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  • nicolaim - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    This seems like an error: "Earnings per share were up 40.6% to $2.91."
  • Brett Howse - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    Nope not an error.
  • johnnycanadian - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link

    Year over year: $2.91 (Q4, 2018) / $2.07 (Q4, 2017), so 40.6%.
  • HStewart - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    I think the problem is Apple does not listen to customers - look at those iPad numbers - people don't want iPad to be desktop replacement - a lot want a new iPad Mini.

    Apple lost me in both the phone and tablet - I use Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy Tab S3. My last MacBook was 2010 MacBook Air. Apple refused to go touch in Mac line. Sorry Apple you lost me as a customer.
  • ZipSpeed - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    It's ridiculous how much the prices have increased these last 3 years. Here in Canada, the new MBA starts at $1500. iPhone Xs Max 64GB starts at $1519. Personally, 64GB is on the smaller side, so to get the 256GB, I have to fork over $1729. When it's time to upgrade my iPhone 7 Plus, I'm going to have a serious look at that current year's Google Pixel XL.
  • HStewart - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    But people complain about prices of computers now a days and I remember about 20 years ago I purchase Dell Inspiron 7000 with had 300Mhz Pentium II mobile processor with 15 in screen and huge.

    But phones are crazy and out of this world pricing, but most including myself - just ignore the based price but phone companies hide the price in phone plans and want you upgrade and just repeat paying for rest of your life.

    But for computers if you don't want an Apple, you can better price unless you desired top of line. This is why they want higher and higher performing graphics card and more cores. Gaming machines are the worst - because next year new GPU's and CPU and repeat again just like phones.

    But unless you tech freak like myself and most people are you don't need the highest tech - you don't need expensive discrete GPU or machine with more than 2 cores. I am as quilty as gamers with desktop - which I been doing for 30 years. I am typing this on a new Dell XPS 15 2in1 with 4k screen on laptop - but that is not good enough I have it connected to LG 34U88 Ultrawide.
  • HStewart - Thursday, November 1, 2018 - link

    I forgot to list of that price of Dell Inspiron from 20 years ago - it was $3500 and my Supermicro Xeon was whopping $7000. Difference between now and then is something called 0%
  • logamaniac - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    show me your receipt from that dell transaction.

    also in 1998 the iMac was released for 1299
  • Speedfriend - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Before getting snotty with someone, maybe do some research. I paid over $4000 for a IBM Thinkpad back in 1998.

    http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9809/12/300n...
  • FreckledTrout - Saturday, November 3, 2018 - link

    I bought a pretty low end Acer Aspire back in 1994 for $2800. Ended up upgrading it to have a super fast 56K modem.
  • Peskarik - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    But you should sober up before you write things
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    "But unless you tech freak like myself and most people are you don't need the highest tech - you don't need expensive discrete GPU or machine with more than 2 cores. "

    well, in the early days of PCs, the saying went, "here are the three main apps for a PC; word processing, spreadsheets, and word processing".

    today, that list looks like; email, Facebook, email. you can get away with one of those 20 year machines for that.

    the only hope for the industry is that games become the main app for 99.44% of users. not very likely.
  • Icehawk - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link

    Eh, you really want to be post C2D but beyond that, yeah not a lot of difference in day-to-day feel. A SSD is really the only mahor performance increase, the delta between a 2nd gen i7 and a 7th is laughable.
  • StormyParis - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    The good news is that you only have to pay those prices if you want the Apple brand. I just checked, a $150 Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 sits squarely between the iPhones 6 and 6S in terms of performance, has a better camera, is cute and reliable... overall, delightful.

    Apple and Samsung and flagships in general have been getting crazy about prices. It doesn't mean we have to follow them, especially since the low and midrane have gone from bad to usable to OK to good to, now, delightful.

    Phones are handbags now. The price you pay for one doesn't have much to do with the use you get of it - exceptions apply of course.
  • johnnycanadian - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Way ahead of you. However the Pixel 3 XL 128 with the extended warranty is around $1450 CDN all in. No thanks. Might I recommend seeking out an Essential PH-1? It's an 835, not the latest and greatest but pretty good. It has a decent camera, the 360 camera attachment is surprisingly good and I picked mine up on Amazon for $250 USD (128GB). No such deals on Amazon any longer but there's a litany of them on eBay for the equivalent. Superb phone, fast OS updates and no awful skinning. It ain't perfect but I've yet to see a better phone at twice the price, and it works perfectly on Rogers up here.

    If you can get past supporting Andy Rubin, given the accusations made against him, it's a worthwhile purchase.
  • Partners in Grime - Saturday, November 3, 2018 - link

    Recently bought a Space Grey iPhone XS Max 512GB with folio case and AppleCare+. With tax it came to $2,718.24 Canadian. So, I was a bit shocked that Apple's ASP wasn't higher. :D
  • name99 - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    “I think the problem is...”
    Perhaps you might explain WHAT the problem is before giving us your diagnosis, hmm.
    Producing tons of money - check.
    Producing best of breed hardware - check.
    Producing more innovation than the rest of the industry - check.

