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Apple Posts Earnings, Denies Bid for Universal
Lars T. writes "A number of things: Apple posts Q2 results, and denies it bid for Universial Music. Now a Register article quotes a Reuters article that 'Vivendi Universal director Claude Bebear didn't express his views on the merger talks between Vivendi's Universal Music Group (UMG) and Apple,' which was the claim of the Bloomberg article. Now who needs General Hospital?"
Apple stock drops on Universal music speculation.
To "get involved with" a record label doesn't necessarily entail taking on colossal debt to actually buy one.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In all three cases, they've actually rewritten their stories to reflect my bitching, at least in some minor ways. Amazing, huh? They responded, and actually rewrote copy, within a few hours.
On the one hand, how responsive they really are -- very cool, better than traditional papers by far and faster than, oh, a certain source of News for Nerds I can think of... ever try to get a headline changed?
But was there adequate editorial oversight, if one reader is capable of influencing them this much? These weren't even rush stories; they were more like the sort of thing where the "reporting" was largely transcribing chunks of a press release. They're rushing the stories up, even at the BBC.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Well, the problem is that while sales are up, profits are lower. Granted profits weren't strong last year either, but this means that either they had some very large one-time charges/readjustments, or their costs are going up for some reason. I'd want to read the entire 10Q to know where their money is going.
Heck, I got nothin better to do for the next few minutes, so I'll bite...
:p) and run an upgrade.
:p).
They cost more.
You also get more. Firewire, DVD-R, gigabit ethernet. ON A 15" LAPTOP. THAT WEIGHS LESS THAN 6 LBS, INCLUDING BATTERY.
Audis cost more than Fords.
They are generally slower (I know this is getting better everytime they make the consumer cough up money for a new version Mac OS X).
Apple has been using the same 3D chipsets as PCs for a few years now (ATI, nVidia), and was in fact first with the GeForce 3. Apple doesn't have the benefits (and drawbacks) of the PC parts bin, though in the last few years they've improved this somewhat, by incorporating the aforementioned 3D components, as well as PC-standard RAM, PCI, etc. Therefore, games such as Quake, Warcraft III, et al. run pretty nicely.
The only performance gripes I have relate to DVD ripping. For my needs, anything over 400MHz with a decent 3D accelerator is perfectly adequate.
Oh, and Apple don't play dat DRM garbage (yet), so in theory you could grab an ISO file from a friend who works in a Mac shop, download it over the complimentary ethernet provided by your Vancouver hotel room, burn it on your laptop (after paying the Canadian CD tax
In theory.
There is less software available in the retail markets.
There's more 'shrinkwrap'ware for OSX than there is for Linux. Not that I particularly care, but it's nice to see that games are available within a reasonable timeframe for OSX these days. Linux doesn't have nearly as much in the way of native apps, and you have to hope and pray that the games work with WineX (lessn you have the spare time to hack WineX, which in this economy you may have
BTW, which Linux app did you use to do and file your taxes this year? I used TaxCut for Mac, and it couldn't have been easier. Saved me HOURS. I would have gotten TurboTax, but Intuit's DRM junk turned me off.
I am actually curious.
Hey, I'm curious about this: Why, if the PC world is so 'innovative', do they steal so much from Apple? People building systems these days don't bother with a floppy: Apple took that chance in 1998. Remember when USB was suffering from the 'chicken and egg' problem Bluetooth is now? Apple solved that problem by ditching ADB and serial ports outright (and in the process pissing off LOTS of the faithful, but it was the technically correct thing to do), with PCs eventually catching up. Bluetooth: bastard stepchild of wireless, but I would bet it grows now that Apple has started installing it standard across the line in new systems. GL-rendered, accelerated GUI? Maybe in the next M$OS, maybe someday down the line in XFree (or implemented kludgily per app), included NOW for Jaguar. Rendezvous == Zeroconf, and now that Apple's in the game, look for Linux to start incorporating interesting zeroconf stuff, followed by Microsoft (lessn they try to do their own NetBEUI-equivalent garbage).
Apple innovates in both hardware and software. Microsoft doesn't. Linux to some extent does, but not in any coherent fashion, at least as far as desktops go.
Macheads with the computer world so very Windows focused why do you still buy macs?
Because my time is worth more? Because standard PeeCee junk is an affront to any decent aesthetic? Because I don't want to have to futz with DLLs or LD_LIBRARY_PATHs, macro viruses, flaky windowing systems or schizophrenic hardware driver situations?
