Apple 2nd Quarter Financial Results Stream

[aswitcher]

Is anyone else sick of these posts from DHM? Every time I look I just see you talking trash about apple, you never offer any valid points except flaming about how Apple has under powered and overpriced. I seriously wish you would leave this site or start making legitimate posts, I am so sick of reading the current trash. I know what I am saying is mean, but I don't care anymore, I am so sick of this.

Well if DHM sees little future for Apple and a rapidly slidding market share then I guess natural attrition should see him switch away from Apple and leave us in peace sometime soon

 

[thatwendigo]

Is anyone else sick of these posts from DHM? Every time I look I just see you talking trash about apple, you never offer any valid points except flaming about how Apple is under powered and overpriced. I seriously wish you would leave this site or start making legitimate posts, I am so sick of reading the current trash. I know what I am saying is mean, but I don't care anymore, I am so sick of this. Even when you do make good points you put such a negative spin on it that it's just complaining, blah.

In a word: Yes.

Many of us are tired of his constant, poorly typed, poorly reasoned, and largely speculative posts. It doesn't take that much effort to cite your information and provide links to it, or to posts where you've already done so. It takes even less to run your text through a rudimentary spellcheck and be rid of the worst of the mistakes and make it easier for people to understand what you're saying. Above and beyond that, punctuation is somewhat necessary to the communication of points, especially when making more than one in a particular sentence.

DHM and his ilk think they could run Apple better, but what they keep forgetting to add into their analysis is that the company is at one of its strongest positions in years. OS X is ascendant in sales and converts, there's cash in the bank and no debt, and we have a chip that's got legs, rather than the embedded-oriented G4... Yes, it's taking time to filter down, but that's going to be true regardless of what was done to fix the situation.

Well if DHM sees little future for Apple and a rapidly slidding market share then I guess natural attrition should see him switch away from Apple and leave us in peace sometime soon

Actually, he's said that he's buying an Alienware Aurora, because AMD is the saviour of all things computing. It's obviously a better computer because it runs games faster, and that has nothing to do with DirectX or the other PC competition-blockers.

My first thought when I was made aware of that thread was that I might finally hear an end of his posts. No such luck.

 

[topicolo]

I might want to sell my stock tuesday... then buy thursday.... what da ya think?

Your broker's gonna love you

 

[billyboy]

I might want to sell my stock tuesday... then buy thursday.... what da ya think?

If you want to speculate on that sort of basis, I guess you have thousands of shares, a crystal ball and cast iron balls.

If you actually bought AAPL shares because you did your homework and wanted to own a part of a company with a decent financial basis, and pretty good but not spectacular prospects in the next couple or three years, hold onto your shares, keep your peace of mind and tee off the broker vultures.

A good playtime pastime is to set up a mock portfolio and "buy" shares in companies that are likely takeover targets, or for even more spectacular returns, read around and buy up shares in any companies that are going into or going to win litigation with Microsoft - I wish I had really bought and sold some burst.com, sun....

 

[iMeowbot]

Many, many software vndors have stopped making software for the Mac, precisely because Apple's userbase is small and getting smaller..That's a problem that Steve and Apple haven't addressed, and have made far worse with the decisions they've made..

On the other hand, other new Mac-only stuff has been showing up too, from newer, typically smaller, vendors.

Percentages aren't everything. The raw numbers of machines out there doesn't exactly suck, and selling software and accessories to a market with less saturation and competition has definite advantages.

Some of the same general ideas are what make Linux an attractive platform for ISVs, but the Mac userbase is still one where customers are willing to pay a bit extra in exchange for relief from dealing with install/configure/usability pain.

I guess I'd be more worried about the market share thing if decent replacements weren't appearing when the entrenched bloatware vendors wandered away.

 

[ggrund]

OK.. I've been reading all your posts regarding this "horrible" Q2 for Apple. Now, my question is, how do you all know that this is going to be a horrible quarter for Apple? I know that they haven't updated any of their systems, but could this be because they are selling? I mean, if the G5 is selling well with the current specs, would they not try to delay the next update as long as they can?

