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Well, since you've got your bib on ...
Impact of channel draining?
http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/06/02/daily63.html?ana=yfcpc
Seems to me this is entirely attributable to Apple's intentional supply-constraining activities draining the supply channel.
How quickly will they have sufficient volume flowing not only to meet pent-up demand, but to re-fill the channel?
Yep, which is exactly
... why I figured all along we'd see a divergence of fully integrated, fully mutually compatible OSes. I suspect there has been a long-standing internal debate over how to handle this, and it looks like they've made a mid-course correction.
"How do you manage the transition ..."
"How do you manage the transition from the subscription revenue model -
justified solely on the basis those OS upgrades, in my memory, to charging for iPhone OS upgrades?"
No transition to manage. The subscription model is attached to access to ATT's mobile wireless infrastructure and usage. Any charges for OS upgrades would be handled just like every other software purchase and upgrade -- via the new App Store.
If Apple worked up a deal with an internet access provider to sell you a PC for $300 or $400 less than it would cost straight up, in exchange for a 2-Yr broadband service agreement (with, say, ATT or Comcast), would anyone think it somehow unreasonable or unfair for Apple to charge for OS upgrades independently? Why would anyone who signed up for such a deal believe themselves entitled to the latest major OS upgrade for free, for the life of the PC?
If you buy a phone with iPhone Leopard OS X, and a year later Apple releases a new major upgrade, say iPhone Lynx OS X, which might contain new features, and Apple chose to charge for the upgrade, nobody would be forced to buy it. Just as a lot of people are happy to run Tiger on their current desktops, I would assume those who wouldn't want to shell out for that next upgrade would just keep on keepin' on with the old OS.
I, for one, wouldn't mind paying $79 or even $99 for a major OS upgrade to my (future) iPhone. Let's face it, if I'm looking at my costs for a 2-yr period, I've got $400 for the phone, $2,400 for the ATT service plan (assuming the $99/mo plan), so I start at $2,800 base. Allocating another $100 for tantalizing miscellaneous software and $100 for an OS upgrade (assuming equally tantalizing new features), hardly seems unreasonable to me.
Then again, I doubt what I find reasonable would match up with the average customer/user.
OTOH, if Apple is EVER going to be able to charge for the substantial software engineering resources it puts into future development of the iPhone OS, it will never get easier to make that announcement or invoke that plan.
Not saying they're going to do this, but I would be shocked if they haven't given serious deliberation to it. And I wouldn't be surprised in the least if that was one of the announcements coming next week.
It's also possible that Apple elects to make the upgrades free for iPhones, but charges for the iPod Touch. After all, it's already established a charge for a firmware upgrade for the Touch.
Then again ... Apple is in a bit of a Google box here, and that Google box looks fairly similar to the box Microsoft put Netscape in with the free Internet Explorer attack. Google uses its dominant market position in search to subsidize its phone OS costs and give that away for free, forcing Apple to choose between eating the entire cost of phone development, or facing a market disadvantage. Obviously, Apple can try and recover those costs by bundling them into the hardware pricing and raising that, rather than charging separately. But the result is the same. Either the iPhone pricing is disadvantaged relative to the gPhone licensed phones, or the iPhone OS is disadvantaged.
We are not that far away from serious engagement in an epic battle between Apple and Google in the mobile space. Let's see how Apple positions itself. Could Apple wind up one day in the future petitioning the Justice Department to help it level the playing field? That's not an unrealistic possibility, IMO.
"Sounds like those roads diverge"
Hmmm. Quite a while back I mused about this and the reaction was a fairly universal thumbs down. Will the reaction be the same if Apple goes this route with the idea emanating from god-Steve?
Would two versions of the OS be entirely for technical reasons? Anyone think Apple is planning to begin charging for major upgrades to OSX iPhone in the same way it charges for upgrades on the desktop? I suspect with the introduction of iPhone Rev. B / v.2 will mark the point where iPhone unit sales volume begins to pull away from PC unit sales. Apple already has begun to lay the groundwork for charging for OS upgrades on iPhone. It's not hard to imagine a $79 or $99 OS upgrade annually as Apple will be able to add attractive new features or bundled software with each upgrade sufficient to make the installed base envious. I suspect we are inside of 24 months from an installed base of 50 million, give or take. Which is roughly double the PC installed base at the time Leopard was released, which I believe added $250+mm in high margin revenue.
