To a certain extent, I DO like these announcements merely because they really tweak the noses of the people that have been beating the 'Apple is Doomed' drum for a while. So yeah, there's a small bit of enjoyment that I get that Apple's numbers are so astronomical--I'll cop to that. That's the same thing that's happening with Daring Fireball. Gruber is obviously an Apple partisan, but he complains about as much as anyone I've heard about quality and direction.

But Apple has a good brand and it's drawn customers in. It's what every company hopes to do, really.

But there are lots of other examples of this. Ford vs. Chevy (or Ford vs. Holden, if you're in Oz) is a good one. People become partisan over all sorts of things.

I don't know why you think I'm getting ripped off. I paid $600 for a phone that will get software updates for four years. The hardware will last for four years. My last iPhone did.

The reason why those profit margins are a good thing are because it means Apple isn't concerned with me buying a new phone from them every 18 months to stay afloat. They don't have to track my personal data or advertise to me to make money. Apple making money means that I can be sure that when I want to buy another phone in 4 years, they'll have something good for me to buy and they'll still be around for me to buy it from.

Contrast that with Android phones. They only promise support for 18 months, even on Nexus devices (though they MAY support them longer than that). There are dozens of phones that have fallen by the wayside. Sure, I can buy a new $150 Motorola every year or two, and it would be a good phone, but I could also just buy my top-of-the-line iPhone and keep it a little longer, and it means that I get a really exemplary phone every once in a while.

I understand the decisions that lead you to chose Android devices, but it's not wrong to chose Apple even BECAUSE they're making money. It's a short term pain that has (for me) been a long-term win.

Well, clearly it's what the market will bear. By definition, it's not overpriced. Overpriced items don't sell.

That is, 75 million phone buyers have decided that the phone price aligns with its value in their hands, whatever that value entails.

In my case, I buy phones to last for four years. That's what I did with my iPhone 4, and that's what I'm planning with my iPhone 6. The $600 I paid is a mere $150 when amortised over that time. And I can rely on there being 4 years of software updates and support from Apple. I can count on the hardware lasting that long, because it's really solid hardware. In what universe is that not good value for money?

My $600 pocket computer is only overpriced if you consider it far more disposable than it actually is.

Given that Apple's OSes are free, I don't know that you can claim that. They basically have a 0% margin on most of their software. They underwrite their software development with hardware sales. Basically, when you buy an Apple product, they're selling you both at the same time. I'm sure if you work in the R&D and the software costs, the margins come down.

You're talking like Google's a minority player in this deal. Google's the big dog here. Google dictates terms, and this one isn't so onerous. They patch the OS and they send the patch to a bunch of handset makers. They integrate the patch and push the update. This isn't a fundamental system overhaul, it's a bug fix. Unless the phones are incapable of receiving an update at all, they should be able to get this no problem. If there are costs, Google can offer to defray them. This is about building a brand and taking care of your customers. All this is doing is further pushing the perception that Apple takes care of its customers and Google and it's partners don't. Samsung is the only one that could theoretically afford to turn Google down because they could switch to Tizen, but they're getting drubbed by Apple at the top end and Xiaomi at the bottom; I don't think they're in a position to make a afuss.

But if that's what they want, that's fine--I'm an Apple shareholder (20 whole shares!) and that just makes my stock more valuable. And I own an iPhone and will continue to buy them. Whenever I look at Android, one of my big concerns is how long I'll get updates. If this is the sort of thing I can expect--buy a new phone for the latest security patch--I'll continue paying $700 for an iPhone and getting updates for 4+ years, thanks. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Apple released a security patch for iOS 6 when that SSL vulnerability was found. It was a deprecated OS running on a MINORITY of Apple phones and they issued an update anyway. (http://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202920)

Why are so many people excited to give Google a pass over this? Support your customers or don't, but be up front about how long they're going to get to see updates. If you're going to drop security support after 18 months, at least let everyone know so they can make an informed decision.

Twitter's request is asinine. Twitter is only set up to share with other Twitter users. When I post something to Instagram, I get to share with people on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. I do occasionally use VSCO and send things to each service individually (usually when I want to preserve the aspect ratio of an image; the lower res square that Instagram demands doesn't always work best).

If Twitter wants people to use their service for images, they have to make it easier to share outside of their network. People interested in sharing usually want to cover all their bases, not just one population.

But this is what's wrong with Twitter's current managementâ"they don't understand their own service and the people that use it. And they don't seem to get that if you want to grow, you have to reach outside of the network and bring people in, not broadcast to the people that are already there. I have friends that have joined Twitter because of my own active cross-posting (using third party tools)â"if Twitter made that part easier, maybe they could convince people to give them a shot. (That and doubling back and making third party clients easier to develop again; the official app is trash compared to Tweetbot. If they want ads, just make it part of the stream that the clients can't skip. It's not so hard.)

