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First "Pods Unite" Competition Arises
So... we've all seen the cute Pods Unite promotion between Volkswagen and Apple, right?
http://www.apple.com/ipod/vw/
Well, look what's next...
GM's Saturn to offer Dell computers with new cars
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030905/autos_gm_saturn_1.html
- louismg
Rendezvous thith!
Tibco sues Apple over trademarks
http://news.com.com/2100-1035_3-5069154.html
Tibco Software on Thursday filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple Computer.
Tibco alleges that Apple's Rendezvous networking software, used in Apple products such as the iTunes music service, infringes on Tibco's Rendezvous name.
Tibco's Rendezvous product allows software applications to share data across networks, but came out before Apple's similar Rendezvous product, Tibco alleges. Tibco trademarked the Rendezvous name in 1994, the Palo Alto, Calif., company said in a statement.
The suit, filed Thursday in the District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Apple infringed on Tibco's trademarks with the intent to harm the company. Tibco said it is seeking unspecified damages for competitive and economic harm caused by Apple.
"Rendezvous has been a Tibco mark for many years and is one of our flagship products," George Ahn, Tibco's chief marketing officer, in a statement. "For quite some time we have tried to reach an amicable agreement but, given Apple's continual refusal to honor our trademark, we have been forced to take action."
Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.
Telecosm 2003 with Gilder/Forbes in Lake Tahoe... now at the Reno Airport... Check out www.gildertech.com for any coverage later. EOM
Hi-Tech Sightings Today
Steve Forbes - Owner/CEO of Forbes, and the former "Flat Tax" Republican presidential candidate... who gave a very good speech on the current state of Economics, intermixed with data from Washington...
Bob Metcalfe - the Inventor of Ethernet (yes, Ethernet) and former CEO of 3COM, who actually could double as a stand-up comic, he was very funny...
Gil Amelio - the former CEO of Apple, who now is looking to be a CEO of a good startup, was seen carrying a new 17-inch PowerBook, and asked Steve Forbes what he thought about the recent political events in California...
Others... Phillippe Khan (founder of Borland), George Gilder, Sky Dayton (founder of Boingo Wireless, Earthlink), etc.
Just another day...
- louismg
Full Disclosure: Sold All AAPL Today at 21.40
We shall see if that was a good short-term move. I may buy anywhere under 20 and get back in... or maybe I'll diversify a bit more.
In other news, on Friday our Exchange Server went poof at the office, and on Tuesday, our Internet was at zero effectiveness due to all the virus activity. I myself found 85 notifications of having the virus blocked on its way to my e-mail overnight, making more than 200 specific contacts in the last three days. One of every two e-mails is related to this MSFT activity.
Enough from me...
- louismg
Apple PR: 100,000 G5s Ordered, Shipping Single G5s
Apple Ships New Power Mac G5
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030818/sfm058_1.html
And the front page of Apple.com shows a big black G5 box.
http://www.apple.com
- louismg
Defined at Birth?
From my former colleague, Darrin Bell...
http://www.comics.com/comics/rudypark/archive/images/rudypark2003081524616.gif
Enjoy,
- louismg
I would suggest that this whole East Cost thing is retaliation California style for the number you guys have been putting on us about our boutique gubernatorial foolishness.
If it helps any, I should say that in the well-lit Valley Fair Apple Store, my wife and I bought nearly $600 in merchandise this evening, and got talked into about $500 more for our next visit...
New 15-inch PowerBooks: August 18 or 19
Nobody's speculating here about the next product revs, so I thought I would throw my hat into the ring. Apple WILL release the new PowerBooks in two weeks, either Monday or Tuesday.
If I'm wrong... then someone else should pick a date.
-iSpy (July 2003 Yangies)
Navy to draft Linux-powered Macs
http://news.com.com/2100-1040_3-5060885.html
A company that specializes in running Linux on Macs said Wednesday that it has landed a deal to supply the U.S. Navy with 260 Apple Xserve servers.
