Apple Targeting Amazon

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

What I found interesting was the number of times, the participants in a sighted test could hear differences while the same participants in a blind test could not.

Not all people (or their hearing) is the same. I would imagine to make such a blind test "valid" you would have to have a group of audiophiles, not folks chosen randomly.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Not all people (or their hearing) is the same. I would imagine to make such a blind test "valid" you would have to have a group of audiophiles, not folks chosen randomly.

The hoot about this was that the test group were audiophiles. When they knew what they were listening to, they could "hear" the differences. When they didn't know what they were listening to, their choices were very different. The same crowd that believed running a green marker around the edges of a CD would reduce the sonic imperfections caused by light reflecting between the layers of the CD.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The hoot about this was that the test group were audiophiles. When they knew what they were listening to, they could "hear" the differences. When they didn't know what they were listening to, their choices were very different. The same crowd that believed running a green marker around the edges of a CD would reduce the sonic imperfections caused by light reflecting between the layers of the CD.

I'm not an audiophile, but I definitely could tell the difference in some music (I say "could" because I haven't tested this in a while and my ears aren't what they once were). It only makes sense, digital music is going to be "cleaner" or "sharper" (otherwise, what's the point?) -- the "analog" stylus on the vinyl has to introduce some of kind of difference. There's no way it can't. I'm guessing that "difference" (probably imperfections) is what makes some music seem "richer" to listeners.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by tiltowait

iBooks is, IMO, the best eReading app I’ve used by a pretty wide margin. If you’re all-in on the Apple ecosystem, no one offers easier sideloading, sync, etc., and the books themselves look great with some nice font options, including Iowan.

That's the kicker there. For sideloading, etc, as you mentioned, that only works if you're all-in on Apple. iTunes doesn't support ebooks anymore and I believe iBooks is only available on Mac. I do agree that Iowan is nice for reading. Thankfully, it's a system font available for third-party apps to use.

Amazon caters to everyone. Starting price for Kindle is $59 for brand new (the sales are very frequent). A lot cheaper used. Plus, pretty much all Android devices support it, even the $39 prepaid smartphones one often finds on sale at Best Buy, etc. I think the cloud reader works on Chromebooks, too.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

My knock on iBooks is that it doesn't handle a lot of books well and sync seems a bit off at times. It's also oriented towards everything being in iCloud. For some reason or another, it just doesn't mesh well with how I want to do things.

Yep, this.

And I personally hate the page curl animation. I prefer instant page turns. I have no idea why Apple doesn't include a setting to turn that off when they've made a concerted effort to get rid of skeuomorphism in iOS 7 onwards. I use Marvin 2/3 on iOS and before that, I was using Stanza.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I'm not an audiophile, but I definitely could tell the difference in some music (I say "could" because I haven't tested this in a while and my ears aren't what they once were). It only makes sense, digital music is going to be "cleaner" or "sharper" (otherwise, what's the point?) -- the "analog" stylus on the vinyl has to introduce some of kind of difference. There's no way it can't. I'm guessing that "difference" (probably imperfections) is what makes some music seem "richer" to listeners.

The test I was referring to was more tied into comparing tube and solid state amplifiers and pre-amplifiers. Some of them at price levels I tend to associate with new car purchases. The funniest one was where the switch to select the amplifier being used was a dummy and yet the "golden ears" crowd still heard differences.

Personally, years back I could hear some differences between various music sources such as a decent turntable/stylus combo, CD player and mp3/other digitial music player. With the changes in my hearing over the decades, I'm now just happy I can hear the music and haven't needed to invest in hearing aids.

[frahse]

In the Stock Market, Apple is negative for the year.

They can't touch the hem of Amazon's garment much less "target them."

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I'm not an audiophile, but I definitely could tell the difference in some music (I say "could" because I haven't tested this in a while and my ears aren't what they once were). It only makes sense, digital music is going to be "cleaner" or "sharper" (otherwise, what's the point?) -- the "analog" stylus on the vinyl has to introduce some of kind of difference. There's no way it can't. I'm guessing that "difference" (probably imperfections) is what makes some music seem "richer" to listeners.

I am not a phile, just someone who enjoyed the rich, full range of sound.

CD's 'sample' the sound waveform at about 44KHz. They are clean all the way to the high end..then there is nothing more. OTOH, those dirty old LP's keep on going. They just 'roll off' as the go past their posted spec. If you can hear in the 20K range, it makes some difference. Those Triangle chimes that go 'ting' in a quiet piece, lack their brilliance'

Now, back to the topic of A vs A:
Greed
You oldsters may remember the LED Digital watch price war between National and Fairchild?
Both made decent products, but got into a 'Market share' war and killed all profit in the line. Same thing happened with 4 function Calculators. Price war until the profit was near 0. I think Casio was the one that walked away with the $ while the big kids squabbled

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by frahse

In the Stock Market, Apple is negative for the year.

They can't touch the hem of Amazon's garment much less "target them."

Seriously? Apple is the number 1 company, followed by Alphabet (aka Google), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. I don't think that any of those five companies is terribly worried about touching each other's hem.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Seriously? Apple is the number 1 company, followed by Alphabet (aka Google), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. I don't think that any of those five companies is terribly worried about touching each other's hem.

GE was a great company once.
I could name others.
Their time came and went.

That statement about Apple being negative for the year is an indicator of "trouble to come!" Sure they got a zillion dollars stored offshore, but Apple and Facebook both have become a drain on the Tec sector this last quarter.

