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Apple Surpasses Dell's Market Value
bonch writes "Nine years after Michael Dell said he'd shut down Apple and give the money to the shareholders, Apple has passed Dell in market value, at $72,132,428,843 compared to Dell's $71,970,702,760. Analysts expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,' with earnings growing more than 35%. I should have bought stock two years ago!" We talked about the approach of this moment back in November of last year.
Dude, you're getting an Apple!
is Unix. And some good support and design. In the end Unix is the only way....
Apple has surpassed Dell in Equity Market Capitalization, but not total market cap.
Dell has $600 million in debt, while Apple has none.
The total market cap is equity plus debt. Think of it this way - if you spend the 72 or so Billion on Dell, you still need to pay off an additional $600 million before you truly own the company. One alternative is to issue another $600 million in stock, and use the proceeds to buy back the debt.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Situations change.
What this has shown is that Apple was viable back then, and that Michael Dell doesn't have the necessary vision to run a company such as Apple.
He has enough vision to run a business selling PCs. Enough capability to scale it up to its current dominant position. He may indeed be a better business person than Jobs - I don't know - but Jobs clearly has something he doesn't (apart from the emotional attachment to Apple).
I'm sure he wouldn't say that today. Indeed I doubt he would have said it in 2000. But in 1997 it was certainly an option. An option that would have removed a competitor.
Before you run out and buy your new Apple shares take a look at the P/E ratios.
Apple 54.87
Dell 23.71
The run up in the price at Apple while, commendable is predicated on the hype around iPod and the assumption that will translate into sales of desktop machines.
Tons of reasons to have concern.
While moving the OS to a BSD-based (or BSD derived?) kernel, I think the iPod also contributed largely to their success. I mean, most kids at the high school I went to, they didn't want an MP3 player...they wanted an iPod. This ties in with marketing.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
It is interesting to note also that Apple is near its 52week high. And Dell is near its 52week low.
Apple
Price & Volume
Recent Price $ 85.59
52 Week High $ 86.40
52 Week Low $ 33.11
Avg Daily Vol (Mil) 25.269
Beta 1.403
Dell
Price & Volume
Recent Price $ 30.58
52 Week High $ 41.99
52 Week Low $ 28.62
Avg Daily Vol (Mil) 22.084
Beta 1.08
FYI. prices are competitive with Apple Products with DELL. I was wondering on the Price difference. So I matched similarly specked (I had to customize both to make them similar) laptops
Dell Inspiron 9400 $3,302
MacBook Pro $3,248
Now to be fare the Dell Inspiron did have a 17" display while the MacBook Pro was only 15. So I added the cost of the apple care program which is about the same as a size upgrade, when comparing older powerbooks of equal specs at different sizes.
Granted that with Dells and other PC you have a wider selection of options that allow you to customize them more closely to your budget. Vs. Apples one size fits group of people. But the Price of Apple Systems are about the same with as its equally match PC brethren.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So, does that mean if Apple takes #2 in the future, you'll see M$ moving in to try and shut Apple down?
Bet M$ regrets the few million dollar donation they made long ago.
How's market value of a company calculated? How do Apple and Dell compare/differ in the variables used in the description?
remember sun's ad?
Who is this Michael Dell guy?
Dell's aim is to have the best supply chain and produce computers cheaper than anyone else, this means they don't really do any innovation its more of a Wallmart sort of play. Now you can get very big being a Wallmart type of business but the challenge is that Dell are in a field where competition has almost always been around innovation. From a margin perspective the aim of Dell is to operate at low margin but sell in bulk, Apple are aiming at high margin and selling decent volumes. The reason people pay more for Apple's stuff is the innovation and design, the reason more people buy Dell machines than Apple's is because of the cost.
Two different models, its not comparing two similar businesses.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Apple's hardware prices are generally in line with market rates in the 'not cheap tat' market areas.
For example, the PowerMac is competitive price wise with any 4-core system you can configure from the major PC manufacturers.
And now the MacBook Pro is similarly competitive, price wise. The parent poster did rightly point out that you have many more options on the PC side however.
You can either save money on the PC side by going with a lesser manufacturer, building it yourself, or making use of a wider range of customisable options. For example, Acer's Core Duo laptop is supposed to be significantly cheaper than the MacBook Pro. OTOH IBM's ThinkPads are roughly on par.
Also don't forget that many people are fed up to the eyeballs with Windows XP, and hell, that Mac OS X keeps getting recommended, and there's all those applications, and my iPod is easy to use, hmm, maybe it is worth a couple of hundred dollars on its own to not get the XP stress.
It does show how overpriced previous PowerBooks were. I wouldn't have liked to buy one in the past few months just to have this come out.
So with the Dell you can get a 2" bigger display, a much better graphics card, and a dual layer DVD burner, plus Firewire 800, S-video out, and Windows Media Center. In fact, the Dell is not a comparable system; it is superior - for roughly the same price as the Macbook Pro. And only a fool would pay the price on Dell's site, so in fact the Dell is better equipped, as well as much cheaper.
Of course, the Mac looks cooler, is lighter, and runs OS X, any of which could make it a better value for a given user, but as anyone who has spent time shopping and comparing Mac and PC laptops knows all too well, Macs are not remotely competitive with PC prices, not even Dell.
You are claiming that the MP3 market is somehow the equivalent of the PC market? Please get real and look at the numbers.
I'm typing this on a 3 Ghz Dell Inspiron 5160 that I bought new for 490 Uk Pounds Sterling, it's coming up on a year old now, but I could go out today and buy a similar performance / spec dell for the same money.
Or I could go out and buy 50, or 100.
Oh yes, this box dual boots windows xp and debian, I wiped it when I got it and did my own virgin installs.
Tell me where I can go and buy a new Mac laptop at a similar performance / spec point for anywhere near similar money.....
Nah, I'll have to pay double the money at least, and then I STILL WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DUAL BOOT to any OS I choose.
Laptops are a commodity tool, the mobile computer, Dell, much as I detest them, have the economies of scale to make them a serious contender for anyone looking to buy a commodity device.
(no way in hell I'd buy a dell desktop or server)
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Truly an interesting slant on the situation.
Redmond does have a stick to swing against Cupertino: MS Office.
Will Redmond let MSO die like IE?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
At Macworld Microsoft stated that they have signed an agreement to continue for at least 5 more years. So it doesn't sound like it is going to die any time soon.
FYI just tried this in England, with same core specs (CPU, RAM, HDD, DVDRW, wifi, bt) Dell having 17", much higher res screen, and 7800 Graphics, free printer. The Dell was £1555 and the Apple was £1779.
So Dell does still have the value edge. Of course this doesn't take weight, thickness into account.
______________
ch424
And you know it.
1) Non-gaming software. Apart from some specialised applications, every software area is covered just as well for Mac OS as for Windows.
2) Games. Yes, an issue to be sure. I bet that now Apple are on x86 that Transgaming will release their software to get Windows games running under Mac OS X.
Macs are for people who don't want to think about the computer, and just get the work done. Quite often these people aren't hard-core geeks, but they earn a lot of money from their work, and they more often than not choose Apple hardware to earn their money. Interesting that.
As a (non-Windows) programmer, working under Mac OS X merges the benefits of Linux/BSD (decent environment) and having excellent applications on top, with a good user interface. Although the Aqua look is starting to look a bit samey to me now.
I bought 100 shares each of AAPL and RHAT two years ago. AAPL was at its 52 week low, a split adjusted 9.85. In my etrade account, that 750% growth is right on top of RHAT's awesome 60%+ growth, which, in comparison, looks small and pathetic. I'm just trying to figure out when is the right time to sell and keep some of Jobs magic in my wallet.
OK, go ahead and one me, you jealous bastards!
One would assume from the poster's butchering of the English Language, that they priced this out in another country and thus they are close due to an error in converting currency.
