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[sevenlayermuddle]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31012410

Apple posts the biggest quarterly profit in history

Yes I know some here really like Apple products, I do, some don't.

Personally my only regret is, over the past few years when buying all these iPods, iPads and iPhones, not to mention the Mac,  maybe I should also have bought some company shares.   

[UncleUB]

There is no doubting the quality of their products but in the case of many young people they want an Apple product because....well its Apple isn't it,they don't think about what they can do or even if there is something just as good on the market.They simply want Apple ipods/Ipads/Mac books etc because its cool to have have them..

[kitz]

I heard that on the news this am.   I was only half listening but I think they said it was mostly down to profits from the iphone and that the ipad had taken a small decrease of sales?

I agree that it does seem to be super trendy and a must have to have an i-phone. 

[Black Sheep]

I'm with 7LM when it comes to Apple products ..... the quality and design of their products is class. I too wish I'd bought shares as we own 2 i-Phones, and i-Pad, an i-Pod, and an i-Mac.

I'm too old to be 'trending', and the only reason we bought Apple was because of it's quality and design. Glad the company is doing well. 

[sevenlayermuddle]

As Kitz suggests, the boom seems to be iPhones rather than iPads.  Plus good inroads in China.

Have to say though, it's a good job they haven't put me in charge of marketing, as I don't like big phones, and would have vetoed development of the 6 and 6 plus.    I like to keep my phone in a shirt pocket, and anything bigger than an iPhone 5 just doesn't fit.   But clearly, Apple's judgement that I am untypical would seem to be justified   

Even for me though, big advantage of the iPhone 6 was the discounting of iPhone 5C, hence why I at last have an affordable PAYG iPhone.  Georgeous and perfect, like everything else I have bought from them, the 5C Quickly became 'My Precious'.  Don't buy a 5C if you need massive amounts of storage, but I don't.

[loonylion]

Personally I'd never touch an Apple product. I was given a 2009 macbook and the hardware quality is atrocious. Apple computers lost their only good point when they switched to Intel processors. In my opinion Apple is the greatest marketing company in the world; They can produce a product that's inferior to almost every competitor, costs 3x as much as every competitor, and still sell millions more than every competitor.

Something to think about: The basic ipad costs £400 to buy. It costs Apple £170 to make. That's £230 profit on every single unit, before you include warranties, accessories, and apps.

Phone wise I have a Oneplus One. Costs a fraction of the price of the iphone, the hardware is superior to the iphone, and it does everything I want without restricting me to what the Apple overlords say I can use their product for.

[Black Sheep]

It's an overly done debate with no 'Winners', just opinions. I've said it before, and I'll say it again ...... the best move I ever made was switching from my update-hungry, no scratch that .............. update ravenous ....... whirring fan, slow to boot, inferior sound/picture quality, with additional space needed for the tower and routing of cables ...... Microsoft PC to my beautifully quiet, switch on and ready to go, space saving, one update a month ...... gorgeous i-Mac.

I'm the consumer, and I'm not particularly bothered about the hardware, software, whether certain obscure stuff works with it or not. I use my i-Mac a lot, just as I did my previous desktop PC, and for what I use it for Apple beats the rest into a cocked-hat.

[Ixel]

Personally I'd never touch an Apple product. I was given a 2009 macbook and the hardware quality is atrocious. Apple computers lost their only good point when they switched to Intel processors. In my opinion Apple is the greatest marketing company in the world; They can produce a product that's inferior to almost every competitor, costs 3x as much as every competitor, and still sell millions more than every competitor.

Something to think about: The basic ipad costs £400 to buy. It costs Apple £170 to make. That's £230 profit on every single unit, before you include warranties, accessories, and apps.

Phone wise I have a Oneplus One. Costs a fraction of the price of the iphone, the hardware is superior to the iphone, and it does everything I want without restricting me to what the Apple overlords say I can use their product for.

100% agree with this. Why is it that Apple also seem to be the one company I regularly see in the news filing a lawsuit against another company...

I also recently saw in the news, other than this supposed hidden spy app embedded in the iOS, that Apple bought the company which was going to be doing the fingerprint scanner for the Google Nexus 6. Dirty tactics indeed .

[loonylion]

100% agree with this. Why is it that Apple also seem to be the one company I regularly see in the news filing a lawsuit against another company...

Apple's modus operandi in recent years has been to copy stuff, patent it, and then sue the pants off of everyone else including the person/company that originally came up with the idea. And they cry foul when someone challenges them on it. A vast amount of Apple's patents are for things that shouldn't be patentable.

the names IOS and iphone were trademarked (by Cisco) and in use way before Apple came up with them. iphone was a voip telephone, IOS is the operating system that runs on Cisco routers.

[Black Sheep]

Every time I GOOGLE ..... the difference between .......... it seems to be split down the middle as to which is best. All I can say is that having used BOTH OS's, it's a no-brainer ...... Apple win every time.
 
