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."
iPod (Score:5, Funny)
[obDisclaimer: I own a 1stG iPod and a 2ndG iPod - batteries still as good as new. But the headphones......
And of course, they would get to that $10 billion sooner if they would release a G5 laptop.
I can personally guarantee them to get $3k closer when they do...]
Re:iPod (Score:3, Informative)
Also, my co-workers mock me for having to go to the Apple Support page, because I was saying how great the build quality on Apple kit is.
Re:iPod (Score:2)
I'll double that. But I still want to know what they're doing to get into enterprise computing. This is all a futile exercise until they do.
Re:iPod battery crisis (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, there is no such company as Mac... (its Apple) and there is no battery problem within the iPod... as has been pointed out time and time again in these threads.
Re:iPod battery crisis (Score:1)
Personally, I don't see anything stopping from making Apple a $20 billion dollar company. We use four of Apple's PowerPCs in the studio, the 4-Mac TVR Analog Video Output, as well as iLife and Final Cut Pro software. Great products. Great company. Plus, no other mp3 player compares to the iPod.
Re:There is no problem (Score:4, Informative)
"The ludicrously high price of the replacement battery is also also well-documented."
And it is also well documented that you can get a cheaper battery from a different supplier for a fraction of the cost.
"Before there were complaints. Apple's semi-official position was "just throw the iPod away" when the battery died."
That'd not true at all. Before there was a battery replacement program, Apple's semi-official provision was to buy an extended warrenty if your iPod was not already covered under its 1-year warrenty.
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:The word from Apple (Score:4, Informative)
If your iPod is out-of-warranty and the battery's ability to hold an electrical charge has diminished 50% or more from its original condition, you can receive a replacement iPod for $99, plus $6.95 shipping. Be sure to follow all of the battery troubleshooting steps before submitting your iPod for battery replacement.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There is no problem (Score:5, Funny)
My screen failed when I used it to hammer stakes for my tent on a camping trip.
Imagine how dissapointed I was when I couldn't use the iPod for the rest of the trip!
Now I hear you can't easily replace the battery when it runs out of charge?
Amazing people put up with this product!
(Please note the sarcasm.)
Re:There is no problem (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPod (Score:1)
Re:It is no joke (Score:5, Informative)
Again, there is no battery "problem".
The iPod battery lasts as long as any bettery of that type is supposed to last. I forget what the exact specs are... but they are very liberal (although it does vary depending on the number of times you charge the device).
As is to be expected, not all things work as planned... hence the reason for Apple's warenty, Apple's extended warrenty as well as its more recent battery replacement programs. Additionally, iPod batters can be purchased from theird part manufacturers for less than even Apple sells.
Re:No problem...... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice spin on "busted the thing just trying to get to the battery". Better-designed devices for a fraction of the cost have a hatch, or from 2 to 4 screws.
That's a nice spin on a device that is designed so well that the battery is intended to last the entire life of the product... as the iPod does in the vast majority of the time.
"Does this warranty cover opening the thing?"
Not sure... though that is not even necessary. If anything should go wrong with your iPod during its warrenty period an individual need only call Apple, they'll ship you a padded box the following day to mail them the iPod, they will send someone to pick it up, next-day deliever it to Apple where they will fix it that day, then next day it back to you.
Apple's warrenty service is EXCELLENT.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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:iPods not intended to last long at all? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple recommends recharging the battery every 14-18days, which would extend 500 full recharges even longer. Really for what the Neistat brothers went through, they either had faulty batteries, or were draining their batteries daily, for over a year.
I consider myself a mid-range user of the iPod, but that's only because their are so many who use their iPods only for trips, etc. I use mine daily, for 4-8hrs a day. When i purchased, I thought the battery might last 3-5years, and so far it's on target.
Re:iPods not intended to last long at all? (Score:2)
Try "replace the battery" not "throw it away."
Re:No problem...... (Score:1, Informative)
if it is under warranty, Apple will do it for free.
Re:It is no joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and
Re:It is no joke (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:It is no joke (Score:2)
Re:It is no joke (Score:2, Flamebait)
Shouldn't that be CFO? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:right before retirement eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, from about 8b in revenues to 10b doesn't seem like that much of a stretch, and probably isn't enough to significantly impact the share price, which has remained within its normal range.
D
Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:5, Informative)
The excitement that has been surrounding Apple the last couple of years reminds me of the Macintosh during the System 7 or PowerPC transitions.
Also, it should be noted that Fred Anderson is the C*F*O of Apple, not the CTO
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:1)
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry but you are. Doubling revenue to $13.4 billion would be 100% growth not 50% growth. Growing by 50% from $6.7 billion would be $10.05 billion.
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.
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:5, Insightful)
You could make that argument, but you'd be just like the people claiming Apple was dying when they had three times the revenues of microsoft!
