Reading into that
It really seems like he was taking a dig at the Galaxy Gear.
Tim Cook has claimed that Apple is "closer than it's ever been" to the release of a new product range. Ignoring the fact that the nearest Apple was to releasing some new iStuff was, well, the last time it released some, Cook claimed exciting new things were in the offing. Dodging questions about exactly what sort of products …
what a crap article... putting a bad spin on someone saying that only release product when they are happy with what they release. Apple should be applauded for it.
Look at all the useless stuff released in the last few years... things rushed to market. The iPad was nearly a decade in development. Result : a success.
> The iPad was nearly a decade in development
Working on it since before 9/11, have they?
> Apple usually do it right
Serial blunders and market failures omitted
> and usually do it first as well
Generally they are at best second
Also, Microsoft invented Internet, Apple invented Ethernet etc..
Microsoft did not invent the internet....... In fact their amazing leader predicted its demise and like with most of their products of the last decade ended up playing catchup with the market because they realised to late that they were wrong.
Allow me to introduce you to a concept called "satire."
sat·ire: n. the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
It's pretty clear DAM was making fun of the previous post.
No, they didn't invent the first PC. They popularised it, which is what they do with everything. They take someones elses idea, make a product out of it and sue the living bejesus out of anyone else who tries to make a similar product, including the person whose idea it was in the first place
They neither invented nor popularized the first PCs. That would be Olivetti, HP, Xerox PARC, and IBM. Quit drinking Apple's kool-aid. They make good equipment, but they really didn't do much aside from making devices to steal telephone calls until long after there were already what we'd call PCs now that were on the market.
May I be so bold as to suggest that it was Alan Sugar (in the UK at least) and his Amstrad PC1512 range that popularised the PC.
I could and did afford that. At that time there may have been a handful of Apple's in the UK so their contribution to the popularisation of PC's in the UK is negligible if not totally insignificant.
Come on, give credit where credit is due.
• Which computer company was successful with a WIMP system before the Macintosh?
• What product(s) did the Newton copy?
• Which companies were already very successful with laser printers when they first came out?
• Which products did the Apple II rip off?
@deadlockvictim
Exactly. The commentaries on this thread are so driven by fanboyism they either have no idea of computer history or are simply prepared to lie. It is the achievement Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniac were famous for and that set Steve Jobs on the sometimes rocky road to massive success. They launched the first home computer, plain and simple. Before that it was all electronics kits or machines costing $19,000. No one can present any counter examples or justify their counter claims because there are non and there are no counter claims that stand up to even cursory examination.
I know, I can still remember the moment the Apple II arrived like it was yesterday, staring longingly at through the window of my local electronics store. There is even a commenter above quoting the PCW 8256, which was launched in 1985 a full 8 years after the Apple II (the Apple I was made of wood to order and was never manufactured in bulk).
There were in fact two others launches in 77 after the Apple II but neither were as good. The other two other launches being the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. The TRS-80 was the better of the two. The Commodore PET was hampered by an unimpressive text display resolution so low as to seriously compromise what it could be used for. Don't get me wrong, in those days any such machine with a CRT display output and that could be used for programming was legendary. My first computer was the ZX81, followed by the Oric1 and the Commodore 64.
quote: "Is that an American 'fanny' or a British fanny that you're thinking about?"
Both, that way they can capitalise on 2 demographics, and also be seen to be anti-discriminatory ;)
quote: "Apple has never been first to market with anything; it looks for an establishing market and attempts to launch a sufficiently significant product to capitalise on the initial growth."
Which I usually mention when people bring up the iPod / iPhone / iPad as "firsts", and then they look at me funny. Apple don't do untested markets, they wait for profitability to be established first and then barrel in after someone else has made all the initial mistakes (it gives them time to engineer out those obvious mistakes).
Brilliant strategy, but then (IMO) they spoil it by writing all the future marketing to imply that they did it first. The products are solid enough on their own merits to not warrant attempting re-writing of history, but Apple apparently try anyway :/
"Apple don't do untested markets, they wait for profitability to be established first and then barrel in after someone else has made all the initial mistakes (it gives them time to engineer out those obvious mistakes)."
Not being snotty, but could you give me some of these engineering mistakes which Apple improved upon ?
Their design is nice though, and that's point.
They barrelled in (PAST TENSE) with itunes and their appstore - that's what makes them the money - innovation in making money and marketing - not in innovation in products.
