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

To: Alomex who wrote (34077)	7/19/2002 11:44:59 AM
From: HerbVic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

As written, the word "needs" could be interpreted either way. However, "to be in want" is not the foremost definition. "Needs" means "to be needful or necessary," and that is how I was using it in reference to both Apple and Microsoft. It also seems that was the meaning intended by Dan Fleuris. This is all superfluous. I'll agree that Apple needs to win more market share. I simply can't agree that they need to do something impossible. In my humble opinion the "end game," as it has been called here, is being played out in the entire personal computer industry. The excesses of 1999 in anticipation of the [Microsoft's short sightedness induced] Y2K bug has led to a glut of Windows PCs in corporate offices and plant sites. These companies are still trying to justify their past expenditures, and it could be quite some time before growth in demand for these distributed computing network terminals returns. The same phenomena is being played out in slower motion in the household computer market. What the desktop computer market "needs" is compelling, "snappy" new software that utilizes the advanced capabilities of the most recent computer product releases. This is the only way to stimulate a new wave of upgrades across industry and households. Apple, for one, is moving in the right direction with their digital hub strategy. But, and this is just my opinion, digital music and video alone is too narrow a focus to create a new wave of upgrades, even as Microsoft catches up in terms of mirroring compelling and comparable solutions for Wintels. I liken the computer industry to be in some respects similar to the drug industry. New drugs are expensive to discover and market. New [mass market] software is expensive to develop and market. No matter how successful a company becomes from their drug or software developments, sustained growth only comes from continued research and development of newer products. In the computer industry, advances in hardware performance have led to advances in software to utilize that performance since roughly 1978. However, since 1999, hardware performance has lost ground to the software chasing the advancing performance with utilization. Sure, there are many niche programs that run best upon the latest and greatest hardware, but none with the wide appeal necessary to drive a wave of spending on performance upgrades. At the same time, the advancing performance mantra seems to be cresting. Yes, cresting. While the mhz numbers may double, the actual gain in performance relative to those numbers increases by less than a third. ( I'm talking Intel and such here) Without another breakthrough in chip technology, performance is cresting. As the distributed computing performance is underutilized by mass market software in installation after installation, and stagnation of product development continues, this market WILL flounder. Make no mistake about it. In that respect is how we should be viewing the end game. HerbVic