And of course that creates additional upgrade incentive ... a "discount" on simply replacing the old phone rather than paying for the upgrade to the old one.
One other item, not much discussed these days ... control of installation. I'm fairly certain if Apple locked down OS installation disks with unique serials, we'd find out there are a great many more upgrade OS installations than there are unit sales. I'd guess the number is at least double. Given the greater control on the iPhone, I suspect the upgrade sales/revenue would be even greater relative to the PC OS.
BTW ... while the roads diverge, it seems to me they're setting up the overhauled .Mac as the bridge between your "home base" computing and your mobile computing. .Mac sales have to be extremely high margin in nature. And it wouldn't take much to grow them exponentially, given the smallish starting number.
I wonder how many analysts have factored these two "new" revenue streams into their models?
More signs of .Mac overhaul
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/06/03/if-mac-is-down-could-me-be-far-behind/?
Brazilian market
Some days we miss more than others. Today, with that post, I miss dilleet. I'm certain he would have shared a Brazilian story or two, and told us of carting down a Powerbook or two for re-sale to finance the trip.
RIP, dilleet.
"much less profitable market of sub-$1000 computers"
This characterization rests on the assumption that the value to Apple comes solely from the initial sale of the PC. Nothing could be further from reality. The value to Apple comes from ALL revenue derived from each CUSTOMER.
That includes ALL revenue at time of sale of the PC (software, peripherals, extended warranties, etc), AND all additional sales to that customer over the life of the PC.
Take a $1,200 iMac. Gross profit on that is roughly $350.
Figure it lasts 4 years, during which the owner buys an AppleCare policy, subscribes to .Mac, updates the OS at 18 month intervals, buys iLife every other year, buys iWork every other year, buys a Time Capsule (or AirPort base station or Express), and buys other doo-dads of maybe $100 a year. Total = $1,630. Gross profit on that is roughly $1,100-$1,200 ... and that's before you consider the potential for increased sales of iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs, iTunes store sales, etc., etc. Which of course is where the REAL margin is, and where the REAL money is made.
BTW, if you disagree with sinclap (or anyone else), please make your case on the merits and substance and skip the personal attacks.
"Are these guys compiler gurus, for example?"
At more than $2 million per employee, one would hope they're gurus of something!
Apple goes shopping
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/23/apple-buys-pasemi-tech-ebiz-cz_eb_0422apple.html
As important as the acquisition, may be what the reported negotiations tell us about possible succession. If the reports are true, and it was Jobs and Fadell negotiating the deal, it looks like Fadell may be leapfrogging Tim Cook in Jobs' eyes.
As for the strategic ramifications, if this is a move to keep Apple's options open and provide negotiating leverage with Intel, it's one thing. If this signals Apple is going to build the future of its mobile handheld platform on another proprietary architecture, it is something else altogether.
Few would argue that the move to Intel architecture has been a major positive for Apple. Or that the decision to pursue the proprietary architecture of the PowerPC partnership was a serious drag on the platform for many years. I suspect that fewer still would argue if Apple elects to go back down the path of proprietary architecture, it will result in higher design and production costs, higher product costs, and that the risk of a repeat of the dog-days of the PowerPC performance gap would be a significant and legitimate concern.
And no doubt
... Apple has some punitive conditions in its contract with whomever is manufacturing those boards, if say, sizable numbers of them were to make their way into the black/grey market, or if the proprietary design got "borrowed" for manufacture of a clone-like board.
Still, makes you wonder if some enterprising chasis designer isn't going to have a go at designing a chasis to fit those proprietary boards, in hopes a leak might spring in the manufacturing facility.
Hard to believe Apple isn't aware of the latent demand for the mythical mid-range non-AIO desktop, and is moving at its own pace to capitalize and cash in on it. Or is that just wishful thinking?
An Apple blind spot
... that desperately needs attention ...
Somewhere a while back I made reference to the real estate industry's primary web-based tool having been captured by Microsoft and turned into an MS IE only portal/engine/tool. And that considering the size of the real estate industry and the number of brokers who run "independent" operations and/or maintain dual home offices, this was choking off and foreclosing (pun intended?) millions of units of potential sales.