 

[nmk]

I agree with some of the previous posters. I, myself, am quite dissatisfied with the current state of affiars in Apple. I have made my thoughts known in previous posts. However, I don't see the point in repeatedly beating Apple over the head. If you've decided to go with the wintel platform (DHM), then good for you. You might as well leave this forum and stop bitching. Truth be told, I have also considered switching to Windows but am forced to reconsider everytime I use a windows computer. I would be sad if Apple were to go under. I can only hope that they do get their act together sometime soon. Maybe its time to fire Steve again

 

[nightcap965]

Spite

Every body's different. Your mileage may vary. Each cat his own rat.

There, now that I've handled the disclaimers, I can put political correctness aside.

It doesn't matter what Apple's second quarter results are any more than it matters what Daimler Chrysler's second quarter results are. My Dodge Caravan will keep running no matter how well they did in the second quarter, and my Macs will keep running for the same reason. Apple is a 28-year-old company with no debt and lots of money in the bank - they don't need to pull rabbits from hats every three months. They can afford to take a longer view.

If you're dissatisfied with Apple's computers and operating system, and you think you'll be happier with Windows, Linux, or AtheOS, go for it and goodonya. If you're dissatisfied with the way Apple is run, here's what you do: Spend $28 and buy a share of AAPL. All you need is one share to get into the Shareholder's meeting. Then cast your vote to throw the bums out.

But let's not have any more nonsense that a single quarter's results - good, bad, or indifferent - matter a rat's patootie to anyone, least of all those of us who use and enjoy Apple's products.

I agree with some of the previous posters. I, myself, am quite dissatisfied with the current state of affiars in Apple. I have made my thoughts known in previous posts. However, I don't see the point in repeatedly beating Apple over the head. If you've decided to go with the wintel platform (DHM), then good for you. You might as well leave this forum and stop bitching. Truth be told, I have also considered switching to Windows but am forced to reconsider everytime I use a windows computer. I would be sad if Apple were to go under. I can only hope that they do get their act together sometime soon. Maybe its time to fire Steve again

 

[kherdin]

Ok, to the poster talking about how great Linux is and that it will soon kill OS X, I say this:

You claim the commandline is better than the GUI. Fair enough, I agree that for some things it is. Are you forgetting that Mac OS X has a commandline? This is in no way an advantage of Linux over Mac OS X - both share the feature.

You say that the Linux market share and soon installed base is greater than Mac OS X. This is not whatt he "hard evidence" shows - if you take a look at the Google Zeitgeist (search for link in google ), you can see that Linux is only at 1% and the Mac has climbed to 4% from 3% in the last month. So again, this is BS.

Next, you claim that Linux being popular is going to murder OS X. Not so! It will actually be benefitial, porting software back and forth between the two is much easier than between the Mac and Windows. In fact, one game developer I've recently seen an interview with (search on OSNews for it), mentioned that it was easier in one case to port a game from Linux (to which it was ported before) than to port that same game from its Mac OS 9 version. It's easier to go from Linux->Mac OS X, than from Classic->Carbon - imagine that! Popularity of Linux will only mean good things for the Mac, my friend, very good things indeed.

And finally, let me remind you that Linux is only a kernel. It is not an OS - Redhat Linux is an OS, Mandrake Linux is an OS, SuSE Linux is an OS, etc. Linux is a kernel. A unix-like kernel, just like what Mac OS X uses (Darwin, a fork of FreeBSD). It would not be that hard to migrate Mac OS X to Linux if there was a need (although it's questionable if there really is one - benchmarks show that Linux 2.6 is only marginally better perfomance-wise than FreeBSD, so the migration would result in a little gain of performance, plus a lot of headaches for the developers - it doesn't seem worthwhile).

 

[AidenShaw]

Linux' Achilles heel - "rebuild the kernel"

IMHO, the biggest impediment to adoption of Linux is the horrible dependence on the kernel version.

With Windows, driver and other system interfaces are architected so that only major system changes require new drivers. (My old scanner driver was last updated for Windows 2000 - yet that driver runs fine on XP and even on the Longhorm preview that's widely available.)

On Linux, I need to keep the sources for my network and video drivers online. Whenever there's a kernel change (sometimes even as innocent as running the RedHat software update (up2date)) I need to recompile my drivers against the new kernel sources.

