Apple: Is Tim Cook The Next Steve Ballmer? [View article]
Who would be a better CEO for Apple than Tim Cook? Someone currently at Apple (Phil Schiller, Eddie Cue, Jony Ive)?? Or someone from the outside? Steve Jobs is dead, and he didn't leave a clone. So when you suggest that Cook isn't up to the task, please suggest an alternative.
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
Libraries are places where communities gather, children learn to love books, and in general, benefit society as a whole. In poor communities, libraries can be a place where inner city kids can find a place to enjoy learning.
My local library DOES hold adult education classes, which helps retrain people. Libraries have been around for 1000's of years (run by closed societies), but PUBLIC libraries to help society in general is relatively recent.
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
People want something for nothing. Greeks are protesting because they want a leisurely lifestyle, government subsidies and not pay taxes for it. We Americans work more and vacation less than most developed countries. So we will do OK. But those of us working are working harder than ever. But people who say they want to cut the deficit, cut taxes and STILL want the government services are not being realistic. We need more realism in politics. If nothing else, let's start by sitting down and looking at the problems realistically. If you hate Obama, fine. But love this country and work together to fix the problems.
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
The point is that there are many people who do not and would not give money to help whole communities of people, which improves the lives of everyone. Imagine if public libraries did not exist today, and then someone proposed using tax money to let people read books for free? Would you be against it? There ARE legitimate reasons for levying taxes, and most people (Democrats, Liberals, Republicans, Tea-Partiers), myself included, would not volunteer to pay for some things if not FORCED to do so via taxes.
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
There is no "wealth redistribution" in the United States. There IS the idea of shared sacrifice and paying for the common good (hurricane relief, military, police, fire, clean energy, etc.). There are many people who are very selfish, and don't like the idea of helping others who are less fortunate. The federal income tax started only really started in 1913 (there were various income taxes before that, but short lived). Before that, there was a HUGE income gap between rich and poor.
If you want to see socialism, look at Sweden and Norway. They pay $10gal for gasoline, and 80% income taxes. They also have health care for all. Obama would be a right-wing conservative in those countries!
Why Apple's Numbers Tell Us Not To Worry [View article]
OK, so Apple has more competition. But they've always had more competition. And many seem to assume that Apple will have no new products, just more of the same products. Is that realistic? Even in the "lost decade" between Jobs, there were new products.
Single digit P/E growth? People all of a sudden dropping iPads for Surfaces? I doubt it. Apple may be forced to lower their prices, or maybe not. During the crash of 2008, pundits said that people won't buy higher priced Apple products. But they did, and Apple actually grew then.
Arguing that an iPad Mini is $130 too high is like saying that all watches should be similar in price because they all tell time. Why should a Citizen watch cost more than a Timex or Casio? How is it possible that Rolex can charge more money and get away with it?
Computing devices are becoming just like any other device. People will buy them based on their perceived value to them, and how the purchase makes them feel.
Will Apple's Products Cause Speculative Stock Valuation? [View article]
I think there is always some weird psychology regarding Apple. For years, Apple was an underdog, and everyone called it "beleaguered". When they started to make real money, a lot of analysts thought it a fluke, and the stock price was held back until Apple "showed them the money". Then the stock jumped up, but the P/E went down, because, in the back of everyone's mind, Apple can't possibly be doing this well, and they will eventually fail and go back to being "beleaguered", so investors were cautious. Now that Apple is at the top, and has pulled back some, we are seeing the stories come out about how Apple can't possibly grow forever, and that they will fall back to earth.
Even if Apple grows at 15% a year for the next 5 yrs, and the P/E stays at current levels (<14 and less than the DOW Industrial ave P/E), the price of the stock will go to 1000 within a few years. Only if Apple starts to lose money and not grow at all will the stock be a bad investment. And that seems to be what is driving the stock price down, the fear that Apple will no longer come out with anything new and innovative, and that they are destined to repeat the "lost decade" without Steve Jobs. It's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!
Apple Shares Slip To 2-Month Lows Ahead Of Earnings; All Eyes On iPhone Shipments [View article]
People tend to forget that companies that make decent margin also pay decent wages, hire more people and generally, improve the economy. It's a virtuous circle. Apple employs a lot of people in the US because they actually make money on the items they sell. Yes, they are fabricated in China. But imagine if they didn't do as well over the last 10 years? Would there be so many mobile App developers? Would Apple have so many retail stores? Or build a new campus and data centers, which helps the local economies?
