Apple is just about to die

Latte And Now For That Latte
1

I’ve bought 280 shares of Apple in 2006 for 59 dollars per share. Today the price is 218 dollars. The stock market of Apple is 198 Billion dollars while Microsoft is 249 Billion dollars. I bought my first Mac in december of 1984. I bought it for 50 000 Swedish kronor which is about 5000 Euros. Back then it was very expensive. In those days I earned 1300 euros a month before taxes, so it was a huge expense. I remember that they had two computers for sale, the first one was called Lisa and it looked like a traditional computer, but I bought the Mac. It had a tiny screen but I fell in love with it. I think I was the first person in Sweden who actually bought the Mac.

Ever since those days I’ve been hearing that the days of Apple are counted and it is just about to die. And actually it was close to die when the Pepsi bozo maneuvered out Steve Jobs, and a downward spiral started for Apple. Also Microsoft developed a decent operating system called Windows XP, which at that time was better then the old Mac OS, version 8 or 9 I don’t remember exactly. Even though the Apple was loosing ground I clinged to it. Mainly due to a programming tool called HyperCard, which Bill Atkinson (one of my heros) developed. I regard HyperCard as a milestone, ahead of its time, even today there are no tools that compare with it. Although Cocoa is a powerful programming environment, it does not even come close to the ease of use which HyperCard had. Fortunately Steve Jobs came back and Mac OS X gave new life to Apple (a sad fact is that Mac OS X doesn’t support HyperCard and today HyperCard is just a sweet memory among many of the old Apple fans, as is 1984 the movie and Knowledge Navigator, a skunk project at Apple in 1987 (look them up on YouTube). Apple also developed Ipod, Iphone and soon Ipad will be released the 3rd of April. I recall that it’s been almost a year now since I’ve last heard that Apple is about to die. Very strange since I’ve been hearing it for almost 25 years.

2

…I remember HyperCard, actually. I used to play with it.

I miss ResEdit, too. I had fun with that one. And PowerPete/MightyMike.

As nice as the newfangled Apple stuff is, I’m seriously considering a change when I have the money for it: an Intel Mac (w/ Windows as well), and a Classic Mac. But maybe Mac will have died by then. :wink:

3

I think it was William James who said many people (like Microsoft lovers, especially those at the computer support in big companies) go through three stages when confronted with something new.

  1. First they say that it’s ridiculous, (it’s just toys with fancy colors to cheat the consumers).
  2. They they say that it’s self evident, and ask what all the fuss is about.
  3. Then they say that they were there from the beginning. They were actually one of the pioneers.

It applies to Mac, Ipod, Iphone and now Ipad.

4

Hypercard morphed into HTML. In reality it was the grandfather of the internet we now see today. (The theory anyways)

Also for those wanting to get their Hypercard info ported into other applications under Leopard here is an interesting read

macobserver.com/tmo/article/ … rd_Stacks/

And of course you can always try SuperCard
supercard.us/HyperCard/index.html

5

As we say in Sweden: “Bad weeds die hard”. Here is an article with the title “Apple: Sell Before the Fall”, written by Mr Bozo himself, that predicts the fall of Apple. You can read it at http://www.thestreet.com/story/10694803/1/apple-sell-before-the-fall.html, but here is a small excerpt.

And so on and so on… I like the phrase “it’s inevitable”. Because Mr Bozo KNOWS the future. He’s been bashing Apple for the last couple of years. Yes, he has missed the opportunity to buy a fast growing stock. But it was not his fault, it was the fault of all the stupid investors, who didn’t see how thin Apple really is behind the glossy colors. But this time Mr Bozo will be right. Listen to him and you’ll be rich. It’s inevitable.

BTW Wock, thanks for the link. I’m running Snow Leopard and Hyperport dosn’t seem to work on it yet, but I’ll have to investigate, when I come home from my winter trip to Cap Verde 8)

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46 days ago (when I started this thread) Apple stood at 218 dollars a share. “The Street” told us to “Sell before the Fall”. It was “inevitable as they said”. Today the Apple share is 258 dollars a share, an 18% increase. So will “The Street” admit that they were wrong giving the advice to sell. No way, they are advicing people to sell again. Here’s a qoute.

You better start listening this time :smiling_imp: . Sooner or later Apple is going to go down. And that’s when “The Street” will tell you that “We have been warning you all along”, but you never listened. It’s inevitable.

