PowerBook is dead; MacBook Pro is here (Intel-based)

[Imran Siddiqui]

You do realize that stock prices are decided by the ordinary schmoe on the street, right? Someone sees a commerical and thinks, wow, I can invest in them.

In capitalism, a company's worth is based on how much it makes. That means its earnings, not its stock price. Sometimes stock will follow the earnings, sometimes it won't, which is why analysts look at P/E ratios.

Stocks display demand for how much people believe a company is worth, not its actual worth. Once you seperate these two things, you may be able to learn about capitalism in better detail.

Unless you actually do think that AOL was worth more than Time Warner back in the late 90s?

I'm glad you aren't an accountant, that's for sure.

[Fve Crathva]

I get about 4.5 hours of battery life from my new ThinkPad T43, with the wireless radio off and the monitor brightness turned down. That's the 6-cell battery; I haven't checked the 9-cell battery yet, and I don't have an UltraBay battery, or whatever they're called. It doesn't really matter though, that, plus the 16 hours of battery life my PDA gets playing MP3s lasts for the bus trip home, which is the longest I'm ever unplugged. The fingerprint scanner is totally badass though. It fails to register every so often, mostly when somebody is watching me log in, or after I've washed my hands. It doesn't like to scan immediately after coming out of hibernation, which is fine, since stuff's still getting loaded from the hard drive and the wireless is connecting during that time anyway. I just give it a few seconds before scanning. It's all worth it though, for having a highly secure laptop, and a wicked-awesome fingerprint scanner to show off.

Originally posted by Agathon
Best name for the new MacBook.. from /.

TSC (The Scottish Computer)

"Out, damn'd PPC! Out, I say!" -- Lady MacBook

SP

[Fake Boris]

Asher: P/E! P/E! P/E!

Aggie: Market failure! Market failure!

[Asher]

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15308&hed=Apple+Faces+Test+After+Macworld&sector=Industries&subsector=EntertainmentAndMedia

It’s a Mac, Mac, Mac, Macworld

The fate of Apple’s Macintosh computers remains murky after Macworld.
January 13, 2006

Apple will likely proclaim the past week’s Macworld expo a success—especially for events on podcasting and digital photography—but deep questions linger as to the future of its computer business.



Reaction from the Mac faithful to the first of Apple’s Intel-powered machines couldn’t have been more positive the day CEO and founder Steve Jobs unveiled them, despite worries that Apple was giving up its unique identity by switching from IBM’s PowerPC chips (see Apple Fans Embrace Intel Macs).



Certain events were sellouts. Digital photography sessions were moved to larger rooms to accommodate crowds while Lockergnome founder Chris Pirillo’s presentation on podcasting and economics was so packed that many couldn’t get in (see Digital Photos Hit Macworld).



More than 350 exhibitors took part, up from 275 in 2005, said spokeperson Mike Sponseller of IDG World Expo, which puts on Macworld. And organizers said they expect to exceed last year’s attendance of 34,000.



But it’s unclear if the initial love shown Apple’s new laptop, called MacBook Pro, and upgraded desktop, will be enough to translate into increased revenue and market share for the Cupertino, California-based company’s computer business.



Apple’s market share is tiny—just 4.2 percent of the personal computing market, according to Gartner. Its bread and butter the past couple of years has been the iPod, but with the portable player’s somewhat low-key presence at the conference, even Apple seems to realize that it must shift emphasis back to computers to survive.



Mac Attack

It won’t be easy, experts said.



“Macintosh is not doing very well,” said Caris & Company analyst Mark Stahlman. “Sales of Macs in December were a disappointing 1.2 million. … Expectations were well north of 1.5 million—1.7 million would have been good.”



Mr. Stahlman said holiday sales of iPods were much stronger, noting, “This is going to be more and more important… as the iPod becomes less exciting.”



Despite a so-called “iPod economy” of companies who make money off iPod accessories, observers said Apple’s own economy can’t rely on iPods much longer.



The machines introduced at Macworld may not have what it takes to lift Apple’s doldrums. Though Mr. Jobs touted them as between two and five times faster than current Macs, using Intel’s low-power Core Duo chip, Mr. Stahlman said those speeds aren’t actual measures of performance.



Security Concerns

Other Mac changes also caused concern about security. Endpoint Technologies founder Roger Kay said Apple is using technology based on Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), which put security applications on hardware instead of software, in a new way—to integrate its operating system, Mac OS X, into the hardware.



“If you could pry software from hardware, it would be really bad,” Mr. Kay said. He added that he’s pretty sure Apple’s engineers have taken security steps. But the company refuses to discuss the matter because it does not want to attract hackers.



Mr. Kay added that there’s a “huge market” for pirated Microsoft Windows operating system software, which runs on almost all personal computers not made by Apple, but not for Mac OS software. However, that could change with the onset of the new Macs.



“Apple could be subject to [pirating] since now it [uses] more standard architecture,” Mr. Kay said.



And he thinks that differently designed Macs could cause Apple to become a different company.



“The one thing Apple brings to the table is design. They’ll continue to do their own innovations,” Mr. Kay said. “But I can see all that unique stuff becoming applications, not hardware. They’ll start looking more and more like Microsoft,” Apple’s archrival.



Happy Campers
But don’t feel sorry for Apple or its happy shareholders. After Mr. Jobs’ speech Tuesday, shares rose 6 percent, and on Friday they closed up almost $1.30 to $85.59. The stock has nearly tripled in value over the past year, making it one of technology’s best-performing investments.



