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Apple Building Cash Reserves for 'Big, Bold' Moves

You know what............

Apple frighten me.

Or rather they dissapoint/worry me.

Why you might say? Well in the way they are now (more than ever) not just making great machines and letting people be creative and do what they wish with them (which is the way it should be and the way Msoft and the PC world is.)

But rather, the ever more "Controlling" manner/direction in which they are going.

No matter how much of an Apple lover you may be. It's never ever a good idea for a company to get really BIG if it's the type of company that is going to want to retain a tight hold on things, block things, ban things and act as a big brother.

We don't want that ever.

Yes, make nice things. (hardware) yes make nice software, but please don't try and control the market.

Apple can only get away now with the type of actions that Microsoft can only dream of, as they are still too small to attract the attention that Msoft do.

I hope we are just in a kinda mid life re-jigging from Apple and they are not going to go further down the line of control on their products.
 
notjustjay said:
I think that might depend on what region you live in. Here, I know of a couple of "mom and pop" shops that I always go to first for OEM parts. I'm about to go to the one across the street from my workplace and walk out with a WD Scorpio Blue 640 gig laptop hard drive for $120 Cdn. By comparison, Newegg.ca sells the same drive for $129, plus $10 shipping, then I'd have to wait a few days.
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I’d say you were in the minority and making an conscious decision to support your local stores unlike most people.
 
JeffDM said:
What would they kill? They don't exactly have a big variety of them and each one seems to fill a role.
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Well, I don't really think they're going to kill anything, although the words "bold and risky" in the article lend themselves well to doom-and-gloom scenarios.

The Mac Pros, the Mac mini, and the server lines seem to be the ones that are neglected the most and appear to offer the least value to the customer compared to the competition.
 
Big, Bold Move:

Pass on more profits to the lowly resellers who have to scrounge just to keep the business running and make more happy customers. That would be bold - throw that right in the face of current "conventional wisdom".
 
Buy Adobe: (do we even need to say why lol)
Buy Nintendo: Merge the AppleTV and the next version of the Nintendo console.
Buy Novell: Get some of their good technology and start getting ready to enter the corporate world.
 
jaw04005 said:
I’d say you were in the minority and making an conscious decision to support your local stores unlike most people.
Click to expand...

Well in this case buying the hard drive locally saves me $20 over buying from an internet store, in addition to not having to wait for a package, so the decision to support the local store is pretty much a no-brainer. :) That could be the part that's region-specific. In my city, the mom-and-pop shops are very competitive, which keeps prices low. Other cities might not be like this, so the local shops might be more expensive.

I'd probably still go to the local stores even if they were up to about 10% more expensive than what's available online because of the convenience of being able to walk out with my parts and do quick exchanges if needed.
 
Eric S. said:
At this point, releasing new computers would be considered a big bold move.
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Exactly...I'm quite tired of the limited Apple Mac products. I barely brought myself to buy a Mini 3 years ago...I ain't buying another Mac (very likely a desktop) till something comes along that is more bang for my buck.
 
I thought Apple had 39.8 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter. This story says they have 25 billion.

Am I missing something, or is 25 of that 40 billion earmarked for "big, bold" moves?
 
What Apple needs to do...

I wouldn't doubt they bought some of the Analogue Spectrum from the FCC and will someday offer FREE internet to their customers. That would be "big, bold"! And very welcomed.
 
AlmostThere said:
No, kill Photoshop and all content production tools on Windows.
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LOL - a move like that would quickly make CS irrelevant, and
Apple's creative market share would shrink almost as quickly.

Out-of-date hardware plus proprietary software is not a good
combination for the buyers who earn their living on their
computers. It's OK for the posers at Starbucks, though.
 
Wait, Apple is planning/currently undergoing construction of a huge new server farm correct? If this is true (can't remember) then my assumption would be they are planning for more "cloud" based stuff as a major extension of MobileMe, don't forget they just purchased LaLa also! Or they could be preparing for some search based stuff too, who knows. Anybody agree?
 
Hmm, Adobe and... Skype

Maybe, unlike Meg Whitman, when they buy Skype, they would buy the part of the software that actually works.

Then Adobe, if only to make it clear that the Mac will not be second-class citizen anymore. Then stop bringing out the $2700 upgrades to the CS series, and open-source a lot of things. Like, for instance, Flash.
 
notjustjay said:
Well, I don't really think they're going to kill anything, although the words "bold and risky" in the article lend themselves well to doom-and-gloom scenarios.

