Rafa Spoladore Ψ

 

For years, Apple’s been told its products were too expensive – and prospered mightily. Today, many suggest Apple should launch a low-cost iPhone. Will history repeat itself, or have the rules of the Smartphone Wars changed in ways that will force Apple to alter its strategy? 

Dismissing the prospect of a Low Cost iPhone isn’t all that difficult. Just look at Apple’s history. For years, the high tech pundits have hectored Apple for it’s inability to see the wisdom of the cheap. In the late eighties and into the nineties, they insisted that a low cost Mac was the only way the company could survive against the swarm of PC clones. Steve Jobs returned and righted the Apple ship, no LC Mac required.

A decade later, the netbook was cast as the killer torpedo that would sink the resurgent Mac business. Jobs famously dismissed the netbook as a cheap plastic device Apple would never stoop to make: “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.”

At the September 2012 iPhone 5 launch, Tim Cook announced that the MacBook is the #1 selling notebook in the US (5:30 into this video). Couple that with the success of the iPad, and the netbook is dead. And thus, by analogy, there will be no iPhone LC. Apple doesn’t do cheap. The company will focus on a premium customer experience and enjoy a high profit margin. The race to the bottom will be left to Android clones. Move along, nothing to see.

Not so fast.

Using Apple’s history — and particularly the sorry netbook story — to dismiss the iPhone LC makes questionable assumptions. As Marx (Karl, not Groucho) liked to say: ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, it stutters’. Smartphones aren’t PCs, only smaller; the rules of the Macintosh game don’t apply to the iPhone. The Smartphone Wars are waged by markedly different laws, and are waged well by Google and Samsung, unencumbered by a PC past.

But let’s back up: What would a Low Cost iPhone look like, whom would it serve, and just how “low” is Low? The easiest way to picture the thing is to drag out your old iPhone 3G or 3GS. A plastic body, an “original-resolution” screen (no Retina here), a slow processor and even slower wireless connection. It’s not today’s iPhone 5, with its metal body, lovingly machined chamfers, Gorilla Glass, high-speed A6 processor, and 5 megapixel camera.

The phone would serve the prepaid market, it addresses customers with little or no credit. Everything is paid for with cash up front: You pay the full, unsubsidized price for the phone and you buy “minutes” (let’s call them units of wireless network utilization) in advance. Buying units for these devices is a simpler experience than I imagined: Go to the neighborhood drugstore, pick out a phone card by a (virtual) carrier such as TracFone, and the cash register prints an activation code you then enter into the phone. Simple, pervasive, and very successful — even in a “rich” country such as the US.

So far, Apple has avoided the prepaid approach. When we give $199 to Verizon for a $650 iPhone, the $450 subsidy is an act of faith by the wireless carrier. The philanthropic organization assumes we’ll pay our bill every month for two years, by which time the carrier has recouped the subsidy. This is the postpaid world that Apple understands.

As for the pricetag, let’s assume that an iPhone LC would cost about $100 to manufacture — that’s half the cost of the basic iPhone 5. If we apply a 60% margin percentage — the same as today’s iPhone 5 — the unsubsidized iPhone LC would sell for $299.

That’s too high. Let’s try lower numbers: 50% margin gets us down to $199; 30% to $149. To get to the magic $99 unsubsidized retail, with an un-Apple 30% margin, the iPhone LC would need to be manufactured for less than $75, about one third of today’s iPhone 5.

And even $99 may not be low enough. Go to Amazon and look for prepaid cell phones. The first models start at $6.99 (not recommended, I tried one at $8.99 for my visiting Mother-in-Law, that was a mistake). Real smartphones running Android 2.2 start at $49.99 – today! For another $10 you get 2.3. The $80.73 Kyocera Rise runs the much more modern 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) version. (I checked prepaid prices in other countries and the situation is similar.)

In his earnings release conference calls, Tim Cook constantly refers to Apple’s interest in the vast prepaid market segment but so far it’s been all talk. The reason for the gap between words and deeds sits in plain view on Amazon’s prepaid cell phone page. As more devices enter the market, we can only imagine what the page will look like a year from now.

