Microsoft still beats Apple in cash and investments, for now

Filed under: Apple Financial, Apple Back during the earnings call a few weeks ago, it was mentioned that Apple has a jaw-dropping almost $40 billion just sitting around in cash. In the chat, we started talking about other companies that might have that much money in the hopper -- Google came up, but I don't think we were able to guess another one. But it turns out Apple isn't even the most flush company out there, and the name of the first might surprise you: According to this chart on...

Filed under: Apple Financial, Apple Back during the earnings call a few weeks ago, it was mentioned that Apple has a jaw-dropping almost $40 billion just sitting around in cash. In the chat, we started talking about other companies that might have that much money in the hopper -- Google came up, but I don't think we were able to guess another one. But it turns out Apple isn't even the most flush company out there, and the name of the first might surprise you: According to this chart on Silicon Alley Insider, Microsoft is currently sitting on just slightly more money than even Apple, with Google and Intel coming close behind; although Apple briefly pulled ahead of MS at the end of 2008, the Redmond Revenue Racers had more cash through most of '09 than Apple did. Well how 'bout that. Of course, the current curves are not so favorable to Microsoft (after the Win7 update push slows down a bit) so it may not be long before Apple's pile grows even bigger. We can probably look for some significant acquisitions from all of these companies very soon -- with the rest of the economy down and lots of interesting ideas looking to sell, odds are we'll see some of this money spent on worthy purchases. [via Cult of Mac]TUAWMicrosoft still beats Apple in cash and investments, for now originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Microsoft - Google - Cult of Mac - Unofficial Apple Weblog

  • TUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010

    Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, AppleIt's the end of another calendar year, which can mean only two things. First, every blog is going to be posting lists of 2009 retrospectives, and second, there are going to be a lot of posts filled with completely off-target predictions for 2010. So that we're not leaving our readership sitting in the dark wondering what the TUAW bloggers are prognosticating for the next year, here are our wild guesses well-researched and intelligent predictions for Apple in 2010. Enjoy 'em, and from all of us at TUAW, have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and Day. Steve Sande Big DUH! The Apple Tablet arrives. There are way too many hints flying around the blogosphere for this to be a non-product for another year. It's gotta happen! The Apple TV disappears from the Apple lineup. I hates it, I does. It just doesn't seem like an Apple product. iPhone moves to multiple US carriers, but not Verizon. Why? Wrong network for a world (read GSM) phone, and I think Apple is probably irritated with Verizon's Droid and their advertising. Apple closes some low-producing Apple Stores. The economy is still bad, and there have to be some locations with stores that aren't pulling their weight. Apple buys Dropbox, BackBlaze, and Evernote, makes MobileMe useful. Dropbox for better and faster folder syncing between devices, BackBlaze for external backups to the cloud, Evernote just because it's cool. Add 'em all together and what do you have? Something that's really worth paying $99 a year for. Apple definitely has the cash to buy these services. The Apple TV reappears in the Apple lineup as a high-quality autostereoscopic 3DTV with TiVo, Slingbox, and Boxee functionality built in. I can dream, can't I? Erica Sadun I'm hoping this will be the year of the tablet. Of course, I've been anticipating the year of the tablet since, oh say, around 1993 or so. Apple's future isn't about the hardware though, and it's not about their OS line: it's about their ability to deliver media. I'm thinking "iTunes gone large". Apple's Lala acquisiition, rumored TV deals, and possible textbook distribution agreements point to a renewed focus on content delivery devices. Admittedly, Apple TV has never really evolved into its promise, perhaps due to areas into which Apple was not able to expand due to licensing deals with companies with Cable/Broadband interests but the iPhone has gone above and beyond in the media realm. So do I see a tablet (or a line of tablet devices) as a natural extension of the Apple content store? Absolutely. Will we see it this year? Possibly. Will it be early this year? Hard to say. Ask me again in a month. Michael Rose The tablet, yes, there will be one, it will be spectacular, and about three months after introduction it will drop in price by $200. People who bought the original version would be annoyed except they're so giddy from having had a piece of the future in their knapsacks for three months. We'll see Apple get serious about cloud services by buying a company that's doing online storage right (Dropbox guys, don't make your numbers unlisted) and creating a capability that will actually rival some of the more effective platforms out there. Apple needs a Microsoft Mesh-like solution to really unlock the portable power of its devices. Then again, the tablet. 2010 will be the year that hackintoshes become more than a distraction and a legal burden. The Psystar battle shows that Apple knows there's risk, and sooner or later the netbooks-on-OS-X market will collide with the business realities of Apple's day to day operations. Then again, the tablet. We'll see a secondary carrier for the iPhone in the US (yay!). It will not be Verizon (darn!), it will be T-Mobile. The Verizon iPhone is a 2011 phenomenon, but by then the prevalence of portable Wi-Fi and VoIP solutions for mobile will start to scratch away at the cellphone market's power. Then again, the tablet. Mac OS X 10.7 will return us to 'new features' land; we'll learn about it at WWDC and see it by 2011. Mel Martin There will be a tablet. Even though Steve Jobs said Apple wasn't working on one, remember he also denied the iPhone was coming for a long time too. There seems to be a crescendo of stories about the tablet (i-Slate, i-Pad, whatever) and that's a pretty good indication something is on the way. Changes to MobileMe. Maybe cheaper, certainly some new features. The system has come a long way, but it can hardly be called reliable, and I think for the money it needs more features and/or a lower price. The notification system could use some improving as well. When things go down it seems to take an awfully long time for Apple support to post something about it. A new AppleTV. I think something is likely, something beyond the current hardware/software. I like my AppleTV, but it is still feature poor and very limited in sources for video. Apple should get something a bit more interesting out, or hang this product out to dry. Blu-ray. Originally Apple was a big proponent of this hi-rez video disc. Now, not so much. I expect Apple will have to start adding Blu-ray to desktops and laptops, maybe even to the AppleTV. Sure there have been some licensing cost issues, but others are getting past it and offering it on windows based hardware. Come on Apple, get with it. Apple will get 'Back to my Mac' working. It was a highly touted feature of MobileMe, but for a large population of Mac users, it simply doesn't work. Hard to get excited about a feature I pay for and can't use. Other applications seem to be able to solve these router and security issues. Back to my Mac should just work. A new iPhone. The easiest prediction of all to make. They seem to come out like clockwork, and force many of us to ditch our older models and re-up with our favorite carrier. Speaking of favorite carriers, I think Apple will finally end AT&T exclusivity. Apple's image has taken a beating over AT&T service and support. The world's best smartphone shouldn't be stuck on the world's worst network. I think Apple will change this. Apple market share will continue to increase. Apple users are generally happy users, and Apple users tend to be evangelical about their experiences. In both the U.S., and around the globe, I expect Apple to increase share of laptops, desktops, iPhones and following on that, OS share. Apple will move more services to the 'cloud'. MobileMe is certainly there, iWork looks like it is heading that direction as well. Microsoft and Google have ambitious cloud-based designs, so it's an easy prediction, and a likely outcome. Most predictions will be wrong. There's something about predicting the future. Things take unexpected turns and don't come out exactly as planned. The film '2001' is really dated, and 'Space 1999', well, it looks pretty silly today. My favorite bad prediction? The GM produced film [YouTube Video link] done for the 1939 World's Fair that predicted the sixties. My, what a miss. Michael Grothaus The iPod classic will be no more. By September 2010 the iPod touch will have a max capacity of 128GB, making the iPod classic look archaic and redundant. The iPod lineup will solely consist of 'iPod touch' and 'iPod' - the former 'iPod nano' that maxes out at 32GB. The iSlate is announced in January, followed by a mid-year product launch. The iSlate will make the iPhone look 2005. It will have multi-touch on front and back of the device. Sometime during the year there will be an interesting anecdote about Steve Jobs showing the iSlate to a famous industrial designer (no, not Johnny Ive) this past December whom Jobs then attempted to call a cab for when the designer was leaving Jobs' "modest" home. The industrial designer will tell how Jobs, the most creative tech genius on the planet, had trouble calling a cab from his home phone. Apple (AAPL) stock will hit $300 a share and the stock will do a 2-for-1 split. The iPhone will be the #1 smartphone in the world by a wide margin by December 2010. Blackberry will be #2, and the Google Phone will be a distant third. Palm isn't even a blip on the radar. 