12 ms·

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

81 points by yoda_sl 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Nicely done. The market seems enamoured with larger phones. And it is good validation for Tim Cook given their sales rate.
- arrrg 12y ago
  iPads aren’t doing so well, worse than analysts expected (but we have known this now for quite some time so it isn’t exactly a surprise). Everything else is pretty much above analyst expectations, weirdly enough, even the iPod (who still buys that?). To be honest, as a consumer I would be ok with this, if not for the software ecosystem. (I like the iPad and it’s useful to me personally. What do I care whether it sets the world on fire.) Devs jumping ship is something I do worry about, but it seems with size classes Apple is working towards making changing the UI depending on device size easier – and if devs have to change their UI anyway for the larger phones the extra work of making that UI viable on an iPad is hopefully still worth it in the future. (Or maybe Apple could do something cool with iPads. The hardware is already pretty mature, but on the software side there is lots of room for making it a more powerful device. Maybe that will help sell more in the future. Or maybe not.)
  - IBM 12y ago
    iPad is much bigger than Mac ever was and it's had great developer support.
    - arrrg 12y ago
      Well, I think it’s more complicated than that. What I do enjoy about the Mac are these small indie devs, selling their software at relatively high prices (read: $50 instead of $3). The Mac doesn’t have all the software, but it has some really cool, high-quality software that shares my values when it comes to design and UI. The App Store (to some extent even the App Store on the Mac) was never really like that and always a more toxic place with cutthroat pricing. You can’t sell $50 software on the iPad (even $10 software is hard to sell), so the situation is just a different one on that device. I mean, devs are frustrated with their inability to make money on the iPhone by just charging for software – and that device is way, way, way bigger than the Mac ever was. Selling software on iOS has its own quirks that makes it different from the Mac. That said, it has always been harder to find devs that share my values on iOS, so maybe that's a general problem of the platform (maybe it’s just a problem with discoverability and there are in fact more devs that share my values on iOS than on the Mac!) and has not a lot to do with how well these devices sell.
      - eropple 12y ago
        You can sell $50 software on the iPad if you've got a real need. Lemur was $50 when I bought it, though it's $25 now.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Generally I agree with that. I was underwhelmed by the iPad Air 2 intro (and name for that matter :-). One of the things that stands out for me is that people with "large" phones tend to talk on them with a headset. Once you make that jump then the size of the phone becomes somewhat irrelevant. I keep hoping they will add phone capabilities to the iPad mini, and create a larger version of the iPad air. The notion earlier of checking out the Surface Pro 3 intrigued me, it is a nice piece of hardware but the reading experience is not as nice as the iPad. We'll see. Bottom line I agree that from this report it seems like iPad is under performing the rest of the portfolio. Tim if you're reading please make a 12 - 13" iPad, I'll buy one of those today if you make it. :-)
- diminish 12y ago
  1. "larger screens" were too obvious to be a validation for cook, everyone was seeing it and only some fundamentalists were insisting on 3.5" or 4. 2. apple 4th quarter is tied closely to the exact timing of launch and availability of the new iphone versions in US and an enough number of other countries. it's an engineered quarter in that sense. 3. even years' 4th quarters (2012,2014,2016) and following quarters do better historically due to renewal cycles of past good performing quarters. 4. in the light of 3, next apple quarter will also be quite well for iphones. 5. iwatch is a better metric to measure cook.
gxs 12y ago
Every two weeks when you receive your paycheck, apple receives one as well. Only difference is that at $8Bn/quarter, their biweekly paychecks are for $1Bn. Not too shabby.
IBM 12y ago
Apple at $400 will likely be the best value investment of my career.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  Apple at $12 (pre split, ca 1996) is the whale that got away of my investment career.
  - afterburner 12y ago
    You're missing hundreds of these kinds of opportunities every year... don't be too sad.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    My (non-tech) friend was sighing about this too, until he thought some more and realized he would have certainly sold it at $20. Which would possibly be an even worse feeling.
    - craigyk 12y ago
      When the G5 Powermac came out I gave some serious thought to putting that money toward stock ($3k at ~$15/share). I needed a computer too badly though... I did end up buying at 280, 320, 500 though. Sold it all off just before the last split.
    - jfb 12y ago
      My initial tranche of options were at $42 in 2004; I sold the majority in 2009. I alternate regret, rage, and joy in the fact that my extremely good luck in getting the job at Apple allowed me to completely clear my family's debts, and provide capital to start an (ultimately) unsuccessful company. Can't change the past, but oh, there are times.
      - saithier 12y ago
        Well, if it makes you feel any better, I sold 14k shares (adjusted for splits) back in 2002 to buy a used car. Didn't have nearly as much room as that house I coulda bought in SF. :-/
autism_hurts 12y ago
Simply staggering.
MaysonL 12y ago
