Apple shares dip following CEO Jobs’ Leopard-focused keynote address

“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs used the stage at the company’s annual developers conference Monday to show off Leopard, the up-coming version of the company’s famous operating system,” Rex Crum and Dan Gallagher report for MarketWatch.

“Jobs gave little new information about the company’s wildly anticipated iPhone, slated to go on sale in three weeks. Nor did he announce any news related to the company’s popular iPod digital music players,” Crum and Gallagher report.

“He did say that Apple has launched a new version of its Web browser software for Windows users. He also outlined a system by which independent developers can write new programs for the iPhone – though he stopped short of opening up the device’s software code for developers,” Crum and Gallagher report.

“Lack of news about the iPhone may have contributed to the weakness in Apple’s shares following Jobs’ keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco,” Crum and Gallagher report.

“After concluding his speech, Apple’s shares slipped more than 3% to a low of $120.30. The stock has been on a tear of late – surging nearly 40% in the last two months on anticipation of the iPhone’s potential business,” Crum and Gallagher report. “The stock was trading up about 1% before Jobs took the stage.”

Full article here.

65 Comments

  1. They had to expect this after touting “top secret” features and then showing us a new finder with coverflow and a transparent dashboard with stacks… Cool features, yes, but “Top Secret?” Come on…

  2. i love the apple community…..

    the windows community gets served a crap OS for $400 and calls it the greatest thing since sliced bread. the apple community gets the best OS on earth, one reasonable price, and looks at the company and says “what, is that all you have?”

    MW: problems. as in “every 6 months the problems of the apple community become apparent….

  3. The market wants EVEN MORE news regarding the iPhone. I guess because the news so far is just not good enough? Sheesh! It’ll be the best damn device on the market – by far(!) – and that still isn’t good enough.

    And I suppose people were really wanting some new hardware announcements regarding the Mac line – but I think it should be fairly apparent that Apple wants nothing to distract from the impending release of the iPhone.

    It’s just weird that each time we have a Steve-note, so many people express so much dissapointment that every single one of their computer-related wet dreams did not become a reality all in the blink of an eye.

    Geez, what spoiled people. Apple can’t reinvent the wheel every 6 months.

  4. What more news did they want about the iPhone at a developer conference.

    The bloody thing doesn’t even start shipping for another 18 days.

    Surely you shouldn’t be allowed to buy shares until you have a functioning capacity for logic and reason.

  5. Finicky day investors with a short term vision.

    i don’t see what the fuss is about. this was supposed to showcase Leopard. Done that. They gave a little hint of iPhone. Done that.

    If anything a couple of things will now happen:
    1. they are finally committing to the Game market space. By next quarter this should result in a couple more Mac marketshare gains.
    2. Leopard is now officially on target. and Vista is now officially outdated. a half percentage point market share will result of this. Mor macs being sold.
    3.Safari on Windows. the missing link to iPhone for Windows users. It is now possible

  6. @Shen

    The problem is not Leopard, it looks awesome.. The problem is Steve already showed us 90% of it last year.. And the 10% of new stuff is hardly worth calling “Top Secret.”

  7. Well… when your favourite shares recede – what do wise investors do? Those who old for the long term. Those who bought under at $15 before the first split and have increased their holding on a steady consistant basis?

    Those PERSONS buy the phuque outta a price drop and then sit back and enjoy the climb!!!

    Buy more!!! Time to buy yesterdays prices! ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    mdn = persons

  8. Shen,
    when you have Steve promising “Top Secret” features and then doesn’t unveil them… of course people feel underwhelmed. (Although Time Machine backing up via Airport is cool).

    As for the stock price, that’s not the Apple Community…

  9. I loved the Leopard announcements and even the Safari announcements, whic is kind of a no brainer now that iPhone will be shipping with a full version of it. But the iPhone “announcement” was completely unnecessary, unless they were finally going to announce how much the AT&T plans were going to cost. At this point, I really dont think that AT&T will have any special plans for the iPhone. Steve should have just given us a speed-bumped iMac (maybe with the Core 2 Quad chips) and got off the stage. That would have been the better track to follow.