I can build a really slick linux box out of odd parts and get it working smoothly. I did so for my most recent job: Mandrake on an NForce1 micro-ATX box. I tilted my lance at NVidia's proprietary X and kernel drivers (to get the ethernet, sound and IDE working properly). I spent several hours on this, but I was paid to do it and the result is a blazingly-fast AMD Linux box.
For my personal life, where I'm not getting PAID for th
It honestly defies all conventional wisdom that a company set beside a large monopoly can still survive with a profit and imbue such incredible loyalty from its consumer base. If there were a couple of big players and Apple was a niche player in left field it would be different. But still..
.......the damn thing just works. I can't explain it entirely, but the user experience is beautiful and everything I have tried to do........just seems to work."
Most likely because they truly have driven innovation in the personal computer market. We could go on and on, but Apple created the portable format that we now use (keyboard in back, wristpads in front), were the first company to: ship CD-ROM drives in computers (remember installing Office on floppies)? They were the first company to ship USB standard, they created and shipped Firewire, they were the first company to ship with plug and play interface card slots (NUBUS), were the first company to ship their computers with built in networking (presaging the internet future by years), they were the first company to ship a GUI, the first company to ship WYSIWYG printing, the first company to ship a laser printer, etc...etc...etc... We could go on and on all day here, but you get my point.
They cost more.
Actually, I just priced out a couple of machines to replace imaging workstations here in the lab with a preference for the Mac, but a limited budget. To my surprise, the Macs were less expensive than Dell, HP or even our local grey box builder.
hey are generally slower (I know this is getting better everytime they make the consumer cough up money for a new version Mac OS X).
I cannot argue here. I have a new P4 and a new dual G4 sitting in my lab and the P4 is generally faster at most tasks than the G4. However, for code that is Altivec optimized, there is no comparison. The G4 sweeps the floor with the P4 with bioinformatics programs and others that are Altivec optimized. Additionally, I should say that OS X does make for a more efficient workflow and I am much more productive on it than in other environments.
I am actually curious. Macheads with the computer world so very Windows focused why do you still buy macs?
I suppose that someone could write a dissertation on the differences and the ideological approaches to solving the same problems that Apple and Microsoft have taken, but Apple computers simply work and tend to be much more flexible and provide a better return on investment.
I have used a variety of computer platforms in my life including Solaris, IRIX, Windows and the MacOS, and I always seem to come back to the Macintosh. It's just better here. Especially with OS X. I can have cli living right along with the GUI and x-windows allowing me to run all of my code on one machine. When I got the G4, I replaced a Wintel box, an SGI and an older Mac with one elegant box with the most beautiful flat panel display I have ever seen and I've not looked back.
To give you an idea of anothers experience, let me relate a story of my neighbor accross the street. This guy is a VP at a local bioinformatics company here and just purchased a 17in iMac for his home after using Wintel PC's for years. I asked him the other day how things were going and he replied ".......Well,
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Actually it was Apple Records (of Beatles fame). They settled out of court.
As many people pointed out IF (big, big if) Apple bought Universal, the music would be kept under the brand name Universal. Apple wouldn't be competing with Apple Records - it's wholy owned subsidiary Univesal would. That gets around any trademark infringement because no one's going to mistake up Universal for Apple Records.
They cost more.
I'll talk to this one last, since I think it relates to the other two.
They are generally slower
Slower is a -very- subjective quality. Let me explain.
We've all heard the arguments regarding MHZ, etc, so I won't go in to that. However, just because the -physical- speed of a machine is faster, it does not logically follow that I will get a task done in a shorter amount of time. I remember reading somewhere in 'The Design of Everyday Things' about how people perceive how they perform a task when using a tool. They can either feel that they're 'directing' the tool to perform a certain funtion, or they can actually feel like they're 'performing' the funtion themselves, using the tool. I feel like I spend most of my time in Windows -directing- it to do a particular task. The 'computer' doesn't fade into the background while I'm performing the task. On a Mac, it does; I don't feel like I'm directing the computer to do something, I'm just doing it. I find it generally easier (and quicker) on a Mac to do certain things, even though it may be -slower- on the processing front. Subjective, yes, but no more so than how MHz influences productivity.
There is less software available in the retail markets.
I think this kind-of relates to my previous point. On the Mac, it seems like the quality of the software is higher, and more consistent than in Windows, so there's less of an "itch to scratch" which would lead to people developing new solutions. For example, I use UltraEdit on my PC, and BBEdit on my Mac. I'd say they're pretty even feature-wise, yet the Mac doesn't need 50 competitors to BBEdit to rock. It just doesn't suck...if it did, someone would develop something better.
