818 million profit for Apple...

Who is apple?

Wow....thats worth $818million?? Well, I guess some people will buy anything!

The resemblence is striking.

You have your mother's eyes [/Frankenstein joke]

Peanut gallery chimes in...is anyone here actually over the age of 12?

Maybe that's why Tom's changed the web GUI -- it does have a more child like appeal for the kiddies that love to post.

Wonder when the advertisers keeping this place alive will realize this also and see zero return on their investment.

$818 million profit? We should lynch them like a the oil companies.

Oh wait, its ok for Apple to make money but when its the oil companies or Microsoft we form the lynch mob. Sorry, I forgot.

consumer ignorance is a shocking thing. I blame marketing, need more restrictons, over here in the UK some of their adverts were forced to be removed due to blatant misleading claims.

They have some genuinely good ideas. They overprice and misleadingly market them, but they are, in general, aimed at the techno-idiots and gadget hounds of this world.

I admire their marketing team in the same way I admire Rove. They took a 'meh' product and sold it to enough people to make it a success, and also to turn those that were sold on it against those that were not. Brilliant marketing.

But the thing that annoys me is the way people, the companies themselves included, can't seem to find some way to integrate these guys. Some standard platform that would allow more crossing over.

Apple has done it with Video Cards, but why are they so reluctant do truly open up the doors to their motehrboards, procesors, memory and other devices? Maybe what they need to do is make it so, like Dell and the others, they offer their own packages and combos that are guaranteed to work, but still open the doors for 3rd party development.

It would be nice to see a bit more crossing over rather than ads of people saying how great their i-XXXX compared to their previous "like, IMPOSSIBLE" Intel/AMD boxes.


But whatever.

By opening up their products to a broader spectum, realiability will go down.

How much can you truly customize a Mac? Even with music, you have to use their iTunes to get music in their m4p or whatever it is.

If their products go across the board, problems will pop up and that will hurt their image, much like Vista hurting the image of Microsoft because of problems. Even though many of problems exist outside of Vista, people blame it when something doesn't work.

Marketing is very similar to using that. Make them blame someone else and they'll keep buying your product.

You make an idiot box, you get idiots buying it.


And Strange, I was referring to compatability. Could you tell me what, besides vid cards and externals, non-branded items work with the Mac?

I am not being facetious. I have just never heard of anything being able to be inserted into their boxes that did not come from their own boxer shorts.

oh sorry, ninja sorry, i thought you mean't they had some proprietary hardware built by themselves. also, you must know more then me as i thought video cards were still slightly differetn even though ATI and nvidia make them.

I was talking with coworkers yesterday about gimmicks... Apparently I'm not an American according to them because I don't go around buying the gimmicks.

Chia Pets
Avoid the Noid action figures
Taco Bell dog
etc.

I don't buy CDs either.

Marketing to Americans is not marketing a great product at a high cost; market a sh*tty product at low cost and nickel and dime everyone to death.

I bought CD's, but I would usually buy them at discount. Some used, some on sale. The $19 price tag for a "regular new" CD was, and still is, ridiculous.

As for the American model? Sell the least to the most. Least being quality (as low as the market will bear) to the most people for the most money.

Just look at things like children's toys. We used to have GI-Joe's that could give Amazon Barbie a shag (Barbie was about an inch taller). Now we get "kung fu grip" Joe that has his thumbs break off.

We used to have tonka payloaders that you could LITERALLY sit on and ride down a hill. Now we have Chinese made "Cars" cars that contain more lead than your plumbing solder.

Bling has beaten actual balls for so long in so many things it is really sad. But, the American (and world population) is, on average, colossally dim witted and easily misinformed and we, as the few that have enough brains to even surf the net for something other than pr0n, have to deal with the results of the mass marketplace catering to them in our products, movies, shows, and everything else.

There's something on the net other than pr0n?

*shocked*

90% of internet use would go away if it went away.

The other 10% would be surfing pictures from Maxim-like magazines and computer hardware.

I'm not paying for pr0n. As I won't pay to see women naked either.

Its a joke.

Pr0n aint the only thing on the net. There is other shizznit.

It IS the major moneymaker though. No doubt. Unfortunately, from what I heard, it is not as easy a realm to get started in (financially establishing and running a .com) and turn a profit.

There is already so much that offering something that cannot be had elsewhere, or grafted for free........ Not that I feel sorry for these people or anything.


Oh, w/o the pr0n there would still be plento of NG and torrent traffic on the net... How ele would you get the shakey handi-cam coverage of Spidey 3 the day after the release???

Where!!!!?????

thanks i needed that.

@V8VENOM (stupid name, btw)
Can we PLEASE keep all this idiotic fashion-conscious pro-apple sentiment OUT of this forum? If not, can Wingy keep his schlong IN you until you desist?

Seriously - piss OFF!

Apple roolz!!! Apple pie moonshine that is. Phucky*, ever try the stuff? A slice of heaven here on earth. One tip, get a ride to save you the trouble of trying to find your car.

*apologies for the stereotype.

A few years ago they were not using ATI. They made a big point that this was somehow a step to making Apple open to new hardware manufacturers.

Apple had their own little cadre of approved manufacturers that gave them the stuff that they put their label on and sold as "apple". For the most part, they never offered anything that was not branded as "Apple", regardless of who manufactured it. ATI was the first internal component "officially supported" by Apple.

So my only point was that Apple may not have the factories or manufacturing plants, but then again neither does Dell.

But I can get a stick of Kingston or Corsair ram to work in a Dell, but I, as far as I know, cannot do the same for Apple. Apple has their "approved" manufacturers, whose names are never really brought to the public eye, who they use and brand as their own.

So, technically, you are correct. They themselves do not manufacture their products, but they are not as OEM friendly as the PC's.....

+ 5 Disturbing Pics Bonus.

AV, then tell us all the generic products that you can use in an apple (categories).

I asked that way back in the beginning, not wanting to step on anyones toes, but all TS said was "what do you mean?"

the main bugger i would think would be the mobo. if i understand right, you need that special chip thing to verify everything ahs the correct bios and is made for apple or at the very least osx won'[t install if i am not mstaken, TMD chip i think it is called.