The real culprit that needs to be fired is Steve Ballmer. He was great from the inception of MSFT until maybe the turn of the century, when their business strategy of making and maintaining a Windows monopoly worked beautifully and extremely profitably. However, he is living in a legacy environment where he believes he needs to protect the Windows/Office monopoly BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, and he and the rest of Microsoft can't keep up with everyone else around them because of innovation.
This mindset has completely stymied any sort of innovation at Microsoft because they are playing with one arm tied behind their backs in the midst of trying to compete against the likes of Google, Facebook, etc. In Steve Ballmer's eyes, everything must lead back to the sale of a license of Windows/Office, and that no longer works in their environment.
If Microsoft engineers had free rein to make the best search engine, or the best phone, or the best tablet, without worries about how will it lead to maintaining their revenue streams of Windows and more importantly Office, then I think their offerings would be on an order of magnitude better and more creative.
This doesn't make any sense to me... You think that the problem with Bing is that it's too focused on revenue for Windows? I suspect the problem is that it's really hard to build a better search engine than Google (and that even if it were slightly better, people are resistant to change).
Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever. They've got 6 different products in their server and tools division alone that generate more than a billion dollars each year! [1] That's not to mention Office, Windows, Xbox, etc.
Right or wrong, your argument is exactly why Ballmer is still in charge and at the same time the reason many think Microsoft's future is bleak until he's not.
>Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever. They've got 6 different products in their server and tools division alone that generate more than a billion dollars each year! [1] That's not to mention Office, Windows, Xbox, etc.
What, if anything, has Ballmer done to make a difference in those areas?
>Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever.
RIM was singing the same song. Profits/etc. are basically the waves behind the ship. By the time those start going down you're not dying, your decomposing.
Awesome. Thank you. Very similar to the "process" I've witnessed and documented. From memory:
1) Assemble non-experts, non-stakeholders
2) Misidentify problem
3) Establish quorum
4) Do not communicate decisions
5) Everyone runs off in separate directions
6) Assign blame
7) Repeat.
Given the challenges of organizational psychology (aka herding kittens), where trying harder won't change outcomes, I support the strategy of multiple competing teams, as detailed in the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.
I suspect that Ballmer wasn't really able to have full control of the company and decisions until Gates left (so...2007, right?). Then, I'd say that CEOs have to be judged 3-4 years in the future, meaning that if a CEO of a huge company decided something _today_, the successes/failures of that decision would only be evident years down the road.
So given that Microsoft seems to be in some exciting times right now, I'd feel comfortable guessing that this is more or less the strategy that got laid out once Ballmer gained full control of the company.
Then again maybe I'm completely wrong. Either way, we'll never really know I guess.
>Ballmer had been frustrated by Sinofsky before. Microsoft partners apparently had a reference design for tablet hardware ready in time for Windows 7. Sources tell us that Sinofsky refused to add support for it in Windows 7. Whether it would have been successful is hard to gauge, but it would have put Microsoft in the tablet market several years earlier, and possibly around the same time as Apple’s original iPad.
I would love to just catch a quick glimpse of the Universe in which this is NOT 100% Ballmer's fault. It must truly be full of fascinating things to see.
This is a bit of revisionism. Windows tablets, and tablet support in Windows, have been around since Windows XP. It was unsuccessful every time it was tried.
Saying "no" to tablet support was, in light of Microsoft's experience with tablets, the right thing to do.
Yeah, but all the tablets were crappy. They weren't what a tablet needed to be to succeed, which unfortunately really means "ditch a lot of Windows." At MS this is heresy and is not tolerated.
Xbox managed to ship a non-Windows-based product because they were nearly completely isolated during the product's inception. (Yes, the Xbox kernel is largely Win2000, but with a LOT of stuff ripped out).
I don't know how WinCE succeeded at all. Microsoft would have been better off if it hadn't, and something better had come along. Lordy, what a pile...
In summary: At MS, you are either (a) Windows, and shipping something probably inappropriate for your users, or (b) playing a political game where users come second, or (c) isolating yourself from the rest of the company, if you can swing it.