SEC 8-K filing here: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS1193125%2D14%2D376361/320193/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS11... Macs up to 5.5 million.
jusben1369 12y ago
It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)
- aaronblohowiak 12y ago
  Laptops ate the desktop. Is that what you mean?
  - redthrowaway 12y ago
    Other way around. The analogy would be the desktop eating the laptop.
- tinkerrr 12y ago
  You mean like the iPod was cannibalized by the iPhone, more or less, and it's revenues have been steadily declining (-28% this quarter compared to Q4 2013)?
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    Well that's "normal" progress. To take your example it would be the iPod suddenly roaring back to life after the iPhone had been around 3 years or more and growing rapidly and the iPhone becoming flat in sales. That's why it's so unique (I think)
  - bgramer 12y ago
    Kind of like how iPod Nano cannibalized iPod Mini.
    - PKop 12y ago
      Nano came after Mini, which would be the expected pattern of canibalization. OP's point was older product category canibalizing newer one.
  - 12y ago
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
Earnings call is live now: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasdfvpijbadsfvpijbadfvpijbvkjhbe10/event http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasd...
downandout 12y ago
"Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 first quarter: revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion" That's ~$5 billion per week. iPhone 6/6+ must be doing amazingly well internationally.
- liquidise 12y ago
  In the keynote they touched on iPhone 6 China release in the coming weeks. I have to assume opening those products up to a market of that size will have a large impact
  - baudehlo 12y ago
    That plus Christmas.
smackfu 12y ago
Wonder why China is so flat year-over-year. I thought that was where the next growth was coming from. Last quarter China was up 28% year-over-year.
- tinkerrr 12y ago
  Probably because the iPhone 6 and 6+ weren't released in Q4, so you'll see the China growth effect in 2015 Q1 instead (and hence the optimistic guidance for Q1 2015).
higherpurpose 12y ago
Is it me or is profit not as big of a percentage of revenue as it once was? Wasn't it like 25-30 percent before for Apple?
stephen-mw 12y ago
I'm long in apple for several reasons: 1. Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the market. Historically you pay a P/E _premium_ for these types of stocks, not a discount. The company is downright cheap. 2. ApplePay has a ton of potential. Just in the other news thread others were complaining that moving to chip & pin cards is basically just changing the fraud, not fixing it. ApplePay's tech passes the smell test, and the people who will be using it have expendable money. 3. The Apple Watch. Who knows how it will sell? I will say I am always impressed with Apple's design and polish and it's hard to picture a crappy product. Maybe it's a hit or maybe it just raises their bottom line, either way it's unlikely to drag on profits. We'll see how it works out. These earnings include only 6 days of iPhone 6 sales... I worry about Apple in my portfolio probably the least compared to other stocks in the S&P 500. It pays a dividend for crying out loud! I have to remind myself not go over diversification rules...
- tinkerrr 12y ago
  I am long apple too, but - 1. The P/E is low because of the future growth potential. Investors don't think it can grow at this pace in the future. It's not like a Coca Cola which grew earnings consistently in the double digit percentages over decades. 2. ApplePay has a lot of potential, but not in terms of moving the needle in earnings anyway. A billion dollars here and there isn't enough for Apple to significantly improve earnings. The company is just too big. 3. Same as 2. The market will price the stock according to the risk it perceives. If you think you know the business better than the market, only then trust your own analysis and declare the market to be wrong and your analysis to be right. That's what value investing is all about anyway.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  > Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the marke Nobody really cares of this. The price and P/E doesn't have to do anything with 'how good the products are' (well, not too much at least). What (essentially) matters is risk -- upside and downside risk. Apple looks quite safe at the moment with little upside risk (it's not probable that they'll suddenly double their revenue, but they make a lot of money) and not too much downside risk (very-very little probability of failure, but if something like the iPhone loses its profitability then there isn't really anything else to rely on). Microsoft has exactly the same PE, but it's different. The upside characteristics are the same (not too probable that it's going to grow a lot), but the downside risk is different: Microsoft has many 'legs', it's very unlikely that a large part of their profit just disappears because of losing in one particular market segment, but it's quite likely that they will lose one or two profitable segments
jcavin 12y ago
No surprise here. Anyone I know under the age of 32 uses a mac. All the microsoft stores are ghost towns in So Cal.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  I only know a few people who use a Mac. Most people I know use Windows (and Android). As always, anecdotes are not the same as data.
  - liquidise 12y ago
    Under the age of 32? 100% of windows users i know of in that demographic do so exclusively for PC gaming. Anecdotes will always be less useful, but this strikes me as a repeatable trend among college campuses and young professionals... to say nothing of a generation of children growing up with iPads.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - mkr-hn 12y ago