... and give the money to the shareholders
Market cap or Equity Market cap, does it matter? I bet Michael Dell really hates it every time somebody brings that quote up in conversation and every body starts laughing. It must be the first thing every new employee at Dell HQ learns:"OK, iPods, PowerBooks and anything else with an Apple logo is off limits and whatever you do, don't crack that Apple shutdown joke when Mr. Dell is within earshot, the last time that happened he punched the guy who told it and cancelled our christmass bonuses!"
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Well for the 2" Bigger display. I added the extra warentee to make the apples price match (Comparing Powerbooks models every 2 inches adds an extra $300), The MacBooks you can get adapters for SVideo out for say $50 bucks, and I matched the graphic cards, Plus the MacBook has some new port to replace firewire 800 or something. Basically all those upgrade to a Mac would probably add $200 which would make it $100 more then the Dell. The the real problem when shopping is you need to match the specs as close as possible. You need to take in what you need for a laptop, Apple Laptops are comparable to high end PC laptops hence prices in the same structure. If you want to go Bargain bin pricing, Sure you can find a much cheaper PC Laptop. But for what you want in a laptop is what apple offers and you compare it with another company selling a similar product you will be surprised on how close the prices are. I could find a more powerful Computer then Apple for less price but as you said it may not be thin enough for me or I want all the usable tools that comes with OS X which is like an other $500 of software for windows.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's a lot of iPods!
creativity.
Those are numbers off the Apple and Dell websites when I tried to customize both systems to match as closely as possible. For any differences in the apple which I couldn't lower the Dell Specs I added an extra feature that would make the price comparable. The MacBook vs. the Dell while cost comparable which was my thesis. The dell did have more options to make it more powerful then the MacBook including faster processor, and more add-ons. But I wanted matching systems in the high-end.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Dell 9400: 1.6" Thick
;)
Mac Book Pro: 1" Thick
Dell 9400: 7.94 lbs (3.60kg)
Mac Book Pro: 5.6 pounds (2.54 kg)
I'm not sure which Dell Screen you picked but:
Dell 9400 17" Screen Res: 1440x900
Mac Book Pro 15.4" Screen Res: 1440x900
Dell 9400: 4 Pin IEEE-1394 (I'm guessing)
Mac Book Pro: Powered 6-pin IEEE-1394
Dell 9400: Windows Mandatory
Mac Book Pro: OS X
Both can dual boot Linux, so that's not really an issue.
I've had my TiBook for 2.5 years now, and was shocked when I saw colleagues getting these huge, fat Dells. Maybe I'm a weak person, but when you can be carrying around a laptop that's 1" thick in place of a laptop that's 1.6" thick, and about a pound and a half lighter, why wouldn't you? I suppose if you like cheap looking plastic, you might prefer the Dells, though, and making sure Redmond gets their tax, and a nice big, low-res screen. I'll take the MacBook Pro
Aside from the crappy products, that statement alone was worth never buying another dell, ever. Arrogant prick.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You are wrong, sorry. Equity value+debt is called "total capitalization." "Market capitalization" is the value that the market ascribes to the common equity value of the company. You are buying a share of this common equity. The fact there there exists debt is already baked into that determination in various ways based on how people think that such debt helps or hurts the company's future performance.
The calculation you describe is grasping at a concept called "Enterprise value" which is total capitalization minus cash. Think about it. If you are going to add on the debt that company has to the total amount someone would need to pay to buy the company, because they would be assuming the debt, you should also subtract the amount of cash on hand. Finance 101, dude.
Yes but your using a cheaper video card, cheaper plastic case, cheaper OS(windows, debian doesn't count), cheaper components, a more expensive but shorter running battery.
Apple computers average 5-6 years, PC's last 3-4.
I don't know about you but my 12" powerbook can surf the web wirelessly for about 4 hours on a single battery, can your dell come close to that with two batteries that weigh as much as my entire comptuer?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Isn't complaining about $600m when you are considering $72b basically a rounding error? That's like comparing two items that cost $10 and $10.08. It's almost negligable.
well after a good conversion that is $866.02 USD.
The Core Duo is one of Intel's newest models and prices for the Newer Models vs Prices for older chips move down exponentially, The 3 Ghz back a year ago was still about a year old (Year old specs are normally the sweet spot for performance/price ratio, something Apple trys to avoid by keeping all their specs up, and moying older specs to different models say the iMac, MacMini, and iBook lines loosing some of the similar specs. ).
And if you didn't know on my Apple Power book, I was able to run Linux, OpenBSD, MacOS, I had VirutalPC to run windows, Which we may or may not need when people start trying to install windows on the intel Macs.
Comparing system prices are extremely difficult especially for laptops. Things like the material for the Case Plastic, Vs. Titanium, or Aluminum, Light weight ultra thin components for CD/DVD ROM, verses larger ones. Low Power settings vs. Chewing up electricity like there is no tomorrow. The quality of the keyboard layout. Brightness of the screen display, Type of pointer device being used, etc...
These are factors that you need to consider as well. Apple and some other PC Laptop companies try to use better components, to keep their customers happy with their product over functional life of the system, hence why a lot of Apple Users are extremely happy with their systems. Other companies cut on these details to sell the most powerful box for as cheap as possible, even though in a couple of years hinges may be broken, or ports my not work, or having to swap batteries every hour. Causing the person wanting a new one every 2 years.
I can only say from my experience. I am using a 4 year old PowerBook (the 667mhz systems) as my primary System, and I have a newer Toshiba laptop, from work, which I almost never use although it is much faster. And I expect that I will buy myself a MacBook Pro Next year for when I start Grad School.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A lot of their success hinges on his charisma alone. Charisma is hard to value or replace.
hmmmmm. it seems that part of apple's success over dell is because of the ipod, and they're unix-based computers. well, i have a solution for dell.
make a better mp3 player than apple, and allow customers to choose between using windows or linux, as this could probably bring the cost of their PC's down, as linux is free. although their customer satisfaction ratings may go down, as the average user may not have much experience with linux.
Proudly posting without RTFA.
I am sure that I missed the original discussion of the Adoption of OSX to an X386 Based Intel platform, but how does this effect Apples Botttom line. Will they in essence become another Microsoft (without the diversity) and stick to Operating system Development/licensing? When a DELL makes the platform that the OSX will run on, and can and WILL do it Cheaper then APPLE... Why buy one.??? If it's because the MAC is pretty blue or Red? Is Apple going to have licence the Use of OSX to only one Maker of Intel Machinces (ex. IBM)? Is that going to Cause a Rift Between Intel and DELL, making Dell switch to AMD processors (although this may be an Apples to oranges comparision.. I'm just throwing it out here.) I recall after they mentioned the Intel based OSX, Leo Laporte (Who is a MAC FAN!) though this was a tragic mistake and would hurt Apple greatly.. Opinions on this..? And all this will do is to allow Folks to say.. If you like OSX on the Intel Platform, Try FreeBSD or some other open source stuff with GUI etc..and it will run the OSX software also.. For Free!!!.. I am way off topic..sorry...
The huge looming threat to Apple is Sony. Its management has refocused Sony on innovation and (if I recall correctly) hired a non-Japanese outsider to be Sony's CEO.
iPod is a cool gadget, its innards are mostly built outside of Apple. Sony is an R&D and manufacturing juggernaut and could outengineer Apple to build a better iPod.
I keep seeing this. Why do people think the new Intel Macs have 4 cores?
They have one dual-core processor in them.
I don't mean to be an asshole or anything, but what was it that gave you and so many other people the idea that they have 4-cores?
Apple sold fewer computers in FY2005 than FY2000. In the same periods Dell more than doubled. Apple stock value has nothing to do with computers but everything to do with the iPod. So, why compare it with Dell?
And Michael Dell is not the only CEO making stupid remarks about other companies. How about Steve Jobs comment about Microsoft going out of business?
Can you do that with the Dell? I mean, can you boot in to OS X with it? No? Then what are you complaining about?