MS needs to fix it's "Windows everywhere" mindset.
>Saying "no" to tablet support was, in light of Microsoft's experience with tablets, the right thing to do.
The point is that the failure of MS to bring a viable tablet to market cannot be painted as any single exec's fault over Ballmer. I was responding to the article's accusation of Ballmer's frustration at being told no (fair or not, I can't say). The bottom line is that the buck stopped with Ballmer, and if he was frustrated at being told "no", then even if "no" was the correct business decision at the time, the reason it was is the fault of Ballmer.
Funny, that's just the attitude Steve Jobs had about IBM in the 1980s. He was sure that IBM was the bad guy monopolist that stood in the way of Apple's success. He created the famous "1984" commercial as a result.
You're looking in the wrong place, 30 years late. The 2012 Microsoft is more like 1984 IBM and that's not likely to change. The duopoly of Apple and Google has more ability to dictate our technology today, if that's what you're worried about. At least we have a choice though.
The only logical conclusion that can be made from eBay's and Paypal's policies is that they no longer want small sellers to use them. They want professional sellers to sell from their site, people who are used to dealing with chargebacks, etc, and can foot the bill when it comes to chargebacks/fraud. They want to facilitate BUYING from regular people, but make SELLING by regular people very difficult.
There is no other explanation for getting rid of buyer reputation and providing no protection to sellers. They only want people who don't care about buyer reputation, and have deep enough pockets and the expectation that chargebacks and fraud will occur. If they deal with these larger customers, this increases their selling volume (and fees) and decreases their support costs.
There is no other explanation for getting rid of buyer reputation and providing no protection to sellers.
I disagree. Back in the old days when I used to use eBay before they removed buyer feedback, it was considered unwise to ever leave a seller negative feedback because they might turn around and leave you negative feedback in retaliation. By removing buyer feedback, it allows buyers to leave unbiased seller feedback without fear of retribution.
One could argue that seller feedback is much more important than buyer feedback because the buyer has to pay first and then trust that the seller will ship them the item as described in a timely fashion. Ideally, the worst thing a buyer should be able to do is not pay, in which case the seller just has to start over and re-list the item in a new auction. It seems like the problem here isn't a lack of buyer feedback so much as a lack of due process for chargebacks, which ends up enabling fraud.
I completely disagree.
I use Allegro.pl(which is like Ebay,but actually was first to the market in Poland and is absolutely HUGE there, Ebay tries to establish itself in there but is without any chances), and both parties can leave feedback - and I have over 7500 reputation, both for selling and buying, and I have left more than a few negative feedbacks for a seller, only one of which resulted in a counter-negative feedback - and it was removed within a few days after I complained to customer service. Oh,and for the payment methods - they work with every single bank in Poland, accepting quick, instantaneous bank transfers directly from your account, no credit card needed,no need for shitty PayPal - but if you want to they will happily accept any credit card. Or as a seller they keep your money in your Allegro account, and pay it out to your bank account daily - without any additional fees. I have personally had so many problems with PayPal that I hate that company wholeheartedly.
Allegro.pl is a good example of how you can get auctions right. I think they watched eBay closely and drew conclusions — they place a HUGE emphasis on fighting fraud.
As a result, it works extremely well. I have >150 transactions, both as a buyer and as a seller, with not a single problem. Oh sure, there is fraud, but it's marginal, and crazy stories like the OP's are unheard of.
This is why eBay, in spite of many efforts, is still pretty much nonexistent in Poland, while Allegro's traffic is booming.
A bad seller (or buyer) could avoid negative feedback just by never leaving feedback, meaning the buyer (or seller) would never be able to publish theirs.
oDesk gets around this by having a time limit on when feedback can be left. If one party fails to enter feedback, then it posts the other's feedback anyway.
Parties can lobby to have the other person change the feedback, but only if they lobbied party wants to. Seems like a workable system to me and allows each to be honest without consequences like eBay's original system.
Then you place a time limit on submitting feedback. Say you have 1 week-1 month. Still not perfect since it sounds like in the posted scam he didn't find out for over a month, but it might help in many cases.