Terra Soft Solutions said the machines will be used as part of a sonar imaging system being built for the Navy by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Although the machines are Apple's servers, they will be running Terra Soft's Yellow Dog Linux operating system rather than the Mac OS. Terra Soft is one of a handful of Linux companies that is authorized to sell Apple gear.
"This brings to fruition two years of effort with an intense recent six months of research, coordination, prototype development and testing," Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats said in a statement.
An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment.
Joe Fanto, Lockheed Martin's lead project engineer representative, said that the Terra Soft approach "provides an optimal balance of open-source flexibility, AltiVec-enhanced performance, and community support."
Terra Soft said the 260 servers ordered by Lockheed Martin will be delivered by the end of October. The company claimed it is the largest sale of Xserves by an Apple retailer. Apple introduced the Xserve, its first rack-mounted server, in May 2002.
Pixar OS X move confirmed
MacRumors.com is running a story on Pixar moving to Mac OS X and the demo of Renderman on Mac OS X at Siggraph I mentioned Wednesday.
The Renderman logo on the Doxk is an aqua-blue lower case R that appears painted. Those talking to Pixar about RenderMan on Mac inquired about importing from Maya, etc...
One digital animation professional I spoke with today said that his company had already pre-ordered nine dual 2GHz G5s and at a recent visit to Apple headquarters, they were promised better NFS compatibility in Panther.
Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that the number one priority for Apple in HollyWood right now are the small design firms, many who have not been buying for the last two yars or so...
All for now. I'm thumb-typing on my Handspring Treo from the airport.
-louismg
G5's at Siggraph
Langostino, I haven't talked to any of the pros about buying the G5's --- too busy trying to get them to buy our own products of course --- but there are dual 2 GHz G5's in the Pixar booth you can poke and prod and run Renderman on. First time I ever had a chance to use that...
Other companies are promoting customizable systems for Linux using G4s and G5s... interesting.
- louismg
Apple at Siggraph: On the Scene
FYI -
This week, I am at the Siggraph 2003 show here in San Diego (http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/ ). The San Diego Convention Center is overflowing with 10s of 1000s of creative types who do post-production, digital effects, and anything to do with movies, broadcasting and the like.
Apple has a medium-sized booth with approx. 25 workstations (all G4 w/flat panels) in front of a large screen where a presenter walks the group through Shake or Final Cut Pro training. Not only are all the seats filled, but around the borders of the booth were standing-room only gawkers three to four deep, even though Apple was not hawking desktops, iPods or even software at the show.
Two booths over was a similar setup from an art center, again outfitted with 20 or so G4's and flat panels, attached to old-fashioned wooden easels. The software company had a unique app that let people draw with the mouse and keyboard in an attempt to match that on stage. Off to the side was an XServe, attached to a 2.52 TB XRAID array, with the two G4 processors lighting up as they reached full capacity.
It's not that Apple has a huge presence at the show themselves, but that this entire market is dominantly Mac OS X. I would say it's a 60/40 split of Mac OS X vs. everyone else, and I haven't seen any Mac OS 9 (thank God)...
In one discussion I had with a team of software developers who make plug-ins for After Effects and Premiere, I asked them if they made Final Cut extensions, and they said no, that they did not have any Macintosh development experience at their firm. Delving further, they said that the 2D design market was more than 50 percent Macintosh, and they were scurrying to find Macintosh talent, even as Final Cut and Shake grow in popularity. I speculated that maybe Renderman (Pixar's app) would go the same route, and one of them said that on Monday, all of Pixar had gone Mac OS X, and the industry was buzzing about it.
Clearly, that's an unsubstantiated rumor at this point, but interesting nonetheless, if true.
Additionally, sections of the show floor, and the area hotels, are featuring wireless Internet connectivity for attendees. I have seen about a 3-2 Macintosh advantage of the Dells/IBMs of this world, and overwhelmingly the PowerBooks are the 12-inch and 15-inch variety. Not many iBooks or 17-inchers so far. It's intriguing to see how popular the 12-inch PowerBook is for this community given its recent introduction...
Oh well... show starts again in a little over an hour, so enjoy,
- louismg
Odd Error Messages...
Roni, that error message does not have to do with a message board.
