Understandable then, that this week's iPhone launch was never going to be a particularly happy affair. Well done Tim and the Apple team, you carried yourselves so well given the burden that you must have been carrying. \
I brought it up because you had written that Wall Street's view of Apple's announcement had now turned quite positive.
No, I didn't. Your own quote shows that it wasn't me.
Unlike you, I don't base company evaluations on short term swings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
I noted that was probably being premature and not a "quite positive" reaction since Apple was still under-performing the overall NASDAQ the following day. I also wrote that I believe investors would come around to a more positive outlook sooner rather than later.
Originally Posted by island hermit
The reaction on Wall Street is now quite positive... One. Day. After. the unveiling.
I brought it up because you had written that Wall Street's view of Apple's announcement had now turned quite positive. I noted that was probably being premature and not a "quite positive" reaction since Apple was still under-performing the overall NASDAQ the following day. I also wrote that I believe investors would come around to a more positive outlook sooner rather than later.
Originally Posted by island hermit
The reaction on Wall Street is now quite positive... One. Day. After. the unveiling.
Hey, Gatorguy... that was me, as you can see.
Everything is relative.
The sentiment did turn quite positive... relative to the doom and gloom observed throughout the media.
Down .8% from the Naz... certainly positive in my mind considering it's Apple we're talking about and the amount of negative press the 4S received immediately after the unveiling. Anything up looked positive... which it is under the circumstances.
I guess some of these guys haven't traded stocks and been involved heavily into a sector when the bottom falls out (ie. uranium in March... now that's negative).
It's all relative.
Whatever... not important right now... or ever for that matter.
The iP4S is not very exciting, but it certainly has teeth.
The A5 and SGX543MP2 is the most powerful CPU and GPU in the history of cell phones. Even more powerful than the Galaxy S 2's dual core exynos chip and Mali400 which held the title of most power chip in a phone till yesterday.
So the iP4S may lack presentation, but it will deliver massive gains over the the iP4
The sentiment did turn quite positive... relative to the doom and gloom observed throughout the media.
Down .8% from the Naz... certainly positive in my mind considering it's Apple we're talking about and the amount of negative press the 4S received immediately after the unveiling. Anything up looked positive... which it is under the circumstances.
I guess some of these guys haven't traded stocks and been involved heavily into a sector when the bottom falls out (ie. uranium in March... now that's negative).
It's all relative.
Whatever... not important right now... or ever for that matter.
Sorry for the confusion over who's who guys. In any case it was simply an observation.
Are you saying that if there was a significant difference (ie. 3% difference even if AAPL was positive) or are you saying that it doesn't matter if it's even less than 1%?
[I'm basing this on a historical perspective of AAPL, which, to me, is open the most under rewarded stocks in the market.... so it tends to play a little differently anyway]
[on edit: This all started because I said that investors were showing a positive sentiment for AAPL by bringing it into positive territory... at that time there was ~ - .4% difference.]
I was making a point about whether some observed change is significant or not. The argument holds true on the upside or the downside. There may be days in which a move of <1% (relative to the market) may be significant, and other days when a move of, say, >2% may be insignificant. It depends on how other stocks in the market have moved.
In other words, one cannot make any statement about whether the stock was 'up' or 'down' reflecting 'good news' or 'bad news,' respectively, by looking at absolute changes. We need to look at (i) relative changes, and (ii) conditioned on the volatility in the rest of the market.
I was making a point about whether some observed change is significant or not. The argument holds true on the upside or the downside. There may be days in which a move of <1% (relative to the market) may be significant, and other days when a move of, say, >2% may be insignificant. It depends on how other stocks in the market have moved.
In other words, one cannot make any statement about whether the stock was 'up' or 'down' reflecting 'good news' or 'bad news,' respectively, by looking at absolute changes. We need to look at (i) relative changes, and (ii) conditioned on the volatility in the rest of the market.
Oh, I get all of that. I was trying to put in perspective what and who we are dealing with in this case.
