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Hell Froze Over...
After my post last week comparing Apple's $100 Billion market cap with other similar tech behemoths, it occurred to me that it's become kind of silly to keep that white Apple logo sticker on the back window of my car.
They're not exactly "counterculture" or whatever anymore (assuming they ever were), are they? The logo used to be the sign of sort of a secret club--something like the Christian "fish" logo (which is now, of course, countered by the "Darwin" versions, etc). If you saw the missing-bite logo sticker on someone else's car, you gave a quiet little nod of acknowledgement.
I'm thinking that with the runaway success of the iPod, the (apparent) home run of the iPhone, and the reliably healthy boom in Mac sales over the past few years, that "secret club" feeling is inevitably going to wain.
Oh well; at least I'll be able to afford plenty of psychotherapy to deal with this tragedy with the profits from my AAPL investment...
Coreguy--ROFL touche...
Annie--here's some good resources:
http://www.cable-modem.net/
http://www.cable-modems.org/
My guess is you'll be better off buying, since modems only run around $50 or so (you'd make up the difference within 2 years, I'd guess)
Roni--well, that's the big unknown, yes? The pundits are probably fairly good at ballparking the retail figures, but the online sales are an absolute unknown. Cold be 5 thousand, could be 5 million, who the hell knows?
Anyone else find it edge-of-your-seat fascinating that there's be NO initial sales figure announcement by Apple yet?
A huge flurry of pulled-out-of-their-ass estimates by the usual analyst wonks, ranging from 200,000 to 1,000,000 (a pretty useless estimate range in my book), but from the Mothership--not a peep.
Time for another contest, perhaps? Guess a) the date & time of the Official Press Release as well as b) the number of iPhones sold in that announcement?
My pick: tomorrow evening at exactly 6pm (precisely 2 weeks after the launch); the number announced will simply be "over 1 million in the first 2 weeks" (my guess is that the actual number is more like 1.3 million, but they'll keep it to "over 1 million" to help build up the number for a future update).
Annie--try these on for size (um, metaphorically, that is...)
http://www.flamingmailbox.com/maccomedy/movies/ibrator.html
http://www.electric-chicken.co.uk/itoilet.html
(sorry, couldn't resist...)
MSFT Office "watermark" mystery cleared up:
I posted the question about this over on MacFixIt's forums as well, and someone there cleared up the confusion:
"...It looks like the rumor concerns Microsoft Office Test Drive. This thing does display a test drive watermark in documents as per this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=office2004tdreadme
...but you cannot even print from it. I am using the STE Office 2004 for several years and never saw any watermarks on printouts from any of its programs, nor heard anything about it."
KCMW/Tex--thanks, I suspected as much. Either my source was misinformed, or there's been a change between version X and version 2004.
It's also possible that the "watermarking" restriction is only on the Windows S/T version (another argument in favor of the Mac!).
I received an email via the Shootouts site from a college student debating between a MacBook and a Dell laptop; she blanched at the $400 Std. version of Office Mac. I suggested the S/T edition for $150 but someone told her about the "watermarking" thing which was a turnoff, so I'm trying to confirm or deny it.
(also suggested checking out OpenOffice, iWork, etc...why should MSFT get any of her money if she doesn't need their product?)
OT: Office Mac 2004 question: does anyone know if there are any technical restrictions on the MSFT Student/Teacher edition vs. the full version?
I ask because it was--until today--my understanding that aside from the "no upgrade" policy, the 3-seat license and the price difference, the two are technically identical. That is, since there's no "student/teacher ID" required to purchase the S/T version, it's essentially an Honor System that prevents non-students/teachers from purchasing the lower-priced version.
However, today someone claimed that the S/T version of Office automatically adds some sort of a "student/teacher edition" watermark to anything that is printed out with it. First I've heard of such a thing; just wondering if anyone else can confirm or deny this?
Note: no, I'm not trying to use the S/T version for business purposes myself, it just struck me as odd.
Sounds like such a change would be good for Apple, not so good for AT&T...it'd essentially cause the 2 year (or is it 5 year?) contract to be made legally invalid, getting Apple off the hook without it being their "fault".