Even worse, some software needs hooks that affect the kernel, so that I need to rebuild the kernel occasionally. (The same software on Windows uses architected filter drivers, so no problems as Windows or the software versions change.)

I don't think Linux will be on my grandmother's desktop until this issue is addressed....

 

[elgruga]

Its Apples Fault for taking way to long to get off the turtle they have been riding known as G4. The Desktop line is a mess. Apple should focus on computers that the public wants not computers that Jobs & Ives want to build. Powermac,Imac,Emac everyone of these are missing the market. Unless you want that 1%

YES! I agree 100% with this post.
Apple should get off the design bandwagon for a week or two and build some serious simple boxes.
Yes, I said boxes.

Headless Imac. Small, cheap, with OSX and a few apps. Just a little box, pizza style, whatever.

MOST OF US LOVE THE DESIGN THING, BUT WE ALSO WANT SIMPLE FUNCTIONALITY AS WELL.
Can you hear me, Stevie?

I am appalled to see Adobe dropping Apple products.
Do something, Apple!
Why doesnt Jobs sell some SIMPLE boxes?

XServe is bull***t. ANY computer can be a server - so a headless imac in a box will do the job, right?
We dont all run big corporations.....

Why does Apple have to make such special products? Why the f*** cant we have a few simple, functional products?

Oh man - bring back the clones.

I am working on a G4 powerbook that is almost 2 years old. I would LOVE to buy a cheap G4 or G5 box, running at, say, 1.25 ghz, and do my web work on it. Plug it into my 17" LCD and not have to use the slow-ish PB.

But my choices are that behemoth of a G5 at a price I CANT afford, or an iMac with a screen I already have......and I cant get in there and change the video card etc. etc.

Sure I'd love one, but I dont have that kind of cash.

You have to give people choice, and, as much as I love the iPod, it doesnt build any web pages for me. Its just a little music box. And I already have one.

Please, Apple, get some ordinary product out there - it doesnt mean you have to stop making fancy stuff.
Guess what - you can do both!

 

[elgruga]

Have to say there are some damn good posts on here today.

Good to see complaints about Apple that are positive in nature, and as a few people have said, if you wanna look at Windows, go for it.

As one guy said earlier, every time you look at alternatives, you come back to OSX, which is a brilliant OS.

I dont care too much about the financials - hey, I just buy my Apple stuff and get on with life.

As someone said here, Apple are a 28 year old co. in good shape.

But they aint perfect, and we need to acknowledge that.

 

[aftk2]

I would LOVE to buy a cheap G4 or G5 box, running at, say, 1.25 ghz, and do my web work on it. Plug it into my 17" LCD and not have to use the slow-ish PB. But my choices are that behemoth of a G5 at a price I CANT afford, or an iMac with a screen I already have......and I cant get in there and change the video card etc. etc.

Voila.
This is literally what you asked for.

It's 1.25 ghz. It's exandable. You can plug your LCD into it. And it's cheaper than the iMac you mentioned in your post (that you didn't want, because you had the LCD).

Now you have three options: you can purchase it; you can refrain from purchasing it, but remain silent; or, you can refrain from purchasing it, and talk about how it's too expensive, the technology's too old, or make some other nebulous argument.

I fear you will choose the latter.

I was going to stop my post there, but I thought it might sound a bit caustic. So instead, I'll offer up some advice: if you want to spend even less money, while sacrificing a little speed and expandibility, get an emac. Hell, if you're adventurous, with the ibook/emac screen spanning hack, you can get yourself a dual monitor workstation (using the LCD that you already have).

 

[nightcap965]

Think Different

I'm pretty familiar with the alternatives. I've been a computer enthusiast since the days of time-sharing Lunar Lander with a 110 baud modem and a teletype, and an IT professional for twenty years. I've used just about every OS: CP/M, DOS, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, NEXTstep, MacOS, a bunch of Unices, and of course, Linux. I love Linux because you can do anything in it, but it does get wearying downloading and compiling and working out the inevitable bugs. Sometimes you just want to get work done without the endless tuning and finagling.