'The iSlate will bomb.' Or so will say numerous tech CEOs who will bemoan its 'limited appeal'. They will all be wrong. And though the iSlate won't kill it until 2011, the Kindle will be handed its hat at the door in 2010. Apple will partner with Visa and Mastercard for turning your iPhone into a swipe credit card using the 4th gen iPhone's RFID chip. iLife 2010 will replace iDVD with 'iLP'. iLP will allow users to easily created iTunes LP albums which they can instantly upload to MobileMe for download onto their friends and families new AppleTVs. The new AppleTV will have the cable companies quaking in their pants. Steve Jobs wants to do for the broadcast industry what he did for the music, movie, mobile, and publishing industries. 32" LED Cinema Display. iPhone: Two more US carriers, one of them Verizon. OLED screen and new industrial design that takes lessons from the iSlate. iPhone OS 4.0. Expect to see a multi-touch surface on the iPhone that is not part of the screen. iTunes Store: another late-year redesign to help facilitate making app search easier. Tabbed browsing. Apps top 200,000. Mike Schramm I think we'll finally see the iTablet this year, but it'll be much closer to an iPhone or a Kindle than a traditional tablet computer, with complete App Store integration and a relatively limited UI. The iPhone will finally be released to multiple carriers, T-Mobile first among them. And Apple will focus on cloud services -- they'll host your music and documents online whenever you want them, accessible from all your Apple devices and/or Apple software. What, those aren't out-on-a-limb enough for you? The Mac Pro will get a major update, possibly even a rebranding. The Apple TV will start running App Store apps. And the iPod touch will finally get a camera. Victor Agreda, Jr. Apparently the tablet is a forgone conclusion, so I'll just say that the tablet is just the beginning... I predict that Apple's tablet move will nearly cement its reign in the digital home of tomorrow. Apple will begin partnering with companies such as LG, KitchenAid and others to bring integration into the kitchen, the spare room, etc. The tablet ecosystem and 3rd-party markets will soon resemble the iPod ecosystems from just a few years ago. Remember the iPod dock with built-in toilet paper dispenser? Prepare yourself for a mirror with enough transparency so you can shave AND read your iTablet at the same time. Apple will also spend 2010 getting into the cloud like never before. iWork, iTunes and iLife will be the first to get online application, further hooks and functionality. But at WWDC Apple will announce 10.7 and some "really amazing" features that leverage the power of the internet with the power of their OS. Online backups? Yes, and probably something new and a little bit innovative to deal with what is now at least a decade for many of us with digital cameras... You didn't think iPhoto's crappy behavior when confronted by huge libraries would go on forever, did you? Speaking of data management, depending on which winds the wireless ones blow, Apple may tie ever more services from app makers to its own cloudy ambitions. Look for some ad-fueled functionality to be provided free to tablet and iPhone users, and for announcements regarding iPhone on other networks... Plus look for some needed upgrades to the iPhone OS itself. Apple isn't dumb enough to ignore the jailbreak community and many of the awesome, time-saving tweaks found there. PogoPlank is one example and Stacks is another. Why can't I see the weather without unlocking my phone? Fixing things like this will put an end to some of the "Droid Does" nonsense.TUAWTUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Steve Jobs - Microsoft - Apple Store - Apple Tablet

  • Apple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW

    Filed under: Other Events11:12 SYNCS exactly like iPhone or iPod touch.Sync everything: media, calendars, apps, etc. Connect via usb sync 11:11 Great pricing! Want! Eng: 11:11AM And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc. 11:11: GIZ Jason Chen: What is Apple going to charge for each of the iWork apps? $9.99 each, so $30 if you want all. 11:10: Eng: 11:10AM It looks as though these new dropdowns menus are a major part of the iPad OS. Will be interesting to see how this translates to the iPhone and iPod touch. Is there going to be room? Or will they be left out entirely? 11:10 All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen. (via Macworld) 11:10: GIZ Jason Chen: So far we've covered ebooks and newspapers (TV and movies were already there from the iPhone), but we haven't covered magazines yet. I wonder what that's going to be like. gdgt: Showing the spreadsheet-centric soft keyboard. Auto-fields and sums showing as inferred. Pretty neat for a spreadsheet. Then again, it's still a spreadsheet. 11:10 Manipulating charts is a dream. 11:09: "I could see this being used as a cash register like the new card swipe systems at the Apple Store now. Be really easy to manage inventory too." -- Megan 11:08: Data entry keyboard. This is one of the amazing thing about touch entry keyboards. Showing that there are custom keyboards, all meant to help context entry. Over 250 options built in. Help built in. Mike Jones: "Nice new 10 key keyboard." 11:07: Now numbers demo. Let's do some typical spreadsheet tasks. Showing how you can manipulate tables. But what about data entry? 11:07: Mike Jones: "there's an awful lot of space around the screen that is making me wonder if they've added touch sensitivity to the edges" Sang: "one thing i notice about this, as opposed to the courier, is the lack of "floating" palettes. iPad's paletttes are more on-demand" 11:07: Demoing the page navigator. And showing the automated text wrap features. Yes. THIS: 11:06AM New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats. 11:06: Sande: "Spaces is *made" for the iPad". Mel: "I think this may kill netbooks if the price is right." Mike Jones: "I'm thinking if they do multitasking they will do it immediately after iWork" 11:05: Big applause after iWork presentation. Big. GIZ Jason Chen: I suppose the iPad would be a pretty good presentation device, letting you see the screens on your device and controlling it while it's being projected onto a wall through the 30-pin dock connector. (Video out is still unconfirmed, this is just my guess.) 11:04 "What about multitasking?" -- Megan 11:04: Eng: 11:03AM We'll say this -- iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data. 11:03: "Look! I just done a mask, an advanced technique and it's easy". Now demoing how to do animations. Easy built-in animations, scaling, translation, etc. These are transitions between slides right now. Very easy, "with just my finger!!" 11:02: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice! 11:01: How do you do this without keyboard or mouse? Demonstrating gestures. Sang:"how awesome would it be if steve's been doing the presentation the whole time using iPad's keynote" 11:00 Amazing software. Want to be the first to show you. Let's show keynote. It runs in landscape orientation, because that's the standard for slides.And you first see your slide library. Gorgeous templates. What you'd expect. 11:00 Completely new version of Keynote: Specifically for the iPad. Create presentations with your fingers. Most beautiful word processor you'll ever see. New version of numbers. 10:58 re: iWork: "What they came up with is really magnificent". About to do iWork demo. 10:58 And now for something exciting. Looking at creating a version of iWork for iPhone a year ago. iPhone? Really? But iPad! Win. 10:57: "i was expecting more "eye-friendly" text, i.e. e-ink. i can't picture myself staring at this screen reading a novel" -- Sang 10:56 Steve showing off the store. Book at $14.99. "And that is iBooks" gdgt: Tap right or left to change the page - or drag the page manually. Very nice! GIZ Jason Chen: You can skip directly to chapters from the table of contents, and there are photos, as you'd expect. gdgt: "We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well." 10:56 Eng: 10:56AM The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation. 10:56: amazon: 0.75 +1.27‎ (1.06%‎) 10:56: "Still no mention of 3G connectivity. Is it WiFi only?" -- Mel Martinaz "Only WiFi so far" -- Mike Schramm 10:55 Five big partners...Penguin, McMillon, Simon &Schuster, and more. Mike R: Wil Shipley's head just exploded 10:54: *blink* This afternoon? Really? 