I got an iBead (Rio SU30 in Japan) in 2003 and I still use it for the Gym / Cycling / Jogging - it is physically and technically perfect, plug it into your computer to charge, drop the music you want to listen to on it if not already there and sorted. No drivers no fuss. Once battery is dead for MP3 playback FM radio lasts another couple of hours. What Apple did here was jump in and say we need to control the physical and software interface to devices and get 30% of all music that can be played on these devices. To help this we will fund investigation into getting trot of napster and equivalents. Oh, while we are doing it, someone draw a picture of something and give it the the lab in China to make, cheers.
"Not being snotty, but could you give me some of these engineering mistakes which Apple improved upon ?"
Find an old Windows Mobile phone of the sort that were being sold before the iPhone came out, such as the XDA/MDA range from HTC. Compare that with say the iPhone 2 or iPhone 3, or some of the Androids such as the original Galaxy S.
You will see very quickly what the improvements were.
Apple makes a single digit fraction of its profit from iTunes/App Store. Those are enablers, hardware is where they make the real money.
Why do you rag on Apple taking a 30% cut when Google takes exactly the same cut? If what Apple is doing taking 30% is so awful, shouldn't the great Google be showing the world how awful that is by taking less? Or hell, taking nothing, since they make their money by selling you, not by selling you stuff?
"""""
Apple's reclassification of its revenues to isolate iTunes' software, media and services separately from its hardware products has revealed the hidden billions of dollars in revenues the company has been earning on top of its hardware sales of computers and gadgets, revenues that now dwarf the company's iPod sales.
""""
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/01/28/apple-now-collecting-twice-as-much-from-itunes-software-services-as-from-ipod-sales
http://9to5mac.com/2013/06/21/apple-owns-75-percent-of-the-digital-music-market-but-apps-are-where-the-growth-is/#more-276455
I for one see few single digits here....
I don't recall Google having an App store when itunes was launched - I could be wrong... also... I don't recall 'ragging on' - I was pointing out that they didn't invent or engineer anything splendid APART from the their Stores, Cables and Interfaces to force people into their ecosystem and their marketing helped a great deal.
Has Paypal released a physical device that can be used instead of cash/card? They've got apps on phones, but not physical devices.
After a quick skim of the article, could this be an Apple bracelet/watch/phone that lets you pay for stuff direct from your iTunes account with a wave of your wrist? Yes, other phone manufacturers have NFC for payments, but it's not Apple iTunes in the back end sapping your bank account ...
Just imagine all those Apple fanbois frantically shaking their wrists to pay for porn by the minute/second/etc ... or maybe not imagine it ... where's the memory wipe button?
Already. Now.
As in Apple did not invent it.
Just leaving this here for posterity when someone gets vilified at some point in the future by AC's (Apple Cultists) for claiming that Apple did not actually invent it...
Maybe for the odd patent trial judge, too.
"Has Paypal released a physical device"
No, but this company called Visa have. Also American Express. They have great battery life, don't weigh much and fit nicely into your pockets. Security consists of using either a 4-figure PIN or by making a complex two dimensional gesture using a haptic input device called a 'pen'.
For those who struggle with the technology involved, there are also a number of devices which can also double as mobile phones, which can be linked to Paypal. Of course, that gives the customer both a choice of hardware and payment company, which can obviously be completely be re-invented by tying both hardware and payment platform to Apple, robbing customers of choice and interoperability. But hey 'It just works', or whatever.
>>which can obviously be completely be re-invented by tying both hardware and payment platform to Apple, robbing customers of choice and interoperability.
Hmm. "robbing". Your grasp of English is even worse than your grasp of reality: "Robbing" means stealing with the use of force or realistic threat of force. Apple gear is damned clever. But I had not realised it could apply physical force to make you use iTunes.
Somehow, such linguistic dexterity makes me doubt, even further, the validity of any opinion you may have.
"Hmm. "robbing". Your grasp of English is even worse than your grasp of reality: "Robbing" means stealing with the use of force or realistic threat of force."
Wow, are you actually having a go at me for using language loosely and in an evocative rather than strictly factual manner, while obviously making a joke?
Really?
"Apple gear is damned clever."
'Clever' would infer intelligence or original thought. In the literal sense it is not 'clever', because it has neither, being a machine. Because you misused a word I too think that you are mentally ill equipped to participate in debate.
See: Annoying and enormously, stupidly petty, isn't it?
