Apple Reports $19 Million Profit for Q3

pinqkandi writes "Apple released it's quarter three results today, which revealed a $19 million net profit ($0.05/diluted shared). Revenue reached $1.545 billion as 771,000 Macs were shipped. CEO Steve Jobs called it 'a great new product quarter', citing the new generation of iPods, iTunes Music Store, and the PowerMac G5."

Comments

It has been a good year.

[Dr Reducto]

Apple has turned their business around and generated a lot of mainstream press this year. They finally made their Powermacs top of the line, they made the 17in laptop, the new iPods, and it now looks really good for Apple. They should hive themselves a pat on the back.

And on an unrelated note, this may be a First Post.

Re:It has been a good year.

[dlosey]

I must agree. While I have always been a strong PC advocate, Apple is looking more and more inviting- especially that Dual G5. Apple has been advertising strongly to push their innovative new products. When is the last time you saw an Intel or M$ commercial (what did happen to those funny Intel guys in cleanroom suits?) The PC world is getting faster, and linux is making huge headway, but not many people seem all that excited about it. Digital video, I-pods, mp3s online, and large LCD screens seem to be the buzz lately. Apple seems to be leading the way on mainstream technology. Dell really is the only PC supplier that I can say has as much PR/Commercials as Apple. Unfortunately Dell seems to be pushing more into server markets than taking market share from Apple.

I know someone will reply with a ton of new PC innovations, but hey .. this is slashdot - just my $0.02.

Re:It has been a good year.

[Dr Reducto]

Yeah, that is a good point. Apple comes out with something uber-cool, and the PC world just sits back and says: "We just increased our processor speed by .5 gHz" or "The New version of Windows will be out in 6 months". Apple works on getting things done that haven't been done before, or done at all, consequences be damned.

Re:It has been a good year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckin liar! It was not you, it was ME, biyotch!

Re:It has been a good year.

[chia_monkey]

It's been a very good year indeed. The interesting thing to note is how different Apple's products and services are now as to how they were a few years ago when the only thing you could read about Apple was how beleaguered they were and close to death.

For example...Apple then:
They sold computers. Sure they sold the OS and a few other things (monitors, other software, etc), but that was it.

Apple now:
Computers. And laptops which are definitely helping them gain some market share again. And MORE software such as Safari (even though it's free...who would have guessed they'd do something like that?), Keynote (you brave bastards), FinalCut Pro (do I really need to talk about their high-end software?), everything in their iLife bundle.
Better yet...the iPod. Shnikeys! They're making some good money off that. It's new hardware that's not a computer. And good money.
iTunes Music Service...for something that only serves 3% (who knows what the real number is...it changes daily) of the market, they're doing DAMN good with that. Imagine when it comes out for the PC.

It's funny to compare the Apple of today to the one of yesterday. Worlds apart.

Re:It has been a good year.

[Graff]

linux is making huge headway, but not many people seem all that excited about it

It's all a matter of who Linux is suited for and targeted at. Linux is a great operating system that kicks ass as a server platform and is great for many tasks but it is not really an operating system for the masses, no matter how great the strides have been in attempting to make it so. It is because of this that there aren't droves of non-technically inclined people rushing to it. This doesn't make Linux any less great, it just means that you won't see it pushing other operating systems off the desktop just yet.

As for MacOS, it is designed especially for the non-techs with the addition of a stable BSD and Mach core for the techs. It tries to give the best of both worlds to its users without sacrificing much of either and it succeeds fairly admirably. In addition Apple seems to be smart enough not to try to compete with any of the other minor platforms but instead tries to work with and even enhance them by giving back code and working on free (speech, beer...whatever) projects.

Re:It has been a good year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a correction: you are incorrect in your assessment. Apple's Net Income may be lower, (32 to 19 mil), but revenues were up (1.55 bil) as were earnings per share ($.05/share, beating street estimates of $.03). Apple and Dell are the only computer manufacturers to actually be profitiable in this economy, so it is actually very impressive. For proof, look at their share price (+$.71 at time of post).

