Who Cares If Samsung Copied Apple? is that going to stop Apple? And other things

Arnold Woodworth, our Vice-President, brought these articles to my (and your) attention:

1. An article in the Harvard Business Review argues that Apple will not stop innovating if it loses to Samsung. Similarly, if Apple wins, will that make things better for us consumers?

2. Facebook has to decide whether toplease its customers or make as much money from them as possible to drive up its stock price? Remember, you bought this stock from a hoodie-wearing kid.

3.Four theoriesas to why Facebook has lost so many customers.

1. 4.Some analysts feel that Dell Computer (yes, that Dell Computer) should get out of making personal computersand move into more comfortable areas. That’s a bit ironic, considering that Michael Dell, who’s still worth a healthy chunk of change, famously remarked that Apple should be liquidated and the cash turned back to the shareholders.

My (Tom Briant) opinion is that the PC market will differentiate into 3 categories:

One, House-brand or contract PCs. Costco, for instance, has ZT Systems. I bought a ZT Systems PC and I like it.

Two, Gaming systems. Computers for playing high-end computer games cost several thousand dollars and that slice of the market will pay. (Or they’ll build their own, but that’s another story)

Three, Tablets. Eventually, Microsoft will figure out how to write an operating system for tablets with a touch interface. They may stumble and fall a few times, but they’ll eventually get it. How this market will break down between tablets running Windows/RT for the ARM processor (which is what the iPad runs, albeit in heavily modified form) and the tablets running the Intel/AMD chips and full-blown Windows 8/9/?. I don’t know. We’ve had tablets from Fujitsu that run full-blown Windows for years. They’ve only proved popular with firms doing midnight inventory work. The iPad and its Android step-cousins, by contrast, have proved quite popular running on the ARM chips.

And I worry that a tablet running an Intel CPU and a Retina display might run hot enough to melt on the tabletop!

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG (With thanks to Arnold Woodworth, VP of Macvalley, for highlighted articles).