MAcBook could boot in to Windows, if Windows supported EFI. But since Windows doesn't support it, it wont work. Vista will support EFI, so you should be able to install Vista on the MacBook (alongside OS X, Linux *BSD etc.)
And every time I have handled those low-end PC-laptops, they have felts heavy and cheap. Mac-laptops have felt a lot better. PC-laptops might have more power (although that could change once all Mac-laptops switch to Intel), but there are more to laptops (and computers in general) than mere performance.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The difference between their market values is only about $150 million, so no, it is not just a rounding error. Had the difference been like at least a few billion, then yes.
First of all, Apple has close to $9 billion in cash and cash equivalents, not $6 bn, about $12 bn in total assets, and no long term debt.
Then, you have the $5.7 bn revenue last quarter (not 5), including $1 bn in Apple Retail revenue, and the fact that revenues, profits, and unit sales are consistently increasing quarter over quarter, year over year:
Total revenues [and profits] for fiscal year, in millions:
2001 - 5,363 [(25)]
2002 - 5,742 [65]
2003 - 6,207 [69]
2004 - 8,279 [276]
2005 - 13,931 [2335]
Not to mention record (and increasing) sales of all of Apple's products, from iPod, to iTunes Music Store, to the Mac platform, including servers and enterprise.
You're also really wrong about Dell having "more profit in one quarter than apple's entire value":
Total revenues [and profits] for fiscal year, in millions:
2003 - 35,404 [2844]
2004 - 41,444 [3544]
2005 - 49,205 [4254]
Yes, Dell is a bigger company (surprise?) and has higher revenues and sales. But over the last two years, Apple is growing at a faster rate. Much faster. Also, when you say "market share" you'd do good to include the market share of all of a company's money-making products, not just the figure you like. It's funny when people keep going around saying things like "Apple, with 1.5% of the market" seem to forget that Apple has over 80% of another huge "market". Does that market not count?
Now we've got a transition to a commodity hardware architecture and platform, with the industry abuzz with what this could mean for Apple in the enterprise for a variety of reasons.
It's funny that you state exactly what is wrong with a lot of people in the financial sector: not being able to look past next year, or even next quarter, for what something is "worth".
Source for financial data: Apple Dell
Oh man. Sorry. I misread your post (I did reread a couple of times too).
Need my caffeine I guess.
Business Week... April 16th 2001:
6 /b3728067.htm
Q: That bad?
A: Maybe it's a little bit different. But if you look at proprietary computer companies, whether it's Digital or Silicon Graphics (SGI ) or Apple (AAPL ), I think the fates are all relatively similar. We know how the movie ends. It's just a question of what happens in the middle. Apple has a very little customer base. If you look at the economics, it has been extremely hard for Apple to get a return on its R&D with a shrinking volume base. It's not to say that Apple's products aren't innovative or cool, but the economic factors here are so overwhelming, it's very hard for them to swim against that tide.
Q: If you were running Apple, is there anything you could do to change that?
A: I would never take that job.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_1
Is apple going to become the dominant player in the market? With Apple going x86 with Intel's processors it seems to be more likely than ever. I mean we could run GNU/Linux on a PowerPC but the _cost_ factor to own a Mac was too high. With Macs going x86 the users hopefully will see a large fall in the prices and a choice of more OSes than ever - Mac OS, GNU/Linux, BSD and Windoze (no flames please :P).
Is what would happen if Michael Dell tried to run a company that had to make quality products to stay in business.
We've got dozens of dell servers (hundreds of servers total) where I work, and the dell servers have a 100% failure rate. That is, each and every dell server experienced a hardware problem that required replacing something. Although usually non-critical, no other vender even comes close. They may make passable desktops and laptops, but their servers are from hell.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Heck, my 3-year-old, 8.6-pound Gateway can surf the web wirelessly for nearly four hours on a single charge too and it has a frigging P4 and a 15.7" display in it. If you said six or seven hours, that would be more respectable. 4-5 hours is pretty much standard anymore.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Then get a notebook that is the right screen size and do not worry about it. If you want a smaller notebook, get one with a 12," 13.3," 14," or even 15.4" screen and not a huge 17" one. And also, the Dell has two screen options: 1440x900 and 1920x1200. The latter is much higher than the Apple offers.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Problem. You only have two data points in your comparison. Last I checked Apple and Dell produced a lot more models than just that. If we're going to analyze the companies, why only have one product each? Isn't that unfair?
Of course, you already admitted you've actually got *different* systems going into your prices, so your comparison isn't fair anyway.
This will be good for MS up to a point because it cuts against the argument that MS is a monopoly.
This is the problem with CEO's and their big mouths:
6 /b3728067.htm
--
From: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_1
Q: What is the future of Apple Computer?
A: Silicon Graphics.
Q: That bad?
A: Maybe it's a little bit different. But if you look at proprietary computer companies, whether it's Digital or Silicon Graphics (SGI ) or Apple (AAPL ), I think the fates are all relatively similar. We know how the movie ends. It's just a question of what happens in the middle. Apple has a very little customer base. If you look at the economics, it has been extremely hard for Apple to get a return on its R&D with a shrinking volume base. It's not to say that Apple's products aren't innovative or cool, but the economic factors here are so overwhelming, it's very hard for them to swim against that tide.
Q: If you were running Apple, is there anything you could do to change that?
A: I would never take that job.
--
I would love to hear his response to those questions today...
Project Marklar part II? Hopefully Apple will be working on a MS Office replacement just in case?
Your comment is completely incorrect.
Total Market Cap is the number of shares outstanding * share price. It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of debt a company has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_cap
I believe you're thinking of enterprise value which does take into account the amount of outstanding debt.
Style, flair, and innovation are Apple hallmarks with Steve Jobs at the helm. Dell is just another PC maker, nothing more. When Apple suffered through those other CEO's, the style, flair and innovation were missing. Apple never was, nor will it ever be just another personal computer company. Gil Amelio and John Sculley never really understood that.
Dell has no real style, flair, nor innovation. Michael Dell sells PC's, nothing more, nothing less. The most creative thing he has done is build an odd sense of customer loyalty where Dell owners believe that their computers are better than other Windows PC's. There is a place for that, but in the end Apple excites the consumer PC market, and Dell along with others ride the waves.
Reality check - this is based on revenue, not desktop/server seats.
If your argument is that the Precision has lower spec's than the Inspiron, in other words that the Inspiron is a better bargain, then you are missing a huge part of the system purchase equation. Quality is worth money, and Dell knows it, even if some Slashdot posters don't.
Digressing for a moment and speaking to Dell's quality: The biggest problem with Dell computers is that purchasers don't understand that their cheap computers have cheap parts in them. Dell builds fine machines, and they cost more than what you get in the weekly mail advertisement. It is not fair to Dell that opinions of all their machines are based on the cheap consumer models. It is equally unfair to assume that Apple's computers are made like cheap Dell computers.
Starting with the $2499 Macbook Pro (1.83GHz) and the Base M70 at $2520. After making the systems match the Mac was $2997 and the Precision M70 was $3130.
Here's what I changed to make the systems match:
To the Dell M70 ADD:
To the MacBook Pro ADD:
Now remember that the Macbook is newer technology.
The Dell's advantages are:
About warranties- I don't know how best to compare the warranties, because I have never needed to use Applecare. Feature wise it seems fair however to include Applecare on the MacBook Pro to make it compare to the Precisions "Business Standard" warranty. Add $349 to the Mac.
Ladies and Gentlemen that is what it costs to build a high quality system.
For right now the MacBook Pro is Cheaper, Better and Faster than its peer from Dell. Macfans can gloat if they like, but I wouldn't. When Dell next updates the Precision laptops expect them to be cheaper and better than the MacBook Pro. When Apple follows that update with one of their own, expect prices to flip flop again- that's the computer industry.
