[CAF NOTE: While you watch tech stocks go up, you might want to ponder their business model. This one just in from a very funny subscriber. One of my favorite quotes is from Sir Peter Medawar who was speaking about software when he said, “What is relevant is what solves the problem. If we had thought through real relevancies we would be on Sirius by now.” Whatever is going on with the U. S. software industry, service to the retail customer is rarely in the package.]

Just think about the disclaimers from the whole software industry. I have often told folks, I want you to imagine 30 years ago an industry basing itself on the following customer service policy – no guarantees that the thing will work as advertised if it damages you or your device, we ain’t responsible we want you to pay for the development of the product and I want to charge you 70% margin for the privilege and more than it will sell for a year later and penalize you if you share it with anyone else you get to use it and pay full price, but we get to own it – we are just leasing it to you (oh by the way, you are leasing an asset with built in, systemic depreciation and obsolescence that will make your head spin) if you don’t agree to our terms, you don’t get it oh, by the way, if you don’t get it, you can’t function in the world and we get to collect data on you and use that data anyway we want – including sharing it with the NSA and MI-5 and 6 and anyone else that will pay us for it or insists that they have a backdoor into our systems for us to thrive

And sorry, no returns once you open it. If you don’t like it after you have tried it, tough.

This is the customer service policy for the richest man in the world’s company – as well as the most successful private industry the world has ever seen!