  10. I agree with Pete. Apple made it appear that something really big would be announced by calling them “Top Secret” features. If they market it that way, the expectations would not have been so high.

  11. these people are ridiculous. apple says there’s gonna be 3rd party apps for the iphone (something everyone has wanted to know about), shows off some cool new leopard features, drops an a-bomb on IE with safari, and investors are all like “what, no quad core mac mini with sli 8800gtx?? f*ck you apple!”

    somewhat related, this post comes to you via safari 3.0 running on a 15″ 1.25ghz powerbook. it feels MUCH faster than old safari, firefox or even webkit! i also downloaded the win version for the athlon xp that’s about to become a MAME cabinet – very nice so far.

  12. @ “what the hell?” You are so spot on!!!

    Oh – and this is a DEVELOPERS conference! No bouncing and screaming – just steady information and news and two “one more things” that were icing on the cake for DEVELOPERS!!!

    Proverbial half wits who complain about that which they have no idea!

    mdn – half

  13. They stuff Steve showed was neat but overall that was the most ho-hum keynote I have seen since I switched to the mac 6 years ago. Heck, even the … one more thing was pretty small. A new browser for windows. I am glad to have it but he could have spent 30 seconds mentioning it and have been done with it. It certainly wasn’t worth the “one more thing” space.

  14. I would pay good money for a picture of Ballmer’s expression when Safari for Windows was announced

    —————-

    Why would you think that Ballmer even cares? There are tons of web browsers available for Windows. IE still has an 80% share.

    I like Safari and all, but let’s be honest, there is nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary about it that’s gonna make every IE and Firefox user out there suddenly switch.. It’s pretty much just an ordinary browser.

  15. What a crappy 24 hours… I don’t know what was worse, the “Sopranos” finale or today’s Keynote address. Oh well, maybe the drug store will let me return the unopened package of Depenz since there was nothing worth peeing myself over.

  16. @MacZeus,

    “It’s pretty much just an ordinary browser.” AAAAAggggghhhhh!!!

    Its Safari running on windows.!!! You people are WAY to jaded. And I don’t think you even try to read between the lines. Sheeezzzzeee. I expect that from “professional analysis” idiots but give me a break.

    People wanted Mac OSX to run on windows. NOW iTunes runs on Windows, Safari runs on Windows, iPhone will run on Windows, and you know they will all run great, even if it is Windows that they are running on..

    —- ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> If the iPhone and OSX 5 worked as a “teleporter” between Macs, you guys would be happy for . . . oh . . maybe 3 months, then you would be saying . . . . so whats next!!! 🙁

    Time Machine runs and it runs on networks for all your computers at once.

    View documents in cover flow!!! Can’t find what your looking for? Do a search, get 150 documents and then just flip thru them, zip, zip, zip, including videos, pictures, etc ah got ya. Simple as “APPLE” pie. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> and super fast. No opening up every document, one at a time.

    OH yea, you wanted iPhone to be open for 3rd party apps, OK it will be, some already on way. Your computer in your pocket, even better.

    But NO. Its not enough. Even the market does its standard drop in value cause the spaceship is not ready for mass sales yet. I guess the family vacation to Mars will have to go on hold.

    All, I can say, is BUY, BUY,BUY, quick before people realize their mistake and Apple hits 150.

    Rant over,

    en.

  17. It was expected that the short-term profit takers would bring the stock down after hitting new highs on most of the trading days for the last 30 days. Long-term investors will come out ahead, whether then bought AAPL last Friday or last year.

  18. I laugh at all you people laughing at Safari for Windows. Apple really started growing the second they released iTunes for Windows. This was the beginning of the halo effect and has dramatically affected Mac sales in a huge and positive way.
    Personally, Stacks, Quickview, Spaces, and CoverFlow are really going to help my productivity, as well as make Windows users drool. Now my mom can visually flip through her files instead of the old file system method. I thought it was a great day with some really cool stuff without losing productivity. Did people forget that it was only 10 of 300 features?Does complete 64 bit intrigue anyone at all?
    My goodness…shame on all you spoiled people. Sell your stock, you short-term boneheads.

