Obama tries but fails to ignite Apple and 3D printing

“In last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama mentioned Apple and 3D printing. Apple CEO Tim Cook was given a prominent spot in the first lady’s box,” Nigam Arora writes for Forbes. “Obama looked at Cook and said, ‘This year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.’ Cameras focused on Cook and he smiled.”

“The morning after the speech there was no impact on Apple stock. But 3D printing stocks were quite a different story,” Arora writes. “Obama said, ‘A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.’ Four 3D printing stocks were hot on the morning after the speech.”

Arora writes, “There is no doubt that 3D printing has a bright future. However, more and more competition is coming and these stocks cannot sustain their present valuations once sanity sets in. As is often the case, Wall Street is going to suck in unsuspecting moms and pops and the professionals are going to make money at the expense of moms and pops in 3D printing.”

Read more in the full article here.

42 Comments

  1. As cool as 3D printing is and I’ve used it on film projects it’s doubtful it will be a hot thing for most consumers. For one thing the cost of the printer itself and then materials will be prohibitive for some time to come. There would have to be one helluva compelling reason to want these for most, besides model and collectible makers. People are still reeling over the cost of ink jet cartridges let alone rapid prototype expendables.

    1. I think 3D printing will be more useful in professional environments for the time being. Rather than having to order a plastic part and waiting for it to be delivered so that you can repair your cheap piece of crap whatever, you can simply print the piece and fix it.

      As for what industries/professions will actually use this regularly, I think we’re still in the early days of figuring it out.

      I would love, however, to have one of these for tabletop gaming. I’d love to be able to build my own mini-figs and print them immediately for any sort of tabletop gaming experience.

  2. Actually, the only thing Obama really tries at is golf, but, like everything else besides persuading low- information voters to pull the lever for him, he fails at that, too.

    1. Look, I didn’t vote for the guy. And I think he’s the worst president in my lifetime. But he did mention Apple in a positive way. And let’s face it, Tim Cook was sitting with the first lady. I guess he could’ve pulled out his iPhone and said “this is what replaced my damn BlackBerry”! But the article is correct, all that didn’t help Apple a bit. It’s still going down. And they’d better come out with the iTV! Because it looks like they’re not coming out with a larger iPhone until next year. That’s not only bad, that’s a real mistake. They may have a smaller more affordable iPhone this year but that’s not enough.

    2. It’s hilarious to watch the bozos suck down the Fox narrative, even as the facts are easily discoverable. No one has beat Bush in the vacation department. No one. Continuing to insist that Obama is always on vacation when the opposite it true just makes you a fucking simpleton.

  3. I don’t think his goal was to “Ignite” either one… But to merely highlight American Technology and potential new groundbreaking technology in it’s infancy, as it was a “state of the union” address and nothing more. Perhaps the writers expectations were a little too high…

  4. Mom and Pop should never stock pick. (unless they bought Apple in the low teens). The Wall Street thugs will just beat them up and take their money. The headline should read Wall Street fails to be a reasonable place for most people to go. The pros there put their own money in US Treasuries.

  5. This is all just Obama’s smoke and mirrors. As long as he can appears to be up-to-date is the most important to his image. Too bad Obama did not talk about Apple hiding billions and billions from the U.S. government tax machine.

    We should all be real concerned with the Spending Problems in DC and not get lost in his smoke and mirrors.

    People, we are COMING UP ON 17 TRILLION IN DEBT!
    Obama is not leveling any playing field.

    1. The tax situation is serious for all countries and must be solved and soon, however thinking that the answer is to knock a company like Apple is about as short sighted as it gets. Your country like all of us need more Apples not the prunes that increasingly we are all stuck with.

      1. I don’t know if he was livid but I sure was. Government spending has NEVER gone down since FDR. The best we’ve ever managed is slowing the rate of increase. Even when surpluses came they all got blown on new spending instead of paying down the debt.

  6. Apple doesn’t need the stock market anymore. The faster the price can go down, the faster Apple can buy themselves back. If they need cash in the future they can offer stock like how UPS does. Once revenue is generated, they buy themselves back again. Also the divided was a huge mistake. You don’t offer such a deal when you are on fire. It also attracts the wrong investor type, i.e., hence the guy suing Apple over preferred stock. Notice ever since the divined being offered the stock value lost its momentum.

  7. When are you people going to realize that not even the president can change Wall Street’s view of the future of Apple with Tim Cook in charge of the once great company. Investors do not believe, for good reason, that Tim has any vision for the company’s future (the only area of time that matters to Wall Street) except to keep tweaking gadgets to see if there’s a way to compete with competing junk. That strategy has absolutely NO FUTURE and AAPL will continue to languish until there is a new leadership team in place.

    Now, flame away with your “troll” and “idiot” name calling but I’m looking like a genius while you are looking as clueless as the failed CEO you all seem to love unconditionally.

    1. Funny considering practically all of the technology decisions and products that are on the market now from Apple and likely the majority for some time to come would have been formed, decided and initiated under Steve Jobs. Its precisely this sort of misconception and self fulfilling delusion about reality that decides the success of anything in western society these days no matter how the facts speak a totally different story. Looking for failure will nearly always result in finding it if you have that sort of mindset.

    2. Doesn’t take a genius to be able to find his own ass without needing a map and GPS, which is about your intellectual limit. “I’m a troll, foll-de-roll, I’m a troll, etc…”

    3. U Mad Bro?
      You sure sound it. Mad at the world’s most successful tech company? I know the feeling. I HATED Microsoft before they began to fade.
      I’d give Cook at least 3 more years before judging his performance, personally. Too soon to tell.
      Fuck Wall Street. With luck, Apple will decide to disrupt the banking industry in the near future.

  8. Don’t understand the headline. How was it a failure? I think the article writer, Nigam Arora, is a failure for trying to be a wet blanket at emerging technologies and he measures Apple’s performance by stock changes? Sad for Forbes that this guy writes for them.

  9. Master of the Sound Bite Words: Zero practical knowledge.

    “Obama said, ‘A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.”

    That statement is about as stupid as Bill Clinton saying “It depends on what is is.”

    3D printing will not make “almost everything”. Even in the limited case of plastics, production molding with all the grades of plastics & the custom plastic property additives are only available in injection and similar forms of high volume production molding.

  10. 3D printing will take off when the big three, Canon, Epson and HP begin to make 3D printers for the home. Until then, the less expensive models available, and that means $3,000 and below, are too primitive for most people, with poor results more suited to toys than much of anything else.

    We need the drivers these companies will deliver with their models. Unfortunately, right now, 3D printing, other than for the high end commercial machines, is not a place that anyone who isn’t a hobbyist will want to enter.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.