With the current iPod lineup, no one has competed very well, but who could have predicted the iPod would vault Apple as far as it has? Speaking of the lineup, aren't we due for a revamped Shuffle sooner or later?

Paging Captain Obvious…

Wow. Dell admitting defeat. Finally, the truth without vindictiveness comes out of their mouths. Oh wait, it's not Michael "I-Build-Everything-Cheap-With-No-Style-Or-Substance" Dell.

...and their revenues aren't going to double every year like they used to. Also, those $300 boxes they sell can do 90% of the things that 90% of the people need so it's tough to move people up to more expensive models with fatter margins.

And it's going to get worse for Dell before it gets better. Wal-Mart is going to be selling a $399 notebook PC the day after Thanksgiving. Foisted by his own petard!

"Apple has come out with a nice product and I think it's really turned their company around," - is commenting about Final Cut Suite or possibly iLife or maybe the iMac or the line G4's and G5's in the last 5 years or Garage Band or iTunes or Safari or maybe he's just talking about the iPod. Could be, never know about those Dell folks, they're so ahead of their time, they don't have time to clarify. Leaps and bounds ahead. damn. I'll stop. Ok.

Dell saying something positive about Apple? Did I miss the memo? Is it April Fools Day? I'm so confused, where are those darn TPS reports!

Did you feel that? The Earth just switched direction.

With my experiences with Dell, they have major issues. Customer service and support. I do not care if it is cheaper to outsource tech and customer service reps to india. Dealing with Customer service and tech support is enough to make you throw the phone against the wall. They tried having their business customers deal with foreign support and companies said, forget this, we will buy our windows PC from another vendor. The decline in sales was all about cutting costs in areas that really matter to consumers both business and personal. Bottom line, Apple sells a product at a higher cost but consumers are willing to buy it at that cost because they perceive that their product will be of good quality and support will help in a prompt and correct manner.

So in your mind, Would you buy a computer with foreign customer support at a cheaper price or buy a higher priced product with support that actually cares about your issue?

Until Dell realizes that customers are now demanding premier products and premier support for their dollars, just will be still going WTF is happening. we don't understand. IT ALL ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE AND SUPPORT IDIOTS!

quality of service and with it, some amount of profit.

I recently purchased a 2405 24" LCD Dell monitor. The monitor is great but their service was terrible. They shipped the wrong unit, which they never picked up, and had to ship the correct unit several times. Customer service was handled through India and there were numerous foul-ups. Assuming that was even somewhat typical, their costs must be astronomical.
Yeah outsourcing!

lol, there rubbing up to Apple to be sure to get that clonecontract up 'n running. :D

"Apple has come out with a nice product and I think it's really turned their company around," - is commenting about Final Cut Suite or possibly iLife or maybe the iMac or the line G4's and G5's in the last 5 years or Garage Band or iTunes or Safari or maybe he's just talking about the iPod. Could be, never know about those Dell folks, they're so ahead of their time, they don't have time to clarify. Leaps and bounds ahead. damn. I'll stop. Ok.

Umm, he's talking about the iPod. All the other things you mentioned did little to turn apple around. The iMac staved off liquidation, but there's no other product that you can point to, whether it be hardware or software, that actually has produced mindshare about Apple. (Oh, and that part about the "G4 and G5" was hillarious. Nothing like touting those G4's that were stuck at 500MHz for 2 years before they crept up little by little). Unless you owned a mac, GarageBand and Safari and Final Cut Pro and the rest are just software you might have heard of (and, really, you think safari turned apple's fortunes around - it still doesn't work correctly a lot of times, and its way underfeatured).

Market share was diminishing year after year until the 'halo' effect, if you will, started to get it to inch upward.

I'm pleased to see someone at Dell speak about Apple with some maturity. I'll probably go easier on Dell until I hear the more expected rhetoric that comes from Michael Dell or Kevin Rollins.

It's nice to hear from a competitor that Apple has done a good job. Most of the other MP3 player makers and digital music distributors simply slander and curse the iPod and iTMS.