Thoughts on Apple, Inc.

Steve Jobs stepped down from the position of CEO of Apple this week.  He named his successor as Tim Cook who was presently the COO of Apple; there are mixed feelings as to whether this was a good idea or not.  Jobs is one of the greatest minds of our time, I'm not a fan of Apple products for personal reasons, however I respect the man behind the products.  The question is: will Apple survive without Jobs' new ideas fueling it?

All the people I know that use Apple were always talking about Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs = Apple.  Perhaps that is because I'm a business student, and Apple has been one of the fastest growing companies since I started business school on the technology field.  Since Jobs took over as CEO in '97 there have been many new products that have been developed by Apple.  The iMac, the iPod, the iPhone (HUGE one!), the iPad (another big one..).  Even the MacBook Air was a huge development, at least I thought it was pretty awesome, and even with the position of Apple products in my mind I would probably still buy one.  I realize that Steve Jobs did not single-handedly create all of those products, but he is the face of Apple, anyone else is just not the same.

Thanks Jobs, for your legacy and life's work.

Please note:  I didn't quote specifically any of the above information, however I did read several articles on the subject mostly from the New York Times.

Is the US President overpaid?

The average pay of a CEO in the US is $11 million a year with base salary and other compensation (such as bonuses and stock options, etc.) Keeping this in mind, think about what a CEO has to do: meetings, travel, planning for the future of the company he/she works for, etc.  It's just like a presidency, except people don't generally care about what the CEO of some company has to say.  

Out of 44 presidents, 4 have been assassinated while still in office.  In other words: 1 out of every 11 presidents dies.  There have been 20 known attempted assassinations on US Presidents, bringing the risk of losing your life in the position to nearly half.  On any given day, about half  (usually more) of the people in the country has something negative to say about the way the country is run, and it usually ends up being the president's fault for whatever happens; he is the face of the Federal Government.  

Just like the CEO, the president travels, has meetings, press conferences, and helps plan for the future of our country.  Granted, I do not know any of the supplements to the president's pay, base salary for the US president is only $400,000 a year.  compared to the average $1,093,989 (2011 base salary average) of S&P 500 companies, it's not even half.  

So, with all this information in mind when I read the following:

"Salary of the US President. ..$400,000 Salary of retired US Presidents ...$180,000 Salary of House/Senate...$174,000 Salary of Speaker of the House.. .$223,500 Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders... $193,400 Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN COMBAT $38,000 I think we found where the cuts should be made! If you agree... repost" 

as a status that is meant to become viral as some sort of protest to how much the President and other "highly-paid" government elected officials make compared to a Soldier, and how they should cut their salary, I tend to disagree.  I do, agree that our soldiers are underpaid, but I do NOT think that the salaries of those in charge are what is causing our debt problem in this country.  Excess spending on unnecessary items country-wide, and unwise choices on the types of products our government chooses to purchase for its personnel are more of a problem in my eyes.  (For example: my brother was partially in charge of reorders on batteries for his cutter in the USCG, and he told me that they would replace the batteries in every flashlight on the boat every month, whether it was used or not.) 

I think before people start screaming for pay cuts for the President and Congress, etc, they should look at where the rest of the  money goes.  The US debt increases at a rate of $50,000 every 2 seconds. I think we've got bigger problems than paying our president $400,000 a year.  

_______________________________________________________________________

Sources: 

https://www.opm.gov/oca/compmemo/2008/2008-01-attach1.pdf   Salaries of government personnel. 2008.

http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/  CEO pay-watch. 2011.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/  US Debt clock. 18 July 2011.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots  List of Presidential Assassination Attempts and Successes. 5 July 2011.

MONOPOLY

Just got an email saying that to continue my service with Netflix, I must pay 33% more per month.  I was literally JUST talking about how disappointed I was with what Netflix was releasing on streaming lately, i.e. nothing I want to watch.  And it's been taking 2 days instead of 1 to get my movies in the mail.  Now they're raising prices?

Here's what I think happened:  Netflix enters market.

Netflix is more convenient for lazy &%# people who don't want to leave home.

America = lazy ass people who don't want to leave home.

Blockbuster and other competitors hurt for business on top of already feeling the pinch of the recession.

Competitors go bankrupt.

Netflix holds market.

Monopoly pricing.

Some customers will be paying for the same (or like me, worse) service for up to 60% more per month!  If that's not a racket, I don't know what is!