      I'm not really interested in dueling anecdotes. Do you have something concrete?
      - adevine 12y ago
        This is 4 years old, and I suspect Apple's position has only improved since then, but see http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/ http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/ . To your "dueling anecdotes" point, it's also clear from this article that some universities are much more Mac-centric than others, given that one survey of 5 universities showed 70% of incoming freshmen came with Macs.
    - bane 12y ago
      Here's my anecdote. I don't personally know a single person personally under the age of 32 with a Mac. For kids under 18, their parents almost universally buy them cheap $500-700 laptops at Costco. They're basically a yearly disposable item at that price (though most of those same kids have iPhones). None of my friend's kids in college seem to have changed that purchasing habit since it's pretty sensible. If you gathered all my friends and family together with all their computers, probably <15% would have Macs. Of the people with Macs, only myself and one other person work in tech. At my local coffeeshops, about half of the people there mess around on some kind of tablet, of the other half, most (maybe 90%) are on corporate Windows machines or Surface tablets (they're really popular around here with the corporate sales types for some reason). And then I and maybe 1 other guy or a college aged kid with a 3 generation old used Macbook are the only people running any version of OS X. I use a Mac because it's what my work issued to me - a West Coast based startup btw. I'm about to change companies soon and I already know my new place is going to issue me a Windows machine. I live in the wealthiest town in the wealthiest county in the United States. Most of the neighboring counties are also in the top 10. My county is also in the regional home to one of the 5 largest tech industries in the United States. Welcome to the world outside of the SV bubble.
MCRed 12y ago
The interesting conundrum here, as I see it, is that the iPad is losing its purpose. Before, it was between phones- which were small-- and laptops-- which were big. But the Air is becoming a lot more mainstream, laptops overall are becoming knife thin, and phones are getting bigger. I think the iPad was meant to replace the PC for most use cases-- e.g. the email, web surfing etc. and I think it's been somewhat successful at that. But like pcs people don't replace them every year (wheras phones seem to be replaced every 2-2.5 years). Now with the Apple Watch, the phone has moved up to be more tablet sized, and the new smallest form factor is the watch. Will the iPad move up and become more like a PC?
- niels_olson 12y ago
  If you project the future of computing by looking at serious hackers, perhaps project the future of reading by looking at the habits of serious readers. I think the magazine form factor is here to stay. I definitely prefer reading journal articles in PDF or paper over html, and in PDF form, I prefer my iPad to my phone or my daughter's iPad mini. I was just at a friend's house yesterday. He had a similar problem with his smaller droid tablet, and he was showing me his 12" droid that he recently bought to solve this exact same problem of reading journal articles.
- MBCook 12y ago
  There was a nice article on an Apple blog the other day (don't remember where) that suggested the problem with the iPad is the lack of purpose built software. I own an iPad 4 and it's pretty rare that I buy iPad only software. Developers just don't seem to make that much even though the markets a pretty decent size. Mostly it's just simple iPhone apps or games that have been scaled up. The article was suggesting that because theres no trials or demos in the app store, as well as the inability to return things, people are very hesitant to buy at any reasonable price point and those developers are unwilling to put the time and effort in making it that should cost $20 or $30. Since consumers won't pay more than a few dollars high-quality in-depth apps are in short supply. In the end it means the iPad feels like nothing more than a giant iPhone, and that's basically been my experience. I really would like to see more large fancy apps that would give the iPad its own strong purpose but for whatever reason that's not happening.
rtpg 12y ago
Apple is holding onto $200 billion dollars in cash. I do like Bill Gate's whole "Let's be able to survive at least a year even if we have no revenue" but companies holding onto this much cash seems like a social ill (and a pretty good counterargument to the whole trickle-down effect)
- ksec 12y ago
  Is that still true? I thought they brought back a lot of their shares and gave lots of back to share holders.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    last I checked before today it was $150 billion but right there in their assets chart it says $200 billion EDIT: it's more like cash + easily sellable market securities and the like (so not the "real" things in the assets like property for their campus or the like).
- onlyfortoday 12y ago
  social ill? why? what would you rather them do with the cash?
  - MAGZine 12y ago
    pay their taxes, for one.
    - icelancer 12y ago
      They pay 100% of their tax liability as set forth by the US Tax Code, I have no doubt. Take it up with the elected officials.
      - rtpg 12y ago
        legal and ethical are two different things.
  - 12y ago
liaboc 12y ago
Based on the press sentiment analysis here http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl It is looking pretty good for Apple as well!