E: Also just had another idea. You could have a way to edit your feedback after the original deadline in case of fraud. If you open up a dispute like the one posted then Ebay could review the edit's on a case-by-case basis.
Online sites like eBay, always want to reduce their personnel costs. Dispute resolution should be a last ditch effort that exists to identify loopholes in a system that should ideally NEVER need dispute resolution.
Interesting idea, but it still wouldn't have helped in the case of the post-transaction chargeback, as described in the article. The scammer would likely still get a positive review (because the seller had been paid) only to discover the scam weeks after the fact.
This agrees with my entire point, which is that eBay has shifted towards a buyer-oriented site. They offer asymmetric protection for buyers over sellers. Buyers know more about the sellers than sellers know about buyers, making it much more buyer-friendly and more risky for sellers.
If the reason is that you might get negative feedback in return, why not make both parties submit feedback blind and only publish the feedback once both parties have submitted it? (and make it not editable)
The other thing I'd add is that basic information about conflicts should be made public on someone's record, along with a high level outcome (and possibly additional comments from the parties involved) so these things can be part of someone's decision making process.
Of course. If you look their website now and their SEC filings, it is clear that eBay is not any more "garage sales on internet with auctions". It is more like discount store.
Are there any of YC companies building "garage sales on internet"?
Yardsale does meet the description of "garage sale on the internet", but in the Craigslist sense more than the old-eBay sense: it's for selling stuff locally, not for selling worldwide and then shipping it. For some things that works fine, but for long-tail items with niche popularity I found the old ebay quite useful, because you could reach a non-geographically-constrained audience, increasing the odds that someone somewhere would want your obscure thing.
Nowadays I sell niche music and books on Amazon Marketplace, admittedly, so one chunk of that market is spoken for by a strong incumbent.
just wondering how would you expect or how do other companies currently avoid fraud. The costs associated or added with constantly investigating fraud would almost seem like a deterrent in making a system useful.
Chargebacks are a part of doing business any time you accept credit cards, whether paypal is your merchant provider or not.
The problem here is Visa/MC/Amex etc. Since you almost have to accept credit card payments these days, you're stuck with their terms. Since the banks all provide credit through these card providers, there's very little competition.
There are numerous ways to virtually eliminate CC fraud but the card providers aren't interested in taking those measures, and neither are the big retailers. They are happy to accept the ~5% loss on chargebacks, because credit card users spend something like 30-40% more per transaction than cash payers.
What we need is a competitor that disrupts credit cards altogether, not just merchant processing. Eliminate VISA and MC, who are basically skimming 2.5% off our retail economy. Cards are obsolete anyways. The processing side is obsolete, we don't need terminals that dial into a central processing machine, we can use the internet. The credit side (banks provide the credit line you get on your card, not Visa/MC) will take a bit more work, but we can combine it with the rise in peer to peer lending: you seek a credit line from a crowdlending site, not Chase bank.
If the OP were the merchant for the credit card transaction, he would have provided the extensive documentation described and I have no doubt at all that the chargeback would NOT have gone through. (The evidence of previous fraud would probably have led to closing the card account also.)
But the OP is NOT the merchant... PayPal is. I do not think that the fundamental problem in this case is the credit card system. (Although there certainly are OTHER problems with the credit card payment system that make it tempting to disrupt - but nearly impossible to disrupt because of entrenched powerful interests.)
Exactly!
Paypal is the middleman here and they are preventing me from going directly to the credit card issuer and providing them with extensive documentation proving fraud.
Not only that, they are making it extremely inconvenient to have any sort of communication with them
Something is beyond wrong if a verbal "not as described" lets them keep the object. That's such an obvious scam/abuse there should be a legal issue with it, if paypal is not pursuing actual proof. They are acting in bad faith because their contract/terms of service is not even plausibly verifiable. The CC company requires an affadivit to issue a refund; if Visa gets wind of this guy with 5 refunds to the same card/provider/etc (thats 5 perjured affadavits) it should be a verifiable problem with paperwork. Paypal should be in the business of verifying this; not denying it. Its so basic as to be beyond belief. Apologies for preaching to the choir.
