Michael, his girlfriend and about 350 others waited on the high-end shopping street in Frankfurt where the Apple store is located, although bystanders said the line was shorter than when the previous iPad version was released.
But the making of screens, like a good magic trick, helps to redirect our attention from what is happening behind the scenes, where Apple is finding more ways to pump its media to us, for a fee.
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Steve Jobs is stepping down at a point where Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Neither have control over the ecosystem of content and app sales which is where Apple derives some of the profit.
The longer explanation is that both companies see the markets for their processors going where Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is busy building an empire: mobile devices that combine computing, connectivity and multimedia content.
Even after all the successes of the last two years, Apple is still where it was during the Spindler era.
This is where Apple could help the rest of hardware manufactures.
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This is where the iPad (or Apple) has an advantage when it comes to tablets (even ignoring the fact that there are only 20 measly tablet apps for Honeycomb and almost 70, 000 for the iPad): Android mainly got pushed by Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile shops (because they had no iPhone, and because most Android OEMs give the shops a better cut than Apple does).
In the U.S., where Apple is managing to hold onto a huge chunk of the smartphone market, this would be especially interesting.
"Apple now faces its arch rival in the retail-music sector where Apple is a juggernaut, " wrote CNET's Greg Sandoval.
Development logs have long been where the first glimpse of a new Apple product appears, so this is not the least bit unusual.
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However this is a market where Apple has set the benchmark.
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In a world of popular opinion where Apple is increasingly seen as the villain when it comes to patent litigation, Samsung has done a nice little job setting itself up as the plucky underdog.
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However, the problem is, if Apple introduces a cheaper iPhone, well, where do the customers come from?
And while Apple is far from Intel's biggest customer, where Apple goes, the rest of the industry tends to follow.
The longer explanation is that both companies see the markets for their processors going where Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Chief Executive Steve Jobs is busy building an empire: mobile devices that combine computing, connectivity and multimedia content.
The iPhone OS, by comparison, is a closed operating system where only certain Apple approved products can be loaded onto the device.
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At the head of the pack is Austin, where Apple recently announced a large expansion, and Salt Lake City, No. 2 on our big cities list, which is a major destination for expansion for Silicon Valley firms such as Adobe, Twitter and Electronic Arts.
One country where Apple has a favourable tax regime is the Republic of Ireland.
And there are times, like what is certainly the case at Apple, where you have no choice.
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Adjacency plays like that are where high risk innovation is played out by the likes of Apple and Amazon.
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It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.
It seems unlikely that an Apple iWatch is going to levitate Apple hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap, so the question is, where is the equilibrium point to this downward move?
We also note that the iPad mini shows management is aware of the need for lower-end products that ultimately offer a foothold in markets where Apple can capture upgrade growth (i.e. the 40% of the tablet market that is owned by mostly Amazon, Samsung, Google and ASUS).
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That is especially true in Silicon Valley, where the death of Apple Inc.
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Apple likes to choose where the work is done for practical reasons, like where it most makes sense.
And where Apple has a huge advantage over Samsung is the values people associate with its products and services.
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As of this writing, Apple stock is roughly where it was at the time of my last column prior to the earnings.
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The rubber banding effect is one where the page appears to bounce back at the end of a scroll and is a component in the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung.
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This is radically different from the US smartphone market, where Apple gained more than six percentage points of market share in a year.
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