The main point is that Mac's are comparable in price to PC's- when you compare like to like. They always have been, well at least since OS X came out.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
I mean look at KMart and Sears. Very good store with very good prices. Both added some value to through the product initially, through selection and location, but failed to continue to push that value. Walmart can in and they were toast. Dell is the same thing, but worse. Dell has the added cost of repackaging, but limited flexibility in terms of managing costs. OTOH, Apple has shown that will act aggressively to manage hardware cost, and is able to make changes to the OS to so do.
Dell is succesful becuase they are able supply large number of cheap computers to large firms. As long as they can win contracts, they will survive. However growth is out of their hands. Growth depends on MS maintaining a release schedule that encourages fast upgrade schedules, which they have not done. Growth depends on firms growing enough to add machines, which has happened. Growth depends Windows providing enough value so that large firms double license at least some machines. Growth depends on new machine running Windows, and not *nix, unless of course Dell is so cheap that even with the MS license the machine is a good value.
That is to say Dell has little control over it's future. It may decide to risk the MS gravy train and set out on it's own, but no one at Dell sounds that creative. At some point someone else will do MS Windows machines better, perhaps MS, or the desktop PC may become a thing of the past, and we will see how Dell does on low margins and low volumes. I mean, is anyone actually going to buy Dell at even a 10% markup?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
... himself. Or something even less pleasant. Perhaps this will take him down a well-deserved notch or two.
I recently talked with a bunch of non-IT people -- contractors who are doing some work in our house -- and every one of them had a bad experience with Dell's junk: either equipment that broke after only six months or very poor customer service. Dell used to make some decent business servers -- perhaps they still do (we don't use them anymore) -- but their "consumer" products are trash. Apparently, the marketplace has finally figured this out.
Yes but I can use my machine on my lap without burning my balls. You can't . My computer weighs half of yours or roughly the same weight as your battey and Hard drive.
It's also 18 months old at this point. Not brand new either.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I have to ask this question because I can point to a very similar company in design standards that has the exact same situation: Nintendo. Nintendo certainly takes a share in the home console market but their real money maker is, and always has been since the early 90s, their handheld systems. Yet, despite that, Nintendo is the only console company out there that makes a consitant profit. In fact in over 50 years of company existance they have only had one single quarter where they posted a loss(they still pulled a profit overall for that fiscal year too).
The comparisons between the two companies is also pretty similar when you look at it. Both companies are concerned about the user experience. Be it customer support, system design, interface, etc they both try to make it a special experience for the user. And, they use that positive experience to build a brand loyalty that helps to sell even more systems.
Anyway, the point is even if it is the iPods that are helping to propel Apple right now, it isn't the first time this has happened to a technology company. And, the profit they make due to the iPod success can only help them to expand slowly into other markets as well as evidenced by the heightened interest in the new intel powered Apple computer platforms.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Dell like most PC manufacturers and retailers are locked into a deal with Microsoft. They get to sell Windows at a high margin if the operating system is bundled with their PC. The consumer if fucked since there is no option not to 'buy' Windows regardless of what operating system they actually end up using. Anyone selling PCs without the bundle will have customers having to pay full price for Windows and the minority increase in sales of linux installers won't make up the difference.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Apple is like the housing market. Just because their stock is 50% OVER-VALUED does not mean they are actually worth that much money... it's all on paper. And when a price correction occurs (and it will, it always does), you'll see how much they are actually worth.
Here's my wild theory. Apple had MS sign that 5 year Office agreement to give them time. In the next couple of years Apple is going to come out with an OS update (like 10.6), in which a major feature is some kind of virtualization software. Think VirtualPC on steroids. This would allow Mac users to run Windows .exe files just like native Mac apps. The 5 year agreement will allow transition time for users on older OS versions. If not for the 5 year agreement MS would drop MacOffice the second they heard about the new Windows-compatibility software. Now however, MS will have to continue making software for legacy users while they find Apple in a position to start taking market share from Windows.
Steve was into UNIX for much longer than his recent run at Apple...
Honestly, if Michael Dell had been given the job of running Apple 5 or 6 years ago, I expect it wouldn't be around anymore. He's good at what he does, but Steve Jobs is absolutely brilliant at what he does, and it's completely different from what Dell does...
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
Microsoft better hope Bill Gates stays around. Because when they want/need to make an impact, they only have him to trot out. We could take a look at companies throughout history and say the same thing. And it is true. Don't you think that Apple was quaking when Steve Jobs was diagnosed with cancer? However, Dell does not have that problem. Few people even know who Michael Dell is...really. And, if he left the company, I doubt it would hurt them in image or management. Mr. Dell's genius was in getting senior players into his fledging home computer business early. He let the really bright guys run the company. And don't dismiss how much courage and smarts that takes.
But, if Mr. Dell left, then Dell, Inc is not loosing a visionary or motivating force behind an organization. They are just loosing the guy who started it and nothing more. They'll gladly toast to the founder's portrait in the boardroom every meeting. But the board knows who is making the real decisions at Dell.
Besides, "vision" is not something that Dell, Inc. is known for. They look at what others are doing and then try to make it cheaper. Never (there might be exceptions) do they attempt to make something better. And even when there are apparent attempts, do they succeed. Are Dell's desktop/laptops/servers/MP3 players better than anyone else's. No. They just offer decent (giving them benefit of the doubt here) products that appear less expensive, in their catalogs, than their competitors. I say "appears" because if you even compare a Dell to an Apple -feature for feature - the Dells often cost nearly the same or even more. And Apple is supposed to be a premium player. So they should always be clearly higher in price than the Dells...right? But they are not.
If Apple was smart, they would license Dell as their sole and only re-distributor, or heck, license the Mac OS to Dell. Dell has mass production, customer service and tech support **down** and is years ahead of apple in these catregories. Dell says, "Sure I'd sell Mac OS X on a Dell", Apple says, "No friggin way": http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/16/HNmacdel l_1.html
Horns are really just a broken halo.
If you ever feel you should have bought a specific stock, print the story up and stick it on your "Thank God I didn't buy stock" wall.
Buy a stock when it is priced at 6-8 times earnings and seems to have a productive, profitable product line that isn't a fad.
Buy a stock when the SEC and the IRS turn back regulations and taxes regarding dividends -- so you can earn an honest profit from honest work instead of earning a "profit" from selling the overpriced stock to some other sucker.
Buy a stock when the Federal Reserve lets interest rates change based on the market, not based on fantasy. Once interest rates are allowed to fluctuate freely, savings accounts will return a very nice and very safe return on your money. This is where most savings should go.
The stock market isn't for long term savings but for risk taking and profit making -- both of these things have been destroyed over the past 25 years, and if you feel your 401K and your private accounts are "safe," they're not. Give it a little more time, and everything tied to the dollar will have a very nice price soon. Including foreign stocks on any market governed by a government that invests in US dollars as part of their reserves. You can't make wealth on inflation, friends.
Senior year of high school we did the stock project thingy... "bought" apple at 7.125... thats right... its been tracking on yahoo... 1000%+ friggin increase... oh if only i had real money on that one...
This is all absurd. Dell does not differentiate on quality between it's different lines. The poster chose the workstation line because it offers the lowest value of all Dell's notebooks, not because it's of higher quality. Dell sells that machine to users who require specific 3D software to run on a notebook. It should never be compared to mainstream notebooks on cost or performance. Workstation notebooks are specialized products for niche markets and they're expensive.
Dell makes a machine that far more comparable and it's the Inpiron 9400. Inspirons are designed, built, sold and supported using the same parts, people and assembly techniques as Dell's other notebook lines. The differences between lines are due to their target market, not how they're built. Dell workstation notebooks are latitudes with quadro graphics in them. Latitudes are business notebooks with longer product lifecycles. Neither are more expensive because "that is what it costs to build a high quality system". "Ladies and Gentlemen", the parent doesn't know what he's talking about.
And with mac you get:
MagSafe (the magnetic power connector)
A high quality webcam
30x better design (dont get me started with the Dell's screwed up designs and lowest ever build quality... Touch the keyboard of both laptops, if you do not realize the huge difference, you trully have no taste of quality)
Backlid Keyboard (with ambient sensor)
Sudden Motion Sensor...