10:53: NEW iBOOK STORE: Fully integrated with iBooks app. Read your eBooks right on your iPad, NY Times bestseller lists, 5 of the largest pubs in the world, all their books on the store. Open the floodgates with the rest of the pubs starting this afternoon. 10:52 Want to show you another one of *our* apps. Amazon pioneered with Kindle. We're standing on their shoulders and going further. This is reading a book on kindle. iBooks announced. 10:52: Apple iPad page still not up. 10:50 More details about Major League Baseball. By the by, the Apple Store? Still up. Nothing shipping today. gdgt Game video with overlays, this is pretty dope. If you're a baseball fan, seems like this is probably going to be your new preferred viewing experience. Scott's back. 10:49 Next App: Major League Baseball. Looking at live game experience. "unless somethign dramatic happens in the next 10 minutes it's just a flat iPod touch." -- Dave Caolo; Isn't this 90 minutes? -- Erica 10:48 It's so PRETTY! Want one, want, want, want. Engadget: "10:48AM Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool.", gdgt: Touch and accelerator-enabled (of course). Tap the mirror to look behind. "A game like NFS really pushes the limits, so we wanted to show you just how fast this can really go." 10:47 Demo of game. Showing really cool racing game, first person viewpoint. 10:47: EAGuy: "really excited about iPad. Showing demo. Gorgeous 3d, showing racing game. 10:46 Electronic Arts up next. Number One mobile publisher of games. 10:46: Eng: 10:46AM This is very slick -- probably the most impressive demo yet. A very sophisticated use of the screen real estate. Brushes for the iPad looks like you can go pretty deep. Available at product launch. 10:44: Showing undo/redo. Wide range of brushes, etc. Digital finger painting. Megan: "Could you imagine Photoshop on this? It'll kill the Cintiq tablet: apple-creation-0275-rm-eng.jpg" 10:44: gdgt: Next up: an app called Brushes, an art browser. Can zoom in up to 32 times. Engadget: "10:45AM "Today I'd like to show you how brushes looks on the iPad." This is nice. Context menus for brush and color options. We're loving these new pop-over menus. No more diving!" 10:44: Taking full advantage of iPad firmware 3.2 (It's 3.2, not 4.0) 10:44: gdgt: Reading [the NYT app] syncs to the iPhone app. Inline video clips. 10:43 Megan: "Needs to be designed better. HIRE ME!!" Sang: "imagine using Keynote on the iPad. it'd be money" Megan: "This is the future of newspaper design" gdgt "We're incredibly psyched to pioneer the next generation of digital journalism." Ha, Martin Nisenholtz said "psyched." 10:42 Steve showed you the NY Times website. It's beautiful. So why do a new app for iPad? Our iPhone app downloaded 3Million times. Want to create something special for iPad 10:42 "gdgt: Martin: "Steve showed you the NYT site on the iPad, it's unbelievably beautiful. Why did we come out three weeks ago to develop an app for the iPad?" Wait, three weeks? Scott said peeps had 2 weeks. Anyway! "We think that we've captured the essence of reading a newspaper... all in a native app."" 10:41 Martin Nisenholtz of NYT. Martin is EVP of digital for the times 10:40 Next up New York Times. 10:38 Really excited about poss. for devs on iPad. "The iPad version of Nova ships later this year..." Interesting. Scott is back. "Next up, the New York Times."" 10:38 Demos. "gdgt Showing a title called Nova. This looks pretty decent, but still a tiny bit choppy. But hey, this was done in two weeks, so I'm gonna cut these guys some slack." 10:38 Devs invited 2 weeks ago. Will show you what they came up with. Mark Hickey of Gameloft is up. 10:38 "By the way, if they're available today, I'll be running to the Apple Store imediatly - 4 miles away." --- Steve Sande 10:37: Rewrote all our apps for this display. New SDK supports devs for new size. Can automatically scale app to full screen, can save profiles, and have it work in both systems. 10:36: Eep. 10:36 NEW SDK OUT TODAY!!!!! Sorry, but I think I just have to *eep* 10:36 Eng: "So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display." 10:35 Interface Builder is going to have to be smart about using dual resolution apps. 10:35 Pixel doubling. Eng: 10:34AM Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth. 10:34 Showing game video, "Video works great on the iPad", And 10:33AM Gaming obviously will handle this better, but a text heavy app looks lonely or weirdly huge. 10:33: "It just works." Demoing facebook now. It just scales up. Facebook uses text, video, etc. What app really drives graphics hw? Games do! 10:33 Eng: 10:33AM "Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook. 10:32: Forstall: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. YAY! I think my inner Apple fangrrl just sqeed herself out. 10:32: All new built in applications. And Scott Forstall, sr vp of iphone softwar to talk aboutApp Store. 10:30: Scott Forstall on stage. 10:30 16-64 GB of flash storage. A MONTH, a freaking MONTH of standby. I am awed. Arsenic free, green and lovely. 10:30: Eng: "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10:30 Eng: 10:30AM "What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time." 10:30 This chip will *scream*. Latest in wireless networking. "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10 FREAKING HOURS OF BATTERY. 10:29: "as mentioned in every bit of upcoming advertising." -- Dave Winograd. 10:28: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It's realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display. 10:26: Now showing videos, movies. That is video on the iPad. That's a little overview of what the iPad can do. 10:26: "This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it's got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you've got a bunch of screen space.(via Macworld)" 10:25: Let's go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube. Again, let's go to landscape mode. And that's Youtube. Again, related clips, etc. Portrait, landscape. (Steve really really likes the portrait/landscape thing today) Movies, TV Shows, Music videos, etc. 10:24 Go to our current location in the maps app (Maps demo) in San Francisco. Should findall the sushi places nearby. mmmm sushi... And here's a sushi bar. Great demo. Mild, not wild, applause. That's maps. Let me show you video. 10:24 Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld) 10:23 Demoing iTunes now. Looking at calendar, again? Steve Sande: "I bet 24,343 Macbooks just went up for sale on eBay" Contact, calendar, address book, Also got a great maps app. Again, the eiffel tower,tap the corner, and pinch as big as we like. 10:22 TUAW staffers wondering about possible fingerprint tech for unlocking? Dave Caolo: "gotta agree: I think there's a 'wow factor' surprise lurking" jEng: 10:22AM Steve is playing more Dylan! iTunes: 10:22: Steve finishes slideshow demo to LOUD applause. Looknow at music collection, iPod, scroll through albums, tap to play. Eng: 10:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We've got a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to come. 10:21: NYT wonders if this is the end of the laptop. Mike Rose: "WE HAZ BROKE THE INTERNETS" 10:20 Show you a map of all the places you've taken photographs. e.g. Photos I took in Paris. Built in slide shows as well as single image display. Picka transition, pick music. (This is on the iPhone too, right now. So not a new feature.) 10:20 Really good closeup of the keyboard: 10:19 Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps. 10:18: Engadget: Wow, nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right. 10:17: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris...As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo'ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking. 10:16 Grab the tablet in the kitchen... A whole website in the palm of your hands. Read national geographic, for example. Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail. 10:12 Great slide show stuff built in. Built in a calendar, see a months' activities, a days', built in, a great address book, contacts, GOOGLE MAPS, satellite view, etc. iPad is an aweesome way to enjoy your music colleciton, and of course, ...iTunes, purchase movies, apps, music, etc. HIGH DEF YOUTUBE 10:12 Whole web page. It's phenomenal. It's incredible. Focus inon a message, see your inbox, turn it sideways (landscape and portrait support), keyboard pops up. It's almost lifesize, it's a dream. Your photos, your albums, your events, etc. 10:10 Very, very thin. Can change the background, Winterboard it out the wazoo (Winterboard is the jailbreak theming app) "Best browsing experience you'll ever have with a whole web page right in front of you. Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone" 10:10 It's the iPad. Mike R: "My iPad, let me show it to you. PREEECCCIIOOUS." Let me show it to you. Wild wild applause. 10:10: Some people have thought about netbooks: sThe problem is netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING." Applause. "They're just cheap laptops." We think we got something better. AND WE'D LIKE TO SHOW IT TO YOU TODAY. 10:09: Something better for browsing the web than a laptop? Watching videos? Something better? Media collection, playing games? If there's going to be a 3rd category of device, has to be better at these tasks. 