I am a huge Apple fan but there is a trend starting to develop that is one of the reasons the stock is dropping like a rock. They are bringing out item after item and quickly replacing it with something better.
This is not what makes a stock decline in price. Apple's current stock price is due to 1) lower than expected earnings projections in the last earnings call, 2) news about a slew of BS lawsuits, and 3) not much news directly from the company itself in the last couple of weeks.
There is so much attention focused on Apple that any story, positive or negative, is launching right into an echo chamber which causes to stock to move very rapidly up or down. Take advantage of the dips, and hold your Apple shares for at least two years, if you want to see the big gains. UBS's $103 target is based only on the current products. One thing you can be sure of about Apple, is that they always have another compelling product in the pipeline.
The format lock-in abbetted by Fairplay DRM currently gives Apple a monstrously competitive advantage over their competition in the music space.
Nope. Apple's competitive advantage is due to the ease of use of the product(s). Why do you think the iPod charged ahead of all of its competition even before the iTunes music store was launched? Why is it a top seller even in the countries where the iTMS isn't available?
Apple is taking advantage of their monopoly position disallowing the playing of itunes purchased music on non iPod players
Oh, for crying out loud.
If it were up to Apple (or any other hardware vendor), there wouldn't be any DRM at all. If Apple let every Tom, Dick and Rob Glaser have FairPlay, they'd probably get sued by the RIAA for not keeping the content under wraps.
Every few months they are coming out with new ipods just to make people think that the ipod they have now is suddenly obsolete and should be replaced.
First of all, it's not "every few months". Most of the iPod models have remained available for well over a year since they came out. Secondly, they're introducing new models so that they can offer the benefit of improved parts (like larger disks and brighter displays), because to remain the market leader, you have to be a moving target.
If Apple was still selling a 5gig iPod with a black and white display, somebody would have eaten their lunch by now.
If you think that bringing the company back from the brink of collapse, to its current state of record-breaking growth makes him a poseur, then we're not speaking the same language.
Since the US backed gov was ousted the ONLY war they've been involved in was the Iran/Iraq war.
Guess again.
Iran has been heavily involved in Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian fighting ever since the Shah fell. The fact that they don't do so with soldiers in uniform doesn't make them any less involved.
Fundamentalists are rarely peacefull and they very rarely represent the whole of his community.
That's not quite true.. There are many fundamentalists who are essentially isolationists. If you leave them alone, they just assume you'll go to hell in your own way, and they won't bother to hurry you along.
So religious persecution is okay as long as it's not physical?
What's your definition of "persecution"? Do you think you're entitled to never have your feelings hurt?
GWB said in an interview a while after he left office, that in his opinion, atheists shouldn't be considered full citizens of the United States. I found that extremely offensive. Should I have taken him to court over it?
I'd like to ask someone to actually tell me what they think a wahhaabi is (seriously, no jokes), and what they think a moderate Muslim is.
Well, from my perspective, the Wahhabbis are the followers of that crazy, vicious bastard al-Wahhab, who conquered Mecca and Medina by making a deal with the house of Saud, and proceeded to persecute the Sufi and all the other more enlightened, educated and tolerant Muslims as heretics.
To me, a moderate Muslim is someone like the neighbors I remember from my childhood in Indonesia, who demonstrated the traditional Muslim virtues of openness, hospitality, charity, honesty, etc.
We don't have to deal with the wahhaabis because they are extremist and unreasonable.
Of course we have to deal with them. We just have to deal with them like Winston Churchill, not like Neville Chamberlain.
The cost of merging with SGI would be way beyond the cash outlay. SGI brings with it an enormous burden of management distraction: government contracts, security clearances, legal issues, etc, etc.
and benefit from all the UNIX goodies that SGI has produced over the years.
Everything Apple could possibly want from SGI can be had without buying the company.
I have heard it said of Microsoft that they have so many really smart people, and you don't see it in the products that they actually release to us normal humans
It's a leadership problem. Would you expect a cretin like Ballmer to know what's worth developing?
If they'd had their dramatic culture shift towards Linux and back towards Openness only a year or two earlier, it would have made a big difference to them.
Nope.
