Sometimes it's funny to hear people discuss a product for whom they clearly are not the intended market. Kind of like listening to adults review a kids movie. The fact that a 55-year old movie critic may dislike a ninety minute cartoon doesn’t mean that the target market of five to seven year olds won’t clamor to see the movie and enjoy every minute of it. The rumored large screen iPad Pro falls victim to this set of circumstances. 

People who don't spend a huge amount of time collaborating around spreadsheets strain to come up with probable use-case scenario’s for a larger iPad. They probably have as much desire for an “iPad Pro” as Martha Stewart would a jacked-up, camouflage clad, 4-wheeler.

In my last blog post regarding how Fedex flexes their labor to deal with volume peaks, I mentioned something that was too good to let go.

Why would Fedex, one of the largest most successful companies in the world, have people manually calling each cell to get a count of their packages processed? Wouldn’t it make more sense to automate that somehow? Couldn’t a company with the resources that Fedex has figure out a way to employ a software system of electronic eyes and sensors to give the command center a real-time information dashboard? 

On the morning of the iPhone 4 release day in July 2010 I was walking through FedEx's second largest distribution hub in the world, located in Indianapolis, Indiana. The hub manager was proudly describing how FedEx can flex their labor to make sure that they didn't ship anything late. It was fascinating. The gigantic building housed many "cells" which were groups of employees sorting packages by destination.  The more packages they had to get through, the more cells they activated. There were one or two office gals who did nothing but contact each cell every fifteen minutes to get a count of how many packages they had processed in the previous fifteen minutes. Before the day started, Fedex had calculated how many packages needed to be processed every fifteen minutes per cell if they expected to get through the day’s backlog. If the cell was falling behind, they'd immediately start shifting labor from cells that were ahead or start calling in additional workers who were on call to come in. 

I've been listening to the rumors swirling hot and heavy over the last week regarding a potentially new MacBook Air with drastic design changes.  I'll let the tech geeks expound on whether or not the changes are a step forward for mobility users, but from a financial perspective almost every single rumored change would make this a less expensive unit to build.

1. Replace two models, a 13" and an 11" with a single 12" model. This is huge and the benefits go in two different directions. One, you get increased purchasing power by consolidating your volume into one model. Apple should be able to negotiate lower prices for those components like the chassis that used to be split into two different sizes. And two, the depreciation charges for machinery and tooling will be less for one model and spread over more volume.

2. Only one USB port.  I did financial analysis for Gateway's return center in Sioux Falls, SD and I remember that one of the biggest causes for laptops to be returned for warranty repair was broken ports. Customers constantly break them. Cords get yanked at an angle, someone walking by snags the cord, or they're full of sand. Only one port port on a MacBook will yield reduced warranty costs. My thinking is that without the cost of the extra 2, 3 or 4 ports, Apple can design a single port that is more durable. It may be more expensive at the unit level, but less than paying for 2-4 cheaper ports.

3. No Cooling Fan - This reduces the complexity of manufacturing and therefore the cost. No longer does the manufacturing plant have to purchase, store, and assemble the cooling fan. 

The one change that may trigger an increase in cost is the change to a retina screen. But the cost savings from everything else should more than offset that increase. And the retina screen would give marketing something new to focus on as opposed to taking things away. 

In fact, if the rumors are true, this is exactly the laptop that I'd advise Apple to build if they asked for financial advice on improving the 2015 MacBook Air Income Statement. Costs could come down $200 per unit and Apple could split that with the customer cutting another $100 off the price simultaneously goosing volume. 

Increasing volume and cutting costs at the same time, nice. 

I may be a little late to this party but I had somebody just last week try and convince me that Apple is making $500 profit from every iPhone 6 Plus that gets sold. The insinuation was that Apple was somehow needlessly gouging the public for profit sake. Now, I’m certainly not against maximizing profit, but I get paid to analyze product costs for a living and there’s more to the picture here than meets the eye.

If you're an avid runner like me, than you already know how hard it is to find good wireless headphones. Currently, you have to choose which of the following two qualities are most important to you, because no single set of headphones will give you all three. 

1. Solid sweat resistance
2. Good sound
3. Great price