Re:It has been a good year.

[MacGod]

That's not totally true. Apple previously (including the "beleagured" days) sold a much wider variety of hardware.

Remember, Apple used to sell its own Monitors, printers, scanners, digital cameras, PDAs, external hard drives, external CD drives and more.

What they're really done is move out of the over-populated peripherals markets (such as scanners and printers, which they didn't manufacture anyway, the printers were just rebranded Canons or HPs) and focus on key innovative hardware (the iPod), and software (iLife, the Studio Pros et all).

A good move, methinks.

Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[JustAnOtherCodeSerf]

1) Listen to users
2) Give them what they want
3) Profit!

Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[Alan Partridge]

Here's a little revision for us capitalists:-

1) Listen to customers.
2) Sell them what they want.
3) Profit.

See the difference?

Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Listen to users
2) Give them what they want
3) Profit!

What if what they want is free music?

Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[York the Mysterious]

Sue them. It seems to be working for the RIAA fine.

Re:If only that translated

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see moderators following up on articles - Apple has not released any G5 Powerbooks yet.

READ BEFORE YOU MODERATE!

Re:If only that translated

[leifm]

I think it's gonna be a while before we see G5 Powerbooks. Probably more likely to see dual G4 Powerbooks than G5 PBs in the near future.

G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that last Anonymous Coward was trying to be funny by making everyone double check Apple.com for new laptops.

However, it is unlikely we'll see G5 laptops anytime soon. The current IBM 970 chips run way, way too hot. Until a low-power version of the G5 is designed, expect G3's and G4's to continue to be the chips in laptops for some time.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it is unlikely we'll see G5 laptops anytime soon

Water is wet, the sky is blue, and shit stinks. What the hell is up with moderation today?

Keep the damn chaffe down, people. When I read at 4, I don't want to read some poorly moderated joke that a bunch of dip-shits didn't get.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read at 4, I don't want to read some poorly moderated joke that a bunch of dip-shits didn't get.

I hope you have a new way to keep dipshits from moderating then.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Go Aptran]

This could become a big problem as Apple applications become more and more power-hungry. If G5s run hotter than G4s, it's going to make the thin streamlined metal cases highly impractical. I can already almost cook breakfast on my G4 TiBook now! I don't want to have to wear gloves to use a G5!

Furthermore, if we have a situations where the most useful software runs better only on desktops, it's going to irritate the many Mac users who find desktops impractical. For example, electronic musicians are unlikely to lug around a large G5 from gig to gig. It's been noted that Apple's new musical offering, Soundtrack, will only work on G4s. What happens when Soundtrack 2 or 3 comes out?

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Myrcurial]

Don't worry so much about the weight of a "large G5" -- these guys like to carry their Marshall stack heads with real tube amps from gig to gig -- 30-40lbs of G5 is nothing.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[podperson]

The G5 could go into a Powerbook if you lowered the clockspeed enough. Currently a top-of-the-line G4 Macs runs at 1.42 GHz (dual processor) versus 1GHz for a G4 Powerbook. From the power dissipation figures mentioned at WWDC it sounds like a 1.2-1.3 GHz G5's power consumption would be manageable in a powerbook; this is not quite as good relative to the 2.0 GHz top-of-the-line G5 and 1.0 is as to 1.4.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[awl]

I don't like to carry my Marshall head from gig to gig, but I do like to have it at the gig, so there isn't really much alternative... ;-)

More to the point, if you're toting a Marshall head then you are probably also carrying at least 1 4x12 speaker cabinet, which makes even the head feel portable.

