Re: No Country For Old Men - Walt and Everyone

I think Apple makes more profit selling a $3k Mac Pro than selling FCP, DVD SP, LiveType, Cinema Tools, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, Compressor, and Color for $1300. I mean, just looking at Color alone, how can Apple buy Final Touch, essentially give it away, and turn a profit on that acquisition?

Apple makes its profit selling hardware, not software. They always have. They are a hardware company that, due to 3rd parties abandoning the platform around a decade ago, had to start making it's own first party software in order to stay in business. It's one reason why they won't license OS X or the Pro Apps for non-Apple machines. Back in the 90's Apple did license other companies to make "Apple clones" and it almost killed Apple because the clones could be sold cheaper and undercut Apple's hardware sales. The only software Apple has made cross platform (iTunes and Safari) is software that runs w/its cross platform hardware (iPods and iPhones).

Due to the huge success of the iTMS it's turning a profit, but when it was first launched Jobs said if the iTMS broke even they'd be happy. He said he didn't think other music stores could survive long term because there was little/no profit in it and that was fine w/Apple because their goal wasn't to make money selling songs it was to make money selling iPods and the iTMS was a "feature", if you will, of the iPod.


-A