Without doing much sleuthing, I can tell you www.lightreading.com and www.byteandswitch.com have had Web site issues all day. We were taking down our own Web site at the same time as their site was unresponsive and noted that today also.
Do not know the cause or the expected recovery time, but earlier in the year, the entire Light Reading family of Web sites (including www.unstrung.com and www.boardwatch.com) came down after a Telco company severed the cable between their datacenters and the real world.
Give it 24 hours.
- louismg
Earnings: 1.55B Revenue, $19M Income, 5c/Share
Apple Posts Lower Net Income
Wednesday July 16, 4:15 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) on Wednesday reported quarterly earnings that fell from a year ago on slightly higher revenue as costs for the maker of Macintosh computers rose.
For the fiscal third quarter ended June 28, Cupertino, California-based Apple said it had net income of $19 million, or 5 cents a share, down from $32 million, or 9 cents, a year ago. Revenue rose to $ 1.55 billion from $1.43 billion.
Analysts had forecast Apple to post, on average, a net profit of 3 cents a share within a range of 2 cents to 6 cents, on revenue of $1.48 billion, according to Reuters Research, a unit of Reuters Group Plc.
New Apple G5 Commercial Airs on All-Star Game
Prior to the first pitch of tonight's All-Star Game, Apple aired their new G5 commercial, showing an explosion that throws a user out/through his house, creating disruption and havoc everywhere.
The camera zooms in, showing a Cinema Display (not running apps, just the Dock), and the G5, with a Jeff Goldblum voice-over presenting "The World's Fastest, Most Powerful, Personal Computer".
Maybe it will appear on apple.com soon.
- louismg
Second Senior VP Switches to Mac
... at this rate, within a year, our entire Senior Management team will be walking around with PowerBooks under their arm...
On Wednesday, a member of our management team turned in his Toshiba sub-notebook to the IT department, and is buying a 12-inch Apple PowerBook, after buying a G4 1.25 GHz for his home machine and loving it to death.
So... earlier someone asked how the progress was going, and it is... swell.
- louismg
.Mac Bookmarks Live Today
If you have iSync 1.1 and Safari 1.0, sync up your bookmarks, and then head over to http://bookmarks.mac.com/
It *GASP!* even works on Windows.
Now I can have my bookmarks on any browser, on any platform, on any computer. Try it for yourself.
- louismg
Avie Tevanian Promoted to Chief Software Technology Officer
CUPERTINO, Calif., Jul 8, 2003 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Apple(R) (AAPL, Trade) today announced that Avadis "Avie" Tevanian Jr., Ph.D., will become the company's chief software technology officer and Bertrand Serlet will be promoted to senior vice president of Software Engineering. In his new role, Tevanian will focus on setting company-wide software technology directions, and Serlet will now report directly to Apple CEO Steve Jobs and lead the company's OS Software Engineering group.
"This will be a seamless handoff," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Panther, the next major release of Mac OS X, is in great shape and everything is on track to ship it later this year, making this a good time to let Avie return to a more hands-on technical role and to promote Bertrand to lead our entire OS software engineering team."
"This is something I've wanted to do for some time," said Avie Tevanian, Apple's newly appointed chief software technology officer. "I'm incredibly proud of the products the software engineering team has delivered over the past few years, and I am 100% confident that their success will continue under Bertrand's leadership."
Serlet has been Apple's vice president of Platform Technology, managing the largest part of the Mac(R) OS software engineering group. He joined Apple in 1997 and has been a key player in the definition, development and creation of Mac OS X. Before joining Apple, Serlet spent four years at Xerox PARC, then joined NeXT in 1989. Serlet holds a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Orsay, France.
Tevanian joined Apple in February of 1997 as senior vice president of Software Engineering, and holds a Ph.D. and a Masters of Science degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from the University of Rochester.
Almost All Cash - Sold some AAPL at 20.12
lbotez, you're not the only one with a quick trigger finger. I put in an order to sell my AAPL at 20.12 today, and it was partially filled, as the market drove AAPL lower.
