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The question is, do they need to do these advertising campaigns? It makes sense to do advertisement if they need attention, need to work the brand or need to announce something new. It doesn't seem the case for Apple. The risk of damaging the brand is higher than the benefits at this point. Invest in ads only if you really really need to.

The price of the desktop app seemed too cheap to me. Why only $10 for such great piece of software? So, it seems they made around $1,000k in two years. That's about $100k per employee per year. Google bought them for $25,000k which gives $5,000k per employee. That's 50 years of work at the rate they were.

It started trading at $43.00 and ended at $38.23 which is a -8.39% loss. Why is the IPO price $38.00 if it started trading at $43.00?

One could extend this idea to all "execution" related practices: design, engineering, etc.

"Good execution will not fix your broken business".

If you are solving the wrong problem, targeting the wrong market or building the wrong product, good execution will not save your business. Both the strategy ('what') and the execution ('how') have to be right for the business to succeed.

What concerns me more about the new design compared to the old original is the readability: now it is much worse. Why not offer the most popular old themes (adapted to the new layout) an option?

I agree. My point is that when big bubbles are forming there is a almost general consensus that it is a good and secure investment and everybody should get into it. There is not much evidence to argue against it and the minority that have the ability/vision to perceive it are considered pessimists by the majority. Today it seems to be at least 50/50, those who believe in a tech bubble and those who don't. This is too much people believing it is a bubble for it to really be. So my guess is it isn't.

The best signal pointing we are not in a tech bubble is the amount of people talking about we are in a bubble. On a real bubble only a small minority (often ignored, despised or even ridiculed by the maiority) think there is a bubble. I don't see this happening now.

I've been using it since Firebird and tried to stick with for as long as I could on my Mac, but after trying Chrome recently, annoyed by performance issues (memory management, flash video, etc.) the difference was so big that it was impossible to justify to keep using FF. Been really happy with Chrome since. Incredibly fast browser in comparison.

Agreed, that market exists. My point is, why discuss the subtle difference between 16/44 vs 24/192 when there are far more audible and damaging practices going on in the music industry. For example, aggressive compression and brick limiting which adds distortion to achieve maximum loudness ('loudness wars').

In normal listening conditions and for most people the difference between 16/44 and 24/192 is inaudible.

Given a 5 minute song, if I have the choice to download a 11MB file (320kpbs MP3) or a 330MB file (24/192) I would of course choose the 11MB file. The sound quality is perfectly acceptable and the file size much more convenient to manage (storage, backups, etc.).

In terms of the convenience of managing the file size and sound quality I think 320kbps MP3 is the best compromise.

Here's a file size comparision of a 5 minute stereo song:

MP3 128kbps > 5 MB

MP3 320kbps > 11 MB

Uncompressed 16/44 > 50 MB

Uncompressed 24/192 > 330 MB

When talking about sound quality there is a much more relevant issue: the amplitude compression (distortion) abuse used by mastering engineers and producers that totally destroys the dynamic and life of the sound. That is a real issue. When buying a song there should be two versions to choose from:

A) "Loud", dynamically destroyed / distorted version.

B) Normal, dynamic, non-distorted version.

Today only version A is available to buy.

I don't like the direction Google is taking with Search. My view of "improvement" is very different from Google's view. I have the feeling that the more features they add to Search the worst the service gets. I miss the old simple Google Search. I think there is a big oportunity here for another search engine focused on: simplicity, speed, relevance (algorythm) and unfiltered. Back to basics.

The most valueable assets are its data and brand. I would be suprised if there weren't already similar open source services.

Most people prefer XHTML syntax, that's why they use XHTML doctype in HTML documents. There's nothing wrong with it.

This looks more like a "labs" feature than a real improvement. Doesn't add any value to me... glad they allow us to disabled it.

This is very interesting. Vivitar made a cheap 35mm "toy camera" very popular in the lomography circuit called Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim. It seems that they market their products to a completely different demographic. Wonder how much of the sales are from the lomo people vs old people who can't handle digital.

The link doesn't work for me

I find the left sidebar annoying and very rarely use it. I wish there was a feature do enable/disable the sidebar like in the old interface. Other than this, I love the new visual tweaks.

Love it. I like the idea of sitting back and scan the information without the need of scrolling.

Learn the pros and cons and then use whatever fits the job better.