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Archives for May 2015

iWatch 76% Markup

If you ever wonder how AAPL, Apple’s ticker symbol on Nasdaq, has done in the last 5 years. It started out at around $40 per share five years ago. It’s currently priced at about $130. That’s 3 times the value. Part of the reason why Apple has so much revenue, they place a huge markup on their products. Consider the latest and greatest, the iWatch. According to Geek.com article, the iWatch costs only $83.70 to manufacture. As the article mentions, it does not put into account the cost of development, support, packaging, etc. If you put that aside for a moment, the cheapest iWatch you can buy from Apple retails for $349, a 76% markup. That’s the just cost of using Apple products. In spite of the cost, consumers still buy Apple products for quality and support. I think consumers value that. That’s the reason why people still flock to buy Apple products. But 76% is a crazy value.

Systemd vs SysV

Systemd is the controversial project taking Linux by storm. Several Linux distros have or are in the process of switching over to systemd, namely Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Debian and Arch Linux. Linux Mint, the currently popular distro, will most likely follow suit. After all, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu.

What’s the hullabaloo about systemd? Systemd is the replacement for the old SysV, the init system that initializes Linux on boot. Some detractors are saying that systemd is not Unix-like, whatever that means. Some say it’s very intrusive software because it’s not only an init system, but a software suite that handles daemons for login, event logs, virtual devices, cron task scheduling, as well as the network.

If you like to dig more about systemd, here’s a good writeup worth reading from PCWorld.