What killed SGI was the standard Big Computer squeeze, just like it killed Cray, DEC, Tandem, DG, etc, etc. The commodity hardware improved enough to eat their lunch, and there just aren't enough of the super high-end customers to keep them in business.
SGI could have survived by returning to their roots as a graphics hardware maker. Instead of ATI and Nvidia, we'd have SGI and a handful of also-rans, but SGI's management thought that making graphics boards for PCs was beneath them.
It's time to name Robertson for what he is: an American fundamentalist whose theocratic views are not much different from the "Muslim extremists" he continually assails
Robertson's an asshole, but when's the last time he ever put out a hit on someone? Calling for god to smite the people he doesn't like, and actually offering a monetary reward for killing a writer are very different acts.
The heart of the problem here isn't one flavor of superstition versus another, it's the willingness to deal with people as groups, and to follow the orders of leaders instead of applying one's own moral judgement.
The logic behind this is that we are all guilty by association unless we openly denounce every action that is done by a Muslim.
Well, that's certainly not a fair burden to have to carry. The problem will remain though for all muslims, that until the moderates start fighting back against the wahabbis and winning, you're going to be painted with a very broad brush.
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I am a huge Apple fan but there is a trend starting to develop that is one of the reasons the stock is dropping like a rock. They are bringing out item after item and quickly replacing it with something better.
This is not what makes a stock decline in price. Apple's current stock price is due to 1) lower than expected earnings projections in the last earnings call, 2) news about a slew of BS lawsuits, and 3) not much news directly from the company itself in the last couple of weeks.
There is so much attention focused on Apple that any story, positive or negative, is launching right into an echo chamber which causes to stock to move very rapidly up or down. Take advantage of the dips, and hold your Apple shares for at least two years, if you want to see the big gains. UBS's $103 target is based only on the current products. One thing you can be sure of about Apple, is that they always have another compelling product in the pipeline.
Apple's not the Titanic: Apple is the iceberg.
-jcr
They need to make themselves relevant again, then worry about profits
They can't do that by targeting a miniscule niche of buyers.
-jcr
Why do you keep asking nonsense questions?
I see you had no intention of discussing anything, you just wanted to pontificate. Well, that's about par for the course for a believer, isn't it?
-jcr
Sculley was at least actually able to sell more Macs each year than the previous year.
I would give far more of that credit to Gaseé than to Sculley. Sculley was basically Chauncey Gardner, and he had a really nice suit..
-jcr
The format lock-in abbetted by Fairplay DRM currently gives Apple a monstrously competitive advantage over their competition in the music space.
Nope. Apple's competitive advantage is due to the ease of use of the product(s). Why do you think the iPod charged ahead of all of its competition even before the iTunes music store was launched? Why is it a top seller even in the countries where the iTMS isn't available?
Think about it.
-jcr
Apple is taking advantage of their monopoly position disallowing the playing of itunes purchased music on non iPod players
Oh, for crying out loud.
If it were up to Apple (or any other hardware vendor), there wouldn't be any DRM at all. If Apple let every Tom, Dick and Rob Glaser have FairPlay, they'd probably get sued by the RIAA for not keeping the content under wraps.
-jcr
Every few months they are coming out with new ipods just to make people think that the ipod they have now is suddenly obsolete and should be replaced.
First of all, it's not "every few months". Most of the iPod models have remained available for well over a year since they came out. Secondly, they're introducing new models so that they can offer the benefit of improved parts (like larger disks and brighter displays), because to remain the market leader, you have to be a moving target.
If Apple was still selling a 5gig iPod with a black and white display, somebody would have eaten their lunch by now.
-jcr
Just room for one big poseur up on top, eh?
If you think that bringing the company back from the brink of collapse, to its current state of record-breaking growth makes him a poseur, then we're not speaking the same language.
-jcr
Since the US backed gov was ousted the ONLY war they've been involved in was the Iran/Iraq war.
Guess again.
Iran has been heavily involved in Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian fighting ever since the Shah fell. The fact that they don't do so with soldiers in uniform doesn't make them any less involved.
-jcr
Fundamentalists are rarely peacefull and they very rarely represent the whole of his community.
That's not quite true.. There are many fundamentalists who are essentially isolationists. If you leave them alone, they just assume you'll go to hell in your own way, and they won't bother to hurry you along.
-jcr
So religious persecution is okay as long as it's not physical?