Which happens to be exactly what I was saying about Working Assets' "unlock the iPhone" petition drive in the first place--if your goal is to unlock the iPhone, you gotta go after either AT&T (pressure them to open up the contract) or Congress (pressure them to make such contracts illegal in the first place).
KCMW--yeah, eventually; unfortunately, my budget for upgrades was only $2K this year, which went towards...the CS3 suite, of course (I bought the iMac G5 2 years ago; last year's budget went towards my new MacBook, which is of course an Intel processor but isn't my primary work machine).
I'll have to suffer through until at least next spring (at which point the G5 iMac will be 3 years old and out of AppleCare). I'll probably replace it with a 24" iMacIntel model at that point.
I'm just seriously bummed--hell, I can't even effectively use Adobe Bridge as a file browser in Photoshop CS3 due to the sluggish performance; the browser in Photoshop 7, poorly-designed as it was, was still infinitely faster :(
Yofal--thanks for the feedback. I'm actually in a pretty sour mood over CS3 right now; given the poor performance, I've actually gone back to GoLive 6 until I can sort out the performance issues, which basically means that for the moment I've effectively shelled out almost $1,800 for Flash (every other product in the suite is either an upgrade of an older version that has better performance on my G5, or is one that I rarely use at all like Acrobat or Contribute).
I'm sure I'll sort out the performance issues and get used to the new versions, and no doubt many of the new features will eventually make the investment worth it, but for the moment I'm feeling like a chump :(
Can't the AP get in trouble with the SEC for deliberately making false statements/claims in the headline?
Headline: "Analyst Says Apple Will Launch Another Phone"
Article: "A JPMorgan analyst said Tuesday he expects Apple Inc. to launch another phone this year..."
"...we believe there's a strong sign that Apple will come out with a second phone"
Since when does an analyst "expecting" or "believing there's strong signs" of something equal the analyst stating this as an absolute fact?
I know, it happens all the time, but jeez...
Yofal--have you found the performance of the CS3 apps themselves to be good/poor?
I'm running the CS3 web suite (primarily Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Bridge) on a 2.0 GHz iMac G5 with 2 GB of RAM, and both the launch time and performance is painfully sluggish!
Same is true of GoLive 9 (which I also got because all of my existing sites were developed in GoLive 6 and there's no way of easily converting them over to DreamWeaver).
Has Adobe screwed over PPC users with CS3, or am I missing something here? Plenty of free hard drive space, system fairly well optimized...
Market Cap looked at another way:
At a cap of $114 billion, Apple is now:
190 times larger than Gateway.
Over twice as larger as GM (20.8b), Ford (17.2b) and Chrysler (80% stake sold for $7.4 billion; call it perhaps $10 billion total) COMBINED.
(admittedly, this may say more about the sorry state of the U.S. auto industry than it does about Apple, but still...)
twice the size of Vivendi/Universal (37 billion Euros = about $50 billion). Maybe they should just buy Universal Music outright (like the rumor from 4 years ago...)
about 60% the size of Wal-Mart.
about 40% the size of Microsoft.
Holy Cats.
(and yes, I realize that market cap is just one of many ways of measuring a company, but it's still pretty damned eyebrow-raising).
Comparable Market Caps:
Gateway: 0.6 billion
AMD: 8 billion
GM: 21 billion
Amazon: 28 billion
Yahoo! 36 billion
eBay: 44 billion
Sony: 53 billion
Dell: 65 billion
Disney: 68 billion
Apple: 114 billion
HP: 120 billion
Intel: 142 billion
IBM: 160 billion
Google: 168 billion
Walmart: 197 billion
Microsoft: 286 billion
What's stupid about it is that the same advice would apply to ANY purchase:
"Take a guy filling his gas tank who's 30 years old and is not maxing out contributions to his or her 401(k) retirement plan (few are).
In that case, the $40 could have been invested tax free. Earning a pretty reasonable 5.5% after inflation over the next 35 years, it would have grown to ... $297.97.
You read that right.
In short: That's how much this customer withdrew from retirement savings to pay for an iPhone."
