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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (29241)	10/10/2000 7:50:42 AM
From: Adam Nash	Respond to of 213176

Allen, Well, if we are being apples to apples (sorry, had to say it), we should remember that "reasonable quantities" of the 1Ghz P3 are an order of magnitude more than the amount of G4s Apple needs, perhaps close to two orders. For Apple, a few hundred thousand are sufficient for the year, while for Intel, a few hundred thousand is just a sampling. The P4 is not a current product, true. But it will surely debut before Apple bumps the G4 clock speed. We know this from Motorola chip announcements and roadmaps. P4 slower @ same clock than P3 by 20%? I'll believe it when I see it, but even if true, I'm not sure it matters if it lets them boost the clock by 100% (to 2Ghz) and still get good volume numbers. I have a 450Mhz G4. Clearly a fast machine. My PC is only a 366Mhz PII laptop, so it is definitely slower than my desktop. But compared to my girlfriend's 300Mhz iBook, it is pretty close running Windows 2000. Much slower on some things (Quicktime), but faster on others (Office, WWW).

To: Cogito who wrote (29241)	10/10/2000 12:20:36 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213176

First, the P4 1.5 GHz chip isn't shipping, and won't for months. Let's compare current products to other current products. Also, there have been some reports that the P4 actually benchmarks 20 to 25% SLOWER than the PIII. Admittedly, these reports have not been verified by credible sources. I'm totally amazed by comparisons like this. It happens on all Mac centric sites. I repeat. Forget about comparisons to PIIIs. 1) AMD Athlons have signifigantly better FPU than PIIIs, and in most tests I've seen their FPU performance is equal or better than G4s. 2) AMD is has no problem with high yield chips. They are shipping 1.1Ghz chips and will be shipping 1.2Ghz chips in time for the Xmas season. 3) Intel and Apple have problems in Europe but AMD doesn't. Their marketshare and total sales are soaring in Europe because of the price/performance ratio. 4) Athlons beat PIIIs at every benchmark I've seen. 5) Dell is the last of the major computer makers that is exclusively Intel based. Bad move. There are rumors, probably true they will be selling Athlon chip systems soon. 6) Comparing a Dual Processor Mac at $2600 to a crappy single processor Intel machine at $1500 is comparing a $2600 machine to a crappy $1500 machine. Forget all those tests. I've got a 600Mhz Athlon and a 350Mhz G4. I use the G4 for video editing. I use the Athlon for everything else, its faster. I'll be upgrading to a 1Ghz Atlon by Xmas. I think I'll be able to do it for about $250. At that point most of the AltaVec advantage of the G4 will be nill despite all the facts and figures. Apple does have a very serious problem with processors. I'd be invested otherwise because I think OSX is a very potent weapon. I believe that although Apple makes most of its money on hardware it won't last if Moto doesn't get the clock speed up soon. If and when Apples hardware sales crash then it will have to port OSX to x86 based chips. Actually I'm closer to investing in Apple now than I've ever been. I think that if the market warms then Apple will follow. I think the price was depressed too much due to the earnings announcement. I think the earning announcement is due to people holding off on upgrading their computers because the 'upgrades' were of dubious value compared to what people think is coming. So there is a lot of pentup demand. I've held back from investing because I think the processor thing is a long term problem. Moto just isn't putting the resources we'd like to see into the problem because Moto has been selling all it can produce of other types of products. Moto would have to cut down on more profitable products in order to keep up with AMD in the general purpose processor race. Moto will not do that. I defy anyone to tell me why Moto would shift resources from a more profitable area into the less profitable area the G4 represents. They are going to put their best team on the problem that is most profitable. However I think that there is a good chance that we will see faster processor yields at reasonable levels some time. The question is when. They may surprise us and announce it soon. If so the pentup demand will boost Apples sales and it will soar (especially when OSX comes out). Probably get back to where it was pre-announcement or better. If not until spring then Apple will probably coast at a depressed price until then. If not until summer Apple will be in serious trouble, at that point I think they will have to port OSX. That will mean a complete shift in business model from a hardware company that sells software into a software company. They know that that's what they have to do sooner or later but they'd like to see it as a gradual process. My prediction: spring. For all you guys I hope Apple announces a better quarter than the warning seemed to indicate. I think that's very possible. You'll get a nice bounce if that happens. Otherwise for myself I'm content to see Apple continue to sink a little or even stay even. Then if I anticipate good news I'll buy some after the new year.