Funny how wrong Nick Farrell was, or funny how much he hates Apple. Look at Apple now with no end in sight. Hate Apple all you want but they have items I want and need. I'm saving for my new Macbook Air, should have it by end of summer. Looking to get an iphone unlocked also. I'm done with Windows and I'm growing tired of Android.

Seriously. Apple is only interested in making products they can charge a premium for. That's why they make assloads of money. Their products might or might not be worth it (depending on what you value and on the value of your time), but that's for people to decide and apparently enough of them vote for Apple with their wallets to make Apple's stock worth a bit.

Let's see - Apple makes computers with an operating system that doesn't suck ass, the best music players, one of the best cell phones. There stuff isn't cheap, it isn't perfect, but it's all well-designed, good looking, and it all works pretty well. They make sure to stick to markets that are very profitable, and therefore they have lots of money. Most of us call that "smart." The stock market pays a premium for "smart" (at least most of the time).

Lenovo, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc. make decent to lousy hardware that runs a shit operating system and fight tooth and nail to make a few dollars on each unit. Their stuff is mostly cheap, until you factor in the cost of dealing with all of the Windows bullshit (ask any IT department what the cost of computer acquisition is versus the cost of maintenance over time). If any one of them had their PC operations go out of business tomorrow we'd hardly notice. This is frigtarded, and the companies' PC operations are valued as such.

I'm amazed that Google makes any money at all. Who clicks on their stupid ads? It's gotta be our grandparents, because I can't think of anyone else who would. On the other hand, Apple makes stuff that some people actually want, like computers and mp3 players. Nobody wants ads.

As for the NF haters, get a sense of humor. His articles might not be accurate, but they are entertaining. :)

@Andrew

I agree. There is a total failure of regulation here. Apple is a shameless monopolist. They are scientologists, but even worse. All the characteristics of a cult. It sells overpriced machines that can only run on their overpriced OS. It brainwashes their consumers with eyecandy. It drop technologies willy-nilly (e.g recently mat screens, firewire, analog out), and demand acolytes pay money year by year just to keep up. Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard. No differences between them just guff. But the cultists gobble them up to continue to be part of the cult. Anyone who criticizes - bam smash - the cultists are in a blood frenzy. In an app that threatens the iphone monopoly - banned.

Nick maybe wrong in just about everything he writes, but perhaps he is more like a canary in a coal mine. I just hope he doesn't asphyxiate before there is a concerted regulatory effort to break up Apple and get a level playing field again.

@Kevin, there should be appleboys filter too - we need only to extend Drashek's filter to include filtering for fanaticism.
About the article I agree N.F. should pick at least partially truthful/believable sources. True, Apple has market growth perspective but we're talking about tens of times more sales needed in order to reach M$ and PC industry. And even then Apple will have to earn profits for several years to reach slightly M$' capital. I for one seriously doubt that corporate business will ever prefer Apple rather than M$/HP/DELL/etc. with their current price and support policy...

I remember someone created a plugin to filter drashek comments a while ago. Could someone please create one for Nick Farrell 'articles'?
Nick: If you don't like Apple, just don't buy their stuff! It's pretty easy, and the rest of the world really don't care about your tired opinions on the company.

People seem to fixate on Apple vs Microsoft. Apple is not only up against Microsoft, they're up against every PC manufacturer out there. Only Apple is allowed to sell computers with Apple OS installed. Microsoft just makes an operating system that any PC manufacturer can use. For Apple to gain majority share of PC market, you’re talking about putting big hits on the profits of companies like Dell and HP. They’re also looking at effecting hardware manufacturers as well. There is a very short list of what Apple’s OSX will run on. So that means profit hits for Nvidia and ATI.

I think Apple will have to make some fundamental changes is they want to beat Microsoft.

totally agree. Apple is dirtier than Intel or Microsoft ever was.... and they get away with it, over and over.

If apple ever got really big, they'd have to grow up fast or get sued by world + dog. Funny thing is all the stuff people like about mac's would have to go. Only apple can make them, no good. only mac os and it only runs on their hardware, no good. comes with apple's browser/email/etc programs installed, no good. itunes only works with the ipod, no good. itunes doesn't support other music stores, no good. response time to security updates, no good...

by the time the legal system was done making them play 'fair' like they did to microsoft - i'd say the mac experience would pretty much be identical to the pc experience.

Until Steve Jobs backdates his stock options again.

...people will realise Apple is more evil than MS soon...

While I disagree with you about the tablet Nick, I completely agree with everything else you had to say here and tell hexx that if it wasn't funny its because its freaking true and when this kind of crap is true there isn't anything funny about it.

The original article also seems to conveniently forget that fact that if Apple were to get anywhere near a majority market share the various monopolies and anti-trust authorities would tear them a new one. They can only get away with their current anti-competitive behaviour due to their relative size.

In 1997 MS should have just bought Apple and this story would have never been....

..instead they gave em $100m. If I were Billy I'd get Jobs down on his hallowed knees to beg for that mullah... and then tore the chq.

boring, boring, boring and not funny at all