“For nearly three years, I’ve been writing that there are so many ways to win with Apple and that iTunes will displace Wal-Mart as the largest retailer of music on the planet. It looks like this will happen before the end of 2006. While Wall Street’s having a cow over Apple’s recent 20% top-line upside preannouncement and the news that it shipped 14 million iPods, the real story for Apple is truly, simply, digital downloads,” Cody Willard writes for TheStreet.com. “Apple’s just barely begun offering video downloads. It’s maybe sold 5 million video-enabled iPods thus far. So what happens when Apple’s video iPod hits critical mass? Say, when 10 million people have a video iPod? And what happens when Apple offers enough video content on iTunes that it hits critical mass? Say, 5,000 different shows and movies? And what happens when Apple’s hardware fully integrates into your living room home theater system?”
“Do you see where all this is headed? The three won’t work together incrementally. We’re looking at exponential growth. And strategically for Apple, we’re looking at de facto standardization around its video platform. Oh my,” Willard writes. “Meanwhile, of course, there’s that little business of music. Three million song downloads per day in the fourth quarter. And that was before those 14 million iPods had been opened under the Christmas tree at the end of the quarter… Finally, of course, there’s that other little business of Apple’s called computers. With the Intel platform rolled out a full five months ahead of schedule, we’re going to see some big market-share gains this year. Even getting to 5% market share for Apple would entail nearly a doubling of its computer sales. Oh my, indeed. There are just so many ways to win with Apple. I’m sticking with it.”
Full article here.
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Go Apple! First Post!
This guy has said what I’ve been thinking– Apple has created a self-perpetuating system that can grow for a along time to come. And, by executing things well, it is actually ready for that growth! Yay for my retirement portfolio.
Love the Apple, but I want to see higher def downloads first and also the ability to burn my own DVD’s from that download. Then I’ll consider it part of my daily purchasing options.
Wow!!! Feels good to be a Machead these days, don’t it?
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When my wife asked me to sell off Apple stock a few years ago, I made the same sort of arguments for keeping it. We kept the stock.
I saw Apple building not just products, but an architecture for capturing the heart and much of the meat of the consumer electronics market. The computer, music, and video are all part of that architecture and with Job’s experience and knowledge of Hollywood — through Pixar — he would know what to do with it.
This is a good article. This guy gets it.
Sidenote: Notice AAPL price drop today, just before earnings are officially announced. Likely a boost is coming our way…
I wish I’d bought Apple stock back when it was $9/share like my friend in college did. 🙁
http://musobs.blogspot.com
Just as there is a ‘spiral of death’ downwards for some companies once bad news spreads leading to more bad news (and very hard to break out of e.g. Napster, Dell), there seems to be an opposite ‘spiral of growth’ for successful companies too.
I think today’s down turn for AAPL had more to do with the general crapiness of the market today. On my ticker widget every single stock I follow was red today, including the dow which lost 63 points. I don’t think there were any especially bad feeling about apple.
The Apple holiday season in 10 months is going to be one for the record books.
Unbelievable….this is getting ridiculous – they’re all starting to say what us nutters on MDN have been saying for a long time…!
From beleagured to lovefest in two short years.
Davis, it always feels good to be a Machead.
I like that I’m a “nutter.”
We’re like the crazy guy on the street corner that keeps yelling out (seemingly)misguided, faith based statements about this or that.
Except everyone’s starting to believe us.
awwwwww…
I bought into AAPL @ $73 a share (smiles)
@RealityCheck: That site you referred us is no big deal (though I’m sure they do a good and useful job).
This link shows you were the action really is, and where administrators need to take ‘immediate action’ every other week to avoid the next catastrophe: http://www.us-cert.gov/current/current_activity.html
It’s very useful for Windows promoters to have articles which promote Mac users as smug because it helps to sow doubts about Mac security.
Journalists will get the message eventually: Mac is not the risk, Windows is.
ooops wrong page sorry chaps
Have you seen this Email from Apple: Art Directors Invitational Master Class
“Don’t miss the hottest conference for creative professionals.
Head out West for ADIM 9, the ultimate design workshop for designers, illustrators, art directors, and photographers. Gain fresh insights and discover new techniques during three days of roll-up-your-sleeves instruction. And learn the hottest tools, tips, and tricks for Adobe products while utilizing the latest technology from Apple.
Free Adobe Web Bundle and more.
Along with a host of gadgets and giveaways, all ADIM 9 attendees will receive a complimentary copy of the new Adobe Web Bundle, which includes Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium and Macromedia Studio 8—a more than $1,800 value.”
So… this sent out on Friday the 13th., when Apple’s share price closes at ≈ $86, the same day they pass Dull in Market Cap,
9 years (or 99 months) after Mike Dell said they should “Shut down the company” (October 6, 1997 – 10/6/1997).
ADIM 9.