81 points by yoda_sl 12y ago

Nicely done. The market seems enamoured with larger phones. And it is good validation for Tim Cook given their sales rate.

arrrg 12y ago
iPads aren’t doing so well, worse than analysts expected (but we have known this now for quite some time so it isn’t exactly a surprise). Everything else is pretty much above analyst expectations, weirdly enough, even the iPod (who still buys that?). To be honest, as a consumer I would be ok with this, if not for the software ecosystem. (I like the iPad and it’s useful to me personally. What do I care whether it sets the world on fire.) Devs jumping ship is something I do worry about, but it seems with size classes Apple is working towards making changing the UI depending on device size easier – and if devs have to change their UI anyway for the larger phones the extra work of making that UI viable on an iPad is hopefully still worth it in the future. (Or maybe Apple could do something cool with iPads. The hardware is already pretty mature, but on the software side there is lots of room for making it a more powerful device. Maybe that will help sell more in the future. Or maybe not.)
- IBM 12y ago
  iPad is much bigger than Mac ever was and it's had great developer support.
  - arrrg 12y ago
    Well, I think it’s more complicated than that. What I do enjoy about the Mac are these small indie devs, selling their software at relatively high prices (read: $50 instead of $3). The Mac doesn’t have all the software, but it has some really cool, high-quality software that shares my values when it comes to design and UI. The App Store (to some extent even the App Store on the Mac) was never really like that and always a more toxic place with cutthroat pricing. You can’t sell $50 software on the iPad (even $10 software is hard to sell), so the situation is just a different one on that device. I mean, devs are frustrated with their inability to make money on the iPhone by just charging for software – and that device is way, way, way bigger than the Mac ever was. Selling software on iOS has its own quirks that makes it different from the Mac. That said, it has always been harder to find devs that share my values on iOS, so maybe that's a general problem of the platform (maybe it’s just a problem with discoverability and there are in fact more devs that share my values on iOS than on the Mac!) and has not a lot to do with how well these devices sell.
    - eropple 12y ago
      You can sell $50 software on the iPad if you've got a real need. Lemur was $50 when I bought it, though it's $25 now.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Generally I agree with that. I was underwhelmed by the iPad Air 2 intro (and name for that matter :-). One of the things that stands out for me is that people with "large" phones tend to talk on them with a headset. Once you make that jump then the size of the phone becomes somewhat irrelevant. I keep hoping they will add phone capabilities to the iPad mini, and create a larger version of the iPad air. The notion earlier of checking out the Surface Pro 3 intrigued me, it is a nice piece of hardware but the reading experience is not as nice as the iPad. We'll see. Bottom line I agree that from this report it seems like iPad is under performing the rest of the portfolio. Tim if you're reading please make a 12 - 13" iPad, I'll buy one of those today if you make it. :-)
diminish 12y ago
1. "larger screens" were too obvious to be a validation for cook, everyone was seeing it and only some fundamentalists were insisting on 3.5" or 4. 2. apple 4th quarter is tied closely to the exact timing of launch and availability of the new iphone versions in US and an enough number of other countries. it's an engineered quarter in that sense. 3. even years' 4th quarters (2012,2014,2016) and following quarters do better historically due to renewal cycles of past good performing quarters. 4. in the light of 3, next apple quarter will also be quite well for iphones. 5. iwatch is a better metric to measure cook.