Now that I'm almost all cash, I can give a little thought what I want to do with it, whether waiting out an AAPL downtick, sucking it up and getting back into TIVO at these inflated levels, or doing some actual analysis.
I don't think the rest of my order will fill at 20.12 today, but that suits me fine.
- louismg
Behind the Curtains of Apple Marketing to Enterprise
I had a meeting this afternoon with a group that assists companies in reaching the highest levels of corporations for marketing purposes, and one of the women I spoke with talked about working with Apple before they launched the XServe.
When approaching a CIO or Senior VP of Technology at any F500 firm, when you bring up Apple, they immediately close their train of thought, spouting words like "incompatible", "not standard" and "expensive".
She suggested that in order to reach the highest management in the enterprise, you start with technology, and then the brand - which is the opposite of Apple's usual strategy - saying... "What would you say if you had a server that could scale... What if you could offer 2 TB with standard RAID for only... etc. etc." and then the last page of the campaign would say, "What if I told you that you could buy this server from Apple?
She thought that bottoms-up approach would be much-more successful, and that pushing Apple in the enterprise based on brand will get the door slammed in your face.
So what did Apple do, she said?
They launched the XServe, with the tagline - "Apple Means Business".
C'est la vie.
- louismg
How to start up in single-user mode
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
1. Restart the computer (see Note).
2. Immediately after the startup sound, press and hold both the Command (Apple) and "s" keys on your keyboard. The computer will display a series of text messages, at which time you may release these keys.
When the computer has started up, it will display a command line prompt (#). The computer is now in single-user mode.
Once you have reached a command line, follow these steps to use fsck:
1. At the prompt, type: /sbin/fsck -y
2. Press Return.
The fsck utility will go through five "phases" and then return information about the disk's utilization and fragmentation. Once the check is finished, if no issue is found, you should see "** The volume <name of volume> appears to be OK."
If fsck alters, repairs, or fixes anything, it will display the message:
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Important: If this message appears, repeat the "/sbin/fsck -y" command until this message no longer appears. It is normal for your computer to require several "passes" of fsck, because first-pass repairs may uncover additional errors.
3. When fsck reports that no problems were found, type: reboot
4. Press Return.
The computer should start up normally and allow you to log in.
Re: Anyone Watch/Hold TiVo?
Roni, after the initial run-up in AAPL following the iTunes Music Store launch, I sold half my AAPL, and bought TIVO at under 7. I rode the stock to about 9, and sold there, even though TIVO has since gone up a bit.
I cleared about $1.5k in profits, and then sunk that back into AAPL, which has gone up well in the last few weeks.
I use my TiVo extensively every day, and it is an incredible product. The competition has been decimated, and their financials are improving. If AAPL finds a selling point after WWDC, and TIVO finds a buying point, I may switch yet again.
- louismg
Apple Cupertino Campus Store
On the way back from a technology marketing forum in San Francisco this afternoon, I ducked off of Highway 280 to visit the Apple Campus Store at their Cupertino headquarters. My 15-inch TiBook has been having an average battery life of say... 20 minutes and needed a new battery, and besides... where else could I get a good deal on Apple merchandise and schmooze?
So... I ended up getting the new battery (at 94% after the same 20 minutes), the Griffin iTrip - punding out tunes on the home stereo from my 20 GB iPod, three new Apple shirts, and complimentary pens and badge holders from the nice guys in Cupertino.
Our home is quickly resembling that of Mr. and Mrs. Shtick when it comes to Apple logo merchandise, but now the wife is all set in her Apple regalia.
Now that I've finally made it there, it'll be rough to see how I can avoid returning again and again with Apple being 1 exit up the road...
- louismg
AAPL Up Over $1 Today to 19.34 (1:21 EDT)
This is the first time in a while that AAPL has jumped more than a buck a share in a single day on no news, the analyst upgrade excepting. Considering, I traded out my TIVO stock for AAPL after a $1.5k gain there, this is working out very well for me.
My average price per share of AAPL is about 16.3, so a move to 20+ would be very much appreciated.
Should be interesting to see how Apple handles a product announcement at the WWDC show Monday.
- louismg