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tr6 says

Here we go again. The latest run up has all to do with financial engineering and not fundamentals. Steve Jobs would have never taken on debt to buy back shares of the company.

iPads are getting killed by competition (the only times I buy iPads anymore is when they are on huge sales). As US carriers move off subsidy based models, the average price of an iPhone will drop below $500 over the next three years to four years. It will be much harder to make serious profits.

Nonsense... Schools only buy IPADS... The subsidy model is not going away. It's just not! Companies love the long contracts.. and the only way to sucker people into long contracts is with subsidies to hardware. They can hide all kinds of fees in your monthly bill that way!

Apple is gonna come out with an iWatch soon or some other wearable tech that will drive an IPHONE-like adoption. IPHONES will continue to advance and eventually everyone will get rid of their wallets.. and use IPHONES to check out at the grocery store and buy things.

I don't know about you.. But i wouldn't trust an open-source program like Android with my credit card information. The nice thing about Apple's walled garden.. is it makes breaches of that wall much more difficult and easier to fix.

Apple is also going to have a music streaming service and probably some sort of deal with Comcast that puts an Apple TV Box in every subscribers home.

The bad news for the consumer is you aren't ever gonna get ALA Carte Television. Most likely the internet is going to become more and more like your Cable subscription in cost and access to what you want. Apple will definitely get it's piece though.

In less than 5 years everyone will have an Apple designed DVR of some sort... with SIRI voice activation, guestures and works seamless with your IPAD or IPHONE if you like. Your cable bill will still be $100 a month... but it will work much better and do more for you atleast.

People keep talking like Android is the minority product, when it has the greatest Smartphone/Tablet market share and gained it very early in the Smartphone wars.

Android is now about 81% worldwide, with Apple at 16% and Windows at 3% of the smartphone market:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/windows-phone/23904/windows-phone-stuck-3-world-market-share-time-call-android

Apple TV has been launched several times, every time it fails to gather steam, Apple claims it was just testing the waters.

Proprietary Software is less robust than open-source software simply because of the numbers of people that can find and close vulnerabilities. There is always the temptation of Prop Software owners to conceal or delay fixing a problem, especially if they have a "Perfection" Culture where they think their poop don't stink.

thunderlips11 says

Proprietary Software is less robust than open-source software simply because of the numbers of people that can find and close vulnerabilities.

I used to believe this too, waving around my copy of Cathedral and the Bazaar.

However, this gross oversimplification doesn't always hold up. Take the example of OpenSSL, a deep underpinning of all Internet commerce. For YEARS it had a major flaw which nobody looked at, and the few authors who were looking at it were just scraping by with no money for audits. This idea that all this wealth of people and money would NATURALLY kick in flatly didn't work. I see this more and more, as IT is chronically bid down to least possible expense. More open source software will be USED but not properly maintained.

Vicente says

However, this gross oversimplification doesn't always hold up. Take the example of OpenSSL, a deep underpinning of all Internet commerce. For YEARS it had a major flaw which nobody looked at, and the few authors who were looking at it were just scraping by with no money for audits. This idea that all this wealth of people and money would NATURALLY kick in flatly didn't work. I see this more and more, as IT is chronically bid down to least possible expense. More open source software will be USED but not maintained.

Interesting, thanks for this point, Vincente. It's nuances like this I love to find out about.

Having OpenSSL dependent on contracts for revenue is a strange model. One would think they would insist on some kind of commercial fee. Given the prevalence of the software, even a very modest fee would be enough to supply far more resources to the organization!

(And I see the mystery disliker has arrived at your post).

After gapped higher in late April and has been consolidating the gains in the last several weeks, looks like AAPL is making its move.

AAPL should get back some market share from Samsung with its iPhone 6. My guess is AAPL will hit $700 by this Christmas season.

thunderlips11 says

Having OpenSSL dependent on contracts for revenue is a strange model. One would think they would insist on some kind of commercial fee. Given the prevalence of the software, even a very modest fee would be enough to supply far more resources to the organization!

Ah but it's Open Source!

I've been to seminars with Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. After reading Eric Allman "Cathedral and the Bazaar" many years ago I was a True Believer(tm) in Open Source and FSF ideals. It's the kind of thing that worked great in the 90's, and even into the millenium. That was when money flowed like water for IT projects and plenty of IT people had free time to do interesting stuff.

Used to be lots of companies might have a few hotshots where some time was carved off to contribute to cool OSS. Now however we all get cut to ribbons on budgets, you want to contribute to SNMP? Fine, do that on your own time! You want to take a junket to a big conference and rub elbows? Forget it!

I really do love the ideals, and would like to see all code be freely available. However the promise of OSS just isn't playing out.

Relevant article:

http://veridicalsystems.com/blog/of-money-responsibility-and-pride/

It's a sort of Tragedy of the Commons, and it will only get worse. How do I put this.... everyone that's a US citizen and still employed, wants to work on the Next Big Shiny Thing. Anything that smacks of infrastructure if maintained at all, is farmed out to H1B or Chindia and those people generally don't give a crap about doing anything beyond what is required to collect the paycheck before moving on to the next contract.

thunderlips11 says

People keep talking like Android is the minority product, when it has the greatest Smartphone/Tablet market share and gained it very early in the Smartphone wars.

I'd be interested to see a chart that breaks out post-purchase revenue (app store / itunes / whatever) by device type. I strongly suspect that even with a fraction of the install base that apple whips the shit out of android. Just a hunch, though.

Obligatory:

Meanwhile I am still long AAPL in a large way. I expect it to top $100 soon.

In keeping with the animated gif can of worms you opened:

E-man says

SFace says

yes, the Iphone 5C is too expensive. Can't crack the asian market with that price tag.

Well, the good news is everyone should download the new Ios7 update on Sep 18th. It would be a good chance to see what improvements are made to the software side of it.

I see it differently. This is an opportunity to buy AAPL stocks before it resumes its uptrend. I was hoping for a pullback to $485, but here it is sitting near its 200 DMA. Back up the truck & load it up.

:0) AAPL is 40%+ higher now. Sweet. :0)

AAPL passed $100 today. Runup before iPhone 6?