toggle

AAPL Stock: 441.35 ( + 1.69 )

http://www.macnn.com/articles/00/12/11/business.week:/

Business Week: Apple's challenge is daunting

updated 04:40 pm EST, Mon December 11, 2000

 
", 0, 0);


Business Week takes a look at Apple's latest financial turmoils with an attitude reminiscent of 1996. "Steve Jobs has no white rabbits left in his hat. Apple appears to be facing a dead end in its business growth, the victim of mismanagement and unmitigated hubris." Readers should note that the article contains several inaccuracies, including comparing in price Apple's Power Mac G4/500MP with Cinema Display to a single-processor 700 MHz Gateway with a CRT, and noting that IBM is to blame for the PowerPC chip, incorrectly stating that the company has stopped spending money on development (also, Motorola, not IBM, is responsible for G4 chip development).


by MacNN Staff

Post tools:

TAGS :

 industry
toggle

Comments

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    Odd coming from BW

    Usually, they're far more upbeat on Apple as a business. Wonder what spooked them?

    I think I see where he got the price wrong. He tossed in the 22" Cinema Display; that's $4000 right there. Of course, that does mean the computer itself is $3500, with no monitor. That's still a little high.

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    I told you so...

    Well, I expected that the industry doomsayers would creep out from under their rocks and spell Apple's doom once again from the minor woes Apple has had lately.

    Nothing new there. Apple is healthy, just needs to get back in the CPU arena. That's all.

    - Peter
    titancity.com

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    Big White Rabbit

    It would be interesting to know how the author knows that there are no white rabbits for Steve to pull out of the hat when, with the exception of leaks and rumors, we rarely know what's to be revealed before the Mac shows. Would also be interesting to know why the biggest white rabbit of all, Mac OSX, didn't get any column space? Prehaps unveiling a radically new, but backward compatible, operating system that leapfrogs the competition and was already won praise in its *beta* form would undermine his argument?

    Save this article: Its a keeper and will be fun to refer back to it in a year ("Remember that clown who wrote...") Until then, it's a classic rehash of the same arguments we've been hearing for Apple's demise for the past 15 years...

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    what spooked them

    was while all their good reporters were at the supreme court. they let some bigoted-multiple-mistake-idiot write a column that was not error checked.

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    White _______ r invisible

    I agree with the Big White Rabbit post. The best magician is always able to surprise his audience. You'r not supposed to know if he is going to pull out a rabbit or maybe even a donkey (aka Jackass) in the form of microsoft until it's there in front of you so you can say "ooh" or "ahh". The columnist is making a stupid self-defeating statement (or whatever it's called) like "expect the unexpected."

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    This is great

    Cant wait until macnn starts posting messages like

    "We have an unconfirmed report that somebody is using a mac in Texas, this would bring the installed base backup to 107 mac users in the US"

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    no more rabbits

    we KNOW what motorola and ibm have in store - 700 mhz at most

    you can't even find a PC with less than 700 mhz - apple's margins are already pretty thin - there's no way they can cut prices in half, which is what they would have to do to compete with their PERCEIVED performance gap

    we've seen osx and MANY mac users are unhappy - i think what steve doesn't realize is that these users are not just "waiting for osx" - they are waiting for it to MATURE - i.e. they are going to wait another YEAR until it recovers all the UI features that have been removed from os9, or until ALL their software is carbon/cocoa-ized

    the rest of the world is not standing still - the pentium4's (idle pipeline) performance problems are solved by a p4-aware recompile, p4 has new altivec stuff, 64-bit itanium systems ship in january, bluetooth-equipped cameras streaming mpeg4 are available now but only compatible with pcs

    it's going to be a very rough year for apple - they are basically going to be able to do nothing except finish osx

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    f*** the BusinessWeek

    These idiots at BW should stop writing bad stuff about Apple, where they were when Apple was getting glamour and money for three years?!

    Think different, and Steve has more white rabbits, than the BW has readers!

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    letter to editor

    Here's the letter I sent to the editor of Business Week:

    Sir:

    I hope Business Week realizes how silly and unprofessional this particular column is.

    Jaffe makes gaffes that would embarrass a high-school newspaper. He also demonstrates that he has little or no knowledge regarding the technology about which he writes. Jaffe perpetuates the old misconception about clock speeds by trying to compare Intel and Motorola chips. Clock speeds between Intel and Motorola chips cannot be directly compared, as their internal architecture is radically different. A 450MHz PowerPC chip is faster than a 700MHz Intel chip for most tasks. And yes, it is Motorola who is responsible for the PowerPC chip design, not IBM, although IBM does make PowerPC chips.

    Additionally, the price comparison between a 500MHz dual-processor Mac G4 versus a 700Mhzsingle-processor Gateway machine is totally inaccurate. It seems that Jaffe included a nearly $4000 22-inch Apple Cinema Display in the Apple pricing. Shouldn't comparisons be made between similar computers? This is not reporting, gentlemem; it is libel.

    Responsible journalism requires that reporters write about topics they know something about and also that they should not impose their personal biases into their reporting. Sam Jaffe, in this column, violates both of those tenets and he, as well as Business Week, should be ashamed.

    This kind of inaccurate, one-sided reporting is not likely to enhance Business Week's reputation, you can be certain. Where was the editorial oversight that quality publications exercise?

    Now let's see if they have the balls to print it!

  1. 0

    Joined:

    0

    What's Motorola's Plan?

    From the CBC Newsworld site (http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/12/11/intel001211):


    "Intel said it has built the world's smallest and fastest transistor that will make chips up to seven times faster than the Pentium 4. The company said it can build the new CMOS transistors, the key component in microprocessors, as small as three atoms thick.

    The company said that within five to 10 years, it will build microprocessors that contain more than 400 million of these transistors, operate at speeds as fast as 10 gigahertz and require less than one volt to operate. Today's Pentium 4 processor contains 42 million transistors and runs at 1.5 gigahertz.

    Within five years it will be possible to build chips than run 10 billion operations a second, compared to the Pentium 4's 1.5 billion a second. "

    So how's Motorola planning to beat this?

Login Here

Not a member of the MacNN forums? Register now for free.

 
close
Photo
toggle

Network Headlines

toggle

Most Popular

MacNN Sponsor

Recent Reviews

MaxUpgrades MaxConnect for 2006-2008 Mac Pro

Nobody outside of Cupertino's privileged bunch knows the future of the Mac Pro line for sure. Despite Apple's reluctance to tell us wh ...

Brother HL-3170CDW LED Printer

We've mentioned before that we are far from a paperless society. For now, at least, there are tasks that require a piece of paper for ...

HTC One

It is hard to overstate just how critically important the HTC One is to the Taiwanese company’s fortunes. Despite its alarming decline ...

toggle

Most Commented