Apple may not have yet succumbed to the economic malaise that hangs heavy over consumer tech, but it will soon. According to Goldman Sachs, anyway. This morning Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey downgraded Apple’s stock to neutral from a buy, claiming the company will suffer when consumers continue to rein in spending next year. Worse, it won’t uncrate a magical new product category at Macworld.
So that “mother of all earnings blowouts” Apple bulls are expecting? It may turn out to be a different sort of mother entirely. In a research note issued this morning, Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes “adjusted” his estimates for Apple to account for handset and other “realities.” But in doing so, he noted that the company could see quite a bit of upside by releasing a Mac netbook.
A third of all consumers (33 percent) who said that they were planning on buying a laptop in the next three months intend to buy one of Apple’s MacBooks, and nearly a third of those in the market for a desktops (27 percent) plan to purchase one of its Mac Pros, according to new data from ChangeWave. This, despite an ugly dip in spending that threatens to turn the upcoming holidays into lean ones for all.
Beyond the wet-your-pants whipsawing of the financial markets, the week ending Oct. 17, 2008, was one in which Apple figured prominently. On Tuesday, the company unveiled revisions to its MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air portables–as well as its new LED Cinema Display. It also issued a Steve Jobs health update: The Apple CEO’s blood pressure is 110/70.
Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2.”
– Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s 14-word email reply to customers annoyed by the removal of the FireWire port from the new 13-inch MacBook
Beyond the technology on display at Tuesday’s Apple event, what was perhaps most interesting was the accuracy with which it had been predicted. Astonishing really, given Apple’s near-monomaniacal secrecy. With the exception of that bogus $800 MacBook story, nearly every single rumor voiced in the weeks preceding Tuesday’s event was proven true.
If there was any comic relief during Tuesday’s Apple event, it was provided by Microsoft, which played Curly to CEO Steve Jobs’s Moe and COO Tim Cook’s Larry. Discussing the dramatic increase in the Mac’s market share in the past year, Cook said it was driven partially by “something we didn’t do: Vista.”
At first glance, the growth of the global personal computer market during the third quarter would seem to belie any notion of a vast economic downturn. Despite the financial crisis gripping Wall Street, PC shipments increased 15 percent from the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner.
In a short video, senior designer Jon Ives and other members of Apple’s industrial design team explain the new unibody enclosure. Machining enables a level of precision unheard of in the industry, says Ives. In many ways, these notebooks are more beautiful on the inside than they are on the outside.
There’s lots of emphasis at this unveiling on environmental concerns, reducing the footprint for manufacturing the new notebooks.
The MacBook Air is also getting an update. The new model will have a faster graphics chip, a new mini-display port, a faster Intel Core Duo chip, and bigger drive.
The media will gather tomorrow at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters for an invitation-only event–presumably about updates to its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. And, as with every Apple product launch, tomorrow’s has been preceded by feverish speculation about what form, exactly, those updates will take. Among the rumors currently making the rounds …
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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