    I agree that Apple is not doing well in the all-important “do internet know-it-all’s love us” category, but you can’t have everything...
  • mode_13h - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    The growth in ASP is not sustainable. The plateau in volume will bite them as the economy cools and even the most die-hard iPhone users start to question the extent of their allegiance to The Fruit.
  • Frenetic Pony - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Hell no, I want a straight laptop replacement. I'm done with MS, they'll never upgrade the Surface Pro in any meaningful way. If the new Ipad Pro had a touchpad so I could see what I'm doing I'd have ordered it already.
  • BurntMyBacon - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Define meaningful. The upgrade to 4C/8T processors in the same power envelope seems pretty meaningful to me. The improvement in battery life is also appreciated. They've also improved the pen with tilt support if that is important to you.

    It seems to me that the the Surface Pros are doing a fine job for many business use cases and I know more that a few people that are quite satisfied using the Surface Pro as their personal machine. The mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." comes to mind so it would be helpful if you described how it is broke for your use case. That said, it may be that the changes that are meaningful to you aren't in Microsoft's vision for the Surface Pro. The straight laptop replacement use case may be better served by the Surface Book (assuming you are looking for a 2-in-1). It is rare that I find someone who thinks an iPad of any type is better for the traditional laptop usage model, so you use case and feature needs interest me. It's possible that some of my clients may have similar enough needs to make this a worthwhile discussion as many of them like Apple product, but can't justify them for their use case.
  • Speedfriend - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    I go to a lot of investor conference and there are now more Surface Pros than any other laptop and also than iPad Pro. Still see a lot of normal iPad and iPad minis
  • Icehawk - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link

    The Surface is terrible, we have had at least 4 different models at work and they are universally loathed by both IT and the end users.

    Love my iPad but considering it’s useage (reading, watching videos, and light gaming) I don’t need a new one for a few generations I’ve owned a 1, 3, and a Pro. Definitely a different use case and market vs Surface/laptops.

    No subsidized phone means I am keeping my iPhones longer too, no more yearly upgrade - but I never really needed that anyway.
  • Yojimbo - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Gross Margin should be a percentage. Your "Margins" field should be labeled "Gross Margin". What you have under "Gross Margin" is presumably revenue minus cost of goods, which would give gross margin if you divided the difference by revenue (although when I do the arithmetic I get 38.3% not 38.5%).
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    It's actually quite literally on Apple's consolidated statements as "Gross Margin"

    https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q4-FY18-Consol...
  • Sahrin - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    Apple's smartphone business is a puss filled bag ready to burst.

    If Satya doesn't have a skunkworks Surface Phone project ready to release by christmas 2019, he should be fired. Android is in chaos, and Apple can't figure out what to do with their market leadership. Time for Windows.
  • AdditionalPylons - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    While I would be welcoming MS' potential return to the smartphone business, I think Apple could kill that competition again by simply releasing new lower cost phones a few months later. An updated equivalent of iPhone SE would be fantastic!
    Very many people are too invested in the Apple iOS/iCloud/iMessage/Facetime ecosystem to find migrating to other platforms worth the trouble. I realise that part of the reason for high prices of 2018 iPhones are the across-the-board integration of FaceID and high-end CPUs, but I still feel they are greedily testing the borders in terms of pricing.
    I've been an Apple user since 1994 and still think macOS and iOS are the best operating systems, but Apple's pricing (and lack of hardware upgradability on the computer side) has made me move more and more to Windows. For phone I seriously considered Android but realised the severity of Android fragmentation and limitations in Camera API preventing apps to use secondary cameras (in addition to Google's data harvesting).
    I ended up buying a used iPhone 6S on the cheap to replace my 5 year old iPhone 5S.
  • star-affinity - Tuesday, November 6, 2018 - link

    I agree with you pretty well. The Mac Pro (Mid 2010) I have is still a great computer for my needs, and very up-gradable (I have SSDs, a GTX 1070 graphics card, 32 GB RAM and a USB-C PCI-E card). I hope the coming new Mac Pro that's supposed to be ”modular” will have similar abilities.
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    You put your faith in a company that has failed at EVERYTHING they ever tried to do in mobile... The phrase "glutton for punishment" best describes you.
  • Peskarik - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    These days for many humanoids their phones have replaced their lives. They slip, shit, stuff their faces with some crap "food" and the rest of the time "live" in their mobile phones. Look anywhere, as soon as people stop - they pull out their mobile phones and stick their faces in them like zombies. Recent story is a good example: chinese woman went on holidays and spent 5 days just eating, sleeping and the rest of the time holding her phone, till she got inflammation in her hand and could not bend her fingers anymore.
    Phone is life now for many, therefore it is imperative to get a good life, an expensive life, 1700 bucks is therefore acceptable, 2000 would also be acceptable and humanoids would still queue for days in front of Apple shops to get the next installment of life.
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, November 2, 2018 - link

    "These days for many humanoids their phones have replaced their lives. They slip, shit, stuff their faces with some crap "food" and the rest of the time "live" in their mobile phones. "

    researchers, they of the Fake News, have been concerned about the bad effect of distracting technology, i.e. substituting playing with pixels rather than thinking about the problem to be solved, since the first GUI-ified PC decades ago. at some point, 99.44% of humans will be brainless meat bags, eager to follow whatever dictator is best able to manipulate the vegetation between their ears.
  • Morawka - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link

    I know at least 10 people (including myself) who used to buy a new iphone every year, but skipped this year due to the across the board price increases. I'm wondering if antidote is part of a larger pattern across the world. Perhaps we'll see reduced QvQ sales next quarter. There is no way they are growing in unit sales with these new prices. Apple suddenly stops disclosing unit sales the year they jack up the price on everything? yeah that tells me a lot.

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