Apple's Steve Jobs named world's best-performing CEO

Well, obviously!

Anyone with THIS kind of attitude when it comes to tech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg

. . . is always someone to watch.

I'm pretty sure this is false isn't it?

Isn't it the case that he was cleared of any problems, but then later *chose* to resign when Chrome came out?

All very well-deserved accolades for Mr. Jobs. Love or hate Apple, love or hate Jobs, the results speak for themselves.

Very well done, Steve!

The truly great leaders couldn't care less about any accolades or even the absence thereof. All that matters is "the game" and the next challenge on the horizon.

I'm very thankful and grateful for your many accomplishments through the products of your companies. We've all benefitted greatly.

Hope you have many more years of life and career.

It's amazing what you can do when you build a solid simple product line, with products that have great design and actually work, sell them at reasonable prices and provide good support.

ATT ... can you hear me now? Nope. Still don't have 3G.

So where are the posters who think Jobs is hurting Apple and should have stepped down right after he made Apple a profit for a couple quarters?

That depends on how you look at it. To say that he was "forced" to resign is not strictly correct. Apple was facing an FTC investigation into potential conflicts of interest, which to my knowledge never actually occurred. Schmidt resigned before the FTC investigation was started.

Dear Steve,

Congratulations! Now please split the stock. Thank you.

Sincerely,

AAPL shareholder

Just what the old boy needs ... a little more stroking of the ego...

That being said, the man has done nothing short of a miracle with his rebuilding of AAPL **and** Apple. Merry Christmas Steve and heres to a great new year!

Perfect video of Steve. Clearly shows what kind of a man he is.

Where is STEVE BALLMER??? ROUNDING error??

Congratulations Steve! (and Apple) You bring excitement to technology, and keep us guessing about your "Next Big thing...".

Doesn't he deserve some kind of award, too? I mean, he is kinda indirectly responsible for Apple's recent success, too.

By the way, how did those "Laptop Hunter" ads go for ya, Microsoft? All they did was tell everyone what they already knew: Macs are cooler and more expensive than cheap crap.

I work in the book publishing industry and Steve's comments about Microsoft not understanding propotional fonts really nails it for me. Nearly all high-end book production takes place on Macintoshes.

I am a original 512k Machead, I've never bought a PC in my life.

Let me tell you the "dark years" when Jobs was away was quite miserable.

Steve Jobs got his chance to "do it all over again" combined with a very nice Bush inspired credit/real estate bubble that occurred after Sept 11th tragedy really got Apple up where it is today.

Unfortunately there is a rough road ahead, the primary market for Apple's products, the US economy, isn't doing so hot in this Dem Congress caused, post sub-prime real estate bubble recession. (not many know it was really the Congress in 2005 that brought the government into the sub-prime mortgages and that Bush had to take over the two failed GSE's; Frannie and Freddie that Congress was using for their socialist experiment, but it's the truth).

Neither is nearly socialist Europe in very good shape. Also Steve's health..

Lately Apple has taken the path of milking it's customers for everything possible, combined with downright ignoring the needs of it's customers. I suspect this is the work of someone else running Apple, not Steve.

Apple has established small sideline businesses to offset the foreseen decrease in their prime hardware sales of computers, namely iTunes and the App Store.

Apple also dived into the portable player market and the smartphone market with much success.

Apple is in these markets because of Steve Jobs innovation drive, nearly everything rests upon his ability to see and create new markets or improve on failed ones.

Steve Jobs is a special person, like Walt Disney, he's very rare and nearly impossible to replace.

What confronts the Apple of the future is the lack of a established business model that can weather the test of time. They don't own any cable lines, they don't have significant computer market share and their devices get copied shortly after their released.

Apple is able to succeed because they have been able to out innovate the others, but it's not a solid and stable business plan and subject to natural forces of aging and accidents, even in the case of Rubenstein, to sell out.

Apple is too dependent upon the quality and creativity of it's people, the money Apple has would be better put to use buying some sort of infrastructure. Perhaps the operation in North Carolina is going to be part of that. Who knows.

But Apple is riding the end of a fad now, a time when credit flowed freely and people felt rich. The future is not the case, it's going to be hard times for many for many years. 10% unemployment will be the average for the next 10 years!!