The Mac Pros, the Mac mini, and the server lines seem to be the ones that are neglected the most and appear to offer the least value to the customer compared to the competition.
Click to expand...

C'mon. Don't be that lazy -- the quote is at the top of this thread.

The actual quote is "Apple is holding onto cash to take 'big, bold' risks."

That is quite different from "bold and risky." First, the word "risk" isn't even attributed to Jobs. It's a word the report used. The only quoted portion is "big, bold."

Second all business decisions involve some amount of risk. Even putting money in a money market fund involves a slight risk. OTOH "bold & risky," implies an inherent gamble such as putting a chunk of money on "red" and spinning the wheel hoping for a big pay day.
 
They could go a few different ways with this:

1) Try to mitigate supply line constraints and pick up a flash memory supplier. That's the main thing that right now seems to constrain Apple hardware in frustrating ways. I don't see how this makes a lot of sense, personally, but Apple might get fed up and think they can do it better.

2) Beef up the "social media" aspects of iTunes/IPhone/iPad and suck up someone big in that space like Digg/Twitter/Facebook/whomever.

3) Go big into Cloud computing and invest heavily in more data centers like the one in NC. Snap up a large number of developers that are HTML5/JS/Ajax/Web Objects/whatever saavy and build fully functional web versions or extensions of iWork/iLife/iTunes/etc. They could also make enterprise frameworks so developers can produce Cloud versions of applications that interact with iPhone/iPad clients in optimized ways.
 
offwidafairies said:
why would apple want yahoo? i can see the worth in buying adobe...

this thread makes no sense when considering the 40 staff cuts recently. or does it?
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i can't imagine why anyone would want yahoo either, particularly for the outrageous price i'm sure it would be. yahoo doesn't offer anything, really, and certainly not comparable to any of apple's products/services. and anything it did have of value, apple could go after and succeed in getting and doing better by way of its own innovation. the only thing would be its advertising, but apple doesn't need that.

it'd be like when aol/time-warner merged or when fox bought myspace ... ultimately a complete fiasco. no offense to yahoo, but it's golden age was back in the mid-, late 90s. yahoo is, in my opinion, just like these two companies - way, way overvalued and essentially dead.
 
Apple will never buy Adobe, this is a fantasy.

US Gov. most likely would not allow it, even if all the other very unlikely scenarios that might make this possible came to fruition.
 
hugodrax said:
Rumor is Apple is Planning to Buy Microsoft with a Partner. Word is Intel/Apple partnership to purchase Microsoft along with some investors joining the pot.
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i find this impossible to consider. what would apple want with microsoft? it would be a liability.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The actual quote is "Apple is holding onto cash to take 'big, bold' risks."

That is quite different from "bold and risky." First, the word "risk" isn't even attributed to Jobs. It's a word the report used. The only quoted portion is "big, bold."
Click to expand...

Fair enough, you can attribute that to lazy quoting on my behalf. Sorry. I meant to say what you pretty much explained.

OK, big, bold moves.

Purely specultive examples of big, bold moves that could be within the realm of possibility:
- killing off certain product lines
- adding new product lines (an actual low-cost, low-margin netbook?)
- bold new product changes (multitouch desktops and laptops, an actual tablet PC)
- licensing OS X for PCs (hey, you never know ;) )
- landscape-changing acquisitions (like the "buy Adobe" posts)
- new hardware fabs to do even more stuff in-house
- big strides in movement toward cloud computing
- new deals with media studios (e.g. subscription-based iTunes)
 
Kilamite said:
Wouldn't surprise me if Apple bought Adobe. That'd be one way to kill Flash anyway ;)
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it would be easier and probably cheaper to just make Flash pointless. Lead the way into HTML5 etc.

Also folks keep in mind that there are legal issues at play. Laws that prevent the buying up of major competitors etc. and if you kill off everyone else you are more open to anti-trust etc suits. Apple needs other folks around so they can avoid such hassles. Plus having Adobe etc around makes it easier for them to have someone to be 'better than' when they buy up some smaller program like Pixelmator, soup it up and link it into both iphoto and Aperture as an editing/compositing solution.

troop231 said:
Wait, Apple is planning/currently undergoing construction of a huge new server farm correct?
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yes they are. but we don't know to what end. the guess is support for mobile me, perhaps lala.com and maybe even this rumored tv subscription service (plus just the general load from itunes). we shall see what the future brings on that front
 
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