phelix_da_kat

American Express Hikes Credit Card Fees

I think many of the card issuers hiked up card fees before the new regs were due to be enforced..

This is like the Clunkers programme... auto makers hiked up their prices, just before the programme was approved.

Most Bank Failures Can't Be Blamed on Exotic Products

These mortgages came from lax rules and requirements of the mortgage lenders...

Quite a few of the bad mortgages ended up in SIVs SDOs and CDO2... and these were repackaged into "high quality" assets. These in turn were sold to retail or banks.

The remainder remained at teh "local level", ie at the issuing bank.

The problem was that there was a high correlation to systemic risk, hence the bank failures coming up now..

Rethinking the Baltic Dry Index

Good article.
I would like to add, is there any way of including data regarding ship building. Such project take years to complete, so would affect the BDI the same way as availability of rigs would to oil fields.
This could explain some of the divergences....

Why Apple's iTouch Tablet Will Become Its Flagship Product

$800 is definitely NOT a high end laptop.
You should look at some of the business end IBMs, Sony, Tosh or even Dells (Alienware).




On Jul 28 08:04 AM jmmx wrote:

> @ jabalong
>
> Don't forget that the iPhone already costs about $600 - it is just
> that the carriers subsidize them. Perhaps these will also be carrier
> subsidized.
>
>
> "I agree, $800 is way too expensive for a portable e-reader device.
> If Apple wants to take over the space from Kindle, it needs to improve
> on it technologically, but compete in the same $200-300 range. $800
> is the cost of an almost high-end laptop these days and not what
> consumers are going to be willing to pay for an e-reader-plus."

Why Apple's iTouch Tablet Will Become Its Flagship Product

Exactly..
From my experience MS will tell the world about all its future products, but may not deliver a coherent solution.
Whilst Apple will try to keep everything secret until they are happy to deliver.



On Jul 25 12:24 PM dicklacara wrote:

>

Why Apple's iTouch Tablet Will Become Its Flagship Product

Exactly..
From my experience MS will tell the world about all its future products, but may not deliver a coherent solution.
Whilst Apple will try to keep everything secret until they are happy to deliver.



On Jul 25 12:24 PM dicklacara wrote:

>

Apple: Great Products = Great Investment?

Don't forget great marketing...
There are companies out there that have great coverage, but do not last the course because they do not necessarily have the product to back it up.

Apple's marketing strategy is to:
- NOT necessarily promote the geek factor. Look at their iPhone, for ages they kept the specs under wraps.. they were not looking for direct comparisons with the Pre, but insteaded pushed the soft advantages.. such as the app store and the GUI.
- when geeks were comparing CPUs of say the Mac Pro and the Psystar, one of the comparisons was the major differene in price when they had the same i7 CPU. Upon closer inspection it was idenitifed that although these were both i7s running at the same clockspeed, they have different throughputs on their bus. the spread between the two CPUs was basically the difference betweem the two computers.

Apple: Creating the Device the Netbook Wants to Be

I concur..

Apple keeps it's product clean and simple.
With the new tablet, it has to fit in to its current line up of products without cannibalising existing sales.
ie, not to do a Dell and offer everything under the sun..

Will Palm Roll Out the Pre the Day Before Apple's WWDC Keynote?

digitaldaily.allthings...

From Digital Daily "Oh, one last thing — an interesting side note. My last message to Palm’s PR head Lynn Fox was met with an out-of-office message explaining she’s away on vacation until May 11. Resting up for the big announcement, presumably, which — given her return date — may fall closer to the originally rumored May 17 drop date than thought."

Will Palm Roll Out the Pre the Day Before Apple's WWDC Keynote?

Agreed!



On Apr 29 08:59 AM Jon T wrote:

>
> the Pre launch the day before WWDC would be like a dinghy engulfed
> by a tsunami...
>
> They would be quite mad. They need to be two weeks ahead of it, minimum.

Will Palm Roll Out the Pre the Day Before Apple's WWDC Keynote?

Palm don't really have a choice but to release it before the WWDC tsunami.

Palm are probably pushing their schedule just to get this out before the new releases by Apple.

If Palm release after the WWDC, then the headline news will be "iPhone 3, iTablet, a new iPhone lite... " - one of these is likely true.
Palm Pre will be smothered out of the news.

So why not maximise Apple's buildup coming up to WWDC.
If the Pre is as good as Palm claim and they have saved something special, then these two phones will be in the headlines and compared - hence free marketing..

(From my observations.. most companies try to keep in the headlines by annoucing big projects and news that they fail to deliver on.. while Apple has always tried to keep these out of the spotlight until they have a working product they can deliver - apart from the MobileMe push email fiasco. Lets see if Palm delivers..)

A Look at Banks' Tangible Book / Asset Ratio

You forgot to bold Northern Rock which is effectively state owned.. and Lloyds TSB will be 77% owned by the Govt?

Points Off for Windows? Assailing the 'Macs Are More Expensive' Assumption

Then again...
I would actually say the "lazy" people are the ones that buy a PC just based on the sticker price.

If you thought about it, worked out the TCO, looked at the actual parts (ie not all memory is the same.. not all hard disk manufacturers are equal..) you could make a better informed decision.

Points Off for Windows? Assailing the 'Macs Are More Expensive' Assumption

@ levin70

Its like why a "lazy" person buys a Porsche Boxter with Tiptronic vs a Chrysler Cross Fire with stickshift.

You buy what meets your spec..
Not everyone can self build a PC..
Not everyone wants to pay monthly subscription to AVG.
The list goes on..

Actually... this ancedotal.. but I work with a lot of techies.. a lot of them have Macbooks and Macbook Pros.. what does that tell you?

I spoke to them and apart from the UNIX driving OS X.. the support guys say the last thing they want to do when they get home is to "support" their own system.

Where as the programmers.. they dont want any downtime... to them time is money.

Apple's Refreshed Macs an Unlikely Catalyst of Growth - RBC

Also, INTEL are having a major release in 3Q09:

www.engadget.com/2009/.../


We already saw the Mac PROs have a 1 month head start over the market with the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor.

I would expect Apple to get first dibs on Calpella too.