Real estate will not make the equity it used to, which makes running a business much much more difficult. This and the competition from China, will make it rough going in Apple's primary markets for the next 10 years at least.

Japan still hasn't gotten out of the mess of their credit/real estate bubble of the 80's and the US and Europe doesn't have any new markets. It's Brazil, China and perhaps India going to be the economic engines and they are pretty much not needing anything from the US or Europe, or each other much for that matter.

So I see netbooks being the consumers computing device of choice. People want the net cheap and portable.

When smart phones get cheaper, then netbooks will die.

I see place for netbooks so i dont think they will die out. I think theyll evolve quite a bit as Atom evolves, but I see a place for cheap, small notebooks for kids, older people and others with very simple internet needs. I think Chrome OS will rejuvenate their sales come next holiday season and expect many home entertainment vendors to include Chrome OS as an optional way to get on the internet through your TV.


PS: I must be getting sick because your mention of the dark years made me think of the The Dark Crystal with Steve leaving Apple as crystal being broken, not to be whole again until Jobs returned. Why that popped into my head, I have no idea, but I dont think its a good sign. \

Poor Ouragon. Even people at Harvard give Jobs credit.

Sure most publishing is done on Mac but it has little to do with fonts. It is mostly a matter of historical personal preference by graphic artists and typographers. Almost all publishing is done with Quark or InDesign which are responsible for the text handling characteristics. The metrics are built into the typeface itself be it OpenType or Postscript, neither of which Apple had anything do do with in terms of creating a cross platform standard. If you create a Postscript file from either Windows or Mac using Quark or inDesign the output will be identical with respect to the type rendering.

Of course the flip side here is that all this praise means the S@@t is about to hit the fan. That seems to be the way it often goes, when so much attention is focused on a company.

Dave

You claim to be a shareholder, so I'm curious why you would want the stock to split. You do realize how stock splits work, right? Double the shares, but half the value per share. You're right back where you started, except now the stock is cheaper and there's more volatility. Ask Google or Berkshire Hathaway about stock splitting. Sorry to hear whatever mental block you have which makes you think two $100 shares is somehow better than one $200 share.

Nearly everything you say is completely hysterical and wrong. You've been listening to the Tea Party types too long. Also, some very conventional Wall Street thinking.

Apple products have been making huge profits this year, of all things. A lot of Netbooks have been selling a lot, because they're cheap, but that's the market that doesn't make sense. They're losing money on them, or not making much. There's a reason that Apple is making half the retail profits in the computer industry this past year.

See, your problem is that you don't know how the world works. The sub-prime mortgages happened all by the themselves. It was Wall Street greed and the lack of regulation, and the lies you're buying about Fannie and Freddie being the cause of all this, when they were a tiny percentage of the problem, is the reason you can't understand anything else. Stop believing FOX and the right-wing prevaricators.

Be that as it is, the "value" that Wall Street takes for Apple is its speculative market cap. Now it's $150 billion, last year it was about $80 billion. It is actually worth its annual sales, its assets, and its future prospects. Real world money and assets, and actual products, and the creative workers at Apple. Real world, not Wall Street onanistic dreams.

I was with you until you got to volatility. In reality, splitting a stock has no effect on this or anything else. Now, if you want to talk about dividends, that's another matter.

thanks, now just go away.

Two $100 shares ARE better than one $200 share. Stock markets are behavioural not perfect.

Uh, no. It makes absolutely no difference, and not because the stock markets are not "perfect." It makes no difference because there is no difference.

then i am curious as to why you'd want it to split. chance at getting higher gains as stock prices rise again?

Pros and cons with a split. More people psychologically feel they can invest since the price per share is lower which can lead to more investors while this effect can make the stock appear more volatile in the short run while still averaging out the same in the long run. I’m long on Apple so I don’t really care about anything else but their quarterly performance.

I don't, someone else thought it mattered -- I was explaining why it doesn't matter. Dividends is what I'd like.

didnt say you specifically, sorry if you took it that way. i was more interested in why someone would want it to split and i think solip answered it well enough for me to get why someone would want it to split..