Profit for 1 reason

[BigBir3d]

$4billion cash reserve that makes nice interest as it sits in the bank.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Your misinformed. To save face, you should check out this artical from foxnews: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92121,00.html

Your comment is so unintelligible, it makes me sick.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

Um, according to this page, *nothing* is making a nice interest *anywhere* right now. The prime interest rate is 4.00%. That's kindof low.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[BigBir3d]

4% of $4,000,000,000 is $160,000,000. That is over $40,000,000 per quarter. Profits were less than 1/2 of that. When profits are higher than the interest earned from the cash pool, then we have something interesting.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[GlassHeart]

Your point is valid, but Apple is one of only a few companies doing anything interesting in this field right now. Within the past year or so, they have release several new software products (Safari, Keynote, Final Cut Express, and most recently Soundtrack), a new line of desktops featuring a new CPU, and at the same time updating just about every existing software title except maybe Appleworks, and every hardware product that I can remember. On top of that, they built an on-line music store.

Each of these take significant investments. The G5 line has not made a single dollar of profit yet, but must have consumed a lot of NRE dollars. This is precisely the stage where companies lose money developing new products, so Apple is just lucky that they have huge reserves to still turn a small profit.

All in all, your observation is rather cynical. It's almost as if you're suggesting that Apple would be a better company if they just laid everybody off, and turn a nearly guaranteed profit each quarter from bank interest.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[nelsonal]

Prime is what banks charge their best customers if they have perfect credit. Interest on cash (required by accounting rules to be in things that mature in less than 1 year) is around 1.0%-1.5%. The idea here is to spur companies in to investing thier cash in something that generates economic returns (new business assets) becuase their cash give them so little or conversely because they can borrow at a very low rate. The scary part is when it doesn't work (see Japan) because everyone is too scared of losing their investment so they keep their money in cash and don't borrow anything new. I'd guess that between that and natural gas prices Mr. Greenspan is waking in a cold sweat regularly.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

Usually it's pretty hard to actually get the prime interest rate by putting your money in a savings account.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use big words that you don't understand the meaning. The word you were looking for is uninformed.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Microsift]

Wasn't his spelling of "You're" more worthy of criticism?

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about a savings account? I am sure Apple can afford investors good enough to beat the interest rate of a savings account.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Elwood P Dowd]

Right. But then it wouldn't be cash. It would be an investment. And the dude said Apple had 4 billion in cash.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Anonymous Coward]

That would have slipped by a spellchecker. His spelling of "article" indicates that he's obviously not using the Apple Safari browser with spellcheck turned on.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you ever heard of *liquidity*? Go back to school and take some finance classes, then you can come here and try again.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Gogo Dodo]

If you read their Financial Statement, you will see they made $17 million in interest, so interest is not the sole reason for their profit.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[bill_mcgonigle]

$4billion cash reserve that makes nice interest as it sits in the bank.

And than goodness for it - they might not otherwise be able to plow so much dough into R&D.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[Large Green Mallard]

Not to forget that Apple is currently "osbourning" in the high end market.. no-one wants a G4 tower now that G5 ones are coming "real soon now".

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[dmdimon]

idiot?

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

No, troll. I've seen this posted all over the place.

Low revenue?

[SoCalChris]

Isn't $19 million in profit awfully low for $1.545 BILLION in revenueThat gives them a profit margin of about 1.25%.

Re:Low revenue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... their money spent (R&D, adverts, salaries, etc) is about the same as Dell. Only thing is, the sales are _much_ less than Dell's sales are.

Re:Low revenue?

[pmz]

Isn't $19 million in profit awfully low for $1.545 BILLION in revenueThat gives them a profit margin of about 1.25%.

I'd say we should be ecstatic that the number was positive, regardless of magnitude. This means, at a minimum, Apple is stable in the near-term and won't disappear in a vapor in a bankrupcy court anytime soon. As long as they stay afloat, they can keep sticking irritating glass fibers into Microsoft's pale skin.

Re:Low revenue?

[MoneyT]

But when you consider the ammount of money that has gone into R&D over the past while, the profit isn't as high as one would like it to be.

Re:Low revenue?

