Saul Sterman

Apple Inc: The Hype Must Go On

I'll try posting the link again. The link above doesn't take 'id=114'.

Here goes...

www.crossprofit.com/ar...

If it didn't work this time, copy and paste.

Apple Inc: The Hype Must Go On

REB, Lars, artman1033, jgphoto1 and geotopia,

Thanks for the comments. Instead of replying to each individually, basically it is amazing how changing a title can throw out of whack the entire thrust of the article. The original article can be seen here: www.crossprofit.com/ar...

As you can see, I was not referring to APPL management hyping anything. This is all about the consumer. As to historical correlation, I was referring to the dip this past August and not years back. Being a consumer oriented stock (I-pods and I-phones) I expect the stock to swing heavily with serious large swift changes in consumer behavior over the next several months. There is nothing that management can do other than recognize their new status.

The article is about consumers, NOT APPL management. Sorry for the misunderstanding and thanks to the SA editors for changing the title!

Apple: Mac Sales Tracking Ahead of March Quarter Estimates

Malkiel,

Q1 is traditionally a much weaker quarter (13%-16%) than Q4. AAPL sold 1.6M units in Q4 and the hope is that Q2 will see an up tick. We have published in the past that we envision a slowdown in computer sales in general in Q2 and perhaps Q3 as consumers recuperate. Others have written articles on SA about this.

See www.macnn.com/articles.../

I apologize if you thought the previous comment was spam. I checked the site and typing AAPL in the search box brings up the AAPL chart with the CrossProfit evaluation line. If you had a problem, please send us an email using the CrossProfit site contact form. If you thought this was a link to a CrossProfit article on AAPL, then this indeed is a misunderstanding as the link was posted beneath the signature or disclosure and is not part of the comment.

We place the new link at the bottom of our comments as many still use the old link to the old site. We would like to discontinue the old link as soon as possible. As requested by numerous SA readers, we upgraded the new site to Firefox compatibility. Since all the requests (except one) came from SA readers, we saw it fit to add this notice as well.

Once again, I apologize if you thought we were spamming, we thought we were providing a service to the SA community. Older CrossProfit articles and comments on SA still have the old link and this causes confusion.

There are no advertisements on the CrossProfit site. We specifically spell out on the site that we are currently not accepting new clients, the new site doesn't have a registration page and the site is completely free.

Over the next several weeks we will be adding features to our new site for clients, specifically private investors. This is going to be password activated without general public access. If you can't see it then you don't know our services. If you don't know what we provide AND we're not showing it to you, it is not clear what you mean by spamming, for whom?

I don't get it; then again apparently you misunderstood our intention as well. If I have misunderstood the tone of your comment, then scratch this entire reply.

We have contributed many timely articles to the SA community (ELOS, NR, SCT, XOM, etc.) consistently publishing before it happens and NOT after it is too late for the average investor to act upon with the exception of TPTH seekingalpha.com/artic... which was written after the fact.

Readers that follow articles and comments posted by CrossProfit and myself know that we had only one total miss in 2006 and one in 2007 where we immediately posted the corrective action we took. Statistically for our articles and comments, two misses out of over two dozen stocks covered in a timely manner yielding accurate results most likely position us in the top half of SA contributors.

In all fairness, we have contributed and continue to give far more than we can possibly get. SA aggregates many sites on one however we continue to go directly to other sites, just less frequently than before. For advertisement based sites, traffic is important. A 'thank you' every now and then is much appreciated.

Have a nice weekend,
Saul Sterman
CrossProfit

Microsoft's Current Situation: Like IBM in the '80s

You missed the point and confirmed both the author’s assertion and the culture comment posted above.

No one is saying that Apple will replace MSFT today. The point is that MSFT is putting all of its eggs in one basket and every attempt to diversify has met with failure because its approach is from a monopolistic skew.

No one can build from the top down. New markets are built from the bottom up. If MSFT can repeat its success story again, then and only then will it have a new monopoly.

The “we are the biggest and best” syndrome is what cut Big Blue down to size. The same is happening to MSFT. If I didn’t care about MSFT or ‘have a bone to pick with Microsoft’ I wouldn’t bother writing about it.

Microsoft's Current Situation: Like IBM in the '80s

I agree.

Once MSFT burns through the first 20 billion, I hope they wise up before dumping the second 20.

MSFT could have bought 5 companies (like Electronic Arts) by now and start building a new empire from the bottom up. The culture problem is that they are so used to being a monopoly that they have forgotten the meaning of hard work.

Disclosure: This is my personal opinion and may not reflect the opinion of CrossProfit.com.
www.crossprofit.com