A dollar invested in Apple three years ago is worth $10 today.



Consumers who like easy-to-use technology will continue their interest in the company’s products. At Macworld, Apple released a podcasting feature within GarageBand, a music-recording program that’s part of the iLife suite of content-making applications. The move is a smart one, as few podcasting tools for non-techies are currently available (see Bono’s Charity Starts Podcasts).



“Apple has the applications to grow market share dramatically in the consumer market, then go after the enterprise,” Mr. Kay said. “The iPod has been the lever to gain [interest] from the consumer. But now iLife does that.”



And that was obvious during the conference. IDG’s Mr. Sponseller said besides “packed” photography sessions, anything related to digital music also attracted large crowds. They watched GarageBand demonstrations by Berklee College of Music and used it themselves in a bus-turned-sound-studio named after John Lennon.



Podcast Newbies

Self-generated content wasn’t just for the hobbyist. Mr. Pirillo of Lockergnome said most attendees at his session had never podcasted before, but hoped to promote their businesses through the much-hyped medium.



Hype generated around Apple’s new computers may not translate into sales big enough to turn its computing business around, Mr. Stahlman said, but he added there might be bigger things in store.



April Fool’s Day will be Apple’s 30-year anniversary, Mr. Jobs noted in his keynote. Mr. Stahlman guesses the company might mark the occasion with an even bigger announcement.

Looking forward even further, it’s notable that Macworld 2007 is scheduled to happen the exact same week as CES (Consumer Electronic Show), the huge Las Vegas event that dwarfs all other electronics confabs. And that may be Apple’s ultimate proving ground.

Said Mr. Kay, “It’s interesting that Apple can set itself, one company, against the rest of the industry.”

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
You do realize that stock prices are decided by the ordinary schmoe on the street, right? Someone sees a commerical and thinks, wow, I can invest in them.

It makes no difference who pays. Absolutely none. In capitalism a commodity is worth what people are willing to pay for it. That's its worth... end of story.

Besides, analysts, who are hardly the ordinary schmoes on the streets, think that the stock will go over 100.

[Asher]

Predicting how high it'll go doesn't have any bearing on the size of the company. Nor does the market cap.

The higher it goes, the harder it will crash.

Read the Red Herring article -- they have some concerns about Apple. And these are the analysts you keep talking about.

Since the stock is overvalued, and usually purchased by people who buy into hype, if they get scared they'll sell and the stock will crash.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
It makes no difference who pays. Absolutely none. In capitalism a commodity is worth what people are willing to pay for it. That's its worth... end of story.

Besides, analysts, who are hardly the ordinary schmoes on the streets, think that the stock will go over 100.

And the award for reading the first sentance and that's it of a post goes to.... Agathon!

All a stock measures is what people think it is worth (or should be worth), not how much a company actually is worth.

[Gatekeeper]

Dear God, Asher. Please edit your "RedHerring" post linkie! It's blowing the entire screen out! (There's a Web address in the article itself that's causing the trouble.)

Gatekeeper

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui




And the award for reading the first sentance and that's it of a post goes to.... Agathon!

All a stock measures is what people think it is worth (or should be worth), not how much a company actually is worth.

How much people are prepared to pay for it is what it is worth in a capitalist economy. There is no other measurement. If you think a stock is overvalued, then you are just saying that you personally aren't prepared to pay the market price for it, or you are predicting that it will lose value in the future. People who are prepared to pay more for it predict that it won't lose value in the future. People often place bets on future outcomes... that's in essence what is happening with Apple shares now. If you want in on that bet, you will have to pay the market price. The share price of a company (what it costs to own it) will almost always include estimations of future value, which are in essence bets.

Moreover, if people want to buy the shares because they like the company logo, then it makes no difference (other companies should just get better logos).

Capitalism is based on what people think things are worth, rather than some objective measurement of worth. That's how prices are set. The market price = the value in the only meaningful sense of the term because that's how much it costs to buy it.

You might think that a certain commodity is not worth what people are asking for it, but if people are paying that much for it, that is its market value at that time. You might predict that the value will fall in the future, but that isn't exposing some "real value", it's just predicting that people won't be prepared to pay the old price for it - i.e. in future it will have a different market value than it does now -- and that different market value is just what people think it is worth at time 2... it doesn't represent some "real" value.

[Asher]

Simple fact: size of company is not determined by the market cap.

[Agathon]

Duh... I never said it was, you cretin.

I was being loose with language, as I explained in a previous post. If you want to make a song and dance about it, that's your problem..... you can add it to all the other problems you have.

[Gatekeeper]

Mucho gracias on the screen size, Asher.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I realize wikipedia isn't in vogue right now, but it serves my purpose in this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_cap

Market capitalization is a function of the price of a firm's stock and may not accurately reflect intrinsic value because of varying future expectations held by investors. It is common for a firm's market capitalization to exceed "book value" (shareholders' equity) because market prices tend to increase at a quicker pace than earnings accumulate due to value placed on expected future growth. For instance, in the late 1990s the shares of Internet-related companies were highly valued by the market, and tiny companies with almost no sales (but high growth) generated market capitalizations in the billions of dollars.

[Fake Boris]

Imran, you do realize that "intrinsic value" is a COMPLETE nonsense, right?

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Agathon
Or you could just build a safer car.

You could build a safer car. That doesn't change the fact that you need to be educated and have a license for said car.

So, frankly, your point here doesn't quite make sense.