MacOS X Panther is the best end-user experience available. It's stable, attractive, well thought out, and powerful. It's not perfect (I have a little list...), but it's head and shoulders above the competition.

Have to say there are some damn good posts on here today.

Good to see complaints about Apple that are positive in nature, and as a few people have said, if you wanna look at Windows, go for it.

As one guy said earlier, every time you look at alternatives, you come back to OSX, which is a brilliant OS.

I dont care too much about the financials - hey, I just buy my Apple stuff and get on with life.

As someone said here, Apple are a 28 year old co. in good shape.

But they aint perfect, and we need to acknowledge that.

 

[in_my_head]

little faith

I might want to sell my stock tuesday... then buy thursday.... what da ya think?

For those that are trying to catch intra day moves in AAPL, I wish u luck...Of course u could be a 'true beliver' and just hang on to the stock while it bounces around here in the mid to high 20's before it makes the real move to the high 30's...(+50%).....but then again that takes patience and conviction......if u don't have that and u want to trade, try MSFT.....

 

[thatwendigo]

YES! I agree 100% with this post.
Apple should get off the design bandwagon for a week or two and build some serious simple boxes.
Yes, I said boxes.

Riiiight... Apple should build plain boxes because the last time that was done, they were really cleaning up in market sha... Oh, wait. They were getting their butts handed to them by the cloners, who used cheaper parts and crappier materials to sell competing boxes.

TANSTAAFL. You get what you pay for, and I'd rather have a real mac, thanks all the same.

MOST OF US LOVE THE DESIGN THING, BUT WE ALSO WANT SIMPLE FUNCTIONALITY AS WELL.
Can you hear me, Stevie?

I'm rather glad he can't, actually, and that he likely wouldn't listen if he could. Because of the unique economies of scale, Apple can't compete in the lowend market any more aggressively than they already do with the eMac. To drop prices more means dipping into inferior manufacturing, and if you think that the stories we hear about problems are bad now, just wait until you see what a move like that would result in.

I am appalled to see Adobe dropping Apple products.
Do something, Apple!
Why doesnt Jobs sell some SIMPLE boxes?

Because Adobe is only dropping products where Apple has them beaten, hands down, in useability and performance. As for simple boxes... Apple isn't a generic manufacturer. If you want a beige box that will last a year or two, go find yourself another OEM.

[quoute]XServe is bull***t. ANY computer can be a server - so a headless imac in a box will do the job, right?
We dont all run big corporations.....[/quote]

Then you're obviously not the target market for the xServe, and so it's not intended for your consumption. While it's true that any machine can technically function as a server, the demands of a rigorous and continual load, not to mention space constraints on server farms, lend themselves to solutions that are tailored to the task (i.e. the sServe).

Why does Apple have to make such special products? Why the f*** cant we have a few simple, functional products?

Pssst... Here's a simple box you can plug your monitor into. It's even something around the price of an iMac, but without that LCD you don't want.

But my choices are that behemoth of a G5 at a price I CANT afford, or an iMac with a screen I already have......and I cant get in there and change the video card etc. etc.

Sure I'd love one, but I dont have that kind of cash.

Hmmm... G4 iMac with a 15" LCD - $1299 (lower speed RAM and processor, lower graphics card, PATA HD). G5 1.6 Single, no monitor - $1,570 (G5, faster RAM, better graphics card, SATA HD, reduced to combo drive and no modem).

What were you saying, again? You can afford an iMac, but not a G5 that would smoke it?

You have to give people choice, and, as much as I love the iPod, it doesnt build any web pages for me. Its just a little music box. And I already have one.

You have choices, right now. It's not Apple's fault that you're too greedy and iimpatient, nor that you want something that really would cannibalize half of the sales into a market that won't really support them at all. The fact that you want cloning again pretty well establishes that you're interested not in what benefits the mac platform as a whole, but in what benefits you individually.

 

[chubad]

Closing in on 100 posts to a statement that Apple is going to stream a financial call. Talk about a dry spell for Apple Rumors!
Oh well. It will be funny to read all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the next Powerbook revision comes out and it turns out to be only a speed bumped G-4.

 

[uktroll]

Printing money in the UK market ?

