I bought my first Mac on Friday at the Mall of America. There's a Microsoft store right across from the Apple store. It was amazing to me how much more crowded the Apple store was. There were a lot of people at the Microsoft store but it was ridiculous how many were at the Apple store.
I'm mostly a Windows user, and I don't know why I'd go to a MS store. For example, if I want an iPad or MBP I'd go to an Apple Store. I'm not sure what other stores carry them (does Best Buy?). But I know that the Apple store does.
In contrast, I can buy a PC anywhere. But I don't actually know what specific PCs are available at the Microsoft store. I do know they have all of the available phones at the MS store, but given that the only phones I'm interested in are those by my carrier, I'm more inclined to go to my carrier store (to see all carrier phones) than the MS store.
I think one of the main benefits to the Windows stores (besides the fact that they sell Windows Phones, and by all accounts don't actively try to talk their customers out of buying them) is the fact that they sell systems there which are part of Microsoft's Signature PC line.‡
For those unfamiliar, it's basically a system from a vendor without all the crap that they install on a fresh system. The fact that Microsoft actually has to have a service like this is certainly an interesting topic for discussion (I'm sure Microsoft would prefer that vendors not load up new pc's with garbage software that slows them down)
So while we're contrasting Apple and Microsoft, here's the first bit of copy on the Signature page:
"New PCs may come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down and makes it a pain to clean out all that stuff, just to get your new PC up and running, so we do that for you!"
Not only is that a hilarious contrast of the typical Mac/Windows out-of-the-box experience — right from the horse's mouth — but it's also quite poor writing. Whereas, Apple seems to have consistently excellent writing throughout their websites and products.
Yeah, I think the model around which Microsoft licenses Windows was designed to be "hands-off" (Anti-trust/non-competitive issues aside), and now they're reaping the results of that.
I'm not going to second-guess Microsoft that it wasn't the right way to do things (their sales over the past twenty years would seem to indicate that it's worked out just fine for them), but it does leave us in an odd predicament; where basically the incentives between Microsoft, the PC vendors, and the customers are not aligned.
I don't know what Microsoft should (or would be allowed to based on anti-trust) do about that situation.
I'm not the biggest MS fan, but they do have my sympathy in this regard. Imagine Ferrari shipping new cars to the dealers, and the first thing the dealers do is bolt on stupid large spoilers, ugly plastic body kits and paint the cars green. Every dealer does it; the only way you can buy a Ferrari is green with added plastic bits.
Ferrari then have to watch as other car buyers laugh - "ha! Ferrari's are so slow and ugly. You need to spend a good day or so just to get them to run correctly". Must be pretty frustrating
I agree it's great you can get a PC without the crap installed but I think MS have to tackle off the root problem and have it so that's how they all come.
Seriously, you'd get a noticable performance increase on the average low end laptop right off the bat if they could do that.
My understanding of how that works (which I admit is an outsider's understanding) is that PC vendors subsidize the price of new PC's by installing crapware on them.
The race to the bottom in PC pricing basically left them scrambling to find ways to keep their prices low without gutting their already-falling margins.
I don't think Microsoft is in a good position to require PC's to stop doing this (unless they were willing to eat the loss of vendor revenue by lowering their Windows license cost, which would effect their own margin).
I'm left optimistic by companies like Lenovo, who are now marketing crapware-less machines as a competitive advantage (as a byproduct of their Rapidboot initiative), and hope maybe other vendors will try and compete.
I don't remember the last time I bought a Windows PC where the first thing I did wasn't to immediately wipe it and reinstall the OS from an OEM version, although it'd be nice not to have to do that.
EDIT: realized I started two comments in a row with "Yeah,". That makes me almost as angry as if I'd littered the comment with "like, you know"'s...sigh
I agree with every word, I just think for moderate users using mid-level or above machines, crapware is a big enough problem that MS should be being worried about the impact it's having on the public perception of Windows.
At least with Windows today, MS has their hands tied. Anything they do to push vendors will throw antitrust flags.