Literally, people have been claiming this in the press and online for about 20 years. (Yes, "online" did exist 20 years ago.)
All the unix geeks I know are getting apple laptops, or want to. The transition to Unix is even more significant than the PowerPC transition, in my mind, because it paves the way for everybody but Microsoft to be using the same OS, which easy transportability of applications, and thus much more collective Unix market share.
Apple has been hampered by Motorola, but hopefully IBM will be more energetic in keeping the processors up to standard...
I do not think the Mac market is dying at all...
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
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:2)
I call bullshit.
Apple has always focused on the education sector, and up until the early / mid 90ies had a firm grip on it in several countries.
As I spoke to the guy in charge of educational sales in Norway, it became clear that they are very, very VERY interested in marketing towards the education sector. But they los
Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B (Score:2)
Most the unix geeks you know? holly shit, you wanna hear about gain in market share beyond unix geeks?
how about this: back when Mac OS 10.1 first came out in late 2001, my boss and i, who have been with this cool, rather large U.S. ISP since 1998 were the first to switch to a TiBook. It was actually a "transition" for him, and a "switch" for me. I had used Mac desktops for a significant part of my professional life, then the company got me a dell laptop running NT in 1999, which i subsequently upgraded
Re:Apple can never die (Score:4, Funny)
And then they found the hook in the car door handle, proving that the story was true.
Re:Microsoft bailed out Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft bailed out Apple (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not so sure on this. The Mac version had languished behind at 6.0 (remember how much that sucked? I claim the last good version of MS Word was 5.1a) and MS had made no noise about updating it for a long time when that deal was made.
That said, what Apple primarily got was a public acknowledgment that they were going to be there in 3 years and a new version of office that was *much* improved. It gave the public confidence in Apple, something that isn't precisely measurable in price.
Not an "appeal to authority" (Score:2)
Citing mainstream (CNN) and technical (O'Reilly) sources is evidence, not
Re:Not an "appeal to authority" (Score:2)
That said, I am not sure they actually reported the deal that way. Hell, I have had fellow sysadmins insist that MS actually bought Apple. I am pretty sure CNN and O'Reilly never reported that. OTOH, I would love to see a WSJ article which called it
Re:Apple can never die (Score:2)
I fail to see how a $150M restricted stock investment for a company that had $4B in the bank is a "Bailout".
To call this a bailout is just to repeat the pro-microsoft zealot's urban legend.
Plus that $150 was a small payment comapred to the Billions Microsoft has paid Apple in their cross-licensing agreement (announced at the same time, but downplayed because MS did not want to admit that it was paying apple for stealing Quicktime technology.)
But people just want to believe that Apple is weak, and so they
Re:Al Gore did claim he invented the Internet (Score:2)
My dispute is not with the word "create".... it is with who he's talking about when he says "we helped". And the "We helped" is clearly the government.
While I think he's wrong-- the government has only hindered the internet-- he certainly wasn't claiming that *HE* invented the internet.
I mean, come on-- you have to be pretty desperate and pretty stupid to think that Al Gore thinks he personally created the internet.
But to pass on the lie that he made the claim you just have to lack integrity.... and so
Random market caps (Score:5, Informative)
Some random market caps for your amusement, all in 10^9 US$
- General Electric 329
- Microsoft: 284
- Exxon-Mobile: 277
- Wal-Mart: 261
- Intel: 189
- IBM: 166
- Cisco: 156
- Coca-Cola: 120
- Dell: 84
- HP: 70
- Time-Warner: 77
- Disney: 55
- Ebay: 44
- Yahoo: 29
- GM: 27
- Ford: 26
- Amazon: 17
- Sun: 17
- Apple: 8.9
- RedHat: 3.2
- McDonalds: 2.2
- Gateway: 1.9
- SCO: 0.17
Should be possible (Score:5, Insightful)
One of Apple's major strengths lies in its design and ease of use, which isn't so much different from Microsoft, but from the majority of the open source world. Apple couples these two design principles, ease of use and configurability, with their OS and also their other products, so their products are very appealing to many customers, especially designers, drawers, and graphic people.
In the near future, I believe there are going to be more and more of such jobs, and so Apple plays a large role in the IT field. I think the $10 billion limit can be reached.
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
Re:A note from the IT trenches (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple's great because they have some of the best-loved products on the planet. And I think the success of Slashdot's Apple section reflects that.
If Rob was bribed with a PowerBook, it certainly paid off well for everyone, including us as readers.
D
Re:A note from the IT trenches (Score:2)
Don't buy it. It comes with horribly expensive software, ridiculously expensive annual fees, and customer-unfriendly support. I can't tell you how much it costs because my boss would kill me, but it was far more expensive than most phone systems now available with the same capacity.
