Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of acquisitions by Apple Inc./archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted 15:22, 26 April 2008.

List of acquisitions by Apple Inc.[edit]

I am self-nominating this article. This article is based on List of acquisitions by Google, a recently promoted list that I also worked on. Gary King (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • It looks pretty good to me, but I have to ask, did they not make any acquisitions before 1996? Lovelac7 21:34, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Since Apple has been a hardware company from its founding to early 2000s, they hired other companies to build their computer parts and then assembled the parts themselves, therefore there was very little need to acquire other companies. It is only recently that they have had to acquire companies in order to quickly expand into the software industry. Gary King (talk) 21:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • In that case, support. Lovelac7 22:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Just 2 little ones

  • Your above reply is interesting and wouldn't be detrimental to the article if it was included.
  • Does "Inc." have to be included every time after the bold lead and wikilink?

-- ṃ•α•Ł•ṭ•ʰ•Ə•Щ• @ 22:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support I just made some edits to the lead, and I think it's a quality list that meets all the criteria. Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from The Rambling Man (talk · contribs)
  • Image caption is a fragment so lose the full stop. It's also not a good description of the image itself, just the postal address of the company (which is interesting but could be explained).
  • Forgive me but this may be a backlash against modern US English - is "headquarter" a verb nowadays? Like "headquartered"...
  • "and hired other companies to build parts" reads clumsily, parts of what? What did they actually supply?
  • Why is Chairman capitalised?
  • "a large percentage of these companies are based in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. " - that info isn't proved clearly in this list.
  • You use three different ways to express US dollars and link them all. Pick one and stick to it!
  • I'd make ref's unsortable and make value sortable.
  • Proximity doesn't link to a company.

That's it for me. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As per previous concerns, only 4 of the 13 previous company names aren't redirects to other products. It's misleading and I'd like it to be fixed before I can support. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All done. Gary King (talk) 20:54, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose from Collectonian (talk · contribs)
  • entire lead is almost completely unreferenced
  • Table is using international format while prose uses American
  • Needs to be American or ISO, but not international in the table
    • Are you talking about dates? I'm using {{dts}} to sort the column correctly, and it formats the dates accordingly so I don't control that in the article. Gary King (talk) 18:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes :) Collectonian (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'd prefer to continue using {{dts}} to add sort functionality to that column. Maybe the better question should be how to make that template follow the same date standards that are used in each article? We should probably tackle that rather than this on an article-by-article basis, because the template is used in a few hundred articles. Gary King (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Table seems incomplete with so many values missing. If its not readily available, maybe drop the column all together.
    • I'd rather keep it there. The information is not readily available because it is not released by Apple; for the larger acquisitions, they announce the acquisition price for their shareholders. This is not needed for smaller acquisitions. Gary King (talk) 18:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • What is country referencing? The country the acquired company was in?
  • Last item's ref is off center
  • Lead prose seems stilted, confusing, and out of center. The explanation on the table formatting should be the last thing in the lead, with the rest covering the topic. Copyediting would be good.
    • I did the shuffle and moved it around a bit. Gary King (talk) 18:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • As someone else pointed out, prose says 13, able has 14 listings :P
  • Why a picture of the Apple headquarters? I doubt all 14 companies were moved to the building, so why use that instead of something like the Apple logo.
    • Apple's logo is fair use and so I'm using free images. Gary King (talk) 18:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Collectonian (talk) 16:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose Have to agree with Tony (commenting elsewhere) that the prose in the lead is poor. The quality of English isn't "professional", is way too wordy and repetitive, it contradicts itself and is imprecise in places.
  • The first sentence and the first clause of the second sentence contradict each other. Apple has always been both a hardware and software company.
  • Apple no more "hired other companies to build computer parts" than I hired Tesco to put milk into cartons. In fact, the examples you give (CPUs, memory and disc drives) are very much commodity components that were almost certainly not specially made for Apple.
  • Saying "Apple assembled these parts into computers" places them about the same level as any number of bit-player PC computer builders. Apple designed computers.
  • "giving the company little reason to acquire other corporations" I couldn't find this in your sources, but didn't look hard (and couldn't read one). I don't believe this is true and suspect it is OR. Even if you can source it, it is opinion that I suspect is not in the majority.
  • "Beginning in the early 2000s, however, Apple has begun creating computer software" Awful English, I'm afraid. Apple always wrote its own operating systems and a fair amount of the associated software.
  • The circular story of Steve Jobs and Apple is not well explained.
  • "headquartered" !!
  • Looking at just one acquisition makes me doubt the list is accurate. The Raycer entry says 2nd Nov 1999 and $20 million. The source is The Register a tech tabloid that isn't always reliable. An update on 5th Nov from The Register say's it is "all but done" for $15 million and that Monday (8th) will probably be the date. You need to find a reliable source that confirms the date, the amount and rather than speculate on what Apple might gain or do with the purchase, should state what it actually did with the purchase.
Colin°Talk 19:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Problems should be resolved now. I've switched out iffy references for more reliable ones, such as NYT, WSJ, CNET, etc. Gary King (talk) 23:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lead prose is still choppy and the final paragraph tedious. I just checked two more names: Proximity and Fingerworks. Read your sources. Those dates are wrong. It isn't even certain that Fingerworks, the company, was actually bought. It shouldn't be this easy to find mistakes. Colin°Talk 18:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've cleaned up the lead a bit more. I've removed FingerWorks and used a new reference for Proximity. In my defense, this was the first 'acquisition' list I built and Apple is also known for being secretive about its business dealings; for my other acquisition lists, the information regarding acquisitions is more transparent and is communicated through official press releases. Gary King (talk) 19:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have you checked the SEC filings? While they are secretive, even they have to file those being publicly traded, and such filings will usually include information on acquisitions. I've found SEC Info to be useful for pulling those up. Here is their page for Apple: http://www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/Registrant.asp?CIK=320193. Might help some. Collectonian (talk) 19:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've looked to there as a last resort, because a press release would be many times easier to read and use. I searched SEC Info for Apple and FingerWorks before, but only came up with the lawsuit that a company put forward, with Apple Inc. and FingerWorks as defendants. Also, I think that NeXT was the only company acquired by Apple that was publicly traded. Gary King (talk) 19:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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