Their best bet, if this is their core concern, is to move to an app store model, and block these apps from ever making it into the store, so the OEMs can't install them to begin with. But honestly, that's not likely.
At the end of the day the market talks. If people truly value clutter free machines they'll pay for it and OEMs will respond.
I went to an MS store in LA the other week. It was sad, but I couldn't stop laughing. Why is there an MS store when all of the products on display aren't even MS products? The tablet right in the front of the store didn't even work (touchscreen was broken), and it had a STYLUS! I actually laughed out loud.
Within close proximity was an Apple store, the MS store, and a Sony store as well. The Sony and MS stores were such blatant ripoffs of the Apple store in their design that it just added to the hilarity. The staff at the Microsoft store even wore the same shade of blue shirts as those at the Apple store.
Point of the story? Apple's lead in the industry is evident from more than their products and their profits.
It is interesting to note that the first Sony retail store wholly owned and operated by Sony opened in 1982 [1], way before the first Apple store in 2001 [2]. Although Sony had retail stores almost 20 years before Apple, their stores are not as popular, likely because of the lack of demand for their products.
I'd venture that Sony stores are only still around in the US out of some kind of corporate machismo. I can't imagine they're making enough money to be worth it.
Sony stores also charge retail for items you can get anywhere else below retail price. Apple typically prevents this by making margins razor thin on items, keeping the price consistent across retailers.
That's a good point. I didn't think about that. But people mostly go to the Mall of America to browse and don't go there for a specific store. That's my impression at least.
Some things I really like and some I really hate. Overall though I like it (Macbook Pro 13" base model - no upgrades).
I don't know why but I thought it would load applications faster than it does. Though, the overpowered Dell I bought last December is even slower. Why do I have this feeling my Mac should load applications faster? I don't know.
I don't like traversing the file system in the Mac. Perhaps its familiarity with Windows. File search on the Mac is infinitely faster though. I like that Macs are true multi-user operating systems. I can separate work and leisure better that way.
I didn't think I would care but I really like that the battery lasts a long time on the Mac. I pretty never used battery power on Windows laptops because "3 hours time remaining" ended up being 45 minutes.
The overall user experience is much better but I'm still getting used to it. I really hate that I can't create a folder at the time I save a document. Maybe there's a setting I don't know.
The most telling thing I can say is that I'm fairly certain that I'll never get a Windows machine again. With less ram, less video card power, less processing speed, my Macbook is much more responsive and the screen is much better.
The Finder sucks, a lot, so file system traversal can be a pain. There are free alternatives though nothing comes to mind right now.
You can create a folder at save-time - there should be a disclosure/down-arrow button to the right of your file name textbox (this is a universal cue for "click here for advanced options"). This will roll out the advanced settings.
This gives you all the standard file system manipulation abilities you're looking for, including New Folder.
command-shift-n to create a new folder even in a save dialog.
command-shift-g to quickly go to a filesystem path (supports tab completion. It's unix filesystem, so ~/ == your home directory. ~/Doc[tab] will take you to your Documents folder, etc).
As for speed - RAM upgrade and an SSD make all the difference in the world (as they would for windows as well).
Oh, also, if you're new to the mac, you might need some of these:
While Quicksilver is supposed to be more powerful, it just never really clicked for me and didn't feel very smooth. Alfred felt like it fit it better and let me do what I wanted to do - especially with the powerpack installed.
Mostly I just use it as an app launcher, file finder (start with ' and only searches files), and file browser (start with / and you're browsing the filesystem). Anything much beyond that was just overkill.
Regarding the screenshots, I find that 90% of the time I'm taking screenshots it's to show somebody something, so I really like CloudApp. (getcloudapp.com) You do the usual shift-cmd-4, but instead of copying the screenshot to the clipboard it uploads it to their service and copies a link to the clipboard. On top of that, their site is really clean.
I like Skitch.com, similar idea, but it lets you choose what you want to take a picture off, and provides a basic image editor (handy for adding annotations, highlights, etc.) before upload.