The prepaid market, without carrier subsidies, is already in a PC-like race to the bottom. For Apple to enter and prosper in this segment, it has to determine two things: What sort of premium can it get for a low cost iPhone, and what would the device mean for the rest of the product line?

Apple execs are fond of saying they’d cannibalize their products themselves rather than let competitors do it. Even if exquisitely executed and priced just so, it’s hard not to see the (putative) iPhone LC as the augur of a new era of lower Apple margins. In other words, the iPhone LC wouldn’t be born of a tactical decision to add a new set of customers, it would be a strategic move that signals a new phase in the Smartphone Wars.

Apple loves to control the game. So do Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and everyone else, of course, but Apple’s love is an unusually intense, deeply seated drive that stems from Steve Jobs’ own (carnal as opposed to deliberate) need to master and direct every aspect of the game.

In the PC business, Jobs pushed vertical integration down beyond hardware and software, and into its retail chain of Apple Stores, thus ensuring a tightly controlled delivery of the product experience. The same applied to the iPod and its integration with iTunes. The well-controlled media delivery and novel micro-payment system was a huge win: In 2006 iPod revenue outpaced the Macintosh line.

The iPhone started with Apple fully in control. AT&T stood aside and let Apple run the table, handle all aspects of the customer experience (except for call quality). Later, the App Store extended Apple’s control of the game. The iPhone became an app phone and a phenomenal success.

(We also have the counterexample of Apple TV, an exception that proves the rule. TV content owners, distributors, and carriers haven’t let the Cupertino company seize control of the customer experience, and thus Apple TV remains a “hobby”.)

Apple is still in control of its iPhone ecosystem… but things have changed. Now the company faces Google and Samsung. Google isn’t just Android, it’s also a provider of a wide set of services such a Google Maps, Gmail, Google Docs and Drive, Google Voice, and on and on. Samsung is more vertically integrated, makes its own smartphones components, and spends more marketing money ($13B last year) than anyone else.

In today’s smartphone scene, can Apple still enjoy the control — and the ensuing profit potential — it craves? And if not, how will it react? Tactics or strategy?

– JLG@mondaynote.com

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"I want to be an actress, but I don't want to go on auditions."

"I want to play varsity sports, but I need to be sure I'm going to make the team."

"It's important to sell this great new service, but I'm not willing to deal with rejection."

You don't get to just do the good parts. Of course. In fact, you probably wouldn't have chosen this path if it was guaranteed to work every time.

The implication of this might surprise you, though: when the tough parts come along, the rejection and the slog and the unfair bad breaks, it makes sense to welcome them. Instead of cursing or fearing the down moments, understand that they mean you've chosen reality, not some unsustainable fantasy. It means that you're doing worthwhile, difficult work, not merely amusing yourself.

The very thing you're seeking only exists because of the whole. We can't deny the difficult parts, we have no choice but to embrace them.

Just a neutrino link: Two weeks ago, MiniBooNE reported some results that seem to conflict with the standard model of 3-flavor neutrino oscillations. Hat tip: Joseph S.

In January 2013, the ATRAP Collaboration that includes e.g. Gerry Gabrielse – an ex-colleague of mine who also led the most accurate measurement of the electron's magnetic moment, the most accurately verified prediction in all of science – published the preprint

One-Particle Measurement of the Antiproton Magnetic Moment

that finally made it to PRL this Monday. The article was accompanied by a popular review by Eric Hudson and David Saltzberg – who is also famous as the flawless science consultant behind The Big Bang Theory CBS sitcom; he's the man who makes sure that Sheldon Cooper in particular doesn't talk gibberish.



Saltzberg with Bill Prady. What part of 41 53 43 49 49 don't you understand? It does sound like a Sheldonite question...

The experimenters threw some of their Harvard devices to their luggage and pockets and they flew to CERN where the (\(5\MeV\)) antiprotons are cheap and abundant. A happy place, indeed. By measuring some frequencies of transitions in a magnetic field, they could quantify the magnetic moment of the antiproton – how strong a magnet each antiproton is. And yes, except for the sign, the result agreed with the figure for the proton within the antiproton 5 parts per million (0.0005%) error margin.