If the seller accepts returns, would that solve the problem? I apologize of the OP mentioned whether his item was returnable -- I did not see him say that.
ACH chargebacks are even worse than CC chargebacks, from the perspective of being able to fight them.
As soon as a payment touches any of the existing networks, it's at risk. The only way to fix it completely (or at least significantly improve the situation) is to have a system that's completely isolated and properly secured; i.e. every payment authorization requires true multi-factor authentication.
This is the thing that drives me crazy. It's the 21st century, so just about every major bank in my country provides two-factor authentication for their customers to use their own on-line banking facilities and numerous similar alternatives are available as well. And yet if a company sells someone something, there is still no guarantee that when the money hits their account they actually have it short of real legal action to show that they must give it back. Moreover, because someone else might get stuck with that responsibility if the merchant bails, merchants have to jump through absurd hoops and accept all kinds of crazy one-sided terms just to get into the game.
I wouldn't mind so much if consumers were actually advised of their ability to use these chargeback facilities, but apart from Direct Debits it seems almost no-one gets told about this here in the UK. Certainly no bank or credit card service I used had ever told me before I started running businesses and seeing it from the merchant's side. The one time I got screwed as a consumer and a chargeback would have helped because it wasn't really worth the time/hassle of figuring out the courts' small claims procedure, I didn't know I could do that so the merchant won by default anyway.
So right now, the do-I-have-it-or-don't-I question over funds is a huge burden for merchants here, yet the supposed protection it offers to consumers here is mostly illusory as well. Nobody wins from this kind of arrangement. The entire payment services industry needs to die and be replaced by something fit for the 21st century, where you simply can't transfer money electronically without robust proof of who you are, and you can't accept money electronically without robust proof of who you are, but given such proof transfers are final as soon as they are confirmed. Is this really such a crazy idea?!
It's interesting that you mention Dwolla. Their approach is indeed to prevent fraud rather than charging back after it happens, but when people look at the hoops that Dwolla makes them jump though (linking a Facebook account, etc.) they usually go running right back to credit cards.
I think you're completely missing the point, because there's a large grey area that requires human intervention in deciding if fraud occurred. The larger the volume the larger the resources needed to review every single claim.
> Eliminate VISA and MC, who are basically skimming 2.5% off our retail economy.
This claim doesn't make much sense. For example, an economy with RGDP 150,000 units, of which 2.5% go to Visa/MC, is not worse off than one of RGDP 130,000 units, of which 0% go to Visa/MC.
That's a false dichotomy – there's (at least) a third option – a service that doesn't skim so much off the top – 2.5% made sense when credit cards were a rarer payment method, used only for a small fraction of transactions.
Now, nearly everyone has and uses multiple visa or mc branded credit or debit cards, yielding trillions in transactions, making billions for Visa/MC.
In short, they've grown much more profitable due to their scale and none of that has value has been returned to businesses or consumers in via rate reductions, AFAIK.
> there's (at least) a third option – a service that doesn't skim so much off the top
I don't disagree with this at all. But I don't read the comment I was responding to as having come from the thought process of
"If Visa/MC charged a 1.5% cut instead of 2.5%, the economy would be 1.5% more productive than it is now, which means that, compared to that more enlightened hypothetical world, the non-Visa/MC portion of the economy is only 97.5% what it should be."
If you think credit is related to the size of the economy (and I do), you need to ask, where did that 2.5% number come from? Saying that Visa's entire fee represents nothing but a drag on the economy is very much of a piece with the historical loathing of merchants and usurers, who, as anyone could see, did not create value.
I should also point out that, if the assumption you start with is "the drag on the economy (relative to potential) from credit card fees is equal to the amount of those fees", you should quickly notice that the directionality is wrong.
In my example example, cutting fees to 1.5% (from any level at all, interestingly) requires the economy to expand by 1.5%. That's not a coincidence -- cutting fees to 0.1% would require the economy to expand by 0.1%, except that that's completely implausible; cutting fees further should cause the economy to expand more, not less.