10:08 Is there room for a third category of device? It's the tablet, of course... Steve is making a case for the mobile niche of Apple. gdgt: "In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks - important things - better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web..." 10:06 In 1991,In Apple shipped first modern laptop computer. Apple invented it. With an LCD screen. In 2007, Apple reinvented the phone. 2 years later, the iPhone 3GS. Apple is laptops, Apple is smart phones. 10:05 Steve: "Apple is a mobile devices company" How does Apple stack up against other companies that sell mobile devices. By revenue, is largest Mobile Device company in the world. More than Sony, etc. 15.6B in revenue. Bigger than Nokia. "apple is larger than sony mobile products division" -- via twit gdgt: "Lastly, we started apple in 1976 - 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter with 15.6 billion in revenue." Big applause. "That means Apple is over a 50 billion dollar company - I like to forget that, because that's not how we think of Apple, but it's pretty amazing." 10:05: GIZ Jason Chen: Next update: App Store. There are over 140,000 applications in the App Store. "A few weeks ago we announced a user downloaded the 3 billionth app from the App Store." 10:04 gdgt: "Last holiday quarter we had over 250 million visitors to our stores." Talking about the new New York stores. "It's so wonderful to be putting these stores right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels good. Next update: app store." WE ARE SWITCHING TO TRADITIONAL LIVE BLOG. Cover It Live is not responding. Happy Tablet Day! Here at TUAW, we are so excited to be able to share the moment with all of you stopping by. Today, we'll be metaliveblogging all the major outlets including Engagdet, Ars, and so forth. And adding to the metaliveblogging goodness, we'll be layering TUAW's own special touch of analysis and opinion on top of the summaries we'll be scraping from other sites. So thank you for joining us. Today we'll be covering feeds from: Today we'll be covering feeds from: Engadget Macworld Ars Technica MacNN Gizmodo and more..."Our Latest Creation" The Apple Media Event TUAW MetaliveblogTUAWApple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Engadget - Macworld - TUAW - Ars Technica

  • 10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check

    Filed under: iPod Family, Portables, Odds and endsOver at TechRepublic's 10 Things blog, Debra Littlejohn Shinder has posted an article called "10 reasons why I'll be passing on the iPad." Some of her reasoning is sound, but quite a few of her points are easy to refute. It's worth looking at her post and the points it tries to make, because it's indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of not only the iPad's capabilities, but also its intended consumer base. 1. There's no physical keyboard Debra's correct that the iPad has no physical keyboard. But what she fails to account for is that not only will Apple sell a keyboard dock for the iPad, the device can also be paired with any existing Bluetooth keyboard. Apple's reasoning for not including a physical keyboard on the iPad is even more compelling than for the iPhone, because unlike the iPhone, you at least have the option of pairing the iPad with a physical keyboard. In order to put a physical keyboard on the device itself, there'd be two options: keep the iPad the same size and sacrifice a third of the screen's real estate, or increase the iPad's size beyond what some (including Debra) already consider unwieldy in order to include a keyboard. In landscape orientation, the iPad's virtual keyboard is nearly the size of a conventional keyboard, too, so while touch typing is going to be a challenge, it's a fair bet that typing on the iPad will be much faster and easier than the high end of 30 - 35 WPM thumb typing many people (myself included) achieve on the iPhone's far smaller keyboard. The lack of a physical keyboard on the iPhone hasn't measurably affected its sales; the iPad isn't likely to suffer many lost sales from this, either. Check out the other nine points by clicking the Read More link below. 2. One size doesn't fit all Debra claims that if the iPad is supposed to be a niche device positioned between a phone and a netbook, it should have a screen size midway between the two -- in other words, smaller than a 9.7" screen. However, that's not how Steve Jobs positioned the iPad at all during the keynote; Jobs's Keynote slide clearly showed the iPad filling a gap between the iPhone/iPod touch and a 13" MacBook. It's puzzling that in one sentence Debra complains about the iPad being too large to fit in your pocket, while in the next sentence she extols the virtues of Sony's VAIO X netbooks, which are almost exactly the same size - in terms of weight and thickness anyway. The VAIO X has an 11.1" 16:9 display, which actually makes it quite a bit larger than the iPad. One other thing about the VAIO X is quite a bit larger than the iPad: the price, which starts at $1299 -- far more expensive than even the priciest iPad. While it's true the iPad won't fit in your pocket, it's still far more portable than even a MacBook Air. Stephen Colbert even managed to pull one out of his jacket at the Grammys, so while the iPad is larger than an iPhone, it's far from the unwieldy monster many people are trying to claim it is. 3. It runs a phone OS One thing many pundits fail to account for is that the iPhone OS is actually a version of OS X adapted for a touchscreen device. No, there's no Finder, Dock, or menu bar. No, there's no Exposé, Spaces, or Time Machine. But the underpinnings of the iPhone OS are exactly the same as those of the Mac version of OS X. So when people complain the iPad doesn't run OS X, they're really pining for OS X features like the ones I already mentioned -- the Finder, Dock, menu bar, etc. However, none of those OS X features are particularly suited to a touchscreen device, especially one with a 9.7" screen. Tablet PCs running the full version of Windows have already demonstrated the pitfalls of running an OS meant for a larger device with a traditional point-and-click interface, and as a result, almost all of those devices have failed to gain traction in the market. Debra and others also cite the iPad's lack of multitasking as a strike against it. On this point, at least, I agree with them. While iPhone OS already allows for limited multitasking among Apple's own apps -- Phone, Messages, Mail, Safari, and iPod can all run simultaneously in the background -- third-party apps are still restricted to workarounds like push notifications. While restricting multitasking makes a kind of sense on devices like the iPhone 3G, with limited processing power and RAM available, on the iPad those technological limitations don't fly as an excuse. You can argue that not having multitasking on the iPad makes it easier to use for Grandma and other non-techies, but it also limits the device's potential utility. Granted, the iPad isn't positioned as a replacement for a MacBook, but the ability to run even one or two third-party apps in the background would make the device far more versatile. Personally, I would be very surprised if Apple doesn't introduce at least a limited form of multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0. Of course, I also said the same thing last year about iPhone OS 3.0, so who knows. One point bears mentioning, though: despite the introduction of iWork for the iPad, Apple is still pushing the device as a platform for consuming media, not as a productivity platform. To get any serious work done, Apple still expects you'll use your main computer, whether it's a MacBook, iMac, or PC. 4. There's not enough storage The most important question to ask on this point is, "For whom?" Debra says the 64 GB model might have enough capacity for her purposes, but she also grouses about the price of that model, comparing it to cheaper netbooks with "four times the storage." I will say that I'm puzzled at Apple's decision to top out the iPad's capacity at 64 GB, especially considering that's where the iPod touch currently tops out. A 128 GB iPad would have been very tempting indeed; unfortunately, given the price of flash memory, it also would have probably cost more than $1000. But what does 64 GB allow you to store? In my case, a 64 GB iPad would hold my entire 39 GB music library -- 19 days worth of music -- plus my entire iPhoto library of over 7000 photos, which, when optimized for the iPad's screen, would probably take up somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 GB, plus or minus a GB or two. At my most app-crazy I had about 2 GB of apps on my iPhone 3G, and "Other" space, presumably including the OS itself, takes up just over 1 GB. Added up, that equates to 47 out of 64 GB. In my case, that leaves over 15 GB of space for document storage, videos, and so forth. Let's say I store my entire Documents folder on the iPad (I wouldn't -- I use iDisk and Dropbox for that) -- 4300 documents taking up just over 2 GB of space. Now we have 13 GB left over for videos and whatever else. Even if I left myself a 3 GB buffer for whatever reason (including accounting for the GB versus GiB difference), that's still 10 GB of space for videos -- enough to store 10 two-hour films at a decent bitrate, or almost an entire season of an hour-long TV series. Let me break that down again -- a 64 GB iPad would store: -- 19 days of music -- 7000 photos -- Well over 100 apps -- A 2 GB Documents folder with 4300 items -- 20 hours of video -- Around 3 GB of space left over for whatever else (temporary photo storage, e-books, accounting for the difference between binary gigabytes versus decimal gigabytes, etc.) Granted, there are people out there with music and photo libraries larger than mine, but most of my Mac-using friends only have, on average, 1500 items in their iTunes libraries, a thousand or so photos, and maybe three pages of apps on their iPhones. 