  19. The big news is Apple is gunning for M$.
    – read between the lines here:
    1) iTunes – started to get Window users exposed to what Mac’s can do in ease of use
    2) iPods – started to get Windows users exposed to what Mac users get in quality of hardware
    3) iPhone – getting the Business user exposed to what Mac users can get done, its not just about creative
    4) Safari for Windows – exposing Window users to better programing that Mac users live by
    This is another Trojan horse – thik about it if you’ve paid $500-$600 for an iPhone you will have to get Safari for Windows to get full functionality of your purchase. Another 10 to 45 million users that potentially have to use Safari they haven’t been exposed to another Apple program.

    Plus – this is another incentive for PROGRAMMERS to write for the Mac platform instead of only for the Windows platform.

    PLUS, Plus – Games are coming to the Mac platform (not sure if this leaves out us older PPC users).

    My 2 cents.

  20. The Airport backup thing makes me queasy – wireless backup with no corruption? Better stay off the wireless phone and shut off the microwave.
    And yes, Apple is in the business of having to “Wow us” every six months. It makes the stockholders money. So where are the other goodies? “iLife/iWork ‘07.5? Maybe iLife/iWork ’07 at half price?

    MDN word, Ground, as to a halt.

  21. @Matrix3:

    Two problems with your number 4: First, Safari isn’t really indicative of good Mac programming. The menus and such, sure, but overall, I don’t think it’s anything that could get people interested in Macs. It’s a browser for crying out loud. And, IMHO, not even a really good one. . If anything, it will just annoy people that they have to install yet another browser.

    Second, I hate to generalize, but I really think it’s true that most Windows users really don’t care all that much about the interface, or about true quality. Some will start to see the light if given the chance, sure, but most people really have no taste. Most Windows users are perfectly happy with oodles of crappy software. If you doubt me, take a look at giveawayoftheday.com sometime. Just absolute garbage software, every day for the most part. Just total junk. That’s the software the Windows world deals with, and doesn’t seem to care.

  22. Its Safari running on windows.!!!

    ————–

    Umm yeah. I understand that.. Still not that big of a deal. Most browsers run on Windows and Macs, now Safari does too. I still don’t really see what is so much better about Safari than say Firefox or Netscape which both run on Windows and Macs.

  23. What was anticipated due to the rumors and hype from Apple:

    1. “Top Secret Feartures”
    No TS features that lived up to what was hyped. Though cool Leopard features, why hype as “Top Secret”?

    2. Sun CEO “ZSF” File System.
    No demo of the ZSF File System, or how Finder uses it, unless it was in the demo of Stacks.

    3. No new Hardware, specifically the iMac or Cinema displays, especially since the Mac Pro-Octo upgrade, MacBook and MacBook Pro upgrades recently.

    4. No mention of AppleTV re: YouTube.

    5. No mention of iTunes Plus or DRM free songs.

    6. No mention of iTunes, iPods, Apple Retail store, Mac Stats for the quarter or marketshare increase.

    I truly feel Apple had a “Wow” announcement ready and due to some glitch or issue couldn’t make the announcement at this time. OR they are planning one in the near future due to it being inappropriate to announce at a Developer’s conference. In any case I think the hype that apple generated based on it’s history of past WWDC announcements was a let down to those who were anticipating much more.

  24. @Chris ][

    – I understand your point, but I think this is just another push to get more Apple software exposure in the hands of Window users.

    Think about it, before iTunes most M$ users wouldn’t even consider anything Apple. Now there are more iTune users than iPod owners.

    Which also means more Window users are using Apple software.

    Second – most Windows users use whatever is the default (already installed) software. I think with the hype, perhaps we can get a few more users to try/download Safari.

    The ultimate reason why Programmers program in a particular language is the audience available. The more users of Safari will hopefully translate (long-term) to more Programmers for Mac.

    Let me know what you think.

  25. @hey –
    Regarding your point #2-
    I think this might have been the real top-secret item, but the cat got let out of the bag by some Sun executive.

