John Gruber of Daring Fireball says Asymco.com is his favorite weblog of 2010

CNN votes iPhone 4 tech fail of the year. The phone which has the highest customer satisfaction ranking from JD Power and Changewave

CNN has vote the iPhone 4 as number one on its list of 2010 tech failures.

Gartenberg says Apple TV turning from Hobby to Full-time business

Michael Gartenberg at Macworld says:
"Apple TV sometimes feels like the Rodney Dangerfield of Apple products: it gets no respect. No less than Steve Jobs calls it not a product line, but a hobby. Hobbies are funny, though. Stick with one long enough and it can transform from side interest to full-time business."


Gartenberg's conclusion seems on the money as Apple has just announced that it has sold a million new Apple TVs in about 80 days. (To put this in context as a significant number Windows fan sites are jumping up and down when Microsoft proudly announced they have sold 1.5m WP7 phones in 6 weeks with 10 different phones on 60 carriers in 30 countries. Considering Apple TV is/was a 'hobby' and WP7 a major platform initiative with a 500 million ad budget... )

Out of 3 WSJ Mossberg's Best of Year Products Apple wins one and ties another

Walt Mossberg tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal has put out his Best and Worst Products of 2010.


Here they are:


Walt’s Best Products of 2010
1. Apple iPad
2. 4G wireless networks
3. Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S


Walt’s Worst Products of 2010
1. Dell Streak
2. Google TV
3. TiVo Premiere

Forbes: "Apple and the Mac: No iPad Cannibalization in sight"

Bruce Upbin of Forbes wrote : "People have been wondering if and when the iPad is going to finally start cannibalizing Mac sales. It hasn’t happened yet. In the year of the iPad’s release, Mac sales continue to break records. Apple sold 3.89 million Macs in the fourth quarter, up 27% over the 2009’s fourth quarter. It sold 3.47 million in the third quarter, up 33% over 2009. The fact that quarterly growth rate is slowing is suggestive, of what I’m not sure.

As Apple drops Wikileaks app, Google keeps it. Will Apple be a Wikileaks target?

Bazinger (an investment site) staff writer Jonathan Chen speculates that Apple which this week removed the Wikileaks app from it's App Store might become a target for Wikileaks.

"  "Is it likely that Apple could become a target? Of course," said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit."Anyone that distances themselves from WikiLeaks could potentially become a cyber target."  "

Steve Jobs is Financial Times 'Person of the Year'

AppleInsider reports that Steve Jobs has been voted UK's Financial Times person of the year. Financial Times considers Steve Jobs unveiling of the iPad as capping "the most remarkable comeback in modern business history"


"Of all the fingers that Apple has poked into Microsoft's eyes over the years, none can have rankled as much as the early success of the iPad," the report reads. "Mr. Gates himself championed a tablet computer nearly a decade ago, though the stylus needed to write on its screen and the PC-like interface generated little demand."

Taiwan race car celeb claims he has a 7 inch iPad prototype and a clue why Steve Jobs says 7 inch tabs are DOA

A well known Taiwanese race car driver celebrity claims that he has a prototype 7 inch iPad.

Steve Jobs has said "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad ... These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival". He argued that the only reason competitors are building them is because they can't match the price point of the $499 iPad with a 10 inch screen.

1.5 m Windows Phones sold on sixty carriers vs 1 m iPhones on one carrier

On Dec 21 Achim Berg, VP of business and marketing for Windows Phone 7 announced "We are pleased that phone manufacturers sold over 1.5 million phones in the first six weeks, which helps build customer momentum and retail presence." WP7 is of course the major overhaul of Microsoft's phone platform, a completely new OS from the end of line Windows Mobile. It was designed to take on Google's Android and Apple's iPhone.


1.5m sold in 6 weeks is pretty dismal.

Steve Jobs Action Figure Apparently sold for $2500 on ebay.

A few weeks back sales of hot selling limited edition Steve Jobs figurines were stopped by an Apple injunction. Now AppleInsider says one them was apparently sold on ebay for a whooping $2500 a big gain from the figurines original $79.90. Analysts say Apple probably stopped sales due to the unauthorized use of the Apple logo and other copyrighted items.

read more at AppleInsider with nice close-up photos.

Google Chrome and Nexus S Twin Daggers at Microsoft's Heart?

Rich Jaroslovsky at Bloomberg argues that Google is less a threat to Apple than to Microsoft. It's Chrome OS and Nexus S smart phone are 'twin daggers at Microsoft's heart'.


He writes "On the surface, neither seems particularly menacing.... Still, the two devices represent an enormous threat to Microsoft and its chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer. The success of Android is rapidly foreclosing Microsoft’s growth prospects as more computing is done on mobile devices. Meanwhile, Chrome OS takes dead aim at its great twin cash cows: the Windows and Microsoft Office franchises" . Google's great competitive advantage:  "Google offers Android to manufacturers at a price that Microsoft can’t beat: free."

Charged Insider Trader says even mentioning the prototype iPad codename K48 could get you fired

Recently four people were arrested in a probe into insider trading in tech companies. One of them Walter Shimoon worked in Flextronics which builds for Apple.  Apparently Shimoon was privy to various Apple trade secrets including that the new iPhone had two cameras, the iPad had none etc. Apple is well known for it's fanaticism on secrecy. Shimoon's revelations to the Feds sheds a glimmer on Apple's security policies. According to Shimoom if you worked for Apple you could get fired even if you just mentioned the codename of the yet un-released iPad which was K48. 