(substitute any other dollar amount for any other purchase).
In fairness, the guy is taking the view of the iPhone as a luxury item instead of a basic necessity of modern life, but you could still apply this reasoning to DVDs, CDs, movie tickets, sporting events, concerts, candy bars or any number of other "unnecessary" purchases.
Basically, if you want to be rich when you're 70, the key is to lie down and stay perfectly still for the preceeding 50 years. Brilliant!
I'd just like to know exactly WHO the ones "whispering" about the 1 million figure were (if they existed at all).
KCMW--well, the original 5GB iPod was 0.78" thick (according to Apple-History.com).
I know they want to keep it as thin as possible, but I'd say that's a reasonable "absolute max" thickness level to use as a guideline.
Design-wise, I would imagine that they'd just make it a different color--black = iPhone, white = m-touch iPod?
Yofal--as far as I know, the only *legal* thing preventing Apple from expanding into a full-bore label by signing artists directly was the ongoing Apple Corp. lawsuit...which they won last year and then completely disposed of (ie, the appeal) by cutting a deal with Apple Corp. earlier this year.
Unless I'm missing something, there's absolutely nothing preventing them from doing just what you described--aside from whether they want to deal with all of the paperwork and, of course, the risk of pissing off the rest of the labels by doing so.
From the artists' point of view, however, there's no way that this wouldn't be a better deal for them than they're getting from the labels right now--Apple could give them a flat 50/50 deal and both the artist *and* Apple would be way ahead.
Re. Universal's bargaining position:
Universal is the largest label; let's suppose that they're responsible for 20% of iTunes total sales (vs. 80% for the other big 3 labels plus several thousand smaller/indy labels).
iTunes annual revenue is about $2 billion, which would mean Universal is worth about $400 million. However, they keep 65% of that, so Apple really only makes about $140 million per year off of Universal's music.
$140 million out of $20 billion in total company revenue = about 0.7%.
Meanwhile, iTunes is now responsible for about 10% of Universal's gross sales.
Which company do you think has the upper hand here?
Besides, no one who was planning on buying an iPod or iPhone is gonna change their mind just because their favorite artist(s) aren't available on iTunes, since they can simply buy the CD and rip it instead (or just pirate it if they're unscrupulous).
525,000...and that doesn't include the online sales via Apple's website.
Whaddya figure, another 100,000 or so via the online store?
Also, I think it's safe to say that anyone who's still using a dial-up connection for internet access is unlikely to be in the market for an iPhone anyway.
I don't mean that as a slam; it's just that anyone who uses dial-up in 2007 is unlikely to have a lifestyle that requires constant, on-the-go internet access. Exceptions would be people who *want* broadband but are in rural areas that the cable/dsl companies haven't reached yet.
That only proves my point--note the different wording:
Drudge: "Universal...notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract"
WSJ: "Universal Music May Not Renew iTunes Contract"
Drudge: "APPLE FACES A REBELLION OVER ITUNES" (in screaming all-caps, of course)
WSJ: "The move does not mean...that Universal will remove its vast catalog...Instead, Universal...expects to go to a short-term sales agreement."
Some rebellion.
Drudge is one of the least-reputable sources of news around.
However, assuming this is true, I'd say it doesn't much matter--iTunes has established itself and pretty much has the upper hand at this point, I should think; they waited too long. Jobs should call their (alleged) bluff.
Yofal/Roni--wow! I'd be happy to be underestimating by a lot!
However, as you said, 20,000 in 24 hours at a single location--even a large store--seems a wee bit exaggerated as well; that's be an average of 14 sold PER MINUTE at a single location, which I find rather hard to believe.
Sounds like it could be close to a half-million, though.
Estimating the number sold opening weekend:
1,800 AT&T stores: Assuming an average of 60 per store, and that all of them are sold out as of now, that equals 1,800 x 60= 108,000.
162 Apple stores: Assuming an average of 250 per store, if they all sell out by tomorrow evening that's 162 x 250 = 40,500.
Sounds like we're looking at at least 150,000 minimum without even including Apple's online store sales.
