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AAPL Stock: 562.29 ( -3.03 )

Business Week: Jobs, Apple will survive

updated 04:00 pm EST, Wed December 13, 2000


Just days after Business Week published a scathing—and somewhat inaccurate—review of Apple's current situation, a Business Week article today explains that CEO Steve Jobs will be able to get Apple through its recent troubles. "What really counts here is Jobs's ability to stay nimble, changing direction quickly with the market. Nimble companies survive difficult times. After that, success is pretty much up to the company's customers."


by MacNN Staff

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  1. 0

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    12/13, 05:02pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Jaffe is an Idiot

    The guy that wrote the original article is a boob. Not only was the article inaccurate, but he updated it after receiving tons of emails pointing out his errors and didn't indicate anywhere that the article had changed.

  1. 0

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    12/13, 05:18pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    He's now in deep s***

    ....

  1. 0

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    12/13, 05:40pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    e-mail the editors

    goto:
    http://www.businessweek.com/info/mastheads/domast.htm

    Their e-mail systems like this:
    firstname_lastname@businessweek.com

    that is an underscore between the first and last names.

    I tried building a comparable system at Gateway and neither a DVD-RAM nor gigabyte Ethernet was an option. Both of which adds cost and features to the G4 used in his comparison.

    Maybe they need to rewrite their rewrite to remove some of their biases and lack of fact checking.

  1. 0

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    12/13, 06:15pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Original article was OK..

    Shock horror! Except if you view it as it was - a guy who knows a lot about how to read stocks but isn't a tech-head (and why should he be) it was quite right. He looked at Apple's financials, and right now they're not encouraging for someone who's not a computer expert wondering where to put their money.

    As for the Cube vs PC thing, he did what non-expert would-be buyers do: he said "it goes this fast, OK (500 MHz)... hmm, only comparison is this 700MHz thing.. and it has this much RAM... so does this. Wowee, big price difference!"

    Which goes to show that the average punter hasn't yet learnt beyond MHz and RAM. That's a fact Jobs has acknowledged in his talk about the "megahertz gap". So Apple users know it's not true, but most folk - especially would-be first-time buyers - don't. (Imagine though how it would have been if by some accident of design RISC actually ran at a higher MHz than CISC. Hmmm.)

    This article isn't in the paper edition (likely won't be). The writer will no doubt feel that Apple folk are nuts. Too few people read the article trying to see why he had written it as he had. Chances of him being an anti-Apple zealot: nil. Chances of him being a good investment writer who doesn't have his head wrapped around OS wars: very very high.

    Charles

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    12/13, 07:25pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Due Diligence- Charles

    DD -its what we call due diligence in investment circles. It is how you find out all you can about a company before you buy its stock. Its why some people get burned by buying stocks they know nothing about. So, no, Jaffe isn't a good investment writer. If he was he would, ....wait for it.....investigate his facts. I mean, after all, it IS why they pay him to do his job. There is NO excuse for the complete lack of professionalism he displayed in his article. Bad Jaffe, Bad!

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    12/13, 08:06pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Quit making excuses.

    Jaffe deserved the scathing retorts, considering that POS "article" he concocted in a cave somewhere in Romania. He offered nothing new. He only dumped more s*** atop an already amassing pile of s***.

    And why would you entrust your bills to someone who doesn't even know how to compare apples to oranges correctly, Charles?

  1. 0

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    12/13, 10:07pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Why buy based on stock?

    Now come on... why would you base your computer purchase on the stock performance of a company? You buy a computer based on the quality, service values, and performace that you see in the brand. Remember stocks are used to create "forward-looking statements that are not definite and cannot be used to determine a precise course of events."

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    12/14, 12:40am | report spam | Reply | delete

    He responded

    I wrote this guy a nice note pointing out he should refrain in the future from speaking about something he does not understand.

    Mr. Jaffe actually took the time to write me back trying to justify his article and claims the editors did not catch the fact the machine INCLUDED a $4000 Cinema display.

    I can post his response if you guys want to read it...

  1. 0

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    12/14, 07:39am | report spam | Reply | delete

    Sure, post it...

    It would be good to see his response. I also emailed him saying that I thought his analysis of the stock was pretty good. (No response so far. Maybe he just started bulk-deleting after the first 10,000...)

    I repeat: if you look at the original article as coming from the point of view of someone who doesn't know a lot about computer companies - because anyone reading this likely knows _a lot_, far more than the average user - he was on the mark. Apple does *not* have any vast rabbits to pull from hats. Any handheld would have to be a PalmOS, so that's just licensing, and it won't overtake Handspring. So, no rabbit there.

    OS X is presently only going to be for PPC G3 - so no stunning attack on the Intel server/Linux/W2K market there, no rabbit.

    The iMac has been done once - why again? No rabbit there.
    The fact is that the whole PC industry is casting around trying to work out what the next thing is that people really want. Best guess is that it's a combo handheld-phone. Apple is completely not in that space - no licensing deals or anything (unless it's keeping them totally under wraps, which would be weird).

    No matter that you *and I* may wish that OS X will part the Red Sea and raise the dead, the fact is that in wider computer terms the entire PC market is slowing down and not even the reality distortion field will alter that fact. Mr RDF even *said* it was happening in his analyst discussion with the profit warning.

    As a piece of investment advice, plus an insight into how novice buyers would view the choice between computers, I still think this was not wrong. Or else point me to three analysts who are calling Apple a "strong buy" right now. There is nothing dramatic that's obvious in Apple's prospects which would make a stock picker choose them as having a clear upside.

    I *am* going to buy a new Apple machine in the new year, but for reasons completely unrelated to any of these other issues. We simply need two in the family now, is all. It ain't going to be a Cube, though. That's for sure.

    Charles

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