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Apple managed to deal with some "gripes" from 10.5, I guess some were dismayed by the dock and menu bar....
http://www.macworld.com/article/131902/2008/02/1052applelistens.html
Don't take it so hard Bootz, we're all waiting for a bus, it's just that I know what time mine will arrive, while most wait for a random schedule
Thanks Annie
I am lurking but somehow any comments of mine on this board's subject matter seems of little import and these days I am fighting profound sadness and not quite sure my "negativity will pull me through"
tuesday 'afternoon' on wall st
OK, I'm finally sold,,,,,,
WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 16.02
GADGETS : WIRELESS
The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
By Fred Vogelstein 01.09.08 | 9:00 PM
Photo: Landov
The demo was not going well.
Again.
It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."
The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting.
The ramifications were serious. The iPhone was to be the centerpiece of Apple's annual Macworld convention, set to take place in just a few months. Since his return to Apple in 1997, Jobs had used the event as a showcase to launch his biggest products, and Apple-watchers were expecting another dramatic announcement. Jobs had already admitted that Leopard — the new version of Apple's operating system — would be delayed. If the iPhone wasn't ready in time, Macworld would be a dud, Jobs' critics would pounce, and Apple's stock price could suffer.
This 4.8-ounce sliver of glass and aluminum is an explosive device that has forever changed the mobile-phone business, wresting power from carriers and giving it to manufacturers, developers, and consumers.
And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines.
For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.
But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone's brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America's big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone "the best device I have ever seen." (Details of this and other key moments in the making of the iPhone were provided by people with knowledge of the events. Apple and AT&T would not discuss these meetings or the specific terms of the relationship.)
Six months later, on June 29, 2007, the iPhone went on sale. At press time, analysts were speculating that customers would snap up about 3 million units by the end of 2007, making it the fastest-selling smartphone of all time. It is also arguably Apple's most profitable device. The company nets an estimated $80 for every $399 iPhone it sells, and that's not counting the $240 it makes from every two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco.
But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and AT&T, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers' proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. "The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave," says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.
In 2002, shortly after the first iPod was released, Jobs started thinking about developing a phone. He saw millions of Americans lugging separate phones, BlackBerrys, and — now — MP3 players; naturally, consumers would prefer just one device. He also saw a future in which cell phones and mobile email devices would amass ever more features, eventually challenging the iPod's dominance as a music player. To protect his new product line, Jobs knew he would eventually need to venture into the wireless world.
If the idea was obvious, so were the obstacles. Data networks were sluggish and not ready for a full-blown handheld Internet device. An iPhone would require Apple to create a completely new operating system; the iPod's OS wasn't sophisticated enough to manage complicated networking or graphics, and even a scaled-down version of OS X would be too much for a cell phone chip to handle. Apple would be facing strong competition, too: In 2003, consumers had flocked to the Palm Treo 600, which merged a phone, PDA, and BlackBerry into one slick package. That proved there was demand for a so-called convergence device, but it also raised the bar for Apple's engineers.
Then there were the wireless carriers. Jobs knew they dictated what to build and how to build it, and that they treated the hardware as little more than a vehicle to get users onto their networks. Jobs, a notorious control freak himself, wasn't about to let a group of suits — whom he would later call "orifices" — tell him how to design his phone.
By 2004 Apple's iPod business had become more important, and more vulnerable, than ever. The iPod accounted for 16 percent of company revenue, but with 3G phones gaining popularity, Wi-Fi phones coming soon, the price of storage plummeting, and rival music stores proliferating, its long-term position as the dominant music device seemed at risk.
So that summer, while he publicly denied he would build an Apple phone, Jobs was working on his entry into the mobile phone industry. In an effort to bypass the carriers, he approached Motorola. It seemed like an easy fix: The handset maker had released the wildly popular RAZR, and Jobs knew Ed Zander, Motorola's CEO at the time, from Zander's days as an executive at Sun Microsystems. A deal would allow Apple to concentrate on developing the music software, while Motorola and the carrier, Cingular, could hash out the complicated hardware details.
Of course, Jobs' plan assumed that Motorola would produce a successor worthy of the RAZR, but it soon became clear that wasn't going to happen. The three companies dickered over pretty much everything — how songs would get into the phone, how much music could be stored there, even how each company's name would be displayed. And when the first prototypes showed up at the end of 2004, there was another problem: The gadget itself was ugly.