And make sure you aren't in a greenhouse prior to throwing stones.
"Has Paypal released a physical device that can be used instead of cash/card? They've got apps on phones, but not physical devices."
Yes:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/account/DCIntro-outside
Whats more it works in all shops that accept cards with no additional hardware needed, doesnt need a battery, its small, light and has curved edges - its practically an apple device already!
That's sort of bizarre, a Mastercard Debit card fed from Visa Credit card via PayPal.. Maybe useful for discovering in a shop that only takes Debit cards that my Bank Account is empty ... Except most shops that take Debit cards have an arrangement the Bank doesn't mention to you till you discover on the statement you can spend past the overdraft limit without knowing.
So many creative ways to get further in Debt!
"So what's happened to the "reality distortion field" in these days of Peak Apple? Suddenly reality looks about as boring as we all knew it to be. So, if you don't mind waiting, we're off for a snooze until the fruity firm decide to do something interesting again. "
El Reg and the other media were the ones obsessing about the "reality distortion field". Good to see you finally caught up.
'...exactly what sort of products was set to roll out...'
Ignoring the (presumably) deliberate misinterpretation of the quotation which does imply the release of impending new iGoodies rather than any old ones, the sense of moral^h^h^h^h^h grammatical superiority didn't last long.
E&OE
The iPod wasn't new or innovative, just better marketed and more expensive. No Apple Tech. Only rip of Dieter Rams Braun styling.
The iPhone had a more slick GUI (but not actually new HW, nor as fully featured) and was better marketed and succeeded well due to bundled data package, no innovation or Apple HW Technology, SW a repackaged OS X (which wasn't actually Apple innovation). More expensive than competitors.
The iPad was a larger iPhone. Zero innovaton. More expensive than comparable competition.
Apple TV isn't a TV. It's a media Streamer which really needs and iPad or iPhone to get best value out of it thus in reality £400 more than a Roku, which doesn't need a tablet or phone for full value. There is zero innovation in an Apple TV.
Apple based on profits vs sales has about x3 margin, thus are obviously overpriced.
They are a Product appearance Design & marketing House with a nice "in house" GUI on the iOS and OSX. They are not a Technology company or innovator. They buy in the HW expertise and little SW innovation since they bought in OS X from Steve Job's Next to replace insecure, inflexible creaking OS9. OSX is not very innovative being largely based on BSD.
Apple do what they do very well. But unlike Samsung have developed very little. The original Mac was a "fixup" of the under spec'd Lisa (which was a cheap clone of the Xerox Star, which I played with). The current Mac is largely an Intel design. The Apple II was "ready to go", only needing a monitor on top but only 40 columns and slow non-standard 100k floppy. I believed the hype and bought one. Terrible waste of money.
Apple have always relied on customer perception. Not on technological innovation. Maybe the Newton and Pippin were innovative.
Or the round puck mouse with one button (but stupid).
To choose but one of the plethora of bullshit comments ... I choose this piece of shite.
"Apple based on profits vs sales has about x3 margin, thus are obviously overpriced."
I let it stand alone, in all its idiotic and illogical glory.
You might as well have written "I hate Apple" and have been done with it.
The word overpriced has more than one meaning.
If a product continues to sell well, and make money for its producers, yes, they haven't set a price that is too high for the purpose of maximizing profit.
If, however, other companies are making products that serve the same purpose just about as well, or maybe even better, for a vastly lower price, then clearly the product in question has a price too high in relation to the value it provides - at least from the perspective of the people who have chosen the alternatives.
Now, the question is: are the alternatives really better, or is it just sour grapes from people who would really love to be able to afford Apple? Unfortunately, that's the question that people can argue about forever in an unproductive fashion. I think there's some truth on both sides of it - Apple has provided many products which were superior in quality, but things like the restrictiveness of the App Store, or the smaller Mac software ecosystem really do impair value for many users of products in the respective genre.
If, however, other companies are making products that serve the same purpose just about as well, or maybe even better, for a vastly lower price, then clearly the product in question has a price too high in relation to the value it provides - at least from the perspective of the people who have chosen the alternatives.
Wait - are you saying there's a difference between utility and price? I always figured those two terms were precisely synonymous, and economists just used both to confuse other people.
(And you didn't even mention use value or exchange value. I won't either.)
