I would not bet against Apple were I you.

http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/gartner_apple_overtakes_microsoft_as_worlds_3_smartphone_os_vendor/

They're already up to ~13% and growing faster than any other company. You say they're too targeted at one market, but the market they're targeting isn't "Executives who need to have access to their email at all times" like RIM and Microsoft have targeted with their respective smartphone OSes--it's "People who want a good cell phone." That's a pretty big market.

Also, what do you mean "like all Apple products"? The iPod still has north of 70% market share.

Not really.

See, in addition to making inferior products, one of the ways that manufacturers lower their prices to meet Wal Mart's goals is to outsource. You'll notice that Wal Mart's big "Buy American" kick died along with Sam Walton--nowadays, shockingly few of the items in Wal Mart are American made, simply because suppliers can't afford to pay American labor while still meeting Wal Mart's supply price mandates.

So yeah, you buy four pairs of pants for 1/4 the cost of normal Levis and each pair lasts a quarter of the time that "real" Levis would. Works out about even for you. But to stay profitable as Wal Mart continues to force the price down, several Levi workers might lose their jobs. But hey, at least welfare will pay them enough that they can still shop at Wal Mart too.

Long term, Levi can't stay profitable at any price, sells their trademark to Wal Mart as part of a bankruptcy settlement, and Wal Mart starts slapping the Levi brand on Chinese-made burlap sacks with two holes cut in the bottom and a rough hemp rope around the waist.

(Then, eventually, they discontinue the rough hemp rope because the size of Wal Mart shoppers' waists are enough to keep the sack from falling down and it saves them a ha'penny per unit)

That is, in fact, exactly what he's saying. Wal Mart requires its suppliers to lower their prices by a certain percentage each year. At first, the suppliers tend to do this by improving efficiency but...there's only so much of that you can do. Eventually they're forced to either stop selling to Wal Mart or reduce quality.

In this specific example:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2003-07-21-walmart_x.htm

Wal-Mart has first dibs on the mass Levi's brand, Levi Strauss Signature, before it hits other retailers. The line, featured on Wal-Mart's in-store TV network since Friday, is a lower-priced take on the premium Levi's brand. Jeans tops and jackets made from lighter-weight denim and with fewer design details will sell for about 30% less than Levi's. "We've built a style and line that are relevant to customers and fashion," says Mary Kwan, vice president of Levi Strauss Signature.

Levis made with cheaper denim and fewer design touches. And it's like that with a *lot* of the "name brand" items you find at Wal Mart.

Why not? If a company spends $50,000 developing a program (A reasonable price for 1 cheap developer employed for 1 year) and then distributes it digitally, you're saying they should only sell it for like $.05/copy? They would have to sell a million copies just to break even.

Not to mention that when a program is shipped, ongoing costs don't just stop dead. There's maintenance, support, sales, advertising, and other such ongoing costs you have to deal with.

And incidentally, unless your app is featured in one of Apple's commercials, the average sales of software in the App store is about 16/day. Assume you price it at the App Store minimum of $0.99 (the only lower price point being 'Free'), which you apparently still think is an enormous markup since you're only taking into account reproduction costs. Apple takes its 30% cut, leaving you with about 70 cents. Times 16 is $11/day. Times 365 is about $4000/year. So to make up that $50,000 worth of development cost would take about 12 years, and God help you if you need to fix a bug, because you can't afford to keep your developer employed during that period or it adds another 12 years. Oh, and this assumes that people keep downloading an app at that rate when you can't afford to debug it or market it in any way.

Software prices aren't based on "artificial scarcity". They're based on scarcity of Programmers, and decent programmers are a very scarce commodity indeed.

Beyond the resolution of 35mm lenses, maybe. I believe the particular RED back with the 261MP sensor was designed to mount large-format glass.

The 50D doesn't have video either. Just the 5DII (and the D90 on the Nikon side)

The Employee Free Choice Act doesn't do away with secret ballots. Secret ballots are still an option. Secret ballots are, in fact, required if more than 30% but less than the majority of employees publicly support the union, and secret ballots are still used to de-unionize. The reason for this is that employers have a long time between the union declaring its intention to be a union and the time when the official vote happens for the Employer to do things like holding mandatory "If You Join A Union, The Company Will Fold And Your Children Will Die Penniless And Hungry In The Street Like Dogs" meetings. Under the EFCA, if a majority of the employees get together and say "We want to form a union", then it works. If a majority of the employees get together and say "We want to have a secret ballot to determine whether or not to form a union", that works too. Under the current rules, that first one doesn't work unless the employer authorizes it.

From The Committee on Education and Labor:

harassment by unions is not the problem. In a study of a more than 60-year period, the Human Resources Policy Association listed 113 NLRB cases which they claimed involved union deception and/or coercion in obtaining authorization card signatures. Careful examination of those cases, however, reveals that union misconduct was found in only 42 of those 113 claimed cases. By contrast, in 2005 alone, over 30,000 workers received back pay from employers that illegally fired or otherwise discriminated against them for their union activities.

If it were something like "There are twice as many instances of Management coercion than Union coercion", I could see that you'd have a position to say "Well, those numbers are probably massaged a bit". But this is thirty-thousand in one year vs 42 cases over the course of six decades. An average of a whopping 7/10ths of a case per year, compared to tens of thousands.

So in conclusion: The fears of rampant, coercing union bosses are mostly mythical. The fears of management illegally preventing unions that a majority of employees really want are very much grounded in reality.