The question is whether this is a blip or a sign of a "sea change."

There is a lot of nervousness about the coming report on sales of the new products.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by frahse

GE was a great company once.
I could name others.
Their time came and went.

That statement about Apple being negative for the year is an indicator of "trouble to come!" Sure they got a zillion dollars stored offshore, but Apple and Facebook both have become a drain on the Tec sector this last quarter.

The question is whether this is a blip or a sign of a "sea change."

There is a lot of nervousness about the coming report on sales of the new products.

Apple was fairly steady in the $160 range for much of 2017. It jumped to the $175 range in early November, stayed there until late Jan, when it dropped back to $155 for a week because of the concern of a trade war, then jump back to $178 in late Feb when the trade war failed to materialize, it then dropped down to the $165 range this week mostly because the earning call is coming up and Apple's stock always falls before an earning call. Apple is expected to beat last year's 1st quarter earning by quite a bit.

Most companies stock prices are down from the beginning of the year when it was at an all time high. On paper, I lost around $20K in the space of a couple of days in Feb when the big market correction happened. Most of it's come back since then. That's just the way the stock market works. It goes up and down.

Apple has bet big on getting into the market in China and India. Personally, I don't think that's going to go well for them, both countries tend to protect local companies. They also have issues with the expectation of what's going to be the new big block buster product such as the iPhone or iPad (hint, they are really raking it in on services, just like Amazon is).

Amazon has it's own issues as does Facebook and Google.

None of these companies are in any particular danger. They are simply in the process of moving from being fast growing companies to established companies. Apple and Amazon in particular seems to be in more or less the same place. They are both continuing to try things, some which work, some which don't.

[Tarana]

As much as I love my iThings, I won't purchase content from Apple until I can archive and play on other things. I bought audio books in 2008 that then disappeared from my account. I repurchased through Audible. My audiobooks showed up again after an iTunes upgrade 2 years ago or so. I'm glad the only ebooks I got were free. None have disappeared, but I've read them all now.

One of the reasons I bought a refurbished iPad was to use the text to speech app. It will load only 1 in 10 sideloaded books and zero books in iTunes. The innova voices are better but if you can't load e-books into the program, it's of no value at all. The text to speech on both the Kindle and the fire is excellent.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Tarana

As much as I love my iThings, I won't purchase content from Apple until I can archive and play on other things. I bought audio books in 2008 that then disappeared from my account. I repurchased through Audible. My audiobooks showed up again after an iTunes upgrade 2 years ago or so. I'm glad the only ebooks I got were free. None have disappeared, but I've read them all now.

One of the reasons I bought a refurbished iPad was to use the text to speech app. It will load only 1 in 10 sideloaded books and zero books in iTunes. The innova voices are better but if you can't load e-books into the program, it's of no value at all. The text to speech on both the Kindle and the fire is excellent.

I don't blame you. I won't buy digital content that I can't back up and format shift either.

Until the most recent MacOS release, you could archive and play on other things via 3rd party apps. However, the most recent release back in November seems to have broken it and so far no one has a fix. Fortunately, I have an old mac mini that is a couple of releases back and works just fine.

I never really found a reason to buy ebooks from Apple. As far as I can tell, all the ebooks that Apple has are available in the Kindle store. I'm one of those types who finds a store that I'm comfortable with and stick with them until they give me a reason for going elsewhere. I think the marketing types call it brand loyalty.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I'm one of those types who finds a store that I'm comfortable with and stick with them until they give me a reason for going elsewhere. I think the marketing types call it brand loyalty.

Unthinking brand loyalty is something I've never really understood. When I saw cars with bumper stickers reading "I'd rather push a <brand name> then drive a <competing brand name>, I tended to shake my head in disbelief. As the response from one American cousin about the Ol' Roy brand of dog food they purchased: "We've always bought that brand". No comparison of nutritional content seemed to be of interest.

[Alpha o]

I have no brand loyalty per se. I want what I want and will do extra work to get it. I'm buying, so the mfg will have to convince me they are either superior or I can totally customize to remove any "experience"

Right now, what I am seeing for the future, is that you will have to register any of your future offspring for computing system and stick with it for life. If you start with Apple, you stay. Same for Amazon, Google and now MS. That should be enough to make people think about the price of convenience.

Either all of the systems apps will have to be basically the same or you will lose out on some little thing that you really want or need since your system won't run it. I do have both Android and iPad and have repurchased some of the android apps for the iPad. They do work differently. Android does have more apps to choose from in some categories. Making things the same on all platforms will kill innovations and choice.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Unthinking brand loyalty is something I've never really understood. When I saw cars with bumper stickers reading "I'd rather push a <brand name> then drive a <competing brand name>, I tended to shake my head in disbelief. As the response from one American cousin about the Ol' Roy brand of dog food they purchased: "We've always bought that brand". No comparison of nutritional content seemed to be of interest.

It's hardly unthinking. If someone has proven that they provide a product or service that I like, then why not continue to use them until they disappoint me? It's the same reason that people ask others for recommendations or people do online research.

I've never really understood why some people jump from product to product to product always looking for that magical bargain where they think they got a real deal. As they say, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Time is the only thing we can't get more of, why waste it looking for the perfect whatever, when I already know that I can buy a good enough product from a company that's proven itself to me. If bargain hunting gives you pleasure, then more power to you, but don't mistake a rational decision with unthinking.