[bill_mcgonigle]

their money spent (R&D, adverts, salaries, etc) is about the same as Dell.

I was gonna call bullshit on you, seeing as how Dell does far less R&D than Apple, but, on second thought, you're probably right - Dell must spend as much money on 'Dude, get a Dell' ads as Apple does writing OSX.

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[daviddennis]

Either you're a troll, or something's wrong with your system.

I've passed gigabytes from my PowerBook G4/1ghz to my LaCie 200gb FireWire drive in less time than that, and generally I've found performance of internal drives is much better than external.

I would bring your system to an Apple Store and ask the Genius Bar people to take a look at it.

That being said, in my experience, the speed of a Mac isn't much different from PC speed one way or the other, and the aesthetics are a great deal more attractive. I find it more enjoyable to use a Mac, and that pretty much closes off debate for me.

Hope that helps.

D

I love apple, but...

[eoyount]

they've still got a lot of work to do. $0.05 per share isn't much profit. That being said, I think things might be going in the right direction this time. Apple has always innovated, but the problem has been mass appeal. With things like the iPod and iTunes music store, it's easier to get people hooked with a small purchase and then reel them in to a new computer that works better with the iPod that the PC they have now.

Re:I love apple, but...

[lowmagnet]

Profit is sales - costs. Costs include R&D, in which Apple obviously invests heavily. and $0.05 isn't a bad EPS, especially since they exceeded expectations.

Re:I love apple, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

A perfectly run company in a competitive market will break even every quarter.

Actually, that's not totally true. You've got these annoying people called "investors" who want to see a "profit" on their "investment." So in reality, a perfectly run company in a competitive market will make just enough profit each quarter to satisfy present investors and attract future investors, and no more.

Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.

The goal is to BALANCE the books. Not to have them go all slip-slidey one way or the other.

Re:I love apple, but...

[overunderunderdone]

Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.

A little confusion over who's money it is? The investors quite literaly own the company and it is their money, their company and it is (supposed to be & is legally obligated to be) run for their benefit. Actually, stictly speaking they ARE the company - a collective body of individuals (the shareholders) that in a limited way can legally act as though they were a single individual (to do things like hire you to make them more money). They are usually more than happy letting you reinvest their profits if it will lead to a bigger, healthier, MORE PROFITABLE company in the future but that is a very different thing froms saying profit is "money wasted" and that it is better to inveset than "give it away to shareholders".

Re:I love apple, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying... what? That you agree with my point but take issue with my choice of words?

Typical Slashdotter.

Re:I love apple, but...

[BitGeek]

Assuming that money can be reinvested more profitably than the shareholders could, you're right.

For a growing company, that's a good strategy. For a company that can't use that money to grow faster than the investors could grow the money (compensating for the taxes the investors would pay) its better to distribute the money to investors.

Notice that Microsoft now has a dividend... that tells you something about their future ability to grow using the $40 billion they have. Apple has great prospects for growth, provided it can come up with a strategy to start converting some of those millions of PC users out there.

Microsoft doesn't have much market share it can take from apple-- and like linux-- Apple has the game set up such that the only way to beat Apple is to out compete them in quality, which MS can't do. So MS can only use protectionism to compete... and this has been successful, but there's nowhere left for them to go.

But I digress.

Re:I love apple, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has great prospects for growth, provided it can come up with a strategy to start converting some of those millions of PC users out there.

You are making the same mistake that many others have made: assuming that the world is divided up into people who have Macs and people who have PC's.

People who have PC's has never been Apple's core market. Apple's core markets are (1) people who have Macs and are replacing them, and (2) people who don't have a computer at all.

If somebody gives up a PC to buy a Mac, that's fine. But that's not where Apple's bread is buttered.

Re:I love apple, but...

[gryphokk]

People who have PC's has never been Apple's core market. Apple's core markets are (1) people who have Macs and are replacing them, and (2) people who don't have a computer at all

Err... but then... that is to say... what about...?

http://www.apple.com/switch/

Re:I love apple, but...

