What? A Disaster Already?

Yes, Apple's back-to-school quarter could be crap, but not for the reasons he gave.

If he had even glanced at Apple's last quarterly earnings report he would have seen that Apple's "aspirational products" have been clobbering the PC industry throughout this entire economic slump.

Apple is blowing chunks with MobileMe right now, but everything else is humming along just fine.

Right now the App store alone looks like it will have a multi-billion dollar halo on iPhone/touch sales as well as Mac software development.

And Apple will soon have lower cost desktops with new technology for workstation performance, maybe.

And, worse yet for Vista, is the revelation at the Black Hat conference taking place now, that Vista has a fundamental flaw in its architecture that will not be easy to patch. Check out the neowin.com website for the original article.

These cost arguments must run in cycles. I keep seeing the same thing pop up over and over again like it's breaking news.

There are plenty of other things to fault Apple on, however pricing hasn't been in this category for a while now. How else would Apple's dramatic growth be explained? If their products were overpriced, sales would be off. Period. People buy because of perceived value, but even direct hardware comparison shows the pricing is right.

Furthermore, since this seems to be a hot topic these days, there was a fairly comprehensive article over at Tom's Hardware on the "Mac Cost Misconception". Their conclusion: Macs are competitively priced. This school season will be very good for Apple, especially when the ad campaign for Vista seems to be "See, it's not so bad after all..."

I suggest that Mr.Paulson check out Credit Suisse Outperform
rating of Apple computer. Personally I'll go with Credit Suisse as they are a much more reliable source than Mr. Paulson.

Well, he speaks as one who has never been a Mac user or familiar in any way with Apple products. Ever been in an Apple store, Mr. Paulson? Been there in the last month? Even been near an Apple store in the mall in the last month?

I'm bullish on Apple and have been since the dark days of the Gil Amelio era. I wish I'd bought 1000 shares of Apple in 1997! I'd be sitting pretty right now.

Apple as a company are responsible for more truly innovative, paradigm-shifting products and services than most of the rest of Silicon Valley. They are true leaders, and are increasingly respected as such. If you haven't tried an iPod, iPhone, or MacBook, you have no idea what Apple is about.

What they ARE about is simplicity, elegance, ease of use, phenomenal customer service at the Genius Bar, and the best user experience on the planet. Are they perfect? No. They laid an egg with Mobile Me, and they have minor quality control issues from time to time. But they tend to get things right more often than anyone else, and it really shows.

I'll bet they have a phenomenal back-to-school season, and a phenomenal holiday season as well.

What software do you get with a new Mac?... iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, iWeb), full version of the OS that's able to connect to a business domain. Let's take a look on the PC side... shareware, crippleware, trialware and an OS that can't connect to a business domain unless you pay extra, hmmmm...