Regrettably I can now add the medical industry to that list. A consortium of major insurers (headlined by United Healthcare, Aetna and others) have joined to create a single major portal for web-based insurance filing and information access. And when it goes live sometime in the next few weeks, it will be IE 5.5 or higher only. Everyone else is locked out. Worse, the existing platform will be shuttered immediately. That means the two medical offices I've successfully transitioned to the Macintosh platform in the past 9 months, are going to wind up stranded high and dry. Needless to say, getting cut off from these services creates a problem of enormous gravity for them -- so much so that they will have to return to the Windows platforms if this problem isn't solved.
Apple, of course, had no problem at all bragging about why medical offices should consider the Macintosh platform "superior", nor did it hesitate to take the $$ when these offices made the switch. Apple is aware that like the real estate industry, medical offices are run nearly entirely on top of a single practice management application - the be-all and end-all of medical practices which accept any form of insurance. Apple is also aware that without platform access to these insurer portals, the Macintosh platform is essentially worthless to the average medical office. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, Apple apparently invests nothing or next to nothing in proactively protecting the viability of the Mac platform for these medical practices by building relationships with the major insurance companies and doing what is necessary to have them construct their major portals and engines for compatibility with non IE platforms.
To put it mildly, that is a mistake. One I hope someone at Apple is able to rectify at some point in the very near future. Steve Jobs is the best salesman in the industry. If he could sell the music, tv and movie industries on digital distribution, I'm quite certain if he decided it was an important priority, by force of personality and effort, he could re-open the large swaths of small business and enterprise that are choking off the Macintosh platform.
Or ... even if he was unsuccessful in that effort, he could sure as heck make some P.R. noise about the potential of the back-door deals Microsoft almost certainly made to get IE exclusivity, and the almost certain collusion and violation of Anti-Trust laws that occurred in the process of getting that exclusivity and lockout of other platforms, and thus tapping the rubric of politics and public policy as a lever.
There is more to championing a platform than obsessing over case design and jumping on stage to do the big ta-da at semi-annual trade shows. Apple needs to do better. It can do better. I hope it will do better. Go. Apple. Go.
P.S. I have done my part on behalf of two offices, to make known our objections, and there are apparently a great many Windows-based offices who are kicking and screaming b/c they prefer to use Firefox, Mozilla or other alternative browser. I doubt, however, without a major PR kick from Apple and UNIX/Linux vendors, and the investment of their resources and clout, that this will be overhauled on any sort of reasonable time frame. I have requested a call from (the new insurance industry consortium's) Legal dept., and expect to have a discussion with them about the P.R. nightmare and customer backlash that can result when victims of anti-competitive and discriminatory corporate behavior become sufficiently agitated to band together and take action pushing back. Something tells me it will be a lively and animated discourse. I will report back when the dust settles. In the meantime any lurkers with means to get this up the Cupertino flagpole, there is great opportunity for Apple in real estate and medical. The heart of the medical business is ginormous databases. It virtually begs for UNIX. And obviously has great potential theoretically for Mac OS X. Apple can open the door to that gold mine if, and only if, it steps up to the plate on using whatever means necessary to get this new insurance consortium tool built for cross-platform compatibility.
p.p.s. In a particularly cruel irony, the highest level managers in the project with whom I was able to get access, claim that the IE only decision was because no other browser but IE was capable of meeting the high level of security necessary for the transmission of patient data in order to meet federal privacy requirements. Arrggghhh. Needless to say, I had to call b.s. on that.
Tex - I can confirm
There are networking bugs in Time Capsule (two firmware updates still haven't managed to squash them) and Leopard sporting iMac models. Unsure whether the issue has anything to do with the iMac's firmware or whether it's simply a Leopard problem that manifests on other machines.
Judging from the relatively rapid release of the Time Capsule updates, Apple is well aware of the problem there and hard at work on a solution. I'm grateful to know via the NYC schools article that Apple has acknowledged and is hard at work on the Leopard/iMac issue.
Marlins new stadium ...
"That should be a tremendous boost to the team and fans."
We'll see. 2011 is still quite a ways off. A larger percentage of fans filling seats at the current stadium come from Broward County and suburbs that actually are much closer to that stadium. For many of them, the move will be a deal-breaker. The hope is, the team will make its real money from selling corporate boxes and with the stadium and team now proprietary to "Miami", they can better sell to Miami corporate interests. (Part of the deal for the stadium is that the team will change its name from Florida Marlins to Miami Marlins). Of course the flip side is that now if you're from Ft. Lauderdale or Palm Beach, it isn't your team any more. That means about 1/2 the gold coast population goes adios, in terms of team identity.