[overunderunderdone]

Either my reading comprehension of your post, or yours of mine sucks. Or perhaps you're a troll and you have me hooked ;)

You said that profits are a waste and that the $$$ should be reinvested to grow the company. For what reason the company should grow is unclear, it appears to you to be an end unto itself. I said to the contrary that profits are the entire point and that if you do choose to reinvest it would be towards then end of having even more profits to pocket.

I am convinced that some of the problems in corporate America today is confusion over this fundamental issue. The confusion is understandable because with todays tax laws profits, real tangible honest profits, are taxed twice and at a high rate both times. Capital gains on the other hand are taxed only once and that one time at a lower rate. So, investors naturally want to make their stock price go up rather than have it pay dividends. Beyond encouraging your kind of thinking the problem is that unlike dividends stock prices don't have to be grounded in any kind of objective reality. The internet bubble and Enron amply illustrated that. The whole stock price game can become a massive, complex, unstable ponzi scheme ungrounded in reality. Enron is a perfect example of the result - it was only important to grow on paper, losses were hidden and profits were manufactured and nobody was the wiser (for a while) because nobody actually wanted to get those "profits" Enron claimed to have. Everybody was happy and tax law encouraged them to "reinvest" to make the company bigger and the stock price go up. If the tax laws had been otherwise Enron would have had to be more honest, if they claimed chimerical profits investors would have wanted at least some of them to go in their pocket. Sadly, while the Bush administration made some progress they got demogogued about "cutting taxes for the rich" and didn't push this through. While it really would be a tax cut for the rich it is still the right thing to do, and with all the 401(k)'s, IRA's, mutual funds and stock investments by pension funds your average stock holder isn't exactly the top hat wearing caricature of wealth from the monopoly box.

Re:I love apple, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... but then... that is to say... what about...?

You are an idiot.

That's what about.

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

No, troll. I've seen this posted all over the place. Really now? Being someone who reads mac news and repair sites all day, i mean between work breaks, i have never heard of this problem once. What is that fragrance you are wearing? is that troll or idiot?

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Your suffering from PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair). I recommend you uninstall the user interface. It is an inferior model...

Re:If only that translated

[twocoasttb]

I read somewhere that heat was the main issue regarding G5's in Powerbooks. Wouldn't two G4's generate more heat than one G5, in addition to draining the battery a lot faster? I'm no expert, and maybe you were joking...

Mac Units?

[TechnoPope]

What exactly is a Mac unit? Is it just a computer, or does it also include the always popular Ipod? I'm not saying I doubt that they sold 771,000 PC's in a quarter, but it seems a little weird. Especially since apperently profits were actually down. I'd assume they make less profits on the Ipod then other things. Just wondering.

Re:Mac Units?

[tenton]

You can see the breakdown.

The iPods are considered "Peripherals & Other HW"

The 771,000 doesn't include iPods...it's only PowerMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks, and iMacs (the eMacs are part of the iMac numbers, the server units, ie XServer is part of the PowerMac units).

The breakdown is like this (in the thousands, of course):
iMac: 256
iBook:133
Power Mac G4: 156
PowerBook: 166

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Tengoo]

Oh no, it's learned to cut and paste! We keep feeding it and it continues evolve. I'm hoping that in a few stories that NT box will receive a much needed upgrade.

I always wonder if this is a Mac guy, laughing his ass off everytime he reels another in :) Glad to see that Teachtext or Simpletext..whatever you had, has been replaced though.

Them iPod Snobs

[inertia187]

About them iPod Snobs,
don't it make you sick?
Goin' all around,
enjoyin' they music.
They listen on the bus,
they listen on the plain.
Showin' off for all to see,
ain't it just a pain?
Look at all those iPod Snobs,
owning one is wrong.
They can load enough to play
three weeks worth of songs!
How to be a iPod Snob,
it's not very hard.
Go to Apple's Store,
and charge it on your card.

