It's ok... let it drop. Buy more cheap shares ($35) and then when they sell 10 million iPods this Holiday, sell at $85.

Oooh I wish! I sold everything before today's crash and am not sure if they will ever have that kind of predictable stability again.

haha.

They might have better luck developing PPC hardware prototypes, and begging to be allowed to include OS X on the new hardware. Even then, I think Apple sees they've got a hot product now, and they're not about share.

Maybe with HP, though, eh? HP PPC with Mac OS X. Has a nice ring to it.

I think Dell PPC sounds much better

that may be a good idea. we hate Dell but millions out there love that shyt

if Apple got themselves into a position where Dell and Apple can make a profit... why not?

because people will buy a Dell with OS X and think "this is a piece of sh*t, i'm going back to windows"

Because that won't ever happen, unless Apple goes a drastic change in management (not just Steve; he is part of the problem, but it goes much deeper than just him).

Apple doesn't sell software. It doesn't even really sell hardware. It sells price points, and is hopelessly addicted to these. In the summer of 1993, my father bought a 6100/60: the third-highest-end of the Macs available at the time. It cost about $2000. Today, almost twelve years later, the third-highest-end machine is a G5 dual1.8. It, too, costs about $2000. The 6100/60 has been tricked out well past its limits, by the way, but it's still kicking along.

When a machine gets old enough that Apple can no longer sustainably keep it at that price point, they introduce a new model rather than lowering prices. This is how they have always done it, and it's how they will continue to do it for the foreseeable future. Apple cannot afford for computing to get cheap. This is the only reason that Macs are still so much more expensive, despite the fact that they use almost entirely the same or cheaper parts than their PC bretheren: Apple artificially keeps the price high to satisfy its business model.

Clones make computing cheaper. This is how they compete; it is their business model. Apple has tried working in such an environment, but it just plain can't do it. Cloners can make machines as good as Apple's while lowering prices, simply because they're set up in such a way that they can deal with price points that aren't fixed in stone. It happened before, in the clone era. It would happen again if Apple allowed these vendors to sell OSX/Intel clones.

Note that while this is true *generally*, price points do vary +/- $200 or so, and prices in general *do* drop over time within this structure - especially on laptops.

The phrase "ate into" implies "they sold fewer eMacs and iMacs than they would have without the mini". It implies that mini sales are lost potential iMac or eMac sales. And you don't have the figures to really argue that.

Consider: they would have expected to sell fewer eMacs and iMacs this quarter anyway, because sales are normally down this quarter. Therefore those Mac mini sales include sales they wouldn't have made at all without the Mini - I can point to six of those sales just among people I know, people who are in no way in the market for an eMac and only casually considered the iMac as a kind of "Mac of last resort". How many mini sales are new Mac owners, I don't know, but I personally believe that the majority of Mac mini sales are people like me, people who would never have considered buying a new Mac if the mini hadn't come out. What the Mini <i>is</i> cutting into are sales of used Macs... the prices for used Macs took a serious nosedive after the Mini came out.

Yeh, but -

(1) $2000 in 1993 is worth, what, $1200 now? Less?

(2) Between the time Steve took over and this year Apple hasn't even sold a model comparable to the 6100: a non-expandible headless desktop. The G5 is more like the 8100 family, the eMac and iMac like the Classic and 5xxx series. The unit you should be comparing the 6100 style of computer to is the Mac mini, which sells for $600.

Really, the 6100 was a distortion in the Mac product line. The first generation of Power PC Macs were massively overpriced and underpowered - running contemporary software the later Quadras kicked their butts. The same thing happened with the G3s, the last 9xx 604-powered multiprocessors were faster than the first Beige G3s. They've done a better job of not prematurely jumping on new technology more recently, but really... any price analysis of the Apple line that's based on the 6100/7100/8100 models is meaningless.

[edited - fixed typo - 200 for 2000]

Other way around... it's worth more now. Kind of like how $2 in 1900 is worth way more than $2 today.

Ooo goody! My happiness is dependent on Apple's sales figures.

The reason the stock is down is rather simple; Apple is in danger of becoming a one-trick pony. The iPod is what is bringing in the huge numbers for Apple, and that isn't going to last forever. Additionally, the key segment of PowerMacs is down in sales, and that's really what Apple needs to pump up, in order to bring in sustained profit and volume sales.

When the iPod reaches market saturation, which may not be far off, then Apple may not have another killer product to keep the momentum going, and this is why investors are getting shy; they're afraid that, once again, Apple has reached a peak.

No, I can argue it just fine with the figures available, I just can't give you concrete proof of it .

Now that you've explained yourself a bit more, however, I see your point clearly. Further, I'm willing to bet a few AAPL shares that the 2% increase in sales and the 20% drop in revenue was a little bit both (i.e., some people who would have bought iMacs/eMacs ended up buying minis and an expected drop in iMacs/eMacs sales because of the holidays in the last quarter). We may never know how exactly it breaks down.

I just bought some more stock... I love it when the market gives me a flashing neon sign that says "BUY"

Bad decision. It look like AAPL will sink to $30-32 before reaching stability. Even then I'm not sure it will rise until then next quarter results show up. The whole market is very dodgy at the moment.

CompUSA moves more Macs than any other single retailer, except Apple itself. Since Apple put their own employees in about 2/3 of CompUSA stores a little over three years ago, on a full time basis, the chain's Apple sales have skyrocketed, to the tune of hundreds of millions of $ per year. The Apple Solutions Consultants, as they are called, are considered the gold standard of sales people within Apple.