    Based on all I heard about Steve -I think he would pull it from the presentation rather that have it said his top-secret feature was blown a week before his announcement.

    I hope that Sun executive got his a$$ reamed for letting the cat out of the bag.

  26. I thought everything about the new leopard was terrific and I am anxiously awaiting its release. And will be buying leopard as soon as it is released. This looks way cooler than Vista in so many ways. He didn’t need to mention any of those things as he has already mentioned some of them. His focus today was Leopard and nothing else. Nothing wrong with that. Things can be released anytime these days from Apple.

  27. *Yawn*

    Steve Jobs is my new hero ever since he rescued me from Windows. Especially night before last when I had to reactivate Vista by phone and they accused me of stealing it. I’m going all Apple now. However, this was a ho-hum keynote. We didn’t learn about any new features of Leopard that we didn’t know about already. Just a few details about Finder. iPhone is an open platform, but not spectacularly, since it’s just web development. Some hints about .Mac. And there is a Safari beta for Windows–which I downloaded and use on Windows XP, and since it is a beta, it has already crashed six times. I see nothing new in Safari version 3. It’s good, but it can’t synchronize with .Mac.

    But no hardware even though the iMacs are overdue.

    I guess they aren’t ready for the rest of the stuff. I hope there is a “rest of the stuff.”

  28. Man I bailed my June options this morning, made it out with 300% profit…coulda had 700%…*tear*. I woulda got out sooner, but I was just in disbelief about how crappy WWDC was (it really wasn’t crappy, but Investors want unreasonably more than techs do). We’ll see what happens tomorrow. I hope this got rid of folks who wanted to mass-sell on the 29th. Hello AT&T =)

  29. I thought Mac OS X was all about impervious security and breath taking graphics. Where is the innovation?

    I was expecting a holographic emitter for true 3D graphics, and a force field to protect me and my Macintosh from evil doers. And a light saber.

    You let me down again apple.

  30. The only windows user I could remotely see downloading Safari for their PC, are ones that already use mac as their primary computer.

    Even if that’s the case, they probably know a thing or two about browsers to get them thinking about it in the first place.

    Which then means… they probably use Firefox.

    I love my Apple to death and am definitely an Apple Fanboy amongst my peers, but I certainly would never pretend that Safari is any sort of advanced or quality browser. In fact, most programmers I know (also in my own web design experience) LOATHE Safari!! Sadly… those would be the few people I can think of that know enough about the web and browsers themselves to actually take a second to think about the browser their using to get them to make any switch from one or the other. In their case… they’re probably use Firefox. Most likely would only install Safari for cross-browser testing purposes during development.

  31. If Steve hadn’t hyped Top Secret features, if Steve weren’t giving the keynote, if they Apple Store hadn’t been brought down, and if Steve had not used the lighting rod phrase “And one more thing…”, nobody would be complaining.
    Nobody, not even the faithful expect miracles every six months. What we do expect is for Apple to fulfill the expectations that it hypes. That’s all.
    But, I am holding on to my stocks and waiting for June 29th when I fully expect them to take off.
    MDN Secret word – ‘writing’ as in ‘As of this writing’…

  32. > The Airport backup thing makes me queasy – wireless backup with no corruption?

    It’s a proven industry-standard technology. If people (including businesses) are using 802.11g (and now n) for networking and saving their “normal” files without “corruption,” why would it be an issue for doing backups? FYI – the new Airport Extreme Base Station is awesome.

    The bigger concern for backup software is the robustness of the backup software itself. For most people, the only time they will “test” their backup is if they have a drive failure and they need to restore from their backup archive files. That would be a really bad time to discover that their backup software created faulty backup files. For that reason, I like backup software that backs up the actual files individually; I use a program called ChronoSync by Econ.

    http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/index.html

    I’ll let others use TimeMachine for a while before I start using it.

  33. Like it or not, Apple Inc. has put their butt on the line. Gone are the days when fanboys opinions meant something for a struggling company that didn’t market itself, well if at all.
    If SJ and Apple don’t produce and make good their promises, they will join the list of hundreds of failed companies that almost made it. Consumers deserve to be upset if a retail company fails to deliver. This ain’t a hobby, Steve! You don’t want to ride on the elevator, do you?
    MDN word – “business” – Capisce?

