Apple (related articles on this blog and at Seeking Alpha) has repeated its feat of capturing more mobile profit than all competitors combined. As described recently in the Jaded Consumer's articles on the competition between the mobile hardware manufacturers (a 3-part article whose topics are roughly Competition Murders Most Mobile Manufacturers, Samsung Sells Tons of Stuff, and Apple Aces the Bottom Line), Apple and Samsung have together maged to capture more than 100% of the mobile profit in the last quarter.
How can two firms reap more than 100% of the total profit? There are net losers that warp the measurement of the profit pie; they take no profit, but lose it to the market. In 2012, Apple and Samsung reaped 103% of the cell phone industry's profits. In the final quarter of 2012, they took in 101%. HTC is gaining – or at least losing less. LG has been fence-sitting on the profit metric, sometimes posting nil share, and sometimes posting a percent or two of profit share. But as suggested at Seeking Alpha, HTC is the third-party candidate to watch in the mobile deathmatch.
For the leader, stick with Apple. On that front, Seeking Alpha just posted a new Jaded Consumer article Understanding Apple's Anemic Quarter. To get an idea just how anemic Apple's December quarter was, it took 72% of cell phone operating income during the quarter (Samsung took 29%). And that was Apple's "bad" quarter.
Baby, I like it when you're bad :-)
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Mercedes Dome: Same Electrical Problems as the Car
When I saw the "Mercedes Benz Superdome" go dark during the Superbowl, my first thought was: how fitting. Mercedes' products have demonstrated awful electrical reliability of late, which is why L forbade me ever to buy another.
This never happens at the Toyota Center.
This never happens at the Toyota Center.
Dell Going Private?
If it happens as reported, Dell's disappearance from the realm of public reporting will remove one of this author's favorite examples of how nobody besides Microsoft makes long-term money on the products. Not that there aren't armies of folks selling services to people who can't run Microsoft-powered machines on their own, but the hardware isn't a place many manage to make money outside Microsoft.
Of course, if Microsoft pitches in billions to finance the going-private deal, Dell won't be able to make money outside Microsoft: it'll be Microsoft. Microsoft will get the advantage of Dell's existing high-scale production and its supply-chain contacts, and other hardware vendors will be scrambling for an answer to even more direct competition against Redmond.
Of course, if Microsoft pitches in billions to finance the going-private deal, Dell won't be able to make money outside Microsoft: it'll be Microsoft. Microsoft will get the advantage of Dell's existing high-scale production and its supply-chain contacts, and other hardware vendors will be scrambling for an answer to even more direct competition against Redmond.
About Apple's Attack on the Living Room
At Seeking Alpha, a new Jaded Consumer article has been published called Is Apple's Threat Real In The Living Room? It's a link-rich look at Apple's impending push into HDTVs' and consoles' business segments.
Upshot: Forbes thinks it'll double Apple's stock, but the timeline to producing the revenues Forbes suggests aren't the 2013 calendar year so some caution should be employed in assessing just how huge the impact will be as Apple attacks a new market with tens of billions in revenues in it.
Upshot: Forbes thinks it'll double Apple's stock, but the timeline to producing the revenues Forbes suggests aren't the 2013 calendar year so some caution should be employed in assessing just how huge the impact will be as Apple attacks a new market with tens of billions in revenues in it.
Butcher's Cold Days Rocks the Faeries' Casbah
I've previously commented on Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series on this blog. "Commented" may be a bit mild: the first post on Jim Butcher's work, Praise for Jim Butcher, has been read numerous times and continues to turn up week after week among the posts people still find in search engines and read. But since I have begun a different blog that relates to fiction, I have become somewhat torn whether to move Butcher blog entries to the new site, which deals much more closely with fiction.