Jobs unveiled the ROKR in September 2005 with his characteristic aplomb, describing it as "an iPod shuffle on your phone." But Jobs likely knew he had a dud on his hands; consumers, for their part, hated it. The ROKR — which couldn't download music directly and held only 100 songs — quickly came to represent everything that was wrong with the US wireless industry, the spawn of a mess of conflicting interests for whom the consumer was an afterthought. Wired summarized the disappointment on its November 2005 cover: "YOU CALL THIS THE PHONE OF THE FUTURE?"
The Apple Touch
Apple has created two music phones. The ROKR, made with Motorola in 2005, respected the traditional relationships between manufacturers and carriers. The iphone, released last summer, completely overturned them.
ROKR
iPhone
Won't hold more than 100 songs, even if there's memory left.
iTunes Music Store purchases must be synced from a PC.
Clunky interface is sluggish and hard to navigate.
Design screams, "A committee made me."
Can hold about 1,500 songs — as much as its 8-GB drive allows.
iTunes Music Store purchases download wirelessly, directly to the phone.
Just tap and go; no user manual required.
C'mon. Look at it. It's gorgeous.
Even as the ROKR went into production, Jobs was realizing he'd have to build his own phone. In February 2005, he got together with Cingular to discuss a Motorola-free partnership. At the top-secret meeting in a midtown Manhattan hotel, Jobs laid out his plans before a handful of Cingular senior execs, including Sigman. (When AT&T acquired Cingular in December 2006, Sigman remained president of wireless.) Jobs delivered a three-part message to Cingular: Apple had the technology to build something truly revolutionary, "light-years ahead of anything else." Apple was prepared to consider an exclusive arrangement to get that deal done. But Apple was also prepared to buy wireless minutes wholesale and become a de facto carrier itself.
Jobs had reason to be confident. Apple's hardware engineers had spent about a year working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone. Plus, thanks to the release of the ARM11 chip, cell phone processors were finally fast and efficient enough to power a device that combined the functionality of a phone, a computer, and an iPod. And wireless minutes had become cheap enough that Apple could resell them to customers; companies like Virgin were already doing so.
Sigman and his team were immediately taken with the notion of the iPhone. Cingular's strategy, like that of the other carriers, called for consumers to use their mobile phones more and more for Web access. The voice business was fading; price wars had slashed margins. The iPhone, with its promised ability to download music and video and to surf the Internet at Wi-Fi speeds, could lead to an increase in the number of data customers. And data, not voice, was where profit margins were lush.
What's more, the Cingular team could see that the wireless business model had to change. The carriers had become accustomed to treating their networks as precious resources, and handsets as worthless commodities. This strategy had served them well. By subsidizing the purchase of cheap phones, carriers made it easier for new customers to sign up — and get roped into long-term contracts that ensured a reliable revenue stream. But wireless access was no longer a luxury; it had become a necessity. The greatest challenge facing the carriers wasn't finding brand-new consumers but stealing them from one another. Simply bribing customers with cheap handsets wasn't going to work. Sigman and his team wanted to offer must-have devices that weren't available on any other network. Who better to create one than Jobs?
For Cingular, Apple's ambitions were both tantalizing and nerve-racking. A cozy relationship with the maker of the iPod would bring sex appeal to the company's brand. And some other carrier was sure to sign with Jobs if Cingular turned him down — Jobs made it clear that he would shop his idea to anyone who would listen. But no carrier had ever given anyone the flexibility and control that Jobs wanted, and Sigman knew he'd have trouble persuading his fellow executives and board members to approve a deal like the one Jobs proposed.
Sigman was right. The negotiations would take more than a year, with Sigman and his team repeatedly wondering if they were ceding too much ground. At one point, Jobs met with some executives from Verizon, who promptly turned him down. It was hard to blame them. For years, carriers had charged customers and suppliers for using and selling services over their proprietary networks. By giving so much control to Jobs, Cingular risked turning its vaunted — and expensive — network into a "dumb pipe," a mere conduit for content rather than the source of that content. Sigman's team made a simple bet: The iPhone would result in a surge of data traffic that would more than make up for any revenue it lost on content deals.
Jobs wouldn't wait for the finer points of the deal to be worked out. Around Thanksgiving of 2005, eight months before a final agreement was signed, he instructed his engineers to work full-speed on the project. And if the negotiations with Cingular were hairy, they were simple compared with the engineering and design challenges Apple faced. For starters, there was the question of what operating system to use. Since 2002, when the idea for an Apple phone was first hatched, mobile chips had grown more capable and could theoretically now support some version of the famous Macintosh OS. But it would need to be radically stripped down and rewritten; an iPhone OS should be only a few hundred megabytes, roughly a 10th the size of OS X.
