Not only that, but Apple *does* do a ridiculous amount of engineering in all their devices. While they don't have a dominating % of the market anymore ... the % they do have is still immense in absolute numbers and since the number of different models they offer is small ... each of those gets far more attention/money/engineering than most others.

I'm not particularly a fan or hater but will say their devices pretty much always fall under the 'premium' heading. That doesn't mean there aren't sometimes shortcomings or design flaws...but they sure as shit make them pretty :)

I'm not sure about that...

Right now they surely are production-constrained, however with that comes some financial constraint. Limited income means it's costly to throw money at things that aren't yet necessary (or can be had for free). Yes there's $bajillions backing them as/if/when needed...but having that much $ is indicative of knowing when, and what NOT, to spend it.

Why pay for advertising when you don't have enough product to sell? Why not 'fight the good fight' and get all your press for free so people are lined up waiting for when you DO have products finally sell? Spend the advertising dollars on lawsuits you'd have to fight anyhow. People listen to stories about your company/cars ... then flip channels when news pauses for GM/ford/etc. commercials. You build the brand...and continue to remain production-constrained with minimal advertising spend.

People will line up to jump through hoops - if there are hoops.

Oh...*KIDS* toys.

Oops. I don't think any of this is child-appropriate. Damn you /. and your in ability to remove posts/votes.

'All over' is relative...and last I checked the US didn't even have the capability of getting astronauts to their own* space station much less the moon.

It's pretty pathetic how far backwards we have slid in some regards. The /original/ space race took 14 years to land a man on the moon and now they're aiming for roughly the same time frame to do it again?

I used to be a WoW fanatic even back before the first expansion. It was grueling in some ways until you discovered some of the shortcuts, easier ways, and ultimately found a good guild. You had to actually pay attention to learn...and typically were rewarded with a good experience if you have a group reasonably adept at the same.

Then all the easy-way-out things came along. Forget tricky shortcuts or easier ways to level or learning the pattern of mining nodes to run...now you could just throw gold at most of the problems and grind the others. I stuck around for 2 expansions if memory serves, left, came back a while, left again, came back to play a few hours killing time and realized it just wasn't fun anymore. Everything had to be equal like between squabbling children. Seemed like they painted an I-WIN button over the grind button.

Buy hey...keep paying! Buy this, buy that...etc. No thanks. Somewhere along the way I shrugged off the MMO world and found better games to play in RL (and no, not sports). I'll stick to hard but short-lived games games like the old 8-bit days (or kill some time with candy crush) and call it a day if I get bored.

Yes and we see what free education did for your math skills ... ~62% overall taxation rate since sales tax is only effectively levied on the remaining money after paying income tax. .52 + ((1-.52)*.21) = .62

On a larger scale, the US wants to be a faux socialist democratic country. In reality we just tax the people and companies who can't afford to avoid paying taxes. Wonderful example - Steve Jobs' wife didn't have to pay income tax on the $billions in stock grants her husband earned during his tenure at apple. Lovely eh?

I did that once though unintentionally. I was at the gym and a friend called to offer some additional/alternate 'exercise' ... so needless to say I wasn't particular about removing my monitor.

It's kind of interesting charging your heart rate during sex if you're enough of a geek to care.

Not only that...but if EVs were ubiquitous then chargers in parking lots would be (nearly) equally so. Right now there's no reason for big-box stores, parking garages, etc. to equip more than a very small number of spots with chargers (if any at all).

If 10% of the cars that used a parking garage in a major city were EVs you can bet they'd offer to plug them in for the day for a few bucks. Maybe not supercharger speed but even a regular plug for the 8 hours most people work would put some decent charger into the battery.

As the market demands, the demand will be met and some will surely make money off it. That money may be indirect (shoppers in our store get free charging) or direct (swipe your card for $x per hr/wkh/etc) from companies. Anyone who things this one happen doesn't understand entrepreneurship.

If both those claims are equally accurate...it about jives with my experience as well

Honestly if the wireless charging standards would get un-stupid we wouldn't need the charging cables to begin with. There's not much reason you couldn't build a recovery method via BT or WiFi instead of wired either.

Heck, I still don't know why someone hasn't done a mag-safe type USB. Oh yah...patent law. See how that's promoting innovation? (sorry, frustration...not troll attempt)

Yah, but that's basic mechanical pins to hold the connector. Pretty much every small connector has them in some form or another. Even if they fail, it just means the plug can fall out...but it will still work.

Actually Apple makes a large profit on each device sold...so yes there are more relaxed cost constraints but it's not like they're eeking by and just barely making money on these.

The actual savings comes from Apples immense and immensely simplified manufacturing. Not only do they sell eleventeen billion of ONE product SKU (ok, some colors or extra flash but that's NBD). So Apple doesn't order 20% of battery A, 40% of battery B, 10% of C, etc....they order eleventeen billion of ONE battery. At that point they get it custom made to exactly what they want and for a substantial discount...they're well known for buying the entire factory output of a certain product for a given time. That's a big reason why the original iPod was the only device so small...they effectively (and realistically) bought the entire production of 1.8" hard drives.

Yes, they do use good materials and have extremely tight tolerances. Efficiency of scale. It's funny though, some people have chronic problems with connectors and cables - complaining about lightning, 30-pin, mini/micro-USB, etc. I never see to break my cables or connectors. Like...ever. I seriously have no idea what 'these people' are doing. I don't baby my electronics either!

I'm pretty sure at this rate the Falcon 9 beats every other space delivery system in cost by far (both development and recurring) and reliability (so far at least).

Granted they've had the entire history of space exploration as a guide towards their design...but then again any other company in the space game has access to at least the same information. I'm pretty sure the contractors and companies that built the shuttle and other rockets actually have significantly MORE information than is publicly available on top of it.

Yet who do we see actually DOING this? Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. It amazes me that the 'leadership' in the US can't understand that basic axiom.

You can thank how easily and readily the news are manipulated for this type of nonsense.

"NASA buys rocket launches from SpaceX with tax dollars. Therefore tax dollars fund SpaceX. Therefore SpaceX should be subject to the same scrutiny as any government-funded project"

Derp.

Apply the same logic to the other option - buying launches from Russia - and see how hard they laugh. Oh wait...didn't they stop or curtail launches for the US already because we're being assholes?

...especially not to another of Elon's companies.

Sometimes the best measure of success is how hard other people try to hold you back or stop you.