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

To: soup who wrote (13571)	5/13/1998 5:57:00 PM
From: soup	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213182

Bizarro World. So where are we? AAPL has the best hardware -- technologically, esthetically and quality-wise of any PC box manufacturer. For the performance, useful lifespan and maintenance costs (or lack thereof), it is also the cheapest. Appropriately, AAPL also commands the highest margins for its CPUs and has the highest customer repurchase rate. Yet for all that, AAPL's valuation vis-a-vis other computer box-makers is dead last. On the software side, AAPL is poised to provide the lowliest end user with an NT/UNIX class OS with the ease-of-use of a ... Mac. On the high end, Rhadsody/Yellow Box are similarly poised to provide a best of class server/developers platform. Quicktime ... Filemaker ... ? Yet have analysts attributed any value to the software side of the business? Can you spell u-p-s-i-d-e? soup PS. Anybody on this thread want to take a whack at the revenue stream from announced OS releases and Quicktime licensing?

To: soup who wrote (13571)	5/13/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 213182

Soup, That does indeed sum up a good part of Apples historical appeal. Now perhaps the new low cost Apple will redress the price problem? When Pogue spoke of the different drivers for this and that, for hardware made by Jack and Jill he made a good call on the major remaining problem on the Wintel front. As they say 'plug and pray', but PnP gets better with every iteration from win95 A to B to C, and now the Win98A due out soon. A better way would have been to put a tight spec on the accessory, like Apple did, so makers were forced to make it work Apples way or not at all. I have often wondered why this was done? Perhaps Apples way is inherently slower in some manner, thus explaining in part why their machines were traditionally slower than Wintels of the same CPU speed. Now it is said that a 233Mhz g3 is as fast as a 400 Mhz P-II? thus the snail ads and other crushing exemplars. Will it translate into expansionary sales outside of the traditional niches.? Only if Apple is perceived as cost effective compared to Wintels. This will be doable against the IBMs, Compaqs, NECs and a a lot harder against the Gateways and Dells who are selling at about 20% above raw costs. The screwdriver shops at around 8-10% above raw costs are harder to beat. Big Corporations do not buy from screwdriver shops, so Apple will make gains there, slowly though, as the Wintels are entrenched in depth in most corporate structures. Schools, paradoxically have huge screwdriver shop sales, due mainly yo the public tender process that schools must use, and Apple will have to work hard there as well. The traditional graphics niches?, how does Apple get cheaper in Corporations and schools and yet keep a stiff margin in those niches which they hold strongly.? Make differentiated machines? The new $1200+ school machine for August?, do not make it in powerful graphics formats to avoid cannibalization. It would not do margins any good to have all the graphics houses buy the $1200 machines, and then add memory and big drives etc. I suspect the new school box will be fairly closed, expansion wise. Will it be possible to buy one of those school boxes in August and rebox it to make an expandable G3 machine?, in effect a clone with a $1200 licencefee? I recall this being done in the 1980s in Ottawa. A company there bought Macs and took off the ROMs and used the board as a gas pump controller, with their own firmware, They werescrapping the box, floppies etc. Some one found out about this and started buying the roms, diskettes and manuals and began making legal apple clones. They did not call them Apples, just compatibles and they were OK for about 18 months and sold about 13,000 units. Apple was miffed, but powerless as the company made their own boards and used legal Apple ROMs and OS. Apple finally started to sell the company motherboards directly, only with no ROMs and no OS, and that finished the clones from Ottawa. The Ottawa company went into WIntels around that time. Phyber something was the name. It would be interesting to see if that could happen again. Bill