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The interesting thing about this quote is that it is evaluating whether or not a company will succeed based on its comparative feature quality with similar products on the market, at the exclusion of a greater scope formula which also takes into account presentation quality, marketing-to-demographic susceptibility, and corporate political strength. If anything has been shown time and again, focussing on a single part of the equation is never a good rule of thumb to follow when investing. It doesn’t matter if the Blackberry is actually a better phone, it fails in other areas of the equation and this shows. Back when the iPod hit the market, it wasn’t the most powerful or best portable MP3 jukebox by a long shot. It suffered in the feature quality part of the equation, but where it lacked there it had two very strong aspects going for it: the presentation quality was extremely high, the corporate power backing it was infinitely more powerful than the competitors at the time, and Apple has always had very good demographic targeting anyway. Over time the iPod got better, and now I dare say its the best portable MP3 player out there, across a very wide range of price target models. Nobody can compete, at a significant level, in the MP3 market, at any price point! Nobody. Not even Microsoft has seen significant success, and other prior giants of the portable music market such as Sony are effectively nonexistent.

The comparison between the Blackberry and the iPhone is similar to the old Nomads and the first iPods. The Nomad was clearly a better device. It could hold more, do more, was cheaper, and could interface with all platforms while the original iPod couldn’t be used on a Windows computer. The Blackberry is more well established than the Nomad ever was, and for good reason as it has better values in the full equation—but if matched against the iPhone it cannot compete. The iPhone has a more elegant presentation feature set, by far, better corporate backing, and can hit a much wider demographic than the Blackberry. If anything, I see RIM going the way of Palm in a few years. Not quite as badly, but it will be a similar downfall unless they address the other areas of the equation rapidly and with confidence.

What can I say. I’m not an economist and I certainly cannot compete, credential for credential, with whoever wrote the above, but to me it seems to be a very foolhardy and narrowminded assessment of two products. It’s taking very specific attributes and saying, “well this one has better attributes here, so its better and the other will die”.

The world just doesn’t work that way in my experience. I’m not advising you to hold on to your stocks, or sell them, or whatever, I just have issues with the analysis posted above.

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Thank you Amber, as sharp as ever. I always enjoy reading your posts . Full of insight :smiley: .

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Whilst using feature comparisons of similar products to evaluate a company is simplistic if not plain silly, I’m still a believer in the “visible signs” theory of corporate health. Of course there are always exceptions that disprove any rule, but if what you as a consumer can see of a company is buzzing (but not too much, Goldman!), if its offer coheres and attracts, if its employees seem confident and upbeat, then odds are the company has life in it for some while yet.

When Apple is about to die - and one day of course it will - a 30-second walk round any Apple Store will probably alert you.

H

10

Today 26-May 2010 for the first time Apple became greater then Microsoft. As for as I know, Apple is the second biggest company in US (for the moment).

11

If you look at the long-term market trends, this was bound to happen eventually. As of today Apple and Microsoft valuation are roughly equal, but due to various differences in the corporations involving outstanding debts and such, Apple’s value is effectively higher. Consider that in the past five years, Apple’s stock has gone up an incredible 560%. In that same amount of time, Microsoft has basically held on to a plateau of 4% increase. Considering the recession, that’s a good figure to have. Any company posting a five-year gain right now is doing well—but in less statistical realms, it clearly reflects what has happened in the consumer market: Microsoft has already started losing. They were rarely ever innovators, but when they were at the top of their form they were buying innovation and repacking it, shaping the industry as they did so. That hasn’t been a factor for many years now—they’ve been playing catch-up with nearly everything Apple actually invents.

I’m not sure about it being the second largest company in the U.S. though. That seems unlikely—out of all industries? Exxon? General Electric? Maybe… I’d be less sceptical if the statement were that it was the second largest tech corporation.

Of course, growth is somewhat abstract all by itself. A mini-mart around the corner might have done 560% + profits over five years, because they were making $10 a year net before. You still have to keep in mind that when it comes to sheer marketshare in computers, there hasn’t been much of a change in percentages. Apple is still holding at about 10% by most estimates. That 560% is nearly entirely mobile devices and their rising domination of the music industry. To put it another way, it is a point of mild concern over the future of Apple as a computing company. In the past we always had to worry because Apple computers were so marginal and always at the threat of being put out of business. The worry has not been removed, it is the source of the worry that has changed. Now, Apple computing’s biggest enemy is Apple itself.

One last thing, with all of this going on, Apple has so far been able to escape the eye of the U.S. Justice Department. They’ve been able to get away with stuff that Microsoft would never be able to do in terms of monopolistic structural setup. This is changing, and in the coming year or two we could see Apple getting a smack-down from the U.S. government on its practices.

