
Apple to become most profitable company ever - zacharye
http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/18/apple-most-profitable-company-iphone-5-ipad-mini-itv/
======
benologist
wow bgr.com finally got some spam to the front page!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kemper>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zacharye>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=CitiiDB>

------
mtgx
I think this video by Simon Sinek explains very well why Apple is successful.
It's the motivation behind doing the things they do that matters, not just
what they make. This tends to attract a lot of customers to think the same
way, and believe in Apple's goals and philosophy.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4>

------
funkiee
I continue to hope that more companies will take the lesson from Apple and
start doing more in-house engineering with a focus on quality and not the race
to the bottom.

~~~
planetguy
Cargo-cultism. Apple was doing both those things back in 1998 when they were
going broke, and they could have just as easily gone broke doing 'em.

There are many ways to run a successful company. Some of 'em involve in-house
engineering and a focus on quality, while others involve outsourcing all your
engineering and focusing on cheap crap (see also: Wal-Mart, nearly as
profitable as Apple).

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, like Steve Jobs making sure the NeXT factory looked pretty by painting
the robots is an example of silliness because NeXT failed. Yet if Apple showed
that off in a product video today, it would be held up as attention to detail.

~~~
mikeash
NeXT didn't really fail. They had a reasonably profitable exit by being bought
by a large tech company, and subsequently basically took over the acquiring
company and drove it to become incredibly successful.

But of course the popular image of NeXT is that it failed, so your point still
stands entirely.

~~~
wtallis
And perhaps most importantly, while it was an independent company, NeXT was
operating under a very restrictive non-compete agreement that forced them to
go after only low-volume segments.

~~~
mikeash
I hadn't heard about that, do you have any links to more info? It sounds
interesting.

------
m_for_monkey
AAPL Stock Chart 1984-2012:
[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL+Interactive#symbol=a...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL+Interactive#symbol=aapl;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined);

~~~
3pt14159
Wow is that highly deceiving.

You need to put stock charts on a log scale otherwise normal growing stocks
(5% per year, say) always look like they are just about to peak.

Here is how it should look for the same time period:

[http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...](http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1339617600000&chddm=2779843&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:AAPL&ntsp=0)

------
grlthgn
Is it the most profitable company ever after accounting for inflation?
Probably not, but would love to see some data on that.

