latter, then you are a person drifting through a grim amusement park, and the real expression of you consists of your thoughts, perceptions and observations within someone else's synthetic world.

Certain things can only be done on one platform or the other, and certain advantages are specific to either one.

That's why, if someone asks whether I'm a Mac or PC person, the most correct answer would seem to be this: "I'm a Mac or PC 'person' only in moments when my thought is confined unintentionally to the limitations of a particular platform. In my best moments, I can work within those limitations without ever allowing them to define me."

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yep. If you are a musician, it's a bit like what sort of guitar you play. It's not so much that one is better than the other, it's more a combination of what type of music you play and what sounds better to you personally. I favor Taylors myself.

As I mentioned before (which could be why you're making the analogy), I've been a musician ever since I could walk. Because I grew up playing an Emerson baby grand with stiff action and a slightly dark tone, I've always preferred Baldwins to Steinways and Steinways to Yamahas. I also prefer certain kinds of hardware synths and VI in every category. But that changes over time as often as the instruments themselves. What changes apart from (but in relation to) these is my own style -- my syntax -- as a musician. As long as they're understood to be distinct, the musician can engage the instrument in a relationship that can prove so paradoxical it verges on syncretistic.

[leebase]

May all my endeavors fail as spectacularly as the iPad and Apple Pay. In 72 hours Apple Pay became the #1 mobile payment system in the US by a mile. I know, not much of a high bar.

The iPad has had 3 down quarters. Maybe a 4th is on the way too. And yet....Apple sells more iPads than any PC company sells PC's. You can bet Apple is making more margin on it's iPads than those PC companies do as well. The iPad all by itself would rank as a Fortune 500 company.

So sales are down...they are still very healthy, and the iPad is still a very profitable business. And there is still no iPad competitor that's doing any damage to them. The vast growth of "white box" tablets do not take sales away from the iPad.

Samsung, Msft, Sony, Acer -- none of them are doing better in tablets than Apple is.

Meanwhile, Apple has become the world's most profitable company by far and the most valuable. Apple's market cap is 50% larger than the second highest (Exxon). Truly...Apple can handle this "problem"

[frahse]

Originally Posted by Shane R

If we bought clothing that way all anyone would ever wear would be khaki's and blue jeans.

Cargo shorts and beach (jungle) shirts here.

Few people seem to notice but Arnold Schwarzenegger has the greatest beach shirts. I think his are custom. Custom pattern and of course custom "fit."

[frahse]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

What's interesting is that people would prefer to assume that I, their contemporary -- someone who grew up in the States and Canada -- could have no experience whatsoever with colloquialisms or how branding actually works.

Any reader who's acquainted with political and semiotic theory will know that I've been using ordinary language to make observations that are usually expressed in terminology-weighted academic idioms. The academics who write about this not only understand consumerism and colloquial speech; they make a point of studying them.

Of course I know what people mean by "I'm a Mac person" in the literal sense, and of course I know that, for most people, "[brand] person" = person's preference.

What I refuse to accept -- in my own life, not yours -- is the level of identification that happens when branding becomes personal, because to do so is to conflate individual expression with corporate manipulation. We are not our tools; our tools are the means to our own expression, not the expression of ourselves.

In other words, you can appreciate the design of a Mac or a stylish Chelsea boot -- you can revel in the aesthetics of external fashion -- without conflating them with individual qualities that only you possess.

The linguistic equation is this:

signifier > referent > signification.

Here's how it works:

the word cat (that which signifies an idea)
> the image of the actual cat (the idea to which the word refers)
> the resonant mind-object ("cat") that is created by the idea and the word.

In semiotics, which is partly linguistics and partly sociopolitical theory, the process becomes this:

signifier: any object that seems natural or desirable
> referent: the naturalization of artificial systems, such as corporations and governments
> signification: the illusion created in the minds of consumers that the artificial systems with which they interact are as natural and inevitable as the object with which they are now associated.

This is why, when people talk about politicians they love or detest, or products they hate or enjoy, they often speak in rebuses that even they never examine. In the worst scenario, this can reduce human beings to human megaphones for dead products. Personal insights are not prefabricated slogans.

Corporate branding wars are also a game of Three-Card Monty in which intense sociopolitical frustration, which can be dangerous to the people who run the artificial systems that create it, is misdirected into involvement in teams for various products and/or celebrities. Team PC/Team Mac is a subtler reimagining of the Roman coliseum.



I understand you, but I am still not a Mac or PC "person." I am simply a person who prefers different tools for different purposes.



Again, I appreciate your taking the trouble to explain the terminology, and I can understand why you did so, but I'm actually familiar with it.