I second that motion ... split the stock

I never bought this reasoning. If you have $10,000 to invest in a stock, I don't see how it could matter even the slightest bit if you were buying 50 shares at $200 or 100 shares at $100. The value of the investment is precisely the same. Once upon a time, the brokerage fees for buying and selling "odd lots" (less than 100 share lots) were substantially higher. Back then, share price mattered -- but no longer.

And if it is intentionally stated or founded on a mistaken impression, it is a lie.

I qualified it with psychological for a reason. Even today you see a bump in the relative value after a split due to smaller investors thinking its more affordable. Your comment about the brokerage fees is correct, but you arent considering that cheap internet accounts have made many more people traders despite with little to know knowledge and almost no input from a licensed and trained broker to guide them.


PS: The the only real world variance I can conceive would be from rounding when purchasing a set value not a number of shares. For instance, if you are choosing to invest $5,100 in a stock that cost $200 verse $100 share. The former will get you 25 shares for $5000 while the latter will yield 51 share for the full $5,100. That example is conveniently setup and likely not going to affect any real world valuation but I thought it should be mentioned anyway.

I wish more executives would be paid the same as Steve especially those folks at AT&T. Then they might be more motivated to improve their companies network thereby improving company profitability then in turn theirs as well. It's a shame how little vested interest executives have in the companies they manage - check insider holdings at your favorite Stock Site. It also influences my voting on re-electing members of the Board if they get stock compensation for their services and immediately turn around and sell it the same day how much confidence does that show that they have in their current executive team and I don't vote to re-elect them.

For someone who tries to lay down a credible argument of Apple's business successes and challenges, you end up way off the mark due to focusing on the wrong things and infusing it with unhelpful political rhetoric that isn't accurate and defeats your hypothesis.

About the only thing I agree with you is that the dark days of Apple (1992-1996) were very lousy indeed and the company nearly packed it in for late 1996. As far as the real estate bubble is concerned, I'm not quite sure how Apple capitalized on this since their core assets are intellectual property, not real estate. Apple owns no factories, collects little of any rent from their holdings and therefore could not be overcapitalized from a market who would be looking at these holdings for growth potential. Even Apple's own stores properties are owned by others since nearly all the stores are in malls or other shopping complexes. If anything, Apple had to survive the outcoming of the dotcom collapse of 2001-2003 which you do not mention. If you look at Apple's earnings, most tech companies had problems during this period even Apple struggled initially after several quarters of modest growth. The key of 2001 was that Apple launched both the iPod and the Apple store then during a downturn, which ended up being an extremely smart long term play.

You claim that "not many know" that Congress brought the country into subprime mortgages in 2005. I would counter that the roots of all of this began in the late 1990s with the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act, allowing banks to get into the brokerage business, combined with a congress who elected to pass on doing anything to regulate the growing problem of credit default swaps. Complex real estate deals and mortgages bundled into securities on the attempt to make them easy money ended up masking the risk. Credit default swaps ended up being the accelerator when companies loaded up on these securities and that brings us to last year's collapse. Plenty of blame to go around on who's responsible, but by analyzing your rhetoric, I would remind you that many of these policies were pushed through by GOP-led Congresses. But back to Apple...

Apple has managed to defy the gravity of the rest of the market primarily by concentrating on the customers that still had money ($1000+ PC buyers) and making devices that ended up being "gotta haves" for customers time and time again. While the bulk of PC buyers held off of upgrading computers at regular intervals due to reduced earnings power, Apple's customers still had money and were (and are) willing to spend it.

Also, the iTunes store and the App store were hardly "side businesses". They were instrumental business decisions to accelerate the sales of Apple's growth products, iPods and iPhones. The public responded by buying more products then even Apple thought might happen (a pretty good problem to have). In the meantime, they completely changed the music business, surpassing the mighty Wal-Mart as the top music retailer. And the App Store cemented the iPhone's position in the market before suitable competitors hit the marketplace. Now the iPhone has another reason for inhibiting customer churn...all the apps you own/use.