64 GB may not sound like much on paper, but practically speaking, it lets you pack around a lot of media. Unless you're going to spend weeks at a time away from your main computer, the iPad should be able to carry around enough media to keep almost anyone entertained for days on end. 5. There's no HDMI output or camera Debra claims you can't output the iPad's video to an HDTV without an HDMI connector. That simply isn't true; with a VGA adapter, you can output the iPad's full 1024 x 768 video signal to an HDTV. With a component connector, you can output a 576p PAL signal or a 480p NTSC signal to your TV. Okay, fine, it's not 1080p ultra-high-def video, but where exactly are you going to find video of that resolution anyway (besides Blu-Ray and Bittorrent)? I'll admit that it would have been nice to have at least 1366 x 768 video (1080i, in other words), but I'm betting that the vast majority of consumers aren't going to even bother hooking the iPad up to their TV at all when it's far easier to just put the screen on their laps and watch a movie on the iPad itself instead. Another point Debra brings up is the iPad's 3:4 aspect ratio, which is less than ideal for video. This has been argued all over the internet, including here at TUAW, but as many people have pointed out, the 3:4 aspect ratio is ideally suited to pretty much every other function on the iPad except video: books, documents, web pages, and photos are all laid out far closer to a 3:4 or 4:3 ratio than 16:9. Using a 16:9 ratio on the iPad would not only make the device larger than it already is, it would also leave all other forms of media on the device at a disadvantage compared to video. The iPad's lack of camera is another point Debra and others have brought out against the device, but like multitasking, this is one point on which I agree. A back-facing camera like the iPhone's doesn't make a lot of sense on the iPad -- it would be a bit unwieldy trying to take pictures or video with a device this size, rather like trying to hold up a MacBook Air to take photos with its iSight. Most people probably have a standalone point-and-shoot camera that would take better stills and/or video than the iPad's hypothetical back-facing camera anyway, and you can load those pictures directly onto the device with either the iPad-specific camera connector or SD card reader. But a front-facing camera for video conferencing definitely would have been a killer feature. Apple apparently thought so, too, because it actually included a space in the iPad for exactly such a camera, only to withdraw it for reasons known only to Apple. Whether the company is waiting for the next-gen iPad to introduce a camera or pulling a big switcheroo like it did with the original iPhone -- which was originally supposed to ship with the scratch-prone plastic face of previous iPods, but was replaced with nearly scratch-proof glass in the six months between its announcement and release -- no one can say. 6. There are no USB ports Debra's main complaints against the lack of USB ports are that you can't hook up a flash drive or a USB keyboard. As far as the keyboard goes, I've already mentioned the fact that you can purchase a keyboard dock or use a Bluetooth keyboard. As for not being able to hook up a flash drive? I can see why some people might want to do this -- expanding the iPad's storage, transferring files, etc. But I'm willing to bet that for most people this isn't going to be an issue. While I run the risk of sounding like Bill Gates's infamous "640K should be enough for anyone" by saying so (although Gates never actually said that), 64 GB of space on a device like the iPad really should suit most users' needs -- at least for the next couple of years, anyway. As for transferring files? I can think of a number of existing, cloud-based solutions, the most simplistic of which is e-mail. No, you can't transfer several gigabytes of files at a time through e-mail or "the cloud," but most people don't transfer that much data all at one go even a handful of times with a portable device, much less on a regular basis. I'm not going to go full fanboy and say it's a good thing the iPad doesn't come with USB ports. In fact, I'm kind of with Debra and the others on this one in wishing that Apple included at least one USB port. While I probably wouldn't use the port very often (if at all), it definitely falls into the category of "nice to have." I've been an iPod user for almost five years and an iPhone user for a year, and I can count the number of times I've needed/wanted a USB port on one of those devices on exactly no fingers... but I'll admit that I might sing a different tune with a bigger device like an iPad. But for most of the people who are likely to buy the iPad, i.e., the non-geek, non-techie, "I just want internet and music and movies" folks, they're probably not going to miss USB ports at all. 7. There's no flash memory slot No, the iPad doesn't have a flash memory slot. You can buy an SD card reader attachment, though, although Debra and others rail against the added cost of the connector, claiming that in order to reach "the functional equivalent of a netbook, you may end up spending a bundle." A lot of the same arguments for or against USB apply here as well; most non-geeks aren't going to miss an SD slot at all. Transferring documents via SD cards in 2010 reeks of the "sneakernet" we thought we were abolishing along with dot-matrix printers and 2800 baud modems; let's just say that most users are going to have photos and/or videos on their SD cards, most users are going to wait until they get home to their main computer to upload those files, and most users aren't going to care that the iPad's missing a dedicated SD slot any more than they cared about the iPod missing one. If anything, the argument for an SD slot is far weaker than the argument for USB. 8. The price is not right Debra claims the iPad "costs twice as much as the Kindle and other ebook readers." That's flat-out false. The $499 iPad does cost almost twice as much as the standard Kindle, but compared to every other e-reader out there, the iPad's pricing is extremely competitive once you consider all the things the iPad does that the other readers iDon't. A $489 Kindle DX, for example, while $10 cheaper than the cheapest iPad, doesn't have a color screen, has only 4 GB of storage, doesn't have a touchscreen, doesn't run apps, doesn't have e-mail, music, and so on, and so forth. The iPad's price is the one aspect of the device that few pundits have complained about; in fact, the pricing has Wall Street and other financial analysts doing cartwheels. You don't even have to compare the iPad to other companies' similar products to see how good a deal it is. The 16 GB iPad costs $300 more than an 8 GB iPod touch. That $300 gets you twice the capacity, a much larger and higher-quality screen, a more powerful CPU, better Wi-Fi including 802.11n, vastly improved battery performance, a built-in speaker and microphone, and, eventually, access to a host of apps designed to take advantage of the iPad's larger screen and higher performance. A 32 GB iPad has the same $300 price difference compared to a 32 GB iPod touch, as does the 64 GB model. Once you tack on an additional $130 for 3G wireless the price difference widens, but so does the device's utility -- access to wireless broadband anywhere there's an available 3G network, which, as iPhone users already know, is invaluable. Debra compares the fully kitted-out $829 3G-enabled iPad to "a powerful compact laptop that runs a full-fledged operating system and multi-tasks and that has USB and SD and Ethernet connectors, 4 GB of RAM, and 250 GB of storage." The "full-fledged operating system" she's talking about isn't OS X, however, and the laptop she's talking about definitely isn't manufactured by Apple. That might not make a difference to a lot of people, but if you're already in the "Macs cost too much" camp, it's no wonder the iPad doesn't hold much appeal compared to that Windows Home Edition running, plastic, bargain-bin quality laptop from Dell or HP that's almost certain to stop working in two years or less. Yes, I recognize the extremely fanboyish sound of that sentence. No, I don't apologize for it. Cheap laptops are exactly that: cheap. Call it elitism, fanboyism, Kool-Aid drinking, whatever: I'd much rather put up with the iPad's shortcomings than those of the "powerful" but oh-so-cheapo laptops of other manufacturers. 