Paintbrush makes for a good free image editor (http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/) — I use Pixelmator as an almost-Photoshop replacement, but the former is good if you want something really light.
when I used a mac, I really preferred Terminal over iTerm (esp. for the large buffer size of term). I could do anything I wanted with Terminal (VT100 emulation etc. etc.)
I really hate that I can't create a folder at the time I save a document.
There is a "New Folder" button in the bottom left corner of the (expanded) save dialogue box. But it is true that you can't edit folder names or move files around from within the save dialogue.
While I realize that a save dialogue should be focused on saving, it annoys me to no end that I can't do some basic editing while I'm in there.
You never know when they might falter one quarter, with so much riding on so few products. If there's another Foxconn flaw in the hardware for the next iphone or ipad, for example, or what if Steve Jobs leaves, for example, who knows. Labor in China is getting more expensive, too, so Foxconn is looking to India and Vietnam, and they've already complained about how 'difficult' the iphone 5 is to build. Of course a bad quarter still won't seriously damage Apple since it has so much cash in reserve.
There is no rule that subsequent quarter revenue should be higher than the prior quarter. [For e.g. the holiday quarter is generally the highest revenue yielding one for consumer electronics companies]. That said, Apple generally sets the expectations way low. The street knows that. They figure out a higher number (based on the past) and make that their expectation and price the stock as such. The interesting thing though is that Apple has been beating that higher expectation as well.
I'm sure not going to buy an iPhone or iPad right now, given the heavily-rumored launch of the next-gen models in late Q3. That could be why they're sandbagging the revenue projections.
Have to hand it to Apple leadership. How much has he accomplished in 12 years? Taking leadership, turning the org around, the iPod lineup, building a super-strong brand, then iPhone, iPad and now the Mac sees a healthy resurgence. I am sure that if he has to start afresh, Mr. Jobs will do it and build another apple.... what a fantastic leader.
Apple is firing on all cylinders. What is hard to appreciate is just how fast they are growing even though they are already such a big company. Can you imagine Microsoft/IBM/Oracle growing profit 125% in a year company wide when they are already as big as they are now?
Most companies that get this big can't keep growing at this kind of rate. Yet, they still have a lot of room to grow in different markets - TV, PC, Mobile, Advertising, (other?)
Well, IBM isn't on markets that grow. Smartphones are obviously really hot right now, even the 'losing' players are growing. By leading the growing markets they can cut the biggest slice of the pie.
Yeah, but you could say the same thing about Apple if it had stuck to making only Macs. Also, Apple is to a great degree responsible for making some of the markets in hot. Thus the comparison is still valid
From what I've read, Apple has never participated in those "top workplace" surveys, so saying they've never made the top 100 is a useless statement at best.
glassdoor.com satisfaction surveys place them somewhere between Intel and Google, but a lot of the reviews come from retail employees. I'd be curious to see what the average score is for corporate employees.
>Apple has never participated in those "top workplace" surveys
Which is sensible IMO. I worked at Walmart in IT at the time that they scored quite highly on one of those things. I couldn't name a single person who loved or even liked their job. Everyone I knew was there because they didn't feel they had a choice. I've never looked at one those surveys since then.
I think it's a good example of technologists wanting to be involved in great projects and products that end up getting used and making a difference.
I doubt anyone there is badly paid but that's not the reason they work there - they do so because they know that most other places would struggle to give them work they could be as proud of.
Oppenheimer mentioned that Apple is transitioning products and that it will impact their projected revenues. Is this Lion/MBA/MB/iPhone? If so, how would that lead to a softening of revenue?
If so, how would that lead to a softening of revenue?
I would guess that the transition involves the iPhone 5 (or 4S or whatever you want to call it) - announcing the iPhone 5 will kill iPhone 4 sales, and Apple always seems to have trouble meeting demand at product introductions so product constraints will probably mean lower sales/revenues.
That makes sense. My initial thought was that iPhone "5" would lead to a spike in demand and therefore a spike in revenue. I forgot to take into account the ability (or lack thereof) to MEET demand. Thank you.
This isn't abnormal for Apple, they usually project lower than expected revenues every quarter.