This is Apple... a lot of times AAPL will lag a bit and in this case I was also trying to put it in perspective with the given event. There seemed to be a lot of negative press the day before about the 4S... it's as if a star basketball player who normally scores 26 points in a game has hurt his leg one day... news sounds quite negative about his chances of playing the next day... the point spread widens... the next day out comes the player and he scores 23 points. Now... considering that some people didn't expect him to play would you say that he did well (ie. positive) or would you say he played negatively because he was 3 points off his average. Half empty or half full. I went with positive. ... and, AAPL was following the trend with every other stock... they went up, AAPL went up during that time... unlike, for instance, GOOG which actually went down at a point when others were going up. AAPL was following the trend.
Anyway, I was just trying to consider everything involved, including the atmosphere that surrounded Apple yesterday... and, in my mind, I expected Apple to fare worse considering the bitching heard in the media the day before, so a gain that got Apple with .8% of average seemed quite positive to me. [ie. GOOG received a downgrade yesterday and it was off almost 2%... now if AAPL had been off that much then I would have conceded that it was negative]
[plus... now we know there may have been other reasons for everyone's seemingly lack lustre performance]
* perfect example, Thursday 6th... this is an example of negative... not because AAPL is down but because AAPL is bucking the trend... as other stocks went up, AAPL went down... the two previous days we saw AAPL following the trend... just not up as much as the other stocks on Tues and Wed.
It's even worse than you suggest. In the UK, they haven't even started the bidding for the rights to the LTE bandwidths! It'll be years before we have an LTE network, but people still moan they don't have the antenna. 'Morons' in the right word.
This is a world phone now, and the hard reality is that LTE is not coming this year, or even next year, or even the year after that in many of Apple's core markets. It's a complete white elephant at the moment.
This isn't an earth-shattering update, but those days are gone. The iPhone 4 made the phone feature complete. From now on it'll be about more speed, better software and a few bells and whistles adding each year. People want Apple to reinvent the phone every summer, it's madness.
As for lacking 'panache', so do the launches from almost all tech products. Apple stood out in the past by having that panache. Without Steve Jobs, perhaps that's gone now but that doesn't make Apple's launch any worse than their competition's.
The only mistake Apple perhaps made here was unveiling iCloud in the summer. People aren't factoring that in to the new release. It's going to be hugely convenient for iOS users but because they heard about it months ago it isn't adding gloss to this release, as it may have otherwise done.
In the end, who cares? Most of us can see through the hype and see what a superb phone the iPhone is. I don't need it put on a turntable with a leggy blonde draped over it to make me buy it.
Will iPhone 4 users want to upgrade? Most of them won't, no. But Apple knew that because every iPhone 4 user is half way through a 2 year contract! The people upgrading to this will be 3GS users, who'll freak out when they see how fast this thing is compared to what they're used to. It may not be Optimus Prime, but it's a sensible update and sensible people can see that.
How refreshing. A critical thinker who understands Apple's two-year upgrade strategy. There are so few who gets this. The iPhone 4S was never meant for owners of the iPhone 4. Its target market is 3GS owners and those who don't own an iPhone yet.
Back to the original point that the presentation lacked "panache". If so, I suspect it's because Tim knew.
Steve's biographer supposedly knew a few weeks ago, so I'm sure Tim knew and that the weight was hanging over everyone. Steve would have wanted the show to go on, but it must have been heavy.
Yah, the iPhone 4S looks to be a great device and a good run up for the iPhone 5 which I expect early next summer rather than fall. We'll see how they do in the next product release.
@solipsism I'm starting to wondering if the product launch was moved up from later in the month to make sure Steve was still around for it. That much rehashing of iOS 5 seemed odd and the lack of one more thing seemed too much like a missed opportunity for the first at bat for a new CEO with something to prove. And no iPod touch refresh at all?
Maybe not, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if Apple has another one of these small get togethers before Halloween.
