Apple Should Get Out of Hardware? 730
SQLGuru writes to mention an analyst recommendation being reported on ZDNet. Despite a BusinessWeek article about Apple's record breaking hardware sales, the folks at Gartner think Apple should get out of the hardware business. Calling for the company to license its hardware to Dell, the analyst company says that gains in Apple's hardware sales are simply not sustainable. From the article: "Apple's margins for its Mac business, currently around 40 percent, are only sustainable because component makers such as Intel choose to prop up the business, Gartner claimed. Given that HP has forced Intel to offer it comparable pricing to Dell, Intel is unlikely to continue to subsidise Apple, the analyst argues. 'As a result of permanently changed market conditions, Intel has been forced to restructure and, in our opinion, cannot go on supporting Apple (or any other customer) indefinitely.'"
Re:For the record... (Score:2, Informative)
And the jackass of the week award goes to... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah Yeah Yeah... heard it before (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sure (Score:4, Informative)
* * *
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) rose 6 percent on Thursday, a day after it reported a sharp gain in quarterly profit alongside strong sales of its popular iPods and healthy shipments of its Macintosh computers.
Apple stock jumped $4.69 at $79.21 on Nasdaq, where it was the third biggest point gainer.
Apple's fourth-quarter results, released late Wednesday, prompted Banc of America to raise its price target to $84 from $79 a share, while maintaining a "buy" rating on the stock.
Another analyst, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, said in a note to clients that the results showed Apple's "formula is working" as the popularity of its iPods is translating into a "resurgence in the Mac platform."
"We believe in six months the halo effect will expand beyond a simple iPod-to-Mac correlation into a four-way relationship with iPod, Mac, iPhone, and iTV benefiting from each other's success," said Munster. "If this plays out, Apple's growth rate should accelerate in 2007."
Apple is widely expected by analysts to introduce a new gadget dubbed the iPhone, which will combine mobile phone features with the iPod.
The company said in September it will ship a device, code-named iTV, in the first quarter of 2007 to let consumers stream movies, music, photos, podcasts and television shows from the Web to their home entertainment systems.
In its earnings statement, Apple said it sold 8.73 million iPods, up 35 percent from a year ago, and 1.61 million Mac computers, a 30 percent increase.
Cupertino, California-based Apple said net income rose to $546 million, or 62 cents per share, from $430 million, or 50 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue climbed 32 percent to $4.84 billion.
Prior to Thursday's surge, shares of Apple had risen about 5 percent this year, compared with an increase of over 4 percent in the Morgan Stanley High-Tech Index , of which Apple is a constituent.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Re:For the record... (Score:5, Informative)
That's just rubbish. Dell sold 37.3 million PCs last year, while Apple broke a record by selling 1.61 million Macs last quarter. Dell sells far more computers than Apple does.
is this the same gartner that said... (Score:5, Informative)
Trusting Gartner's eval is a bit like listening to the white house or congress speak about Iraq; You just know that they have their own agenda and worse, the ones behind it, have zip experience or education.
Let's Compare Dell vs. Apple Financials (Score:5, Informative)
(in millions, except per-share)
Q2, FY'07 Q2, FY'06 Change
Revenue $14,094 $13,428 5%
Operating Income $605 $1,173 (48%)
Net Income $502 $1,020 (51%)
Earnings/Share $0.22 $0.41 (46% )
Now let's look at Apple from their most recent announced results (in their case it's Q4 FY06 vs. Q4 FY05): [apple.com]
Q4 FY06 Q4 FY05
Revenue $4.84b $3.68B
Net Income $546m $430M
Earnings/Share: $.62 $.50
(Slashdot keeps taking out the spaces, which is why this looks funky.) So, even though Dell has a little more than 3x Apple's gross sales, Apple is the more profitable company. Dell's profits dropped by 51% between Q2FY06 and Q2FY07, while Apple's profits reached new records. Moreover, Apple's profitability and market share are both increasing, while Dell's is decreasing.
And Apple would want to outsource manufacturing to a much less profitable and quality-conscious company why?
