My insight is mostly financial but I've given it here before. While there is no doubt that Apple is a great, very profitable company, people often exaggerate something they heard somwhere and the facts don't support it (mostly things like Apple's profts are larger than the GDP of Australia or whatever). Whatever, I think Apple is awesome. In my house we have at least 15 iDevices/Macs and maybe 6 PCs and other assorted things like GoogleTV and Amazon FireTV.

Now, this is just my observations as a geek dad. I have 5 kids, including 3 pre-teenish girls that have like a bazillion friends. They hang out at our house all the time (we're sort of the neighborhood hub I guess) since my wife stays home and takes good care of all the kids. We have a lot of fun things to do and really good wireless, technology, and toys.

Anyway, what I've notcied is that for the girls Apple products are a status symbols. They bling their iPhones, iPods, watches, all that stuff.

The boys, however, have very little interest in Apple. They like things they can take apart (perhaps metaphorically as well) and that aren't so "girly" or whatever. Moms and girls have iPhones. But the boys around here (and man of their dads) don't use iPhones. iPhones are regarded as girly. My son has an iPhone and he won't take it anywhere. It just sits until the battery drains and I recharge it. I have to stick it in his bag when he leaves so he has an emergency phone. He's embarrassed by it.

Remember, iPhones are almost 2/3's of Apple's revenue. That's a lot of eggs in one basket.

Now, before you go calling me sexist, an Apple hater, or whatever.... I spend a lot of time with all my kids, especially the girls, on STEM, hacking EV3s, showing them what's possible with technology and just having fun with it. I am a coach at a robotics league and I do some extra things to encourage girls to join, explore, and stick with it. Same thing at work. I realize that there are some barriers for them and I'm trying to help them (as best I know how) to not let them get in their way. Also, I'm one of the dads that owns an iPhone because I like them and it helps keep the girls happy.

I also wonder about the Facebook effect (is that even a term?). I don't know a single kid under 18 that's on FB, they're mostly on Instagram. They don't want to be on FB so their parents can't see what they're doing. I have iCloud Family Sharing set up and the kids give me grief about that. But it's more than that, it's natural for kids to want to do their own thing. If mom and grandma are using iPhones I *guarantee* you kids won't be for long.

You might thing I live in some back-country, hill billy, place and perhaps there is a bit of that, but I live in the Midwest near Chicago in a somewhat progressive area.

RTFA. I haven't checked sources, but it to expand, the article claims that even though Apple has a lot of cash, they have a lot of debt too ($53 billion USD). Apple took the debt to fund their stock buybacks/dividends and to avoid taxes (2.1% vs. lots of taxes).

If Apple brought their cash back to the US and paid their debts that would at least half their cash position. So they're not in bad shape by any means, but it's not as look as it sounds on the face of it.

Also, iPhone accounts for 2/3's of their revenue according to the article. If that's the case, Apple has said they expect a ~14 percent drop in iPhone sales this quarter. That's a big deal. It actually puts them pretty close to where Microsoft is at.

Alphabet, on the other hand, went and hired some wall street people, reigned in spending, reorganized and made some smart moves. They're on the rise.

The most valuable company thing I'm not sure about, I guess it depends how you measure it. Market cap does tend to be what the media and others are talking about when they say "the most valuable company in the world," but we all know there is a lot more to it than that. For example, market cap only represents outstanding stocks and is really all over the place.

This sort of smells of the old political trick of announcing a fire station will close. It gets a lot of people together against the bad government closing the fire station which leads to a tax increase. Perhaps they're betting on people getting riled up and getting more public or private funding. If they were hurting that much financially the layoffs would happen sooner unless there are some legal reasons not to.

Note that one of the purposes of these benchmarks was to test the 64-bit version of Firefox vs. the dominant browsers.

Spat out my coffee. Ha!

In reality we're all probably breaking some US law right now. For whatever reason our elected officials think it's their job to make new laws the entire time they're in office. I wish they'd focus on modernizing and looking at reducing long-term costs and setting us up for a more advanced technological future rather than worrying about bullshit to score short-term political points or whatever.

Has anyone been convicted in the past 50 years? In WI it's supposedly a felony too.

Interesting. It sort of sounds like a bit of irony here. People wanted to BYOD so they just started doing it for convenience or what have you. Then, employers figured out they could save money and snoop. So now, some employers require ("embrace" is the dumb ass buzzword I hear) and get the benefit of the employee always being available, save hundreds on a phone and a lot on a plan, and have control of the device.

Ditto at my house. Instagram for all the girls and their friends. Facebook must have figured this out and bought Instagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The younger kids don't want to be on what their parents are on.

No. As the old saying goes, possesion is nine tenths of the law. If data is on someone BYOD device then there can be questions as to who owns it. Even with contracts, etc. it's all a civil matter. The sheriff won't get involved.

With a company-owned device there is no question. If someone leaves and they still have your $800 phone... the cops will at least listen and there is no question as to whether you can brick it.

I'm all for freedom and stuff but I've seen this go south too many times.

The biggest business expense isn't taxes (for the most part since they're variable), it's labor. Not just the labor to assemble parts and what not but on the supplier side too. That's where the US has the biggest issues, not to mention unions, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for jobs coming back to the US and am an employer myself for a small company of 30 people. We get *slammed* for taxes (37.5 percent is what plan for all in state/feds on all "profit") even using a competent and well-respected accounting firm. Even "profit" is a lie, we keep all the "profit" in the company. So when we have a not so great year that "profit" is gone even though we've paid taxes on it and we can't spread out the loses like the big guys. So I get stuck with a $100K tax bill every year and only have a $170K salary. Sucks balls.

I meant, that the United States is such a huge portion of their market/revenue...

Interesting. My first reaction was that the tech CEOs would respond with "fine, we'll move offshore." But since such a huge portion of their market putting the government in a position to further regulate them out of existence. How could the tech leaders even take a firm stand?

It's called telemetry now. Get with the times.

Wouldn't this apply to Google or pretty much any company too? If they provide search information to the government who then rounds up people who later disappear or aren't allowed to have children, or whatever....