ACME

“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

– Michael Dell on Apple, October 6, 1997

“Michael Dell will take Dell Inc private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis…”

– Reuters, February 5, 2013

It’s not quite the same as “shutting it down” but it’s still giving the money back to the shareholders, isn’t it?

2 notes

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Did Apple and Google really spend more on patents than R&D? Technovia

Second-last graf:

So yes, Google and Apple did spend more on patents in 2011 than R&D. But that’s very likely to be a one-off, simply because 2011 was an unusual year which saw several highly-desirable patent portfolios come on the market. What the NYT didn’t say is that Apple also increased its R&D spending in 2011 by 33%, and that Google’s R&D spending continues to trend upwards massively, with the company spending a whopping 12% of all its revenue in R&D last year.

Yeah. I thought something felt a bit…off about the original piece.

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[Galaxy tablets] do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.

U.K. Judge Colin Birss, in ruling on a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. The law has spoken!

(Bloomberg, via Daring Fireball)

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Apple - Jobs at Apple - Job description

“The ideal candidate has extensive experience making pizza dough from scratch and is able to portion and toss the dough…”

Is that a euphemism?

(via John Moltz)

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Pundit-Matic™ 3000

Now you too can write authoritative, insightful analysis of new Apple products, just like the pros do!

(via The Macalope)

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Why Siri Can't Find Abortion Clinics & How It's Not An Apple Conspiracy

In short: Siri doesn’t find Planned Parenthood when you search for “abortion clinic” because PP doesn’t bill itself as an abortion clinic. (Not discussed in the article: the likelihood that pro-“life” organizations do include it in their site meta tags to screw around with search engine results.)

(h/t to Daring Fireball)

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They need to set records every time they report to keep up the momentum.

Colin Gillis, BGC Partners analyst, on Apple’s financials

If that statement doesn’t tell you just how utterly detached from reality our stock markets have gotten, I don’t know what would.

(from The Guardian)

15 notes

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How to decode an Apple event invitation:

Tuesday, the 4th (of October)
10:00
Apple’s Cupertino campus
New phones waiting: one

And people say the company is secretive…

(via AppleInsider)

7 notes

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I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient.

Steve Jobs. Read the article.

(from Vic Gundotra; h/t to Daring Fireball)

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Yet, when we see Google (GOOG) report 17% earnings growth and trade a 20 P/E ratio and then watch Apple report 92% earnings growth and trade at a 16 P/E ratio, how in the hell can anyone say that Apple is treated as a darling? Amazon (AMZN) missed earnings expectation for the third time in five quarters, and grew at a far lower growth rate than Apple on both the top and bottom line and trades at a 90 P/E ratio. Netflix (NFLX) also missed expectations, grew at a far lower growth rate than Apple on both the top and bottom line and trades at a 70.58 P/E ratio.

Andy Zaky on Wall Street’s treatment of Apple. Short version:

[T]here seems to be this major imbalance in large cap tech where the worst performing stocks get the best valuations and the best performing stocks get completely sh** on.

(via Seeking Alpha; h/t to Gruber)