gxs 12y ago

Every two weeks when you receive your paycheck, apple receives one as well. Only difference is that at $8Bn/quarter, their biweekly paychecks are for $1Bn. Not too shabby.

IBM 12y ago

Apple at $400 will likely be the best value investment of my career.

wiredfool 12y ago
Apple at $12 (pre split, ca 1996) is the whale that got away of my investment career.
- afterburner 12y ago
  You're missing hundreds of these kinds of opportunities every year... don't be too sad.
- idlewords 12y ago
  My (non-tech) friend was sighing about this too, until he thought some more and realized he would have certainly sold it at $20. Which would possibly be an even worse feeling.
  - craigyk 12y ago
    When the G5 Powermac came out I gave some serious thought to putting that money toward stock ($3k at ~$15/share). I needed a computer too badly though... I did end up buying at 280, 320, 500 though. Sold it all off just before the last split.
  - jfb 12y ago
    My initial tranche of options were at $42 in 2004; I sold the majority in 2009. I alternate regret, rage, and joy in the fact that my extremely good luck in getting the job at Apple allowed me to completely clear my family's debts, and provide capital to start an (ultimately) unsuccessful company. Can't change the past, but oh, there are times.
    - saithier 12y ago
      Well, if it makes you feel any better, I sold 14k shares (adjusted for splits) back in 2002 to buy a used car. Didn't have nearly as much room as that house I coulda bought in SF. :-/

autism_hurts 12y ago

Simply staggering.

MaysonL 12y ago

SEC 8-K filing here: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS1193125%2D14%2D376361/320193/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3346552619x0xS11... Macs up to 5.5 million.

jusben1369 12y ago

It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

aaronblohowiak 12y ago
Laptops ate the desktop. Is that what you mean?
- redthrowaway 12y ago
  Other way around. The analogy would be the desktop eating the laptop.
tinkerrr 12y ago
You mean like the iPod was cannibalized by the iPhone, more or less, and it's revenues have been steadily declining (-28% this quarter compared to Q4 2013)?
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Well that's "normal" progress. To take your example it would be the iPod suddenly roaring back to life after the iPhone had been around 3 years or more and growing rapidly and the iPhone becoming flat in sales. That's why it's so unique (I think)
- bgramer 12y ago
  Kind of like how iPod Nano cannibalized iPod Mini.
  - PKop 12y ago
    Nano came after Mini, which would be the expected pattern of canibalization. OP's point was older product category canibalizing newer one.
- 12y ago

aaronbrethorst 12y ago

Earnings call is live now: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasdfvpijbadsfvpijbadfvpijbvkjhbe10/event http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/14lkjbsdpihjbfvpihbasd...