Documentation is only through a $3,000 course you have to take in their beautiful, tourist-friendly headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Why don't these companies recognize that Honolulu is a much
hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It is the only thing (Score:1, Funny)
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:hmm (Score:2)
Well yes, and they might decide to buy a HP.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put HP in the same league, but HP (arguably) holds the PC equivalent of Apple's position on that mentality: a slightly higher price-point for hopefully better design.
I'm still amazed at what PC users put up with daily. I mean, if after all this stupid virus shit you're still not prep
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: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
This should make one group extremely happy.... (Score:5, Insightful)
During the "good ole days" (1998-2001) when dot-com money was fluid, training centers were handing out MCSE cert training and testing and getting better than $2000 or even $3000 for it. Now, I doubt many people care as they saw what it bought them.
Enter Apple growing market share. Companies will still need someone to show the secretary how to use the Dock. It isn't that it's difficult to use, it's that she just doesn't have the self confidence that she's doing it right.
The winner (besides our favorite produce supplier) is the training company that now has a service someone will buy.
Re:This should make one group extremely happy.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac users and stockholders owe Fred a LOT (Score:5, Informative)
Good job, Fred! Good luck with retirement.
Re:Mac users and stockholders owe Fred a LOT (Score:1)
iTunes for europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iTunes for europe? (Score:3, Informative)
We don't even have it in Canada yet!
And, no, it certainly hasn't been "YEARS" as you complain, it was launched last April, not even 11 months yet.
Stop blaming Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Trust me, if it wasn't for the record companies, iTMS would have been global from day one. Every day they're not able to sell DRM'd AAC somewhere is another day that shit-ass WMA has to entrench itself there.
Re:iTunes for europe? (Score:1, Insightful)
The record labels are the ones dragging their feet on this one. Aparently, citizens in EU (or Canada) cannot be trusted as much as their US counter parts. So if you want iTMS, go bitch at the folks who have the copyrights locked up.
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).
10G$ (Score:2, Funny)
Once they hit $10B... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Current earnings? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/14resu
Apple Reports First Quarter Results
Revenue Increases 36 Percent Year-Over-Year
CUPERTINO, California--January 14, 2004--Apple(R) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 first quarter ended December 27, 2003. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $63 million, or $.17 per diluted share. These results compare to a net loss of $8 million, or $.02 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter reached a four-year high of $2.006 billion, up 36 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 26.7 percent, down from 27.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue.
Re:Current earnings? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Current earnings? (Score:1, Funny)
More than I make.
Grammer Nazi (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Grammer Nazi (Score:2, Funny)
It doesn't take long for the Grammar Nazi to rear its ugly head. It's a sign of their low esteem.
=)
Re:iTMS: apple's only hope. (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 1: Press and hold the Play/Pause button for 5 seconds to turn the iPod off.
Step 2: RTFM!!!
Step 3: Gently press any button to turn it back on.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:2)
The only thing about the iPod that strikes me as odd, is the "Hold" button. When you have it on "Hold" it shows bright orange - like saying "Caution!". It seems to me that the orange should be for when keys CAN be pressed - and alter your current playing mode or settings. "Caution - buttons are active!"
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:2)
I understand your logic, but the real risk isn't that you press buttons while looking at the device; after all, if you are looking at the iPod, you'll see if the buttons get bumped.
The risk i
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:2)
I think it harkens back to things like guns, where there is an orange band when the safety is off.
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the exact opposite. You turn the iPod on by touching any of the four buttons on the front (or the scroll wheen button), and turn it off in the same way by holding play.
The iPod has six buttons on its front surface (the trackwheel and select are two buttons.
None of these buttons has any moving parts - it's all touch sensitive. No mechanical parts to break down during use. The only mechanical switch on the whole unit is the hold switch on the top by the headphone socket.
Apple's buttons are big and easy to press. I don't have big hands by any stretch of the imagination, but I hate hate hate the current trend of manufactuers to put smaller smaller fiddly buttons on their products. You need a matchstick to press the keys on some cellphones nowadays.
I fear for the day when I dial a number on my phone and I press all the keys together and the Simpsons quote will come to mind:
"I'm sorry, your fingers are too fat to dial this number. If you would like to order a complimentary dialing wand please mash the keypad angrily now"
Or something like that.
Apple's large buttons are a joy to use, and the interface (from the way the buttons work, to the way the menus on screen work) is second to none.
Lacking a grasp of friendly user interfaces? Bollocks! It's beautifully designed from a UI perspective.
Re:What a KLUDGE! (Score:1)
Re:iTMS: apple's only hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing new thing: iMusic (Score:5, Funny)
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: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:Amazing new thing: iMusic (Score:1)
You might learn something.
I learned that what YOU call iMusic, everyone else is calling the iTunes Music Store and that is pushing iPods, which you imply won't succeed because of the (false) statements of battery problems.