The term "overpriced" is nearly always "from the perspective" of someone - it's a subjective evaluation. In theory there's an ideal price that maximizes net profit for product X in market Y, which would make any price over that ideal objectively "overpriced". But as behavioral economists keep demonstrating, markets aren't stable, actors aren't rational, and price itself is an intangible that affects demand, so that ideal price is generally impossible to determine and keeps changing.
This is particularly the case for products which have complex affordances ("do a lot of things"), are luxury items, and have other strong intangible price factors such as brand association; such products are not commodities (that is, most buyers do not regard similar products from other suppliers as interchangeable). And all of those apply to Apple products.
So Apple products are, and are not, overpriced. It's a function of who the potential buyer is.
One thing about the iPod was very new. You put a CD into iTunes, it ripped into your library, and the moment your iPod was plugged in the music transferred to it. Compared to the abysmal way the Creative players et al handled getting music onto their devices at the time and that alone was worth paying the extra for.
As for the iPhone, you can't seriously argue that it wasn't a game changer. Google certainly thought so. They threw out their Blackberry-like Android phone GUI and completely reworked it after the iPhone was demoed. Android wouldn't be a patch on what it is now had the iPhone not been invented.
Apple aren't the only player in town by a long way, but credit where credit's due. They've moved the field forward where others simply haven't had the bottle.
"Compared to the abysmal way the Creative players et al handled getting music onto their devices at the time"
I have, sitting in the cupboard behind me, an old Creative mp3 player. Still works, if I could be bothered to charge it up. Now, to get the mp3 files on it was incredibly tricky.
What I had to do was connect it to the PC, using some obscure thing known as a USB cable. I believe they are really expensive and difficult to obtain. Then, I had insert the CD into this thing called a CD Drive. Don't think they ever caught on. The really difficult bit was then clicking on one button in the Creative suite that ripped the CD to mp3 and instantly transferred them to the mp3 player.
Yep, bloody hard work it was.
Of course, I could also rip CDs using any number of applications, and simply drag n drop them onto the player. That concept is obviously far too complicated for a simple minded Apple owner to comprehend.
>The iPod wasn't new or innovative, just better marketed and more expensive. No Apple Tech. Only rip of Dieter Rams Braun styling.
Few PCs had USB 2.0 at the time of the iPod's release... the first model iPod was FireWire and Mac only. I was studying Product Design at the time, and the iPod was the first mp3 player that appeared to offer a marked improvement over our MD players, mainly due to its sheer capacity. That same capacity necessitated a different UI to those used in MD players... indeed the Sharp MD722 boasted a scroll wheel a couple of years before the iPod, but it was only used for text entry and cueing within a track - not track selection itself.
Solid state memory was so expensive that the first MP3 players started at 32 MB.
> Only rip of Dieter Rams Braun styling.
Dieter Braun was not a stylist, or even an Industrial Designer. He was a Product Designer or, as he prefers due to the common misconception that 'design' only covers appearance, 'Form Engineer'. His Principles of Design were there for all to read, but to actually implement them requires time and skill.
Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how it worked.....after the release of the iPod. I remember it being a little more complicated prior to that though.
You see, "simple minded Apple owners" often had Creative MP3 players back in the day. Some "simple minded Apple owners" also used to use Windows, or even still do.
I know, amazing concept eh?
I'd say having to throw away your PC and buy a Mac, just to use an iPod was way more inconvenient to anybody than anything Creative designed.
Hmm.. Apple made a massive design mistake and quickly back-tracked to allow Windows users to use an iPod?
Apple got it wrong.
I know, amazing concept eh?
I remember the horrors of installing the required SW to work iPods on Windows 98. With only 19kbps available on rubbish dialup to download the applications.
People bought them at Christmas due to hype and had no way to load music on them! Most people even if they had a PC didn't have internet.
I had an mp3 player that did one click rip and copy - it was definitely before the iPod, wasn't a creative device, and was one of the easiest things ever to use. It was also card based so you didn't even need a USB cable and install drivers... Just plug it into a reader.
I then got a a creative nomad Zen (awesome little device)... First time I enjoyed carrying all my music around with me.
My only bad experience with ripping and copying was with a net minidisk player by Sony... It was horrific software that was loaded with DRM and prevented you from listening to tracks you "checked into" a minidisk. Artificially limiting mp3s to mimic physical medium, to "protect" themselves from piracy. Even then though Sony released and then tried to ban a standalone application that ripped and copied whole CD directly to the netmd, including tags, side stepping the concept of a library on the PC.