With that in mind, it might make sense to measure against the hypothetical where credit card companies offer their services for free, but even then there is no obvious relationship to the current level of their fees. I have to stand by my assessment that saying Visa/MC are skimming 2.5% of the economy doesn't make sense. How'd we get that number?
Still, money handling/cheque handling has costs as well.
Cheques are much more prone to fraud, money has some fraud cost (% of fake money, not sure how it is, but it's not that big) and costs of handling and moving the money (hence, cashback reduces this cost)
In the instance of online auction marketplaces, you could create an escrow system where the seller ships the good to the auctioneer's warehouse (with some practical limitations) who verifies condition and that the good is legitimate (not stolen). Buyers pay money to the escrow company (e.g. Ebay) who ships the goods and send the money to the seller. Any chargebacks go against the escrow company who also happened to have validated the good and can use TOS/Legal Agreements to fight the chargeback on grounds of item quality. In this situation, they could also probably finagle a decent relationship with the CC processors to streamline the process and weed out fraud.
Is that workable? Quite possibly. Is it probable? Probably not.
The same way AirBnB does it: verify everything (phone, email) and provide social context ("You and the seller have 2 friends in common on Facebook"). You could go a step further and remove as much anonymity as possible.
Of course, there are other ways to stop fraud which you'd want to do as well.
Facebook has the infrastructure and population coverage to facilitate provide this service.
They could charge for "Verified by Facebook" services. Hell, they could replace eBay and PayPal while they're at it, not to mention AirBnB, CraigsList, etc.
They're stumbling around looking for a business model as it is, I don't know why they don't get into this. Sure, easier said than done maybe, but if anyone can do it, it is Facebook. Becoming the one site that has the single largest repository of known internet identities within it is the hard part.
I've said the same thing for a couple of years. Their Oodle marketplace is anemic, despite having the ability to combat fraud issues in a way eBay, Craigslist, etc will never be able to.
So bizarre to me they don't move into in a serious way. ecommerce
paypay already has your credit card and banking information. I think its more about having staff investigating it. For example in this type of story it may be clear, but otherwise its your word vs theirs type situations. With volume of sales, and probably the number of transactions, I imagine its not cheap.
I really don't know. For example, as MVP they could actually manually verify accounts (verify Facebook login, friends on that account, etc.). Also, at the beginning, maybe to allow only people in same city to do transaction. I know it is hard, but somebody much smarter than me could do it.
I agree. The consistency of their changes that always disadvantage small sellers, reveals intent.
But I don't agree with your suggestion that eBay-PayPal is doing this just because they are greedy. I think eBay-PayPal is run by people who take the Elite viewpoint - they dislike that the Internet is giving so much freedom and empowerment to the common people. And they want to reverse that.
Ebay originally provided a new and wonderful thing - a facility for individuals to trade easily with each other worldwide. I think that eBay has for a few years now been doing their best to destroy this capability, without being too obvious about their intent.
Another comment I have, is that eBay's practices are a very good proof of the social evils that result from software method and business practice patents. If others could provide a trading service that competed with eBay, but was sane and helpful to customers, eBay would be out of business so fast they'd wonder what hit them. (And same for PayPal.)
To play devil's advocate, how could similar businesses make better decisions? For example, buyer/scammer "A" sends money via credit card payment to seller "B"s paypal/dwolla/freelancer/etc--"C"s account, who then withdraws the money to his bank. Buyer "A" then files and successfully gets a chargeback from the credit card company, who debits company "C".
Now C is wrongfully in the red, and they need to make it back somehow. Their only options? Either get it back from B's account or take the hit--which can really hurt smaller companies and startups.
What would you do in company C's position? It seems that the real bad guy here is the credit card company, TBH.
Having recently sold an iPhone on eBay and been concerned about problems like this, I wish eBay would allow non-professional sellers restrict bids to professional buyers.
Thousand times this. Their buyer filtering options are laughable.
If they were to let me limit sales to people
with certain types of addresses, purchases of certain value, a reasonable number of feedback, etc, that would be very helpful in reducing a chance of being defrauded
If they allowed that, almost all sellers would do it for security, and then there would be no ways for buyers to get any feedback.
