Shine That Apple, or It Won't Sell

Once again, here's Apple's fundamental problem:

Outside of the physical construction of the device, the Galaxy S5 continues to ship the latest and greatest hardware for its time.

Apple, on the other hand, is the Olde IBM; a marketing behemoth which ships cheap goods sold dear. What?? You're a fanboi and take umbrage?? Then, do tell, how else can Apple sit on $159 billion in retained cash? Gross margin, is where.

And, there's this:

Another e-mail exchange, detailed here by Business Insider's Jay Yarow, displays the tense relationship between Schiller [Apple marketing chief] and TBWA's Apple account lead, James Vincent. In it, Schiller e-mails Vincent a Wall Street Journal story asking "Has Apple Lost Its Cool To Samsung?" along with a note stating "we have a lot of work to do to turn this around."

Apple's gotten used to charging lots o bucks for so-so pieces (just look at the upcharge for more memory/storage, on any device), relying on The Bling Story to keep sheeple buying. "You won't get fired for buying IBM" has become "You won't find prettier bling than Apple".

And, no, the A7 isn't some magical part which emerged from the Brains of Apple. All they did, while not entirely trivial but not fundamental hardware design, was assemble more ARM IP blocks than anyone else. And added needed glue logic to keep it all together. 64 bit on a 1 gig phone? I don't think the quants will be doing their MCMC runs on a 5S whilst taking the A train and reading the Post. Or that Woody Allen will make his next movie on one, either.