downandout 12y ago

"Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 first quarter: revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion" That's ~$5 billion per week. iPhone 6/6+ must be doing amazingly well internationally.

liquidise 12y ago
In the keynote they touched on iPhone 6 China release in the coming weeks. I have to assume opening those products up to a market of that size will have a large impact
- baudehlo 12y ago
  That plus Christmas.

smackfu 12y ago

Wonder why China is so flat year-over-year. I thought that was where the next growth was coming from. Last quarter China was up 28% year-over-year.

tinkerrr 12y ago
Probably because the iPhone 6 and 6+ weren't released in Q4, so you'll see the China growth effect in 2015 Q1 instead (and hence the optimistic guidance for Q1 2015).

higherpurpose 12y ago

Is it me or is profit not as big of a percentage of revenue as it once was? Wasn't it like 25-30 percent before for Apple?

stephen-mw 12y ago

I'm long in apple for several reasons: 1. Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the market. Historically you pay a P/E _premium_ for these types of stocks, not a discount. The company is downright cheap. 2. ApplePay has a ton of potential. Just in the other news thread others were complaining that moving to chip & pin cards is basically just changing the fraud, not fixing it. ApplePay's tech passes the smell test, and the people who will be using it have expendable money. 3. The Apple Watch. Who knows how it will sell? I will say I am always impressed with Apple's design and polish and it's hard to picture a crappy product. Maybe it's a hit or maybe it just raises their bottom line, either way it's unlikely to drag on profits. We'll see how it works out. These earnings include only 6 days of iPhone 6 sales... I worry about Apple in my portfolio probably the least compared to other stocks in the S&P 500. It pays a dividend for crying out loud! I have to remind myself not go over diversification rules...

tinkerrr 12y ago
I am long apple too, but - 1. The P/E is low because of the future growth potential. Investors don't think it can grow at this pace in the future. It's not like a Coca Cola which grew earnings consistently in the double digit percentages over decades. 2. ApplePay has a lot of potential, but not in terms of moving the needle in earnings anyway. A billion dollars here and there isn't enough for Apple to significantly improve earnings. The company is just too big. 3. Same as 2. The market will price the stock according to the risk it perceives. If you think you know the business better than the market, only then trust your own analysis and declare the market to be wrong and your analysis to be right. That's what value investing is all about anyway.
sz4kerto 12y ago
> Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the marke Nobody really cares of this. The price and P/E doesn't have to do anything with 'how good the products are' (well, not too much at least). What (essentially) matters is risk -- upside and downside risk. Apple looks quite safe at the moment with little upside risk (it's not probable that they'll suddenly double their revenue, but they make a lot of money) and not too much downside risk (very-very little probability of failure, but if something like the iPhone loses its profitability then there isn't really anything else to rely on). Microsoft has exactly the same PE, but it's different. The upside characteristics are the same (not too probable that it's going to grow a lot), but the downside risk is different: Microsoft has many 'legs', it's very unlikely that a large part of their profit just disappears because of losing in one particular market segment, but it's quite likely that they will lose one or two profitable segments

jcavin 12y ago

No surprise here. Anyone I know under the age of 32 uses a mac. All the microsoft stores are ghost towns in So Cal.

