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* Posts by Smart-ti-Pants

8 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2014

PEAK APPLE: One MILLION fewer iPads sold this quarter

Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Mac Sales

"Mac Sales

To the extent that the growth in the Mac market is as a result of the gateway drug of iPod/Phone/Pad can we expect an eventual deceleration in Mac sales too?"

Yes. It's quite a few years since the last of three successful new things (iPod/Phone/Pad) appeared, with no sign of a long awaited follow-on. (A limited appeal watch doesn't count as most people aren't going to start wearing watches of any brand).

If I start tossing a coin I'm going to get a run of three heads or three tails before too long. A run of four is much less likely in a short time frame, five much less so still...

It's beginning to look as if a business model based on three heads and a "cool factor" needs to change before it fizzles out. Inertia / momentum mean that the steamroller will probably keep rolling for a while yet. But long enough for a 4th head to land? And a 5th...? It's a matter of faith versus probability and I'd put money on the numbers winning within a few years.

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Smart-ti-Pants
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Joke

Re: Invested?

"I love it when people call toy buying an investment:"

But doesn't "investing" sound so much more grown up and cool than "buying"! ;-)

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Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Invested?

"I would hazard at a guess that an Apple Toy (viz iPad) will be worth more after 2 years than the equivalen Android or Surface devices in terms of % value retention."

Maybe. But when the huge iPad profit margin that would have paid for two or three almost-as-good / better Android devices is taken into account, the iPad still amounts to a pretty large financial loss in comparison.

Unless, of course, a picture of a bitten apple is "worth" the large premium, as it clearly is to some types.

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Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Invested?

"Toy investment can be very profitable.

I have a collection of 500+ Dinky, Corgi 'toys' plus an extensive collection of Hornby 3 Rail '00' Gauge track locos etc. All boxed and in mint condition. Worth a heck of a lot more dosh than what was paid for it."

So you're suggesting that when iPads are historical interesting quirks, left behind long ago by the passag of toys, the very few people who have kept them in unopened boxes for many years will have something worth something? Yes, that sounds reasonable. But for the other 99.99999% of of buyers who haven't it won't have been an investment, will it?

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Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Correlation != Causation

>So you really have cause and effect the wrong way around.

>"... just as Tablet's caused a slowdown in the PC Market..."

>should read

>"... just as a slowdown in the PC Market caused the introduction of Tablets ..."

... or...

Just as battery, processor and screen technology reached a point at which the majority of (non-techie) PC users could finally have the limited web / simple email / social networking device they really wanted all along, they bought it.

And PC sales levels realigned to the market that actually needed computers (*) as they always had since the first PCs (and way before the P part), i.e. accounting types, bisiness and technical users, writers of substantial documents, programmers, etc.

(*) Yes, of course they're all computers really, under the skin, even smartphones and iThings, but most of them are locked down / simplified / prettified to suit people who don't really want / understand actual *computers*.

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Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Perhaps?

>You're absolutely right. However I'm the exception here.

>1) I invested in an iPad mini retina

You might well be (the exception). We usually describe buying something certain to decrease in value as an expense. Investments normally go the other way. (The stock market and the horses are gambles and go either way).

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Who will kill power companies? TESLA, says Morgan Stanley

Smart-ti-Pants
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Re: Net energy gaiin?

"If the price is low because Musk can afford to subsidise it"

An important point. As you say, a short-term subsidy might provide the impetus to get to the point of viability.

A much bigger, long-term subsidy which is nearly always overlooked in energy debates, is that of the nuclear power industry. It currently buries a lot of very dangerous waste products in storage which deteriorates and, one day, will be very, very expensive to replace. The amount buried continues to grow as long as fission-based power generation continues. Storage replacement will eventually cease to be optional or postponable because constructed things degrade over time. (Replacements will, themselves, be further temporary circumventions, rather than permanent solutions, needing to be replaced one day, etc.). This continuously accumulating cost is rolled into the future and ignored, wrapped in a vain hope that it will eventually go away. It won't. Allowing the industry to ignore it amounts to a huge subsidy. It's a bit like allowing someone to run up ever increasing debts on a credit card and never insisting on payment. Except that in the case of growing nuclear waste the debt collector is the laws of physics which, unlike economic systems and governments, is not a transient smoke-and-mirrors act.

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Hacker crew nicks '1.2 billion passwords' – but WHERE did they all come from?

Smart-ti-Pants

Have NSA / GCHQ been knocked off the podium?

Respeckski!

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