You say that Apple's problem is the lack of a long term established business model. I'd say that no company is immune from change and constantly has to adapt, innovate or die (just ask the US auto industry which has been around for 100+ years). Apple isn't a railroad, telecom or other company with large "cash cow" assets and doesn't aspire to be. If Apple has any advantage over its competitors, it's that drive to continue to innovate and keep ahead of the other guys. Apple is "too dependent on the quality and the creativity of it's people"??? Seriously, that's your argument? When your primary asset is intellectual capital, that's how you keep ahead. Businesses everywhere need to learn Apple's lesson.

For someone who talks about conservative beliefs and probably believes in American Exceptionalism, you seem to be saying we should all roll over and wait for China and India to pick up the pieces.

I did notice that. My response to any investor who thinks they're getting more buying twice as many shares at half the price is: please do yourself a favor, buy t-bills. I believe the effect of these novice investors on stock volatility is extremely marginal. The big short-term moves in any stock come from the institutions moving many thousands of shares at a time, often based purely on momentum and other technical factors.

In all fairness, this is a better perspective on 'A Question of Taste' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBISzVRmYIM&NR=1

and this as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSt5j...eature=related

and then there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjVi...eature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytWjEd2gcg&NR=1

I can never forgive Steve Jobs for his continued insistence on having ATT as the carrier for iPhone. The iPhone is a great piece of technology made into a joke by ATTs shoddy network. It is the equivalent of going to a fine restaurant and being served up a real nice steak on a trashcan lid.

A rising credit bubble lifts all ships, including Apple's.

People flush with loans from their rapidly rising equity.



Yes, Apple does well on its own verses the other tech companies, no doubt. But the credit bubble had a lot more customers for Apple's gear than normal.


Many don't know that, Bush as the outgoing president was smeared by a vengeful Dem Congress not only for political gain, but because Bush took the two GSE's out of their "socialist experiment" and fired both CEO's for bringing both companies to ruin.



Banks can handle the brokerage business as long as it's a separate identity than traditional banking.
Unfortunately the risk taking, like a disease, works it's way up to the top and effects the whole company. I would like to see it re-enacted.

Being the root of the sub-prime mess?, no that goes back to Clinton and his revisions to the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks into giving risky loans under the threat of redlining. The first mortgage backed security was created later that year by Bear Sterns as a way for banks to dump the toxic loans.

Then in 2005 the Dem Congress got Freddie and Fannie into the sub-prime act right during the height of the bubble...

So basically it was government sponsored corruption of capitalism that was the cause of the problem. The Dems brought the government into the sub-prime mortgage game like bringing a drunk whale (rich person) to a casino. Now we will all pay, with sub-standard socialized health care tax during a severe recession. Wonderful!

Dems are by nature anti-capitalists and certainly anti-business. They are the ones who ripped off the sub-prime poor with loans they couldn't afford, and like blaming Bush, they blame the banks for laws and regulations they created in the first place. They blame everyone but themselves for their failure to understand how things work.

You see, I lived through two real estate bubbles, they normally are a game of speculation for those who can afford to take the risk. It's not for the sub-prime and middle class.




No, what Apple needs now to cement itself is buying or creating some sort of infrastructure, it's too dependent upon other countries and companies for it's products.

It's too dependent upon innovation, well that innovation will die when Steve goes, talent is already leaving Apple. Like it did when Walt Disney died.

Apple is really desperate, this is why it's doing what it's doing. Good thing it's successful or it would be another Palm.

Apple needs to cement a market, preferably a infrastructure really bad, that's why it's in the portable music and phone business.

The computer market it has failed in, due to circumstances and earlier mistakes. 10% market share is a failure, 90% or more is successful.




No they are happily going on without us or really caring two shits really.

China is the one sucking up the worlds resources, they are to blame for the gas spike because they loaded up on oil before the Olympics, but the smear campaign it was speculators to blame. Some in the media re quick to blame capitalism for everything, why is that? (sure they made some money, but they risk losing too)

I'll close with this, the US used to consume nearly 90% of the worlds resources for the standard of living we experience today.

How the heck can the rest of the world enjoy that same standard of living?

It's only through strength that our country got the standard of living it is spoiled on today.

Even Obama wised up and is sending more troops overseas...the Congress isn't even batting a eyelash.

hehehehe....