Apple Plans to Grow to $10 Billion 244
mattmcal writes "Fred Anderson, CFO of Apple, this week outlined Apple's strategy for returning to its former self as a $10 billion company. He cited portability, digital lifestyle, and music as the three pimary drivers of this new strategy. Anderson announced last month that he plans to retire June 1 of this year."
Current earnings? (Score:-1, Interesting)
right before retirement eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to me like a:
1.) Talk up Apple, raise share price.
2.) retire, have all options vest.
3.) Profit!
situation to me.
A note from the IT trenches (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I was just managing a virus outbreak, and finally getting the Symantec Centralized Anti-Virus solution to more or less work in my company, and I can say the value of the time it took to do this would have easily paid the price difference between the PCs we have and the eMacs we could have bought instead. Add outside consultant time and Windows TCO compared to the Mac gets even more absurd.
Most of our employees use a web-based CRM system I developed for the company that's completely platform-independent, so theoretically there should be no problem at all switching.
Unfortunately, we have a phone system that forces a Windows lock-in for a variety of reasons, but if it didn't, I would think a switch to Mac for most people wouldn't be that difficult a sell. "Look, you can still get Office, and you'll have 1% of the trouble with viruses and worms. It's a no-brainer!"
If mid-sized companies like ours could be a bit more open-minded, and if they could avoid buying a phone system like we did (it was a mistake, for a lot of other good reasons), I think more companies would find major advantages in switching.
D
Mc Donalds... (Score:4, Interesting)
A previous rumour doing the rounds was a 100 million free song deal with McDonalds, Which you can find here [macrumors.com].
McDonalds later said there 'Was no deal to announce', but did not actually deny the rumour.
The revenue and publicity from such a deal would certainly put iTunes further in the lead in the online music store biz.
But perhaps Coke [cokemusic.com] might not be so happy with that.
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's actually been more exciting, in that it's more broadly-based this time, and Apple's critics have much less solid ground to walk on than they did in those periods. No one seriously writes "Apple is dying" articles anymore.
iTunes for europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The word from Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
That article refers to the "Apple's Dirty Little Secret" Web site not Apple's official position. If you listened to the phone call recording that got MASSIVE attention... the support rep suggested that because his iPod fell out of warenty the caller buy a new Apple warenty (costing $250) "but at that cost you might as well buy a new iPod anyways".
Obviously the support rep didn't say the thing that offerd the most level of comfor to the caller, but that hardly implies that Apple's position was to throw the iPod away.
Regardless, Apple has since updated the iPod support program to include an iPod battery. Additionally other suppliers have offered replacement batteries for even less than that which Apple sells them for.
This is all a moot point for the most part because we're talking about the fringe edge of iPod owners anways... only this extremely small number individuals are reporting problems. Thankfully, Apple and theird party companies provide support for this small group.
"A $50 DIY kit, also documented at popsci.com. Pretty steep."
Not at all. Batteryies for the Dell's Mp3 player, the archos brand gateway etc all utilize similar pricing structures as Apple and 3rd party companies do for the iPod.
Replacement batteries for the iPod are very much in sync with battery prices from other major MP3 manufacturers.
Re:iPods not intended to last long at all? (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, the popssi article was reference the ipod dirty little secret web site... an instance which has already been regarded as an obscure instance.
The life of the ipod will vary depending on the individual that has it. Every single individual I know that has an iPod 5 gig 9the first ipod) say that its serving them very well... no problems whatsoever.
"That's pretty bad."
It would be if that were the case. But its not.
"My existing mp3 players are that old, and I have every expectation that they will last much longer."
Perhaps, and yet its not entierly unlikely that those MP3 players with batteries have the same life expectancy and reliability as the iPod battery.... which is very good.
"Of course, I don't have to wreck them in order to deal with battery problems, either."
Good to know.
Neither do iPod owners either however.
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, that's 100% knee-jerk defensiveness -- especially because I made it clear that I don't think Apple is dying at all.
Most of the Unix Geeks I know have always used Apple equipment on and off over the years, so I don't see the massive market growth you are predicting from Apple capturing this oh-so-not-crucial
There's an interesting argument regarding the future of the Mac platform here [arstechnica.com].
Note that I fall purely on the pro-Mac side -- I would love to see Apple return the Mac platform to a competitive position in the general purpose personal computing market. Just that over the last 5 years Apple's shown 0 interest in doing so and instead has time and time again gone back to soak their installed base. Sorry, that I'm not excited as the rest of you about Apple making big revenue selling iPods, RIAA Tunes, and other consumer do-dads, but it's hardly trolling.
