OldFart Peter

Apple: Unlocking iPhone Profits

The IC industry went through a similar accounting crunch a few decades ago. Sales to distributors were recorded on shipment date, rather than when the distributor sold them to an end customer. Some companies (notoriously National Semi) would ship products to a distributor on the last day of a quarter, the distributor would ship them back a few days later, but the company reported great sales for that quarter. This practice was stopped, and such sales could only be reported when the distributor sold the product. The IC company results were less "game-able", but I am sure it was harder for the accountants, since the distributor had to add a new reporting channel to their suppliers, etc. However, the industry has survived this change to the financial reporting rules. NS survived, unlike Enron.

10 Reasons Why Apple Should Acquire AMD

At NeXT Computer, Steve Jobs got the company into a non-core MO-Disk project (that I was involved in), before dropping it as too expensive and non-core, given the other problems the company had. I did get two airline tickets to Europe from those frequent-flier miles, and some fun memories...