Apple's profits would fall by almost 30% following a China ban, says analyst

[captaincranky]

Everybody is giving Apple the evil eye because of "inflated prices". It's a free market system after all, nobody is forcing you to buy their stuff!!
.

The American consumer isn't self aware enough to come to grips with his or her own stupidity. Accordingly, if say Samsung, puts out a $2,000.00 folding phablet, then sheer greed, hopeless addiction, and outright stupidity, will compel people to rush to the store, just to beat their next door neighbor to it.

The only "intelligence" the American consumer displays, is the "clever thought" which concocts the rationalizations for their completely irrational behavior.

I've always said that if you say I want, want, want, want, want, long enough, loud enough, and with a bit of a grunting inflection, you be able to call hogs like a pro.

Just stir in some greed, and it's all too easy, to turn want into need. (*)

(*) I promise from here on out, to stick to prose, and leave poetry alone..

 

[Nocturne]

Apple is more profitable than Microsoft. Microsoft has a higher stock value than Apple right now. However some Saudi Arabian state-run oil company is about 3x more profitable than Apple, so they're no longer #1 in profits worldwide.

Ah ty for the clarification, I knew they weren't #1 but must have confused info on the stock price.

 

[Nocturne]

Yes PC aka Mac division is in total shame lately with all the CPU throttling due to the weak design (very bad cooling) + thos stupid bend-gates and faulty keyboards. I do not have high hopes for Mac Pro as well.
Apple is also way too slow to update their Macs (all of them). IMHO, All they need to do is just release Mac motherboards for both Intel and AMD CPUs with full out of box support of Mac OS X... But it would never happen.

As much as I like the direction your thoughts are going the problem is Apple relies on optimization for limited hardware variations, it's why Apple over the years has been able to juice out the numbers they were able to, the problem is when Vista 64bit came out deeper access to greater hardware allowed the PC to brute Force it's way past or on a MACs level of performance, from the days when around 2000-2006 where MACs were the best choice for music and video production, that case dried up fast and for many people it became a matter of these days using programs they were taught on or had a much more familiar experience with, but as Apples computer division is sliding down the wayside now and they are having a shift towards ARM processing many developers are abandoning them in favor of sticking to a more liberated x86 ecosystem. Honestly I think you have a great point and I think it's officially time for Apple to let go and just merge with the PC universe and compete with Microsoft in the open market using atx standards while allowing for a range of hardware to be MAC certified while allowing for a premium product available from Apple. Then again they could be like Nintendo and hate money.