Views from the Ivory Tower
May 2007
By Ted Bade
There is quite a lot of turmoil in the land of the Apple faithful right now. The people in Cupertino seem to have lost interest in computers, replaced by an interest in creating the next great gadget. Apple, once called Apple Computer, is putting it’s effort toward perfecting the iPhone. In the mean time, other Apple products are taking a back seat. For instance, the next version of Mac OS X, called Leopard, has been delayed until this coming fall. Rumor has it this is because resources were moved from creating the next great Mac OS to perfecting the iPhone.
This is really disappointing to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was looking forward to some of the features they promised would be in Leopard. Installing a new version of Mac OS X gives me a chance to clean up things, as well as the opportunity to play with all the new features. I, for one, will not buy a new Mac until I am certain the new version of Mac OS X either comes installed or as part of an inexpensive upgrade.
The other item is that it would have been really cool to release Leopard a month or two after Vista. This would give the media pundits a juicy opportunity to compare Vista to Leopard. I expect that if this had happened, Mac OS X would have come up on top! Releasing the new Mac OS X right after Vista would have made it even more apparent that Mac OS X is superior.
Oh well, Mr. Jobs and the Apple team have decided to pass up this golden opportunity to pursue the ?iPhone. I just hope their lackluster attitude toward the Macintosh is only temporary and doesn’t infect that of the many Macintosh users that enjoy or even love their Macs.
So this month, the majority of the news about Apple has been delays, problems, and other news about the iPhone. ?TV was released and shipped, and while it is a nice idea, I don’t think that it will take the home market by storm as the iPod did.
On another note, it seems things aren’t going well for Vista. From what I can tell there are two major problems plaguing it. First of all it has some problems. I haven’t personally used it, so I cannot attest to this personally. I can say I have read a lot of complaints. Probably the biggest piece of news in this regard is the fact that Dell computers has decided to offer new PCs that include some variety of XP instead of Vista. This is really significant because Dell was one of Vista’s most vocal supporters before it’s release. Apparently Vista is unable to perform well for gamers. Check out the article on the Electronista web site: http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/04/19/dell.casts.doubts.on.vista/.
Vista does have some problems and even the magazines that are Pro Microsoft are pointing this out. One interesting article I found was published in PC magazine Titled: Quick Fixes for Five Nasty Vista Problems. (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2104022,00.asp). Early in the article the author sets the tone by saying:
“A great deal of the problems we've encountered aren't really fixable. It's more a matter of finding a workaround or waiting for a patch...”
Ouch! The people at Microsoft must cringe when they hear a statement like that. But all the problems aren’t created directly by Microsoft. Apparently hardware companies have been slow to provide hardware drivers that support Vista. What this means is that peripherals attached to a computer won’t work properly. check out this article: http://www.crn.com/software/197006899.
What does this mean for Mac OS X and Mac Users? I don’t really think that Mac OS X will take over the computer OS market. I do believe it will become a major player. What I really think will happen is that the market will spread into a variety of current and new methods of providing operating systems to users. Both Linux and Mac OS X will be major players. As Microsoft looses market share, other companies will create new systems to fill the gap. Another effect of this is a reduction in malicious software.
Let’s face it, one of the main reasons there is so much malicious software for Windows is that one piece of code can negatively affect millions upon millions of computers. What if there were five equally used computer operating systems, would the person writing the virus learn to write code for all five? How about if there were twenty OS choices?
While it would be nice to dream that the world will turn to Apple for the next great OS, I don’t think this will happen. Apple has been cemented in user’s minds as, “That other Operating System”, as Linux is considered the OS of real geeks. I see a lot of opportunity for a new operating systems. Something outside the box, new, and exciting. I also see the possibility of a web based OS, one in which a user needs to log onto a site on the internet to gain access to the features and programs. I guess one could say the future looks interesting and full of options!
Let’s close our eyes, hop into the future and see what really happens!
Financially things look good – At the end of April, Apple posted the financial statement for the March quarter. Things look very good for them financially. In fact, the results are well above the market expectations! Which is to say that everyone expected Apple couldn’t continue to grow the sales of Macs and iPods the way they did.
You can check out the official statement from Apple by visiting: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/25results.html.
Here are some of the interesting facts about that statement: Apple posted a revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million. This compares to revenue of $4.36 billion and net quarterly profit of $410 million of a year ago quarter. Pretty nice!
Sales of Macs and iPods were up as well. They sold 1,517,000 Macs and 10,549,000 iPods, which is a 36% growth in Mac sales and 24% for the iPod.
This is the best quarter ever for Apple. To quote the statement:
“We are very pleased to report the most profitable March quarter in Apple’s history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.”
While Apple had some nice figures to report, media financial-related media pundits had some positive things to say about this. Many of the companies that offer stock information indicated that they expected Apple’s share values to rise to around $140/share and that Apple stock was a good buy right now. This followed by Apple’s stock jumping to over $100/share and hovering in the upper $90s by the end of the week. It had been jumping between the low $90s and upper $80s for the past month.
The Wall Street Journal posted a nice article concerning Apple’s financial statement. You can read this by visiting: http://www.thestreet.com/_dm/newsanalysis/techgames/10353181.html.