Before they could start designing the iPhone, Jobs and his top executives had to decide how to solve this problem. Engineers looked carefully at Linux, which had already been rewritten for use on mobile phones, but Jobs refused to use someone else's software. They built a prototype of a phone, embedded on an iPod, that used the clickwheel as a dialer, but it could only select and dial numbers — not surf the Net. So, in early 2006, just as Apple engineers were finishing their yearlong effort to revise OS X to work with Intel chips, Apple began the process of rewriting OS X again for the iPhone.
The conversation about which operating system to use was at least one that all of Apple's top executives were familiar with. They were less prepared to discuss the intricacies of the mobile phone world: things like antenna design, radio-frequency radiation, and network simulations. To ensure the iPhone's tiny antenna could do its job effectively, Apple spent millions buying and assembling special robot-equipped testing rooms. To make sure the iPhone didn't generate too much radiation, Apple built models of human heads — complete with goo to simulate brain density — and measured the effects. To predict the iPhone's performance on a network, Apple engineers bought nearly a dozen server-sized radio-frequency simulators for millions of dollars apiece. Even Apple's experience designing screens for iPods didn't help the company design the iPhone screen, as Jobs discovered while toting a prototype in his pocket: To minimize scratching, the touchscreen needed to be made of glass, not hard plastic like on the iPod. One insider estimates that Apple spent roughly $150 million building the iPhone.
Through it all, Jobs maintained the highest level of secrecy. Internally, the project was known as P2, short for Purple 2 (the abandoned iPod phone was called Purple 1). Teams were split up and scattered across Apple's Cupertino, California, campus. Whenever Apple executives traveled to Cingular, they registered as employees of Infineon, the company Apple was using to make the phone's transmitter. Even the iPhone's hardware and software teams were kept apart: Hardware engineers worked on circuitry that was loaded with fake software, while software engineers worked off circuit boards sitting in wooden boxes. By January 2007, when Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld, only 30 or so of the most senior people on the project had seen it.
The hosannas greeting the iPhone were so overwhelming it was easy to ignore its imperfections. The initial price of $599 was too high (it has been lowered to $399). The phone runs on AT&T's poky EDGE network. Users can't perform email searches or record video. The browser won't run programs written in Java or Flash.
But none of that mattered. The iPhone cracked open the carrier-centric structure of the wireless industry and unlocked a host of benefits for consumers, developers, manufacturers — and potentially the carriers themselves. Consumers get an easy-to-use handheld computer. And, as with the advent of the PC, the iPhone is sparking a wave of development that will make it even more powerful. In February, Jobs will release a developer's kit so that anyone can write programs for the device.
Manufacturers, meanwhile, enjoy new bargaining power over the carriers they've done business with for decades. Carriers, who have seen AT&T eat into their customer bases, are scrambling to find a competitive device, and they appear willing to give up some authority to get it. Manufacturers will have more control over what they produce; users — not the usual cabal of complacent juggernauts — will have more influence over what gets built.
Application developers are poised to gain more opportunities as the wireless carriers begin to show signs of abandoning their walled-garden approach to snaring consumers. T-Mobile and Sprint have signed on as partners with Google's Android, an operating system that makes it easy for independent developers to create mobile apps. Verizon, one of the most intransigent carriers, declared in November that it would open up its network for use with any compatible handset. AT&T made a similar announcement days later. Eventually this will result in a completely new wireless experience, in which applications work on any device and over any network. In time, it will give the wireless world some of the flexibility and functionality of the Internet.
It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and thus on networks, racking up bigger bills and generating more revenue for everyone. According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services — like mobile banking — that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. "We're thinking about the market differently," Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that.
Im here Annie, feelin a lil weak. Storms knocked out juice all day Friday in Scotts Valley, not a good time for the Dilleet to be sitting by his lonesome in the dark with only his mortal thoughts. With faith I am hanging in and will be damned if I am going to miss the Angels 2008 season or a new Mac for 2008
thx folks, all i can say bout pancreatic cancer surgery, is OUCHY. guess i was too far gone for the whipple procedure, so we'll see what kind peace of mind and appreciation of life as we know it, i can conjure up in the next 12 months with some chemo and radiation treatment. the one redeeming quality of these kind of exits is that i know when and can make the time to say, thank you, i love you and ,i'm sorry....
pete, thx, no private account here, send me your email addie to laotom@gmail.com, i should be out of icu by weds.