Re:Them iPod Snobs

[SN74S181]

"Hey little rich boy.
Take a good look at me...."

(from Sham 69's best album. 1979)

Haha

[bconway]

Revenue reached $1.545 billion as 771,000 Macs were shipped.

Does anyone else realise how sad that is?

Re:Haha

[tres]

Doesn't seem too sad when you look at the state of the economy, when you take into account that many purchases of Apple Macintosh computers were put off until next quarter because of the upcoming next generation hardware.

It doesn't seem sad at all.

Re:Haha

[tyrione]

Rougly 771,000 x 4 periods would be roughly 3 million units per year.

In 4 years that would be rougly 12 million units.

Apple hardware tends to last 4 years so nice guaranteed business.

Assuming interest peaks as the job market goes from the Abyss back to normalcy and people start spending money you'll see more of a surge in purchases as more and more compelling pieces of software keep surfacing with each innovation.

Being Porsche has never been being Ford, but everyone would love to own a Porsche and outside of the battle of Chevy vs. Ford on trucks who the hell wants to settle for a Ford if they can enjoy a Porsche?

Porsche seems to survive and has been around quite a long time.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

hey moron! chevy trucks are way better in every way! and they are more expensive

you stole my sig!

[Microsift]

...or I stole yours!

Re:you stole my sig!

[inertia187]

Wow, what are the odds?

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[torpor]

FWIW, the first (Rev A.) Powerbook G4's had a big hardware bug in the Firewire firmware, which resulted in *definitely* degraded performance for Firewire i/o. Very, very sub-par, in fact.

This was fixed rather rapidly, but if someone is complaining about Firewire speeds on a Powerbook G4, ask if its a Rev. A before correcting them. It may be true.

Whatever happened to the bunnymen?

[rjung2k]

When is the last time you saw an Intel or M$ commercial (what did happen to those funny Intel guys in cleanroom suits?)

They got laughed off the TV from all the non-Intel zealots. The only thing more embarassing than a white guy doing the Hustle was a white guy wearing a dorky cleanroom suit doing the Hustle.

And calling them "bunnymen" certainly didn't help.

Re:Whatever happened to the bunnymen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that they weren't smart enough to stop, drop, and roll...

And don't forget...

[rjung2k]

...the economy. A lot of people are tightening their belts, and are not in the mood to buy anything from anyone. For any tech company to be making any sort of profit in this climate is a minor miracle in and of itself.

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[webguru4god]

Hmmm, I read this guy's post complaining about the speed of his Mac and something seemed very familiar about it, so I did some searching, and it turns out that an Anonymous Coward posted almost the exact same post on the recent /. article about the new SGI Workstations.

This guy is just going around posting his form letter about how other architectures suck, only changing small details between each post.

How Trollish!

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[MikeXpop]

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'm bored and I have karma to burn.

1. So you have a 1400 MHz machine huh? Wow. Did you underclock your 1420? Or did you build a new mac yourself with a custom G4? Strike one.

2. All current powermacs use 7200 rpm Ultra ATA hard drives, meaning about 100 MB/s. So your 20 megs shouldn't take 20 minutes, it should take 1/20 of a second. Strike 2.

3. This troll can be seen in Linux articles, BSD articles, and other mac articles (with simpletext instead of TextEdit) Strike 3.

You're out.

That was *last* quarter

[overunderunderdone]

This did in fact happen last quarter (the profits being all in interest on the $$ in the bank while the business otherwise would have shown a loss). THIS quarter however they did in fact run a profit off of their business of selling computers. Also to be fair they are doing some things this quarter that cost a fair amount of $$$ that are investments that will reap rewards in future quarters. Opening new stores and opening the iTunes music store - which is actually supposed to turn the corner as soon as this next quarter, and may be a real cash cow when it comes out for windows.

Apple has 2.3% market share?

