Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,335
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Post by Dave on Feb 15, 2023 2:02:31 GMT -8
Another good morning and another red pre-market at -0.40% at this moment.
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Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,335
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Post by Dave on Feb 15, 2023 2:12:04 GMT -8
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Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,335
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Post by Dave on Feb 15, 2023 2:17:36 GMT -8
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Post by zebrum on Feb 15, 2023 4:05:52 GMT -8
Airbnb did well, up 9% to $132 in pre-market, chart looks like it could gap up to $140s and might bring other nasdaq stocks with it!
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chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,438
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Post by chinacat on Feb 15, 2023 6:36:42 GMT -8
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JDSoCal
Member
Aspiring oligarch
Posts: 4,241
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Post by JDSoCal on Feb 15, 2023 7:17:20 GMT -8
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4aapl
Moderator
Posts: 3,867
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Post by 4aapl on Feb 15, 2023 8:56:02 GMT -8
Interesting stuff. I kept on watching to the end. The Orange Juice futures brought up several things in my mind. "Higher prices are the solution to higher prices". With the unsaid caveat that there is a fungible choice. His example was that people would/could just switch to other juice types, or water. There are times where there aren't easy switches. High gas prices, localized or not, don't give people quick and easy solutions. "Drive less" can happen somewhat, but a lot of it is a longer term process of changing habits/preferences. Buying a new car, whether going electric, going with a hybrid, or just going with something that gets better gas mileage, is a longer term solution. But we see the push that way especially in times of longer upward pushes in fuel costs, though it helps if consumers are flush with funds too. Overall, it's just not a quick and easy change. But what about a smartphone? A few articles and posts recently talked of Apple raising prices too much, though helping make margins high. After hanging out at the cell phone store, there are lots of options for a nice looking smartphone. I'm sure the screen quality, camera quality, processor speed and battery life all vary. But on the outward appearance, they look pretty darned similar. There are a few outliers, with a couple that are extremely long, a couple foldable ones, and one or two that come with a stylus. Instead, the choice must come down to experience with the device, and reputation (friends and family, or in general). For people to take the $800 14 over the multitude of $200-$400 choices, the devices must not be seen as fungible, even if the outward appearance looks fairly close. It helps that the provider is giving 0% interest, and pushing the low monthly or even daily price (their table for device insurance showed multiple variables, down to something like 25 cents a day). Some of these total prices are made to matter very little. If Apple really did up the margin by 200 basis points (such as 42% to 44%) from just the consumer price on an iPhone Pro, that would only be taking it from $1000 to $1020. Does that matter much for someone dropping $1k on an iPhone? What if instead it's 3%, but it's spread evenly between the suppliers, the assemblers, and the consumer, so just a $10 increase to the consumer. And that might even get absorbed by the provider, when purchased through them. FWIW, this time around there is a $20-$30 price bump on the MSRP, if not bought through a provider. Even at $20, that's less than a $1 increase in the monthly bill for a provider that splits it over 24 months, and barely more than a 50 cent increase for those using 36 months. It is impressive that Apple can have such higher prices than most of the competition. But part of it is like the timeframes of margins that the chart the other day was showing, and the underlying reasoning. Some companies, mainly in early days of the company or product, have a race to the bottom on price and margins in order to get marketshare. Apple is well beyond that point, though it often has products with enough differentiation that there really isn't a reason to race to the bottom because there is not a suitable substitute with the competition. Instead, it try's to make a product worth the extra cost. One way to see it is to look at an Apple product that many of us don't have, like the high end monitor. A couple people here in fields where this is valued point out that it really is a good deal for what it is. And yet for most of us, myself included, the $5k price just seems crazy. So high prices can be the solution for high prices, whether that is pushing people to other solutions, or bringing in competition. OTOH, just because there are high prices doesn't mean that people will be pushed to other solutions and cause those high prices to drop. Each situation is different, and demand matters. It seems Apple has managed to widen its product line through keeping old things around, both on iPhones but also on other things including Mac Book Airs (see Costco.com). But the biggest thing is keeping demand up, by making a good product that people want to have.