Thanks you guys, it's out of my hands now, but whatever will be, will be...
My last noodles tip for you is one of the Nasdaq 100's members, FMCN, sounds like a winner
http://everydayfinance.blogspot.com/2007/12/chinese-near-monopoly-focus-media-gets.html
Philips is so cool, I also bought one of their 50 buck DVD players that plays Xvid, Divx and many other common formats. For some reason I discovered today that Divx is offering their converter for free, or at least they were earlier today
http://www.divx.com/dff/index.php
Incidentally I got diagnosed with a tumor in my Pancreas last week and am going in for massive surgery on Monday, after you guys get done praying for Steve's health, save a word or two for me.
Thanks, its been cool dialoguing with you guys over the past few years
Jobs has an executive office CS team which handles all escalated issues & VIP customers, this is common for many tech and other companies. In the past 10 years I have dealt with the Exec CS office at HP, H & R Block and Apple, in all cases the results far exceeded my expectations. One just just has to know which door to knock on, whining and crucifying Apple on their discussion boards really won't get you too far.
In my last experience I sent an email to Jobs@ Apple about a very cheap refurb iMac, 4 years old and out of warranty I had given my sister. The capacitors were leaking, it was an industry wide issue at the time, but this was not a model covered by the recall. Within 24 hours I was directed to an Apple Store where I was given an entry level iMac to replace an eMac that couldn't have been worth more than 100 bucks.
In Block's case the guy supposed to do my taxes went bonkers and never completed and submitted my tax forms on time, they gave me free tax service for 2 years and offered to cover any legal or penalty fees, should they arise. Once again I got this result nearly instantly by calling the highest level of offices at H & R Block
I can only speak from my personal experience in dealing with Apple customer service and those in the executive customer service suite, but they have more than done me right on numerous occasions. I won't report my stories here, as I've gone into them at length before, but Apple has gone far and above the call of duty in seeing to my satisfaction and believe me, I am not an easy guy to please or impress.
If you're nervous take a couple of Xanax and buy a Dell.
"aapl to surge to $250.00 by end of 2008", I'd be surprised if it doesn't hit that by back to school qtr 08
Apple May Surge 34% by End of 2008, Bear Stearns Says (Update1)
By Jeff Kearns
Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. shares may surge 34 percent by the end of next year, boosted by higher iPod sales and better- than-expected demand for Macintosh computers from Asia, a Bear Stearns Cos. analyst said.
Andrew Neff increased his share-price forecast for the Cupertino, California-based computer maker to $249 from $243 and raised his earnings estimate for the fiscal year ending in September by 2.9 percent to $5.40 a share.
He also cited ``strong consumer acceptance'' of Apple's new Leopard operating system and said the company is ``strongly positioned for the holiday season given the confluence of product cycles'' for Mac and iPod. He maintained the ``outperform'' rating he's held for two years.
``We see Apple's story becoming stronger and evolving from a company dependent on one hit product to one with multiple growth engines,'' Neff wrote in a research note. ``Mac product cycle continues to gain momentum following the migration to Intel-based CPUs, along with very competitive pricing, OS refresh, and expanding distribution.''
Apple advanced to the highest in a month, climbing $4.45, or 2.4 percent, to $189.95 at 4 p.m. in New York. The stock has more than doubled this year.
Neff's $249 forecast is the second-highest among 29 analysts who track the stock, according to Bloomberg Data. Piper Jaffray & Co.'s Gene Munster has a forecast of $250.
Leopard, the latest version of the Macintosh operating software, went on sale Oct. 26. It's the sixth major version of Apple's OS X software, which first went on sale in 2001. The previous edition was released in April 2005.
Mac laptops and desktops accounted for 43 percent of Apple's revenue in the fiscal year ended in September, followed by iPo
You gotta luv it!
FORBES
Market Scan
Consumers Crave Apple's Macs
Andrew Farrell, 12.06.07, 12:15 PM ET
Consumers are becoming more comfortable making the jump from Windows-based PCs to Apple’s Macs. This growing comfort is pointing to big holiday’s sales of the tech company’s computers.
Shares of Apple rose 1.5%, or $2.88, to $188.38, after two analysts lifted their price targets on Apple shares. Both said they expect strong holiday Mac sales.
RBC analyst Mike Abramsky upped his price target of Apple shares to $215.00 from $205.00 on Thursday. He maintained his "outperform" rating on the stock.
Abramsky said he expects a "massive holiday" season for Macs. He also expects Mac shipments to jump 47% year-over-year during the company's holiday season quarter.