As for what it means to the team, it's hard to say. The players are at the mercy of the ownership. Not just for their paychecks and the competitiveness of their roster, but for the level and sort of support they enjoy in the community. And in that regard, a new stadium won't change anything. The public doesn't like the owner or his son-in-law President. They are, to say the least, unpopular. The GM is first rate. The players themselves have been the best thing about the franchise, especially in the lean years. The GM is not just a whiz at spotting talent and doing an amazing amount with no money, but he's even managed to get "quality" people characteristics in his players. Good, decent, likable, standup guys, for the most part. The kind of kids you really want to root for.
On the flip side, I sense more than a bit of just-beneath-the-surface distaste for the idea of 1/2 billion dollar taxpayer handout to a billionaire and a bunch of multi-millionaire employees, in the nation's 2nd most impoverished city. Particularly in that city, it's a rather embarrassing screw job for taxpayers and society, generally. Given the economic strife and challenges coming down the pike, I suspect that sentiment is only going to worsen, and I wonder if there isn't going to be an eventual backlash of sorts.
Girardi was fully aware
of the roster dismantling when he signed onto the job. The Marlins gave him the full and complete info before he signed. So the "bad attitude" didn't have anything to do with the dismantling.
Here's some of the detail I wrote up at the time (including the moves Girardi was trying to force, but lost out on) ...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=13087989
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=13088883
"he knows the difference between coaching ..."
Girardi's problem with the Marlins had nothing to do with his coaching abilities, or even his relationships with his players. True, he had alienated several players. But he hadn't lost the clubhouse. (Although to be fair, he was on his way, and would have eventually gotten to that point had he not changed).
His real problem was three-fold: his extremely poor abilities in the talent/personnel evaluation department, his arrogance in trying to interfere in those matters and force his beliefs down the throats of others, and his blindness to his deficiencies in that department coupled with his stubbornness in fighting to have his way.
I believe some time back I chronicled in detail the specific player/personnel/roster decisions that Girardi wanted. They were atrocious. Still, he tried to bull his way past the GM, past the VP of baseball operations, and past the President of the organization. You may recall Girardi's tantrum and attitude problems when the owner backed the GM and execs and forced Girardi to abide by their decisions.
Lucky for him, that's what happened. Because had he been permitted to make his personnel and roster moves, the Marlins probably would have produced a record with 30-40 fewer wins and he wouldn't have won manager of the year and nobody would think he was a "genius" for having gotten so many wins out of a bargain basement roster of inexperienced players.
I agree with you that Girardi will do fine, at least for this year, b/c in NY, he won't dare fight with Cashman or the front office, and there isn't much in the way of talent evaluation required. Not to mention, the Yankee players are vets who will stop him long before he can work up a head of steam in the control-freak department if/when he tries. But if Cashman goes, look for Girardi to try and bull his way into "control" of player/personnel matters. And if he does, there will be trouble. He's a controlling personality (in the extreme), he doesn't ever admit a mistake, he's blind to his inadequacies, and he's arrogant in dealing with others when he thinks he's right (even if he's not). That old phrase: "often wrong, never in doubt" has at least some application with him.
Nice find Bootz
That's some pretty interesting fine print! OTOH ... how many photographs with any real value are going to get posted to the Adobe "Flickr" world, and how is Adobe going to sort through, find them, market them and sell them.
Something tells me Getty Images isn't exactly quaking at the thought, LOL!!
"There's a population ..."
And exactly what is it that you envision Adobe is going to offer those folks that they can't already find at Flickr or any of the literally dozens of alternatives, for which it could somehow convince them they should pay?
"storage on a subscription basis"
Yikes. If that's the plan, then it sounds like the beginning of a giant flush. Storage is a commodity. There's no margin in it. And if the margins are supposed to be created by differentiating commodity storage by offering "superior services", exactly where does that end?
If this is merely Adobe trying to find a way to stop an exodus of customers to Flickr, iPhoto+.Mac, etc., it strikes me as a move that would be akin to Apple deciding it was losing some PC customers to $399 Dell boxes and shifting their PC product line down-market to prevent the losses.
Maybe this is just the best alternative from among an unappetizing list.
