Apple Inc (AAPL)

[acesteele]

WLD - Touche'

Disney's biggest changes in the last decade have come since Iger took over. The inane assumption that Linda makes that Steve Jobs joining the board would suddenly make DIS an AAPL computing company,and that he wields so much power are ludicrous. Roy Disney before him couldn't do it, Michael Ovitz couldn't do it, don't expect Steve to wave his hand & company's current IBM thinkpads will all be handed in for MacBooks. It's not going to happen. Steve owned Pixar, but John Lasseter is the one Disney cared about getting on board. All the previous Pixar movies weren't suddenly going to end up on Paramount DVD if Disney didn't buy Pixar. The characters already are in evergreen status thanks to Disney's daily exposure of them. ( If you've not been to the parks lately, there's Buzz Lightyear's Astroblasters Ride, The just opened Monsters Inc. ride @ California Adventure, & the re-tooled Disneyland Submarine ride now to feature the Finding Nemo characters (re-opening 2007).) Without the theme parks, who thinks about 10 year old movie characters? Is there a Paramount theme park that has rides based on RockADoodle? I don't think so. This is all about acquiring talent, the portion of character rights they didn't have, and synergy between the creators & the distributer, with the added bonus of a bit less operating tension. FWIW, Disney overpaid a bit, but will make it up on now keeping all of the all important plush (stuffed toy) sales profits.