He explained that a number of market drivers are helping Apple gain market share. The release of Apple's new operating system, Leopard, is prompting people to upgrade. New, sleeker iMacs are luring buyers. The company is also getting a boost from the popular iPhone which is attracting new customers to the Apple brand.
The last driver, the effect of one product on other product's sales, is often called the "halo" effect. Apple has enjoyed similar benefits from its iPod. Owners of the music player are more likely to buy other Apple products than those who don't own an iPod.
Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff also upped his price target on Apple stock. He raised it to $249 from $243 and maintained an "outperform" rating on the company's shares. Neff said the new iMacs, competitive pricing and expanding distribution are all helping grow Mac sales.
Such a great idea, I can remember a day when Dell touted its direct buy model and Mikey claimed he would never compete on price. Nothing would please me more than to one day talk about Dell the same way we talk about Packard Bell computers
from their official docs
Capital Expenditures
The Company's total capital expenditures were $657 million during 2006, consisting of $200 million for retail store facilities and equipment related to the Company's Retail segment, $263 million for real estate acquisitions for the Company's second corporate campus and for a new data center, and $194 million for corporate infrastructure, including information systems enhancements. The Company currently anticipates it will utilize approximately $675 million for capital expenditures during 2007, including approximately $360 million for expansion of the Company's Retail segment, approximately $50 million for real estate acquisitions including the Company's second corporate campus and its new data center, and approximately $265 million to support normal replacement of existing capital assets and enhancements to general information technology infrastructure.
Stock Repurchase Plan
In July 1999, the Company's Board of Directors authorized a plan for the Company to repurchase up to $500 million of its common stock. This repurchase plan does not obligate the Company to acquire any specific number of shares or acquire shares over any specified period of time. The Company has repurchased a total of 13.1 million shares at a cost of $217 million under this plan and was authorized to repurchase up to an additional $283 million of its common stock as of September 30, 2006.
With that in mind, Apple spent $712 million last year in R&D and they increased spending from the previous year. Also they are using the cash apparently to expand the business by acquiring real estate for new stores while upgrading their infrastructure. And they are buying back stock.
I don't get it either, but would assume that it's a financial decision several people participate in. The stock seems to be performing well, sales are good and Apple seems to be growing, do you happen to know if the issue of their free cash has ever been broached at any shareholder meetings?
Thanks, Cap'n
I finally got it working, I needed to 'reset' the printer utility and get it all set up from scratch again. Even so I think I will keep one of my home Macs running Tiger in case I should get stuck with anything else in Leopard.
By the way, you want to see how fast a leopard is, check out this vid
It has nothing to do with the install, many apps like Toast 7 or 8.0, Digidesigns stuff, drive utilities and many others are not ready for 10.5. I think Epson or some guy in Bengalore fed me a line of BS, even reverting back to Tiger does not allow me to print DVD media
I don't necessarily buy into the theory Apple's in a better component negotiating position because of more cash then Dull, but they do have quite a bit more of it.
I do think that Dell's once legendary manufacturing-assembly-distribution channel ain't what it used to be
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=DELL
Some analysts have pointed to Apple's cash on hand as a factor in obtaining favorable pricing from component suppliers. This provides a credible explanation for how Apple may have been able to leverage a deep seated financial advantage over Dell and maintain its favorable gross margins.
Apple Turns the Tables on Dell with Component Costs
by John Martellaro, 2:55 PM EST, November 30th, 2007
Analyst Shaw Wu is maintaining a neutral position on Dell in his periodic research notes due to the recent erosion of gross margins. The reason: poor procurement execution. Mr. Wu believes the unthinkable has now happened: Dell's component costs may now be higher than Hewlett-Packard's and Apple's.
The two key paragraphs from Mr. Wu's notes tell the story:
• Most confusing and controversial was the gross margin, which came in at 18.5%, down 150 basis points Q/Q from 20% (consensus ~19.1%), despite a favorable mix shift towards notebooks. DELL cited a tougher component pricing environment. We find this odd as AAPL and HPQ experienced the opposite and our own supply chain checks indicate otherwise.
• Moreover, DELL's ASPs [Average Selling Price] were flat to up, indicating pricing pressure wasn't a big issue. We believe poor procurement execution was the key reason for the margin erosion. It is interesting to note that DELL's costs may actually now be higher than HPQ and AAPL, something that was unthinkable not that long ago.
Some analysts have pointed to Apple's cash on hand as a factor in obtaining favorable pricing from component suppliers. This provides a credible explanation for how Apple may have been able to leverage a deep seated financial advantage over Dell and maintain its favorable gross margins.