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Post by duckpins on Feb 15, 2023 10:51:47 GMT -8
"Macworld has Is Apple making a Mac Pro nobody wants?. I am sure that Apple knows this product is not going to be its bestseller. But some of its technology will end up adding value to other models in the lineup, and will maintain Apple’s reputation for the pursuit of quality. For example…
Patently Apple has Apple supplier LG Innotech to begin high volume production of flip chip ball-grid array (FC-BGA) for M-series chips in Q4 for new Macs."
Well the cylinder or garbage can Mac Pro was just that. That was a case of Steve is gone so we will make a new and exciting product in a revolutionary form just like he would have done. Sorry. Missed the boat.
There is no reason to fix what is not broken unless your job depends on it.
The Mac Pros were great for those who want the 30 inch Matte Mac Cinema monitor which was one of the best products ever, they should still make it. That goofy cylinder design meant you could not use it. Really useful would have been the 30" display with modern connections instead of firewire.
MacPro as expandable and upgradable. You can put the backup in one of the slots for a hard drive. That is what people did for years. When you have 4 slots that is perfect.
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Post by hledgard on Feb 15, 2023 13:24:44 GMT -8
I still have the 30" Matte Cinema Display and love it ! ! Superb, and truly functional.
Much easier on the eyes and the big screen is terrific..
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Ted
fire starter
Posts: 892
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Post by Ted on Feb 15, 2023 13:40:29 GMT -8
That one little LEAP (6/25, 115 C) that I bought on Jan 2nd in a show of protest when AAPL was around 128 is now up 61%. I'll hold it for at least a year. I used to play AAPL options and BCSs back in the day, did okay - winning about half the time - until I realized that the big money was in holding the common. You don't play Apple, you acquire it.
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chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,438
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Post by chinacat on Feb 15, 2023 15:20:53 GMT -8
There is no reason to fix what is not broken unless your job depends on it. Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree. The world, and especially technology, does not stand still. If everyone followed your advice, there would never be any progress. Do you really think that Steve Jobs’ success was built on satisfaction with the status quo? Fear of making mistakes is the greatest impediment to advancement. Yes, there will be setbacks, and lessons will be learned, yielding new opportunities.
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4aapl
Moderator
Posts: 3,867
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Post by 4aapl on Feb 15, 2023 18:00:16 GMT -8
There is no reason to fix what is not broken unless your job depends on it. Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree. The world, and especially technology, does not stand still. If everyone followed your advice, there would never be any progress. Do you really think that Steve Jobs’ success was built on satisfaction with the status quo? Fear of making mistakes is the greatest impediment to advancement. Yes, there will be setbacks, and lessons will be learned, yielding new opportunities. I think there's a happy medium in there somewhere, between attempting to stick with what always worked and not change a thing, and adding features just to add features. Word 6 is one people always throw out, with Word 5.1 seen as ideal. But I had times where SimpleText, saved in .txt format, was ideal. (It's just text!) Though normally BBEdit would also be nice, especially once dealing with some html. When I joined MOT about 25 years ago, one of the mottos they liked to throw about was "If it ain't broke, fix it". OTOH, both in computers/electronics, but also across life in general, it's easy to look back and think of the good times when things were simpler. How many security updates were they for a Mac SE? Things just made sense, and worked...while they worked. And even with the complexities that existed like SCSI, it often just wasn't that complicated. (SCSI ids were pretty simple. But a potential headache was if an internal SCSI chain worked fine even if it wasn't properly terminated, but when you added an external one it caused things to not work because that internal side of things wasn't terminated) Things have gotten more powerful, and complicated. I used to know where to go for all settings, both on the Mac and on the iPhone. Now it's a challenge. Part of it is that I don't do it every day. But part of it is that it has gotten more complex. I already complained about my iPhone upgrade experience, which eventually worked at the store, but took half a day (seriously). Part of that was that the tried and true that I was ready for wasn't applicable, doing it in the store instead of just off my Mac. And I can blame some of it on that manager, as I think the iPhone to iPhone update would have went just fine, but she convinced me to start a "backup to iCloud". Grrrrr. (I've got time to try it out again, with my wife's iPhone. My son's went just fine, so that gives me hope. And I can toss a laptop and a drive into the car, so that I have the tech on hand if I need it) Truthfully, I've never gotten a complete handle on Mac OS X, and where everything can be hidden. The GUI is one thing, but there's a lot under the hood. I've found it at times, understanding that there are multiple /Library's, for the user, general, and system. That shouldn't matter most of the time, but when things go astray it is something to understand, especially if working with a system that has been upgraded again and again. Mine might date from 10.2. And some stuff gets ignored on an OS update, and then can become a problem later on. My parents just texted me with some startup item problems, for a google update and a HP printer one. Neither are things I'd want around, and they aren't showing up where I would expect in their 13.x system. OTOH, there is just so much that can be done today, vs a few years ago, vs a decade ago, vs 3 decades ago. It might seem like it was better back then. But it's just not comparing apples to apples. Our Apple seems to have more settings and choices these days, but in general there is just more stuff. Truthfully, how many apps do you have on your iPhone, vs how many applications did you have on your Mac a decade ago, or 3? Apple still tries to make things easy, or at least easier. But the benchmark they are working from has changes, as has the new average user and their expectation.