When the iP4S was being shown, Steve Jobs was probably on his death bed. That is sure to affect the tone and mood.
Definitely. Now I realise why when I was reading the liveblog everything felt so "sucky".
Now I understand the strategy of the iPhone 4S, Steve somehow planned for them to transition smoothly in his absence/ extreme illness/ death.
Rather than go for broke with iPad3 Retina, iPhone5 and iPod refreshes, he just got them to stay the course in delivering on their iOS5, improve the iPhone4S in light of LTE and other technologies coming up, making it world phone at least for US dominance, and now with his passing they are almost, more certain in what they can do and can forge ahead. Next year and maybe the year after that we'll see what Steve was really planning in his final months. Jon Ives probably, maybe even more than Tim Cook, would have been privy to Steve's most brilliant ideas yet to even take physical form as prototypes.
Steve even in his death proved everyone wrong yet again. "It just worked". Taking a medical leave of absence, putting all the "succession" stuff in place, handing off increasing portions of the keynote to others in the past few years, and knowing absolutely the point of his own point of no return when he officially stepped down as CEO. Staying on long enough for Tim's first keynote to succeed. Even in dying, he was a perfectionist, one could almost say.
As per his beliefs, I believe his consciousness is now disseminated and may be reincarnated in different forms in different times of history in our universe or parallel universes. He is now in every Mac, every iPhone, every iPad, everything tech.
I postulate that maybe as a human being gains increasing spread of their consciousness they may no longer need to inhabit one, limited physical form.
But for now, may the Divine bless you Steve, and you will certainly be missed. We need someone like you for our next big challenges: finance, energy, environment, space, medicine. Not necessarily in that order or exclusively in each field.
Comments
Terrible news breaking right now.
Steve has passed away.
How sad.
Off topic:
Terrible news breaking right now.
Steve has passed away.
How sad.
The entire tech world recognizes him as an irreplaceable legend. A sad day indeed.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/...s-passes-away/
Upwards and onwards...
I brought it up because you had written that Wall Street's view of Apple's announcement had now turned quite positive.
No, I didn't. Your own quote shows that it wasn't me.
Unlike you, I don't base company evaluations on short term swings.
I noted that was probably being premature and not a "quite positive" reaction since Apple was still under-performing the overall NASDAQ the following day. I also wrote that I believe investors would come around to a more positive outlook sooner rather than later.
Originally Posted by island hermit
The reaction on Wall Street is now quite positive... One. Day. After. the unveiling.
I brought it up because you had written that Wall Street's view of Apple's announcement had now turned quite positive. I noted that was probably being premature and not a "quite positive" reaction since Apple was still under-performing the overall NASDAQ the following day. I also wrote that I believe investors would come around to a more positive outlook sooner rather than later.
Originally Posted by island hermit
The reaction on Wall Street is now quite positive... One. Day. After. the unveiling.
Hey, Gatorguy... that was me, as you can see.
Everything is relative.
The sentiment did turn quite positive... relative to the doom and gloom observed throughout the media.
Down .8% from the Naz... certainly positive in my mind considering it's Apple we're talking about and the amount of negative press the 4S received immediately after the unveiling. Anything up looked positive... which it is under the circumstances.
I guess some of these guys haven't traded stocks and been involved heavily into a sector when the bottom falls out (ie. uranium in March... now that's negative).
It's all relative.
Whatever... not important right now... or ever for that matter.
The A5 and SGX543MP2 is the most powerful CPU and GPU in the history of cell phones. Even more powerful than the Galaxy S 2's dual core exynos chip and Mali400 which held the title of most power chip in a phone till yesterday.
So the iP4S may lack presentation, but it will deliver massive gains over the the iP4
Hey, Gatorguy... that was me, as you can see.
Everything is relative.
The sentiment did turn quite positive... relative to the doom and gloom observed throughout the media.