"he is saying there is a chance"
Not really. His claim was concrete and specific -- that he turned A-Rod on to a supplier and that afterward the supplier told him A-Rod had bought into program. Canseco's either straight out lying (for dough), or he's telling the truth (for dough). There isn't much middle ground. If you meant that YOU think "there is a chance", then I agree. And agree that at this point, we don't have any way of knowing.
Canseco is far from what you'd call a "reliable source." He's a congenital exaggerator. He'll do most anything for $$. Cheesy reality TV shows. Blackmailing guys on which he has the goods (yes, I believe both his claims of firsthand assistance to Magglio Ordonez, as well as the claim of his having tried to convince Ordonez to join him in putting up money for a movie project in exchange for Canseco leaving Ordonez out of the first book). Etc. And yes, I believe there was some kind of "arrangement" between Clemens and Canseco in which Canseco traded his affidavit claiming Clemens wasn't at his pool party for something of value. (Ironically, by then his book had already gone to press with Canseco's statements that while he'd never seen Roger "do the deed" with his own eyes, he believed Clemens was on the juice without a doubt).
At this point, ironically, I think Canseco is right about one thing ... it will be interesting to see how A-Rod responds. Canseco appears to be baiting him, trying to draw him into a specific denial, trying to get him to elevate things and directly challenge the validity of Canseco's claim by saying it's a lie.
Is Canseco bluffing? Is "Max" just a figment, a bald-faced lie? If not, if there really is a "Max", and if "Max" really did supply A-Rod, then I find it hard to believe Canseco hasn't leveraged his way into a "business discussion" with "Max".
It would be a bit of a high-wire act, but if he convinced "Max" that he had enough good on him to out him and ruin whatever future he had dealing 'roids, not to mention expose him to potential law enforcement ramifications, without "Max" getting a penny for the outing, then he could propose the alternative -- if you're going to get outed, then out yourself in a book deal or National Enquirer deal, or something to make $$ from it.
Even if A-Rod only met with "Max" and never bought from him, nor used, were "Max" to be real, and his identity revealed, and some contextual facts be verified, that would put A-Rod in a tight spot, and there would be enough smoke there to cause a pretty big media stir.
BTW ... doesn't feel a bit like deja vu all over again (as Yogi would say), that we've got all these reporters who've spent the last year saying "gosh, in retrospect, we really should have seen all the obvious signs and at least looked into things more and asked more questions ... we're sorry, we promise from here on out we'll never be so naive, so blind, and that we've wised up and will ask the questions and do the legwork to find out when we see something suspicious", YET we've got Albert Pujols with an injury assessment that practically screams STEROIDS, and not a single question, comment or observation??!!!
Seriously, could the red flags be any more obvious? The physical bulk-up and shape. The fact that his personal trainer was also the personal trainer to Jason Grimsley and pipelined Grimsley to the hGH and 'roids. The release of his name in the initial Mitchell Report rumor, only to have it pulled back. And now he manifests with a high-grade tear of the ulnar collateral ligament, bone spurs, and arthritis in the elbow joint -- a classic outcome of over-roided joint musculature? And not a question posed in the baseball media about how a 1st baseman winds up with this kind of injury? We're talking about THE least demanding position on the diamond.
Can anyone name a single 1st baseman who's manifested with this injury?
precursor to ... some larger strategy
OK ... what's the strategy? Seriously, I'm having a hard time envisioning. Are they aiming to expand the customer base? Are they looking to port the existing customer base from local machine to WAN? Are they thinking they'll be able to give it away free for a while, suck users in, then start charging in the belief once they're in, they'll pay to stay instead of bolting?
You've had an over-the-horizon view on web-based apps for years now. I suspect you can see something from your vantage point, I'm blind to. Do tell!
It begins ... ???!!!
Okey dokie, the brain cells required to understand Adobe's strategy on this one are MIA this morning. What exactly is the business plan here?!!
For that matter, what is the gameplan and business plan for the Adobe Express deal Bootz just posted?
I am clearly ... confusigated, bewildered, befuddled. And in need of some morning joe?
"even goes so far ..."
Is there a particular reason you think Mike Wallace qualifies for some sort of immunity from anyone speaking about it? It's perfectly reasonable to talk about this stuff in the larger context. In fact, insisting on referring to discussing the social context and usage outside baseball would be like baseball tackling the cocaine problem of the 80s without taking note of the larger context.
Again, looks like more doping apologia trying to attack the messenger.
By all means, attack and denigrate the messenger
... rather than the message. I'd love to hear what you've got to say about Dale Murphy. Please ... let us know.
