"A number of plans" - fred anderson

[quote]Originally posted by The Mactivist:
<strong>Fred says, as of a few moments ago, that Apple has a number of plans for getting its powermac sales up and that management is keenly focused on getting sales back up to the 200,000 range.

hmmm...</strong><hr></blockquote>

More cryptic BS...Not trying to be a troll, but I'm suprised Apples stock is still above $14.00 with such a cloudy direction of the future of the hardware platform.

Especially with a net loss for the 1st Quarter. The stock has to go up, I bought it at 21 and 17! :confused:

....I would think that it would have something to do with its $12+/share cash value. I would think Apple's future earnings potential and IP is worth more than $1.85/share.

Obviously some disagree.

[quote]Originally posted by JCG:
<strong>More cryptic BS...Not trying to be a troll, but I'm suprised Apples stock is still above $14.00 with such a cloudy direction of the future of the hardware platform.</strong><hr></blockquote>

At this point, anyone covering Apple should be used to clouds. Frankly, if there is any uncertainty about when things will be done, it's the only approach they can prudently take.

It's good to hear that they're targeting at least 800,000 PowerMacs per year.

Apple's stock is at $14 because of it's cash per share. If it was not technically a bank with all that cash, it'd be a $3 stock like gateway. It has about $12 a share in CASH. It has over $3 billion in cash and a market cap of $5 billion, you don't see that often. There are tech stocks out there trading with negative equity (they owe more debt, than the stock price). So Apple is a dirt cheap bargain. You'll actually some old-school value investors talking about AAPL now.

"Fred says, as of a few moments ago, that Apple has a number of plans for getting its powermac sales up and that management is keenly focused on getting sales back up to the 200,000 range."

I bet that none of those plans involves either faster macs (next generation powermacs) nor pricecuts. That "management" team has got them selfs an impossible mission. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote]Originally posted by firelark:
<strong>"Fred says, as of a few moments ago, that Apple has a number of plans for getting its powermac sales up and that management is keenly focused on getting sales back up to the 200,000 range."

I bet that none of those plans involves either faster macs (next generation powermacs) nor pricecuts. That "management" team has got them selfs an impossible mission. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>

Didnt Steve say last year that Apple could double their market share? How are they going to achieve that with product update cycles every 12+ months. No wonder Apples board was voted one of the worst in the US

"It's good to hear that they're targeting at least 800,000 PowerMacs per year."

I don't know how many 'power'Macs they sold this quarter. But I feel confident they can take at least 200 k 'power'Macs per quarter with a 970 in them. That and a slight price reduction. Kickstart dem sales...

Lemon Bon Bon

[quote]Originally posted by firelark:
<strong>
I bet that none of those plans involves either faster macs (next generation powermacs) nor pricecuts. That "management" team has got them selfs an impossible mission. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>

they said they increased their investment in R&D and made special efforts to increase the performance of the PowerMac line - i think this is a good hint that they're aware of the lack of speed in their current towers. how many users of quark xPress do you think are really waiting for new machines? i think the statement "we believe customers hold out to buy until xPress is done" is bs - apple itself thinks that performance is the main issue!

[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: Krassy ]</p>

Apple had better but their shit to gether. The mac 3D community is starting to limp. Maya has some major issues on mac that doesn't seem to be resolved. I guess well never se the Maya Ultimate version on mac. Lightwave users have the option to switch between PC and Mac as they like which is good but I know there are more and more people using the PC version only. Apple doesn't seem to lift a finger to help the mac 3D community. When Maya and Lightwave are gone from the mac there arent much left of proffesional 3D for mac. Mabe Cinema 4D but I doubt that the users of C4D macvarsion are happy with the 3D performance on mac.

Apple is a small company making very little profit, but yet they continue to innovate. Apple Computer continues to make some of the best computers, although maybe not the fastest, in the US market. As well, Apple has one of, actually the, best OS on market. Apple for the most part owns their own worth in cash and makes a nice profit on the interest that 4.3 Billion recieves.

Apple is not going anywhere. Heck they would never have to make a profit and as long as they broke even they could stick around for years. Apple seems to have a lot of potential for future earnings. Their stock is being assessted at about $2.43 per share and then $12 a share extra becasue of their cash value. Lets just put it this way I just got another 100 shares.