My Epson R800 paper print quality has taken a dive and the ability to print DVD/CD media is gone. Epson's tech support attributes it to the installed drivers with Leopard and are aware that glitches are surfacing. Odd, my printer worked fine for 3 weeks under Leopard, but Epson is acknowledging their drivers need tweaking
Uncovered: Evidence that Mac OS X could run Windows apps soon
By David Chartier | Published: November 30, 2007 - 08:36AM CT
Once Intel chips landed inside Macs and Boot Camp made its debut, it got a lot harder to blame rumor mongers for making a certain leap: Mac OS X could one day run Windows apps sans-Windows. Indeed, projects like the open source Wine have facilitated some of this functionality, albeit in a limited fashion, for some time now. But a new discussion on a Wine mailing list could refresh hope for those looking to get their Frankenstein on with Mac OS X and Windows computing.
The discussion begins with a mailing list message called Interesting Behavior of OS X, in which Steven Edwards describes the discovery that Leopard apparently contains an undocumented loader for Portable Executables, a type of file used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. More poking around revealed that Leopard's own loader tries to find Windows DLL files when attempting to load a Windows binary.
Yes, that last bit is the juicy one. According to the fledgling investigation in this as-yet short message thread, folks are suspecting that Leopard contains at least the building blocks for Apple to one day add a compatibility layer to Mac OS X for running Windows apps right alongside Mac OS X apps. "Just add Windows" and Boot Camp itself could fall off the list of ingredients for bridging these two computing worlds.
Of course, this could also be nothing; perhaps leftover from some behind-the-scenes project, spare code from adopting EFI (though this reply notes that PE files are flat-out rejected in Tiger on Intel Macs), or who knows what else. Still, if your conspiracy theory wells have run dry during Macworld's pre-season, this should be more than enough to keep you busy for at least a week or so.
Here's a good compatibility issue list for leopard
http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/compat.html
Tomm, The site says it is not even considered Beta yet and only runs on 10.4
Yes, well I jumped the gun on Leopard, as I always fall into the early adapter camp, but there are just too many small annoyances to go solo leopard. I will keep it running on my business MBP, but not being able to use Toast, my Epson R800 for direct DVD/CD printing, dock overflow or any of my haxies is just too darned inconvenient. Not to say Apple is at fault, but Apple's marketshare still is not at a priority level with some developers where they stay on top of their drivers or tweak their programs
I'm reverting to Tiger on one of my Macs, too many things weird or broken with Leopard. At first it seemed OK and novel, but now even Epson is telling me their Macintel drivers are broken with 10.5
Apple: Boot Camp beta expires Dec. 31
Gregg Keizer
The news shouldn't surprise anyone, since Apple repeatedly told Tiger users that it would terminate Boot Camp support. The program's end-user license agreement (EULA), in fact, set the expiration as when Tiger's successor shipped or on Dec. 31, whichever came first.
November 29, 2007 (Computerworld) Apple Inc. on Wednesday set the expiration date for Boot Camp, the free application that runs Windows XP or Vista on an Intel-based Macintosh, as Dec. 31. Users were notified by e-mail.
"With the introduction of Leopard, the Boot Camp Beta program has ended," the message read. "The Boot Camp Beta software will expire on December 31, and Apple won't offer further updates of Boot Camp Beta for Mac OS X Tiger."
Apple has promised that Windows partitions already installed on Macs running Tiger will remain intact and bootable after the cutoff, but Assistant, the program that creates and manages the XP and Vista partitions, will stop working. Apple has also suspended driver updates for the beta of Boot Camp.
The news shouldn't surprise anyone, since Apple repeatedly told Tiger users that it would terminate Boot Camp support. The program's end-user license agreement (EULA), in fact, set the expiration as when Tiger's successor shipped or on Dec. 31, whichever came first. Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, debuted Oct. 26, so technically Apple didn't heed its own EULA, opting instead to go with the later date.
To update Boot Camp to the final release Version 2.0, users must upgrade to Leopard. Windows partitions built with the Boot Camp beta do not need to be recreated, nor does XP or Vista need to be reinstalled to run Windows on a Leopard-equipped Intel Mac.
The internal Mac drives differ whether they are pioneer, samsung, panasonic on how they deal with regions. It can be confusing and hacks also risk killing the drive because the code is in the firmware. Changing the file is the safest way
http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/15/1329226
There is no problem whatsoever creating a DVD file that plays in all regions, or that loses the Macrovision locks either. Where there's a will and MactheRipper, there's a way
"Verizon sees the expansion as a "transformation" for the industry but notes that its core strategy of offering locked phones with customized, controlled software will remain intact."