Ars: "A true competitor arrives"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080324-safari-3-1-on-windows-a-true-competitor-arrives.html
"We put the Safari 3 beta on Windows through the wringer last summer, and we weren't too terribly impressed. The problems were significant, such that we'd have a hard time recommending the browser to any Windows user. Have things improved? Wow, have they"
iWork on Windows
Tex, I like the direction you're thinking, and your speculation on Safari as trojan horse for Cocoa on Win is interesting.
But I find it hard to believe big corporate installs would consider swapping out the mission-critical MS Office suite for Apple's iWork, which is, frankly, an inferior product (Keynote is debatable, Pages and Numbers are not), just to save a few bucks. Ditto Outlook, especially given Apple's failure to integrate in any reasonable or sensible way, their mail, calendar and
IMO, if they were going to make that leap, they'd be looking not to Apple, but to Google and the web-apps. That's where the real competitive pressure will come from, IMO. I regard iWork as more gimmick for hard-core Macheads than serious entry in the space.
Clearly Apple's energies have been directed to the iPhone platform and the core OS. Frankly, it's hard to see the roadmap for web services (.Mac), iWork and iLife. Doesn't seem to be much vision or strategy there.
All-u-can-eat coming to the menu?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b55a0d64-f523-11dc-a21b-000077b07658.html
Seems reasonable/sensible to me too
But my question wasn't whether it was reasonable/sensible in my own eyes, rather whether there wouldn't be some whining from those who feel slighted b/c they didn't make the cut.
Tex - workout data
It would be uploaded to Nike's website and be there in real time for you the second you wanted to analyze your workout or review your log at any PC terminal, anywhere. No need to carry anything.
All your iPhone apps are belong to us!
Maybe it's the right move for now, but the lockdown seems kinda Bushian -- you will sacrifice your freedom in order to guarantee your security.
Q:"I think the fact that Apple is gonna be the exclusive distributor for these apps reaises questions about monopolies. What if a dev doesn't want to distribute through the AppStore?"
Jobs: "Well, they won't be able to. But we think it'll be fine."
I feel a faint flashback to Jobs v. 1.0 and the ill-fated lockdown of the Mac OS in the 80s. Might Google eventually be to the iPhone OS what Microsoft was to MacOS?
"Jobs said"
Hmmm. Posting this because you think even by Jobsian standards it's such a whopper people are going to laugh? Is the audience he's trying to con the developers, or the general public? Funny the reference to the music industry, which is fuming at the fact Apple negotiated a deal with them that left Apple with so much more of the profit.
How long do you think it will be ...
"During the beta iPhone SDK program, a limited number of developers will be accepted into Apple’s new iPhone Developer Program and offered the ability to get code onto iPhones for testing."
How long do you figure it will be before developers who are "rejected" by Apple and not allowed to be among the "limited number of developers" start bitching and backbiting? I'm sure Apple's planned for this eventuality and will be ready with damage control p.r., but ...
The App Store
Finally!
I can't think of any reason why Apple wouldn't eventually branch the store into two sections: one for iPhone apps and one for desktop apps. What if Apple managed to attract even 20%-25% of 3rd party developer apps sold to the OS X desktop? That would be big, big bucks. And the margins would be obscenely large.
This is 1,000 times more important than the MacBook Air.
It's gonna be a looooong 4 months
"We're going to ship this to every iPhone customer in June"
So ... presumably Jobs will unveil the new 3G iPhone w/OS 2.0 on June 10 at the WWDC keynote, shipping June 30.
With the early adopters out of the way, the economy sliding into oblivion, and this stuff on the way, I can't imagine who would want to be buying iPhones in calendar Q2.
"Maybe that means nothing to you"
C'mon now Annie. I never said any such thing. I merely gave the factual context for exactly how much weight it carries. And pointed out that your experience was not mutually exclusive with what the analysts have said, or the collapse of the stock price.
As for the "it speaks volumes to me" ... I can only say, me too Annie! It tells me that Apple continues to be THE most outstanding retailer in the world, and, as far as I'm concerned the best brand in the world too.
And as someone who argued in favor of Apple getting into the retail business even before they did (which you might recall was a very unpopular position back then), it makes me very, very glad Jobs took that gamble. In fact, I think it's the boldest gamble he's taken in the last decade since his return to the company. Had it not worked, the blowback and criticism he would have endured would have been far worse than the Cube the ill-fated education software acquisition or any of the other missteps. So I give him big props for that, and for having recruited Ron Johnson to run the show -- what an incredible hiring that was.
