Apple's Jobs Takes On Rivals Adobe, Google

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 2, 2010 | Yukari Kane and Nick Wingfield

[re_tail20]

Chief Executive Steve Jobs, in a broad-ranging discussion, took more potshots at Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash software, vowed not to get into search despite Google Inc.'s move into Apple's turf, and called Apple passing Microsoft Corp.'s stock valuation "surreal."

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital technology conference on Tuesday, Mr. Jobs touched on issues that include suicides at Apple's largest contractor, challenges related to AT&T Inc.'s phone network and the origins of the iPad.

The war between Apple and Adobe has been escalating over the last few months. Mr. Jobs reiterated on Tuesday that it believed an emerging technology called HTML 5 was a better alternative to Adobe's Flash. "Sometimes you have to pick the things that look like the right horses to ride going forward," he said, adding that consumers pay Apple to make those choices.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jobs defended its Taiwanese contractor Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn, saying that it wasn't a "sweatshop" despite a spate of employee suicides that has put its working conditions under scrutiny. Still he said that the company was troubled over the situation and it was "over there trying to understand what's happening, and more importantly trying to understand how to help."

[Thurston_Howell_III]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-31/steve-jobs-wont-live-forever-so-short-apple-stock-now/

"Apple bears more than passing resemblance to a 1970s therapy cult. With his infectious faith in the liberating power of technology, Jobs has persuaded countless impecunious hipsters to pay vast sums for his brushed aluminum baubles, even as his control-freakery reaches new heights. His turtlenecked product launches are like tent revivals, only more hushed and reverential. Express any doubt about the superiority of a Mac over, say, a humble PC with identical specs that costs half as much and your blasphemy will be met with sputtering, uncomprehending rage. This is the kind of devotion that is the hallmark of a small, tight-knit group, like the Branch Davidians. Yet the cult of Apple has expanded to include tens of millions, many of whom were first hooked by the ease and attractiveness of the iconic iPod, pusher-man Steve's gateway drug."

[Goldsborough]

Of course the flaw in the quote is PC with identical specs. . . .

A computer running Windows is not identical in any software respect to a Macintosh and for a great many people the presence of Windows as an operating system is a rationally arrived at deal breaker, usually based upon past experience with Redmond's crap.

[Uri’el-2012]

Foxconn

It has been under-reported that the rate of suicide at Foxconn
is dramatically lower than that of the rest of Communist China.

This report is more Marxist propaganda.

[Carl LaFong]

BTW, their Safari web browser for Windows is gawdawful. It sits on my desktop gathering dust.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

I don’t see how they makes sense with Windows dominating the market. I’d say the Apple Tax “hipster” premium built into the price of one of their plastic boxes is a bigger deal breaker, thats why they can’t grab any substantial global marketshare outside the affluent USA.

[CodeToad]

“trying to understand “

Translation: We really don’t give a rat’s ass. We do not understand because we do not want to understand. If we gave a rat’s ass we would already understand.

[Codeflier]

Uh oh! You stepped in it now. Watch out! Never post or say anything bad about Apple in FR. Apple can do no wrong.

[D-fendr]

PC with identical specs that costs half as much

I believe this has been pretty thoroughly debunked. What is true is you can buy a much cheaper PC as Apple does not market low-end.

[Goldsborough]

I don’t see how they makes sense with Windows dominating the market.

It makes sense when Apple absolutely owns the top end of the market. People who can afford to do better don't drive Kias and Suzukis because those are cheaper cars. . . .

I’d say the Apple Tax “hipster” premium built into the price of one of their plastic boxes is a bigger deal breaker, thats why they can’t grab any substantial global marketshare outside the affluent USA.

I'm sure that market share reports from Sri Lanka and Cameroon keep some BMW executive awake at night. Global market share means squat, especially when software piracy is taken into account. What matters is making money, and Apple seems to do okay for itself and its investors.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

It makes sense when Apple absolutely owns the top end of the market. People who can afford to do better don't drive Kias and Suzukis because those are cheaper cars. . . .
key word here is "top end"...thats a nice way of saying the smallest part of the marketshare pyramid. As for marketshare reports, Steve-O and crew need to worry more about Asia than they do Africa. Whats next, you going to sell us all on Apple's "better" virus protection "security through obscurity" of their OS?

[Goldsborough]

For accusing Apple fans of having a complex, you certainly seem to have one of your own. Why would you care what a “globally irrelevant” computer company does? Did Steve Jobs dump your mother or something?

[Thurston_Howell_III]

Don’t let the facts get in the way of Apple’s marketing hype, right?

[TXnMA]

"...for a great many people the presence of Windows as an operating system is a rationally arrived at deal breaker, usually based upon past experience with Redmond's crap."

...or present experience with Redmond's crap -- just ask Google:

Just check out the results of this FR search...

[Goldsborough]

When you present some facts, start a new thread willya?

[Sir_Ed]

They’re nuts. They completely disregard the reality that Macs are simply better in their interface, their operating systems, their quality...they have the opposite of a Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, they have a Steve Jobs Hate Distortion Field.

Anything that has the appellation of Apple, Mac or Jobs fills them with fear, loathing and hatred, no matter how good the product.

It’s really strange, such irration. I see it time after time and after a while ya’ just shrug your shoulders, move on and wish Freep had a Kill/Ignore field for deluded haters of their ilk.

Oh well...

Ed

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Eh, I’ve worked with Macs for various lab work at the university (for physics labs, math labs, and so on). The interface is very annoying.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

Face it, Apple marketing hype increases the market cap in stock land, but in real life when Apple is not being investigated by the DOJ, dealing with yet another Foxconn suicide, or having Microsoft scoop them on key patents for their “paradigm shifting” devices, they’re lamenting that they can’t gain marketshare.

[Goldsborough]

Being a Microshaft fanboy is like being a Maytag repair man.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

Sorry friend, but that doesn’t make any sense. Just because I understand that Apple marketshare depends on easy to market to (i.e. easy to dupe) iSheep to continually purchase the “newest” offering from Steve-O and crew doesn’t make me a Microsoft anything. They had a hit with the iPod, a digital walkman was just what the world needed, but everything after has been a reinvention of that.