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It’s a market cap thing: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/tec … y_id=64427 – stock price x shares. They are, in fact, second only to Exxon in this category (today, anyway).

And while I’m sure the government is interested in Apple’s business practices, it’s unlikely they have any real grounds for pursuing antitrust complaints. It wasn’t just Microsoft’s practices that got them in trouble, it was their practices plus their share of the PC market. Like you said, Amber, Apple is only 10% or so of the installed base in computers, and even with the wild success of the iPhone, they do not dominate that market either (and Android Froyo is going to eat into those sales as well.)

Apple is what it is in terms of market cap because they make so much damn profit on everything they sell. I saw a comparison the other day that had Apple making something like 35 cents profit on every dollar in sales, whereas Dell – which sells many more computers – makes something like 5 cents. Add this to $40 billion in the bank, and a penchant for innovation, and you have a healthy stock. But not a monopoly.

Update: Like, the SECOND I posted this, there’s an article about the US Justice Dept. looking into Apple’s practices in digital music. So yes, totally take business advice from me, because I am a moron. :slight_smile:

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Yes, that is the news I was referring to. I should have been more clear, it isn’t their computing practices that are a concern, but the way they’ve handled their mobile platforms that has come under legal scrutiny. I think the latest SDK agreement which prohibits third-party platforms like Flash and Unity that started the investigation over whether there should be an investigation. To be clear, there is no investigation yet—the DOJ is merely considering whether or not there are grounds to open an inquiry on the matter, and they have it seems approached some third-party developers already as part of that information gathering process. At least, that is what I had been keeping up to date on, it looks like their focus has shifted more to the music industry as a result.

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STICK!!!

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Actually APPLE is ranked 103rd in profits and 18th in size for American Companies (based on 2008 figures)

money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ … s/biggest/

When Apple was in dire straights Microsoft came along and bought 250,000 shares to help Apple out. Why? Simple. With Apple around it is harder for the Government to prove Microsoft has a monopoly on OS systems. Also rumor is Microsoft borrowed Apple GUI designers for Vista/Windows 7. Jobs wants the home market while gates wants the corporate market. Apple wants to design “devices” or “appliances” where Microsoft wants to sell “licenses” and “software service agreements”.

Apple has around 5% of the computer market which may seem small to many but then BMW and MERCEDES each have less than 5% of the Car market in the US.

In the Mp3 player market Apple has over 73% of the market. In smart phones the iPhone is the standard for comparing all other models now. (Rumor is iPhone 4g will come out this month on Sprint).

Apple TV has not taken off like other products but another rumor is Apple may design the Interface (GPS, Menus, Music, etc) on future Mercedes cars and trucks. Was supposed to release in 2009 but I think has been delayed
leftlanenews.com/report-appl … cedes.html

Apple does face some strong resistance to making everything a closed loop with the iPad/iPhone which has some people worried but one has to ask themselves where do you draw the line on proprietary in a product you make…

16

I wish I had gotten a newton.

MD

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No reason to lament!

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Seven months ago when I started this thread, one Apple share was 218 dollars. The stock market of Apple was 198 Billion dollars while Microsoft was 249 Billion. Mr Bozo from thestreet.com wrote a warning

Mr Bozo said that it was high time to sell. PCs are back, take your money away from Apple and invest in something that has real value. Today one Apple share is 300 dollars. The stock market of Apple is 275 Billion dollars while Microsoft is 217 Billion. How come? Did Mr Bozo get it wrong? No, it’s the stupid investors who do not understand their own best interest :imp: . As you know, a light bulb never shines as bright as when it’s about to go out. In truth, this is a symptom of something going very wrong in the world. When people put more money on entertainment than on education, on toy phones and toy computers instead of reliable phones and real computers, something has to be wrong :open_mouth:. But the world has a way of correcting itself. Tulip were once expensive in Holland, but who would like to pay today 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman, for a single tulip bulb? :laughing:

So, it’s high time to sell your Apple shares and invest in Microsoft, or some similar company of high reputation. The time to act is now :angry: Be warned :smiling_imp:

19

I have read that Apple is projected to surpass Exxon for the number one spot and to be included in the S&P 500 which for investors will be a very big deal since many fund managers will be adjusting their holdings to include apple.

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Exxon is 331 Billion while Apple is 287 Billion. During the last 5 years Apple has grown over 400% while Exxon only 11%. So the scenario of Apple surpassing is not impossible. However it’s hard to predict things, especially the future.