I could spend ten minutes and dig up all sorts of crap about MS and it's flaws, why waste my time The question in my mind is, what is best for you .... the user ..... ??
Some folk simply bash Apple because of the pricing structure alone, that is not an argument though. Invariably, you get what you pay for in life. Harsh, but very true. 

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/opinion/apple/115151/5-reasons-why-a-mac-is-better-than-a-pc/

[Ronski]

I'm firmly in the camp that hates Apple because of the way they conduct their business.  They are the business world equivalent of the play ground bully! They beat their suppliers down on the price of building their products, and then they rip the consumer off when they buy an Apple product! This is why the are the richest company in the world with so much cash reserves! It's a shame that people that buy Apple product choose to ignore this side of things.

Think of it another way, if your car manufacture said you could only buy fuel from their filling stations, you can't use cheaper parts from factors and had to pay excessive prices for original main dealer parts, how long would the majority of you put up with that? Oh and every time you bought something for the car you'd have to pay 30% to the manufacturer!

The above said, if someone wanted to buy a smart phone or tablet, and they were not technically minded then I have suggested Apple products in the past, but having very rarely used them this is only based on what I've heard people say.

[sevenlayermuddle]

You can't blame tech companies for patenting their ideas.  Often they simply take out patents to prevent others from later patenting these same ideas and then suing the genuine inventor, wrong way around.  The patent system is not meant to allow that but in practice it is hard to stop, as shown by the Australian who was granted a  patent for  the wheel a few years ago.

I'd actually like to see Apple win a lot more cases.  Having been first to mass-market with the modern touch screen smartphone, people like Samsung were able to come along a year or so later, with phones that were all but indistinguishable from iPhones from more than a few feet away.  Yet it turned out Apple had precious little legal recourse, other than  specific features like individual swipe recognition, iirc.  Never seemed quite fair, to me.

Per technical considerations, which is a different matter, I'd point out that both OS X and iOS are built upon an evolution of Unix.  For those that are unfamiliar with Unix suffice it to say that many people who profess to like Linux, they are actually liking Unix. 

But for those that hate Apple so much, why not do as I do with things that I do not like?  Just don't buy one.  For me, if it subsequently transpires that I am the only person not buying, then it may be time to reconsider my prejudice, but that is optional.  If you don't like, just don't buy?

[Black Sheep]

I've read today, but can't be bothered hunting it down for referencing  , that the longevity of the Apple components more than makes up for the relatively poor PC equivalent.

Horses for courses, it would appear.

[loonylion]

Every time I GOOGLE ..... the difference between .......... it seems to be split down the middle as to which is best. All I can say is that having used BOTH OS's, it's a no-brainer ...... Apple win every time.
 
I could spend ten minutes and dig up all sorts of crap about MS and it's flaws, why waste my time The question in my mind is, what is best for you .... the user ..... ??
Some folk simply bash Apple because of the pricing structure alone, that is not an argument though. Invariably, you get what you pay for in life. Harsh, but very true. 

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/opinion/apple/115151/5-reasons-why-a-mac-is-better-than-a-pc/

I've also used both, and would never use Apple by choice. The macbook I have is probably the most expensive computer in the house, it's also by far the most unreliable. I've got better things to do than continually switch the thing on and off in the hope it eventually decides to start properly. its only plus point is the firewire port which none of the other laptops have.

I don't deny that Windows has many flaws, some of them significant. So does Apple. On balance, Windows is far more useful to me than Macos ever will be.

The 5 reasons listed in the above article are very easily refuted. Horses for courses, but Apple are not the company they once were, and their products are not what they used to be. Macs were good at what they did at one time, now they're just overpriced, non-upgradable PCs with a restrictive OS controlled by a dictatorial corporation.

You can't blame tech companies for patenting their ideas. 

Except it's not their idea they're patenting, it's someone elses'. Apple manages to patent a hell of a lot of things that are considered prior art, or even fundamental. Sure patent law isn't supposed to allow that, but they get away with it. Perk of being the richest company on the planet in a country that values money above all else (USA).

[sevenlayermuddle]

...now they're just overpriced, non-upgradable PCs...

On a more light-hearted note, that reminds me.  A few years ago, my Mac Mini was running out of steam, clearly wanted more RAM.

Officially it could only be upgraded by Apple, as opening the case required special tools.  Various website suggested that a 'putty knife' (or wallpaper scraper, as we would call it in the UK) would do the job.  I was reluctant to attack my lovely little bit of tech with a decorator's tool, but eventually tracked down what appeared to be the official Apple service manual that had somehow 'escaped' onto the Internet. 

There was indeed a special tool for opening the case, with an Apple part number, available from various online suppliers at not insubstantial cost.   The accompanying picture showed... a wooden handled putty knife.  Or 'wallpaper scraper' as we would call it. 

After a quick detour via Homebase, the RAM upgrade went smoothly, and I remain a loyal customer of Apple .