The Mac Professional's Resource
Steve Jobs’ keynote from MacWorld 2008 is only a week old, and while most of the world goes on about its business, those of us who live in the cult of Mac as well as the media that likes to follow, are still waiting for the next big thing after a MacWorld that only rated a “meh” on revolutionary scale.
Meanwhile, Jobs knows that criticism can come from every corner. Bloggers around the net came down on him after he brushed off San Francisco sex columnist Violet Blue and even though Macs are selling well and iPhones and iPods seem to be hitting their targets, investors are saying the first quarter results conference call could be make or break for AAPL stock.
We can understand why some people may be upset with the Violet Blue incident. I helped keep his company alive by buying Performas and dealing with things like System 7.5.2, so even though it was somebody else responsible for those messes, I would like to think it warrants at least a picture. I am not sure how long Violet Blue has been a fan of Macs, but maybe next time she should offer something to Steve Jobs first. As Forbes columnist Brian Caulfield says, “Steve Jobs is not a petting zoo.” Performa guilt might not be worth a photo opportunity, but perhaps a signed copy of The Adventurous Couples Guide to Sex Toys is worthy of a little more consideration.
As for AAPL itself, it may be getting hammered harder than the other Violet Blue, but if people haven’t noticed, the market as a whole has been taking it on the chin for a little while now. AAPL may be 20% off it’s all time high, but as the market prepares for a correction, recession, etc, Apple appears to be in a good position for continued profits, so we’ll wait to get our panties in a bunch for a little while longer.
— Joe Fahs
Yesterday, we warned against judging the greatness of any Apple announcements until you have left the reality distortion field the surrounds Steve Jobs wherever he goes. Today, we would like to call out the analysts who may have avoided the RDF, but then go on to decide how good a product announcement is based on stock price. BusinessWeek took time to outline why the Keynote bounce is sometimes a thump.
Since 2000, Apple has become a strong company, and its growth has gained it a lot of attention within the investor community. Many investors look towards Apple product announcements to gauge the Apple’s future prospects. But although AAPL has risen 2000% in the last five years, the stock often fares poorly after a Keynote. If you remove last year’s iPhone announcement, the stock has fallen an average of 3.9% after every keynote. There are a lot of people with things to say about the viability of Apple’s new offerings, but if they immediately point to stock price, you probably know they haven’t done their research.
— Joe Fahs
Steve Jobs said a lot of things in his keynote yesterday at MacWorld. It’s fine to get excited about the products Apple announces, but it is important to re-visit everything after giving yourself a chance to let the RDF wear off.
Time Capsule – Great product. You have up to 1TB of storage along with a built-in Airport Extreme base station, allowing you to share printers, etc, off the disk. It supports Time Machine backups, which is great for the people on Leopard who saw this feature pulled, but also sucks because it doesn’t look like Apple is going to ever build that support for those people who already have an Airport Extreme. I think an amazing feature to add in the future is built-in syncing of home directories, something some third parties already offer, but it is not seamless. And in our pipe dreams we would like to sync iTunes libraries across Macs as well.
New Software for iPod Touch – Apple is charging $20 for software some people should have been included in the first place. We know Apple is a business, and it’s not as bad as the 802.11n surcharge from a few years back, but Apple stopped nickel and diming early adopters, then fewer people would hold off for the Rev. 2 models of their products.
New Apple iPhone Software – This is a great, free upgrade. The customizable home screen and web clips are a great addition, and we can finally send SMS messages to more than one person. The Google Maps location field does a decent job finding your location, although using only EDGE data, I think Blackberrys are more accurate (could be my imagination). And directions can originate from the location Google Maps provided you. Next up, we need the ability to send MMS.
Updated AppleTV – Apple did a good job lowering the price, but the hard drive sizes are still only marginal, especially since you don’t need to use a computer to download content any longer. The improved interface looks nice, and the addition of flickr content to the picture items is a nice feature, although for such a hip company, they really should be offering stuff from facebook as well.
iTunes Movie Rentals – This is a nice addition that brings Apple more in line with other competitors out there, and Apple did good work to get all of the studios on board. The price is only average, and you should have more than 24 hours to play the movie. There are times when you see a movie and want to share it with a friend. 72 hours to view would be a good compromise and give Apple a competitive advantage over the cable companies that offer similar on-demand features. Also, it’s great to have HD content, but not all titles have 5.1 sound. AppleTV is getting closer, but I’ll stick with NetFlix.
One small item we liked is the addition of free iTunes content on 20th Century Fox Titles. This is a great way for Apple to promote iTunes and movie studios to encourage people to buy more DVDs.
MacBook Air – I am not sure, but I think jobs created this MacBook solely because he wants to make the people who say Apple will introduce a tablet look like chumps. As an exercise in design, the MacBook Air is a masterpiece. Once again, Steve is challenging the industry to think about what an ultralight laptop means. For Apple, that means a large screen, 2GB of RAM standard, and a full keyboard. What it leaves out are a lot of ports, and user replaceable RAM, battery, or hard disk. As products go, this is much better than the Cube, which some have compared it to, but we really hope the price of the SSD storage comes down. It looks like a good product, but we’ll have to see what a less free-spending market thinks. However, I like that the wide variety of intel chips has given Apple some flexibility to try innovative designs. Presumable, the MacBook Air is just the first step. Still, I really just wanted a 13” MacBook pro. Is that too much to ask?
Combined with the new MacPros from the week before, it has been a pretty good couple of weeks for Apple hardware.
— Joe Fahs
If Steve Jobs puts his mind to it, there really is nothing he can’t do. Truly the world has not seen such awesome power contained in one individual. After Chuck Norris, whose tears can cure cancer, he might be the most impressive man on earth. Jobs is busy with MacWorld this week, but BusinessWeek believes he can help put an end to the writer’s strike simply by existing. OK, that is not entirely true. Instead, BusinessWeek comments on the speculation that Apple will announce a more robust AppleTV to go along with a wider selection of iTunes Store offerings, including video rentals. They speculate that the announcement will help spotlight “the major issue separating the writers and movie moguls”, i.e. how to share revenue from television and movie downloads.
I know that many people listen when Steve Jobs has something to say, especially now that he is the largest shareholder in Disney, but if anything, studios have been trying to get away from letting any one voice have too much say in what they do. Movie studios will more likely take a page from the music industry, which is trying to find ways to make sure their move away from physical media does not depend on Apple. If there are any voices that can end this thing quickly, they will have names like Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch.
— Joe Fahs