This blog is dedicated to consumers. People who buy fiction are consumers. I think it's fair to evaluate Jim Butcher's latest work (and his whole series) as a consumer product – right here. Those of you who like are free to pretend they didn't see the title of this post, and pretend this is a hard-hitting critical evaluation of Jim Butcher's work. It is, of course. I simply conclude that the work is worth every penny, which is why I gave the latest book to my sister when the weather turned cold last year then harassed her as she continued to fail to install it on her Kindle and read it.
So, the review is here, under a pseudonym. Later when I want to suck up to Butcher in connection with my own work, this may be trouble. But here it is.
Past Is Prologue
Before writing Cold Days, Jim Butcher wrote quite a bit of other fiction in the same universe. While it's not strictly necessary to enjoy Cold Days – he explains enough along the way that it's completely edible as a stand-alone dish – these works do so much to build the universe in which Cold Days is set that one should really consider them. Since some of them are free, this is also an opportunity to test-drive the author. Works in the Harry Dresden Files include:
When the narrator wakes a few months after the curtain of Ghost Story, he discovers he really can't escape the choices he made in the last few books. And it isn't long until he's given instructions that make him absolutely certain he needs to get it right the first time when he decides whether he's going go obey them or not. Cold Days shows Harry Dresden trying to do his thing without depending on the people whose support he used to have before he joined the Winter Queen as her indentured-servant contract-killer.*
Naturally, this doesn't work. At all. On my read, Harry lasts maybe ten minutes. Less, even. Butch as Butcher's protagonist is, he's still outclassed in the unending supernatural deathmatch tournament that is Chicago in the Dresdenverse.
Harry Dresden just can't go it alone against the kinds of forces against which he's pitted himself. Not with any chance at all of survival. This has been true since before the cataclysmic events of Changes, though Harry tries awfully hard not to imperil his allies as he did Michael by the end of that book. Dresden arguably got close in Turn Coat, but he ultimately involved his apprentice Molly and his faithful companion Mouse, and even hired a P.I. to take pictures of his hiding opponent. In Small Favor Harry inadvertently imperiled Ivy with her involvement, enabling awful consequences for Ivy and threatening every living thing on the planet with the risk of serious bad guys acquiring unthinkable power. In White Night Dresden risked his brother and all his mortal allies in an all-out assault on his opponents, while taking a chance on elevating the supernatural stature of Chicago's coldest and most calculating crime boss. In fact, Dresden's decisions have led him to depend on his allies (to their detriment) going back through all the books. The consequences echo even in the current work: the career path of his love interest Karrin, which Dresden inadvertently derailed when she came to his aid in Proven Guilty, is completely over. And his apprentice is on a hit-list. And to aid Harry's plans, his brother's love keeps a dangerous job in the midst of mind-bending immortals (at least, they don't seem ever to age).
So we find in Cold Days that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This doesn't mean there's no excitement: it means that Dresden's efforts to go it alone are such abysmal failures that he's dragged back to his old practices. Though sadder but wiser, he's still scrapping with bad guys and getting delayed and dazed while looking for answers to immediate dangers while time ticks quickly on catastrophe. His new powers are cool (so very cool – but of course they would be; he's joined the Winter Court) but they're far too new to be under anything like Harry's full control, and they're woefully inadequate to address problems that require skill and will one can't get as a gift from faeries.
And as usual, Harry has a lot more will than skill. It's his problem in this book to come to grips with the forces trying to make him into something he loathes, all while he's unable to avoid the people he loves and whom he hoped to avoid injuring by leaving out of his future fights.
Conclusion
In my last review of Ghost Story, I wrote:
And what an ending. So many people's lives turned upside down, so many people's relationships upended – so much to sort out in the next book. And – some hope for Dresden's deceased love life. Lots to build on for the next major mishap.
Like I wrote before, my main complaint with Jim Butcher is that he produces only one of these in a year or more. I acknowledge it's an unfair complaint – I haven't completed a single novel of this caliber, and I don't know anyone who has fourteen works so satisfying in a single series, or maybe even to their names – but honestly it's about the only complaint I can level straight-faced against this body of work.