2006 is the 10 year anniversary of Steve Jobs return to Apple. Announced 12/20/1996.
Monday 1/16/06, was MLK day, 20 year anniversary.
Apple share price was still $86, and was all day because markets were closed.
Notice the date that the invitational is over… Apple’s 30th Anniversary, April Fool’s Day 2006.
Note that Vista used to be called “Longhorn”.
Note the branding iron… as in “BRANDing”… as, in “iPod”… as in, here’s how you build a brand.
as in “Burning your Rump”, or “Gonna’ Brand Your Ass”, as in MSFT, ass in ass.
Note that a LOT of history has been made in Monterey, California.
Especially as regards Music and Pop Culture.
Big history.
Click “Learn more about “ADIM 9” :
http://insideapple.apple.com/redir/350438/LEARN_MORE/eab2a9743a417287b25653560ac90cbe
and see Apple use words and phrases like:
Manifest destiny,
destine to conquer,
expand your knowledge,
three days,
inspired potential,
take possession,
tricks of the trade,
work more effectively,
Xerox, Adobe, Cannon are sponsors for this event
Steve Jobs 51st birthday is 2/14/2006, born in 1955
1955 also happens to be the same year that Albert Einstein died
From Wikipedia:
February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 310 days remaining, 311 in leap years. By Roman custom February 24 is the day added to a leap year, and the occurrence of February 29 is merely a consequence of this.
also on Feb 24:
1803 – The Supreme Court of the United States, in Marbury v. Madison, establishes the principle of judicial review. (in the news recently)
1975 – Hard rock band Led Zeppelin release the classic double album Physical Graffiti.
1988 – The Supreme Court of the United States sides with Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine by overturning a lower court decision to award Jerry Falwell $200,000 for defamation.
1996 – The last occurrence of February 24 as a leap day in the European Union and for the Roman Catholic Church.
1990 – Malcolm Forbes, American publisher dies. (b. 1917)
1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitt
Holidays and observances
Regifugium, in the Roman calendar
Independence Day in Estonia (1918)
Flag Day in México
Catholicism: Mardi Gras (aka Shrove Tuesday) (2004, 2009)
And 1955:
Events
July 17 – Disneyland opens.
July 18 – The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially.
September 22 – Commercial television begins in England.
September 30 – Actor James Dean killed in car accident near Cholame, California.
December 1 – Montgomery, Alabama seamstress, Rosa Parks, refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested.
December 31 – General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make over USD $1 billion in a year.
70 mm film is introduced with Oklahoma!.
Deaths
March 12 – Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist (b. 1920)
April 18 – Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879)
The list of births is amazing… 50+ well known famous people incl.: Bill Gates, Whoopi, Yo-Yo Ma, David Lee Roth,
PEOPLE:
Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the CEO of Apple Computer and a leading figure in the computer industry. As co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) of Apple in 1976, he helped popularize the concept of the home computer with the Apple II. Later, he was one of the first to see the commercial potential of the GUI and mouse developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, and saw that these technologies were incorporated into the Apple Macintosh. Jobs is known to be the man behind the recovery of Apple Computer, especially through the success of the Apple iPod. He is also chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, a leading producer of computer-animated feature films which has made such films as the recent Incredibles and the Toy Story series.
Go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs
A good read, I especially like: In the autumn of 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the “Homebrew Computer Club” with Steve Wozniak. He took a job at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, as a technician. During this time, it was discovered that a slightly modified toy whistle included in every box of Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal was able to reproduce the 2600 Hz supervision tone used by the AT&T long distance telephone system. Jobs and Wozniak went into business briefly in 1974 to build “blue boxes” based on the idea that allowed for free long distance calls.
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18, 1955) was a theoretical physicist of Jewish descent, born in Ulm, Germany, who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He proposed the theory of relativity and also made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his “miracle year”) and “for his services to Theoretical Physics.”
After his general theory of relativity was formulated in November 1915, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame exceeded that of any other scientist in history. In popular culture, his name has become synonymous with great intelligence and even genius.
Einstein himself was deeply concerned with the social impact of scientific discoveries. His reverence for all creation, his belief in an “ultimate principle” (or “unified field theory”) and the grandeur, beauty, and sublimity of the universe (the primary source of inspiration in science), his awe for the scheme that is manifested in the material universe—all of these show through in his work and philosophy.
President Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the sixteenth Vice President (1865) and the seventeenth President of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson presided over the Reconstruction of the United States following the American Civil War, and his conciliatory policies towards the defeated rebels and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Congressional Republicans, leading the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1868; he was the first President to be impeached. He was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.
The impeachment of Johnson is widely regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the Federal Government. Had it been successful it would most likely have permanently damaged the Presidency and established a precedent that a president may be impeached not for “high crimes and misdemeanors” but for mere political differences.
Johnson was the first President to be impeached, and the only one until Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998. Both presidents were acquitted.
