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Apple Mac posts

Eighteen Years Later, AutoCAD Comes Back to the Mac

Posted Aug 31st 2010 1:00PM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL)

Apple's (AAPL) Mac has often been considered a niche product -- at least compared to the massive PC market. Yet, this is starting to change. A key has been the success of the iPhone and the iPad. So why not get a Mac as well?

Well, this is certainly starting to play out, as seen with each quarterly report from Apple (the latest one saw 3.5 million Mac sales). And as a result, major application developers are getting interested in the platform. Just look at Autodesk (ADSK). The company has announced that it will launch its flagship architecture design product, AutoCAD, on the Mac for the first time in nearly two decades. Of course, there will be versions for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that will integrate with the Mac version.

Continue reading Eighteen Years Later, AutoCAD Comes Back to the Mac

Apple's Moment: Market Cap Leaps Past Microsoft's for First Time

Posted May 28th 2010 4:20PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL)

Appple (AAPL) has never been worth more than rival Microsoft (MSFT). Although the brand equity in Apple is at an all-time high and it can't make its newer products fast enough, Microsoft's continuing bankroll every quarter from software licensing has trumped just about every other computer company (hardware and software) for years. Microsoft's consumer electronics products (except for maybe the Xbox 360) have never had the cache or consumer love factor as Apple's products. And, it finally happened: Apple's market cap bypassed Microsoft's this week.

Continue reading Apple's Moment: Market Cap Leaps Past Microsoft's for First Time

Is Apple Trying to Be More Like Google?

Posted May 4th 2010 4:40PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG), Apple Inc (AAPL)

With Apple, Inc. (AAPL) continuing to set the consumer electronics world on fire, it's a problem every company would love to have. Apple, at the top of its game from just about every angle, is timing its product launches in almost every category to capture the hearts and minds of consumers all over the globe. Its stock price and quarterly revenue prospects reach new heights on a monthly basis it seems. Thus, it is hard to believe that, in half a decade, one of Apple's core businesses may no longer exist as it does today.

Continue reading Is Apple Trying to Be More Like Google?

Apple to roll out new lower-priced Macs?

Posted May 4th 2009 9:30AM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL)

Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) may be looking at lowering pricing on some of its most popular Mac PCs after the first year-over-year decline in Mac shipments (3% drop) in the last six years. It's no surprise: the U.S. and much of the world are in a recession and cash conservation is king. Macs are among the most expensive PCs there are in many ways (regardless of style, design and software), and customers are backing off a bit.

Continue reading Apple to roll out new lower-priced Macs?

Apple's PC sales slip in fourth quarter of 2008; Acer gains

Posted Jan 20th 2009 6:30PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Products and Services, Apple Inc (AAPL)

Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), while still having outpaced all PC makers in growth during the dismal last quarter of 2008, realized that it's not above every other competitor on the PC planet. Consumers seem to have been gaga over Apple's laptops in the last few quarters, but even that fervor is being tempered by trying economic times.

The Q4 period of 2008 saw Apple sell 1.25 million PCs, a 23% drop from the prior quarter (but an 8% increase year-over-year). At the same time, the design-conscious consumer electronics company saw its share of the U.S. PC market slip to 8% in the Q4 period from Q3's 9.5%. This was to be expected due to Apple's bump in each year's Q3 back-to-school buying period.

Taiwan's Acer, however, bumped Apple from third place to fourth in the U.S. PC market, taking 15.2% of all sales, indicating a 55% lift over the year-ago period. The Gateway and the Acer brands both are contributing to those sales, along with bargain-basement pricing that's apparently more important to Acer.

That is, market share over revenue share and Acer's huge hand in the red-hot netbook category. Apple will hold on better than the competition in 2009, but folks dropping hundreds of dollars for iPods, iPhones and thousands for MacBooks may slow down faster than the industry believes.

Apple Mac sales start to slow in 2009: Company faces reality finally

Posted Dec 18th 2008 1:35PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Products and Services, Apple Inc (AAPL), Recession

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has been on a run lately -- it's selling Mac computers an an ever-increasing pace, the iPhone is successfully being transitioned as the successor to the iPod universe (even with those two-year contracts!. The company can't seem to do any wrong. It literally is selling all it can, even in a recession. How can Apple do this? Its prices are not cheap and the company shies away from discounts. Well, Apple also has a marketing gold touch that's unmatched anywhere in any industry, and that's the competitive advantage.

But the gold path can last forever, right? Will the tightness of consumers' wallets and purses ever put a damper on Apple's business? That's the thinking for 2009 -- the economy will catch up to Apple's sales and the company will experience at least a little bit of the slowdown that is catching retailers like a noose around the neck. Mac sales even declined in November by 1% over the same period in 2007 at the same time overall PC sales increased 2%. The problem was desktop Mac sales, which bombed 35%. Apple's laptop sales were still on fire, though.

Will Apple see a more pronounced slowdown after the holiday sales season is over? That's anyone's guess, but it seems logical. Until the economic rut is lifted, it's hard to imagine that financially fickle consumers will be shelling out $1,000+ for a new Apple laptop PC at the drop of a hat during the first half of 2009. Plenty will, but also plenty won't. Those that won't will opt for cheaper PCs, which sell for half the cost of an Apple laptop in may cases -- and price sensitivity will be the order of the day for 2009 consumerism. Apple best be prepared for reality.