The proton's magnetic moment is measured with accuracy that is about 500 times better than for the antiproton. I think it's because you don't have to be afraid of the protons so much and they are cooler. When you are trying to determine how smooth the skin of various animals is, you may also get a more accurate measurement for a kitty than for a tiger.




I have written about CPT, CP, C, P, T, and all that many times, e.g. in November 2012, so I won't do it again. Here, let me just mention that while C,P,T,CP have been found to be broken in Nature, CPT has been proven to hold in a Lorentz-invariant Lagrangian quantum field theory since the mid 1950s when it was demonstrated by Wolfgang Pauli, John Bell, and Gerhart Lüders.

This symmetry – which replaces all particle configurations by their mirror images composed of antiparticles and that runs everything backward in time – has to hold because this CPT is the right interpretation of the rotation of the Euclideanized spacetime in the \(tz\) plane by \(\pi\) and this has to be symmetry because it belongs to the analytical continuation of the Lorentz symmetry.

The CPT-symmetry has many trivial consequences. For example, when you talk about the mass of the proton, there's just one number. We don't have a special mass for the "left proton" or the "right proton", a special mass for the "proton observed forward in time" and the "proton observed backward in time". It follows that as far as the value of the mass goes, the transformations P and T are irrelevant. CPT effectively reduces to C and it says that the mass of the particles and their antiparticles have to coincide.

(Most recently, this was verified at the LHC for tops and antitops, despite some previous implausible statements by CDF at the Tevatron.)

Similarly, there are just two possible values of the magnetic moment – one for the proton and one for the antiproton – and it's equally clear that the CPT-symmetry can't do anything else than to relate these two constants and demand that their magnitudes are equal. This is what the ATRAP Collaboration verified at a rather impressive accuracy.

I would think that if the top quark and the antitop antiquark had masses that would differ by \(3\GeV\) i.e. 2 percent or so, as previously claimed by the CDF, a comparable asymmetry would probably exist for other quarks as well and it would be more or less unimaginable that the antiproton – which is a rather complicated bound state of quarks and gluons that feels "everything" – would have the same properties such as the magnetic moment as the proton, within 5 ppm.



Your humble correspondent is a theoretically inclined person who takes all the proofs of the CPT-theorem very seriously and I think that the CPT-symmetry simply has to be exact. But even if you ignored all of theory, there are still experimental constraints. Measurements such as the measurement of the magnetic moment of the antiproton (and the proton) show that the typical differences between the properties of rather ordinary particles and their antiparticles are smaller than several parts per million (several times 0.0001%).

For the CDF to claim that they see evidence of a 2% difference between the top and the antitop was an immensely extraordinary statement that required extraordinary evidence and their 2-sigma deviations, probably caused by some human errors anyway, were simply not the adequate evidence to back similar statements.

At any rate, congratulations to ATRAP.

An anonymous reader writes "HBO programming president Michael Lombardo not only says that illegal downloading of Game of Thrones isn't hurting the show, but goes far as to say it's 'a compliment' and worries about the image quality of pirated copies"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AKIRA

mouffettefatale:

petting

Marilyn Monroe

Hip hop

MARISA FULLY COELHO (36 anos) Modelo, Atriz e Miss Brasil 1983
* Manhumirim, MG (1962) + Manhuaçu, MG (23/11/1998)
Marisa Fully Coelho foi uma modelo e atriz brasileira, eleita Miss Brasil em 11 de junho de 1983 no Centro de Convenções do Anhembi, em São Paulo, representando o estado de Minas Gerais. Para conquistar o título, ela derrotou outras 26 candidatas de todo o país.
Representante oficial do Brasil no concurso Miss Universo, realizado no dia 11 de julho de 1983 em St. Louis, Estados Unidos, ela não conseguiu se classificar entre as 12 semifinalistas do concurso, vencido pela neozelandesa Lorraine Downes.