I'll have to wait n see but I don't like or trust much of anything Verizon does. The wireless industry must evolve, especially domestically, but it is Google & Apple who are the vanguard of potential change.
I for one am glad Apple is not squandering the iPhone in a manner that Moto did with the Razr's popularity, Moto lost out while the carriers reaped the benefits
Europe faults Apple for 'anticompetitive' iPhone deals
At issue are laws that bar companies from 'tying' – requiring consumers who buy one product to buy another.
By Mariah Blake | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Hamburg, Germany
Apple's iPhone marketing has been a smash success at home, but it is running into stumbling blocks in Europe, where the touch-screen handset and music player is making its debut this month.
At issue are national laws that bar companies from "tying" products so that consumers have to buy one to get the other. The laws present a major challenge to Apple's global strategy of cutting an exclusive deal with mobile operators and taking a share of the profits from calling plans.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile, Germany's exclusive iPhone dealer, announced that it would offer the device without a contract to comply with an injunction issued by a Hamburg court last week – brought as the result of a lawsuit by mobile-phone giant Vodaphone. Similarly, in France, where the iPhone goes on sale next week, Apple has been barred from requiring customers to sign up with the service provider Orange.
The iPhone conflict is another sign of the increasingly proactive approach European courts and government agencies are taking when it comes to regulating competition – a fact illustrated most vividly by the recent European Union court decision that forced Microsoft to unbundle its Media Player from its operating system.
"To the extent that their products reach a European market, American firms are going to have to watch their step," says Harry First, director of the trade regulation program at New York University School of Law. "Europeans are clearly getting bolder about proceeding against dominant firms."
Apple has already had its share of run-ins with European officials. Earlier this year, Norway outlawed the iTunes online music store, because the songs downloaded from the site can be played only using Apple products. Sweden, Finland, and Germany are also pushing to make iTunes music available on rival technologies. The European Union, meanwhile, is probing the iTunes pricing scheme, which it believes violates European law by preventing users from one country from buying music on sites elsewhere.
But the iPod product family, including iTunes, differs from the iPhone in one key way. While the new all-in-one device is undoubtedly a hit (Apple sold 1.4 million in the first 90 days alone) it doesn't dominate the cellphone market, as iPod does the MP3-player market.
"The big question raised by the current iPhone dilemma is whether preventing exclusive arrangements fosters competition in the absence of a monopoly," says Carole Handler, vice chairwoman of intellectual property litigation at Foley & Lardner LLP, an international law firm.
Vodaphone, which had tried to secure a deal as Europe's sole iPhone provider, is interested in finding out. Spokesman Jens Kürten contends that part of his firm's goal in bringing the suit was to clarify the law.
"We want to have a clear court ruling on whether the conditions with which the iPhones are sold in Germany are in line with German law or not," he says. Vodaphone, he notes, is interested in plumbing the legality of selling locked phones tied to a specific rate plan.
T-Mobile argues that no clarification is necessary. "Offering a phone coupled with a calling plan is a common practice in the industry," says spokeswoman Cornelia Rauchenberger. And it will save consumers a bundle: T-Mobile's new unrestricted phone option will cost €999 ($1,477), versus €399 (US$590) for a locked phone purchased with a two-year T-Mobile contract.
In the US, AT&T is the sole iPhone dealer, while O2 holds exclusive rights in Britain – which, unlike Germany and France, does not have antitying laws.
10 million bucks, what a joke and to think some guys actually invested in this lawsuit. here ya go Pal, here's a quarter now go away. I thought they wanted a piece of every iPod sold
I'm sure you could research it and find even a wrong clock is right twice a day (or is it?)
Personally I am keeping my eye on the price of oil as an indicator of odds increasing that we are going to attack Iran and the resultant impact on the both the dollar and gold
Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct
Published: Nov. 19, 2007 at 2:16 PM
RHINEBECK, N.Y., Nov. 19 (UPI) -- A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said.
"We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forecasting a "Panic of 2008."
"The bigger they are, the harder they'll fall," he said in an interview with New York's Hudson Valley Business Journal.
Celente -- who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar's decline a year ago and gold's current rise in May -- told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first "small, high-risk segment of the market" to collapse.
Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said.
Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common "for some time to come," he said.
He said he would not "be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths," Celente said.
