Where you getting your figures?

http://investor.apple.com/results.cfm

Quarterly figures you compare to the same quarter, x years ago. Not Q4 to Q3, but Q4-2012 to Q4-2011. Holiday sales, summer slacking, start of school sales, etc. All those have an impact.

On the iPads, as previously stated. Market share is not important here. You don't aim for max market share, you aim for max profit.

The market is bound to grow as a whole, how can it not? iPad sales have gone up 26%, and that was in the quarter just before the release of the new iPad which is bound to have an influence.

There's a difference between having verbal consent from the patient, the family, the doctors in the hospital and the hospital management (which is often the case (all of the previous)) instead of doing the paperwork. I remember this on the news a couple of years ago, the 'against' group was acusing people of murder, the 'for' group was just stating the law is black or white, while reality is very grey indeed.

On the contrary, this spread from many countries to America.

The list on Wikipedia is sadly incomplete, but in Belgium for example this has been normal for quite a while (by law since 2002). Either by stopping treatment (breathing apparatus, kidney apparatus, etc.) or intravenously giving the patient a lethal dose of x (not entirely sure it's a poison or the like, it could be just a high dose of salt or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_and_the_Law

Well and good too.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Isn't Vorsprung durch Technik the Audi slogan? Not much clean energy there buddy :)

Quote please?

We push enterprise SAP applications using Sybase Unwired Platform in combination with Afaria and others. They provide all the device mgmt you could want (remotely wiping devices, pushing updates, etc.)

Allowing just about anybody to create an app has a lot of upsides.

Allowing just about anybody to create an app has a lot of downsides. Too.

Why not build specific cases that fit perfectly, in a single mold? Then you could make a group of 4, and submerse that (you can even leave the top open and connect a tube in the bottom to create a current inside and turn it into a huge heatsink too). It won't be perfect obviously, but would work better than tubes I reckon, and since you could have the submerse them compeletely, but put them in containers that are open at the top serviceability would be easier, at least.

The small keyboard on the Mac doesn't. Though it has a backspace which turns into delete if you press the 'fn' key (bottom left corner)

The extended (only real proper) keyboards have a del key nps there.

You're getting your info from your pre-2000 Mac keyboard?

I completely understand your frustration, a machine 5 years old should run anything. Especially considering the average lifespan of my Mac laptops is about 7 years. (Hell, all of them still work, even the Powerbook which ended up having the screen torn (metal hinges, not a good idea Apple, not a good idea ...)).

Anywho, the point being, I understand your frustration, and it's quite valid as well. But I do get Apple's argument. I'm not too savvy on the OS technical parts, but parts of what made Mountain Lion so nice for me, is the performance. Basically it's just Lion, but done right. Like 7 is basically Vista, but done right. Everything feels 20% faster, and for me, it's what it needed badly ... But doing that probably required them to drop support for those old 32bit components (correct me if I'm wrong). So at some point you have to make a choice.

But don't worry, you're not missing much by not upgrading to Mountain Lion, my 8 yr old white Macbook with a Core Duo 2 still runs Snow Leopard for exactly that reason ... (and runs it just fine)

"a lot"?

Let's be clear about it. An analyst will say whatever he thinks will be accepted, so they can pretty much juggle with whatever figures and estimations they have, based on pretty much anything.

More importantly though, and this is becoming more and more rare among (especially big) companies: margin went up from 41.7 to 42.8 percent. The margin is already quite impressive, and they're becoming even more profitable.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/07/24Apple-Reports-Third-Quarter-Results.html

Other than that, revenue still went up, which is still quite remarkable, seeing as competitors are now becoming more and more active. 'Normal' people now know who Samsung is and what they do, instead of tablet computer = iPad. So ... meh ... don't believe the analysts, if we believed them, Apple would've died in 1996 (in 1997 they kicked out Gil Amelio and put Jobs as iCEO for the time being).

Finally I'll be able to sell my stoch of Samsung Galaxy 7.7 tablets as well as other equally outdated tablets!

That argumentation may have worked years ago, but let's see some proof perhaps? It's a bit cheap saying 'IT frowns on IE' and leaving it at that.

If IE share is dropping so dramatically, wouldn't it be coming mostly from corporate PC's no longer using it? (and many people switching from their already less powerful Netbook to an iPad running apps designed by/for the company? it's a growing trend in many of the companies we have as client (as an ERP consultancy firm))

Doesn't the state offer free or payed reschooling for all jobs that seriously lack properly trained personnel? (note: properly trained, most companies don't have problems finding minimum wage workers, they have problems finding employees with the required (and often very specific) skills).

Here the state funds education (for 3 years, with full pay + benefits) for unemployed people who want to become a nurse. It's one of those jobs that's dieing out because it's not 'sexy' enough, but on the rise back because of it. And it's not something you want to get a shortage of ... Those programs make a lot of sense, I pushed to hire an long time unemployed person, simply because he took 3 months of such a specific course that was relevant to us, and because he showed so much motivation for it ... It pays off in the end, at least tenfold ...

- It's just as expensive to school someone than to do follow-up to force them to get a job they don't want. (already just in people you need to do it it comes out cheaper, 1 person can teach 40/day, but only do follow-up for 10/day)
- They return the investment in them in a couple of months in taxes alone
- You no longer have to pay them unemployment when they do finally get a job
- You reduce unemployment because you're founding a state funded school for hard-to-find jobs :) And as soon as it lifts off (years ago) companies, like mine, will dump time and money in those foundations to get the first pick in choosing the new students (eventually, we'll just be training them ourselves)