100x better style
How can you compare Apple vs Dell only by looking at Graphics card and such????
WHY O WHY is it just me that has been following this connection for 20 years? Steve went to India, Steve's guru (I think, but not yet 100% confirmed, I've been researching this for 20 years now) was Neem Karoli Baba. Out of all the gurus in India, he was BIG (Ram Das, Bhagavan Das, etc). THEY all said he had MAGICAL powers!!!! Steve was in India for a year! A year in India is a LONG time.
... They're coming to take me away, it's TRUE I tell you it's ... !!!!
:-)
There is a connection! Wait, I hear a knock at the door
Sorry, the poster has been committed, please ignore everything he has to say.
Dell's aim is to have the best supply chain and produce computers cheaper than anyone else, this means they don't really do any innovation its more of a Wallmart sort of play.
Keep in mind how Apple makes money. Apple is making money through a set of ad campaigns that have given their products a popular image, so they can currently demand high profit margins on their iPods. Apple's strength is in marketing -- they have Jobs running around in a black turtleneck, sell shiny products, and basically sell a self-image of creativity to consumers.
That's not likely to last forever. All it takes is one good competing ad campaign, and they've lost that. Also, iPods are consumer electronics devices. When one wears out, there's a clean "breaking point" where there's no cost to the customer is switching to a competing brand with more space for the cost. Apple's personal computer market is a lot more stable -- people put a lot of time into learning how to use their computers, they own hardware and software for their computers, and there's a lot of incentive to get a new Mac. That isn't the case for iPods -- I mean, Apple can make a lot of money on 'em in the short term, but they can also dry up quickly.
Finally, the iPods, even aside from the image issue, are luxury items. When people's budget is short, luxury items are the first thing to dry up.
Dell, on the other hand, is quite stable. I think that your Wal-Mart analogy is quite apt. Wal-Mart would be incredibly difficult for someone to unseat -- they sell to the value market, and they keep their costs low, and they've built up a great deal of infrastructure that someone else would have to beat. Dell is in a similar position. It's *hard* to provide competing products at a lower price point than Dell. Dell is providing a meat-and-potatoes service. Everyone needs PCs. If you need three PCs for new employees, you need three PCs for new employees, no ifs, ands, or buts. Dell doesn't sell the highest-end products out there, or even things that are all that exciting, but they do sell tools that inexpensively get the job done. Dell's been doing the "sell on value" thing for many, many years, and they're pretty good at it.
Now, that doesn't mean that Apple is going to flop, but it means that their revenues rely on a much riskier and more volatile source than Dell's do.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
look at apple's stock over the last 3 years... its done nothing but rise
m &q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=5y&l=on&z=
this is not based on "hopeful" expectations. its based on consistently being years ahead of everyone else in technology.
Let's see. Michael Dell's statement was a public one during the internet and PC industry boom that made him look like a bigger ass than usual. Steve Jobs statement was NOT public, but made in private to an employee that he did not want to see leave Apple 25 YEARS ago when both Apple and Microsoft were fledgling endeavors and the PC industry was embryonic.
It is true that if you look ONLY at Mac unit shipments that Apple is down about one half of 1% compared to FY2000, or 24,000 units less. Some might speculate that this is in anticipation of the switch to Intel-based Macs. They still shipped over 4.53 million Macs both years. Plus you choose to ignore the 22,497,000 iPods they shipped this year. So, if you're suggesting that unit shipments indicate success then they have at least 27,031,000 (not counting software) or ~6 times the unit shipments of FY2000.
Of course, units shipments are only half the equation. Revenues are at least as important. And profit is the ultimate goal. Lets see what happened here: Apple posted revenue (Q405) of $3.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $430 million, or $.50 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $2.35 billion and a net profit of $106 million, or $.13 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 28.1 percent, up from 27.0 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Compare this to Q400: For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $170 million, or $.47 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $111 million, or $.31 per diluted share, achieved in the year ago quarter. Revenues for the quarter were $1.87 billion, up 40 percent from the year ago quarter, and gross margins were 25.0 percent, down from 28.7 percent in the year ago quarter.
So yeah, total unit shipments up: check. Revenues up: check. Profits increasing: check. Margin increasing: check. Looks like one sick company to me. Apple is DOOMED, I say.
Why compare with Dell? I dunno because everyone including Michael Dell does. Hell you just did, too. Dell sells consumer electronics as does Apple. They even have their attempt at competing with the iPod called the DJ (or whatever; who has one of these?) Seems like a decent comparison, even if it's not perfect. Obviously, their business plans are quite different. Dell want to sell low-cost, high volume to the lowest common denominator. Apple sells value, innovation and user experience to people that are willing to pay for it. And people do. Hell, people line up outside the door of Apple stores begging to throw down their hard-earned cash for the opportunity to escape from Windows. Reminds me of pictures of the last helicopter out of Saigon. http://www.mishalov.com/Vietnam_finalescape.html
Exactly!
Apple's succes really is more than the looks of their products.
Some people really want software or appliances with tens of toolbars, hundreds of buttons, thousands of tweakable settings etcetera. Apple doesn't do that, no hundreds of settings here.
But lacking these abundance of options doesn't mean that the functionality is (too) simple! This is the mistake some geeky people make. Sure, sometimes an Apple piece of software clearly lacks some function or option in some aspect.
But at other moments it is clear that loads of options and buttons weren't needed in the beginning anyway provided the software had well thought through workings and a sensible user interface..
This is why non-geeky people quite often prefer the Apple way compared to other ways of doing something.
It is much harder to develop software that combines power with a simple user interface, and Apple demonstrates that it continues to excel in this arena. That is what investors see and like.
--[rosso bright]--
From the shareholder perspective, size (or more accurately, market share) doesn't matter.
Take Toyota, for instance. It is not the world's largest car company in terms of sales. But it is by far the world's most valuable car company in terms of market cap. Why? Even though GM sells more cars, Toyota has been perfecting the world's most efficient production system for the past 3 decades. Shareholders know this, and expect that for every dollar of sales today, Toyota generates more profit than any other company. And they extrapolate this into the future: for every dollar of profit made today, Toyota will make even more profit compared to other companies. That's because the benefits of continuous improvement are cummulative - you can't just decide over night to have a world-class production system. It has to be developed over time.
A similar thinking applies to Apple. Even though Apple sales are miniscule compared to Dell's, the market sees Apple products as giving greater profits per unit of sales, and sees those profits as more sustainable than any other company. Why is this so? Because Apple has a much simpler product range than Dell's (reducing the cost base), because it's average prices tend to be a bit higher (increasing margins), because it has products like the iPod that are truly unique and valuable from the consumers' perspective (increasing margins, both now and in the future), and because Apple products are addictive - after using an iPod or a iBook, it's damn hard to move back to a generic MP3 player or a commodity PC (increasing sales and profits in the future). Few other PC companies have such a magic mix, and that is what makes Apple so much more valuable compared to larger companies.
"So Dell does still have the value edge. "
;) XP on the Mac. The amount of hassle-free work that one can get done over the life of the computer must be far higher on the Mac. Macs are way more fun to use, too, and owning one makes the buyer feel like a superior life-form, which is worth quite a bit by itself. pleasure + productivity - hassle = value
Er.. price edge, not value. How much to get OSX on that Dell laptop? OTOH, you can run (well,walk
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Remember when Microsoft settled with a company (I believe AOL) back in the 90s and part of the settlement was a cut of all Internet Explorer sales/profit and then Microsoft turned around and reduced the price of Explorer to free? Remember?
Same song, new verse. To wit: commit for the next five years and reluctantly, sluggishly, incrementally release (buggy!) updates to Microsoft Office for Mac OS on Intel. I hope this is not what happens, but if Microsoft gets nervous you can bet this is exactly what will happen.
blog
I understand your P/E concerns. I say the same things about GOOG (P/E: 100).
