jmmx

Apple's History Puts Its Present into Question

I don't think you need to be a fanboy to notice how many of your points are on very very old events - over 10 years in some cases.

The only point that is even vaguely relevant today is #4 "Another problem is that Apple always gives conservative guidance on their projections and always seems to beat expectations by a wider than expected margin."

Yes, Apple always gives conservative guidance. Especially in a very uncertain time. Could you have predicted the iPhone sales 6 months ago? Could you have told Apple exactly how many Macs would be sold this past quarter?

Now let us suppose that Apple had given an optimistic guidance and failed to meet it. How many people would then have cried foul and beat up on them or even sued them?

Given all this, I will take my conservative guidance. Now you can choose to not buy a stock for passed perceived transgressions and because they give "conservative guidances" while the company is producing groundbreaking products and growing like wildfire, but to me that appears foolish.

As for me... I'll take my politics liberal, my products visionary, and my management conservative.

RIM, Apple Slow Adobe's Flash

"... in this case not being died to any particular hardware."

Has it died? Poor thing.

The 10 Most Important Technology Developments of 2008

Second - The cloud

Good point here. But you left out one important player - Apple's MobileMe.

Oh yes, it did get off to a truly horrible start, but there it is and I assume it is growing. Not only does it have most of the important parts of the cloud and the virtualization experience, but it comes from a company that excels precisely in integration of the user experience.

It has one other very important advantage over Google, Yahoo, and many others. It does not rely on advertising. (It also is free of the fear folks have of Big Brother Google collecting all this info on you.)

Yes - you have to pay for it, but it is a fairly nominal price (except for additional disk space), and then you are free of all the pesky advertisements. It would be easy for Apple to add in other apps, they already make them.

Personally - I think they would do well to cut the price in half. After all, it is one big subtle advert for Apple itself.

The 10 Most Important Technology Developments of 2008

Several points here. First: CPU vs GPU.

I have a Masters in CS including courses in architecture. This does not mean that I know everything, so I will say up front "Perhaps I am missing something." However! My understanding is as follows.

By Definition a GPU is an engine for performing specific mathematical operation in parallel. By definition, it does NOT have the capacity to perform all the general purpose operations that are done by a CPU. General purpose programs are compiled to run on a CPU.

THEREFORE - if you want to run a program, then you must have a CPU in the computer.

Of course - as has been noted - One can easily put an x86 (or whatever) core on a GPU chip. This would no longer be a GPU but rather an integrated chip. One can also put a GPU on a CPU chip (there is nothing magical about the operations that an NVidia GPU performs) This would also be an integrated chip.

So I do not see the big fuss here. That the GPU is taking over some of the math processing (a la OpenCL), this is an interesting development.

Flash Is Still Not Alive on the iPhone

This is the difference between Apple and some other companies. Others would say "Oh, oh! customers want it. Put it out the door, out the door ASAP." But Apple will not do that. They are not perfect, but over all, they will not ship until they feel it is ready. (MobileMe the huge snafu!)

I see it as Apple standing in the way in order to protect the user experience. I just hope that it is optional for those who don't want it.

Adobe's CS4 Should Give Apple Sales a Boost

You say "... as no one buys a new computer until they have to. "

"have to" is relative. If an artist is spending 30 min extra per day waiting on the computer (that would be about half again to double the average wait for a render), then it is costing the company about $100 everyday to keep the old machine. They can buy a new one in a month and a half. Since the old one will be used by someone else (or possibly sold) the cost is even less. It pays to invest in productivity.

(I figure $200/hour to keep a design engineer, includes: salary, benefits, workspace and equipment, a fraction of the support and management staff necessary to maintain the individual. This is a moderate level designer.)

Which CEOs Have the Best and Worst Approval Ratings?

Last chance to get aboard the Manzana Express. Soon Apple @ $190 will be history!

As soon as they let out their new hardware upgrades and release the number of iPhones sold.

IMHO