In fact, when I was placing my first bids on eBay, some buyers would cancel the auction or retract the bids because they didn't trust me. I understand their position, but how are you supposed to get feedback if sellers won't sell you anything?
Right, which is why they should only allow non-professional/low-volume sellers to make this restriction, that way new users can still buy from pro sellers to get some reputation, or people selling in odd-ball domains where such a restriction overly harm the seller.
If you sell, say, more than 500 items a year, you turn into a professional seller and you can't be as restrictive, but you are doing enough business for the occasional scammer to not make a large impact.
Of course, I think eBay is harmed relatively little by scammers like the one in the OP; so I can see why they haven't done much to prevent it at risk of loosing real business.
I agree. I played around with the Surface RT for over 30 mins at a Microsoft store with the intention of buying it for my parents for Christmas, and I walked away because even I couldn't effectively figure out what the "rules" were for interacting with Metro. I'm sure if I gave it more time, I could, but there is no way my parents, who still use XP, would be able to figure it out.
I wasn't sure what I needed to do to get to the "Desktop" mode where it looked like Windows 7, or how to flip back and forth, and which things I could swipe, etc. I felt like it was a big mess because a lot of the UI features that we've come to expect were not there. In contrast, the iPhone and subsequently the iPad were intuitive right off the bat.
To be fair, I'm seeing a lot of this terrible UI experience in other things as well. For example, on Chrome when you are reading a PDF, if you want to save it or zoom, it's not obvious how to do it. You need to miraculously hover over the bottom right corner and then the buttons show themselves, but there are no visual cues indicating that that's what you're supposed to do. It's fancy, but terrible UI.
The same thing occurs on Facebook, where people are just expected to know where to hover in order to show functionality. I don't know where this trend came from, but it's terrible, and I think this article is showing an extension of how we are moving away from all the visual cues and things we've learned about UX in the past 30 years. Sure, it's different but it doesn't mean it's better, especially when it forced people to hunt, peck, and guess for functionality, something that UX is supposed to get rid of.
anecdotally, my mom really likes Windows RT. Watching her use the traditional start menu, or attempting to navigate Windows Explorer to find something is an exercise in pain. She, honestly, really enjoys the full screen start menu -- easier to find the app she wants to start --, the WinRT full screen apps -- doesn't have to remember/think about window/application life cycle management. It pretty much works the way that she wanted Windows XP to work in the first place.
When I use Windows 8, on the other hand, I spend 99% of my time on the desktop, and the transition to a full screen start menu/screen is pretty jarring. But, honestly, as far as the new UI paradigms go, its not that much of a mess... Try watching a Windows user try to use a OSX for the first time. Or vice versa. Or a mac user trying to use KDE.
I think the real world analogy of the OP is a bit flawed. Babies don't instinctually know how to open a door, that is not something we are genetically programmed for. They learn by watching other people do it, and you learn by trying. There is a low penalty for trying to failing to open a door correctly -- sometimes you push instead of pull -- and that is the point of a good user interface. Does Windows 8 succeed at that? Perhaps, but its not a disaster.
A disaster would be a door that killed you if you tried to open it incorrectly.
This seems like an overreaction. Facebook has a billion users, so trying to do things like encourage voting is a nice sentiment, but practically useless in my opinion.
It's better for the company to just do what they want, and if they overstep their bounds and if people don't like it, they'll leave, just like they did with MySpace and Friendster. And if people stay, then it means they don't care. People are allowed to have the right to not care what people do with their personal data. I personally care, so I would close my account, but I'm sure there are swathes of people that simply don't care.
The reason why I hate features like this is because it now puts the onus on customers to detect fraud, not the banks. If my understanding is correct, you have 60 days to reverse any fraudulent checks on your account. If you're someone like me that doesn't look into their bank account too closely (because you don't spend a lot), then you could be the victim of fraud very easily. And in the age of Photoshop, you can make a very convincing check image very easily.
While I agree with the principles of your objection, there are several mitigating factors.