[quote]Originally posted by firelark:
<strong>Apple doesn't seem to lift a finger to help the mac 3D community.</strong><hr></blockquote>

This is based on what, exactly?

They have an excellent OpenGL implementation. They have 3D cards that are basically the pro versions disguised - and priced - as consumer offerings. They are using the fastest CPUs available to them, and they are using as many of them per machine as the shared bus they use can reasonably support.

I realize that the end result doesn't compare to a n Athlon box in terms of rendering time. Not by a long shot. But there's a crucial difference between realizing that Apple is doing as much as they can and falling short because of certain third-party components, and accusing them of indifference.

There is, as ever, the question of why Apple got Maya and Shake and their ilk on OS X in the first place? They obviously think they've got hardware in the pipeline that's capable of doing those applications justice.

[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

Apple has come a long way for 3D.

They've dropped the crazy 'sell only 16 meg Ati Rage card' Mantra. (Damn things stuck like alien sucker faces to that top end 'power'Mac...)

Choice is now offered. Nvidia. Decent cards with 'power'Macs. Could do better in their 'high end' (come on, for £2500 ish, I'd expect at least a Geforce 4 Ti...) 9700, which is a smashing card: pending in a month or so according to a few Mac gaming sites.

Open Gl. Come on, you've got to give Apple this one, since the panty Quickdraw 3D days, Apple has moved mountains on this. Notice the flood of games on Mac now? And the Lightwave 3D support has improved since earlier versions. Due to GL, 'X' and competition amongst graphics cards.

High graphics cards? Quadro? Wildcat? Hmmm. I'd argue, with the next round of Geforce FX and Ati 9700 cards, offering terrific bang for buck, why would you want to spend a grand on such 'Wildcat' cards?

CPU. Well. You can't say Apple haven't tried. They've doubled them up. But I feel they could have compensated further by offering better graphics cards as standard on top two 'power'Mac models.

Over long renders, the latest Athlons and Pentium 4s stuff the 'top end' G4 with a thick rhubarb. Still, 'we'll' have our day in the sun.

970 willing. In duals. In quads. In octos. In 'X-Serves'...on 10.3.

Then you take my Athlon and drop kick it down the stairs...

Lemon Bon Bon



And as Amorph said, we got Shake and Maya too. (Come on. If I'd have said to you a few years back, 'We'll have Maya and it will cost you less than £2,000 inc Vat!', you'd have had me certified...)

[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:
<strong>I don't know how many 'power'Macs they sold this quarter. But I feel confident they can take at least 200 k 'power'Macs per quarter with a 970 in them. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Q1 2003 158,000 powermacs sold. Average price $1800.
Q1 2002 212,000 powermacs sold.

In 1999 Apple sold 1,296,000 PowerMacs and 1,802,000 iMacs.

its amazing how low their targets are when just 3 years ago they were selling that many machines

Apple is a very interesting company.

First, they are very disciplined. Apple has a strategy and sticks to it. You can't tell what Apple is up to by listening to just one keynote. That only gives you a snapshot. For example, the PowerMacs need upgrading and you know Apple is hard at work on those upgrades but nothing will be said about them until they are ready.

Part of the strategy is to run at just a slight profit. That means that they are investing as much of the profits as possible with an eye to capturing future profits when that R&D generates great products.

Apple's R&D budget is about half a billion dollars. Read that twice.

They are running the stores at about the break even point in order to capture more market share. However, they are not sacrificing anything. Although the sales outlets run at near break even Apple makes a significant profit on the product itself.

One cool tidbit. The last question was whether Apple would make more non-Mac products that can be used on wintel systems (like iPod). There was no denial. Just a curt "No Comment."

[quote]Originally posted by applenut:
<strong>In 1999 Apple sold 1,296,000 PowerMacs and 1,802,000 iMacs.

its amazing how low their targets are when just 3 years ago they were selling that many machines</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yea, that's the affect of 3 years of recession.

i dunno
steve is sounding way too confident in interviews lately about future powermacs and apple in general for 2003. as for their stock i've been picking up shares in the 14-15 range for awhile now, and am buying more each week (along with palm, i got in pre-reverse split and made a nice bundle) with aapl i look at drops in the stock price like this as buying oppertunities, and trade on the daily up and downs

but if they come out with something truly awesome this thing could skyrocket. but what on earth could steve be hinting at about 2003 being a "turning point" for apple?

that implies change...

but what kind???

