I don't think it makes sense to term this prediction in price of gas. Even as they say in the study, one of the most weighted factors in a purchasing decision is the number of charging stations available. It's the cart and the horse, even if gas is $5/gallon, consumers won't be super motivated to buy cars b/c of a lack of charging stations, and charging stations won't be built due to a lack of existing demand.
These things need to happen together to make the change, not just the gas price hike. Like others have alluded to, there needs to be more of a cultural shift or incentives from the government.
I think it makes sense to do this study with more focus on number of charging stations or public/private investment in the space rather than gas price.
You never know when they might falter one quarter, with so much riding on so few products. If there's another Foxconn flaw in the hardware for the next iphone or ipad, for example, or what if Steve Jobs leaves, for example, who knows. Labor in China is getting more expensive, too, so Foxconn is looking to India and Vietnam, and they've already complained about how 'difficult' the iphone 5 is to build. Of course a bad quarter still won't seriously damage Apple since it has so much cash in reserve.
There is no rule that subsequent quarter revenue should be higher than the prior quarter. [For e.g. the holiday quarter is generally the highest revenue yielding one for consumer electronics companies]. That said, Apple generally sets the expectations way low. The street knows that. They figure out a higher number (based on the past) and make that their expectation and price the stock as such. The interesting thing though is that Apple has been beating that higher expectation as well.
I'm sure not going to buy an iPhone or iPad right now, given the heavily-rumored launch of the next-gen models in late Q3. That could be why they're sandbagging the revenue projections.
I totally agree. We have over 100 domains and 10 SSL certs with GoDaddy. Sure it gets a little annoying opting out of upsells, setting the domains to manual renewal, and changing the registration to 1 year with every purchase, but it adds a net of maybe 15 seconds to the purchase. That's well worth the savings and the flexibility they actually provide through DNS controls.
Their customer service is great and you can always get in touch with someone if you need any kind of support. Also, the iPhone app is really great. I don't know why that doesn't get more attention, but it's the most powerful Domain or DNS management app I've seen out there.
Like Callmeed, if you want to avoid them 100% b/c of Parsons, then I respect that. Otherwise, they're a budget provider that does a good job when stacked up against other budget providers in different verticals.
One of my criteria for a good registrar measures how much effort it takes to transfer a domain away from the registrar.
I love godaddy's customer support even though I am no longer a customer, don't get me wrong. I loved that I could just call them at 4 in the morning with a random problem. What I didn't love was that I had to call them up and live through upsells and boredom in the process of trying to initiate a domain transfer. I unlocked my domain in question, verified the email address, but then I couldn't send an auth code to a known-working admin email and...yeah.
I've also moved clients' names away from Network Solutions, since those support people were just beyond unbelievable. One particular support person was telling me that there was a chance I was going to lose the domain if I initiated a transfer and that there would be nothing they could do about it if that happened. I almost lost my cool at that point.
No company is perfect and sometimes they have really aggressive retention policies for their support people to follow. I get that. So I'm willing to pay extra for registrars that make it braindead easy for me to do what it takes to get away from them should the need arise. I use dynadot and gandi right now quite happily and have never had problems with the company or their management or their UI for managing domain names.
This sounds a lot like the design studio at Apple. It's basically Jony Ive and ~10 designers who have full rights to prototype new products, even if they're completely random. I think a telling difference is the fact that this is a part of the core myth of Apple and the emphasis on beautiful design and small teams. It's not some hidden away secret.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl... - "Jobs swiftly brought Ive in from the cold, moving the designers into a building on campus and investing in the latest rapid-prototyping equipment. He also beefed up Apple’s security, locking down the design studio to prevent leaks and installing a private kitchen so designers wouldn’t talk shop in public.
Sounds nothing like it actually - this one being open to any employee who wishes to take advantage of it, the other one being a private perk for a top exec and his close associates.
I don't think you've been a member of the community long enough, then. On YC, I certainly find a correlation between the points for a certain comment and the thoughtfulness put into that comment. This isn't true on other systems (reddit, etc) where clever noise is preferred to depth, but I generally find the most helpful comments getting voted up here.
The only other motive it suggests is garnering as much publicity for their innovation/company as they can. Facebook is notorious for being able to magnify a small announcement into a big event and reap the dividends -- remember the announcement of a redesign via 60 minutes? If you can get media and influences to come pay attention to cool stuff you're doing, why wouldn't you?
Totally agree. Some of the most influential "design" companies of the past decades weren't actually started by designers. Apple, Mint, etc. are renowned for their beauty, elegance, and design foresight, but that's just because their leaders had great taste not actual design skills.
> 5 years later? $350k minimum. There was a structural change in the economy that hasn't since reversed and doesn't look like ever reversing.
This was the fallacy that got the US into so much trouble. When real estate rises quickly and consistently, people think it's a guaranteed perpetuity. That's not the case. Any investment can go down in value and almost surely will at some point in time.
These things need to happen together to make the change, not just the gas price hike. Like others have alluded to, there needs to be more of a cultural shift or incentives from the government.
I think it makes sense to do this study with more focus on number of charging stations or public/private investment in the space rather than gas price.