Slashdot Mirror
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?"
That said, I own 2 Macs. A G3 tower (which I popped a G4 CPU into after accidentally cooking the original), and a fairly recent (last August) iBook.
I'm not a Mac Bigot by any stretch of the imagination. I also own a Duron box which I built for Windows gaming, and two Linux servers which are cheerfully humming away in my back closet.
Why do we continue to buy Macs? Well, it's kind of like getting a better S/N ratio on a radio... I have far fewer headaches and glitches per productive activity when working on my Macs than on any other computer. My Windows box is a contant nightmare of driver, library, and registry issues, and my Linux boxen (while very robust) were a major pain in the ass to get set up with all the server apps I wanted. My iBook has taken over as my main computer for 90% of the tasks I do: programming, surfing, writing, etc. It's not even as fast as my desktop Mac, which is a smidge slower than my Duron box, but the lack of raw CPU speed is more than made up for by the fact that the "it just works" meme is not just marketing hype. I get shit done faster on the iBook, it's as simple as that. If you gave me a top-of-the-line Windows laptop for my birthday, I would probably sell it on eBay and continue to use my humble little iBook.
I've had friends insist to me that Windows stability is "not that bad," and claim that I must be doing something wrong, because their system works like a champ... but then I sit in their office for 20 minutes and watch them work, and sure enough they run into a technical glitch that I would never accept on my Mac, and shrug it off like nothing happened, because that's what working with computers is like in their world.
Then there's the tale of the two elderly female relatives. One was given a PC by my father, the other received a Mac from me. Starting out, they were both uncomfortable with technology, but the one who got the PC was generally more adept and motivated to learn. It's now a few years later, and the PC user hardly ever turns it on, and on those rare occations is still as likely to need to call me to get anything done as not. Meanwhile, the Mac user replaced the old hand-me-down Macintosh IIci that I gave her with a brand-new iMac, which she uses every day. She almost never needs my help with anything (the last problem she had was with an Epson printer about a month ago), and she's accomplishing stuff I never would have guessed she would have accomplished.
I would not reccomend Macs to every geek here on Slashdot, but based on my experiences, I would not reccomend anything else to a non-geek, ever... at least not as long as I'm the one they are going to call for help.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
My father has been a Mac fan my entire life, and he was disappointed to find that I was a DOS and later Windows user. But it was to be expected; I wanted to play games and I wanted the BBS software of the time.
Once I got into college and started studying computer science, my respect for unix grew. I played with an ancient laptop installed with Linux over the summer and really learned a lot about this exciting area. But due to (in my opinion) poor applications, it would not be a desktop OS to me. All it really took to switch me to the Mac was a few evenings on my dad's Powerbook playing with OS X.
The interface was intuitive and clever. The whole thing looked professional and yet beautiful at the same time, not much like the previous Mac OS I'd remembered. The apps worked together, had really cool features, and were generally more pleasant to use and look at than on Windows; plus, most of them actually came with the machine as standard. Mail's junk mail filtering and simple interface had me entranced. The way iTunes automatically sorted and managed all of your mp3s based on their id3, while providing ripping and burning support, amazed me (I can stick an audio CD in my computer, it'll rip it in iTunes, add it to the library appropriately, and eject it automatically). For some reason, even Microsoft apps such as Office and IE look and feel much nicer, and even have added functionality! And, of course, I could access a unix terminal at any time.
On the unix side, there's plenty to be done. You can load an entire KDE installation and run it on top of Aqua. While in Cocoa-based apps such as Safari -- where I type this -- I can use emacs-style keys like ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-k, ctrl-y in this comment field. And I was finally free of the registry.
And it's all packaged. It's all so easy. It removes a huge portion of the headaches, the real currency of computers. There are a huge number of "little things" I could say I prefer about the Mac that add up to a really pleasant overall experience. If I was a gamer or multimedia expert I might be disappointed with the recent hardware speed issues, but don't be mistaken. The 1 Ghz G4 is fast as hell, and I can play Warcraft III (and many other mainstream games) or use Photoshop very smoothly.
I don't think it's perfect. I've had crashes and have been frustrated by a lack of some Windows app I wanted. But I will say I do think it is better. At this point, I'm fairly certain my next machine will be a Mac. Ideologically, it appeals to me more than Microsoft. I genuinely feel that Apple is out to make good stuff and change things for the better, while Microsoft seems more purely capitalist.
OK, this has way too long, but it's helped me put off studying for a test ;)
why do you still buy macs?
It's all a matter of work focus. Although many people enjoy being
computer hobbyists, spending time tweezing, installing, configuring,
upgrading, administering, and adjusting things, Macs are designed to
let you spend that seat time in front of the computer doing your
work, instead of completing the work that should have been already done
by the OS/hardware vendor.