Crow T. Trollbot
Windows95c == usb support (Score:3, Informative)
Windows95c, on the install disc. And you could get USB to work on Windows95a and Windows95b with a driver from Microsoft or the manufacturer.
affect, not effect! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I haven't heard this one in a while. (Score:4, Informative)
Uh no. USB2 is crap at handling throughput. I wish I could remember where I saw it, it was ars technica or hothardware or something, but some guys did a study where they hooked the same drive up to the same PC, but first through USB2 and then through FW400 and it turned out that on this machine which was a >2.0GHz P4 the USB was something like 20% slower, but that's not even the most important part; during data access to the USB2-connected drive CPU usage went as high as 14% while using FW400 it never crossed 2%. This is from the OS access to the device alone. And mind you, this was a drive with a peak throughput of something like 24MBps. FW400 has a theoretical max of 50MBps, while USB2 is supposed to be what, 60MBps? But in reality it is slower. USB2 is CRAP and anyone who uses it for storage when they have access even to FW400 (let alone -800) is losing out on performance. In addition, IEEE1394 supports peer to peer operation (IEEE1394b) and offers an 800Mbps speed if you want to pay for it, while USB2 doesn't even manage to come close to its supposed 480Mbps of throughput.
Re:Apple doesn't make computers, yes they do!! (Score:2, Informative)
"Manufacturing" is a bit of a misnomer, as all the do is assembly parts from Asia!
Mostly iMacs and Desktops with some xServes as well.
The two reasons they left Cork intact is that Ireland have a low tax rate,
and they can fill cto orders for the European market within a few days.
They also have a large call center there as well.
Re:Clue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clue (Score:3, Informative)
Now wait a sec, didn't Apple go down this road once before? We as consumers did indeed get cheap apple boxes that were in fact better than Apples hardware (at least performance-wise) but then Apple pulled the plug on licensing cause' they were losing hardware sales, duh! Am I missing something?
Re:For the record... (Score:5, Informative)
One early use of the term "personal computer" appeared in a November 3, 1962 New York Times article reporting John W. Mauchly's vision of future computing as detailed at a recent meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. Mauchly stated, "There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer."
The term is much older than Apple. What Apple did is popularize it. It became synonymous with IBM compatibles because of the name of the original IBM PC (PC for short).
Re:Of course it matters (Score:1, Informative)
Re:For the record... (Score:5, Informative)
If you compare prices on similar Apple and Dell systems, you will usually find that the prices are higher on the Apple side, but only 10-20%, and that in the high end the margin disappears and your most powerful systems cost about the same either way.
Actually, you're out of date. Last year Apple systems were priced at approximately 14% higher than equivalent PCs, not Dells in general. This year, they are actually cheaper by about 5% to equivalent machines. You'll note, I don't say Dells, I say equivalent machines. That is because people conducting real market research soon discover it is hard to find an equivalent machine from Dell.
Apple's customer support is legendarily bad when they think they can get away with it.
Yeah, um, unlike all the other companies out there? Take a look at Consumer Reports for the last 5 years. Apple is one of the best for support, not the worst. You actually have to compare them to what else is out there. Sure, Apple support can really suck an egg, which makes it about twice as good as Dell's customer support that sucks two eggs.
Re:For the record... (Score:4, Informative)
Let me put it another way that might be more enlightening: The growth in Dell's volume (ie, the difference between the number of machines they sold this year and the number last year) is greater than Apple's entire volume for the corresponding time period*. Apple is a distant fifth worldwide behind Dell, HP, Acer, and Lenovo.
* Note, this has been true for the last few years, but this quarter may not be due to Dell's recent problems.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I haven't heard this one in a while. (Score:2, Informative)
USB version:
You have 2 devices: A scanner and a hard drive. Both use USB to connect to a host system. The scanner is a "USB 1.1" (1.5 MBps) device. The hard drive is a "USB 2.0" (60 MBps) device. Both are connected to the same bus. USB basically divides the bus according to time slots. There are 2 devices, so there are 2 time slots in this setup. The host can handle 60MBps communication in each time slot. Time slot 1 goes to the scanner. It transfers its data at 1.5 MBps (peak). Time slot 2 belongs to the HDD. It transfers its data at 60 MBps (peak). This will continue for as long as these devices need to use the bus. Overall bus speed for this setup is 30.75 MBps (peak). Adding more "USB 2.0" devices will raise the average, adding more "USB 1.x" devices will lower the average rate.
Firewire version:
You have 2 devices: A scanner (yes, you can get FW scanners) and a HDD. Both use Firewire 400 to connect to a host system. There's no difference in max throughput, except the scanner is obviously going to use less bandwidth than the HDD. Both are connected to the same bus. Firewire also divides according to time slots, but it has an "overflow" handling mechanism. There are 2 devices, so there are 2 time slots. The host can handle 50 MBps communication in each time slot. Time slot 1 belongs to the scanner. It transfers data at (for consistency's sake) 1.5 MBps. Time slot 2 belongs to the HDD. It transfers data at 50 MBps, and notifies the host that it's going to need as much bandwidth as it can get. The average speed for this round is 25.75 MBps (slower than USB, but these "time slots" are fractions of a second). But the rate isn't going to stay consistent like USB's rate does. Time slot 1 goes to the scanner again, and it transfers its next 1.5 MBps (it's a very slow device I guess). The host recognizes that there's spare bandwidth this time and asks the HDD (which registered itself as a "bandwidth hog" in its first communication to the host) to fill the rest of the 48.5 MBps remaining in this slot. Time slot 2 goes to the HDD again. It transfers a full 50 MBps. Average transfer for this turn is 50 MBps. Average for both turns is 37.875 MBps. Now we're way faster than USB will ever be. And the increases keep racking up, turn after turn.