The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.
A result will be a drop in holiday spending a year from now, followed by a permanent end of the "retail holiday frenzy" that has driven the U.S. economy since the 1940s, he said.
© 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
Do we go through this extended dialogue with every major new release?
Geeze guys, get over it....
It took me awhile to get accustomed to endlessly bouncing icons in OSX 1.0, broken apps with the Intel switch & now a few hiccups with Leopard that I am living with while I am loving 10.5, and suffering no losses of any 'mission critical' business apps
from Apple's discussion board...
Well the reason is this:
You have a G4 Mini -
1) Panther was released for PowerPC processors (G3, G4, G5) as they were the only processors in use at the time.
2) A retail version was available for Tiger for PowerPC processor machines ONLY. So you were able to go out and get a copy for your G4 Mini.
3) Leopard was released to support both PowerPC and Intel Machines... so you were able to install Leopard on your G4 Mini.
For the MacBook -
1) Panther was designed and released for the PowerPC machines and simply will not run on Intel Machines
2) All Intel machines (until the recent release of Leopard) shipped with Tiger. Since all Intel machines shipped with Tiger, there was never a reason for Apple to release an Intel version for sale in stores... this is why only a PowerPC version was available in stores.
3) All newly revised MacBooks (with the Santa Rosa chipset) shipped after the release of Leopard, so they all have Leopard installed on them. There would be no reason for Apple to upgrade their earlier OSs to be compatible with the newest machines with the newest OS already on them.
Now... the retail, in-store, version of Leopard supports both PPC and Intel machines so everyone can upgrade to Leopard.
I have had 3 similar experiences with Apple's customer service, I am beginning to think they deeply value customer satisfaction
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/071118.html
Bootz your Yahoo-Baidu strategy now has an interesting side note. The funny part is the last paragraph that says if it were to come to pass most of Yahoo's best people would leave in 6 months
Microsoft buyout rumours spice up Yahoo stock
Will Microsoft buy Yahoo?
Elizabeth Montalbano MacworldUK
Speculation that Microsoft is looking to buy Yahoo has stepped up a gear after a blogger cited a Microsoft executive who has outlined plans for the company to improve its online search market share from about 10 per cent to 30 per cent.
Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget, who writes for The Huffington Post, posits that Microsoft could not achieve this goal on its own, so an acquisition may be in the works. His comments come after Microsoft president of platforms and services Kevin Johnson outlined the company's online search goal at a UBS investor conference in Seattle on Thursday.
In his blog posting, Blodget said Microsoft is no closer to succeeding online than it was when it began 12 years ago, and noted that the company's online division is still losing about $1bn a year.
Microsoft still trails both Google and Yahoo for search market share and advertising revenue, and Blodget wrote that the only way company executives think they can achieve their growth goal is by making a very specific purchase. According to site analytics firm Compete, Microsoft's online search market share was 9.2 per cent in September compared to Yahoo's 19 per cent and Google's 67 per cent.
"How could Microsoft actually achieve the goals Kevin Johnson laid out?" he asked in his blog. "There's only one answer: Buy Yahoo. Buying Yahoo would give Microsoft 30 per cent search share instantly."
Yahoo shares closed up nearly 6 per cent Friday on renewed speculation about a possible buyout by Microsoft. Company stock opened the day trading at $25.67 and closed at $26.82.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have said they will not comment on rumors or speculation about a deal, gossip that ran rampant in the industry earlier this year. At the height of the rumors, Microsoft purchased digital services agency aQuantive for about $6 billion in May, the largest acquisition the company has ever made.
Still, though the aQuantive deal closed in Microsoft's fiscal first quarter, which ended September, the revenue for Microsoft's Online Services Division (OSD) grew only 25 per cent year over year, and analysts criticized the company for that performance. Even Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell at the time acknowledged that this kind of growth, despite all of Microsoft's investment to grow its online strategy, was "acceptable, but not stellar."
Microsoft began to ramp up its investment in growing online advertising revenue and building out more online services in earnest in November 2005, and since then even overhauled and rebranded its search engine, Live Search. The company also has rolled out an entire portfolio of new and revamped online services under the brand Windows Live to compete in this area.
If Microsoft does indeed purchase Yahoo, Blodget wrote that it would be a far better deal for the software giant than it would be for the struggling online services company. He said that the deal "would be disastrous for Yahoo, which is having enough trouble competing with Google on its own."
"Imagine what would happen if it got swallowed by the Redmond whale," Blodget wrote. "In six months, all the remaining strong people would be gone."