Car Computer comparisons (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually - it's different. Air-conditioning on a car is an integral part of the car - and is near to impossible to add after-market. Thus the lack of air-conditioning is a negative. But a USB floppy drive can be had for as little as $25 for a name brand (iomega). So lets use $2000 as the average price of a Mac, and you have a little over 1% of the cost of it to add floppy capabilities without any hardware modifications. For the car version that would mean that for a $50,000 porsche you would have to add a fully functional air conditioning for just over $500. Not possible. And another benefit to the Mac - with that $25 USB floppy drive you can read PC *and* Mac floppy disks seamlessly, while PCs can't read Mac floppies. So the question is - why include a $25 accessory that is used by almost no one anymore? (I have floppy drives in my work PCs and one at home, and I have not touched them in more than 2 years). Since the bootable CD - floppies are obsolete. But if you need one, you are welcome to buy one.
Yes, this is true. It is an example of "more for the money". You get standard printer AND serial ports along with all the USBs.
It is very hard for a regular consumer to find a printer that needs a Parallel port anymore. In fact, my last 4 printers - going back to pre-1999 - have all been USB. My current one supports USB/USB2/Firewire. No Parallel. And regarding serial... What a pain in the arse that was... Configuring external serial devices on PCs was worse than a root canal given by my 2 year old... Who needs serial anymore? GPS devices come with USB now, Cell Phones come with Bluetooth or USB now, Modems and network equipment come with USB now, what is your justification for needing serial - besides supporting legacy equipment. Of course, there are USB->serial adapters for those who absolutely have to have them. You say that having more is better - so why not include ALL the old standards? Why not have an EGA and CGA video out? Why not have SCSI on every box? What about MicroChannel? Controller/joystick ports on sound cards... Networking? Why not Token Ring... Lets include everything now... Consumers LOVE to look at the back of a computer and see 129 different places they could plug stuff into. I don't even know why PCs still jave PS2 mouse and keyboard ports...
Again, it is like a chevy with 3 cig lighter plugs compared to a Porsche with just one. At least in this aspect, the chevy has something the Porsche lacks. Repeat after me: having more available options is better.
Well, that comparison doesn't work either... It is more like the chevy having 5 different ways to plug things in, and the porsche only having one. It is not important when the majority of things only need the one - and anything else usually has an adapter, or you can get an adapter... The Mac has just as many "interface" options as the PC, they just don't put them on every single Mac.
But I guess you would prefer an RV fully decked out with everything you *could* need, and I would prefer a mini-van and a couple highly specific adapters... I'll get better handling and mileage and top-speed 99% of the time, and 1% of the time I will be inconvenienced by needing an invertor to run an appliance or something... You will always have what you need at your fingertips - but will always be big, slow, heavy, and hard to park...
:) We'll both get where we are going.
Re:It is the only thing (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to get outta the 90's with your criticisms, dude. Do you still refer to the Apple competition as 'IBM'?
Re:Car Computer comparisons (Score:5, Interesting)
First, both are minor parts of the vehicle's functionality. Second, they're features that most people don't want or need. Third, they're features that the people who do want them really shouldn't be using in the first place, as they are harmful to your health (or at least the reliability of your data and/or your ability to concentrate on the road).
And we didn't abandon SCSI. Your firewire hard drive uses SBP2. That's SCSI commands sent over a serial tunnel. Want to know what your CD/DVD drive uses? ATAPI. That's SCSI packets encapsulated into ATA requests.
SCSI is like the force. "If you kill me, you will only make me stronger." And so, in effect, by abandoning the actual parallel SCSI physical transport (which really sucked, IMHO), the SCSI protocol (which doesn't) lives on in nearly every computer built in the past several years, PC or Mac.
But I digress.
Re:Mc Donalds... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that's exactly the point he was trying to make.. It wouldn't look to good to have Coke (indirectly via McDonalds) copying Pepsi (who were the first ones to give away iTunes under the cap) and start giving away free iTunes, because then it would seem as though Coke isn't very inventive, and that Pepsi's marketing worked better than anything Coke could've come up with.
Re:iTunes for europe? (Score:5, Interesting)
Arne Odden, a rather nice fella and the CEO of Apple Norway, started the whole thing by saying that he's getting a bit tired of the questions about iTunes Music Store for Europe, since no one knows when the myriad of contracts, recordings (yes, even European artists record and these are going into the store), and the kitchen sink will be ready.
So he said it with these words:
It'll ready, when it's ready.
And that is what we know about the Apple Music store for Europe today. He even mentioned that there's some recorings being prepared from tapes. Studio tapes that is. Interesting...
On a side note, the presentation falled into the clammy hands of the DemoDevil when the iPod everything was stored on reached its limit (4 kB left!) and crashed the whole shebang right into the stone age. That was the first time I ever saw the Mac equalent of a BSOD, the grey please-reboot-window. Even that was designed beautifully. The Wintel fanatics started to laugh, but made utter fools of them selves afterwards by asking the dumbes, most inane questions I have ever heard from persons supposed to work for the computer press (Think PC Magazine journalists).