First time Mac customers at the Apple Store (revised)

I revised my previous chart to show a correlation with total units sold through Apple Retail.

SOURCES: Seeking Alpha Stock transcripts (earnings transcripts), ifoAppleStore (units), Asymco (inspiration)

First time Mac customers at the Apple Store

SOURCE: Seeking Alpha Stock transcripts

One year later

If you are thinking of selling your first generation iPad, there are ways for you to do it simply but you won't be getting the best price. You simply enter your iPad model and condition and get a quote. Below, I'm comparing the prices eBay and Gazelle offer for the different models and don't see a huge difference in price. These prices change every day and in eBay's Instant Sale offers for iPad supposedly end on March 25th. Keep in mind this chart compares the original prices and clearance prices that Apple charges you with the prices that electronics resellers and recyclers will offer you for your used iPad without even seeing it. As a buyer or seller with some patience, you should consider asking around and checking direct sale opportunities via social networks or listing your electronics on eBay and classified ad sites like cragislist. UPDATE: I updated the chart and rewrote the post because the original was a bit misleading by implying trends. [3/20/2011]

White is the new black

I went to the Apple store today to make an international call using Skype, but found that many of the iMacs had parental controls turned enforcing a white list of websites users could access. That list included Apple websites, but did not include skype.com or even att.com, which made it difficult for me to download the software necessary for me to make my international call. Luckily not all Macs were restricted and I was able to take care of business.

In other news, I think it's at least worth mentioning that white is an available option on the 16GB iPhone 3G but is not available for the 8GB. Does that make white the new black, a traditional mark of distinction? Back when the first 2G iPod nanos were released, black was only available on the higher capacity 8GB nano. Black MacBooks also cost more than white MacBooks.

A look from other angles at the MacBook Air

Catch one of the founders of Apple, Inc? Check!

Steve Wozniak beginning a wave! Thanks, [kind stranger], for getting his attention for me!

Android vs. iPhone

Here's an interesting write-up about how Android's doing from a developer's perspective. I really thought that if Google really delivered on Android, it would commoditize iPhone, but it seems there are still some challenges the Android team has to iron out that Apple may still have the edge come February when they in turn release the iPhone SDK.

Why Manhattan needed a new Apple Store

Another piece falls into place

... for my vacation to San Francisco in January. Ok, if the winter switches places with spring and I get my hotel upgraded to a four seasons, then it'll all have fallen into place, but Steve Jobs is confirmed to be headlining Macworld Expo 2008 with a keynote address. I'm keeping my hopes low, but I wish for at least new iPhone/Apple TV features, either a new Mac Pro or new MacBooks, and maybe a demonstration of the iPhone SDK. Of course, the greatest delights are the surprises.

SOURCE: Macworld via MacUser

My first Leopard upgrade hiccup

If you've upgraded to Leopard and suddenly none of your web sites work, it's because Leopard uses a newer version of Apache and the upgrade process doesn't copy your configuration files over. For an Apache newbie like me, the only thing I needed to do was to copy the contents of my /etc/httpd/users directory into /etc/apache2/users.

SOURCE: Apple Support Forums

Android to come to iPhone? Please?

I just knew that Android was going to be Java-based. Now, all I want is for Apple to follow up with a related announcement at February's Macworld Expo. There has to be something better to come out of Eric Schmidt being on Apple's board than the Google Maps app for iPhone.

What's powering your Time Machine?

Mac OS X (pronounced 'O' 'S' 'Ten') version 10.5's Time Machine has an automatic versioned backup and recovery GUI but requires an external hard drive. While the Western Digital MyBook is the obvious choice (white or silver), I thought the Maxtor One Touch 4-Plus looked pretty stunning.

Leaving the network behind

Unlike David Pogue, who stuck with Verizon's superior network despite being impressed with the iPhone and being a Mac user, I've switched to AT&T. The only fault I could find in my old service provider was their high cost but it's arguable that it was worth it.

I found out that not only does Apple not offer any sort of corporate or educational discount on the device, AT&T does not offer anything in the way of corporate discount on the monthly service for iPhone, usually a nice 13%. This goes in line with an estimate from Morgan Stanley analyst Katiey Huberty's estimate that Apple receives a one-time payment of $150 per customer and a recurring $5 a month. That certainly leaves no room for any discounts.

Links and corrections to come.