If you like Urban Fantasy, you have to read it. Or fantasy. Or whodunit stories. In fact, if you like any stories at all, I'd be hard-pressed to do anything but suggest giving it a try. The uncertain can test out the free chapters or the full length (and free) Restoration of Faith, which Ghost Story entertainingly references.
======
*: Or something like that. At the curtain open, Dresden is still working out what his new job is and what it requires of him, but he knows what the last Winter Knight did and is sure it's an awful job more suited to monsters than to men. Which is why he worked so awfully hard to avoid taking it – the full extent of which we learn in greater detail in Ghost Story.
===
For a look at how the last Summer Knight died and how Harry was previously introduced to his current job, you can enjoy Summer Knight. It's a delight.
This blog is dedicated to consumers. People who buy fiction are consumers. I think it's fair to evaluate Jim Butcher's latest work (and his whole series) as a consumer product – right here. Those of you who like are free to pretend they didn't see the title of this post, and pretend this is a hard-hitting critical evaluation of Jim Butcher's work. It is, of course. I simply conclude that the work is worth every penny, which is why I gave the latest book to my sister when the weather turned cold last year then harassed her as she continued to fail to install it on her Kindle and read it.
So, the review is here, under a pseudonym. Later when I want to suck up to Butcher in connection with my own work, this may be trouble. But here it is.
Past Is Prologue
Before writing Cold Days, Jim Butcher wrote quite a bit of other fiction in the same universe. While it's not strictly necessary to enjoy Cold Days – he explains enough along the way that it's completely edible as a stand-alone dish – these works do so much to build the universe in which Cold Days is set that one should really consider them. Since some of them are free, this is also an opportunity to test-drive the author. Works in the Harry Dresden Files include:
- short story Restoration of Faith (free here)
- Storm Front (preview)
- Fool Moon (preview)
- Grave Peril (preview)
- NOTE: the first three books are available in a set as Wizard For Hire
- Summer Knight (preview)
- Death Masks (preview)
- Blood Rites (preview)
- Dead Beat (preview)
- short story Something Borrowed, in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding
- Proven Guilty (preview)
- White Night (preview)
- short story It's My Birthday Too, in Many Bloody Returns
- short story Herot (mentioned here), in My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon
- Small Favor (preview)
- novelette Backup, illustrated by Mike Mignola (occurs at least in part during Small Favor)(point-of-view character is not Dresden, but Thomas Raith)
- short story Day Off, in Blood Lite
- short story The Warrior, in Mean Streets
- Turn Coat (which inspired this post) (Butcher offers a preview)
- short story Even Hand, in Dark and Stormy Knights (point-of-view character is not Dresden, but John Marcone)
- Changes (discussed here, and badly spoiled here) (Butcher offers a preview)
- short story Aftermath, in Side Jobs (point-of-view character is not Dresden, but Karrin Murphy)(the stories in Side Jobs are listed here)
- Ghost Story (about which I first commented here; I later gave a vigorous defense of Ghost Story against an attack that totally missed the mark on a work that was crucial to understanding the protagonist's development as a character) (Butcher offers a preview: ch. 1, ch. 2, ch. 3, & ch. 4)
- Hell's Bells
- Stars and Stones
- Empty Night
When the narrator wakes a few months after the curtain of Ghost Story, he discovers he really can't escape the choices he made in the last few books. And it isn't long until he's given instructions that make him absolutely certain he needs to get it right the first time when he decides whether he's going go obey them or not. Cold Days shows Harry Dresden trying to do his thing without depending on the people whose support he used to have before he joined the Winter Queen as her indentured-servant contract-killer.*
Naturally, this doesn't work. At all. On my read, Harry lasts maybe ten minutes. Less, even. Butch as Butcher's protagonist is, he's still outclassed in the unending supernatural deathmatch tournament that is Chicago in the Dresdenverse.
