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Apples poor performance
This one is for Craig.
Given that you have a very keen interest every time Avid’s share price or quartly earnings have the slightest hiccup. I was curious if you have any commentary on the latest financial forecast regarding Apple.
This of course is in the interest of being “Fair and Balanced” as Fox News might say.
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23 Replies
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The bad news here? Their fourth-quarter profits were only up 24% YoY. Not quite the same scenario as Avid.
With respect to products, I’ve said that Apple has trapped themselves in an innovation bubble. They’ve hyped their innovations so heavily that now we want every single product release will be amazing, ground-breaking, and utterly transformative. They are now punished for simply releasing good products that do what people want. If Apple fails to knock our collective socks off, then the market says they fail, period, no matter how fundamentally good the product is. (iPhone 5?)
I guess it’s really an expectations bubble that applies to their stock as well.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Walter:
“…now we want every single product release will be amazing, ground-breaking, and utterly transformative.”Great description of the Mac Pro to be released in another year. I think it especially deserves that treatment.
But I agree the analysts are the most influential about what happens and they never seem happy since Tim Cook took over as CEO. However the stock seems to continue to recover as the consumers respond each time to the incrementally improved products. Speaking of hype, it seems to me Apple is shy to get into the details of improvements they do make. One example is the new screen on the iPad mini–it’s new and improved technology and I don’t think Apple mentioned it. They did mention the 5mm thick edge on the iMac but that’s obvious and also really not important at all to anyone (compared to dropping the optical drive–Apple is wrong to never point out what major features no longer are included). Of course Apple wants to stay away from technical features that might just confuse grandma and grandpa who just want something that looks pretty and “just works.” But grandma and grandpa likely own Apple stock and the youth market they pursue doesn’t. Apple wants to avoid a features war they’ll lose with PC makers of cheap but feature-laden products. Then once in a while they do bring an astounding feature to the fore such as Thunderbolt. They’ll do it again, perhaps it will be the 100Gbps optical TB the Mac Pro will support in 2013. And the stock will rise again.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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I’d say their ability to innovate when it comes to Manufacturing and Engineering continues apace. But the visionary product, whether they’re able to continue knocking these out, that’s the question. The last new product was what the IPad? And we’re 4 generations into that life cycle now.
I’d be shocked if there was anything visionary about the new MacPro. They sell a small number of them per year, and R&D probably reflects that.
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True, visionary gets harder to do when you have so many products to update continually. Case in point is their hobby, Apple TV. It’s taken so long and become so difficult as the big media companies fear Apple and are playing hardball, that one wonders if anything will come to fruition let alone something that’s visionary. The big TV manufacturers are doing their best to emulate what vision they think Apple has for TV.
And I don’t know if Apple has drawn more engineers into the Mac Pro team or taken them away to work on something else. But the issues of the neglected professional creative community have got Tim Cook’s attention and commitment to do something in 2013. Quite a challenge but I think Apple won’t put any energy into fighting the Promax and those PC powerhouses. I think they’ll once again try to skate to where the puck is going. Any intelligent and thoughtful group (like we hace here) could bat around some ideas but I’m afraid to suggest anything concrete now or it might evaporate like the Apple TV as everyone moves to the open ice. There’s room for hardware/software/storage/network game-changing innovation but let’s hope Apple shares that desire too to think differently.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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This happens to varying degrees with any new Apple product launch or quarterly earnings. I think what happens is that many ‘analysts’ game the system by over-inflating their expectations so that they can report negatively on Apple, which leads to stock prices decreasing temporarily (and giving those same analysts a temporary discounted price to purchase more of the stock). I can’t find the link, but Jim Cramer talked about this a good bit about 4 years ago.
There’s a whole industry designed around pushing Apple down, reporting negatively on Apple for website web page views, etc. This industry continues because despite their best efforts, Apple long term continues to rise.
I just wish I had gotten in Apple two or three years ago when it was $80. Sigh.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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It may depend what one defines as visionary.
We won’t know until it happens regarding the MacPro replacement but I’d suspect Apple will be first to market with a Xeon based computer with Thunderbolt.
As to Pros, I still contend Thunderbolt is in the domain of Pros and while there’s a PC laptop here ‘n there with it, it’s not being heavily promoted (ore even built) on that side.
I’d say the ability to use one’s Pegasus RAID, Ultra Studio 3D, Sonnet Echo chassis on every computer in the lineup so that a “Pro” will have universal utilization and accessibility, “visionary”
For the Mac Pro replacement “visionary” will mean a design that will significantly increase sales with a far more versatile box for those that need Xeon and GPU power with expandability.
Of course one wonders about “the next big thing” and whether Apple can do that again but the nature of the “visionary” thing is that it’s hard to anticipate until it happens.
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[Gary Hazen] “Given that you have a very keen interest every time Avid’s share price or quartly earnings have the slightest hiccup. I was curious if you have any commentary on the latest financial forecast regarding Apple.”
Apple burps money while Avid gags. Some hiccup!
Apple’s “off” when they make a fortune.
The best Avid can hope for it seems is a cheer if they don’t lose quite as badly as the previous year and they can’t even get to that point. -
[Rick Lang] “Quite a challenge but I think Apple won’t put any energy into fighting the Promax and those PC powerhouses. I think they’ll once again try to skate to where the puck is going.”
This metaphor always misses the fact that the puck moves continuously from where it is now to where it will be…
I think that the four defining characteristics of a workstation are performance, balance, reliability, and expansion capacity.
I’d be very interested in hearing other opinions on what separates a workstation from a desktop computer, and how Apple has room in those definitions for disruptive innovation that others are not pursuing.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “This metaphor always misses the fact that the puck moves continuously from where it is now to where it will be…
“Thank you. Its a laugh, ain’t it? If you are only ever skating to where the puck is going–as opposed to where it is–you will never ever see the puck, and since the goal is to hit the puck, perpetually skating to where you expect the puck to be, will never get you to that goal.
In reality, Apple is sitting right on top of the puck, and fervently guarding it with all its might.
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[Chris Harlan] “Thank you. Its a laugh, ain’t it? If you are only ever skating to where the puck is going–as opposed to where it is–you will never ever see the puck, and since the goal is to hit the puck, perpetually skating to where you expect the puck to be, will never get you to that goal.
In reality, Apple is sitting right on top of the puck, and fervently guarding it with all its might.”
Nope.
Everyone on the ice comes sharing a fundamental truth.
The whole point of the game is to score.
Skating to where the puck will be is a sensible strategy articulated by the games greatest player because he understood game deeply. Defense is a conservative tactic to prevent loss. Period. Positioning yourself to take advantage of those moments where opportunities arise is always a required strategy to win.
Because it’s impossible to win with a score of zero.
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