[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: futuremac ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by KidRed:
<strong>

Yea, that's the affect of 3 years of recession. </strong><hr></blockquote>

not so sure..... iBook sales like quadrupled in that time... recession or weak products?

powermac sales, recession or not, should never have reached this low.

[quote]Originally posted by JCG:
<strong>More cryptic BS...Not trying to be a troll, but I'm suprised Apples stock is still above $14.00 with such a cloudy direction of the future of the hardware platform.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Well, since the shares are only trading on a premium of $2 above their net tangible assets of $12 (they have &gt; $4 billion in the bank), I wouldn't say the market is being overly optimistic about Apple. You know, pricing the whole of Apple's future performance at effectively $2 a share...

(That's the $2 they lose if Michael Dell's prediction is correct and they close their doors and give the money back to the shareholders.)

But as we know, Apple WILL survive. It always has.

I wonder if an experiment among the lines "let's sell the last few G4 PowerMacs with a margin of 10%" would do any good as far as powermac sales go. I mean 4 billion - geez, with that kind of pocket change there is definately some room for toying around.

[quote]Originally posted by xype:
<strong>I wonder if an experiment among the lines "let's sell the last few G4 PowerMacs with a margin of 10%" would do any good as far as powermac sales go. </strong><hr></blockquote>

With all the rebates Apple offers, and the mild price drops that periodically come out, Apple has all that data. They probably don't have actual data for "What if we sold at a loss on the XYZ, how many units would we sell?" but by changing the price a couple hundred dollars they get data on how bigger price cuts would probably affect sales.

[quote]Originally posted by JCG:
<strong>

More cryptic BS...Not trying to be a troll, but I'm suprised Apples stock is still above $14.00 with such a cloudy direction of the future of the hardware platform.</strong><hr></blockquote>

To the folks working on such things at Apple, the future of the hardware platform isn't cloudy at all. It's quite exciting, really.

[quote]Originally posted by xype:
<strong>I wonder if an experiment among the lines "let's sell the last few G4 PowerMacs with a margin of 10%" would do any good as far as powermac sales go. I mean 4 billion - geez, with that kind of pocket change there is definately some room for toying around. </strong><hr></blockquote>

I disagree. What they need to do is beef up the specs so much that people will drool over the machines and while in a hypnotic trance they will pull out their wallets and pay the MSRP.

[quote]Originally posted by KidRed:
<strong>

Yea, that's the affect of 3 years of recession. </strong><hr></blockquote>

I wish it was. Unfortunatly, total PC sales have continued to grow.

[quote]Originally posted by Addison:
<strong>

I wish it was. Unfortunatly, total PC sales have continued to grow. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Perhaps we should bring this in here too:

[quote]Originally posted by JLL:
<strong>Perhaps we should bring this in here too:</strong><hr></blockquote>

Wow, I always tought Apple at one point had more than "just" 12% of the market. Interesting.

nice graph.
there are a couple of questions, though...
what is the unit ? thousands of boxes sold ?

second thing, a quick look at the 1984 line would indicate that the mac share represents 6% of the market that year.
now, arithmetic 101 taught me that 1372 is not 6% of 6322. it's more like, ermm, let me see, 21 percent... unless, of course, the mac share thing indicates, well, something else than the mac share that year...

pentium floating point bug maybe ?

on a related note, it'd be nice to have a cute little graph of this...

Originally posted by applenut:
<strong>

not so sure..... iBook sales like quadrupled in that time... recession or weak products?

powermac sales, recession or not, should never have reached this low.</strong>[/QUOTE]

People still buy in a recession, however not as many and they don't spend as much. pMac sales have slowed because of the recession as well, the recession of speedy chips

[quote] I wish it was. Unfortunatly, total PC sales have continued to grow <hr></blockquote>

The only PC company, other then Apple, that has made any money is Dell. Gateway just closed 3 MORE stores and is moments away from join Acer & EMachines.

[quote]Originally posted by KidRed:
<strong>Gateway just closed 3 MORE stores and is moments away from join Acer & EMachines.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Er, to the "Ugly PC Makers Club"? Why isn't Dell allowed to join?

[quote]Originally posted by JLL:
<strong>

Perhaps we should bring this in here too:
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Where did you get these numbers? Why are you rounding?