Apple Shares Slip To 2-Month Lows Ahead Of Earnings; All Eyes On iPhone Shipments [View article]
And I suppose that you always buy generic colas at your local supermarket instead of Coke, you don't buy Oakley sunglasses, and your female acquaintances buy generic lingerie instead of Victoria Secret. How DARE Victoria secret rip off women by charging $50 for a bikini that you can get for $10 at Wal-Mart!!!
People WANT high end goods at low end prices. But they end up buying the high end goods anyway, because, well, they are higher quality than the low end goods. It's called supply and demand. If Apple charges too much for the iPad Mini, then people won't buy them. This will force Apple to lower their prices.
I personally don't want the kind of plastic body tablet that Amazon and Google sell. Is that worth the $80 price difference? To me, yes, especially when you add all of the other iPad ecosystem benefits. If you don't, then please don't buy an Apple's gear.
There are a lot of "technical" traders that are in and out of the stock and options. And then there are the "investors" that buy and hold. Much of the volatility in Apple stems from the high absolute value of the share price. To buy even 10 shares of Apple, you need to invest ~$6500. The average investor may only want to put $3000 into any one stock trade. People have a psychological barrier to buying just a few shares. So options get traded in lieu of the stock. That brings volatility. I think that if Apple did a stock split, more people would buy and hold stock, and we wouldn't see as much option action, which would reduce volatility.
Apple Retail Store Profitability Analysis [View article]
How does one account for the Apple sales that result from a visit to an Apple store, but the purchase is then done on-line? I know several people who went to an Apple store, and then ordered their item on the Apple web site for home delivery, RIGHT IN THE STORE!
Apple Should Rise On This $29 Solution, Eventually [View article]
So was Apple supposed to keep the 30-pin dock connector forever? At some point, it needed to change, so why not now? When would ever be a good time? And if Apple thought a micro-USB port was sufficient, I'm sure they would have used that. People forget that Apple was the first to make USB mainstream by eliminating all legacy ports in favor of USB. The PC world invented USB, but didn't make it mainstream.
Apple invented FireWire (IEEE-1394), and then removed it from iPod's in favor of USB. So Apple has a history of changing wires. I suspect that Lightning is somehow related to Thunderbolt, and the new uses for it will become apparent in the near future.
Yes, we can all complain about changing connectors, but it is the price of tech. I had big box in my basement filled with SCSI, Firewire, ADB and AppleTalk connectors that I just threw out, along with a SCSI 105MB Zip drive, a Syquest drive (400 MB!) and an iOmega floppy drive. I can fit all of the data contained in all of those drives on one, almost free, USB memory stick. So don't complain about a cable upgrade.
3 Signs Apple Is Turning: A Rebuttal [View article]
Thank you for this article. Most of the "Apple must go down soon because..." articles argue using technical pattern analysis. As if stock market fundamentals (sales, earnings, growth, cash, liabilities, ROI, etc) don't apply. Technical analysis may be helpful for dot.com era stocks that aren't making money, because how else do you determine how much a stock is worth if the company isn't making money?
When someone says "Apple has gone up too fast, and is bound to crash", they don't seem to ever consider Apple's actual performance. To paraphrase an old commercial, they make money the old fashioned way (and always have), by making products people want to buy, and selling them for an enormous profit at "what the market will bear" prices. How much simpler than that can it be? Apple is really an old-fashioned company! And somehow this confuses modern "analysts".
Apple's (AAPL -1.5%) sell-side fans are quick to attribute the weekend's lower-than-expected iPhone 5 sales on supply constraints. Piper's Gene Munster notes Apple's retail inventory is half what it was at the time of the 4S launch, and says his prediction of 8M sales was based on a belief Apple's figures would include all pre-orders (apparently not the case). The WSJ reports this morning that retail partners such as Best Buy and Target were given limited supplies at launch time. [View news story]
We still don't really know why Apple dumped Google Maps at this time, other than the speculation that they can't rely on Google (a competitor)) to provide a key function. When Apple partnered with Google for YouTube and Maps for the first iPhone, Google wasn't competing with Apple.
I suspect that they had a 5 year license agreement that expired, and Google's terms for renewal weren't in Apple's favor. Google may have been convinced that Apple would be foolish to dump Google's mapping data. Apple's maps WILL get better, especially if users send in the error corrections.
The New York Times' Wrongful Apple Takedown [View article]
Over the weekend, I used my iOS 6 upgraded iPhone 4S to navigate around the Chicago area. I simultaneously used my portable Garmin GPS unit. While the routings were different, they were equally correct. I also found that the iPhone gave a more accurate ETA when the routes were identical (the Garmin unit always gave an optimistic ETA, which changed to match the iPhone the closer i got to the destination).