However, I think iCloud is going to require a lot of capital expenditures. It's going to be free and will likely be utilized by nearly their entire existing customer base along with any future customers. They are probably preparing Wall St. for that.
It was mentioned in the call that, due to iCloud, they've started deferring revenues from Macs and iOS devices to account for the ongoing cost of the service.
"Transitioning products" in response to a lowered guidance could very well mean that the prepaid, differentiated, iPhone for emerging markets (currently rumored) is more likely.
That's a pretty disingenuous thing to say since Google, HTC, LG and Samsung are being sued, they're not doing the suing. Also, that graph is outdated, Apple is now also suing Samsung and Motorola... their other big smartphone competitors.
But then Google also does not have so many mobile patents as others. Currently royalty payments in all directions are 'fought out' through patent lawsuits. If you do not participate, you will be the sucker that only pays royalties, but doesn't receive any.
This is the annoying thing about the current patent situation: companies have to participate if they do not want to hurt their margins.
They're not suing competitors. They're suing people who are profiting from Apple research without compensating them. You think it's good that one company spends billions on research and everyone else just steals it and undercuts them? Don't you realize that that eventually leads to no research being done anymore?
Your statement may be technically true, but in this case it just comes to show the stupidity of the patent system - is making a link from text something Apple invented? Probably not. Did it need to spend billions creating it? Definitely not.
I think reality trumps made up laws, so I don't like your statement, as it just shows conformity to a broken system without any thought at all.
Tim Cook just said that they sold about 33 million iOS devices in the last quarter. (20.34 million iPhones, 9.25 million iPads and half of the 7.54 million iPods.) That’s the number you have to compare. That’s about 363,000 iOS devices per day.
It’s quite astonishing that Apple is doing so well compared to Android. Apple sells two phone models, two tablet models and one iPod model – compared to dozens of Android devices, some vastly cheaper than any iPhone.
Android is growing faster (and from a larger base) but I believe both iOS and Android are growing faster than the market right now.
It's RIM, Windows Mobile, Nokia and the others who Android seems to be impacting rather than Apple.
Not surprising really. Regardless of what you think about Android vs iOS, you'd be hard pressed to find significant numbers of people who preferred the other platforms to iOS. If Android is going to dominate the world you'd expect it to pick off the weakest competition first.
That said I don't think it's going to be a one player market, or even a two player market. I don't see either Android or iOS going anywhere and Windows Phone is looking interesting and getting a lot of good things said and written about it so I think it has it's part to play.
I think the tablet to phone ratio right now is such that it's not that big a deal which it represents.
That's not to say Android tablets won't take off, just that in the numbers that have been published until now they're not selling that well and the phones are selling like hot cakes.
The Nook runs Android. I wonder if it counts towards 'activations'. Last quarter B&N sold ~3M Nooks, which would be ~33k activations per day. Not that huge, but the difference between 465k and 500k activations. The Nook and other tablets and devices might actually end up combining to an appreciable amount (100k/day??).
Interestingly Tim Cook made some comments about the Android activation numbers on the Apple call yesterday:
"I think the Android activation number is a difficult one to get our hands around. Because unlike our numbers, which you can kind of go to our data sheet, and add the iPhones and iPads, and make a reasonable approximation of the iPod touch—which we said is over half of our iPod sales—you can quickly see that in June quarter we sold over 33 million iOS devices. And across time… we’re now over 222 million cumulative iOS devices. So we think this is incredible. So our numbers are very straightforward, they’re transparent, and they’re reported quarterly."
I'm not quite sure what he's getting at here. It seems he's suggesting that the Android activation numbers are, shall we say, soft, but if he is that's an interesting claim and one which I'm guessing can be checked relatively easily (add up what the major suppliers claim to be shipping - HTC, Samsung, B&N - if you can't get in the ball park then something might be up).
"...which I'm guessing can be checked relatively easily (add up what the major suppliers claim to be shipping - HTC, Samsung, B&N - if you can't get in the ball park then something might be up)."