Truthfully, I prefer the Mac UI to that of the PC in many respects, but not to the point of internalizing it as my own personal world. Think of gaming for a moment -- if you like survival horror, then you probably enjoy roaming through nightmarish worlds. But are those worlds created by you or do they express someone else's creativity? If the truth is the latter, then you are a person drifting through a grim amusement park, and the real expression of you consists of your thoughts, perceptions and observations within someone else's synthetic world.

Certain things can only be done on one platform or the other, and certain advantages are specific to either one.

That's why, if someone asks whether I'm a Mac or PC person, the most correct answer would seem to be this: "I'm a Mac or PC 'person' only in moments when my thought is confined unintentionally to the limitations of a particular platform. In my best moments, I can work within those limitations without ever allowing them to define me."



As I mentioned before (which could be why you're making the analogy), I've been a musician ever since I could walk. Because I grew up playing an Emerson baby grand with stiff action and a slightly dark tone, I've always preferred Baldwins to Steinways and Steinways to Yamahas. I also prefer certain kinds of hardware synths and VI in every category. But that changes over time as often as the instruments themselves. What changes apart from (but in relation to) these is my own style -- my syntax -- as a musician. As long as they're understood to be distinct, the musician can engage the instrument in a relationship that can prove so paradoxical it verges on syncretistic.

Oh how you do carry on!

Because I grew up playing an Emerson baby grand with stiff action and a slightly dark tone,

You might like the Asian keyboards then, which though certainly stiff seem bright. I too like the Steinways which as Horowitz said, can "sing."

Still one of the best tonal, and a fine action as well, pianos I ever played was actually a Wurlitzer that I found in a Baptist Hospital when my mother was there. I would visit til she drifted off or had a visitor and then go down to the large Chapel and play the Wurlitzer in the dark. It was magic. (My mom recovered too.)

Later when I had occasion to visit that hospital again, the big Chapel was gone as was the Wurlitzer. I would have bought that on the spot had I the opportunity. Only a smaller older and "tiny" Chapel was left with an old organ. I played it too but it wasn't magic, just a diversion.

[frahse]

Apple becoming "1 trick pony."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-...223009105.html

Short term until end of year, looks good.
Then, not so good.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by frahse

Apple becoming "1 trick pony."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-...223009105.html

Short term until end of year, looks good.
Then, not so good.

That has been brought up multiple times. Have to see if it has any impact on their long term health. For right now the declining market share has no real impact on their profits - as they decline in market share, Apple still manages to increase unit sales.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Yes, but what a trick it is!

[rkw]

Originally Posted by Shane R

If we bought clothing that way all anyone would ever wear would be khaki's and blue jeans.

yeah, so? ;P

...that pretty much describes my wardrobe such that it is...it's about comfort and utility, hmmm, same for my PC's (for those who don't get it...Macs are PC's too since PC is not Politically Correct in this context but personal computer; unless of course Mac's are not personal and simply the result of implants placed at birth or during your alien abduction.)

But gimme my 501s, some comfy khaki's and cargo's then throw in a couple pair of sweats and I'm done shopping for clothes for the next decade. Even at 50-mumble it's what I wear, in fact now I care even less about anything but comfort and utility.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by rkw

yeah, so? ;P

...that pretty much describes my wardrobe such that it is...it's about comfort and utility,
[...]
But gimme my 501s, some comfy khaki's and cargo's then throw in a couple pair of sweats and I'm done shopping for clothes for the next decade. Even at 50-mumble it's what I wear, in fact now I care even less about anything but comfort and utility.

Sounds good to me, wardrobe-wise, though 501 buttons are too much work. And since the Walmart effect has destroyed Levi's quality anyway, I usually go for the far less expensive Wranglers.
Professionally, however, I find dressing more business-like often helps me get the results I want more easily, and at 40-something, I've discovered I really like cashmere sport jackets. Camel hair, too.

Guess you could say I'm trying to be "a sport jacket person."

ApK

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by rkw

Even at 50-mumble it's what I wear, in fact now I care even less about anything but comfort and utility.

Yes, this seems to be a common ailment among the older portion of the population. I saw a guy the other day at Target who didn't even need a belt because he had an elastic waistband on his pants. Looked terrible, but I'll bet they were comfortable as hell and very practical!

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by Anthem

Yes, this seems to be a common ailment among the older portion of the population. I saw a guy the other day at Target who didn't even need a belt because he had an elastic waistband on his pants. Looked terrible, but I'll bet they were comfortable as hell and very practical!

Hardly an ailment of only the older. Go to an airport and see all the teenagers and twenty somethings in pajamas. There's a fashion statement.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by RDaneel54

Hardly an ailment of only the older.

I agree.