Hard News: iPad Impressions
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You see, I am not an economist, and we seem to have all kinds of arcane rules about how economies work, and I don't really understand why one rule is perfectly acceptable and another rule makes everyone go all 'pffft! that's ridiculous!'
I'm not an economist either. And it's a perfectly doable idea to cap margins according to some set of rules, just as freezing wages and prices was doable (without actually being a good idea). You'd probably need to be more specific about exactly what you had in mind to be taken more seriously.
One of the most serious difficulties I see in the idea is simply the accounting of what a margin actually is. If a company is in the business of innovation, like Apple is, then they have a whole portfolio of things they are working on, and the overall profitability of the company rides on the collective worth of those things, not how one particular one pans out. So while it may well be that the unit cost of making iPads is way less than the price, you have to take into account that the company has a whole lot of things on the boil, and the iPad could be paying for all of them. That makes the margin seem a whole lot less all of a sudden. It could even be that the company is losing money whilst still profiting handsomely from the iPad, because of 3 simultaneous flops, and some highly speculative thing that they're still working on.
I can see that capping might make sense in some totally uninnovative business, like, for example, loaning money, which is done in much the same way it was done thousands of years ago. Indeed it seems to me that most of the innovations that have been come up with there are for the bad, because the industry itself does not produce, so if it's taking huge profits it's basically draining the rest of the economy. Gambling would be another clear choice for capping and already is capped.
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I hope that wasn't coming from me: what I wrote in supporting the Greenpeace campaign notwithstanding (and I stand by that),
Oh, I completely understand why Greenpeace focused on Apple -- like I said, it was savvy, it got them more press than anything else they could have done, and it did help push Apple into doing more, sooner, about the contents of its products.
I was a bit annoyed at the time, because of the free pass given to Nokia et al on the basis that they'd signed up to (but not met!) European e-waste standards.
But I do feel (and not just here) like I've had to justify my purchase in a way that I can't recall having to do do before. It's like the flipside of the hype.
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You'd probably need to be more specific about exactly what you had in mind to be taken more seriously.
I can't be messing about with pesky things like details, Ben! I've got an entire global capitalist apparatus to destroy from within! (Right after I buy a second-generation iPad, you understand.)
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I'm surprised more hasn't been made in reviews of the virtues of a portrait-oriented screen
I'm a big fan of portrait-orientation as well. I run two 19" monitors on my desktop - one landscape and one portrait. I almost exclusively do my web browsing on the portrait monitor. It's also great for long paged documents. The landscape monitor is better for working with things like images and spreadsheets and gaming. I did actually toy with having both monitors in portrait mode but it doesn't work well for most games.
I don't understand the move towards widescreen monitors. They're great for fullscreen video, sure, but are people really watching so much of that on their computers? For everything else the penalty to the height far outweighs the benefit of the extra width in my view. It's one of the reasons I hate having to work on my laptop.
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PAS is perfect width for scrolling on an iPhone too. It did feel a bit like RB had to justify his bleedin' birthday present. Still, these ethical dilemas are worthy of consideration.
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I've also never had quite such an experience of feeling I have to justify a purchase with my own money.
Sorry, Russell, but it is 2010 and we live in a world of finite resources. I'm just struck by how, however ethical we are in other political issues and consumer decisions, there are some areas we excuse because we REALLY need the product. Not IT stuff for me, but other things (eg shoes which involve exploited animals and workers).
Let us know when you buy a gun.
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Funny, I was going to say 'thank goodness he didn't buy an air rifle'.
ETA: That's 'dilemma' with two ems, but you knew that.
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One of the most serious difficulties I see in the idea is simply the accounting of what a margin actually is.
Exhibit 1, y'ronner: Hollywood. Never underestimate the ability of numbers types to twist and fudge and generally distort any existing concept you may have had of any aspect of income and expenses.
Hollywood accounting is actually the best possible example of why capping margins would be so incredibly difficult in practice. If movies that turn over nine figures at the box office can make a loss on paper, it's primary school maths to make an iP*'s margins fall within some arbitrary percentage.
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I haven't bought an iPad yet (as stated previously, I'll wait for the second generation model), but I'm already having to justify my future purchase in a way that I've never had to do for any other piece of kit.
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Sorry, Russell, but it is 2010 and we live in a world of finite resources.
Yeah... although I don't think it makes much difference what we, as consumers, do when we purchase things, does it? Because the problem is bigger, and systemic. You would have to have much wider, sweeping changes on the governmental/multinational corporation level. Our consumerist angst is basically pointless without that. (She says, bleakly.)
Never underestimate the ability of numbers types to twist and fudge and generally distort any existing concept you may have had of any aspect of income and expenses.
You guys aren't helping me much with my 'isn't capitalism just a big pyramid scheme?' problem, I must say.
PAS is perfect width for scrolling on an iPhone too.
Yes! I've always appreciated that.
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You guys aren't helping me much with my 'isn't capitalism just a big pyramid scheme?' problem, I must say.
Most forms of commerce are pyramid schemes of one sort or another. It's not the form, but human nature. Look at communism, which was a beautiful theory that got thoroughly corrupted (Coat. Getting) by the motivations of those who implemented it. Capitalism at least doesn't pretend to be about equality of man or any of that other nonsense, it's all about accumulation of money.
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You guys aren't helping me much with my 'isn't capitalism just a big pyramid scheme?' problem, I must say.
Danielle, have I got the presentation for you! Umm, well it will probably only reinforce your pyramid scheme "problem". Although it's not really your problem.
Crises of Capitalism. An incredibly animated presentation by David Harvey who is using classical marxist analysis of the global finacial crisis.