But you have to understand these shares have run up with an expectation of higher future earnings. In the case of Apple, basically, next week's earnings numbers are already priced into the stock because Apple release the iPod and iMac sales numbers last week.
So yeah, Apple's P/E is too high right now (over 50), but next week, I expect you'll see it drop back to under 50 because the next quarter's earnings will be record earnings. If the P/E drops to something like 40, then it'll be in line with what it was two weeks ago.
As long as Apple keeps growing at this speed, they can sustain a P/E in the 40s. As soon as they stumble, it'll surely drop to a level more in line with Dell's P/E.
I do agree market cap isn't necessarily the best measure of the value of a company. Remember, AOL had such a high market cap one day that they bought Time-Warner. Which company really was worth more?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You are very correct. In a sense, Microsoft needs Apple, because Apple is its only commercial competitor in the OS market. I like Linux, I'm not badmouthing it, but it'd be hard to explain that as a competing company to a judge, whereas the judge can easily recognize Apple as a competing company.
Also, MS needs Apple to continue with it's "complete user experience" thing, because that would suggest to any anti-trust judge that bundling is simply a part of the industry. Yes, MS stuff is harder to remove than Apple stuff, and MS has other questionably "monopolistic" business practices, but Apple removes an anti-trust person's main two arguments.
Any mature company with a price earnings ratio of 46 in normal times, ie not during a market panic, is overvalued. The chances of making money in it over five years are tiny. The chances of making a risk adjusted rate of return that exceeds that available from Treasuries is even smaller. Doesn't matter if its called Apple or anything else. Doesn't matter if its in tech or coal.
If you doubt it, do the homework and count the cases. Then compare to the number in which you would have lost money. Compare. Figure the odds.
This is not investment advice.
But by comparing pure numbers blindly you are ignoring the dynamics of the situation.
Apple's computer share is growing year over year. They are very, very near an infelction point in that graph - where suddenly enough users have Macs that people start buying macs because lots of people they know have them.
And that was before the Intel macs, which seem to be drawing a huge amount of interest - not to mention that undoubtedly some people will want the ust to run Vista on. That could lead to a huge spike in Mac sales for the next few years, and there still is a lot of sales room in the iPod and the expanding vido market (where Google has released an unconvincing competitor).
So if every space they are in has the prospect for almost exponental growth, who is to say they are overvalued? I think that is ignoring the exceptional position Apple has managed to put themselves in. I don't even think it's because Apple is smart so much as other companies have been stupid. But that's exactly how Microsoft got where they are. What if Apple is the next Microsoft? Is it then so overvalued?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yep. Brilliant.
Beyond that, if they relaease a boxed Intel OSX that will run on non-Apple hardware (no Apple support, obviously), they could sell perhaps 4x - 8x as many units as they currently sell computers. Each of those units would be 90%+ profit, and at say $100 - $200 each would likely give them more profit than the rest of their computer business. Each such "unauthorized" unit would be like an ad for their hardware, too, and those using OSX on generic hardware would want to move up to the social status, reliability, clean design and support of having a real Mac. Those who already have Mac hardware are mostly too loyal and hassle-avoiding to move to the PC hardware, and even if some do, the potential new market is so much bigger that overall it's a huge win for Apple. Five years out, Apple could be on a third of computers or more, but since many of those will also have a Microsoft OS, it won't take nearly that much business away from Microsoft.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Today, you're right. Mac and iPod both accounted for about 40% of Apple's revenues (sales) last time out.
But this quarter Steve said Apple sold 14M iPods and 1.25M Macs.
Unless the average Mac sold for 10x the price of an average iPod, that means iPod now is Apple's biggest selling product.
iPods are:
$100/$130
$200/$250
$300/$400
Macs are:
$500
$1300/$1700 (iMac)
$1500/$2000/$2500 (PB G4)
$2000/$2500/$3300 (G5 tower)
So now select a product mix. I'd say the average iPod is probably just about $200. The 4GB nano is probably the biggest seller, but the Shuffle probably outsells the w/video, so we'll use $200.
How much is the average Mac selling for?
Well, iMacs sell pretty well, I think Minis sell pretty well, and I know towers don't sell very well. So I'm just gonna select the 15" PB ($2000) as a representative price. It's probably too high, since the only thing dragging the price upwards is the 17" PB, since very few towers sell. But perhaps a few accessories are sold with the machines (base stations, extra RAM), so $2000 seems okay.
If these numbers are right, then iPod accounted for $2.8B in sales (before accessories) and the Mac accounted for $2.5B in sales (before add-ons and accessories).
That means iPod is Apple's biggest selling product in dollars or units, and they have a dominant market position in that product space.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
How many times has Apple been on the mat and down for what seemed like the last time only to rise up and start fighting again? I don't know but it seems like a lot. I'm only familiar with Apple products in passing, I've never owned one and never had to do any real work on on so I'm obviously not an Apple fan but, I have a very real and healty respect for them.
It really looks like Apple is making all the right moves. Their iPod product line has a lot going for it and their new computers sound really sweet too.
Frankly I'm wondering what took them so long to join forces with Intel, from a marketing standpoint this sounds like a slam-dunk. In a short time I think we can see a lot more software running on the Apple platform (you can read this as Apple will emulate the Windows platform or actually run Windows or whatever you want). With more software availability, they will find a home in more business environments.
For Apple, the business world isn't where it is all at. They seem to market to consumers, especially younger consumers very well. This means more Apple products in homes and dorm rooms too. In some ways, the iPod product line is a "taste" of the Apple world and since they like the taste, it isn't such a big step to move up to bigger products. This is especially true if the marketing mavens at Apple make sure their products work better with the iPods than Windows machines do -- this means that Apple will maybe offer very easy to use software for their computers to interface with the iPod as a standard feature. I would at least.
Apple is posied for some great things to happen in the next few years. Steve Jobs is the right guy and this is the right time. I think it is pretty easy to say "Apple is back and here to stay."
That is a very interesting point. I saw the laptops with the media players on the side of them, plenty while I was traveling over the holidays, but it hadn't occurred to me that those people probably had to shut their OS down to listen to music in that fashion. If, in fact, you must shut down your OS to use those buttons, which I assume you do, then that feature is built on a weakness, and that weakness is Window's lack of stability over long periods of time. I suppose it's only really worth while if you make use of hibernate. And then, it'd have to have a very impressive interface to fit in such a small area on the side of the laptop. To be sure, it is a neat feature, but if it were put on a Mac which frequently have uptimes of a month or so I don't think me or the people I know who own Mac laptops would have any time to use it, and since the UI almost definitely suffers insurmountably when compared with an iPod or even a Dell DJ, the feature seems like a novelty.
By the way, I'd love to hear back from somebody if this isn't the case and you actually can put your laptop to sleep and still use the media player, or if the media player has some über amazing UI for that tiny LCD.
That really is a humorous way to point out the leadership that Steve Jobs has at Apple and the rapport and superstar status he has with a large number of members in the tech community. Wether you love or hate Apple, you can't deny that that's how it is.
If lack of MS-Office is a threat, then Apple should lend a hand to Neooffice. Neooffice is dog slow on the macs I've used (fastest = 1.67ghz powerbook). Seriously, the best way to run Openoffice on a mac, is to run it on a linux machine and do X forwarding over ssh. It's amazingly zippy that way, but really lousy when running locally on a mac (at least on a G4 -- I don't have any G5 machines).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I agree with the AC, but I'd like to add that Apple doesn't see Mac OS X or Macintosh computers, it sells an experience. OS X and Macs go hand in hand and are designed to complement each other. Look at the iPod for an even better example. iTMS and iTunes and iPods were built for each other. They are each individually enhanced by the other in a sort of synergy. A OS X on a Dell wouldn't be half as good as OS X on a Mac.
You know, Michael Dell really has never liked proprietary anything. Nothing built at Dell is proprietary, except for the irritating OS on consumer PCs (you can get linux on your servers).