The contribution by the UK market should help the corporate bottom line quite a bit.

A quick bit of maths on the USD prices on the Apple Store suggests that the current price level in the UK is somewhere around 20-25% above the price level in the US. This is what the numbers show (based on a USD rate of $1.80 to the GBP)

iBook 12" - USD 1099 - GBP (VAT Incl) 717.40 - Apple UK GBP 849.00
iMac 17" 1.25 - USD 1799 - GBP (VAT Incl) 1174.35 - Apple UK GBP 1449.00

Imagine what Apple UK could do in the market place if they dropped the prices by 20%...

Perhaps we will shortly see the parallel import business take hold in the market again ?

 

[visor]

But if that's the case, then that means Linux won't eat into Mac market share. It'll eat into Windows. Why would someone seriously considering a Mac want to go with something with sketchy support and a lousy UI? (I'm being a bit melodramatic...I tried knoppix on my laptop and was actually impressed.) By "seriously considering" I mean "someone who has the money." Yeah, they might just decide..."you know...why pay all this money when I could pay a whole lot less?" But if that's the case...why wouldn't they go to Windows?

Well, I'll try to make a point here:
Of course, as a user, very few people want to go for linux. It still sucks in the UI, and that's all that counts.
For a developer however, Linux is a good choice, because chances are that if he develops server side Applications, he will deploy it to a linux maschine. Now, if your deploy base is 95% Linux, that you have to have one of those, just to check if everything works.
It doesn't make any sene for me to look deeper into Cocoa and Quicktime frameworks, if I can't sell the xserveG5 with the app - and then, most people don't understand why they should buy an Xserve, if they already a have a linux serverfarm, or solaris or whatever. Esp. if the servers are very costly (other platforms are, too - but if you have them already..)

Next problem with the xserve is - availability. Last time I checked they had deliverytimes of 7 weeks. Theres nothing to add to that. I just can't wait almost 2 month for hardware. 1 week is painfull already.

 

[visor]

XServe is bull***t. ANY computer can be a server - so a headless imac in a box will do the job, right?
We dont all run big corporations.....

Well, xserve is for companies who need a lot of power in small space. I work in a small company with lots of caluculation work and storage going on. We have a server room - and it's stuffed to it's limits with computers. Now we have a couple of racks with servers takuing up half the room - and a couple of 'boxes' that take up way to much space, while having very little power.
Turns out we'll have to rent new rooms to get our computers stuffed in - now, with that in mind - wouldn't it make sense to go for an xserve rather than, say, a g5 2*2 that uses up 2 to 3 times as much space?

Oh, btw - when I started at the company, the serverroom was mostly empty - only 3,5 years ago.

 

[h'biki]

Making a Profit.

yes its been said but my question is does Apple want 1 out of 100 new machines to be a Mac or do they want .5%? when will it be low enough? What they are doing now with product line is all wrong.

They're making a profit, that's the only thing that matters. (Well, almost)

Who cares if you have a large market share if you lose money hand over fist like Gateway?

 

[neonart]

They're making a profit, that's the only thing that matters. (Well, almost)

Who cares if you have a large market share if you lose money hand over fist like Gateway?

Ouch!

VERY MUCH THE TRUTH.

 

[Sped]

It will be funny to read all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the next Powerbook revision comes out and it turns out to be only a speed bumped G-4.

I wouldn't mind a speed bumped G4. In fact, that is all I was expecting last month. Although I have some fear that OS X will become highly optimized for 64 bit computing leaving G4 and older processors out in the cold, the G4 is a strong, dependable CPU. It isn't the fastest on the block, but as one of my friends at work mentioned, "it just works."

Not to get too far off on a tangent, I agree with one of the previous posts stating company financials don't have much to do with product. When you see the debt rating services like Moodys or S&P downgrading AAPL, then you might become concerned about financials affecting product. Till then, bring on the new products!

 

[dontmatter]

Heck of a lot of good rumors these days.....

 

[aswitcher]

They're making a profit, that's the only thing that matters. (Well, almost)

Who cares if you have a large market share if you lose money hand over fist like Gateway?

If they were bigger economies of scale would bring down their prices and they would grow...that would be nice.