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Apple CFO Gives Info on Company Direction
osViews.com writes "Mac World is reporting a recent talk given by Apple's Chief Financial Officer (Peter Oppenheimer) at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium. The article illustrates several things about about Apple's business plan, much of which is totally new information about the company's current and future direction. Here's the nutshell summary: iPod "Halo" effect is causing some Windows switchers, little demand for satellite radio/iPod integration, iPod shuffle margins below HD ipods, happy with rate of growth - no plans to license OS X, margins on Mac mini equal to eMac (both below corporate average), retail store to expand to 125, no plans for media center PC - prefers to stream multimedia to TV from primary computer over wireless network, no video for iPod, portable media centers a failure."
Kudos to the submitter and the editor for posting a useful and interesting story with a useful and concise summary. I wish we had more stories done exactly like this one.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Everything Apple's ever done has, according to people who get paid to be taken seriously, been the death knell of the company.
And the only thing that's stopping some people from buying Macs isn't the price point or the applications, it's the games.
Feel free to spout off the list of everything with Mac support, and realize that Painkiller, System Shock, GTA, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (and by extent Steam, CCS, etc) and a shitload of other games aren't available. And several Mac ports have been gutted on the way over- it's an old example, but Baldur's Gate for the Mac is missing multiplayer and any character customization capability.
There's a large chunk of the vocal PC userbase who use the thing as glorified nintendo- it's really (imo) the ONLY area where the PC has any kind of advantage over the Mac.
running OS X on a piece of shit Fry's discount x86 box doth not a Mac make.
I don't buy that Apple will buy Tivo, but I can see them creating a Tivo-like device with these abilities:
DVR with free remote control service (why free? wait a second)
Ties right into the iTunes Movie store.
Right, Movie store. Imagine Jobs going to the MPAA and saying "Hey, remember all the problems the RIAA had with downloading? Lawsuits didn't help enough - but now we have legal music, and people are buying music online, and look how many songs I've sold.
"Join with me, and we can end this pointless conflict, and bring order to - *cough*, I mean, we can sell movies."
The PC/Mac will still be the hub - use iTunes to buy music, or buy a movie. You can put either on a new iPod, but for the movies, the iView (just a name I threw in) will be the best way.
Want to watch a movie? Forget Netflix - just use the iTunes store. How about a documentary (independent movie makers who have limited releases would love this - what if you could pick up a documentary for $10, and around 50,000 people all wanted to - now that little indie project just broke even).
Miss a TV show? Why DVR it (though you have that power) when you can go to your computer, type "Battlestar" or "Babylon" to get the entire current archives (including commercial), and for $3 (or $20 for the entire season), you can watch your movies *now* (or, with broadband and figuring about 300 MB per 30 minutes, about 30 minutes or so).
The biggest thing of this is what it turns Apple into. With the iPod and the iTunes Music store, apple is moving away from hardware systems, and going towards hardware accessories and services. Eventually, I can see a Linux client - but in the end, Apple won't care what you run as long as you buy an iPod and use their iTunes store for movies and music - they still make money (though they'll still tell you a Mac will work better, and as the services do well they'll sell more Macs along the way).
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Adding to what you said:
At this point, every geek I know (hardly a scientific sample, I know) who used to build their own unix/ linux boxes has now bought a powerbook. Eventually they just got tired of fooling with something that was going to be their primary machine (plus BSD tends to be a pain on laptops).
I know... I'm getting flamed for this one.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Okay, forget size for a moment.
Where can you get a $499 PC with:
CD-RW
DVD-ROM
Firewire
non integrated, non shared 32mb video (ATI or NVIDIA)
And with software, to boot:
Movie making
DVD making
Music making
Photo album
Yes, all that software exists. Yes all that hardware exists. None, to my knowledge, come in kit that's $499. For $349 you can get a PC without CD-RW and with shared video ram and integrated video. For $649 you can get the video+CD-RW and DVD.
Likewise software; for $699 or more, you get the movie making software, but for bundles of $499? You get Quicken or Windows XP Home and Norton Antivirus.
GPL Deconstructed