On the whole, I have had no problems with Apple's map product so far. I am sure that the errors will be fixed, and that this will "failure" will be forgotten soon. Remember, Google Maps wasn't perfect when it came out.
Apple: Is Tim Cook The Next Steve Ballmer? [View article]
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
My local library DOES hold adult education classes, which helps retrain people. Libraries have been around for 1000's of years (run by closed societies), but PUBLIC libraries to help society in general is relatively recent.
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
A Sober Wake-Up Call The Morning After [View article]
If you want to see socialism, look at Sweden and Norway. They pay $10gal for gasoline, and 80% income taxes. They also have health care for all. Obama would be a right-wing conservative in those countries!
Why Apple's Numbers Tell Us Not To Worry [View article]
Single digit P/E growth? People all of a sudden dropping iPads for Surfaces? I doubt it. Apple may be forced to lower their prices, or maybe not. During the crash of 2008, pundits said that people won't buy higher priced Apple products. But they did, and Apple actually grew then.
Arguing that an iPad Mini is $130 too high is like saying that all watches should be similar in price because they all tell time. Why should a Citizen watch cost more than a Timex or Casio? How is it possible that Rolex can charge more money and get away with it?
Computing devices are becoming just like any other device. People will buy them based on their perceived value to them, and how the purchase makes them feel.
Will Apple's Products Cause Speculative Stock Valuation? [View article]
Even if Apple grows at 15% a year for the next 5 yrs, and the P/E stays at current levels (<14 and less than the DOW Industrial ave P/E), the price of the stock will go to 1000 within a few years. Only if Apple starts to lose money and not grow at all will the stock be a bad investment. And that seems to be what is driving the stock price down, the fear that Apple will no longer come out with anything new and innovative, and that they are destined to repeat the "lost decade" without Steve Jobs. It's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!
Apple Shares Slip To 2-Month Lows Ahead Of Earnings; All Eyes On iPhone Shipments [View article]
Apple Shares Slip To 2-Month Lows Ahead Of Earnings; All Eyes On iPhone Shipments [View article]
People WANT high end goods at low end prices. But they end up buying the high end goods anyway, because, well, they are higher quality than the low end goods. It's called supply and demand. If Apple charges too much for the iPad Mini, then people won't buy them. This will force Apple to lower their prices.
I personally don't want the kind of plastic body tablet that Amazon and Google sell. Is that worth the $80 price difference? To me, yes, especially when you add all of the other iPad ecosystem benefits. If you don't, then please don't buy an Apple's gear.
The Apple Confusion [View article]
Apple Retail Store Profitability Analysis [View article]
Apple Should Rise On This $29 Solution, Eventually [View article]
Apple invented FireWire (IEEE-1394), and then removed it from iPod's in favor of USB. So Apple has a history of changing wires. I suspect that Lightning is somehow related to Thunderbolt, and the new uses for it will become apparent in the near future.
Yes, we can all complain about changing connectors, but it is the price of tech. I had big box in my basement filled with SCSI, Firewire, ADB and AppleTalk connectors that I just threw out, along with a SCSI 105MB Zip drive, a Syquest drive (400 MB!) and an iOmega floppy drive. I can fit all of the data contained in all of those drives on one, almost free, USB memory stick. So don't complain about a cable upgrade.
Time marches on.
3 Signs Apple Is Turning: A Rebuttal [View article]
When someone says "Apple has gone up too fast, and is bound to crash", they don't seem to ever consider Apple's actual performance. To paraphrase an old commercial, they make money the old fashioned way (and always have), by making products people want to buy, and selling them for an enormous profit at "what the market will bear" prices. How much simpler than that can it be? Apple is really an old-fashioned company! And somehow this confuses modern "analysts".
Apple's (AAPL -1.5%) sell-side fans are quick to attribute the weekend's lower-than-expected iPhone 5 sales on supply constraints. Piper's Gene Munster notes Apple's retail inventory is half what it was at the time of the 4S launch, and says his prediction of 8M sales was based on a belief Apple's figures would include all pre-orders (apparently not the case). The WSJ reports this morning that retail partners such as Best Buy and Target were given limited supplies at launch time. [View news story]
I suspect that they had a 5 year license agreement that expired, and Google's terms for renewal weren't in Apple's favor. Google may have been convinced that Apple would be foolish to dump Google's mapping data. Apple's maps WILL get better, especially if users send in the error corrections.
The New York Times' Wrongful Apple Takedown [View article]
On the whole, I have had no problems with Apple's map product so far. I am sure that the errors will be fixed, and that this will "failure" will be forgotten soon. Remember, Google Maps wasn't perfect when it came out.