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Post by Lstream on Feb 15, 2023 20:00:48 GMT -8
There is no reason to fix what is not broken unless your job depends on it. Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree. The world, and especially technology, does not stand still. If everyone followed your advice, there would never be any progress. Do you really think that Steve Jobs’ success was built on satisfaction with the status quo? Fear of making mistakes is the greatest impediment to advancement. Yes, there will be setbacks, and lessons will be learned, yielding new opportunities. Agree with you. Also “not broken” is a huge oversimplification in tech. So much so that it is dangerous. And a recipe for being complacent. I think a more applicable quip comes from Andy Grove, before Intel ended up in the tough spot it is now. Only the Paranoid Survive. One’s company will eventually be an irrelevant also-ran if they adhere to the “not-broken” mentality.
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Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,335
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Post by Dave on Feb 16, 2023 2:22:03 GMT -8
I remember reading a story several years ago about the problems that Microsoft was having and why, but this holds true for many companies as they age along with the employees. People become protective of their turf and become fearful that they will do something that may bring unwanted attention to them, so they basically do nothing. They just want to get their time in so that they can retire. And then there are those that will push their ideas, no matter how bad the idea is, to get themselves recognized and advanced no matter how destructive their idea may be to the future of the company, as long as they progress. And the company looses its vision. History is full of companies that forgot what made them competitive and went down roads that seemed right at the time but in the end was destructive. Steve Jobs had the vision of what he wanted his creation to become, and he defended that vision against all, and it worked. The founders of companies are like that, those that follow them, not so much.
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JDSoCal
Member
Aspiring oligarch
Posts: 4,241
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Post by JDSoCal on Feb 16, 2023 8:27:47 GMT -8
I remember reading a story several years ago about the problems that Microsoft was having and why, but this holds true for many companies as they age along with the employees. People become protective of their turf and become fearful that they will do something that may bring unwanted attention to them, so they basically do nothing. They just want to get their time in so that they can retire. And then there are those that will push their ideas, no matter how bad the idea is, to get themselves recognized and advanced no matter how destructive their idea may be to the future of the company, as long as they progress. And the company looses its vision. History is full of companies that forgot what made them competitive and went down roads that seemed right at the time but in the end was destructive. Steve Jobs had the vision of what he wanted his creation to become, and he defended that vision against all, and it worked. The founders of companies are like that, those that follow them, not so much. The (alleged) problem was that Microsoft was sales-driven culture (as opposed to innovation or design-based) in its halcyon days of desktop dominance. The execs who warned that Microsoft needed to diversify were drowned out by the sales guys who just wanted to protect Windows desktop and Office and said "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Why upset this cash-printing apple cart? Bozo Ballmer was at the helm and he didn't see the dangers and just worried about next quarter instead of 10 quarters out. Of course it was Apple that torpedoed desktop, and the rest was history.
Microsoft eventually somehow righted the ship with the cloud, but of course Ballmer was jettisoned. It's good to know that if a tech company is big enough, it has some ability to weather disaster. But why get there in the first place? I look at the Mac Pro as VW's 911 GT3 RS. Prestige products have a place in a successful company.
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