Macs and iPods better than some hifi CD players

There are some audiophiles who feel that Macs and iPods can compete with some high end brands of CD players. Interesting...

Better than CD player!

Apple CFO optimistic!

Gentlemen, it is no surprise that the Apple CFO would be very optimistic. He reiterated that Apple TV and iPhone will change the landscape yet again, and he did not mention anything about Leopard slipping its ship date. There really isn't a ship date - they said Spring, which could mean a lot of things! He said Apple would not be licensing OSX (no surprise) and they have no intention yet of changing the large cash reserves they maintain (I'm all for that!). I think we're in for a banner year!

Apple CFO

San Francisco (and Cupertino, the Motherland)

Just a heads up Stitch. Le and myself will be on vacation for a week beginning this Saturday in San Francisco. Yes, I am returning to visit the Mother Ship! So for one week, Le and Lo will be absent from Macnight, but fear not, for we will return with new vigor and sweet Apple in our hearts! Yes, we will trek to the Motherland of Cupertino, and we will take in the radiance and beauty! Make no mistake, we shall prosper as a result of our journey.

Move to Iceland

This is it. Check it out.

Link to It.

Morgan Stanley estimates 8 million iPhones will be sold in one year.

An article on MacNN.com said that Morgan Stanley estimates over 8 million iPhones will be sold based on current trends and a survey which shows that about 19% of the market wants to buy a converged device and about 23% are at least somewhat interested in buying an iPhone. Here is my post on MacNN.com going through the numbers.

These are investment analysts that are trying to predict the market for the iPhone. It is not going to be an exact science. Let's look at the numbers and try to make some reasonable conclusions.

Article numbers:
140 mil - Number of "converged" devices sold in past 2 years.
7 mil - Number of "converged" devices sold by Blackberry
19% - Percent of people who own/want conv device.
23% - Percent of people who are extremely/somewhat interested in buying an iPhone

Conclusions:
The percentage of people who currently own a conv device has to be less than 19% since this includes "want" to buy also. Lets say it is 15% now. Since the current market for converged phones is 140 mil over 2 years lets say it is half that in one year. So the current market of converged phones is 70 million in one year. So the total market per year for cell phones is (70/.15) = 467 million. If only about 10% of the people who say they are interested in the iPhone actually buy one then that would be (23%*0.10) = 2.3%. That is 2.3% of the total market not just the converged market. This would mean that Apple could sell about (0.023*467) = 10.7 million iPhones in one year. This is 2.3 times more than the goal Apple is shooting for. So Morgan Stanley is being more conservative than my estimates. Then there is the potential ace in the hole. Apple already has about 23% of the market at least somewhat interested in buying an iPhone. This can only grow more when the iPhone is heavily advertised and all of your friends have one to show off. In reality, no one can know how big the market is going to be for the iPhone but it is potentially very very big.

Rumor - Touch sensitive Apple displays!

With the recent hooplah surrounding the Beatles deal, I'm more careful about getting too excited about rumors. This rumor suggests there may be new touch sensitive displays coming out from Apple to compliment the touch sensitive iPhone. It could happen to be a new killer feature of Leopard! Unfortunaltey, I heard the latest Leopard build released to developers was still a "work in progress", so they suggest not to expect Leopard until June. I hope they're wrong!

Rumored Displays

Vista has Speech Recognition going for it

David Pogue, a Mac guy who write for the New York Times, posted an interesting and complimentary article about Vista's speech and dictation abilities. It sounds like Microsoft got this aspect right and is well ahead of the Mac. I haven't heard if Leopard will have this!

Vista Speech Recogition

Wished for Blogger feature

I was hoping that with this new update to Blogger that they would have added the feature to know that new postings or comments have been added since the last time you viewed the blog. I don't think this would be too technical to do. They could store the date and time you last viewed and then flag new comments.

It seems as postings are added, and the older postings drop down the list. People stop the discussions on them. So we end up only being good for about 2-3 comments per posting. Unless McFan and Le go at each other. Then we have banter. Oh well, maybe in the next update.

