Apple’s dreary outlook on 2008
The company that was doing so swimmingly last year has seen a drop in stock prices, just as Steve Jobs announced these seemingly great products that would be joining the Apple lineup. The future isn’t looking bright for 2008, but there might be a few saving graces for both Apple and the shareholders.
I think everyone was just slightly underwhelmed at MacWorld’s opening keynote; I don’t think that is fair, either, because everyone was “underwhelmed” last year and Apple did just fine. However, the Apple Air is apparently not the most popular computer in the Mac lineup now, and the critics are tearing Apple a new one for its efforts.
Many could care less about the new Airport Extreme with backup; I can say that I find it interesting, only because I would like an N router in my house. The terabyte of extra storage would be great, but only if I wasn’t forced to use Time Machine to back it up; that program is riddled with issues and I enjoyed the sour looks of many people at the keynote as they were told that Time Machine could now be backed up wirelessly…whoop-de-doo.
The updates to the iPhone and the iPod Touch are great, but I think most people weren’t particularly excited about them, as those updates were just hacks that people were using that Apple decided to incorporate. That is a GOOD thing for Apple fans; there is no reason to ruin your phone or iPod just to have some added functionality. Be excited, Apple is listening to the people.
Last but not least on my list of Apple issues is the Apple TV; great, it does movie rentals now, but more importantly it does HD rentals. What is interesting is that many people are angry they can’t rent HD movies without an Apple TV, as many have become accustomed to running a line out from their Mac to the TV. I understand the frustration, but how else was Apple going to move any Apple TVs?
The one saving grace for Apple this year might be the success of HD rentals; I believe that Apple isn’t doing full purchase downloads yet, because they want to test the waters of streaming HD before they commit to selling full feature films. If people adopt the HD rentals, I think that Apple will go to selling both full DVD quality and HD quality films before the end of the year. If that happens, I think Apple’s stock will begin skyrocketing again.
If not, I think that 2007 was just a little too successful, and set Apple up for a bit of a fall in 2008. That doesn’t mean more people won’t adopt iPhones, Macs, and iPods like they are; I just don’t think the overwhelming popularity Apple experienced last year will be quite as shiny this year.
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January 18th, 2008
I hope they pick it up, or they will have a lot of angry supporters.
January 19th, 2008
Wrong. The year has just begun. Did you see the size of the processor in the Macbook Air? Did you see gesture based functions in the track pad? Did you see OSX being utilized on different devices? What do toy suppose Apple will do with this things this year? You must be a sleep at the wheel.
January 19th, 2008
Funny everyone seems to wish Apple products to fail….why? any answer?
January 19th, 2008
Time Machine is one of Leopard’s best features. If you don’t want to use Time Machine, you can use other backup software. Time Capsule is not Time Machine dependent. Time Capsule is a shared hard drive that can be accessed by OS X v10.4.8 or later XP (SP2) or Vista. You can install Bonjour for Windows (included on the Time Capsule CD) so that your PC can instantly pick up the shared hard drive.
January 19th, 2008
Mac sales way up; iPhone sales strong. What else matters?
The Apple movie rental biz is also important, though. They CAN dominate it, as they did with iTunes. And the competitors really DO suck. NetFlix and AMZN Unbox downloads don’t even work on portable devices– or Macs at all! What total garbage! Unbelievable they’d even release such half-baked junk!