I think that's probably the key: _some_ of the other MP3 makers supplied terrible devices and none of them gained critical mass. Apple supplied a simple device and had enough baseline recognition that the perception stuck. So when presented with a choice the logic went: the Apple is definitely simple, the others are probably simple but maybe I'm thinking of something else and anyway who wants to take the risk? I'll just pay the extra £15 and skip the hassle.
If you were a Mac user then that's doubly so because iTunes was essentially built in. If you were a Windows user you'd probably have to be reasonably literate to understand that buying into iTunes could be not described as reducing hassle without quite a stretch of the imagination.
Maybe < 5% of purchasers were Mac users then and iTunes was pretty useless without Internet. Even today Broadband isn't universal and some Western countries a 1/3rd have never used Internet. I have broadband. But almost all my music and video is dowloaded on plastic disc via a physical trip to shop or postal delivery. Then I "rip" the CD and put it in a safe place.
>>What I had to do was connect it to the PC, using some obscure thing known as a USB cable. I believe they are really expensive and difficult to obtain. Then, I had insert the CD into this thing called a CD Drive. Don't think they ever caught on. The really difficult bit was then clicking on one button in the Creative suite that ripped the CD to mp3 and instantly transferred them to the mp3 player.
>>Yep, bloody hard work it was.
>>Of course, I could also rip CDs using any number of applications, and simply drag n drop them onto the player. That concept is obviously far too complicated for a simple minded Apple owner to comprehend.
Trouble is that you never really understood the power of iTunes and the iPod then.
I could just as easily rip a cd in iTunes, plug in my iPod, and that's more or less it.
The power of iTunes was to use smart playlists. You didn't need to copy anything; it did it all for you, if you had spent a little bit of time creating playlists.
"Apple have always relied on customer perception. Not on technological innovation"
Quite correct.
The one thing that Apple have long understood, and used to their great advantage, is that unlike El Reg readers the average consumer doesn't understand or even care what happens inside a device. They largely only care that -
1. The device is a pleasing looking object to own
2. The device is simple to operate and it does what they want it to do
Microsoft (another non-innovating company, who buy in whatever they need) got a hell of a lot of mileage out of their focus on low price, but have always stumbled on either or both of the above.
You must be an Apple fan as you deliberately disjointed the last two lines of your post to make Apple look better.
Do you think when Cook became CEO that they threw out their entire R&D department and started over?
It has been 4 years and 22 days since the iPad was available for purchase.
1 - flumox the opposition?
2 - planned stepwise incremental from new 'public' beta (was it iOS or OS?)
3 - encourage folks to set aside hard earned dosh, save up or delay purchases while this new iThingy is preparing to be brought to market?
4 - buy time as it is going to take longer than the present marketing timeline permits?
5 - prepare for the next stage in the marketing operation?
How many years ago did they switch from an Apple OS (the last was 9) to simply bolting stuff on and polishing GUI of OS X?
Though Actually perhaps MS should have been doing that since NT 3.5 instead of the evil of Win95, Win98 (bug fix), Win ME (joke OS) and degradation of NT via NT4.0 (Drivers into Kernel), W2K (inconsistent GUI and USB of unreleased SP7 of NT4.0), XP (finished version W2K). Vista (joke based on NT instead of Win95), Win 7 (bug fix / finished Vista), Win 8 (What do you get if you cross a Zune with an NT Desktop OS? ).*
Been nice if MS had released Courier, married Zune and Win Phone CE and just been polishing XP :-) with spinning off Media Center as a FINISHED product based on NT embedded and a new GUI unrelated to Zune / Metro/Explorer etc.
And if some consumer electronics company rather than Oracle had bought Sun (all SW then OS but financially supported, no Davik and Android or C# as Java and JVM would have been totally free).
(* Yes, I also had Explorer Preview Shell on NT3.51 (no BSOD) and a USB stack on NT4.0 which worked with later released Win2K Scanner & printer Drivers)
So yes, Apple do actually do their stuff well, but it's not innovation nor much R&D, (maybe r&D).
But he said closer than ever to the release of "a new range of products", not closer than ever to the release of "this particular new range of products". So times when Apple was close to the release of previous new ranges of products have to be included in the comparison too, which is why he was technically wrong, wrong, wrong.
Heck Tim, I just woke up this morning and you are closer than you have ever been yet again!
And tomorrow is even closer.