It's not a shock that he hates Apple. I still don't understand why we all love Apple so much, they're the same evil, repackaged.
beyond this, they have a very functional voice recognition system that is way faster than dialing in a million numbers
Maybe for you, this is functional. Unfortunately, while everyone's kleypad generates the same DTMF tones, not everyone's voice is as recognisable.
For me, I'd much rather dial "1" than repeat an answer because it didn't understand me the first time.
I was checking to see if Mac Prices were competitive with PC's not nessarly higher or lower. Dell while not being the cheapest and not the most expensive as well. But Dell is the most competitive laptop out there to challenge Apple. A wile back I check Sony VIOs and I found that they were much more expensive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think what's interesting is that with the move to Intel, it really opens the door for a whole new market for Apple computers. Previously, if you bought a Mac - you bought a Mac. You're locked into Mac software, games, etc.
With these new machines - you've still bought a Mac - but I guarantee by 2007 you'll be able to dual boot with Windows. Apple says they won't stop people from doing that - so what's stopping people in 2007 from buying a Mac and just running windows. They're basically making their market the ENTIRE computer audience where before you were limited to Mac OS, Linux, Unix (Windows on VPC is barely usable).
Like the iPod - people LOVE Apple hardware - both Mac and Windows users. If I were an analyst looking at Apple I would see a HUGE upside on their hardware sales.
Most of the people that I know that have macs are really smart people and are willing to spend a bit more money for well designed systems. They appreciate the elegance and brillance of the design. Also in my experience, there are more dumb people in the world than smart people. Logically therefore Apple's market reach will be limited until they start to suck at what they do best - thoughtful design.
...it means absolutely nothing if you don't tell me what method was used to calculate their market value. There are at least three ways I can come up with off the top of my head that are accepted methods for calculating market value and each will give you quite different numbers that may favor Apple in some and favor Dell in others. Also, when we're talking billions on billions, 72.13 vs 71.98 billion is a pretty damn small (read: meaninglyess and negligible) difference. we're talking less than a 0.25% difference between the two. And yes, I know "...but 0.25% of a billion is a LOT OF MONEY" - it's still a quarter of a percent and if you have the money to buy either of these companies, that quarter percent is NOT going to factor into your decision unless you feel one of the two is undervalued.
It's difficult to get the monitor comparison exactly fair since Apple doesn't elaborate on their monitor technology and I don't have time to research it, but you can at least get them the exact same size (15.4). Even then, with Intel's best CPU and Apple's best dual core Yonah, Apple offers a better price, ceteris paribus (roughly):
Dell Latitude D810 PERFORMANCE (from Dell Small Business Store): $2,592
Ideal owner: Customers requiring maximum performance and advanced features for demanding applications
15.4 inch UltraSharp Wide Screen WSXGA+ LCD Panel
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 780 (2.26GHz)
ATI RADEON X600 128MB
1.0GB 533MHz, DDRII SDRAM, 2 DIMMS - Dual Channel
100GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM
8X DVD+/-RW w/ Sonic Digital Media and Cyberlink PowerDVD
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 802.11b/g WLAN miniPCI Card
Windows® XP Professional
Starting at 6.49 lbs6 and 1.6" thin; 1.6"(h) x 14.2"(w) x 10.3"(d)
Apple MacBook Pro: $2,399.00
15.4-inch TFT display with 1440x900 resolution
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2MB shared L2 Cache
667MHz frontside bus
1GB 667 DDR2 - 2x512 SO-DIMMs
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB GDDR3 memory
100GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
OS X 10.4 Tiger
5.6 pounds
Footprint 14.1 x 9.6 inches
Thickness 1.0 inches (2.59 cm)
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
No, Apple would sell a few copies, then it would show up on file sharing networks and Apple would make $0. I say this because only more technical people would ever think of installing an OS,and a very large percentage of those people would be likely to pirate the OS instead of paying $200 for an unsuported product (myself included). Thats not to say that I wouldn't like to run OSX on my A64 machine, but it would be a poor business decision.
A lot of people buy boxed distros, even when they could download. It's a lot to download, and in the case of a bootleg, who knows what hacks the uploader added? Anyway, a certain amount of piracy broadens the market, and they run a high risk anyway of getting their DRM cracked and OSX uploaded anyway. Once that happens they might as well accept the money of the people who would prefer to get Intel-version OSX from Apple directly.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
A better comparison is: http://www.tnl.net/blog/entry/MacBook_Pro_Comparis on_Charts
1 &fromYear=2005&toMonth=1&toDay=7&toYear=2006&site= slickdeals&pastdeals=Go#p6930
Any google search will yield a 750 off coupon for the Dell as well.
For example, you could have gotten something like this:
http://www.slickdeals.net/?fromMonth=12&fromDay=3
Any person savvy enough to shop online is hopefully savvy enough to check for deals, and not just buy the first price they see on the website.
Because not everyone here believes that closed-source is inherently evil.
What the numbers and the history show however, is that this time it is never different. They always turn out to be bad investments. Well, not quite always, but so often that it amounts to always.
Numbers and hitory are a guide, but only a guide - they are not absolute predictors of the future or else all would be pointless.
Again, what other companies have themselves in the forefront of so many industries at the same time? Apple is in a good position because any number of things can carry them forward- string video sales, strong music sales, strong consumer electronics sales, stron computer sales. If you can find another example in history of a company that has reached the crest of so many waves at once and looks to ride them out, then please by all means inform us of who there are so we can learn a more accurate lesson - the only one I can think of is Microsoft (or perhaps IBM).
Yes the numbers have to grow substantally for the current P/E ratios to make sense. But take a look at sales curves in the various industries they are in and you'll come to realize that they do not have to be sucessful in every aspect to meet or exceed those numbers. There s a reason why the forcast for iPod sales was around 9 million units when the actual number was 14 - because the market is exploding and Apple holds the vast percentage of it. Look at where video sales are going, they have sold around 8 million videos in a very short period of time. Lok at where computer sales are going, around a 1% increase in sales percentage per year with very high margin computers.
The reason Apple has been able to escape the fate of those other "closed" companies is because while the hardware has been closed, they have based a lot of technology around very Open things. And as I said as people will figure out how to run Vista on the Intel macs, Apple is no longer a closed comany in any sense of the word whatsoever.
The underlying problem is that you are probably looking at the wrong kinds of compaies when thinking about where Apple is headed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do not forget that Apple DOES have a $500 computer, a perfectly legitimate working one that is actually of surprisingly good quality. I've heard nothing but great things about the MacMini, and from personal experience, it's a fine computer (I talked my folks into getting one, and they love it). What's more is that Apple goes a long way to supply low end buyers with the most they're going to need for as little possible. For example, many low end PCs have PCI slots up the wazzu, aimed toward a market that will most likely never use them. So Apple ditches all that wasted space, insures that if people do need to expand, they can still do it externally, and can therefor deliver a smaller product, something that's probably of more value to low-end consumers than PCI slots are.
I don't think it's fair to call Apple the "expensive computer company" anymore. While definitely true in the mid 90s, the iMac really has done a lot to lesson the price gap between Apple and PC manufacurers. And now the MacMini serves to compete head to head with PC manufacturers in terms of price. Also, sure that $1000 is expensive for a desktop, but for a laptop, the best you're going to get, that isn't incredibly outdated or underpowered, is going to be about $800. Last I checked, iBooks (soon to be MacBook) were selling at around $1000, and tended to be, for quality, pretty close to pc laptops at the same price.
Then there's also the issue of longevity and frequency of repair. Apple is similar to Toyota (or Honda or Subaru), would you rather get a new mid-sized Ford sadan for $15k that will last you for 100,000 miles, or a new mid-sized Toyota sadan for $20k that will last you for 200,000 miles. As a proud owner of a '99 Camry, I can attest to paying for quality. And all that, and Toyota is severely lacking in something that Apple has plenty of: style. Most people who buy Toyotas do because their reliable, they feel incredibly sturdy, but they've also lost a lot because they're not very interesting cars to drive or to look at. They lose out in the image department where Apple thrives. The only real thing that keeps apple down is, I don't have to worry about compatability when I buy a car, I do when I buy a computer.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
You're the same /. moron, repackaged.