I can't recall ever having had anything but kudos for Apple's bricks and mortar real estate (or their online store).
yofal - how's this for goin' easy?
My overarching reaction to the interview was a reminder that if there's one thing that defines Steve Jobs, it's that he's a marketer par excellence. And that Steve Wozniak was right in saying Jobs would have been a success without Woz, or even without having anything to do with the PC industry. Had he gone into political consulting, for example, I suspect he'd have turned out to be among the most legendary spinmeisters that biz has ever seen. And that's sayin' something.
My secondary reaction was that it would be kinda fun to take the piece and run it through the de-spinner.
"the economy may be slowing elsewhere ..."
"my point is the economy may be slowing down elsewhere but not in Appleland."
It is a dangerous game to take extremely limited anecdotal experience and extrapolate.
For Q4 '07, Apple retail stores produced 20.1% of Revenue. As the number of Apple retail stores has grown over time, this figure has risen steadily. Yet in Q1 '08, retail stores took a sudden and pronounced drop, accounting for 17.7% of Revenue. Those numbers are analyst generated estimates, they're Apple's numbers from their SEC filings.
"Some of these analysts who are taking Apple's numbers down need to visit a store. No slow down there."
Similarly, it's a dangerous game to conclude on the basis of very limited anecdotal evidence that a 40% haircut in a stock would happen without any deceleration in the business. It's fashionable to declare analysts right-on when the say what we want to hear, and denounce them as bumbling fools when they say what we don't want to hear.
It may very well be the case that when we get Apple's numbers for the current quarter in mid-April, that the Apple retail stores will have seen no slow down in the rates of growth they have seen on a same store basis. Apple continues to evolve the stores, create new and better services, and increase efficiencies that should result in ever greater sales per square foot. But at less than 20% of Apple's business, it's perfectly possible that the retail outfits are seeing no slowdown, but that there is a slowdown in the other 80% of the business.
I don't recall any analysts saying the less than 20% of Revenue coming from retail stores, specifically, was falling, but rather that overall Revenue and sales in certain segments had decelerated. I don't think anyone has disputed the numerous reports from the supply chain that indicate Apple has lowered its component order sizes. Which is about as clear a sign as can be had that sales have slowed.
Doesn't mean Apple won't see great growth in the Mac business, or in any particular segment of the business, but it strikes me as a long-odds gambit to bet that there hasn't already been a slowdown, and that Apple is somehow unaffected by the broader economy. To the contrary, I believe Peter Oppenheimer stated in fairly clear and unequivocal terms in the most recent analyst presentation that Apple will be affected.
"I wonder how this will catch on"
Seems to me an iPod is an unnecessary step in the process. Nike wants you to keep your workout data in their database, viewed and analyzed through their web app, not on your local PC on an independent app.
So the question becomes, how to best get workout data from the machine in the gym, to the Nike web app. For now, maybe it's to download the data to an iPod, schlepp the iPod back to a PC, upload to the PC, then upload to the Nike site. But ultimately, the sensible way for this to happen is for the data to uploaded via wi-fi chip in the exercise machine through the gym's wi-fi and straight to Nike.
Maybe using the iPod franchise as a way to reach out to the iPod owner universe is a sensible way to capture share, but once that's done, there's no real reason Nike doesn't eventually streamline and cut Apple out of the loop.
Make or break
The core of Microsoft's future?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-first-look-microsoft-office-live-workspaces-goes-public.html
There he goes again
Woz flaps his trap some more ...
On the iPhone:
"To tell you the truth I was really disappointed when the iPhone was introduced ..."
On Apple's excuse for why it chose EDGE rather than 3G:
"I don't understand why it would be a battery issue - I get as much life on my 3G phones as I get on my non-3G phones."
On the MacBook Air:
"I don't think it's going to be a hit."
On the aTV 24-hr rental limit:
"My life is way too global and unpredictable for that [24-hour time limit]"
On whether his criticisms have gotten him flack from El Jobso:
He said Jobs "very seldom" calls him to complain about something he has said about Apple in public.
... SO FAR.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/woz-finds-flaws-in-apples-latest-offerings/2008/03/03/1204402340251.html?page=fullpage