Post-Presidency
Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate in 1868 and to the House of Representatives in 1872. He eventually succeeded and was elected as a Democrat to the Senate and served from March 4, 1875, until his death near Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31, 1875. He is the only President to serve in the Senate after his presidency.
States admitted to the Union
Nebraska: March 1, 1867
The Johnson Administration negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia on 9 April 1867 for $7,200,000.
The Alaska purchase from Russia by the United States occurred in 1867 at the behest of Secretary of State William Seward. The territory purchased was about 600,000 square miles (1,600,000 km²) of the modern U.S. state of Alaska.
Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing the Alaskan territory without compensation in some future conflict, either to US expansion in much the same way that Mexico had lost territory in the Mexican-American War, or to the British who had fought against Russia in the Crimean War. Therefore Tsar Alexander II decided to sell the territory to the US and instructed Russian minister to the United States, Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, to enter into negotiations with Seward in the beginning of March 1867.
The negotiations concluded in an all-night negotiating session that resulted in the signing of the treaty at 4 o’clock in the morning of March 30, with the purchase price set at US$7,200,000 (equivalent to about US$90 million in 2005 dollars). For the treaty to come into effect it had to be ratified by the United States Senate, and on April 9, 1867 the Senate approved the purchase by just one vote.
The purchase was at the time derided as Seward’s folly, Seward’s icebox, and President Andrew Johnson’s polar bear garden, because it was believed foolhardy to spend so much money on the remote and distant region. However, Seward’s icebox eventually paid off. In 1896, gold was discovered in the neighbouring Klondike in Canada, setting off the massive Klondike Gold Rush. Gold was being mined in areas of Alaska not far from Dawson, spawning settlements like Chicken and Eagle.
One of the most popular routes to the Klondike involved landing in Alaska where Skagway was established, as well as nearby Dyea, now abandoned and with no standing buildings. Some gold-seekers came up the Yukon River through Alaska, and may have been instrumental in the 1900 discovery of gold in the area of Nome, where another gold rush took place. Alaska has proven to be abundant with natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, coal, timber, and salmon.
Waiting for the Gold Rush and the new Klondike Solitare from Apple.
It must be generational.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pay for video on a tiny little screen when you can have on full size TV for free. Not only that, I just don’t need to watch whatever’s playing that badly. There’s better things to do with free time than spending it starting at a 2″ TV screen. Read a book or a magazine for cryin out loud!
I also can’t bring myself to buy music at 128bk which is significantly below CD quality. Even my so-so hearing can notice the difference.
It just amazes me how easily we’ve all bought into paying for something that is lower in quality vs. what was previously available and worse yet, what was sometimes free.
It may be ad-free right now, but just wait: The marketers will find a way to put their advertising in front of you or into your ears and we’ll blithely accept that as well just like we accept them at the movie theatres.
I wish these people would consult a dictionary.
The Intel Macs were *not* “ahead of schedule” – the “beat the deadline by a wide margin. Nowhere – either in Jobs’ 2005 WWDC Keynote or elsewhere – did Apple announce a schedule.
MW: “months” oddly enough…
There are 4 areas where Apple needs to execute over the coming 1-3 years to maintain its lead:
1. full-length movies for iTunes and iPod
2. home theater (and network)
3. wireless/cellular connectivity for the iPod
4. simplified remote access to all your content over the Internet (like Slingbox but beyond TV and DVR content)
I think these are the areas where Apple’s consumer electronics competitors can make a move. Up to now, Apple has been moving so fast that by the time their competitors have barely been able to produce poor copies, Apple has moved on to the next thing. (You can argue the Windows MCE is ahead of Apple but it’s too complicated, poorly integrated across all the devices and UIs, and badly marketed, and thus, has no traction.)
Of course, the competitors also need to produce a well-designed pocketable device like the iPod, a quality download store like iTMS, and seamless connectivity between the two. These, plus its 700+ iPod accessories, are key pieces that Apple already has giving them a huge lead but it’s still early in the game.
4.2% x 2 = 5% …?
I find it incredibly ironic that I came to thestreet.com following this upbeat article about Apple, especially in the area of video, only to find that thestreet.com doesn’t support Macintosh-based video! Instead, they’ve unaccountably limited their market to users with the latest Windows Media Player software. Is this silliness… or what? If they were to publish to an open standard such as mpeg4, mpeg2, or h264, anyone could watch the videos on any platform. This is easy to do if they were using Apple’s Quicktime video software, since it can read and write to all open standards.
I’ve written a note to them pointing this out, and I hope they’ll put their head back on their neck where it belongs rather than keeping it tucked up their ***!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> QuickTime is clearly the superior choice for video processing for any number of reasons. Not the least of which it’s compatible with iPods and iTunes.
Gotta keep an eye on these guys… they have so much to learn!
Cheers, Leland