I'm not sure I buy this. Apple's control extends only to their own product. There's a active market below Apple's pricepoint (though there's not much profit there, I'll grant you). When Apple's prices change (actually, has that happened in the last few years? I think the price has been steady for a while) the market doesn't reconfigure around that price. Apple certainly has a monopoly on Apple phones, but I'm not sure that's particularly insightful.

In theory, someone could also release a product that's priced ABOVE the iPhone (perhaps as a Veblen good) as long as they can make a sufficient appeal to the wealthy that their product is superior. (I know about Vertu, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think that anyone thinks their phones are better than even ordinary Android phones.)

If Apple disappeared tomorrow, the world would still have smartphone manufacturers. The only way this monopoly argument could hold water is if we decide that Android and the handsets it runs on should be considered a completely different category of product.

What?

Sorry, this makes no sense to me. Why should Apple be forced to open up its protocol? Why is that necessary for the public good? As people are always delighted to point out, Apple's market share is by no means the majority. Apple isn't a utility.

If people don't like iMessage or people they know aren't on iMessage, then they can use something else. I chat with friends on Hangouts (which, if I'm honest, is the worst of all the chat apps out there), WhatsApp (some clumsy UI elements, but lots of good features) and Facebook Messenger (surprisingly good, despite the fact that Facebook is behind it; also the one I'm least likely to trust privacy-wise). I don't demand that my friends only use iMessage. I'll find a way to chat with them one way or another.

If I happened to have a friend with a BlackBerry, I'd use the BBM app. Or ordinary texts. There's plenty of interoperability here.

If Apple didn't allow the BBM app (or any other chat app) on their phones in order to ENFORCE iMessage use, maybe you'd have a point.

BlackBerry missed the boat about a dozen times at this point and that's their fault, not Apple's.

In India, until March of this year, antibiotics were an off-the-shelf drug.

http://bsac.org.uk/news/major-...

You can't blame the doctors there for this one.

But as usual, things are probably a mixture of things. In India, antibiotics were easy to get, and waste at the plants was an issue. In North America, over-prescription and people not taking the full course of drugs when they ARE required is an issue. In all places, prophylactic use in animals is definitely an issue.

Put all those things together, and here we are. But it's nice to see this guy cop to his industry's (and his own, by implication) complicity in this problem. They're making drugs to help people, and the part that HE can control is how safely they manufacture the drugs. The agriculture and medical industries will have to be dealt with separately (and probably through legislation).

Actually, it's even worse than that. India JUST banned the sale of antibiotics off the shelf this March. Until recently, you could just walk in and grab them. http://bsac.org.uk/news/major-...

There are way too many things wrong with that, but among them is that a lot of unused antibiotics probably wound up in the trash.

Not only does Apple support MOST of its devices for about 4 years, the first iPad's abnormally short update lifetime is still longer than Google's official support lifetime of 18 months.

And on top of that, they even pushed out iOS 6 security updates when that SSL bug popped up. That was a security patch for an OS and device that was basically EOL.

If you toss your phone after two years, that's your problem. My iPhone 4 was working great when I gave it to my Mom in September after getting my iPhone 6. Maybe she'll only get a year or two out of it, but six years is about as long as anyone ever owns a computing device these days.

I buy Apple phones specifically because I KNOW I'll get 4 years out of them. Don't pin any of this crap on Apple, because it's just not true.

100% true.

Something that helps a lot (in all industries, including academia) is stripping names and gender/race identifying characteristics from resumes and papers. When those documents are assessed in a context absent the nature of the writer, they're considered more equally. They've done experiments where the same paper has been submitted with male, female and neutral names, and the female names see more critical judgement and a higher rate of rejection. This is for exactly the same paper, remember.

The problem isn't overt racism, it's subtle, institutional discrimination that most of us suffer from. Even female researchers and professors are guilty of discriminating against other women.

The CEO of Intel can't affect those industries, except, perhaps, indirectly and through example.

All of those are good questions. Those are all places where we should be striving to see a better mix of genders and races. You tell ME why those industries aren't trying to change. Could it be the institutional sexism that's so pervasive in our culture, starting when children are young, allotting toys on a gendered basis? Is it because we don't discourage construction workers in many of our cities from catcalling really offensive things, making women wonder why they'd ever want to work on a site like that? Is it because when women DO go into the armed forces, they're raped or sexually assaulted at distressingly high rates? Is it because we tell men that caring for children is women's work, and simultaneously tell them it's a horrible thing to be feminine?

By the time someone is looking for a job, it's probably too late. The people that want to be in construction have already made their choice, male or female.