Birds of a Feather

It's been a little over a week since my last post, and lately I've been thinking about how people are afraid to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd.  Personally I don't think being different is such a bad thing, when it comes to your ambitions, drive, and personality (as long as we're talking about "good" personality traits!)  What made me finally decide to write this was something my brother told me last night.  He posted the "she was finally starting to realize what she lost."  So I liked it, and said "you go little brother!"  Then he tells me that his ex-girlfriend who I considered to be someone that I trusted up until a few weeks ago, and especially until last night, said that I was to blame for their (my brother and her) breakup.  I had nothing to do with it, in fact my only advice to her was that she should only leave the relationship if she was unhappy, because my brother was a good guy and he wouldn't do anything wrong to her on purpose.  So suddenly it's my fault.

Anyway, the point is: I've been in New Orleans for about 8 weeks now, and I've noticed the attitudes and differences in people here compared to those of people in Texas.  I know it's a different type of "bird" here, but I've also noticed that the attitudes are catching.  I'm starting to wonder if maybe the reason my brother's ex-girlfriend is suddenly such a bad person is because she wants so desperately to fit in here that she is picking up the bad habits of disloyalty, and flat-out lying to try and get her way?  She didn't seem like a bad person when I first met her, but now that the truth has come out, I'm not so sure her breaking up with my brother was a bad thing.

The REAL point is:  be who you are, be honest with anyone you meet, because in my book, family comes first, and if you say something about someone I love, they come first.

In other news:  I'm working on my resume today, and making my "five year plan." It's time to get passionate about it.

Market Segmentation or Stereotype?

http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp
http://www.esri.com/data/esri_data/tapestry.html#

In my Consumer Behavior course, my professor gave us the assignment to go to the above websites, enter our zip codes and make a summary of the information provided about the major market segments in that area.

I entered, obviously, the zip code from the town where I live in, and have lived in consistently for the past 15 years, in Texas.  What I found was in some ways disturbing.  There were comments on nearly every segment provided that the "people" that live there were, for lack of better terminology, technological retards.  I realize that my zip code also covers about half of the county in which my town is located, but there was NOTHING that was included in ANY of the 10+ segments I read that was about the college students who live in the area, or anything that I could personally identify with.

Is it possible that these segments are nothing but a generalized stereotype that was made up based on the population density of the area?  I know that there are definitely areas that are still untouched by technology still today, but there has to be at least 75% saturation of at least 1x coverage for cell phone service, if not more, when I was working for the US Census Bureau 3 years ago, I was consistently getting 3G coverage in the rural areas I visited.  So, how is it possible that the top two market segments listed on any of the settings contain information about how the population has NO cell phone usage?

I do, however, agree that the average income of the families living within my zip code is significantly lower than some of the surrounding areas, but I also know that in 2008 our local economy of mostly oil based industry, and retailing was hit extremely hard by the recession. Of course now the market is depressed compared to the "richness" it was used to before.

I don't know... if these market segments are the main way a new business decides to come to an area, maybe it's not good that our zip code is listed in such a... "back woods" kind of way that leaves out those of us who are environmentally aware, own 2+ computers, have college education, use cell phones, DO NOT drive huge gas-hog vehicles.

Working Man - Boost Mobile TV Commercial

I thought this commercial was ironically true to the way our consumption based society operates.  People work day and night just to have "stuff" like a cell phone, specific clothes, shoes, a car, almost anything.  If a cell phone provider is advertising that they "understand" that we work our asses off for this stuff, and they are marketing to those people that are tired of doing so, I think it's a sign that maybe we're living for the wrong thing in the US.

Think about what the guy in the commercial is doing.  And notice that when he tweets "How many jobs does it take to pay a cell phone bill?" that he is working as a janitor, one of the least respected jobs in our society.  But he HAS that cell phone that can complete things such as tweeting from anywhere, making it (obviously) worth doing a job that so many of us look down on.

Food for thought today.

Expectations... and Reality

This summer I am taking courses at the University of New Orleans, and I love it.  The people are nicer than I expected, classes are exciting and actually require you to do something more than sit there and listen to the professor drone on and on for hours. 

I'll be honest, when I signed up for two classes that are 2.5 hours long back-to-back two times a week, I expected to want to shoot myself by the end of the second class.  However, I barely notice the time going by.  Dad says it's because they "feel bad" for those of us that chose to take summer classes. I see it as a huge value, I'm taking 9 hours, which could easily be a regular semester (or about 15 weeks) in 7 weeks.  That's less than half the amount of time for the same number of hours.  And I get to graduate a semester earlier than I would if I had taken them in the Spring or Fall.