[quote]Originally posted by xype:
<strong>

Er, to the "Ugly PC Makers Club"? Why isn't Dell allowed to join? </strong><hr></blockquote>

Hell, I wish Dell woul headline

Imagine what would happen if IBM clone-PC makers ceased to operate? Steve Jobs would cum himself.

thanks jll
never saw that before. now since im somewhat new to macs and dont know too much about the history, can any mac vetrans tell me what caused the huge jump in mac numbers between 1990-1991 ?

what i remember about that time period is there being parity in the number of software titles then on the walls at electronic boutique betwen the "ibm" section, and the "apple" section you had an even choice then. was it marketing? did apple release some hot new machine that caused their marketshare to double??

and what pray tell happened just 5 years later in 1995-1996 that caused apple to loose half their marketshare??? was it the windows 95 rollout? that drop is just amazing!

[ 01-16-2003: Message edited by: futuremac ]</p>

on second look it seems to me not so much as apple loosing marketshare in 1996 but of windows pc's doubling their marketshare so it almost had to be the rollout of windows 95 ??

[quote] So Apple is a dirt cheap bargain. <hr></blockquote>

I agree that their cash holdings are staggerring (especially considering their condition as recently as 98 when they needed that infusion from M$) but I honestly don't think you will hear many analysts wowing the stock at a 80.170 P/E forward looking ratio. A bad number might be around 25, so 80 completely sucks.

Also, the cash burn rate of technology companies can be significant, especially for one that has such high R&D demands as Apple (ie creating all of your own OS and major apps). But I will admit that they are/have been a great company with great potential.

A significant cash hoard can also be a sign of a company that is too conservative with their money. The question is, what kind of a rainy day are they saving that money for?

Fred Anderson said that their income from interest will drop significantly in the third quarter of 2003.

Does this mean interest rates will go down, or does it mean that they are going to do some big spending?

[quote]Originally posted by Algol:
<strong>Apple is not going anywhere.</strong><hr></blockquote>

That's exactly the problem.

[quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:
<strong>Apple has come a long way for 3D.

They've dropped the crazy 'sell only 16 meg Ati Rage card' Mantra. (Damn things stuck like alien sucker faces to that top end 'power'Mac...)

Choice is now offered. Nvidia. Decent cards with 'power'Macs. Could do better in their 'high end' (come on, for £2500 ish, I'd expect at least a Geforce 4 Ti...) 9700, which is a smashing card: pending in a month or so according to a few Mac gaming sites.

Open Gl. Come on, you've got to give Apple this one, since the panty Quickdraw 3D days, Apple has moved mountains on this. Notice the flood of games on Mac now? And the Lightwave 3D support has improved since earlier versions. Due to GL, 'X' and competition amongst graphics cards.

High graphics cards? Quadro? Wildcat? Hmmm. I'd argue, with the next round of Geforce FX and Ati 9700 cards, offering terrific bang for buck, why would you want to spend a grand on such 'Wildcat' cards?

CPU. Well. You can't say Apple haven't tried. They've doubled them up. But I feel they could have compensated further by offering better graphics cards as standard on top two 'power'Mac models.

Over long renders, the latest Athlons and Pentium 4s stuff the 'top end' G4 with a thick rhubarb. Still, 'we'll' have our day in the sun.

970 willing. In duals. In quads. In octos. In 'X-Serves'...on 10.3.

Then you take my Athlon and drop kick it down the stairs...

Lemon Bon Bon



And as Amorph said, we got Shake and Maya too. (Come on. If I'd have said to you a few years back, 'We'll have Maya and it will cost you less than £2,000 inc Vat!', you'd have had me certified...)

[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

But if Maya and Lightwave drop the mac becuase its hardware is too cr*p to make people switch enough to warrant the development costs it would do far more harm to the idea of 3D on a mac than the announcement of Maya on the mac did it good.
If Alias wavefront ever stopped development of Maya on the Mac it would send a clear signal that the mac just can't cut it - we'd never see the mac in 3D again.

[quote]Originally posted by rogue27:
<strong>Fred Anderson said that their income from interest will drop significantly in the third quarter of 2003.

Does this mean interest rates will go down, or does it mean that they are going to do some big spending?</strong><hr></blockquote>

It means interest rates are going down.

Apple is already spending almost all of their income per quarter, including the previously quoted $500 million on R&D.

[ 01-16-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>