That says nothing of the fact that Firewire is capable of peer-to-peer (as you mentioned) which requires it to use a "smart" host controller (real, actual hardware, rather than a software host handled by the CPU). Both of those things speed FW up even more and make it much less taxing on your computer's CPU.
It's really a difference in what they were intended to do. USB was Intel's answer to Apple's ADB. Firewire is Apple's "SCSI++". They really aren't competing until you get to things like HDD's, and there are legitimate reasons for both USB and Firewire in that sort of device.
Re:My recommendation (Score:1, Informative)
Because stupid big companies like mine happily pay $50k per seat for a subscription to read their crap, saying that their analyses are essential for understanding what's happening in the industry.
Re:For the record... (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't had any issues with a properly-configured Linux desktop setup;
I'm not talking about "problems" as in bugs. I'm not talking about UI effects. I'm talking about missing features. I got a new laptop from work a few weeks back. I rebooted my old laptop into firewire mode, plugged in a cable and turned on the new laptop. It asked me if I wanted to install from the old one and I clicked "yes." Then I walked down to the coffee shop, grabbed a bite and a drink. That was it. All my configurations, settings, files, programs, security certs, user accounts, and everything else was sucked across the firewire cable. With a straight Linux machine it takes me days of configuration to get all those configurations back on new hardware.
The other feature I mentioned is system services. One spellchecker that works in all programs and shares a dictionary I customize. One grammar checker that works in all programs, regardless of if the developers of vi or Adobe InDesign or SubEthaEdit even knew such a feature was available. The same goes for scripts, language translation, online dictionary/thesaurus lookups, automatic bibliography citations, and hundreds more. Because OS X has provided a way for applications to share functionality with one another or from a plug-in I no longer have to copy and paste from my IM application into MS Word to check spelling or grammar. I can translate text from one language to another in any program. It saves me hours every week and I catch spelling errors in my posts and chats and IRC conversations and e-mail and Web mail and everything else, that I would have missed before.
Those are the two examples I listed, but they are not the only ways Linux is behind as a workstation. The thing is, I don't expect Linux to catch up anytime soon because all the people who really care about these things, have moved to OS X on the desktop. I use Linux on the server and I use it on the desktop for testing compatibility and for a few programs that I like better in KDE than in a generic X11 on OS X. But it just does not compare in general.
Until you try different systems for your everyday computer you just don't know what is missing from one or another. Don't mistake not having "problems" for Linux not being inferior in many ways.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple is a bit different (Score:3, Informative)
I agree, they're definitely doing something right. Maybe advertising, maybe being trendsetters, maybe people just recommending them more than ever. I couldn't say. But I'm not going to be able to trick myself into thinking the hardware is vastly superior, when there are still heat-related issues (I just got my MBP back from Apple's service dept where they were going to fix it... it's still scaldingly hot) and the things don't even sit flat on the table because they warped. Don't get me wrong - I'd still take the Apple system any day, but it's solely because of OS X.
Yes it does... (Score:3, Informative)
Apple retains one manufacturing plant in Laguna, CA and another in Cork, Ireland. Both have seen their workforces shrink in recent years.
I believe it may also have a company-owned (that is, not contracted) plant in Malaysia that makes mice.
Re:Clue (Score:4, Informative)
A decent high-end Windows machine (since you're comparing it to a high-end Mac) built in 1997 probably had a Pentium II and an AGP slot, which could have run Windows 98, Windows NT 4, or Windows 2000 until "just recently," but you retired it in 2000.
A decent PC built in 2000 that's in the same price range as a Power Mac or iMac 20" would have had a Pentium III, AGP, and support for 1GB+ of memory. That would still be usable today with Windows XP. But you retired it in 2003 and continued using a PowerPC 601 with no AGP and OS 9 until "just recently?"If you like long-lasting computers, you seem to have made poor choices of PC hardware, especially if you think a PowerPC 604 120-200Mhz still "usable."