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Oh, Danielle, if you want more help with your crisis of faith, consider this: the richest 400 families in the US have a combined wealth of USD1.27 trillion. Yes, with a t. And the 400 highest-paid Americans had a mean income in 2007 of USD345m, with an effective tax rate of 16.6%.
Source here. Quite a scary article, given that Key et al think we should try and be more like the Yanks. Starting with their tax cuts.
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Oh, Danielle, if you want more help with your crisis of faith, consider this: the richest 400 families in the US have a combined wealth of USD1.27 trillion.
Yet some of them have arranged their affairs so they can still claim Working for Families. True story.
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Well, except that Capitalism was meant to be about egalitarianism; the Free Market (TM) was meant to close the gap between the rich and poor by pulling the poor up towards wealth (rather than dragging the rich down). Now, depending on how you define that goal, some economist will say Capitalism succeeded (everyone has TVs now; well, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, everyone worth talking about) or failed (the Rich seem much richer now and the gap between the poor and the rich is widening).
Economic theories aren't just brute facts about the world; they are meant to be testable, falsifiable and the like.
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3410,
Capitalism at least doesn't pretend to be about equality of man or any of that other nonsense, it's all about accumulation of money.
Yeah, but - and 'scuse me for teaching my grandmother to suck eggs - it relies on endless growth in a finite environment. This is impossible, but society in general is happy to live in a state of self-deception about it, or at least tacitly says to itself, "Well, let's just ride this out as long as we can then".
Frankly, I really don't like our chances.
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it relies on endless growth in a finite environment. This is impossible, but society in general is happy to live in a state of self-deception
The growth should be cyclical, and would be if central bankers weren't so terrified of deflation. Capitalism's need for growth is not unbridled in its purest form, but as we've seen with "too big to fail" we're not in a pure capitalist system. Capitalism's growth is self-regulating, or pushes for other resources to be found. Run out of one resource, find an alternative. That is the beauty of the system.
Is the earth a finite environment? Technically, yes. But there are many sustainable sources of energy, minerals and other necessities that we can use. The utilisation of those alternatives will see a shift in consumption, not a termination. We're not even close to consuming all the resources of the planet, only a few of them.
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topsy turvy... bunnies with scurvy!
Most forms of commerce are pyramid schemes of one sort or another. It's not the form, but human nature..
and
...it relies on endless growth in a finite environment. This is impossible, but society in general is happy to live in a state of self-deception about it, or at least tacitly says to itself, "Well, let's just ride this out as long as we can then"....
what they said... this delusion continues as long as economists and planners think the planet and its resources are a subset of the economy/money rather than the other way round...
I've also never had quite such an experience of feeling I have to justify a purchase with my own money. Oh well.
Hopefully you'll at least be able to claim some of
the cost as a business expense and offset the GST (if yer registered for that)... -
Sorry, Russell, but it is 2010 and we live in a world of finite resources. I'm just struck by how, however ethical we are in other political issues and consumer decisions, there are some areas we excuse because we REALLY need the product. Not IT stuff for me, but other things (eg shoes which involve exploited animals and workers).
Let us know when you buy a gun.
Hilary, I'm seriously on the verge of taking offence here. You've clearly made the judgement that I have made an unnecessary purchase. I think that's up to me to decide.
It's made in the same places as the computer equipment on which you've typed your comment. And, y'know, I do have to buy my own computer equipment. These things are my tools of trade, and they'll be the basis of my children's working income too.
And I have no idea what you mean with that "gun" comment.
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And I have no idea what you mean with that "gun" comment.
Sort of "let us know when you buy a Segway", but less calculated to offend?
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Actually, Russell, get backing to the utility of the iPad.
I'm struck by those who claim that the iPad isn't a content generation system. Now, perhaps because my kind of content generation is mostly about sticking words together in these eclectic things I call "sentences," I'm not convinced the iPad isn't a content generation device out of the box. I also imagine we'll see a lot of content generation apps for it as we have seen for the iPod/iPhone. Sure, they'll be tied down to the Apple eco-system, but, then again, a lot of apps on the "big boy" machines are tied down to particular hardware (try using ProTools without an MBox (actually, trying using Protools on a Windows machine; it's a quite horrible experience compared to the Mac), for example).
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Is the earth a finite environment? Technically, yes.
Technically the entire universe is finite. But please note it's also fucking enormous. So is the sun, which provides most of the energy on the earth, it's good for billions of years. I'm not really that worried about peak oil.
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Actually, Russell, get backing to the utility of the iPad.
I'm struck by those who claim that the iPad isn't a content generation system. Now, perhaps because my kind of content generation is mostly about sticking words together in these eclectic things I call "sentences," I'm not convinced the iPad isn't a content generation device out of the box.
Quite a few of my comments in this thread have been composed from the iPad, depending on where I'm sitting at the time. I'd cheerfully write longer works on it with the keyboard dock, and it'll be interesting to see how the iWorks applications (and Keynote in particular) will work in multi-touch form.
So yes, you can actually generate content on it quite happily. There are productivity, music, etc, apps that do all that already.
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I'm struck by those who claim that the iPad isn't a content generation system. Now, perhaps because my kind of content generation is mostly about sticking words together in these eclectic things I call "sentences," I'm not convinced the iPad isn't a content generation device out of the box.
I don't think anyone is saying the iPad isn't capable of being used to generate content. Certainly that's not what I said. I said that content generation is not what it shines at - for example, it's got few advantages over a laptop or desktop if you're doing a lot of typing (especially if you've docked it to a keyboard).
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You should be worried about Peak Oil, Ben; at the moment we need petroleum to produce solar panels. Not only that, but we have a power generation system that designed more to move rather than store electricity, the storage of which requires, at this stage in our technological development, the use of petroleum products. Whilst we'll have the sun for a good long time, we might not have our current level of technology for much longer.
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