[kawika]

According to Infoworld there were 32.8 million computers shipped in calendar Q2; I don't know how that overlaps with Apple's fiscal Q3 but assuming it does then it gives Apple a 2.3 percent market share.

Risk/reward and recession

[Anonymous Coward]

steadily making money during a recessionary period is good news. one does not expect constant 10% ROI and thats especially true for an investment with very low medium term risks. Most of the stocks I own are losing value.

one button mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

At last he never brings up the sorrid one button mouse controvery :-)

Re:one button mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Or fruity colors (I'm not colorblind, thank you very much), or translucence (like that matters), lack of games (got a PS2), and on and on, blah, blah, blah. But the best aspect of all of this, is that Apple must be important otherwise trolls wouldn't troll.
Gotta love it. : )

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently that 'fragrance' is your own.

The original post is a newly modified form of this blog entry from 1998. This is the first I've seen it modified to talk about a newer machine. All other instances have included the original blog text verbatim.

Clearly the original guy was having some sort of problem -- whether hardware or stupid extension conflicts, who knows. But that version of Mac OS sucked and could easily bomb like that with a rogue extension or program. No surprise.

Reposting this on every apple article is a big troll. It's totally irrelevant. And as you can see here, the same guy seems to be slightly happier with Apple products these days. Except for a new problem with his iBook, hehe...

OS X and Apple Stores are working...

[metamatic]

From Investor's Business Daily:

Apple's share of U.S. consumer PC unit sales rose to 3.4% in the first quarter, up from 1.9% two years earlier. Its share of dollars spent on consumer PCs rose from 2.3% to 5.2%.

Things are brighter in the U.S. consumer notebook PC segment. Apple's unit market share rose from 0.3% to 6.8% in the two years. And its share of the market based on dollars spent rose from 0.2% to 8%.

This says to me that xServe isn't managing to push the Mac into the business server market, but OS X and nifty hardware have lead to a major jump in consumer sales.

However, compared to last year...

[n-baxley]

From the article:
These results compare to a net profit of $32 million, or $.09 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Errors in posting

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be "Beleaguered computer company Apple ..."

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[TheRaven64]

2. All current powermacs use 7200 rpm Ultra ATA hard drives, meaning about 100 MB/s. So your 20 megs shouldn't take 20 minutes, it should take 1/20 of a second. Strike 2.

Really? Can you provide some real world benchmarks to back that up? Most 7,200rpm IDE drives provide around 7MB/s write 20MB/s read speeds (sometimes more for linear read / writes or cache hits), nowhere near the maximum theoretical speed of the interface. Actually, you an be glad of that, since a 32bit 33MHz PCI bus only has a little more bandwidth than that, and if a single drive could saturate it then the system can crawl. I'd expect to see a 20MB file copy taking about 2-5 seconds, not 1/20 seconds.

Mind you, the grandparent post is still a blatant and unoriginal troll...

Yeah, you're right!

[commodoresloat]

According to these figures, Apple is DYING. The company's beleaguered, I tell you!

Re:Yeah, you're right!

[Tokerat]

According to these figures, Apple is DYING. The company's beleaguered, I tell you!

They must be going down with the BSD ship!

A long road still ahead

[frankie]

In the first quarter, Apple was the No. 7 PC vendor in the U.S., IDC says.

Remember that 10 years ago Apple was the #1 PC maker, with about 20% market share. That's where they need to reach again before the calls of "beleagured" will stop.

Re:A long road still ahead

[Juanvaldes]

According to this in 1993 apples share was 10%. While this chart gives no idea on actually installed base we do know the PC market is MANY times larger today then it was 10 years ago resulting with a small % that apple can serve.
But you are very right in apple still has a LONG road ahead, hopefuly apple from one side, Linux from the other and the PC market can be broken into three dominant platforms.
Hey, I can dream can't I? ;)

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[frankie]

since a 32bit 33MHz PCI bus only has a little more bandwidth

Huh? The IDE and PCI buses are completely separate on Macs.