I would like to know the numbers too but I think it's not that easy to determine or else someone would have done it by now. It seems the only reference there is to the number of Android devices is when Google mentions it during earnings or @arubin tweets it. No hard numbers exist anywhere.
Hyundai has a larger market share than Audi. Coors has a larger market share than Guinness. Does that mean they won?
Which has bigger share doesn't matter, as long as each grows and has enough critical mass to sustain their ecosystems and developers. There's room for both. Isn't it the Android fans that bring up choice all the time?
Exactly! I think a flood of new iPhones owners will be hitting this fall. I know plenty of iPhone 3GS owners waiting to pick up the rumored iPhone 5. By that point, I may even be ready to replace my iPhone 4 with the 5...
Chalk me up as one of those 3gs owners. I was originally waiting for the white iphone 4, but, well by the time April rolled around there didn't seem like much reason to bother with it anymore.
iOS is about to displace Windows/DOS as the top selling OS in the U.S. A Microsoft OS has probably been the top seller for the last 30 years.
Just a rough back of the envelope calculation is 12-13 million iOS devices sold in the U.S. this quarter. (7 million iPhone, 3.5 iPad, 1.6 iPod Touch at 35% US/Global).
In comparison, 2Q11 non-Mac PC sales in the U.S. were about 16 million (and shrinking).
iPhone 5 on sprint/T-mobile and iPad 2 Christmas sales will give iOS a good chance to take the lead.
While I can't find numbers, I suspect you'd find that one or more embedded RTOS's like VxWorks or linux outships windows by a significant margin - DVD players, TV's, dumb phones, security systems etc. Windows has the crown for desktop OS, but of course iOS won't overtake that without a product shift.
What about Android? It seems that worldwide quite a few more Android devices than iOS devices are activated per day. Are less than 35% of all Android devices sold in the US?
Based on U.S. market share, Android would be selling about 10 million a quarter in the U.S., so depending on growth they may or may not be the ones to displace Windows first.
In order to get to 15 million this quarter, Android would have to be outselling iPhone over 2 to 1 in the U.S. to make up for the iPad/iPod Touch.
Android will get a good boost if the rumored Amazon tablet comes out. It's just a matter of time.
From Apple’s and Google’s Q2 quarterly earnings call, respectively.
Google just announced that they activate 550,000 Android devices per day. That’s in all likelihood (and considering the language) not an average value for the whole quarter but only the most recent value (that must have been rapidly growing during the last quarter). Still, the average for the last quarter is probably over or around 500,000.
Apple doesn’t publish any such numbers but it’s easy to estimate them. Apple sold 20m iPhones, 9m iPads and 8m iPods. Tim Cook said during the earnings call that about half of those iPods run iOS. That’s about 33m iOS devices altogether for the whole quarter, for an average of 360,000 sold devices per day.
their $75 billion in cash and negotiable securities compares with eBay's July 19th enterprise value of $37.5 billion, Microsoft's $188 billion, Sony's $28.5 billion and Google's $160 billion. They could buy eBay or Sony for cash.
Enterprise value is market capitalization (value of all the shares) less debt. Apple's was $316 billion on the same date.
Note - Apple is great at making awesome products, and most likely lousy, like everyone else, at taking over lousy companies.
Yes, enterprise value (EV) is equity market capitalization (stock price times # of shares) plus the market value of debt (this can be lower than the book value of debt). Financial analysts often prefer to calculate something called "Net Enterprise Value", which is EV minus "excess cash" (total cash minus "required cash", where required cash is usually calculated as a certain % of sales). Net Enterprise Value gives you the present value of all future cash flows to the firm (you are ignoring the value of today's excess cash, which doesn't come from future cash flows). This is particularly useful when looking at companies like AAPL with tons of cash.
Does enterprise value consider the uplift of actually paying cash? At $33.75 [1] EBAY has a market cap of just under $44B but to actually buy the company for cash and get everyone to tender their shares you would probably have to pay $80B+ and that would not include assumption of debt. I guess I don't get how EBAY is valued at less than their market cap.