Flash RAM prices dropping fast

I read that Flash RAM prices are dropping fast. And the article said that stock analysts are predicting this will help Apple get even better profit margins. Normally I would hope that when companies get their raw materials or parts for less money they would pass the savings onto the customer. I am sure Apple will do some of this to stay competitive. But I am actually happy Apple will keep some of the profits. I feel that when Apple has more money for R&D they will continue to make great new products.

iPod to use OSX?

Do you think that Apple plans to change the OS of the iPod to OSX just like the iPhone will? It would seem like a natural progression. Plus it would allow Apple to support just one OS. I know that the full OSX is not in the iPhone, just the core libraries for graphics etc. I suppose it will depend on if the iPod has enough RAM to even run OSX.

iTV already taken?

Looks like iTV was already taken. There is a web site called www.itv.com. It is a site that broadcasts over the internet British television programs. I believe this may be the reason Apple chose to change the name from iTV to Apple TV.

Zune nowhere to be found!

Gentlemen, at last check, the much hyped Zune is nowhere to be found the the Amazon top 100 electronics best sellers. iPods are on top with various flavors, followed by the SanDisk players. I didn't think this would happen - Zune appears to be getting a butt kicking from one of Microsoft's original collaborators!

Cover Flow hoax?

Gentlemen, there is a YouTube video purporting to be the much balleyhooed "CoverFlow" option on iTunes on the iPod with video. Is it real, or is it an imposter?

Cover Flow iPod

"iPhone" a Go...

Cisco and Apple have reached an agreement on Apple's use of the name "iPhone." Good news, since that's the best name for the new device.

-Le

Can Macnight be Revived !!!

We are in a crisis. We are losing our audience. It looks like we are going to have to put on a much better show if we want to survive. Are you with me?

Stitch, here's a link to the Beatles story

Stitch, check out the link below about the Beatles not being on iTunes in an exclusive deal:

Beatles

And this information comes from the Beatles record company spokesperson. It could have been so great!

Did we lose Le and Macminni?

I hope the switch to the new blogger didn't cause such a headache that we lost Le and Macminni. If your out there, please give us a sign!

Apple to be trounced by the Kazaa creators

I was reading an article in Wired magazine about this new file sharing program called Joost. It is from the creators of Kazaa and Skype. Joost claims to be the new replacement for television via the internet. I know, everyone makes this claim, but Joost will be using the same file sharing peer to peer system that Kazaa and Skype have used to take the distribution load off of large centralized servers. And the developers have learned their lesson from Kazaa that they need to play legally. So it has high level encryption.

The basic idea is that content is originally stored on a central server along with the advertising to support the system. As people load Joost onto their computer, then they become a mirror site for content. Therefore the central server does not get all of the load of supplying content. This is the key breakthrough. For such a large system to work it needs to be distributed, otherwise the cost of these large central servers would kill you.

Advertisers are very excited about Joost because it allows them to target very specific markets with direct advertising. Not everyone who watches the same show will have the same advertising. The developers of Joost claim that because of this very targeted advertising, there will only need to be one small commercial for a 1/2 hr show.

I personally believe that this is a much more logical system than the central server, no commercial, pay $3 per show model that Apple is using.

At this time content providers are few and far between right now for Joost but there does seem to be an interest. The encryption of content goes a long way. The interesting thing is that Joost is built from a collection of free open source software combined into a fully integrated system. I hope Apple takes notice. This is the TV of the future.

Joost

No Beatles exclusive for Apple

I think it would have been a magnificent follow up to the iPhone announcement - an Apple-Beatles spectacular with a special iPod, etc., but it didn't happen! I can't help but think that Apple and the Beatles would be able to make so much money if they put their heads together for something special. Maybe there's still too much bad blood for them to work together like that. Is anyone else as disappointed as I am?

Market Capitalization Update

Back in Nov 2005 I showed the market capitalization of Apple and a few other companies. Here is the latest update.

Company Nov 2005 Feb 2007
Dell $70 Billion $54 B
Apple $51 B $74 B
Ford $15 B $16 B
Microsoft $278 B $287 B
Google $101 B $111 B
HP ? $115 B

As you can see, Dell is fading from popularity on the PC side of the biz but HP is taking off like gangbusters (sorry missing data for 2005). Apple has grown significantly. And the big MS snowball keeps getting bigger and bigger. Probably due to momentem no doubt. Apple is still playing in the big leagues!