Apple (AAPL) nears 10% marketshare in PC sales

Posted Oct 21st 2008 3:50PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Products and Services, Competitive Strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL)

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stepped up its market share in Q3, lifting its personal computer sales to nearly 10% of all PCs sold, according to research firm Gartner, Inc. For Apple, this is great news -- it's steadily taking sales from larger competitors Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) and global PC sales leader Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ). Its laptop PCs continue to sell like hotcakes, even with prices that are much higher than the discount prices you would normally see on Windows-based laptop PCs.

Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last week that the company won't be getting into the "netbook" business (tiny notebook PCs with limited features), a Gartner research analyst said the company could be in trouble for not having a product to address this market. I think Apple is right here, though; just because there is a market doesn't mean Apple needs to play in it. The laptop PC industry continues to try and find the next big niche so that product segments like fully-functional laptop PCs won't see decelerating growth. When there is a lack of demand, create it; that must be the PC industry's rallying call.

With Apple releasing quarterly earnings in just over an hour from now, my prediction is that the current quarter's results will reflect a company that is timing its product releases, refreshes and entire product line transitions with great precision. It has shown that it can grow market share without being involved in trends that others create. Rather, it creates its own trends and gives birth to new industries as a result.

iPod, iPhone raising Apple's share of PC market

Posted Dec 14th 2007 4:50PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Good news, Products and Services, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL), Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), International Business Machines (IBM), Technology

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has had tremendous success in the digital music player and now cellphone markets. Starting with the iPod and (not) ending with the iPhone, the company has been a force -- if not the force -- in consumer electronics this year. But, was it all to get more customers buying Apple's computer products? That argument -- known as a the halo effect -- has been drawn up in countless articles and blog posts. Surprise, surprise -- it is most likely working.

The market share Apple's Macintosh computer products have been seeing has taken the Cupertino, Calif., company from a single-digit slice of the PC market to a force to be reckoned with in 2007. In a November report from research firm ChangeWave Research, the data indicates that more potential buyers than ever plan to buy a Mac in the near future. Is Steve Jobs dancing in his office? Probably not -- this has been part of his plan for more than just a few years. After all, capture them with marketing and surround them with your other products behind the competitor's back, huh Steve?

Continue reading iPod, iPhone raising Apple's share of PC market

Microsoft disses Apple: No Windows Vista virtualization on the Mac

Posted Jun 22nd 2007 3:00PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL)

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) does not want Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Mac owners to run the Windows Vista operating system on those machines, reversing a decision made just this week. In the "virtualization" world, Microsoft's current Windows XP computer operating system can be run inside of a "virtual software" environment on current Apple MacIntosh computers so that Apple fans can use those stylish Apple systems with Apple software but can still access the Windows environment for certain things (like work email or running Windows-only applications).

That arrangement works pretty well for the Windows XP operating system on current (or even older) Mac computers, but Microsoft has now said that it will only allow the bare-bones Windows Vista "Basic" operating system to be used in this virtual Apple Mac environment. Vista versions such as the "Premium" or "Ultimate" won't be allowed to be used with "virtualization" software at all on Apple systems.

However, with Apple systems now using Intel CPUs, installing Windows Vista alongside the Apple Mac operating system without this kind of "emulation" is no problem. Basically, Microsoft does not want customers using the nicer versions of Windows Vista on older Apple Mac machines made before Steve Jobs decided to use Intel chips in all Apple Mac systems.

Will this hurt the adoption of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system growth? Probably not, but this move signals that Microsoft would like most Windows Vista customers to use non-Apple machines, like the commodity PCs from vendors like Dell, HP and Acer. Surprised? I'm not.

[Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 6-22-07]

Is Google the next operating system?

Posted Jul 18th 2006 9:40AM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Good news, Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Internet, Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG)

One of Google's missions is to bring the world's information to everyone possible using any method possible. With that said, it's good to see that much of what Google produces in terms of product can be accessed by customers using either the Windows operating system or the Apple Mac operating system. Is this a coincidence? Hardly.

Most of what Google produces is platform-agnostic, and that's by design, of course. The platform used by Google is the web browser -- the operating system is an afterthought in a manner of speaking. Yes, there are Google applications like Google Earth and Google Picasa that are actually installed programs -- not web-based ones.

But still, most of the great stuff Google produces just needs a standards-compliant web browser (that's an oxymoron). If you use Windows XP, MacOS X, Linux, Unix, FreeBSD, you name it -- most of the Google universe is available to you with an Internet connection and a web browser.

The point made in the source article is that soon, many questions about "software" won't be mentioned as in "for Windows or Mac." Soon, it may take on the phrasing of "Windows, Mac or Google." That's an odd thought, but true. Just like the Internet itself, Google has designed and is designing everything to be universally open and accessible from almost every possible angle.

As a GOOG investor, this is a key thing to keep in mind -- the barriers to entry are almost non-existent and the product release schedule is not dictated by any third party. Google may just be the next operating "system".