What's your definition of "persecution"? Do you think you're entitled to never have your feelings hurt?
GWB said in an interview a while after he left office, that in his opinion, atheists shouldn't be considered full citizens of the United States. I found that extremely offensive. Should I have taken him to court over it?
-jcr
he called on the U.S. government to assasinate Hugo Chavez, the president of Argentina.
So? Did they do it? Did he have any reason to think they would?
Compare this to Khomeini offering up millions of dollars to kill Rushdie. See the difference?
-jcr
I'd like to ask someone to actually tell me what they think a wahhaabi is (seriously, no jokes), and what they think a moderate Muslim is.
Well, from my perspective, the Wahhabbis are the followers of that crazy, vicious bastard al-Wahhab, who conquered Mecca and Medina by making a deal with the house of Saud, and proceeded to persecute the Sufi and all the other more enlightened, educated and tolerant Muslims as heretics.
To me, a moderate Muslim is someone like the neighbors I remember from my childhood in Indonesia, who demonstrated the traditional Muslim virtues of openness, hospitality, charity, honesty, etc.
We don't have to deal with the wahhaabis because they are extremist and unreasonable.
Of course we have to deal with them. We just have to deal with them like Winston Churchill, not like Neville Chamberlain.
-jcr
Don't forget the Standard Template Library.
Well, nobody's perfect. Still, with all of their accomplishments we should forgive them for having done so much to propagate C++.
-jcr
They certainly can afford it these days,
The cost of merging with SGI would be way beyond the cash outlay. SGI brings with it an enormous burden of management distraction: government contracts, security clearances, legal issues, etc, etc.
and benefit from all the UNIX goodies that SGI has produced over the years.
Everything Apple could possibly want from SGI can be had without buying the company.
-jcr
I just think that Sun has made some *questionable* decisions since I bought their stock :-(
If you bought any SUNW shares after Schwartz took over, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
-jcr
I worked at Apple in the early 90s and, given the amount of really dim or useless people we had there, we had really GREAT products.
;-)
You should see the place now.
The remnants of Apple's Sculley-era management dysfunction are pretty well isolated. Poseurs don't last long anymore.
-jcr
I have heard it said of Microsoft that they have so many really smart people, and you don't see it in the products that they actually release to us normal humans
It's a leadership problem. Would you expect a cretin like Ballmer to know what's worth developing?
-jcr
Linux killed SGI
Not hardly. Linux hasn't killed any vendor, but it's fooled a couple of struggling ones by looking like a life preserver.
-jcr
If they'd had their dramatic culture shift towards Linux and back towards Openness only a year or two earlier, it would have made a big difference to them.
Nope.
What killed SGI was the standard Big Computer squeeze, just like it killed Cray, DEC, Tandem, DG, etc, etc. The commodity hardware improved enough to eat their lunch, and there just aren't enough of the super high-end customers to keep them in business.
SGI could have survived by returning to their roots as a graphics hardware maker. Instead of ATI and Nvidia, we'd have SGI and a handful of also-rans, but SGI's management thought that making graphics boards for PCs was beneath them.
-jcr
SGI is a legendary brand, and could easily compete with Alienware for the multi-thousand dollar multi-graphics card gaming market.
Alienware doesn't make enough money to service SGI's debt.
-jcr
The problem there was the idiot, not the size of the organization. I've encountered idiots everywhere from the Fortune 100 to a five-man operation.
-jcr
It's time to name Robertson for what he is: an American fundamentalist whose theocratic views are not much different from the "Muslim extremists" he continually assails
Robertson's an asshole, but when's the last time he ever put out a hit on someone? Calling for god to smite the people he doesn't like, and actually offering a monetary reward for killing a writer are very different acts.
-jcr
The Christians are far worse.
What's your next guess?
The heart of the problem here isn't one flavor of superstition versus another, it's the willingness to deal with people as groups, and to follow the orders of leaders instead of applying one's own moral judgement.
-jcr
The logic behind this is that we are all guilty by association unless we openly denounce every action that is done by a Muslim.
Well, that's certainly not a fair burden to have to carry. The problem will remain though for all muslims, that until the moderates start fighting back against the wahabbis and winning, you're going to be painted with a very broad brush.
-jcr