Add those in, figure a quarter million by tomorrow evening?
shtick--that's a hell of a coup, photo-wise; I don't think a photo of Mrs. Jobs has ever been seen publicly before?
Update: As of 5pm, 8-10 people has turned into about 40+ people waiting outside the AT&T store near me.
pardon a dumb question, but couldn't they have opted to make it compatible with *both* 2.5G *and* 3G, the way 802.11 cards are now compatible with a, b, g and n versions?
Or would that require 2 separate bits of hardware to do, making it heavier/clunkier still?
iPhone Line Report: I drove by the local Cingular/AT&T store a little while ago in a suburb of Detroit; about 8-10 people were lined up.
Interestingly, they also decided to finally replace the Cingular logo on the awning with the AT&T logo *today*, which makes sense--the iPhone is also being used as part of the "official" company name transition.
On the lighter side: iPhone vs. Paris Hilton - Hype Smackdown:
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/06/28/hype-smackdown-iphone-v-paris-hilton/
Yofal--the CompUSA SWAS's were actually quite successful, but only because they were done properly. The failed versions you're thinking of were the ones done at Circuit City, etc, where it was just a smattering of systems lost in a sea of crap.
Hard to tell from that pic which one BB is gonna more closely resemble.
How about simply calling the mini-tower "the Mac"?
After all, we have the Mac mini in the low market, the Mac Pro for the high market, the MacBook and MacBook Pro for the notebook markets, and the iMac for the "headed" market.
Strip away all the prefixes and suffixes for a model smack in the middle--the Mac.
So, is it too early to speculate on what might be added to iPhone Rev. B?
Here's a list from Gizmodo of features missing in the first version:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/what-the-iphone-doesnt-have-272571.php
• 3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
• GPS
• A real keyboard
• Removable battery
• Expandable Storage
• Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)
• Songs as Ringtones
• Games
• Any flash support
• Instant Messaging
• Picture messages (MMS)
• Video recording
• Voice recognition or voice dialing
• Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
• One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)
3G will show up eventually, no doubt; Jobs has said as much.
The keyboard is obviously not gonna happen, since that's contrary to the whole design and intent. On the other hand, I could easily see a 3rd-party come up with a small "clip-on" physical keyboard which plugs into the bottom for those who simply can't handle the virtual keyboard.
The battery probably won't change; they're following the same path as the iPod, and that's worked out pretty well. Removable battery probably = thicker/bulkier iPhone.
Personally, I have no problem with the lack of music ringtones; I find them incredibly irritating. Still, this *is* an odd thing to disallow considering that it's an iPod (as well as the recent addition of DRM-free music on iTunes).
Dunno about the rest.
April 27, 2003.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Forget about the first iPhone mugging or car crash, these guys are laying official odds about the first iTrampling:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/070625_iphone_future.html
"BetUS.com figures the odds are 20-1 that someone will get trampled while scrambling to snag one June 29. The site has also put odds on how long the batteries will last and whether the devices will be recalled."
Existing phone numbers transferable to AT&T through iTunes:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/06/26/existing_phone_numbers_transferable_to_att_through_itu...
Is this a big deal? I've only owned 1 cellphone in my life, so I've never experienced the whole 'switch to a different phone/carrier' thing--is it usually that much of a headache?
KCMW--they didn't "put their free speech in my mouth"; just about all of the political/activist online petition links work that way (regardless of ideology). If you're on the mailing list, the link in the email to the petition is specific to your individual information; it fills in your name & address automatically, but you still have to actually click the "SIGN" button to have your name added.
The mistake I made was posting the customized link instead of the base link, which has blanks for the name & address fields.
When I said "that isn't right!" I was talking about my own stupidity in posting the wrong link, not for anything they did; if I worded it confusingly, I apologize.
On the other hand, my name, address and political leanings are hardly a secret, so I'm not too concerned about the address being out there.
Coreguy--I didn't sign it--I just clicked the automatic link from the email!
Ut-oh...did it automatically fill in my info?? That's not right!
Oh crud...looks like it did; here's what the link should've been:
http://actforchange.workingassets.com/campaign/iphone
Any way of editing my last post past the 15-minute limit??