REB's Profile

Finally, the reality of Macworld begins to circulate! Is it any wonder that Apple's stock goes down at Macworld every year. The stock analysist will have a field day with "disappointment" columns and the resulting effect on the stock. I wonder how many "shorts" will take advantage. Meanwhile, we can all hope that our favorite holliday wishes for our "one more thing" will come true.

Another bonus is that by the time Vista is released you will be able to run it on your new Mac! As a "budget" purchaser you could wait for the Mini to go Intel; but I would recommend the iMac. Put additional memory in it yourself through the easy-open door on it's bottom. You can't do any other upgrades unfortunately; but it should do the job for many years.

As to the "computer company" future I wonder if you have considered an partner, such as HP, who could produce clones under license for the enterprise market. This would enable Apple to gain market share while limiting their hardware competition. HP's sales and products are focussed on this market with failings in quality and support for consumers. It would bolster their support services options by enabling cross platform sales. With Intel's dual OS support the enterprise market would be easier to crack with support for legacy code enabled while enabling the Mac OS for new software and security. Apple's programming tools could be utilized for faster coding of new applications. Getting a partner for the service support and hardware could enable corporate purchasing to be based on more predictable hardware production cycles. There could be some conflict in Apple's penchant for secrecy with the demands of this sector; but Apple's models could be focused on consumer needs and have feature sets different from the more generic HP models. Apple could continue to focus some efforts in the server market to compliment their science and media distribution efforts. I do believe that they have the video media market firmly in their sights with aggressive support for the open standards and mpeg 4's flexible distribution model. As momentum builds overseas with growing commitment to those open standards Apple is in a more competitive position in their domestic market. The iPod success, along with Job's Pixar ownership, gives him much higher credibility with content owners while Microsoft's support and manpower keeps them in the competition. We should see the beginnings of Apple's media center product line next year. I'm hoping that wireless distribution of HD video will be achieved, and we could see some good integration of economical hardware implementation with focused products and a central point of distribution. With multi-core, 4 say, chips in the near future and Apple testing some of Intel's future designs, I can see their association paying off with Apple solutions. I don't expect the major push to start until 2007, as Wi-Max begins to establish a foothold in competition with normal cell phones and wi-fi distribution. Apple could wait until new partners could enable them to avoid the market control of the current cell phone service providers. I don't see Apple re-entering the consumer camera market. Their future technology, similar to Firewire, could enable them to establish compatibility without the need to distribute branded products of their own. They could make the TV market into something new with an enabled media hub, display screens, and wireless speakers. I would expect them to partner for the speakers and screens as they do now. Hi-Fi sound could add new partners to this mix as high-end media hubs could compete with the present multimedia receivers. The media markets depend on the defeat of Microsoft's multimedia file format. With Quicktime's flexible architecture and multi-layered capabilities I can see Apple winning this war within the next five years.

Apple is setting up a research group in the same building as Intel's at Carnegie Mellon University. It's the alma matter of Avie Tevanian, Apple's head of software development and one of the designers of the Mach kernel for his PHD. Might this development give some added wieght to your thought?