I guess he is saying 'Please please wait until September otherwise we will never get you will be lost forever in the Android gobbling machine.'
That is exactly how all those 'imminent iThingy' rumours work every easter.
Obviously, he misspoke, since as the Reg pointed out, there was a past time one nanosecond before the last time Apple released a new product range.
But what did he mean to say, and could it have been true? Well, it could certainly be true that Apple never dropped tantalizing hints about the future release of a new product line, without identifying anything about the nature of the products involved, closer to its actual release than he just did this time. I can believe that easily.
"I realize that there are some companies playing in it, but you still have a wallet in your back pocket and I do too which probably means it hasn’t been figured out just yet.”
Doing support for retail stores when they call to report that a customer can't use their Credit/ Debit/ EBT card, or God forbid, during a major outage can you guess what I tell them? Cash still works.
So I'll keep my wallet on me for a while longer, seeing as what's in it is universally accepted, Mr Cook.
"Our objective has never been to be first. It’s to be the best"
Oh really?
iPod (1st generation) released 2001. First to market, wasn't very good.
iPhone (1st generation) released 2007. First to market, wasn't very good.
iPad (1st generation) released 2010. First to market, wasn't very good.
Apple was doing quite well before Cook took over.
The he fucked it all up by sacking Forstall, and others. And promoted the ridiculous Federighi to prominence.
iPod, neither the first mp3 player, nor the first hard disk mp3 player
iPhone, neither the first smartphone, nor the first smartphone with almost all screen and minimal buttons
iPad, not the first tablet PC, Android devices were available from 2009 onwards (I own an Archos 5 myself, released the year prior to the iPad), even if you choose to ignore all the various Windows tablet PC efforts that MS have been churning out since 2000.
All 3 are definitely awesome commercial successes for Apple, however none of the 3 are firsts. I would argue that the former is in fact closely tied to the latter; Apple let others make all the mistakes first, so they can tweak their product to avoid most of the 1st-gen pitfalls that plague the first to market models.
If you don't mind my asking, could you confirm why it was you thought any of those 3 Apple products were first to market? I see it repeated time and again, and my personal opinion is that Apple deliberately write their marketing material to infer their products were first, when they demonstrably were not. Public perception is hard to shake, even if it is demonstrably an untruth ^^;
What a perfect end to the work week - Arguing about Apple! (one of my fav pastimes)
@Bullseyed
It has been 4 years and 22 days since the iPad was available for purchase
Whatever the interval is.... The point is that since the iPad, there has been zero new product release from Apple. No, wait, I take that back, the mini pad. But then, that was just a panicked interation to compete with the Kindle Fire and Nexus tablets. And iterations don't count.
One thing no one has mentioned here is the stock split. A 7 way split to drum up some interest from lower dollar investors should certainly be a warning sign that this company is in trouble. Couple that with no real new product release in years and you surely have some very nervous people in Cupertino. Yes, they are sitting on mountains of cash, but one has to wonder what the bleed rate is these days.
Apple capitolized on two existing markets in their recent past: Cell Phone, and portable music. Both of these industries were already well established markets that have seen fantastic growth over the last 10 years due to miniaturization. The PC industry has taken a hit from this, and I wager that Apple is in no way insulated from the decline.
That pretty much sums up all 3 of their market profiles. Watches? Digital wallet? Spouting nonsense about the newest product being "just around the corner" while Japan, Korea, and China are wiping the floor with Apple? None of these things are going to make the company beeelions of dollars in the coming years. They will decline into also ran territory in the next 10 years. Unfortunately for them, there won't be a Steve Jobs to come back to the company and rescue them as he did the last time they almost went bankrupt. When that day comes, we will all suffer agony at the hands of Apple fanbois who remember how it used to be...
I don't have a wallet and haven't had one for many years.
I do have a Visa card though and it work just fine thank you.
(Guess old farts say the same about cash though... But any system need to be standardized and Apple isn't the right company to make one as such. It will like be iCrap-payments for people with iOwned and as such they aren't the ones to solve it either. If they don't go that way then sure but we could have systems which cost close to nothing to use.)
If Apple really were about to release something, wouldn't we be getting the usual "Apple engineer accidentally leaves prototype in bar, prototype mysteriously finds its way to Apple-friendly blogger/magazine, Apple claims to sue Apple-friendly blogger/magazine and retrieves prototype after just long enough for plenty of details to be leaked" routine?