So if you're the same AC that started this thread, you've got some odd circular logic.
Apple's only hope for such great growth, really
Yet, in the next paragraph...
The iPod bubble
Re:iTMS: apple's only hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Apple's only hope for such great growth, really
Thats a reaching statement considering the fact that they dont yet make such a product.
"That is the only thing they have that is truly competitive."
Apple makes iMusic? Never heard of it.
"The iPod bubble will burst as soon as someone comes out with something similar"
There are already plenty of knock-offs.... with similar features yet non have knocked apple off its high point.
"but with a battery hatch"
This would be an important feature if the iPod's battery was non replaceable (it is) and if the iPod battery was unreliable. (It's not)
and missing controls (like on/off switch)."
It doesn't need an on off switch. It turns off by itself.
"Likely it will cost half as much."
So, you're suggesting that this hypotheticvall competitor will ADD more and yet cost half that which Apple charges. HAH!
"Apple's desktop machine bubble already burst:"
Could have foold me. Their desktop business is doing very well.
"the Mac's appeal only to a tiny niche market"
Apple computer users make up between 10-12% of the computing market. That's hardly a tiny market by any stretch of the imagination.
You must be thinking in terms of "market share" rather than "install base". Apple's "market share" is small not because people aren't buying their computers or even because people are bying them less frequently than before. (Quite the contrary). Rather, PC users are replacing their existing machines twice as freequently. (Less longevity). Because "market share" is solely determined by quarterly or annual sales figures the "market share" number will be low while the user base continues to grow.
"which will not grow unless Apple does such things as drop the price"
I don't see how Apple could drop the price much more. They're already priced the same if not lower then PCs of comperable specs.
"and mass-market the thing."
They do this already.
A better strategy might be to simply educate the masses about business in general. If your post is an indicator or the average PC user... i'd say its an absolute necessity.
Re:They have one of these.... (Score:2)
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, all the current iBooks can drive an external display at a resolution above 1024 x 768. Apple just turns it off in software (the open firmware). For information on how to easily (without risk of losing warranty) turning this back on, look here:
Rute Moeller's spanning hack for the iBook [rutemoeller.com]
And yes, I fully agree that we shouldn't have to resort to this kind of solution, but it is a solution nonetheless, and one that has worked very well for me for the past two years on my 600 Mhz iBook. In fact, I wouldn't have bought my iBook had I not known about this.
Cheers.
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:1, Insightful)
Just look at any PC vendor. If you want the fastest Pentium 4, or you want the best graphics card, or you even want a couple of pathetic PCI slots, you aren't f
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:3, Funny)
Or something to that effect.
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:2)
Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins (Score:5, Insightful)
The margins are not as much as the average outraged x86 geek makes them out to be. From what I've heard, they make as much on an iPod as on an iMac. Don't forget they have to plow a lot into R&D, whereas Dell just has to order the latest chipset and case from Taiwan and load whatever MS is offering at the time and sell them together.
My hope is the next revision or two of the G5 desktop takes off like crazy, as their power and speeds will more closely match the x86 market. Motorola's inability to ramp up the G4 series fast enough was a serious blow to sales, I'm sure.
Margins to end? (Score:4, Informative)
Uberblogger Stephen Den Beste has a post [denbeste.nu] in which he raises doubts that Apple's high margins on hardware (thus, high profits) can continue. He thinks there will be a WinIBM platform in the near future. (WinNT is already running on G5s as an XBox dev platform.) Apple, in his estimation, will be forced to cut margins to compete.
I don't entirely agree with him. Apple has always commanded a premium because its software was good, not its hardware. Plus, I think he underappreciates OSX's BSD underbelly (odd, for an engineer.) But a WinG5 computer would provide an alternative to people who might otherwise make the switch.
(I thought I posted this earlier, but it doesn't seem to be showing up. Sorry if this winds up being a repeat post.)
Re:Margins to end? (Score:5, Insightful)
D
Re:Margins to end? (Score:4, Funny)
Do you think he would find this description depressing? I can't think of anything more disappointing than uberness wasted on blogging.
Re:Margins to end? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's all PERCEPTION (Score:5, Insightful)
When an IBM laptop exhibits a problem there's no 'community' to coagulate into a problem in the first place.
The G5 is a stunningly quiet machine compared to the Dell P4 machine's we've got at my current site, but Mac users still bitch about it being so much louder than their fanless iMac when they hover around the water cooler. The PC users here just shut up and take what they get and don't complain.
Re:It's all PERCEPTION (Score:2)
Re:Build quality has to improve. (Score:2, Informative)
A customer isn't always dissatisfied when there is a problem, but is always royally pissed off when the company does nothing to solve his problem. Despite my loud G4, I still purchased a new i