Down .8% from the Naz... certainly positive in my mind considering it's Apple we're talking about and the amount of negative press the 4S received immediately after the unveiling. Anything up looked positive... which it is under the circumstances.
I guess some of these guys haven't traded stocks and been involved heavily into a sector when the bottom falls out (ie. uranium in March... now that's negative).
It's all relative.
Whatever... not important right now... or ever for that matter.
Sorry for the confusion over who's who guys. In any case it was simply an observation.
Sorry, I think you might have typed that wrong.
Are you saying that if there was a significant difference (ie. 3% difference even if AAPL was positive) or are you saying that it doesn't matter if it's even less than 1%?
[I'm basing this on a historical perspective of AAPL, which, to me, is open the most under rewarded stocks in the market.... so it tends to play a little differently anyway]
[on edit: This all started because I said that investors were showing a positive sentiment for AAPL by bringing it into positive territory... at that time there was ~ - .4% difference.]
I was making a point about whether some observed change is significant or not. The argument holds true on the upside or the downside. There may be days in which a move of <1% (relative to the market) may be significant, and other days when a move of, say, >2% may be insignificant. It depends on how other stocks in the market have moved.
In other words, one cannot make any statement about whether the stock was 'up' or 'down' reflecting 'good news' or 'bad news,' respectively, by looking at absolute changes. We need to look at (i) relative changes, and (ii) conditioned on the volatility in the rest of the market.
I was making a point about whether some observed change is significant or not. The argument holds true on the upside or the downside. There may be days in which a move of <1% (relative to the market) may be significant, and other days when a move of, say, >2% may be insignificant. It depends on how other stocks in the market have moved.
In other words, one cannot make any statement about whether the stock was 'up' or 'down' reflecting 'good news' or 'bad news,' respectively, by looking at absolute changes. We need to look at (i) relative changes, and (ii) conditioned on the volatility in the rest of the market.
Oh, I get all of that. I was trying to put in perspective what and who we are dealing with in this case.
This is Apple... a lot of times AAPL will lag a bit and in this case I was also trying to put it in perspective with the given event. There seemed to be a lot of negative press the day before about the 4S... it's as if a star basketball player who normally scores 26 points in a game has hurt his leg one day... news sounds quite negative about his chances of playing the next day... the point spread widens... the next day out comes the player and he scores 23 points. Now... considering that some people didn't expect him to play would you say that he did well (ie. positive) or would you say he played negatively because he was 3 points off his average. Half empty or half full. I went with positive. ... and, AAPL was following the trend with every other stock... they went up, AAPL went up during that time... unlike, for instance, GOOG which actually went down at a point when others were going up. AAPL was following the trend.
Anyway, I was just trying to consider everything involved, including the atmosphere that surrounded Apple yesterday... and, in my mind, I expected Apple to fare worse considering the bitching heard in the media the day before, so a gain that got Apple with .8% of average seemed quite positive to me. [ie. GOOG received a downgrade yesterday and it was off almost 2%... now if AAPL had been off that much then I would have conceded that it was negative]
[plus... now we know there may have been other reasons for everyone's seemingly lack lustre performance]
* perfect example, Thursday 6th... this is an example of negative... not because AAPL is down but because AAPL is bucking the trend... as other stocks went up, AAPL went down... the two previous days we saw AAPL following the trend... just not up as much as the other stocks on Tues and Wed.
I'll match the number of times that I've apologized to someone for being wrong with anyone on this board.
Well that wouldn't be hard given you're wrong more often than anyone else...
Joking.
There's only a couple posters on this forum that will take denial to extremes and it's pretty funny to watch them try.
Well that wouldn't be hard given you're wrong more often than anyone else...
Joking.
There's only a couple posters on this forum that will take denial to extremes and it's pretty funny to watch them try.
I wonder how many people in these forums would actually know if a person was right or wrong.
Spot on.
It's even worse than you suggest. In the UK, they haven't even started the bidding for the rights to the LTE bandwidths! It'll be years before we have an LTE network, but people still moan they don't have the antenna. 'Morons' in the right word.