Granted, playing with a computer's internals is educational and enjoyable
for many, the Mac is designed from the user on down, instead of the
hardware on up. After 20 years of computing, I've spent enough time tuning
Unix or of spending the time from 1995 to 2000 trying to get Windows to
actually work as well, and transparently as Microsoft has continually promised.
Current Macs might not be the fastest, or cheapest, or totally bug free,
(although from a hardware quality point of view there's nothing better)
but it's liberating to get "real" work done on a computer instead of being
interrupted or distracted from work flow just to be my own mechanic and
sysadmin. I use an older dual 500Mhz G4 as my main work machine
every day and I never find myself thinking it's too slow.
I don't understand why Mhz of PPC vs. Intel gets so much attention.
Again, I think it's that tweezer, shade-tree-mechanic mentallity.
I'm happy that I get an OS X terminal window that's fast and doesn't
screw up the text when you resize the window. I didn't have to research
and buy a better terminal app or download and build 4 or 5 packages just to
find one that doesn't mess up on remote telnet sessions and runs fast.
Most of what's expected in a modern computer comes standard with OS X,
out of the box. This is especially true of the excellent development tools that
come free with OS X. And if you don't like the full blown IDE, you can pop open
a terminal window and get all of the gcc, vi, and make you need. Same thing
with all of the usual low level networking tools. There's also the icing on the
cake with the best of breed "iApps" that are included.
With OS X, you now get the ease of use that older Macs had, plus you get
all of the Unix goodness underneath that's easily accessible. Even if an
Mac costs more, what's your time worth over the time you own the box?
There is no simple answer to your question(s). What you stated is basically true.
No doubt about that. Sure--you can compare some high end Dell machine with a high end PowerMac and come up with roughly the same amount, but in general Apple computers are more expensive. Maybe upgrade cycles are longer, maybe the resale value is higher. Up-front they cost a lot more.Once again you are correct. That doesn't mean that there are things that you can't do on a Mac, just that in some areas there is less choice. Most people encode their MP3s with iTunes and that's it. Would it be better if I had the choice between dozens of programs to do the same thing? Maybe, but it is not vital. All the content creation tools I can think of are there. Gaming is bad. There are quite a few games available but there seriously is no competition to other platforms. In numbers definitely. Basically speed is a perception issue, though. That is not necessarily an argument in favour of the MacOS, but for me a computer is fast enough as long as I can get my work done and earn my living with it. My computer is getting old but when I will eventually get a new Mac this machine will seem plenty fast to me. After all I can only compare the performance to what I have now, not some assumption about other machines. From my point of view I am pretty sure that one of those new 1.42GHz dual machines would blow me away performance wise. And as any Mac-faithful will tell you: 'It's getting better really really soon now, like tomorrow'.No matter what I say, your points stay valid. But at the end of the day the most important argument for the Mac platform is that it just works. It even worked in the pre-OS X days. Working is enjoyable. Everything is designed to make my life easier. The UI is pretty and functional. Windows might have caught up since the days of 95. But I left that platform behind then and I am never going back. Image is a factor as well. Not being part of the Windows centred world just feels right. Maybe I habitually pick losers, maybe I just have a sweet spot for the underdogs. I had a Dreamcast, a GamCube and a Mac. Maybe I'm weird, but I never regretted not going with Sony or Microsoft.
Hank! White!
It's not so much how much profit they're making, it's where that profit is coming from that's a concern.
Everyone makes a big deal out of Apple's cash horde ($4b? $5b?), and about how the "market" isn't valuing Apple at much more than its cash value per share. I haven't looked at the numbers in a long time, but we can safley assume that Apple isn't keeping its $4b in cash under the mattress. That means that they put it somewhere where they expect it to make some return, even if they only put it into the equivalent of your savings account.
How much money do you think Apple is making on their cash horde in interest alone? Again, I don't have those numbers, but I suspect that they made more in interest than the $14m they reported in profit. That means that they are actually losing money from operations, and using their interest income to make up the difference.
Apple IMHO has been using that cash wisely, without that interest income they would be posting losses every quarter and really in danger of dying. That cash is keeping the company afloat. Now they're thinking of spending it all (and then some). All I have to say is that, as a shareholder, the return they get on that investment needs to be better than their current interest income, or else I'm bailing out.
It is true that the Universal music label is a profitable concern (bringing in >$200m per year IIRC), but everyone predicts that the entire music industry is going down the toilet. If Jobs can figure out a way to keep the music label profitable in the long term, then this purchase makes sense.
We'll have to see what Apple's much-hyped music service is all about. If it convinces me to buy music again, than I will assume it will convince others too, and then maybe the unit will be profitable long-term and this deal will make sense...