<p>I don’t think that savers would agree.</p>
<p>Happy for the returns, but investing for those reasons are sketchy at best</p>
<p>I am just goofing around.</p>
<p>I am a saver and I hate what the Fed is doing.</p>
<p>There is an article in the NY Times that says the FED will throw more money into the system if the economy doesn’t improve. Looks like the Fed will buy mortgage securities.</p>
<p>Bummer.</p>
<p>ES futures are down 1/2 percent.</p>
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<p>Maybe they can monetize iPhone 4s.</p>
<p>:)…</p>
<p>So, Anybody else concerned with Aapl’s operating model?</p>
<p>This year will be ok. Maybe next year will be ok.</p>
<p>But how long can Aapl stay ahead of its competition and keep its profit margins up?</p>
<p>Samsung, Goog, Msft, AMZN…</p>
<p>Some day the tablets are going to be frisbees and the smartphones are
going to be ubiquitous.</p>
<p>A friend said that the Surface has an advantage over the IPAD because developers will be able to use it. What do I know?</p>
<p>IBD went from market under pressure to market in correction. that means down.</p>
<p>Apple at 567 at end of day. Probably goes down more tomorrow.</p>
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<p>Software.</p>
<p>Google released their tablets. Most of the apps run in smartphone mode - they aren’t native. There are a ton of native iPad apps. Take a look at the Ameritrade or Fidelity Apps on the iPhone vs the iPad. There’s a huge difference in the amount of information displayed and the navigational abilities.</p>
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<p>The Intel-based Surface will be priced like an Ultrabook - as in not cheap. You can run Windows 8 on it just like a regular laptop. Are you going to do development on it without a mouse and keyboard? I doubt it.</p>
<p>The ARM-based Surface has practically no software available. Microsoft is even further behind than on Android smartphones.</p>
<p>Don’t you think that it’s odd that Microsoft hasn’t released pricing sales yet? They announced before Google announced but Google is already shipping the Nexus. Apple has advantages in software libraries, content deals and a customer base willing to spend money for content and apps. Developers like to go to where they can make money.</p>
<p>Do you want a tablet that has no software? I guess that would make for a good frisbee.</p>
<p>I understand Aapl has the lead right now.</p>
<p>I think time will lessen that lead.</p>
<p>I am not that long MSFT so I am not really talking my book.</p>
<p>I don’t know why MSFT hasn’t announced pricing.</p>
<p>I don’t know who the winners are going to be, but I am pretty confident profit margins are going lower over time.</p>
<p>[Why</a> Microsoft’s Surface Tablet Shames the PC Industry - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>[Closed</a> for Business - Matt Gemmell](<a href=“http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/23/closed-for-business/]Closed”>http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/23/closed-for-business/)</p>
<p>Designed for piracy</p>
<p>I previously wrote about the threshold of frustration at which piracy becomes easier than buying, but that’s not the case here. Buying an app on the Android Market is substantially similar to how you buys apps on iOS: you search, find the app, click Buy, confirm, and it downloads. It’s not an unduly onerous process, and certainly not a barrier to the business model. This isn’t piracy due to frustration.</p>
<p>Pretty easy. You search the internet for pirate copies of apps, then copy them onto your (regular, unrooted, non-“jailbroken”) device, and launch them. The system is designed for piracy from the ground up. The existence of piracy isn’t a surprise, but rather an inevitability.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>This is a pretty good article from a developer that’s just trying to make a living writing apps.</p>
<p>From your article:</p>
<p>Workers will be able to run all their Windows 8 software and previous Windows applications on this device, while the thinner one will support a more limited set of software—it uses a chip architecture more common to smartphones than PCs.</p>
<p>Do you want to run a more limited set of software? Like instead of a million applications, you can run 20 or 30?</p>
<p>I am going to read your link. </p>
<p>Give me a chance. :)</p>
<p>I want to be able to run more than 20 or 30 apps. I don’t need a million though.</p>
<p>I Want to be able to run the smartstreet platform from Schwab.</p>
<p>Schwab says no tablet can run Smartstreet right now, If the Surface with the Intl chip can run Smartstreet, then I am going to look at that tablet.
