Apple Computer -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken

Updates

January 18, 2012: More Apples landing on corporate desks. I noticed the same thing in the military. Graphics shops, intel shops, and headquarters were the first to get Apples; the rest of us were stuck with WinTel.

Original Post

Link here.

According to IDC estimates, Apple shipped 2 million Macs in the U.S. during the quarter ending Dec. 31, an increase of 18 percent over the same quarter of 2010. Gartner’s number of 2.1 million was slightly higher, as was its 21 percent year-over-year gain by Apple.

All other computer makers in the top five shipped fewer machines in 2011 than they did the year before, IDC and Gartner said.

Again, to repeat: Apple shipped 20 percent more computers in 4Q11 than in 4Q10. All other computer makers shipped fewer. 

I doubt I would have posted that story, but it confirms what I see when I stop in the Starbucks coffee shop on Harvard Square, Cambridge. Yes, one sees a few non-Apple computers, but one is struck by the number of Apple computers in the coffee shop. It is truly amazing.

The most interesting thing: one can spot an Apple computer from across the room. One can identify non-Apple computers, but one cannot identify the brand. Non-Apple computers have been commoditized by WinTel. Apple remains a name-brand computer company.

Apple has become the "new" Gucci. Except "average" folks can afford Apple products and it is not considered too pretentious to use an Apple. It has become bourgeois, if that makes sense, but yet the elite use them. Jean Valjean would have carried an iPhone, if only to coordinate the flash mob at the barricades.

One buys Apple or one doesn't.

I remember articles a couple years ago that iPads would cannibalize iMac (Apple computers); in fact, I argued that first-time buyers of Apple products (via the iPads) would convert to Apple. With Apple one gets the entire community of devices: smart phones, tablets, light laptops, laptops, desktops. And TV to follow.

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On a completely different note, for the past week, I've been enjoying coffee at the Starbucks overlooking Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The most incredible moment: when I turnright to go up the stairs, I feel as if I am back in Yorkshire. The stairs are wooden, worn, and the passageway is dark. One small difference: in Yorkshire the stairway would be only as third as wide. And if the thoroughfare below the Starbucks was much narrower and if the cars were driving on the "wrong" side of the road, I would think I was back in Harrogate. And I wouldn't be on the computer. Smile.

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Diamonds and Rust, Joan Baez
Perhaps one of the most poignant love-songs ever written led me down a rabbit path to this little bit of trivia:

In 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to Belmont, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. At that time, it was within the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began busking near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs, and attended Boston University for about six weeks. In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends to a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show. -- Wiki

"Our" home when "in Boston," is in Belmont, a 20-minute ride on bus route 73 to Harvard Square, Cambridge. A subway stop or two on the Red Line and one is at MIT.


Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word, Joan Baez
A country-western song. I wonder if Norah Jones will cover this one?

The title, "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word" comes from a line in the Tennessee Williams play, Camino Real (no wonder the country-western flavor) in which:

A main theme that the play deals with is coming to terms with the thought of growing older and possibly becoming irrelevant. -- Wiki

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Idle rambling; for the archives; something to share with my granddaughter, Arianna, who at age 8 loves Greek mythology.

From The War That Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander, c. 2009, remaindered.

The Iliad covers a 2-week period in the 10-year long Greek siege of Troy. The Greek commander, Agamemnon, is the son of one of the most, if not the most, powerful king in "Greece," and is the equivalent of the 5-star general leading the seige. One of his lieutenants, Achilles, is himself a son of a Greek king, but is at best equivalent to a brigadier general (one star); based on his argumentative personality is more like a colonel.

The Iliad starts off with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, bordering on, if not outright, insubordination. Achilles is upset with Agamemnon's leadership style and war strategy and has told Agamemnon he has not come to the Troad to die:

I, for my part, did not come here to fight the Trojans for their sake, since they have done nothing to me.  Never yet have they driven away my cattle or my horses, nor spoil my harvest; for indeed there is much that lies between us, the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea.

And then Caroline does this, recalls Muhammed Ali's famous refusal to fight in Vietnam:

I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong ... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger ... I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to help simply continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people.

Some irony that I am reading that on the weekend of celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday and life. It is also interesting to see Ali's use of "dark people." When my five-year-old granddaughter tells me the story of Martin Luther King, she always refers to "dark people," not using other terms. Interesting.

Like WWI, I have never been able to understand the Iliad. Twenty pages in to Caroline's book and I have already had an epiphany. Wow.