Here I go again

If you've read this blog before, you may have been amused my disclosures of owning Apple and Google stock. For about three quarters, I've been clean and have had no financial interest in either company. The company I work for has a policy dictating that discretionary trading must be conducted with the company, so I closed my external account with TD Ameritrade and open a new one with the firm. I did that on Monday because they had a table in the cafeteria and made it very convenient and rewarding. It was convenient because I could take care of the paperwork without touching a fax machine and rewarding because I was promised a BestBuy gift card for applying on the spot.

What I've done in the past is to buy stocks in which I have blindcomplete faith. This leads to few picks and usually generously valued ones (i.e. Apple or Google). This isn't to say that I've always been successful. Asides from those two, virtually every company I've owned stock in has been de-listed, but not always for bad reasons. The most recent recently delisting was a voluntary one by Creative Technology (CREAF), but I could spend several posts talking about each of my unsuccessful picks.

One straightforward thing I might do is to try and short (or sell) companies who are grossly overvalued. I can still imagine being screwed by the strategy but it seems logical.

Playing with Numbers

This is the beginning of a correction to my previous post.

By the way, I do mean Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet application.
UPDATE (9/20/2007): Seems my estimates were very conservative according to this NYTimes blog post that comes to a similar conclusion (see revised chart), that Apple could afford to sell iPhone at a loss [via tuaw].

iPhone debriefing

Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to iPhone early-adopters today adamantly defending his company's decision to drop the price on iPhone by a third, or $200, after just two months. Although he believed the price drop was the correct thing to do, Jobs recognized that Apple underestimated the effect it had in jeopardizing the trust of its first million iPhone customers. To reassure them, he will be issuing a $100 store credit, single-handedly creating 100 million in consumer surplus.

Rationalization

By yesterday morning, I had already come to terms with my very late early adoption. While I originally got the iPhone on launch day, I returned it two week later, only to buy it back once a screenshot of Vim running on the iPhone was posted. As a huge Apple fan, I'll admit I was willing to pay even more for the iPhone and wished to be mature and take responsibility for my actions. Luckily and despite my previous misgivings, iPhone has not ceased to delight me. You may think that it's all cognitive dissonance and I will not defend against that accusation. I do, however, feel like the signs of the price drop were all there by the time Steve Jobs made the announcement on Wednesday.

I knew it! (not really)

First of all, after all the pent up demand, Apple's first full month of sales only exceeded their 2008 target of 1% mobile phone market share by 80%. They would have a really hard time sustaining that $600 demand for 18 months. Second, Apple has decided to implement subscription accounting (is that what they called it) for the iPhone since they're receiving monthly payments from AT&T in return for the exclusivity in the US market. That means they'll be recognizing the revenue of iPhone over the two-year service contract.

If Apple intends to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, that'd be an average of 833[,333] a month. Even if they receive a generous 10% of AT&T revenues of $60 per line month, it comes out to be an average of $60,000* each month for two years. It'd be a stretch to also recognize the hardware revenue monthly at $500,000, or [up to ] three times the [profits from ]subscription revenue. Finally, we're all used to subsidies by mobile phone service providers with 2-year service contracts. Prices fall sharply and may not reflect the actual cost of the hardware and volumes matter a lot. Apple fans quoted Motorola's RAZR's similarly high intial selling price to justify our purchases but forgot about how fast it became virtually free with service contract. Yes, hind sight is 20/20, but I hope this was an interesting exercise.

Wait at your own risk

One thing that's nice to keep is your conviction in times of difficulty. One rule I've preached is to buy Apple hardware day one to maximize your value against obsoletion. I practiced what I preached, but to my detriment broke the rule eight weeks later on the trust that Apple wouldn't screw their customers that badly (i.e. within a quarter). This was the same belief I held when I thought they couldn't possibly release another iPhone within a year of the first generation possibly sporting a broadband wireless modem (UMTS/WiMAX?). That's the very trust that Mr. Jobs rightly seeks to maintain.

As a brief summary of what currently delights me about the iPhone asides from its fantastic exposition of functionality, check out (if you haven't already) Installer.app or iBrickr. They are a testament to the current state of native application development for OS X on iPod (iPhone and iPod touch).

SOURCES: iPhone margins, iPhone July sales, Apple Q3 Earnings Conference Call (6:11")

*(10,000,000 units / year or 12 months x 10% share x $60 service charge) x average monthly revenue taken over lifetime of 24-month contract (1 + 2 + ... + 24) / 24 months = $60,000

UPDATED (9/19/2007 00:44 EDT):

I was off by a factor of 1000. Instead of average monthly payment from AT&T being generously estimated at 60,000, it should be over 60,000,000. Thankfully, nobody actually read this (yet)! I'll try to fix it.

