As an investor since 8/97 I ask, when was it better?
There's a difference between being happy in Apple investor land, and being happy in Mac user land. The two have some degree of correlation, although Wall Street usually lags the Mac community of users in recognizing problems.
As an Apple user since 1980 (Apple II), and Mac user since 1984 (through 9 different personal machines), I would have to say that there are more rumblings of discontent in Mac user land today than there were a year ago. The underwhelming performance and compatibility problems of Mac OS 9 (compared to OS 8.6), the user interface issues (Quicktime 4/Sherlock II/Final Cut Pro), the ROM-block and G4 downgrade issue, Java indecision and general uncertainty about suitability of Mac OS X for this new-found consumer environment are all concerns for me as a Mac user, and ultimately for me as an Apple investor.
A year ago, things were a lot better. 8.5 was out and was great, the iMac was going gang-busters and showed Apple flair at its best, Java had just been upgraded to a JIT environment with speed comparable to the Wintel side, Mac OS X Server was on the near horizon and we thought Mac OS X Client would only be 6-9 months behind.
In terms of user happiness, I would say on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being Apple going out of business, and 10 being euphoric users), it's probably around 7. A year ago, I would have said 9.
In my opinion March 1987 (Mac II release), October 1990 (Mac Classic/LC/IIsi) and April 94 (PowerMac) were the past occasions when Apple user land was happier than they are today. On both occasions it looked as though Apple might have a chance to really topple Microsoft/Intel with faster, very cool machines. Now it just looks like Apple may be able to make a solid beachhead in the consumer market and that makes users happy. If you look at a graph of historical performance, you'll see the stock price reached local peaks around 6 months to a year after these events.
Obviously at the moment, all is well in Apple investor land. How could it not be with AAPL at an all-time high? But you have to ask yourself whether some of the missteps that Apple has made recently will eventually reflect themselves in the stock price. |