Harry Dresden just can't go it alone against the kinds of forces against which he's pitted himself. Not with any chance at all of survival. This has been true since before the cataclysmic events of Changes, though Harry tries awfully hard not to imperil his allies as he did Michael by the end of that book. Dresden arguably got close in Turn Coat, but he ultimately involved his apprentice Molly and his faithful companion Mouse, and even hired a P.I. to take pictures of his hiding opponent. In Small Favor Harry inadvertently imperiled Ivy with her involvement, enabling awful consequences for Ivy and threatening every living thing on the planet with the risk of serious bad guys acquiring unthinkable power. In White Night Dresden risked his brother and all his mortal allies in an all-out assault on his opponents, while taking a chance on elevating the supernatural stature of Chicago's coldest and most calculating crime boss. In fact, Dresden's decisions have led him to depend on his allies (to their detriment) going back through all the books. The consequences echo even in the current work: the career path of his love interest Karrin, which Dresden inadvertently derailed when she came to his aid in Proven Guilty, is completely over. And his apprentice is on a hit-list. And to aid Harry's plans, his brother's love keeps a dangerous job in the midst of mind-bending immortals (at least, they don't seem ever to age).
So we find in Cold Days that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This doesn't mean there's no excitement: it means that Dresden's efforts to go it alone are such abysmal failures that he's dragged back to his old practices. Though sadder but wiser, he's still scrapping with bad guys and getting delayed and dazed while looking for answers to immediate dangers while time ticks quickly on catastrophe. His new powers are cool (so very cool – but of course they would be; he's joined the Winter Court) but they're far too new to be under anything like Harry's full control, and they're woefully inadequate to address problems that require skill and will one can't get as a gift from faeries.
And as usual, Harry has a lot more will than skill. It's his problem in this book to come to grips with the forces trying to make him into something he loathes, all while he's unable to avoid the people he loves and whom he hoped to avoid injuring by leaving out of his future fights.
Conclusion
In my last review of Ghost Story, I wrote:
Ghost Story doesn't raise the stakes or excitement from Changes, but if you find a book that does you are commanded to post its title in the comments because I need to read it. I'm betting it's a rough hunt for books with such bang.In keeping with my own command, I am posting a link to Cold Days. (Note: I also explain in that review that without Ghost Story, the full stakes of Changes aren't really available to the reader; the two are too intimately connected, and so much better together.) Without descending into spoilers, Cold Days manages to raise the stakes on Dresden and his loved ones and the world while advancing the series plot along a critical plot arc first disclosed to readers in Storm Front over a dozen years ago. A character arc opened in Summer Knight is closed. Along the way we learn more about lots of characters who have long colored the landscape of the Dresdenverse, which is a sure pleasure for longtime fans. For those who aren't longtime fans, the book is a rocking ride full of betrayal, uncertainty, and a race – on several levels – against the world's death-clock.
And what an ending. So many people's lives turned upside down, so many people's relationships upended – so much to sort out in the next book. And – some hope for Dresden's deceased love life. Lots to build on for the next major mishap.
Like I wrote before, my main complaint with Jim Butcher is that he produces only one of these in a year or more. I acknowledge it's an unfair complaint – I haven't completed a single novel of this caliber, and I don't know anyone who has fourteen works so satisfying in a single series, or maybe even to their names – but honestly it's about the only complaint I can level straight-faced against this body of work.
If you like Urban Fantasy, you have to read it. Or fantasy. Or whodunit stories. In fact, if you like any stories at all, I'd be hard-pressed to do anything but suggest giving it a try. The uncertain can test out the free chapters or the full length (and free) Restoration of Faith, which Ghost Story entertainingly references.
======
*: Or something like that. At the curtain open, Dresden is still working out what his new job is and what it requires of him, but he knows what the last Winter Knight did and is sure it's an awful job more suited to monsters than to men. Which is why he worked so awfully hard to avoid taking it – the full extent of which we learn in greater detail in Ghost Story.