Running Flash would be nice too.</p>
<p>I love the article from your link BCEagle91.</p>
<p>I love the whole how much freedom is good argument.</p>
<p>So…because I am dense…you don’t see a threat to Apple?</p>
<p>Do you think this guy below is full of crap?</p>
<p><a href=“How Windows 8 Tablets Could Seriously Challenge the iPad | Mashable”>How Windows 8 Tablets Could Seriously Challenge the iPad | Mashable;
<p>"The thrust of Windows 8 — and why it’s such a big gamble my Microsoft — is that it brings the same UI to tablets and traditional PCs (desktops and laptops). Metro is ideally suited for touchscreens, but it works with a mouse and keyboard, too. (Here’s a full breakdown of Windows 8.)</p>
<p>There’s a reason Microsoft has done this, and it’s not really the spirit of bringing tablet features to your laptop. Quite the opposite, in fact. In order to have any hope of succeeding in tablets, Microsoft has to convince its army of Windows developers to make software for those tablets. But no one’s going to develop software for an unproven OS where the company has seen little commercial success (no current Windows tablet has significant market share).</p>
<p>However, if your entire OS, including traditional PCs, is running the same software, then developers almost have no choice but to design apps for tablets. Windows 8 essentially turns all Windows developers into tablet developers, potentially giving the Windows 8 tablet platform the fuel it needs to expand rapidly and finally give the iPad a real opponent."</p>
<p>[Uncle</a> Ben’s To Compete Against Apple With Brand-New Smartphone | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source](<a href=“http://www.theonion.com/articles/uncle-bens-to-compete-against-apple-with-brandnew,28892/]Uncle”>Uncle Ben's To Compete Against Apple With Brand-New Smartphone)</p>
<p>^ really funny!! thanks for the giggle…</p>
<p>I accidentally bumped into discussion of the “fat tailed” distribution ([Fat-tailed</a> distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tail]Fat-tailed”>Fat-tailed distribution - Wikipedia)) while trying to process power-law data of my fruit flies on drugs relating path curvature to velocity (yes these are medically relevant experiments :p). Anyway, a lot of mathematical finance models (Black-Scholes, etc.) assume thin-tail distributions (i.e. a normal dist) when they might actually be fat-tailed (follow a power law distribution); the result is a massive underestimation of risk in derivatives and mispricing of options that are significantly out of the money – credit default swaps, for instance.</p>
<p>menloparkmom, :).</p>
<p>You didn’t answer my question earlier.
Has the residential real estate market cooled in the south bay?</p>
<p>Evitaperon, yes. You are correct. Are you going to be a drug researcher? Going to med school?</p>
<p>I guess some people are going to be disappointed today. The stock market is up today.</p>
<p>Sanford Weill is a breath of fresh air. I am a little shocked because he
was the guy who helped build up Citi.
He wants to separate commercial from investment banking. Limit leverage and risk taking in commercial banking. Use mark to market to control risk and size of bets.
Weill is correct.
I wonder if anybody will listen to him.</p>
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<p>I see lots of threats to Apple. I work in big high-tech and there
are always threats. Someone with a small team and a great idea
can steal part of your lunch. There are typical tactics that large
companies use to deal with that kind of thing.</p>
<p>Apple’s up against those and other big and smart companies.</p>
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<p>I’ve played around with the iPhone development environment - actually
my son did and I kind of watched. It is a considerable amount of work
to build an app and the environment is moderately different compared
to a desktop program.</p>
<p>Developers do have a choice: they don’t have to design apps for
tablets. They can use the old version of Microsoft Developer Studio
or GCC and the Gnu development environment (which probably doesn’t
support the tablet stuff).</p>
<p>What about backwards compatibility? Let’s say that you are a big
software vendor on Windows and you have a large installed base of
Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 customers. When you write your
tablet app on Windows 8, will it run for your legacy customers? Are
you going to maintain two code lines, one for tablet and one for
non-tablet? That adds a lot of expense for software development.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that Microsoft doesn’t have a lot of this stuff
worked out yet. It is really, really late to have big issues dangling
when they plan on launching in a few months.</p>
<p>I have a bunch of concerns on Microsoft’s approach - but if you are a
developer and just keep on developing as you are now, your programs
should run fine on Windows 8 - you just won’t have the tablet
functionality with your program. You’ll need a keyboard and mouse.
For the vast majority of Microsoft customers - this will be fine.</p>
<p>What I think doesn’t matter as much as what app developers think.
They want to know that they can make money writing apps for the
platform. Apple supports app writers in making money - I think that
they are fine with the notion that people should pay for good stuff.
The Android world is more of - everything should be free. I haven’t
seen where Microsoft stands on supporting developers.</p>
<p>App developers at major companies that have to have apps to support
company sales are a bit different. There is a cost to developing apps
and a considerable cost to supporting multiple platforms. I’ve already
seen griping about supporting two major platforms iOS and
Android. Imagine supporting three. As a developer, you want to express
your creativity and ideas in an app - porting to other platforms has
to be very low on your priority list. Sure, corporate can tell you
that we have to support all of these platforms but that means that
you can’t add creative and functional value because you have to spend
time porting.</p>
<p>I would look for opinions of app developers on what they think of the
Microsoft platform.</p>
<p>Ok…thanks BCEagle91.</p>
<p>Dstark: “Sanford Weill is a breath of fresh air.” Agree. Ears perked up in this household at that. Seems like ears perked up in Congress, too - Squawk is continuing to report on rx to that statement. A sea change? Perhaps.</p>
<p>It would be nice if there was a sea change.</p>