Oops, I did it again

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well I'm doing typing on the iPhone.
No, I couldn't think of a better allusion.

Epiphany of the Day #4

Not sure if you noticed the 'DVDs are for losers' vibe at last week's Apple press event, but I sensed that there would be no next version of iDVD. See where I'm going with this? Among computer manufacturers, Apple sided with Dell and Sony in supporting the Blu-ray Disc format against notably Microsoft and Toshiba's support of HD-DVD. Other manufacturers have begun offering Blu-ray disc drives and burners on their computers, but Apple seems to be waiting for it to reach critical mass.

Count on Apple to jump in just before that moment with support in the Mac Pro and eventually in an iDVD replacement (iBD anyone?). iBD won't be a killer app or anything, but if released, is likely to mark the triumph of the format.

Favorite little features of iLife '08

I didn't think I'd be upgrading my bundled version of iLife, Apple's Mac-only entry-level digital media lifestyle software suite. Every new Mac comes with iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, Garage Band and iWeb. I think this time it's a good value even if you have to pay the full price to 'upgrade'. As a little introductory rant, iLife can be viewed as a package of demos for Apple's professional software offerings. iPhoto is an ultra light version of Aperture. iMovie is a basic version of Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. Garage Band is the baby version of Logic Express and Logic Pro. The two features I'm about to mention are so valuable yet deliberately left out of iLife for all the previous versions.

If you've ever taken video using your digital camera in the portrait orientation, you probably regretted it after loading it onto your computer since it'd only display in landscape view anyway. One cool new feature in the new iMovie is cropping and rotating video. Previously, this feature was also available from Apple as part of Quicktime Pro (29 USD) or sold as a third-party iMovie plugin. Windows users can use VirtualDub, although it's not the paragon of user-friendliness.

The other feature I liked that was only briefly mentioned in the press event is notation printing in Garage Band. In previous versions, Garage Band would show you the musical notation of tracks you create but the ability to print it out was found only in the premium Logic offerings. Now, even if you don't write music in your spare time, you can open up a MIDI file in Garage Band to view the notation and then theoretically print it out to play on the piano.

Sorry this is getting long, but if you're not already bored, bear with me for just a bit longer.

I can't talk about iLife without also mentioning the brand new iMovie. It borrows a feature of Windows MovieMaker where it will automatically create scenes within in your videos by looking at when the camera was stopped and restarted. It also has speeds up the process of creating videos by including a really fast way to 'scrub' through and select scenese by mousing over the thumbnails. Conservatively speaking, iMovie and iPhoto themselves are worth the 79 dollar cost of iLife, not including educational or corporate discounts. It's worth mentioning that iPhoto has a new feature to easily if not automatically group the photos in your library into events. I'm also going to get iWork. You've doubtlessly heard at least of past rumors about its slick new spreadsheet application, but I have less of a legitimate reason for getting it. Takers?

Product links: iLife, iWork

Apple TV's power consumption

The Apple TV is a nice addition to any HDTV setup. It's currently the hottest setup component we have next to the PS3. Taken literally, that's because the TV is always on and lacks any form of active cooling, leaving it very warm to the touch. While this is worrying from the perspective of power consumption, it turns out that I should be more worried about the 60 watt incandescent bulb above my head.

According to Apple Support forum-user rverwij, the Apple TV consumes about 14 watts in standby and between 17 and 19 watts while in use. The reason the Apple TV is always on is probably to increase responsiveness and to sync your content so quickly you don't have to ever manually intervene. Another reason might be to avoid startup times or even to reduce what could be constant wear and tear of booting and shutting down. This doesn't make it energy-start compliant, though, as rverwij also points out.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind going back in time to defer my purchase of the Apple TV, since clearly the best is yet to come. I also believe that to be the case with the iPhone, which I returned it unopened a week after purchasing it on release day.*

SOURCE: Apple Support Discussions

Updated 10:16 AM EDT: * The official reasons I returned the iPod[iPhone]: 1) I never really intended to buy it. 2) I just got a new 30 G iPod in February. 3) It doesn't have a killer feature like the Unix terminal. 4) I still have a contract with my current wireless provider Verizon Wireless that ends in October. 5) ...

Updated (March 28, 2011): This post applies to the First Generation Apple TV. The newer Apple TV is smaller and more more power efficient than the original and only consumes 6-watts (it only has a 6-watt power supply).