First, generally deposits are done via an app without choosing a photo from the photo roll. So you'd need to actually print a check to get it through the app, or hack the app to take a digital file. The deposit is tied to your account, and your physical phone, which means if you use it for fraud it is easy to trace back to you. I suppose we could see stolen phones being used to deposit checks, but then they'd have to get the money out of that person's account and move on quickly.
Second, a bank that isn't customer-hostile will have many notification tools available. I get push notifications of large transfers in or out, and the same for low balance warnings or upcoming bill payments.
Moving on to some opining...
I wish I could print one-time use codes (QR or letters) on my checks. It'd be nice for me to submit the amount and the challenge code through my bank's app to authenticate a paper check.
But the fact is, I now write checks very infrequently. Assuming that's a broader trend, I think any major development we see in the handling of checks will be to benefit businesses, which might deal with a lot of them going in and out.
We don't let our customers write checks directly. They can send checks from our apps, but they don't get a checkbook. Even if someone produced checks with one of our customer's account numbers, our systems are set up to reject them.
We are working on a way to let our customers write their own checks, but we're taking our time on this feature as we want to shut down that fraud path with a special type of check. More details to come in the future.
The feature we released today is for check deposit. Yes, you could suffer if someone gave you a fraudulent check, but the risk is no different than depositing that same check at a teller.
As a customer it's interesting to learn that you would reject "custom" checks since your app shows me the routing number and I can use that (and have used that) to do EFT which asks for the number off the bottom of a check. You make it look like a check, and it works like the number off a check, but a third party printed check using that same number wouldn't work? Good to know.
I don't think writing your own OS is as difficult as people are saying. You're not trying to compete against Windows or Linux, you just want to get something up and running. I'm sure bugs and crashes will be prevalent, but I'm sure it would be a great project.
A really, really good book for this that I've read is "Developing Your Own 32-Bit Operating System" by Richard Burgess. It starts you from the beginning, and walks you through all the steps in writing a really basic OS.
It's old and out of print, but it's definitely the best one I've seen.
Edit: I just found the website, they are offering the book free here:
I've wrote my own OS back in the late '90s based heavily on this book. Probably one of the best learning experiences I've had. I'm not sure how relevant it is today. I'd love to see a second edition brought up to date.
This is unfortunately turning into an example of "you can't fight City Hall".
In a city like SF, where the taxi cab service is the worst I've ever experienced (empty taxis just driving past you, or never honoring a commitment to pick you up even if you call in), Uber is something that is necessary. But the status quo's long term experience with enforcing a monopoly through laws/regulations, etc, will make it really hard for Uber. Uber will need to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to get those laws to change, which will likely be at a glacial pace, if ever.
I'm sure there's a huge amount of interest for this in SF, and taxi service is so bad, you might even be able to make this an election issue. But other cities like Vancouver I'm sure don't have as bad of an issue, so it might be harder to make it an issue that politicians will take notice of.
I've lived for years in both Vancouver and in SF. I can't say I prefer one's taxi service over the other. At least in SF, I have the option of Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar.
I would love to have Uber back home, but not for $75 a ride.
"I'm sure there's a huge amount of interest for this in SF, and taxi service is so bad, you might even be able to make this an election issue. But other cities like Vancouver I'm sure don't have as bad of an issue, so it might be harder to make it an issue that politicians will take notice of."&
I've lived in Orlando, DC, SF (Santa Clara, but went to SF regularly) and Boston. All of those cities have major issues with cabs. My experience in NYC is better, but I have never lived there. At any rate, Uber is doing well, in part because cabs are terrible.
This is Uber's issue in a lot of places, I think. They're trying to apply the SF model to cities that doesn't care about it anywhere near as much. I rarely have issues getting a cab in NYC- at peak times you do have to wait, but 5-10 minutes- I doubt an Uber car would get there much quicker and would cost a ton more. I also had no issues getting cabs in Vancouver.
Errr... "5. Song previews can only be used to promote the track. They cannot be used for entertainment independent of that purpose, or as the main focus of an App or web experience." source: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/blog/song-p...
(Full disclosure: I bought Apple stock and calls in the last 2 days, for a short term trade. Yes, I was &*!@-ing my pants yesterday when it hit ~$505.)