I guess Apple investors are willing to pay more for the company. I vote "irrational exuberance" :)
Steve Jobs would never let "pirates" have his OS. I honestly think he would send out an update to fry every PC that was running OSX even if it meant Apple going out of business.
And anyway, when you say "A lot of people buy boxed distros", just how many is alot? Because I doubt it's enough. Not to mention the fact that Apple would not be able to provide any type of support. People would be running with hacked drivers on their Pentium II boxes and telling all their geek friends how unstable OSX is.
I was the head of windows development at a company for a couple of years and used macs at home the whole time.
.Net and their video streaming. I hope everybody gets the opportunity to try a stream from a Windows 2003 Enterprise server with Advanced Fast Start turned on. It buffers much faster than my digital cable changles channel, and which is faster than starting a live video on my own computer. It costs $4000/server but man, talk about amazing.
I hate the Windows desktop, but I really like
Microsoft has pulled way ahead in the video market technology, investing a billion dollars into their streaming/drm product line. It seems way too much like they saw all this coming, like a lot of us did.
So my prediction... Windows will make the IPTV software work, and we'll all be surfing on our Macs.
Can Apple buy Dell now, sell off its assets and redistribute the wealth to the shareholders ?
His comment about who is this Dell person... 1. Neatly summarizes why Dell was wrong (Apple was the innovator and he was unable to see it) 2. Is clearly the best payback for Dell kicking Apple in the groin when Apple was down. Mod him up!
The next pasture is always greener
... since Apple is selling the exact same computers as Dell now.
I see a lot more BMWs at the grocery store and preschool than I do slamming down PCH at thrilling speeds.
:-p Nothing personal though. I'm just quipping!
Hahaha, this is because you live in L.A. You think your sample population is typical?!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I don't think you realize just how shiny this new package is.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
IMO, DRM and or lack of support of open standards is what's killing sony on portable music. Their ties to their music division is not healthy for the hardware guys.
Although the psp is not actually a portable music machine (or dedicated to being jsut taht) imagine how much greater it would be if the standards were more open. It's a great piece of hardware but is sadly lacking in ability due to content/media restrictions. If they supported those small standard half-size cd-r's or dvd-r's and supported a long list of video decoders (or at least some popular mpg4 related one) it could have been much more customizeable and popular.
They could have put heavy restrictions one game discs and gone easier on non-game discs.
Hmmm... Pie...
I personally have the option of telling my computer to go sleep and then having it hybernate after a bit of time but I've never used that option. It's mostly because i don't want it to. I run different stuff at times. Combined with the options in the windows control panel which lets you control 5 events or so for two different modes (on battery or plugged into wall) I'm pretty damn satisfied. You can control monitor switch off timing, turning off the hard disk, sleep mode, and hibernation easiyl from there (hrm that was only 4 settings! not 5). And if your skilled enough (like most slashdot nerds!) you can customize the little details of sleep mode and stuff from the bios. I'm pretty sure i can get my battery hogging old hp laptop (yeah yeah it's hp but i got it cheap so there!) to last a few days in sleep mode.
Hmmm... Pie...
Every good operating system I know of or have used in the past 10 years is unixy. I did not do pre OS X Macs, I did do Apple squiggle squiggle in for 10 years before this time, and had no UNIX experience.
And the Lord read this and proclaimed: "It is good...I don't understand a word of it, but it sounds good. Behold Slashdot moderators and rate it...insightful"
"Jeff Raikes told the story of leaving Apple for Microsoft in 1981."
Ok, you are using that quote against Jobs... that was in 1981 - do you seriously think that makes your point? Yeah, its funny in retrospect. Michael Dell is still an idiot saying stupid things - Jobs can be called stubborn, but not an idiot.
The Quicktime Streaming Server is pretty damn nice too, and it's free (if you use the Darwin Streaming Server, which is the same technology but without support).
I've always heard that BMW stood for "Bring Money With", a reflection of poor reliability and expensive parts and repair services. Having never owned one, I don't know for sure. A friend owns a 330i coupe and seems to have had good luck with his, but he doesn't really drive it that hard and has only had it for about 30k miles.
As far as VW build quality goes, my wife had one when we met and we had a number of problems with the electrical system (and the tape deck quit, too), but I think it was otherwise OK, but a little on the chintzy side.
I'm on year 6 of my Honda Accord V6 and couldn't be happier. More than adequate performance for what the speed limit and traffic allow in an urban/suburban freeway system, and totally bulletproof reliability up to this point (70k miles).
I think if I was to "upmarket" my car, it wouldn't be a BMW, but would be an Acura to get the Honda build quality and reliability, which I can only presume (short of some interior doo-dads) would translate to Acuras.
I haven't installed the Darwin streaming server, but I've read a little bit on it. Have you, or anyone else reading this, been using it? How is the buffering time? Mpeg4 and WMV9 formats are comparable in quality, so I'm sure they both look nice.
I prefer open-formats over proprietary, and Apple over Microsoft, so Quicktime server would make me happier, although in this particular case I don't have any big problems with using Microsoft. If there's an advanced feature for keeping buffering time under half a second, it's really a no brainer to go get an xServe rather than pay even more for the right version of windows.
Lets think about what this means and whether it is likely. That means revenues of 112 billion in five years. Does this happen to mature companies in mature industries? Alas no.
And there is the root of your problem.
Let's look at what industries Apple is in, and how mature they are:
Online music sales: Nascent.
Online video sales: Nascent
Consumer electronics tied to computing devices: Lower than nascent.
Computers: Mature but...
For most of the industries Apple has a strong presence in, things are not mature at all - which is why Apple has been able to dominate as there has been no organized opposition in that space.
Even in computers, which seem like a mature industry - it is not at all. If Apple is really at an inflection point where people start buying Apple computers instead of PC's from other people, there are a LOT of PC's to replace. Remember how many commodore 64's and Atari 800 computers there were at one point? Yet those were all replaced by PC's to the great profit of Microsoft and IBM.
If you think it hard for Apple to reach more that four times growth in four years, you are not paying attention to what is going on!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dell and Cisco are very specialized companies that really produce one product. As I sad, Apple has a range of industries they are expanding into...
Indeed your chart proves my proposition, look at the last three to fours years on that chart and THEN say 4x growth in four years is impossible - when the growth curve seems to be exponential in nature. That was related to the Ipod and ITMS, now Apple is just moving into the video space in the same way, the computer space seems almost ready to adopt that curve, and they may even get into celluar devices and service.
You used the old tired doge of expanding the range of your data until it fits you conclusions, but you are ignoring why that chart is the way it is and what is different now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,
I'm sorry did you say MORE importantly? I know Apple is SUPPOSED to be a computer company first and foremost, but I'm having a hard time with this sentence given the ridiculous number of iPods they're selling. Anyone have a figure on what % of 2005 sales were iPods vs. "macs"?
The one who was convinced that with the right app he could watch DVDs using his CD-ROM drive. This sounds like the kind of line of bullshit he throws out to try to get a clue.
I really tried to come up with a reasonable and non-condecending response to this. Really, I did. However it's clear that your base assumptions about the entire issue are so grossly flawed that I'd need to write an entire essay just to get you up to speed to the point that we could begin having an intelligent conversation on the topic.
I pity your employees/IT department.
Windows 2000 and later almost never crash unless there's a hardware problem. They're at least as stable as OSX, so that's not a good argument.
On the other hand, most PC laptops do power management worse than Apple, so users are probably more in the habit of shutting them down.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Exactly what I had in mind!
Stock price goes up and down. Right now, Apple stock price is riding a wave of momentum and DELL is in a slump. Market cap is really nothing to brag about when it's accompanied by an unhealthy P/E ratios.
Dell still enjoys WAY bigger earning than Apple.