This is a world phone now, and the hard reality is that LTE is not coming this year, or even next year, or even the year after that in many of Apple's core markets. It's a complete white elephant at the moment.
This isn't an earth-shattering update, but those days are gone. The iPhone 4 made the phone feature complete. From now on it'll be about more speed, better software and a few bells and whistles adding each year. People want Apple to reinvent the phone every summer, it's madness.
As for lacking 'panache', so do the launches from almost all tech products. Apple stood out in the past by having that panache. Without Steve Jobs, perhaps that's gone now but that doesn't make Apple's launch any worse than their competition's.
The only mistake Apple perhaps made here was unveiling iCloud in the summer. People aren't factoring that in to the new release. It's going to be hugely convenient for iOS users but because they heard about it months ago it isn't adding gloss to this release, as it may have otherwise done.
In the end, who cares? Most of us can see through the hype and see what a superb phone the iPhone is. I don't need it put on a turntable with a leggy blonde draped over it to make me buy it.
Will iPhone 4 users want to upgrade? Most of them won't, no. But Apple knew that because every iPhone 4 user is half way through a 2 year contract! The people upgrading to this will be 3GS users, who'll freak out when they see how fast this thing is compared to what they're used to. It may not be Optimus Prime, but it's a sensible update and sensible people can see that.
How refreshing. A critical thinker who understands Apple's two-year upgrade strategy. There are so few who gets this. The iPhone 4S was never meant for owners of the iPhone 4. Its target market is 3GS owners and those who don't own an iPhone yet.
Back to the original point that the presentation lacked "panache". If so, I suspect it's because Tim knew.
Steve's biographer supposedly knew a few weeks ago, so I'm sure Tim knew and that the weight was hanging over everyone. Steve would have wanted the show to go on, but it must have been heavy.
I expect the next event will be more lively since it will be long after people are done mourning.
@solipsism I'm starting to wondering if the product launch was moved up from later in the month to make sure Steve was still around for it. That much rehashing of iOS 5 seemed odd and the lack of one more thing seemed too much like a missed opportunity for the first at bat for a new CEO with something to prove. And no iPod touch refresh at all?
Maybe not, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if Apple has another one of these small get togethers before Halloween.
When the iP4S was being shown, Steve Jobs was probably on his death bed. That is sure to affect the tone and mood.
Definitely. Now I realise why when I was reading the liveblog everything felt so "sucky".
Now I understand the strategy of the iPhone 4S, Steve somehow planned for them to transition smoothly in his absence/ extreme illness/ death.
Rather than go for broke with iPad3 Retina, iPhone5 and iPod refreshes, he just got them to stay the course in delivering on their iOS5, improve the iPhone4S in light of LTE and other technologies coming up, making it world phone at least for US dominance, and now with his passing they are almost, more certain in what they can do and can forge ahead. Next year and maybe the year after that we'll see what Steve was really planning in his final months. Jon Ives probably, maybe even more than Tim Cook, would have been privy to Steve's most brilliant ideas yet to even take physical form as prototypes.
Steve even in his death proved everyone wrong yet again. "It just worked". Taking a medical leave of absence, putting all the "succession" stuff in place, handing off increasing portions of the keynote to others in the past few years, and knowing absolutely the point of his own point of no return when he officially stepped down as CEO. Staying on long enough for Tim's first keynote to succeed. Even in dying, he was a perfectionist, one could almost say.
As per his beliefs, I believe his consciousness is now disseminated and may be reincarnated in different forms in different times of history in our universe or parallel universes. He is now in every Mac, every iPhone, every iPad, everything tech.
I postulate that maybe as a human being gains increasing spread of their consciousness they may no longer need to inhabit one, limited physical form.
But for now, may the Divine bless you Steve, and you will certainly be missed. We need someone like you for our next big challenges: finance, energy, environment, space, medicine. Not necessarily in that order or exclusively in each field.