The difference with Apple and other momentum stocks is that Apple isn't like Netflix, where hype deeply overshadowed the problem they have with increasing content costs, or Groupon, which simply has a terrible business model.
Apple makes an incredible amount of real money and real demand. In this 4th quarter, Apple will make more money than Cisco will throughout its entire year.
My concern isn't that people will all of a sudden stop buying Apple hardware... that simply won't happen. They will continue to make billions upon billions of dollars.
My concern is that there are a number of strategic missteps almost as soon as Steve Jobs died. I think the iPad mini will cannibalize iPad sales completely and I think a lot of strategic decisions appears to be fraught with confusion and desperation, like Apple Maps, releasing iPad 4 6 months after iPad 3, etc. I get the argument as to why they made the iPad Mini (my wife wants to get one because it will fit in her purse easier), but I still think very few will buy iPads, and they will need to double iPad Mini sales to make up for lost iPad sales, but I guess we'll see in January.
The major difference with Apple and a company like Microsoft or Cisco is that they don't have much recurring revenue streams. Most of their revenues come from consumers purchasing their goods quarter after quarter. In order to keep growing revenues, they really have to maintain their amazing pace of innovation.
If they make a really bad strategic misstep, and people slow down in terms of buying the products, it will show up immediately, and they won't have a strong enterprise pipeline to buffer them. In 2011, Apple sales were about $60B. In fiscal 2012, they were over $100B. So, could their revenues drop to $60B in a year? It's not probable, but it's possible.
That being said, their PE ratio is ridiculously low, something like 10x next year's earnings, and they have $120B in cash. They can do something ridiculous like buy Facebook or even Cisco for cash, and still have more money than most other companies out there, so there is a lot of room for dramatic and aggressive action by Apple.
Apple, for a long time were a high margins, low volume company. Excellent products that people are willing to pay extra for. It's what they called "differentiation" (as opposed to penetration) when I was at uni. Macs work like this. I'm willing to pay a lot for a mac, more than twice what I'd pay for a Windows machine because I want a mac specifically. Most people don't though. They want to pay less for a computer or they want something Apple don't make.
With ipods, iphones & ipads, Apple created or re-invented markets. They also learned to produce more cheaply. The upshot was that they go to keep their margins as high as always but got market leadership too, even dominance.
That's an anomaly though. In a free market a company is not going to be able to keep such high margins and high market share forever. Apple are impressive, but its probably inevitable that one or the other will give. Just like no company can maintain a startup rate of growth forever.
I'd argue their willingness to cannibalize their exisiting products is exactly why they are doing so well. The product that finally killed the iPod was the iPhone.
I think their logical next move that's been fairly obvious to most people is the television. $120B ought to be enough to make that a reality and is the first true test of a post Jobs Apple.
It's likely been in the pipeline long enough to have Jobs's impressions, but if it lacks the final polish it will be glaringly obvious Apple is letting its focus slip. My expectation is something on par with the original iPhone launch.
I bought some 2013-APR-20 $600 calls yesterday, too (I'm glad I didn't see the $505 drop; I think I got mine when the price was around $520).
I'm hoping they release a new product between now and then. Unfortunately iPad Mini has both lower margins and lower selling price than the iPad, so while it might get some secondary sales for people who own an iPad already (either a new one or upgrading sooner than otherwise), it will probably hurt more than that because it will cannibalize iPad 4 sales.
Supply issues also kind of suck -- they won't have the new iMacs in time for christmas or end of the year budget, and there's no retina external monitor, so the Mini isn't as great a choice as a desktop. The rMBP15 remains the high end choice. If there's any disruption to iPad 4, iPad Mini, or iPhone 5 supply, they're screwed (and it appears there are pretty big supply constraints for each, which might last through the season.)
Apple has been pretty horrible at services, so I think the best chance is a TV device, or potentially a sufficiently refreshed computing line as to take over more business sales.
I think Apple's biggest risk is that their products become stale, while Android moves a step or two ahead in innovation. The early adapters that I know have moved on to Android products, and so far they are very happy.