Back to the cost issue. I concede that the hardare is definitely more expensive (but not by much, and it's getting better every year), but when put in context of my points above, I find it actually cheaper to own a Mac since I'm able to get a lot more done. People who say the hardware is cheaper are not looking holistically at what a Mac gives you.
Hey, a cubicle is cheaper than an office, but which one do you think you're more productive in?
The Mac Observer has been keeping count...
It's a fake. It isn't that hard to lie about your registration data.
What you miss is that treading water is relatively better than drowning, and there's a whole lot of *that* going on these days. I myself was a bit disturbed by the drop in non-notebook sales numbers, but the increase in sales of the PowerBook line (and increases in gross margin) were beyond my expectations.
On the other hand, my expectations probably should have been different. At the moment, there is very little reason to buy any Apple non-notebook except for for the best value deals in the iMac and eMac line, so the fact that they have any sales there is striking. By the end of Q4, I think we will see a significantly enhanced contribution to Apple's profits from the new line of 970-based Macs and the new version of the OS, but I think that Q3 could get very rough. As in: lose $100 million. That said, those numbers won't look too horrible compared to other hardware vendors. The hint that Windows hardware vendors will be hurt is in Microsoft's statements about their expectations. They are "very cautious" and sentiments anything like that are basically unheard of in Redmond.
Babar
Nothing. Apple adds value to its products by developing integrated software and hardware solutions for information technology and entertainment purposes. Venturing into the source of entertainment itself could only potentially distance Apple from the very media sources it should be trying to court in promotion of its core businesses (i.e., why would Warner, Sony, etc do business w/ Apple if they owned Universal?). Purchasing Universal, or any other media company, would not add value to Apple's product lines. If merging with media companies were such a priority for Apple, wouldn't it then make more sense to merge Apple with Pixar? Wouldn't that logically happen before any merger of Apple and Universal?
.Mac service (which includes various things, not all of which I'm familiar w/, tho I do know that a few of them, such as email & web page building, can be had for free elsewhere), what would be the likelyhood of Apple allowing free distribution of Apple-owned music? Slim to none. If Apple will charge clients $99/yr for email/webpages, there is no reason to believe that they would allow free distribution of music.
The only 'good' that could come out of an Apple/Universal merger would be the launching of a royalty-free music sharing service, in which Apple would permit clients to freely distribute Universal-produced music. But, seeing as Apple charges $99/yr for its
The music world is better off w/o Apple purchasing Universal; the 'Apple' world is better off guarding the sanctity of Apple's core product lines w/o the confusion that would ensue if Apple tried to manage both Universal and its computer business. The merger won't happen, because it shouldn't happen.
You just specced out my old web server that was doing about 500K hits a day, with SQL Server and a web server for several years. I'm not sure what you did, but I was running that config for about 2 years....
I ask again, was it also running Office, Photoshop and allowing the computational load equivalent of Java based image capture at the same time as hosting your web site?
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Interesting. Their last 10-Q statement
shows $6.4B in assets with $3.4B in cash. Interest income was $23M, offsetting $4M in losses and $5M in taxes for a net income of $14M.True, I'd love to be seeing the $40M in net income that they has a year ago, but I suppose a profit is a profit no matter how they get it.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Apple's cash fund is small beans when placed aside the enormous pension funds of most major corporations. Pension funds don't count as "cash" because they represent future liabilities, but they're investable cash in hand all the same. One day you should take a look at the profit statements of a few Fortune 500's and see how much larger their return on pension investments is than their stated profits. Especially back in the days of the bubble, return on pension funds was responsible for *most* of the boom-time increase in corporate profits.
Even better, those returns lasted in profit statements far longer than in reality, since companies are allowed to "estimate" their return and use that estimate rather than the actual return in counting profits. A good idea, in that it shields companies from huge qtr-to-qtr volatility in returns, but it also lets them pretend they're still making $100M/qtr a year after returns dropped to zero - thus neatly disguising real losses. Apple's profit, on the other hand, is real.
Besides, if Apple really is getting a nice return on their cash, good for them! This isn't exactly an easy time to be investment fund manager. Most college endownments, for example, have been stagnant or shrinking the last two years.
I really know next to nothing about investment but Matthew Ingram, a stock market expert at Canada's Globe and Mail disagrees with you. At the time of the article they were trading at 85x this years earning's estimates, which is apparently insane.
Random is the New Order.