O Caminho Para o Miss Brasil
Como Miss Minas Gerais, Marisa representou a cidade de Manhumirim, repetindo o feito de Monica Tanus Paixão, eleita em 1980. Não era a primeira vez que Marisa tentava ir para o Miss Brasil. Em 1979, perdeu o título de Miss Minas Gerais e, consequentemente, o direito de suceder outra mineira, Suzana Araújo dos Santos, na disputa do título nacional. O grande salto só ocorreria em maio de 1983, quando a candidata de Manhumirim arrebatou a coroa estadual num ginásio lotado da Associação Atlética Banco do Brasil, em Belo Horizonte.
No concurso municipal de 1979, Marisa sucedera a sua irmã Patrícia.

Miss Brasil 1983
No dia 11 de junho, Marisa disputou a 30ª edição do concurso de Miss Brasil, a terceira promovida pelo SBT. Nas provas de traje de gala, plástica e simpatia, a mineira perdeu para as candidatas de Mato Grosso do Sul, Denize Dermidjan, e do Rio Grande do Sul, Rejane Heiden, segunda e terceira colocadas no resultado final.
Na contagem de pontos, Marisa derrotou a candidata gaúcha por um ponto de diferença (96 a 95). Entre os jurados que elegeram a quarta Miss Brasil de Minas Gerais estavam personalidades como a apresentadora Xuxa e a vencedora do certame de 1981, Adriana Alves de Oliveira.
Concursos Internacionais
Antes de participar do Miss Universo 1983, Marisa representou o Brasil na primeira edição do concurso Miss Sudamérica (extinto), em Lima, Peru. Ficou em segundo lugar.

Carreira Artística e Compromissos
Após o concurso, Marisa participou de vários programas do SBT e chegou a atuar na novela "Vida Roubada" (1983), exibida pela rede paulista. Também foi jurada de algumas etapas estaduais do Miss Brasil 1984.
Vida Após o Reinado
No dia 2 de junho de 1984, Marisa passou o título para a paulista Ana Elisa Flores. Após o reinado, participou de júris de concursos de beleza em seu Estado e concedeu algumas entrevistas para emissoras locais. Dias antes de sua morte, Marisa planejava retornar às telenovelas e fazia cursos de interpretação.

Morte
No dia 23 de novembro de 1998, Marisa saiu da casa de uma de suas irmãs na cidade de Manhumirim, MG, com as filhas e retornava para a sua cidade de Manhuaçu, MG, quando o carro que dirigia, um Chevrolet S10, colidiu com um Chevrolet Kadett no trecho mineiro da rodovia BR-262. Marisa chegou a ser socorrida e removida para um hospital de Belo Horizonte, MG, mas já chegou sem vida, como noticiou o jornal Estado de Minas.
A morte interrompeu os planos de Marisa Fully Coelho em voltar a ser atriz. Ela deixou duas filhas: Paula, do casamento com Pedro, sobrinho do escritor Fernando Sabino, e Laura, com o compositor Carlos Colla. Marisa Fully Coelho foi enterrada em sua cidade natal.
O irônico é que, duas semanas antes, no enterro do amigo Nicolau Neto, o então coordenador do Miss Minas Gerais, Marisa deu sua última entrevista numa televisão, para o programa "Point", da TV Catuaí: "Eu só espero que Deus me deixe aqui quietinha porque ainda tenho muito o que fazer!".
Fonte: Wikipédia Indicação: Natalino Pires de Miranda

Cacti and a diplomat

a street corner designed for the lower-class to absorb mockery and contempt from the upper-class; a spiritual whipping post.

an image from fukung.net

blackpaint20:

Art by Austin Osman Spare 

“Austin Osman Spare was an artist, philosopher and occult magician. Like Aleister Crowley with whom he had a brief association, Spare was a genius in his own time unappreciated and vilified by a society that could little understand him. His was the inspiration that led to the formation of the‘Illuminates of Thanateros’ (IOT) in England in the late 1970’s and the practice of what is now known as ‘Chaos Magic’ ” - source here.

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For Better or Worser

“Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.”

8½ (1963)

This post marks the one-year anniversary of this little tumblr. Thanks to all readers and followers.

ar_gaff

Andre Joaquim

Simon B.

Tom Rintjema

Simon Gardiner

Patrick Joust

Valeria Lazareva

Stefano Pedroni

Patric Shaw

A number of wonderful shots seen the past two weeks on Flickr. Every image linked to its source. See past Flickr Finds.

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