More on this by Larry Dignan at ZDnet
and by John Brownlee at Cult of the Mac.

JP Morgan ups Apple Stock to $420

There's been a rash of agencies upping Appl up recently. JP Morgan joins in with new target of 420.
Gene Muster's longer projection of 5 years into the future puts Aapl at $1000! (see story below).


Read more on JP Morgan's new target at Edible Apple here.

Gene Munster says Apple stock is going to $1000

Recently there various agencies have either upped their targets or initiated coverage of Apple (aapl) at pretty high targets. For example Gabelli & Co started coverage of Apple with a target of $450  and Kaufam upped it from 380 to 395  but these are one year targets.


Looking into his crystal ball Gene Munster the long time Apple analyst for Piper Jaffray argues that in five years Apple could become a $200 b revenue a year company and rocket Aapl to $1000.  Apple's market cap will then be close to a trillion $, compare this to the largest company in the world Exxon which currently has a market cap of around 360 b. 


Some people say this is crazy but as the stock is already past 320 it's only triple the current price. Only? Well a 1000 invested in Aapl 10 years ago would be worth 43000 so historically Apple has sustained such growth rates. Three years ago Aapl was only around 90 so it has already tripled. Still some still argue that as Apple gets bigger generating such huge revenues might be a challenge not to mention PE compression issues (as growth companies get very big their PE ratios tend to get smaller). Personally I think Apple stock is going to go up, how much in five years I'll have to chew more on it... 


Read Jay Yarow's article on Munster's analysis here: 

Earliest for Verizon iPhone is February?

Many people seem to be waiting for the Verizon iPhone. According to this post from Tom Kaneshige the earliest it would be is February. Why?  According to Kaneshige one big reason is "If a Verizon iPhone came out in January—that is, inside of the 30-day return policy—Verizon customers would return their Christmas phones for iPhones, leaving Verizon stuck with crushing inventory."


Squeeze Da Apple: Yeah, we think so too, if Verizon had a January iPhone launch they were be inundated with Christmas phone returns. 


Read full story here : 

Rob Enderle says Steve Jobs "He is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he’s excellent."

Marketwatch recently selected Steve Jobs to be their CEO of their decade (joining Fortune Magazine which has also earlier voted Steve similar status). The Marketwatch article  "the  Rock Star of Corporate America'  (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apples-jobs-rock-star-of-corporate-america-2010-12-08) generally gave a concise summary of Jobs' achievements and struggles. But unfortunately they also elected to quote Rob Enderle of the 'Enderle Group' who is well known  (to put it mildly)  as an Apple critic.

Enderle's website modesly touts "Rob Enderle is the King of Quotes". Of the several statements made by the King of Quotes used by Marketwatch one said about Jobs:   " He is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he’s excellent.”

I suppose Marketwatch used Enderle as in journalese to give 'balance' to the article (i.e get a critic in) but I found it in poor taste  (especially as there was nothing in the article to back up Enderle's conclusion) . Sharing my sentiments were several of the talkback commentators:

BC2009 said "The comment about Steve Jobs watching your kids was ridiculous. I wouldn't let a secret service agent watch my kids unless I personally knew and trusted the person. But Steve Jobs is no worse than any other person off the street, and better than most because he is at least a father and somebody who has run a company producing G-rated and PG-rated animated movies for children.

and ebernet: "What Steve Jobs may do as a tenacious businessman is one thing, and the way he may treat his employees. But attacking his parenting skills, his personal life, and how he interacts with his or anyone else's kids is slander, base, rude, and inexcusable."

I don't have any personal relationship with Steve Jobs and have little ideal how he treats his kids but I doubt Rob Enderle has much more of an idea either. What we do know is that Jobs is very private. We hardly see any press photos of his family. He doesn't trot them out as some celebrities are wont to do. Just checking basic web info we find that Steve Jobs has been married to Laureen Powell since 1991 and have 3 children. He also has a daughter from a previous relationship. 

One hint of  Steve Jobs current family attittude is his determination to limit porn on  iOS as he wanted them to be family devices.

During the iPhone 4 (iOS) preview in apr 2010 he said 

"“You know, there’s a porn store for Android….You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there.” 

His stand has serious consequences. Besides financial risk (many people said Porn was a big driver for example of VCRs and the internet) he suffered ferocious condemnation from certain segments/ 

For example a Gawker reporter sent this email to Jobs arguing that Apple was limiting freedom:  " I don't think it's going to f*** up my kids if someone in my house looks at a porn clip" 

Jobs stand on porn on iOS of course doesn't really tell us his ability to handle his children at home but it gives a more positive impression than a negative one. 

Rob Enderle  sometimes makes reasonable comments on tech, sometimes (especially about Apple) they are ludicrous, but this comment about we shouldn't trust steve Jobs with your kids surely slides over the limit of proprietary especially for a serious journal like Marketwatch.

This all leads to the bigger issue of how Apple is generally treated in the press. Often it seems that Apple and its CEO is treated to double standards i.e. the limits to what you won't write or use against another company or personality it's ok to use against Apple and it's staff. Look at how Apple was raked over 'Antennagate' the phone which amazingly enough is now the largest selling (by far!) smartphone in the world, getting the highest polled satisfaction ratings from users with a return rate of 1.6%. From the press reports you would think the satisfaction ratings would be the lowest etc. Perhaps in the future I would touch on further on the press' treatment of Apple.