“This promises to be a joyous holiday season for Steve Jobs and the incandescent Apple. Over the past year, the company’s numbers have been stunning: Sales are up 24%, earnings up 75%, margins topping 30%, stock price up 146%. The popularity of the iPod and its snazzy young cousin, the iPhone, has lifted other Apple products, helping boost market share in personal computers in the United States from 2% a few years ago to 8% this past quarter, with Apple leapfrogging Gateway to take third place behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard,” Adam L. Penenberg writes for Fast Company.
MacDailyNews Take: The superior quality of the Mac experience being showcased at Apple’s growing network of retail stores and in TV commercials, combined with people who have finally tired of Microsoft’s unending litany of empty promises and mediocre-at-best products, certainly deserve some credit. iPod halo effect is nice, but worthless without the Mac’s overall quality.
Penenberg continues, “The latest upgrade to Apple’s operating system–Leopard–is getting strong reviews, in contrast to the indifference that greeted Microsoft’s new Vista OS.”
MacDailyNews Take: Indifference?! Would you qualify “Vista’s a lemon” or “Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd as “indifferent?” Penenberg is far too charitable.
Penenberg continues, “Yet this is also a dangerous moment for Apple. In a way the company has never seen, the barbarians are massing at the gates. From hardware to software to services, major competitors with serious R&D and marketing budgets are laying siege to the House of Jobs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oooh, scary!
Penenberg continues, “MP3 players from the likes of iRiver, Microsoft, SanDisk, and Toshiba are getting slicker all the time, targeting the iPod at a fraction of the cost. Vivendi Universal scuttled a long-term licensing deal to offer its music on iTunes and is talking with other music companies about building a download store of their own… Even the tree huggers are coming after Apple, threatening to sue under a California consumer-protection statute if certain allegedly toxic chemicals aren’t removed from the iPhone.”
MacDailyNews Take: Will… type… something… if… we… ever… stop… laughing… uncontrollably…
Penenberg continues, quoting “analysts” who try valiantly, but unconvincingly, to talk down Apple’s stock and then writes, “It’s weeks before Christmas, and all through the house, there’s an iPhone, a touch screen, and no need for a mouse. But Jobs, the ‘brilliant,’ ‘visionary’ ‘genius’ with a knack for creating ‘insanely great’ consumer products, may well be wondering whether next year will be different. Merry Christmas, Steve. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, we stopped: Petty. Jealous. Loser.
Penenberg continues, “The question isn’t whether Apple will survive but how it will evolve… In an age increasingly defined by interoperability and technical collaboration, Jobs still refuses to license Apple’s operating system. He won’t allow music and videos downloaded from iTunes to be played on other MP3 players. He won’t permit music downloaded from competing stores to play on the iPod.”
MacDailyNews Take: This age is described here – and by others who have actually used both Apple’s products and badly-executed knockoffs from Microsoft and the box assemblers – as The Dark Ages of Personal Computing precisely because horizontal integration has proven to be a race to the bottom, devoid of concern for the end user experience, and fraught with frustration and incompatibilities. Apple’s vertical integration model – control of the whole widget, if you will – is superior for the only person that really matters: the user. By the way, Adam, Apple’s iTunes Store sells DRM-free music – prompted by Steve Jobs, no less, who would like all iTunes Store music to be sold DRM-free – that plays on many “other MP3 players.” And, just yesterday, we downloaded MP3’s from Amazon that play just fine on our iPod. Apple’s iPod does not require use of iTunes Store. iTunes Store does not require use of iPod. Next time, do some research before propagandizing, Adam.
Penenberg continues, “Gorgeous as Apple’s products are, people aren’t buying them for their inherent technological superiority. For half the price of a Mac, you can pick up a PC that does pretty much the same thing. There are MP3 players that produce superior audio to the iPod. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and a beautiful touch screen, but the phone itself is middling, as is its cellular network. Even the security of Apple’s operating system, a theme the company returns to frequently, is overstated: As most hackers will tell you, it’s security-by-obscurity, a function of tiny market share, not inherent uncrackability.”
Penenberg’s B.S. – mixed with a veritable list of all of the anti-Apple FUD that’s been concocted in recent years – flows even thicker and heavier in the full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
MacDailyNews Take: In our experience, people who think “Apple isn’t anything special, it’s all marketing” are people who’ve never actually used an Apple product. And people who think an operating system that’s been in use for over 6 years — an OS used by over 25 million of the richest and best-educated people — which has never had even a single self-propagating virus in the wild is protected by “obscurity,” not inherent security, are complete idiots. And people who try to talk down a stock almost always do so for financial gain.
Contact:
Analysts … they analyse but are bad at predicting… except for their own gain.
I would say more likely that out of the fustration of vista and the reluctance of Apple to license their OS. The computer companies will group together to form their own OS.
Forget linux, it’s too difficult for general consumers.Forget windows, it costs to much for companies to have a technical support team to handle people with a lack of technical knowledge.
But the writer does have a point though.
The fact that a lot of computer companies rely on windows, and they have massive cash reserves, and they also need to protect that cash flow… might mean a change in direction for a lot of them.
They know that ubuntu though a lot user friendly than all other linux distros, but still its for the advance user and a bit unstable.
This gap can’t be filled with macs in time.
With the rumour that Acer is teaming up with apple on tablets… i think that Jobs is one step ahead.
There is an air in the sky, that doesn’t feel normal, and analysts keep getting wrong. It’s Jobs, he’s out-done everyone being miles ahead in thinking…
I feel it’s happening again here.
I think FUD should stand for:
F###ed-Up Disinformation
@Swordmaker: great effort!
@TowerTone: > And for half the price of a PC… LOL
@Penenberg:
> <u>Yet this is also a dangerous moment for Apple</u>….
Counterintuitive, isn’t it? If anything, it’s the least dangerous moment for Apple as a corporation. Just think for a moment: broad product line; increasing market share; innovative fresh software; fat margins; successful growing retail presence….
> <u>Let’s state the obvious: Apple isn’t going under</u>.
Let’s not; instead let’s try to state something relevant next time.</i>
> <u>But none of that will stop a growing number of adversaries from doing all they can to pare Apple down</u>
So what are you saying? That they helped Apple achieve success has but have now changed their mind? If anything, the number of adversaries is dropping! The more successful a corporation becomes, the more competitors it displaces. It’s a “dangerous moment” for its competitors!
> <u>Apple is at a moment of choice</u>…
Let me guess because the rest of your long-winded piece is so unoriginal: Apple can continue to innovate its way to success or it can’t. That’s really the crux of it. And, as an analyst, your anxiety about the future can’t be helped. So let me tell you:
No one can foretell the future. Your industry is based on the assumption that looking backwards – and hindsight – can be the basis for predicting the future. It’s the only “real” tool you have. You can couch it in elaborate mathematics or logic, but it will work only for a short period of time. The relevance of the past to the future diminishes exponentially the farther you look forward.
And it will be some random, unpredictable event that will destroy your model. I’m sure you will write some brilliant piece (you think) in hindsight then. But for now you’re chasing a wild goose. Don’t look for dangers where there aren’t any. They will emerge from a quadrant you haven’t considered no matter how wide you wield the shotgun approach. Look to the past and present.
Apple is successful, so in the short term, it will continue to be successful. Its competitors have ceded market share to Apple. In the short term, they will continue to do so. And if and when you see the trend reverse, then – and only then – can you report otherwise. In hindsight, of course. Otherwise, you will mislead fools.