As mentioned below, enterprise value is generally calculated as equity value + debt - (excess) cash. Ebay has approximately $5 billion more cash than debt, so its EV is less than its market cap.
One way to think about why cash is subtracted is that the acquirer gets to keep it. If I pay $10 billion for 100% of a company's shares, but get to keep the $1 billion in cash on the balance sheet, then the actual price of acquiring the company is only $9 billion (assuming no debt). With enough cash, it is possible to have a negative enterprise value.
EV is usually calculated with the current equity value, as that is what the market "believes" the company is worth. If an acquirer comes along and wants to purchase all of the shares at a premium, you can find an implied EV from the offer price.
What's realistic about that? The 11" and 13" Air both got bumped over the 13" "pro", but I'm still stuck with my pricier 13" "Pro" model with screen real estate below what consumer grade PC laptops offer for half the price.
This is a good point. I guess the only explanation that doesn't involve cheaping out or questionable market segmentation attempts is that they don't see a jump to 1440*900 / 128 DPI as worthwhile and would prefer something more.
Me, I like my 133 DPI Thinkpad for when I need screen space, so I'm pretty neutral on this :)
The market for high-priced computers "saturated" in the mid-nineties when computers started to cost less and less.
I think if Apple's sales were going to flatline because of saturating the market for high-price computers, they'd have already done so. (Which isn't to say they might not flatline or even decline for some other reason, sustaining this kind of growth probably won't last forever).
Apple currently has ~10% PC market share in the world‡ (higher in North America, but let's be conservative).
They still have a long way to go before running out of people to buy their computers.
the iPad isn't high priced compared to competitors, nor is the iphone. For that matter, nor is the macbook air. PCs with the same features as the MBA are more expensive!
Probably because people have been predicting this kind of thing for years. It is also worth pointing out that only 18% of Apple's ridiculous revenue comes from Mac sales.
To be fair, people have been predicting both sides of the coin for a while. People predicting success on hacker news tend to get upvoted, and people predicting failure tend to be downvoted, regardless of the reality of the situation.
Right now Apple is doing great. I would still question the sustainability of this business as an investor. What's next after ipad?
Long term, 5 years say, ipad/iphone margins will evaporate and Apple will need a series of "big things" to fill in the gaps to even have a flat growth curve to justify their market cap - that's my prediction.
Why would margins evaporate? Tech gets cheaper every year, but Apple keeps the same price points. They're the 800lb gorilla, and can get better pricing than competitors because of their volume.
They grew the market for smartphones and tablets, and they'll probably continue to do so. It's still a long way to smartphone and tablet saturation.
Who knows, but I’ve learned not to bet against Apple too often. Who would have foreseen the popularity and success of the iPad just a couple of years ago? The iPhone is barely four years old and has dramatically changed the industry as well.
And if any company has a track record over the past decade of delivering "big things" it's Apple. No company in recent history comes even close. Can they? Who knows, but if anyone can, it's Apple.
One decade is great. Plenty of companies have had their one decade in the sun - Microsoft, Cisco, IBM... Standard Oil.
I think your comment is a bit of hyperbole, the success of a company like Apple is not unprecedented in history. Apple could continue doing "big things" over the next decade, I just seriously doubt their ability to continue their growth and justify their market cap over the next 5-10 years. That's all. Possible, yes, in my opinion extremely, extremely unlikely.
And also like clockwork, I had a comment explaining why I thought they would fail, and have downvotes.
Take Microsoft: they are making most of the money off the same two products for decades—OS and Office.
Now take apple: 47% of they revenue is from product which was introduced four years ago (iPhone). 21%(!) comes from product which was released merely a year ago—iPad.
Apple is not afraid to kill its cash cow if they think they have a better product in line—see how they dealt with iPod line before the iPhone—they were replacing the most popular model with something new.
I have no doubt Jobs has a vision many years into the future. It was amazing to watch his 1997 WWDC keynote and realize that now we see the fruits of his thoughts then.
And most of your posts are mindless anti Apple rambling. Doesn't make you any better then the fanboys that you accuse other people to be. As a founder representing a company you might want to show a bit more professionalism.
