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

To: Murrey Walker who wrote (22599)	1/16/1999 5:04:00 PM
From: MeDroogies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

I don't think the cloning issue is a major one anymore. For one thing, most Apple machines run Windows emulation pretty nicely. For another, the internet doesn't care what OS you use. As such, the iMac is a wonderful choice. And they'll get cheaper, too. AMD isn't coming out with a sub-$500 machine of any substance soon...they need to repair their margins in order to show growth. Chances are, if they can do it, they'll be charging a decent margin just to repair their image. AAPL is likely to do a deal with someone soon. My guess is SGI. They're not doing so well, it'll give AAPL a bigger foothold in an area where they still have problems (enterprise solutions), and it helps them to keep the Wintel monopoly at bay by getting deeper into their realm. SGI is likely to start pumping out cheap high-end machines soon, from what I've heard. All in all, a nice fit.

To: Murrey Walker who wrote (22599)	1/16/1999 6:31:00 PM
From: nommedeguerre	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

Murrey, >>Jeez Norm, I didn't realize the SUNW and SGI were out of business. Let's see, SUNW makes its real money from the server/network side of things and sells workstations as a complementary item. SGI sells higher-end machines and systems to a select group. Both are introducing lower-end machines to meet the reality of staying in business as producers of high-end systems. You forgot to mention IBM, Wang, ATT, Data General, CBM, Atari, TI, DEC, and all those others who didn't adapt to the marketplace at one time or another. >>APPL lost their chance for increasing market share when they shut down the clones. The clones just seem to cut into the installed base of users rather than bring in new ones. Apple's personal share of the market continued to drop, making its economies-of-scale even worse and its ability to survive as a design house even less likely; unless you think that burning a billion dollars a year is a signal of market leadership. >>How many LESS Apple software developers are there today, than a year ago? Two years ago? More now than a year ago that's for sure. Pick up any Mac catalog and what did you see last January? Mostly hardware. Pick up a PC catalog and its got the same hardware but the software section is 3 times as thick. I actually went out and looked through every publication I could find to see what software was available for the Mac and what was available for the PC, before buying my new G3 last January. Everything I personally needed was there but my options were limited to a few companies or even one in some cases. This was good enough for me and with VirtualPC I've had good luck running most Windows95 stuff but there was no comparison in the diversity of software available on the Mac vs. PC. >>As soon as AMD and a box maker hammer out a deal you'll see sub $500.00 machines. What happens to your iMac then? Yeah, every trailer down by the river will be sporting a sub $500 machine full of pirated software. Commodore found out the hard way that people who spend a few hundred dollars on computers, will never buy $50 software titles let alone MS-Office or Adobe Framemaker. How many $500 machines do you plan on buying? What is it about the iMac that offends you so much anyways? Is it the fact that they sold 800,000 MacOS machines to people who would not have purchased a G3 Minitower? Have you even used an iMac? Ok, the mouse sucks but functions, and it doesn't allow the owner to connect a 21" monitor to it. BFD. For nearly all average users, giant monitors are a luxury and the mouse can be replaced with ANY USB mouse. What is the difference to the user between running a piece of software on a iMac vs. Powerbook G3? If I gave it a flat-screen and called it the iBook; power users would pay twice as much for it and rave about its performance! I know you feel betrayed on the professional machines but they can't do any better than a 400MHz G3 until the G4's come out and then you should see a leap of performance. Cheers, Norm >>p.s. I just know that you knew that NeXT was Mr. Jobs' vision thing. Like the LISA? Steve's an alright guy, but shareholders have visions too.