  34. 1. “Top Secret Feartures”
    No TS features that lived up to what was hyped. Though cool Leopard features, why hype as “Top Secret”?

    Stacks has only ever been a patent before and – AFAIK – has never been seen as an actual bit of running code. CoverFlow in Finder? “Back To My Mac”? Out of the country? Get back to your home or office Mac, no muss, no fuss!

    2. Sun CEO “ZSF” File System.
    No demo of the ZSF File System, or how Finder uses it, unless it was in the demo of Stacks.

    I never thought it was going to be in there in the first place, but then the last conversation I had with an Apple product manager pretty much made that obvious.

    You might see it appear in Server around 10.5.5 as an adjunct to XSan, but it won’t show up for real until 10.6 – BTW, that’s my opinion based on nothing more than an educated guess rather than the conversation with the afore-mentioned product manager.

    3. No new Hardware, specifically the iMac or Cinema displays, especially since the Mac Pro-Octo upgrade, MacBook and MacBook Pro upgrades recently.

    It’s called managing and maximising the news cycle. There’s no point in flooding the specialist or general news media with more information than it can accommodate in any given cycle.

    You might, if you’re lucky, see a new iMac next week. But, if it were me, I’d make you wait until I’d maximised the PR return on investment afforded by iPhone – seven days of stories of people fighting in the aisles of AT&T stores is more interesting and useful to the overall cause than a Santa Rosa iMac, it’s that simple. Get over it.

    4. No mention of AppleTV re: YouTube.

    And the relevance to people paying a couple of thousand clams for new developer info would be what precisely? AppleTV is – theoretically – a “closed” system. If you want to develop your own media server software, go and do it or participate in one of the open-source projects.

    5. No mention of iTunes Plus or DRM free songs.
    See the above.

    6. No mention of iTunes, iPods, Apple Retail store, Mac Stats for the quarter or marketshare increase.

    Good idea. I’m relatively certain it’s against the rules to give information that would/could affect the share price to any audience, without first making that data/opinion available to the market at large.

    If he made that announcement in an audience of several thousand developers – many of whom are probably shareholders – exactly how would they feel if the price of their shares plummeted whilst they were unable to do anything about it.

    I’d feel pretty pissed if I paid over $2000 to be in San Francisco, and then got screwed for another four/five-figure sum because I couldn’t get to my e-trade account.

  35. Nothing will really be allowed to eclipse iPhone for the next few weeks. There will almost certainly be another special big event to launch Leopard come October/Sept. Maybe we can expect some related hardware announcements then too. Remember Leopard was very recently delayed… and think what this Stevenote MIGHT have been if the OS release had kept to its original schedule.

  36. “Finicky day investors with a short term vision. “

    They have a long term vision, Steve sold them much more in that vision. So when Apple disappoints, the stock goes down.

    “the 10% of new stuff is hardly worth calling “Top Secret.””

    What about the of the words “reality Distortion Field” is unfamiliar to you?

    “Its Safari running on windows.!!! “

    Just getting you ready for Mac OS XI Vista. Wait for iLife on Windows next, followed by an announcement that Leopard is the last of it’s kind.

    “This is another Trojan horse”

    Yes, another Apple app migrated to Windows. One less reason for Mac OS X to exist.

  37. Everybody was so afraid of Apple ditching the Mac, and here’s a keynote about nothing but OS X, and we hear things like ‘underwhelmed.’ Come on! This is an interesting comment on just how much Apple has grown as a company over the last several years. I remember when the G4 announcement was enough to make everybody slaver. Can you imagine how people would have been raving if there was something like spaces or time machine back then?