mkr-hn 12y ago
I only know a few people who use a Mac. Most people I know use Windows (and Android). As always, anecdotes are not the same as data.
- liquidise 12y ago
  Under the age of 32? 100% of windows users i know of in that demographic do so exclusively for PC gaming. Anecdotes will always be less useful, but this strikes me as a repeatable trend among college campuses and young professionals... to say nothing of a generation of children growing up with iPads.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    I'm not really interested in dueling anecdotes. Do you have something concrete?
    - adevine 12y ago
      This is 4 years old, and I suspect Apple's position has only improved since then, but see http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/ http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/ . To your "dueling anecdotes" point, it's also clear from this article that some universities are much more Mac-centric than others, given that one survey of 5 universities showed 70% of incoming freshmen came with Macs.
  - bane 12y ago
    Here's my anecdote. I don't personally know a single person personally under the age of 32 with a Mac. For kids under 18, their parents almost universally buy them cheap $500-700 laptops at Costco. They're basically a yearly disposable item at that price (though most of those same kids have iPhones). None of my friend's kids in college seem to have changed that purchasing habit since it's pretty sensible. If you gathered all my friends and family together with all their computers, probably <15% would have Macs. Of the people with Macs, only myself and one other person work in tech. At my local coffeeshops, about half of the people there mess around on some kind of tablet, of the other half, most (maybe 90%) are on corporate Windows machines or Surface tablets (they're really popular around here with the corporate sales types for some reason). And then I and maybe 1 other guy or a college aged kid with a 3 generation old used Macbook are the only people running any version of OS X. I use a Mac because it's what my work issued to me - a West Coast based startup btw. I'm about to change companies soon and I already know my new place is going to issue me a Windows machine. I live in the wealthiest town in the wealthiest county in the United States. Most of the neighboring counties are also in the top 10. My county is also in the regional home to one of the 5 largest tech industries in the United States. Welcome to the world outside of the SV bubble.

MCRed 12y ago

The interesting conundrum here, as I see it, is that the iPad is losing its purpose. Before, it was between phones- which were small-- and laptops-- which were big. But the Air is becoming a lot more mainstream, laptops overall are becoming knife thin, and phones are getting bigger. I think the iPad was meant to replace the PC for most use cases-- e.g. the email, web surfing etc. and I think it's been somewhat successful at that. But like pcs people don't replace them every year (wheras phones seem to be replaced every 2-2.5 years). Now with the Apple Watch, the phone has moved up to be more tablet sized, and the new smallest form factor is the watch. Will the iPad move up and become more like a PC?

niels_olson 12y ago
If you project the future of computing by looking at serious hackers, perhaps project the future of reading by looking at the habits of serious readers. I think the magazine form factor is here to stay. I definitely prefer reading journal articles in PDF or paper over html, and in PDF form, I prefer my iPad to my phone or my daughter's iPad mini. I was just at a friend's house yesterday. He had a similar problem with his smaller droid tablet, and he was showing me his 12" droid that he recently bought to solve this exact same problem of reading journal articles.
MBCook 12y ago
There was a nice article on an Apple blog the other day (don't remember where) that suggested the problem with the iPad is the lack of purpose built software. I own an iPad 4 and it's pretty rare that I buy iPad only software. Developers just don't seem to make that much even though the markets a pretty decent size. Mostly it's just simple iPhone apps or games that have been scaled up. The article was suggesting that because theres no trials or demos in the app store, as well as the inability to return things, people are very hesitant to buy at any reasonable price point and those developers are unwilling to put the time and effort in making it that should cost $20 or $30. Since consumers won't pay more than a few dollars high-quality in-depth apps are in short supply. In the end it means the iPad feels like nothing more than a giant iPhone, and that's basically been my experience. I really would like to see more large fancy apps that would give the iPad its own strong purpose but for whatever reason that's not happening.

rtpg 12y ago

Apple is holding onto $200 billion dollars in cash. I do like Bill Gate's whole "Let's be able to survive at least a year even if we have no revenue" but companies holding onto this much cash seems like a social ill (and a pretty good counterargument to the whole trickle-down effect)

ksec 12y ago
Is that still true? I thought they brought back a lot of their shares and gave lots of back to share holders.
- rtpg 12y ago
  last I checked before today it was $150 billion but right there in their assets chart it says $200 billion EDIT: it's more like cash + easily sellable market securities and the like (so not the "real" things in the assets like property for their campus or the like).
onlyfortoday 12y ago
social ill? why? what would you rather them do with the cash?
- MAGZine 12y ago
  pay their taxes, for one.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    They pay 100% of their tax liability as set forth by the US Tax Code, I have no doubt. Take it up with the elected officials.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      legal and ethical are two different things.
- 12y ago

liaboc 12y ago

Based on the press sentiment analysis here http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl http://financeai.com/stock/nasdaq/aapl It is looking pretty good for Apple as well!