we did this book for our work book club a year or so ago. most people in the club enjoyed reading it. there were issues getting the some of the examples to work at the time but that's another matter.
"A lot of folks, especially Apple supporters, like to characterize Amazon as irrational, even crazy, for its willingness to live with low margins. It must be frustrating to compete with a company like that."
This assumes that Apple is actually competing with amazon. Does BMW compete with say Ford.... maybe but really they are after different markets. Apple has said numerous times they are not interested in going after the low end market.
The iPad mini is quite obviously a response to cheaper, smaller Android tablets, the best selling of which is the Kindle. Apple is clearly interested in the customers on the fence between a Kindle and a more expensive but higher quality device.
I'm not so sure that it is that obvious that the iPad mini was in response to competition. My personal theory is more that they recognised that there was an unfulfilled need for an iPad that was smaller / lighter than the original. For example, many people find an iPad too heavy for long periods of reading, but an iPhone is too small. As this is one of the biggest use cases for tablets, it is not surprising that Apple wanted to make a product that is optimised for that use case.
Another way to look at it - if competition was the motivation for the iPad mini, it would have cost $50 less.
Why bother selling it for less if people buy it for more, too? Apple's customers don't really compare prices and features between different options. They won't even consider an Android tablet and why would they? They probably own three generations of iPhones and two generations of iPads already. They'll happily pay Apple's price.
So many unsubstantiated assertions in your reply...
I'm an "Apple customer" and I'm price sensitive, I've also considered many Android based tablets as well as WebOS based tablets. Now we all know that anectadata is of limited value, but compare to no data...
"Apple has said numerous times they are not interested in going after the low end market." - Yes, but that's exactly the premise that this author is now questioning. Is that the right strategy?
BMW competes directly with Ford in Europe. Prior to the sale of PAG (Aston Martin, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover) BMW also competed with Ford-owned brands in the United States.
I'm also certain more people cross shop Fords and Bimmers than one might initially assume.
Ford might be competition for BMW in Europe, but they certainly aren't in the US. The only Ford I could believe a BMW customer even considering is the Mustang. The base model 3-series coupe is significantly more expensive than all but the top three Mustangs available (GT Premium convertible, Shelby GT 500, GT 500 convertible). If one is in the market for a $40k coupe, they're not going to compare the BMW to the Ford, they'll compare the BMW to the Mercedes, Infinity, and Audi.
it's also funny that I can't think of any IM services that are making money.. or rather I have no idea how they make money.
however it seems like with geo fencing and a willingness to share your address book with a new service it can do all the work for you, so it might be useful, but profitable? without selling contact info i don't get. ads in the status screen?
it seems like all you have to do is convince you friends to install the app and set locations / status they want to share and the app ( uses geo fencing ? ) updates the status for them and you when they enter those areas.
Ahh, quite right. I've deleted my comment as I can see that there is a demo of sorts.
I don't know how I missed this on the first try. Maybe it should be more prominent. I simply wanted to check out the site and the two biggest things staring me in the face were that I was a developer or a company. Both of these required something I wasn't willing to give up: Facebook login or company details including email.
It would still be nice to see some sort of actual demo of the process or how it works without having to provide that kind of information rather than an example portfolio.
Not sure is this is what gp meant, but the cycle of screenshots through the iphone screen slide in and out over the whole screenshot of the phone, not just the screen portion.
You should be able to pretty easily play with the positioning and width of the carousel to fix it so they just slide across the screen.
definitely should put up a screenshot or example of a profile on the homepage. please don't expect me to commit and login with my fb info unless i know exactly what i'm getting
I think its like 12 bucks, but its worth twice that easy! It's fast pace, won't put you to sleep like most video tutorials. Good stuff!
Then after the basics, if you need info on a specific topic often Ryan Bates at RailsCast has covered it at least once. Most of his RailsCasts are free, but recently he started doing procasts which are top notch as well.
this is exactly what I was think while reading the post! at some point abstraction isn't just a something to geek out on, it is necessary.
maybe the problem is not know some assembly or at least some C when you write Objective-C or C++ you can write some really bad, inefficient code if you don't know the work the language underneath has to do. the same goes for the DOM and Javascript our assembly on the web.
https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-compo...