===
For a look at how the last Summer Knight died and how Harry was previously introduced to his current job, you can enjoy Summer Knight. It's a delight.
Google Not Trustworthy With Your Credit Card
I have a domain name I use for professional work to receive email. In order to get reliable email (in light of Apple's abysmal track record with MobileMe and Mac.com email) I pay Google once a year for a professional-grade email service. Benefits include huge-attachment-handling.
I don't use Google to advertise; I don't advertise my day-job online at all. The couple of places I've appeared in professional listings online have, in fact, resulted in nothing at all but wasted time due to low-quality leads from "prospects" who don't understand what I do and have no desire to pay me to do it. So imagine my surprise when I saw Google Inc. on a credit card statement, charging me for AdWords service.
Say what?
Naturally, Google doesn't supply any contact information through which to find out what on Earth was supposedly done for the $4.16 billed me, and how to stop it. And since Google has enrolled in some kind of signature-less service that prevents my credit card from being able to provide itemization, my credit card company's online interface said I needed to contact the merchant directly about the charge.
Um. Google is as opaque as can be. How am I supposed to contact Google about charges, when Google's phone number says "Because Google does not offer live customer support at this time, please visit our web site at www.Google.com/support"...? Google.com has no apparent interface for people who want to know why Google is charging them money. Worse, I can't see a way to limit Google to charging my only for the one service for which I'm actually willing to pay.
Pretending interest as a new customer to get a human resulted in transfers to automated call queues which disclaimed the power to help.
At the end of one of my longer calls to Google (ie, transfers followed by new combinations of numerical responses designed to avoid the areas of the menu tree known to refer me to Google.com), I was asked whether I wanted to take a survey in English. Sure, why not. After spending several minutes giving answers (by pushing numbers) and leaving a recorded message ... I was kicked back to the menu position in which I was asked whether I wanted to take a survey in English.
Google's idea of a customer-friendly interface probably says something about why Apple is making all the money in interfaces.
Solution: I told my credit card to block Google as a merchant. I have about eight months to replace Google for my email service. Any suggestions?
I don't use Google to advertise; I don't advertise my day-job online at all. The couple of places I've appeared in professional listings online have, in fact, resulted in nothing at all but wasted time due to low-quality leads from "prospects" who don't understand what I do and have no desire to pay me to do it. So imagine my surprise when I saw Google Inc. on a credit card statement, charging me for AdWords service.
Say what?
Naturally, Google doesn't supply any contact information through which to find out what on Earth was supposedly done for the $4.16 billed me, and how to stop it. And since Google has enrolled in some kind of signature-less service that prevents my credit card from being able to provide itemization, my credit card company's online interface said I needed to contact the merchant directly about the charge.
Um. Google is as opaque as can be. How am I supposed to contact Google about charges, when Google's phone number says "Because Google does not offer live customer support at this time, please visit our web site at www.Google.com/support"...? Google.com has no apparent interface for people who want to know why Google is charging them money. Worse, I can't see a way to limit Google to charging my only for the one service for which I'm actually willing to pay.
Pretending interest as a new customer to get a human resulted in transfers to automated call queues which disclaimed the power to help.
At the end of one of my longer calls to Google (ie, transfers followed by new combinations of numerical responses designed to avoid the areas of the menu tree known to refer me to Google.com), I was asked whether I wanted to take a survey in English. Sure, why not. After spending several minutes giving answers (by pushing numbers) and leaving a recorded message ... I was kicked back to the menu position in which I was asked whether I wanted to take a survey in English.
Google's idea of a customer-friendly interface probably says something about why Apple is making all the money in interfaces.
Solution: I told my credit card to block Google as a merchant. I have about eight months to replace Google for my email service. Any suggestions?
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
War On Drugs Hops Species Barrier
Props to the RidicuList for bringing us this new development in the War On Drugs. The Wichita Police Department's public information officer shows us who's behind an evidence-room dope heist:
No home is safe.
No home is safe.
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