  38. Playin’ Stupid wrote:

    “The Airport backup thing makes me queasy – wireless backup with no corruption? Better stay off the wireless phone and shut off the microwave.”
    did u ever, even once, get corrupted data over WIFI ?
    i doubt it, either the data is send/received succesfully, or the transaction fails (after a few retries with long timeouts)
    backing up over airport is just as reliable as over firewire, or to your local disk, that’s just how TCP/IP works.
    and, even if u loose your connection, the part of the file that was supposed to be sent, will be sent again at the next opportunity.

    —

    mingy stingy wrote:

    “I was expecting a holographic emitter for true 3D graphics”

    what about a 3D OS, where every button, every window, text, is REAL 3D ?
    would u like that ?, i hope so.

    a new OS that gets rid of applications and documents completely, replaced by tools (pencil, paint, text etc), materials (paper..), shapes (spheres, cubes, lines, etc…) and more complex object like a spreadsheet, a house, a garden, a mailbox, a stereo to play music, or anything else that anybody can think off and share with other users.
    a new OS that works with 3D screens (with or without special glasses), or on any “old” 2D screen, resolution independent, no bitmaps, just objects.
    a new OS where u can mix any type of data together, a web page + a spreadsheet + some paint tools, that allows u to invite people to join u in a document to work together.
    a new OS that knows who changed what, and when, and allows you to undo changes made by a person, or all changes made to an object.
    a new OS that is completely extensible, anyone can create new tools, materials, or more complex objects made by combining basic objects.

    leggo ?

  39. People who complain about AAPL tanking are STUPID. Me, I’d just buy more. $125 was a great price. $120 even better. Go to $100, see if I care. Let’s see what the price is in 3 years.

    Keynote disappointing? By FAR this was one of the most entertaining keynotes ever. Apple is about more than just the tools. It’s the culture. Why else do we evangelize? Resistance is futile!

    Safari on Windows is huge, or are you too stupid to see why? It’s freakin’ FAST! Makes up for time lost using other parts of Windows. I’m getting much faster page loads on my XP at work. And how else you gonna prototype for iPhone? Duh.

    Anyway, see y’all on the other side of $300 a share.

  40. I, for one am even more sold on Leopard. The new finder looks great, the desktop looks cool and Time Machine looks even more useful. Not to mention the back to mac sharing functionality and the myriad of other minor changes that we’ll see throughout the system. People are acting as if that’s it, there will be changes to virtually every app, they just chose to show these. It’s the little things that will really make the system.

  41. This drop in price was predictable.

    In fact, someone did predict it: Laura Goldman of LSG Capital, from Tel Aviv, Israel.

    On May 21, 2007, she put a sell rating on AAPL, and almost everyone in this forum, from MDN on down, dismissed or poured derision on her and her rating.

    Now we can see that Ms. Goldman wasn’t an idiot. You may disagree with her rating, i.e. you may decide to hold your shares instead of selling.

    But Ms. Goldman wasn’t, and isn’t, an idiot. Nor are all the other professionals who have been pointing out the “sell the news” reaction that was waiting in the wings.

    The equity market is a harsh mistress and is unforgiving of mistakes. People who are consistently wrong tend not to last very long. Ms. Goldman has a long (20+ year) history in the industry, and that speaks for itself.

  42. No more Macworlds or WWDCs for me. Although Mr. Jobs seemingly makes an effort to make these historical events work, not only did he inherit these events from an earlier Apple era, but they ultimately go against the grain of his “think secret” mentality.

  43. It doesn’t matter what the stock price is doing, all i know is for the first time i am seeing hard core Windows users opt for a Mac. why would that be? Thats stats. this month show mac servers out selling Windows servers. The key to this wave of mac buying is simple.
    People want to be different, people want to be creative, people want to do things with there PC’s without becoming a computer wizard. For the first time in this tech economy we are seeing applications,web sites, hardware being developed with the user in mind and not the techie. Look at what web 2.0 is telling us ! its not a technical phenomena, its about the dog wagging the technology tail.
    so for all you tech wizards out there, Apple is doing it for the people. The iphone is just another great device, it doesn’t have a whole load of technical gadgets, that other phones don’t have or won’t have, its just the way its going to present them to you !
    Phones unlike PC’s have a less technical user base, so why does one buy a ipod of a iphone, silly question !

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