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.

Does Flip Have a Chance in an iPhone World?

I think Flip should actually make a phone. Do it in cooperation with motorola perhaps.
Specs:

- Quality video cam with real zoom
- basic phone
- wifi for downloading/viewing youTube, etc.
- no apps other than photo/video & email
- gps tagging
- lower price point

The point is to NOT compete with iPhone by trying to emulate it, but rather be a highly differentiated device that focuses on video.

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.

Consortium To Standardize Digital Rights Management, Take On Apple

You may not like Apple's DRM - but it sure is a whole lot better than what we had before. The only choice you had then was to buy a CD or download illegally!

That was the deal the music companies made. We will sell online IFF you can protect the product from illegal copying. It's worked fine for me.

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

Jim Cramer's Mad Money Lightning Round, 12/12/07: An Intuitive Buy

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THE REPUBLICANS ARE WH0RES TO THE OIL INDUSTRY

From NY Times

WASHINGTON — Pared-down energy legislation cleared the Senate on Thursday by a wide margin after the oil industry and utilities succeeded in stripping out provisions that would have cost them billions of dollars.

The legislation still contains a landmark increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles and a huge boost for alternative fuels. But a $13 billion tax increase on oil companies and a requirement that utilities nationwide produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources were left on the floor to secure Republican votes for the package.

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To hell with global warming - the poor oil companies need charity from the american people in order to survive!!!!

The republicans continue to give liberal handouts of taxpayer $$$ to the oil companies which are making record profits!

DISGUSTING!!!!