Nice catch, guy!

[daviddennis]

I knew there was something phony about his post, but you nailed him.

Great work!

D

Re:Nice catch, guy!

[jo_ham]

He/she/it has been doing it for ages now.

I'm hoping that the warmer weather of late will entice him/her/it out of the basement for a little while.

Music is Apple's Future

[jamesmrankinjr]

Apple's growth prospects are all wrapped up in Music.

• iPod sales way up, especially with Windows version.
• 6.5MM songs sold WITHOUT a Windows version. Huge growth potential here, and scales nicely (marginal cost of selling a song is roughly 0, compared to computers which have large fixed costs).
• iTunes Music Store for Windows should create even more iPod sales, completing the virtuous circle.

So outlook for growth in Apple profits is tied strongly to its music business, much more so than computer sales.

Best,
-jimbo

Re:Music is Apple's Future

[csoto]

It's wrapped up in the "digital consumer," for which digital music is the most "mature" activity, and which Apple does very, very well.

The future also includes video, audio production, and so on.

This damn troll again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. It's a troll. In fact this exact troll message has appeared all over the place, and in every Slashdot Apple story. Someone out there just loves to get the goat of Apple fans.

Re:my mac is simply too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't you know mac users are stupid? you must be new around here....

Re:If only that translated

[leifm]

I actually read that rumor somewhere, I think it's unlikely but then again I thought the "17 powerbook rumor the day before MWSF was bullshit..

I would think power consumption would be an issue as well with the G5, but that's just a guess I don't really understand or know anything about process. arch.

Ah! so you /do/ read your followup posts Mr Troll!

[jo_ham]

I see that you corrrected your troll template after posting "Even SimpleText is straining to keep up as I type this." in your post in the previous Mac thread yesterday and people pointed out that you obviously didn't know what you were talking about or that you'd ever used a Mac since SimpleText is an OS 9 app, not an OS X one.

Well corrected; you even capitalised it correctly, although I suspect you just cut and pasted from one of the replies to your troll.

You really are a bizarre person, I imagine that you ride a bus that's far shorter than it is wide.

What's the third platform?

[solprovider]

1. Linux for people who like inexpensive.
2. Apple for people who are willing to pay for that extra TLC.
3. ???

That's two. What's the third dominant platform?

It can't be BSD. BSD is dead. I know that because I read it in the Slashdot postings. (That was sarcasm. I doubt the home consumer will move to the major variations. Apple has the ease-of-use version, and Linux has the mindshare. Where's the RedHat and SuSE companies pushing the other BSDs?)

If you've read my other posts, you'll see rational reasons to believe that MS will die soon. I do not believe anybody will try to keep Windows alive. It will not have the following like other dead architectures like the Amiga, because the Windows architecture is too flawed to generate that type of dedication. Even the developers who know only MS software know it sucks, but they won't convert today while the MS world provides a paycheck. But are they going to keep a Windows PC around for nostalgia after spending a decade cursing it? MSWindows will be used less in 10 years than the Amiga is used today.

Apple's marketshare should increase greatly if MS dies quick enough that the Linux companies cannot switch to a full consumer-oriented model. Apple has several decades of goodwill from proven reliability, ease-of-use, and good support for the home consumer. Linux companies cannot generate that "happy feeling" since the oldest are less than one decade old, and Linux only started to reach the general public's worldview in the last few years.

Apple's competition probably won't be RedHat and Lindows. RedHat is busy selling to corporations using the Compaq model. Lindows is too small to fill the gap. My bet is that Dell will be one of the first to have a full line of Linux PCs. And then Gateway, HPaq, IBM, and MPCC will follow.

("MPC Computers" was condensed from "Micron Personal Computers Computers". Huh?)

In 10 years, it will be Apple vs. Linux. Both are based on Unix-like code. That is a win for the techie community, right?