9. It's locked in "You have to buy your apps from the App Store," Debra notes. Yes, you do: from a store that has over 140,000 apps available, most of them for free, and capable of doing almost anything. Hate the App Store for some reason? Fine. Jailbreak the thing and use Cydia instead. Apple may not want you to do this, and they may go out of their way to prevent it, but if you're of the jailbreaking mindset already, that's not going to stop you, is it? A very vocal minority of people love to complain about "vendor lock-in" when it comes to the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, even though those same people have likely been playing around with video game systems from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft for decades -- all platforms with "vendor lock-in" even more pervasive and insidious than that of Apple's platform. What these people don't seem to realize is that same vendor lock-in is precisely what keeps Apple's portable platforms from being riddled with viruses, malware, and apps made of more crap than code. "Security through obscurity" may be a valid(ish) argument to fall back upon with the Mac, but with 75 million plus people using the iPhone OS, it's a very high-profile target for virus writers. That same "walled garden" that Linux proponents and "open internet" evangelists whine about is what keeps the iPhone platform from being an unusable nightmare. Yes, the App Store approval process has in many cases been a pain in the nether regions, but things are improving -- apps that might have once taken days or weeks to get approved are now getting through the approval process in a matter of hours. Has the App Store's "lock-in" affected sales of the iPhone one iota? No. In fact, sales of the iPhone took way off after the App Store's arrival. Yes, "Apple as gatekeeper" gets the George Orwell fans riled. But someone has to keep the gate, because the instant the iPhone OS becomes a truly "open" platform like some people are espousing, that's the same instant the Russian mafia remote-hijacks your iPhone from a basement in Vladivostok because you just had to download that "Siberian Honeys" app from the dark alleys of the internet. Other aspects of dreaded "lock-in" that Debra's concerned about are riddled with falsehoods. "You can't run Skype to make phone calls," with the iPad, she claims. "We wouldn't want to cut into the iPhone market, after all." Say what? That must be news to the Skype team, who's already investigating an iPad-specific Skype app. It must be news to Apple, too, who no longer restricts the use of VoIP over 3G. "Nor can you download Flash to install on the browser, which means you won't be watching those YouTube videos." Say what again? Since when is the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad incapable of watching YouTube videos? Oh right: since never. No, you can't put Flash on the iPad, but according to our informal poll, 75% of people planning on buying one either don't care or are outright glad Flash isn't making an appearance. What about hardware "lock-in?" Debra says that "you can't even remove and replace the battery yourself," which has been true of every single iPod since 2001 and hasn't stopped people from buying them by the millions. She goes on and says, "if you were flying to Australia and wanted to bring along an extra battery for the extra-long flight, forget about it." Um. A two-second Google search for "iPhone external battery" might have been a good idea. Plus, speaking from personal experience, if you stay awake for a full flight across the Pacific Ocean, you're going to have a lot more pressing issues to worry about than your iPad's battery, like the fact that you're going to feel like you got run over by a truck after the plane lands. Take it from one who knows: Trans-Pacific flights are best spent in blissful unconsciousness. 10. The network Yep, the iPad's 3G connection is only available on AT&T's network... if you live in the United States. If, like me, you live in what's known informally as "the rest of the world," this argument against buying a 3G-enabled iPad holds no water for you. But let's stick to the States for a moment and analyze Debra's argument against AT&T's network. No, AT&T isn't everyone (or possibly even anyone)'s favorite US network, but the pay-as-you-go, completely contract-free plans available for the iPad are very compellingly priced. You can get 250 MB of data for $14.99 (not the $20 Debra claims in her article), which is more than enough for casual data usage. 250 MB doesn't sound like a lot on paper, but that's what my iPhone plan started out at here in New Zealand. I never once went over 100 MB or so of monthly data usage until I started using iPhone tethering, and I'd consider my data usage fairly robust. The "unlimited" AT&T plan at $30 a month is an even better deal, and even if "unlimited" only means 5 GB, you're not going to burn through that much data unless you're using the connection every waking hour of the month. Debra's argument against these plans is that it's another bill to pay on top of your cell phone bill, but that's the beauty of the iPad plans: without a contract to commit to, you can cancel the plan whenever you want. If you start out with the $30/month "unlimited" plan on the iPad, only to find out your usage isn't topping 250 MB, rather than being locked in to that plan for another 23 months, you can downgrade to the $15 plan. If you find that you don't need the 3G coverage at all, you can always buy the Wi-Fi only iPad. "Here's wishing you good luck on finding those Wi-Fi hot spots," Debra says in response to that idea, which sounds about right for us in New Zealand, where free Wi-Fi is about as rare as gold, but makes much less sense in the US, where free Wi-Fi is usually only a library or café away. If you absolutely must have 3G on the iPad, absolutely must not use AT&T, and are prepared to spend twice as much for the privilege of going with Verizon, you always have the option of hooking the iPad up to a MiFi (possibly -- we'll have to wait until the iPad's actually released before we know if this will work or not). Additionally, just because the iPad isn't available on Verizon right now (now now NOW) doesn't mean it never will be; Apple and Verizon are reportedly "still talking" about bringing the iPad and/or iPhone over to the network. We've come to the end of Debra's ten points, but not to the end of mine. My final point, the one that sums up all of this: like the Mac, like the iPod, and like the iPhone, the iPad is not for everyone. It's not even for me -- despite all the words I've just spent defending it, I'm not buying an iPad until next year at the earliest, and only if I decide against replacing my current, aging MacBook Pro with the same computer rather than an iMac/iPad combo. The bottom line is that the iPad can't be all things to all people. It's not meant to replace a full-fledged Mac or PC -- it's meant as an ultraportable extension of a larger device, and one with a far simpler and more intuitive interface, a "computer for the rest of us," if you will. And make no mistake: for every Debra Littlejohn Shinder, for every "open internet" geek who screams "vendor lock-in" every time Apple's name is mentioned, for every "no multitasking, no Flash, no sale" techie, for every dismissive pundit who shrugs and says, "It's just a big iPod touch," there's at least one person who has been waiting for a device just like the iPad, and those people are the ones who will make it a success. Whether you like it or hate it, the iPad is indicative of the future direction of computing. But, just for the sake of argument, let's say we can cook up a portable computer far "better" than an iPad, a dream device that has USB, 1080p output, a removable battery, runs the full version of OS X, has a front-facing camera, isn't dependent on AT&T, isn't "locked in" to the App Store, has a physical keyboard, widescreen-formatted display, and has more than 64 GB of storage. What might such a device look like? Oh. Right. TUAW10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - iPhone - Steve Job - IPod Touch - Sony

  • Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

    Apple: What recession? Apple (AAPL) customers continued to buy up iPhones and Mac computers, seemingly ignoring the recession and helping the company's Q4 results shine. "We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter," Steve Jobs said. Apple easily exceeded analysts' Q4 earnings expectations as back-to-school promotions drove sales: revenue grew 25% to $9.87B versus last year's quarter, while net income surged 47% to $1.67B (see more numbers below). Apple shares rose 7.2% to $203.43 in after-hours trading; the stock has more than doubled this year. Read Apple's earnings call. Lehman's Europe unit readies $90B claim. Lehman's European arm, now managed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, is preparing a new $90B claim against the U.S. parent of the failed bank - bringing the unit's total claims against various Lehman entities globally to $208B. PwC fees for managing the wind-down so far: €168M ($253M). Icahn targets CIT. Corporate raider Carl Icahn turned up the heat on CIT Group (CIT) Monday, slamming the company for unfairly favoring large bondholders with its revised debt exchange offer and saying he was prepared to offer a better deal by lending the company $6B and saving it $150M in fees. In a letter to CIT's board, Icahn said the proposed alternative $6B loan package is "the latest example of incompetent and unconscionable behavior" from CIT's board. Prospective lenders, he says, would get well in excess of what the current syndicated loan market should dictate, in exchange for voting their debt in favor of the company's reorganization plan. Morgan confirms Van Kampen sale to Invesco. Morgan Stanley (MS) confirmed Monday that it's selling its retail asset-management business, including the Van Kampen fund unit, to Invesco (IVZ), for $1.5B in stock and cash, including a 9.4% stake in Invesco. "By taking a minority interest in Invesco, Morgan Stanley will be able to realize significant value in partnership with a world-class player," co-president James Gorman said. The deal, rumored for months and expected to close in mid-2010, will remove some sales limits that Van Kampen managers faced since Morgan's JV with Smith Barney closed. Bernanke warns U.S., Asia to mind the gap. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke called on U.S. and Asian leaders to "avoid ever-increasing and unsustainable imbalances in trade and capital flows," saying the U.S. financial system is currently "overwhelmed" by an inflow of capital. Speaking Monday at a San Fran. Fed conference on Asia, Bernanke warned that while the U.S. trade deficits with developing countries are not as onerous as they were two years ago, they are still a threat to the global economy. World leaders believe global economic growth must begin to depend less on the U.S. consumer. Fed tests exit tool... As global central banks begin to weigh inflation risks, the Fed confirmed Monday it has begun experimenting with "triparty" reverse repo agreements, but says their actual use is not imminent. In a reverse repo, the Fed pledges mortgage-backed securities and Treasurys it bought as collateral for short-term loans, thereby draining cash from the financial system. Reverse repos are normally the domain of the 18 primary dealers; the experiment involves extending that to deals with the $2.5T money-market mutual fund business. ... while Australia says inflation risk looms. The Reserve Bank of Australia believes that the risk to global economic growth is passing, and that the bigger threat is now inflation. "Keeping interest rates at very low levels for an extended period could therefore threaten the achievement of the inflation target over the medium term," according to minutes from its Oct. 6 meeting, released Tuesday. At the meeting, the RBA unexpectedly raised its policy rate by 0.25% to 3.25% - its first such hike since March 2008, and the first in a major developed economy since the start of the financial crisis last year. Galleon faces massive withdrawals. Clients of hedge-fund giant Galleon jumped ship Monday after Friday's arrest of co-founder Raj Rajaratnam, forcing Galleon to unload some of its holdings, including tech stocks. So far, investors have requested $1.3B of the total $3.7B Galleon manages, and two of its brokerage firms - Bank of America (BAC) and Barclays (BCS) - have cut off relations with the firm. In a letter to investors and employees Monday evening, Rajaratnam said the charges "are, without exception, entirely baseless," and vowed to defend the firm. Financial sector fraud on the rise. Fraud is increasing twice as fast in the financial sector as in other sectors, according to Kroll's annual Global Fraud Report, released Monday. In a survey, senior executives said North America had been particularly hit hard by the financial crisis: the average financial services company lost over $15M to fraud over the past three years. The report comes as sources say investigators plan to charge 10 more securities dealers with insider trading, some linked to Galleon Group, which is at the center of one of the biggest-ever undercover operations into illegal trading (see above). Bair speaks up for small banks. FDIC head Sheila Bair warned Monday small community banks are struggling to compete against their too-big-to-fail rivals. "Too big to fail has become worse," she said, "it's become explicit when it was implicit before." Bair contends government guarantees create competitive disparities between large and small banks, because "everybody knows small institutions can fail," making it more expensive for them to raise capital and secure funding. China fires new salvo in trade tussle. In the latest in a series of China-U.S. trade disputes, China's Ministry of Commerce took preliminary measures Monday to impose tariffs of as much as 36% on certain nylon imports from the U.S., saying the imports have damaged the domestic industry. The ruling affects imports of Nylon 6, used to manufacture a variety of products, including toothpaste and chiffon. Affected U.S. firms include BASF's (BASFY.PK) U.S. arm and Honeywell (HON). Group support for Microsoft/Yahoo tie-up. In an open letter, advertising industry heavyweights urged the Department of Justice to fast-track approval of a Microsoft (MSFT) / Yahoo (YHOO) tie-up, saying the potential benefits for advertisers, marketing services agencies, Web site publishers and consumers are "too important to wait for." Google (GOOG) remained more circumspect, perhaps because it doesn't want to alienate customers. Earnings: Before Open Bank of New York Mellon (BK): Q3 EPS of $0.54 beats by $0.06. Revenue of $3.33B (+3.7%) vs. $3.18B. Provision for credit losses goes to $147M from $61M last quarter. (PR) Biogen Idec (BIIB): Q3 EPS of $1.12 beats by $0.08. Revenue of $1.12B (+2.8%) in-line. Shares -1.9% premarket. (PR) BlackRock (BLK): Q3 EPS of $2.10 beats by $0.17. Revenue of $1.14B (-13.2%) in-line. "Improving investor sentiment was the most important factor in third quarter results. Clients are putting money back to work in the markets, driving inflows in equities and bonds, and outflows in money market funds industry-wide." Shares +0.9% premarket. (PR) Brinker International (EAT): FQ1 EPS of $0.17 beats by $0.02. Revenue of $778M (-20.9%) vs. $766M. Cost of sales fell to 28.2% from 28.4% last quarter. (PR) Caterpillar (CAT): Q3 EPS of $0.64 beats by $0.58. Revenue of $7.29B vs. $7.49B. "We believe the third quarter marked the low point for Caterpillar sales and revenues in what has been the toughest recession since the 1930s. We are seeing encouraging signs that indicate a recovery may be underway." Shares +4.4% premarket. (PR) China Mobile (CHL): Q3 net profit of 28.6B yuan ($4.2B), up 2.6% from 27.9B last year, short of consensus of 29.2B. Sales rose 9% to 114.1B yuan. Ebitda rose 5% to 57.8B yuan, short of 58.1B consensus. (Bloomberg) China Telecom (CHA): Q3 profit of 2.39B yuan ($350M), down from 4.6B last year, and well short of consensus of 3.68B. Ebitda profit margin slipped to 41.1% from 42.3%. (Reuters) Coach (COH): FQ1 EPS of $0.44 beats by $0.05. Revenue of $761M (+1.1%) vs. $754M. (PR) Coca-Cola (KO): Q3 EPS of $0.82 in-line. Revenue of $8.04B (-4.2%) vs. $8.11B. "We expect the consumer to continue facing economic uncertainties into 2010 and for consumer sentiment to recover slowly.: Shares -1.2% premarket. (PR) Comerica (CMA): Q3 EPS of -$0.10 beats by $0.43. $311M provision for loan losses, unchanged from Q2. (PR) Diamondrock Hospitality (DRH): Q3 FFO of $0.19 beats by $0.02. Revenue of $138M (-14.6%) vs. $134M. (PR) DuPont (DD): Q3 EPS of $0.45 beats by $0.12. Revenue of $5.96B (-18.3%) vs. $6.14B. Sees full-year EPS of $1.95-2.05 vs. $1.83. "We see overall sequential improvement in our industrial businesses as market conditions begin to firm." (PR) Forest Laboratories (FRX): FQ2 EPS of $0.85 misses by $0.01. Revenue of $963M (+4%) vs. $1B. (PR) Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (GAP): FQ2 EPS of -$1.18 misses by $0.47. Revenue of $2.06B (-5.4%) vs. $2.13B. "The current challenging economy continues to impact our business. The macro headwinds including rising unemployment, intensifying price competition and now also deflation are creating an even more difficult short-term economic environment." Shares -9.7% premarket. (PR) Illinois Tool Works (ITW): Q3 EPS of $0.60 beats by $0.07. Revenue of $3.58B (-19.8%) in-line. Operating margin 13.5% up from 9.9% last quarter. (PR) Invesco (IVZ): Q3 EPS of $0.24 in-line. Revenue of $706M vs. $687M. Shares +3.6% premarket. IVZ announced yesterday it would acquire Morgan Stanley's (MS) retail asset management business, including Van Kampen Investments." (PR) Jefferies Group (JEF): Q3 EPS of $0.42 beats by $0.14. Revenue of $M (+154.5%) in-line. Shares +6.1% premarket. (PR) Journal Communications (JRN): Q3 EPS of $0.02 misses by $0.06. Revenue of $105M (-22.9%) vs. $108M. (PR) LaBranche (LAB): Q3 EPS of -$0.22 misses by $0.27. Revenue of $M in-line. Shares -4.9% premarket. (PR) Lockheed Martin (LMT): Q3 EPS of $2.07 vs. consensus of $1.83. Revenue of $11.06B (+4.5%) vs. $11.4B. (PR) Lexmark (LXK): Q3 EPS of $0.65 beats by $0.20. Revenue of $958M (+6%) vs. $901M. Gross margin 32.7% vs. 32.5%. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.50-0.60 vs. $0.47, revenue "up slightly." Stronger than expected customer demand drove better than expected growth. (PR) Marshall & Ilsley (MI): Q3 EPS of -$0.68 in-line. Average loans and leases fell 6% to $47.1B. "There are some encouraging early signs that credit quality is improving, but we realize it will take a few more quarters to fully address our problem loans." Announces $775M common stock offering. (PR) Parker-Hannifin (PH): FQ1 EPS of $0.45 beats by $0.28. Revenue of $2.24B (-27%) vs. $2.17B. Shares +4.9% premarket. (PR) Pfizer (PFE): Q3 EPS of $0.51 beats by $0.03. Revenue of $11.62B (-2.9%) vs. $11.41B. Sees full-year EPS of $2.00-2.05 vs. $1.98. (PR) Precision Castparts (PCP): FQ2 EPS of $1.54 misses by $0.09. Revenue of $1.3B (-27.6%) vs. $1.4B. "From a top-line perspective, overall sales declines seem to be bottoming out in the second quarter." (PR) Regions Financial (RF): Q3 EPS of -$0.37 misses by $0.12. Revenue of $1.62B (-20.3%) vs. $1.58B. Allowance for credit losses +2.9% to $1.025B. Shares +0.35% premarket. (PR) Sherwin Williams (SHW): Q3 EPS of $1.51 beats by $0.16. Revenue of $2B (-12%) in-line. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.35-0.55 vs. $0.61, and revenue down 8-12% Y/Y. (PR) State Street (STT): Q3 EPS of $1.05 beats by $0.01. Revenue of $2.24B (-19.3%) in-line. Shares -0.75% premarket. (PR) UAL (UAUA): Q3 EPS of -$0.43 beats by $0.51. Revenue of $4.43B (-20.3%) in-line. Shares +8.1% premarket. (PR) UnitedHealth (UNH): Q3 EPS of $0.89 beats by $0.12. Revenue of $21.7B (+7.6%) vs. $21.56B. (PR) United Technologies (UTX): Q3 EPS of $1.14 beats by $0.02. Revenue of $13.38B (-11.3%) in-line. "Order rates for most of our businesses have largely stabilized, although the shape of recovery is still uncertain." (PR) Western Union (WU): Q3 EPS of $0.33 beats by $0.01. Revenue of $1.31B (-4.6%) in-line. Says recent stabilization trends are encouraging. (PR) Earnings: Mon. After Close Apple (AAPL): FQ4 EPS of $1.82 beats by $0.40. Sales of $9.87B vs. $9.2B. Sees FQ1 EPS of $1.70-1.87 vs. consensus of $1.91 on sales of $11.3-11.6B, in line. Sold 3.05M Macs, 10.2M iPods, and 7.4M iPhones during quarter. Gross margin 36.6%. Shares +5.9% AH. (PR) Atheros Communications (ATHR): Q3 EPS of $0.46 beats by $0.08. Revenue of $157M (+13%) vs. $147M. Shares +2.1% AH. (PR) Boston Scientific (BSX): Q3 EPS of $0.19 beats by $0.05. Revenue of $2.03B (+3%) vs. $2.04B. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.17-0.21 vs. $0.17. Expects full-year adjusted EPS of $0.75-0.79 vs. $0.56. Shares -7% AH. (PR) JDA Software Group (JDAS): Q3 EPS of $0.40 beats by $0.04. Revenue of $96M (-3%) vs. $92M. Shares -2.8% AH. (PR) Lincare (LNCR): Q3 EPS of $0.53 beats by $0.01. Revenue of $393M (-3%) vs. $391M. Shares -0.8% AH. (PR) Packaging Corp. of America (PKG): Q3 EPS of $0.25 in-line. Revenue of $554M (-11%) vs. $549M. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.13 vs. $0.17. Shares -7.4% AH. (PR) Steel Dynamics (STLD): Q3 EPS of $0.30 beats by $0.07. Revenue of $1.2B (-54%) vs. $1.1B. Shares +2.6% AH. (PR) Texas Instruments (TXN): Q3 EPS of $0.42 beats by $0.03. Revenue of $2.9B (-15%) vs. $2.8B. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.42-0.50 vs. $0.40. "Our balance sheet is strong and has allowed us to opportunistically make investments in Analog and Embedded Processing throughout this downturn that should provide returns for years to come." Shares +2% AH. (PR) UDR Inc. (UDR): Q3 FFO of $0.31 beats by $0.01. Rental income of $150M (+2%) vs. $149M. Lowers full-year FFO guidance to $1.14-1.20 from $1.23-1.35, vs. consensus of $1.27. Shares -0.5% AH. (PR) Volterra Semiconductor (VLTR): Q3 EPS of $0.19 misses by $0.01. Revenue of $29.7M (-3%) in-line. Shares -10.3% AH. (PR) Werner (WERN): Q3 EPS of $0.26 beats by $0.06. Revenue of $429M (-27%) vs. $428M. Shares +3.3% AH. (PR) Zions Bancorp (ZION): Q3 EPS of -$1.41 misses by $0.17. Revenue of $753M (+29%) vs. $633M. Shares -1.1% AH. (PR) Today's MarketsAsian markets were mostly higher Tuesday, while Europe stocks were mostly lower. Nasdaq futures are well higher on the strength of Apple's (AAPL) blowout Q4; other indexes are flat.

  • Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

    Unemployment set to top 9%. Today's markets will be focused on the monthly U.S. nonfarm employment report, which often sets the tone for the coming month. Economists predict the workforce declined by 520,000 in May, the smallest decrease in seven months. But unemployment is expected to jump to 9.2%, the highest level in 26 years. While many think the worst may be over for the economy, it's unlikely firms will begin hiring aggressively until recovery goes from being a possibility to a well-rooted certainty. Earlier this week, Fed chief Bernanke warned "sizable" job losses may still occur. Peter Morici does a good job of summarizing expectations for and potential ramifications of this morning's report. Rio scraps Chinalco deal. Rio Tinto (RTP) scrapped a controversial $19.5B investment from Chinalco (ACH) and will instead raise $15.2B from a share sale and $5.8B from an iron ore venture with BHP Billiton (BHP). The new agreements will allow Rio to pay down some of its $38.9B in debt, and deal a blow to China's plans to secure access to raw materials crucial for its economic growth. FDIC gets tough on Citi. The FDIC is pushing for a management shake-up at Citigroup (C), and recently tried to lower the government's confidential ranking of Citi's health in a move that would give regulators greater control over the firm. Among FDIC concerns are the slow pace of change at Citigroup and the lack of senior executives with commercial banking experience. Officials have reportedly reached out to Jerry Grundhofer, former CEO of U.S. Bancorp (USB) and a recent addition to Citi's board, to see if he'd be interested in taking over CEO Vikram Pandit's position. Citigroup officials say the FDIC has overstepped its bounds, and several government regulators disagree with the FDIC's stance as well. Obama to create 'Pay Czar.' The White House plans to appoint a 'Special Master for Compensation' who will make sure companies receiving federal bailout funds abide by executive-pay guidelines. The administration is expected to name Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the government's compensation fund for 9/11 victims. Feinberg's appointment could be announced as soon as next week. Breezy times for Intel. Intel (INTC) agreed to buy Wind River Systems (WIND) for around $884M. The surprise move nets Intel a significant software business and makes it a direct competitor with Microsoft (MSFT) in certain areas. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is looking forward to continuing its long-term collaboration with Intel, but is also "working with Intel to evaluate what impact today's announcement has on our partnership." GM uses cash to fund Delphi buyout. General Motors, flush with $30B in bankruptcy financing from the government, is putting up over $2.5B to finance a private-equity firm's buyout of bankrupt auto-parts company Delphi Corp. Separately, GM is expected to announce today that it reached a preliminary deal to sell its Saturn division to mega auto dealer Roger Penske, who runs the Penske Automotive Group chain of dealers, for $100-200M. GM executives also said the company is considering a senior management shake-up but declined to provide details. AIG selling Transatlantic stake. AIG (AIG) may raise almost $1B by selling part of its stake in Transatlantic Holdings (TRH). According to a statement released yesterday, AIG offered 26M shares at $38 each. The sale will bring AIG's stake below 20% from 59%. Icahn wins Biogen board seat. Biogen Idec (BIIB) held its annual meeting this week and activist investor Carl Icahn claims he won two seats on the board. Biogen said Icahn won one seat, and the second is 'too close to call.' The showdown over the remaining board seat is the culmination of a months-long proxy fight. Icahn's victory, even if only partial, suggests shareholders are frustrated with Biogen's stagnant share price and the gap in its pipeline of new drugs. Countrywide CEO charged in subprime mess. The SEC charged Countrywide Financial's former CEO Angelo Mozilo with securities fraud and insider trading, winning Mozilo the distinction of most-prominent executive targeted to date in connection to the subprime crisis. Mozilo pocketed over $139 in profits in 2006-2007 while knowingly selling risky subprime loans and failing to disclose the deteriorating quality of the company's assets. Two other former Countrywide executives were also charged with fraud. Hartford to get TARP money, new CEO. Hartford Financial Services (HIG) CEO Ramani Ayer will step down from his post by the end of the year, following through on a departure originally planned for 2008. Ayer, who has been CEO for twelve years, was responsible for crafting the aggressive growth strategy that led to some of the insurer's current troubles. The company is expected to receive as much as $3.4B in TARP funds in the next few weeks. Jobs returning to Apple. Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs is on track to return to the company this month after a medical leave, possibly in a surprise appearance at Apple's annual software developers' conference next week. Some analysts thought Jobs' sudden departure six months ago and the limited disclosure of his illness would hurt the company, but the stock has risen 68% since Jobs announced his leave vs. a 24% increase in the Nasdaq. Even after Jobs returns, it's unclear whether he'll resume his full set of duties immediately. Jobless claims dip. Initial Jobless Claims came in at 621,000 vs. last week's 625,000 (revised) and consensus of 620,000. Continuing claims dipped by 15K to 6.74M. Productivity higher than expected. Q1 Nonfarm Productivity of 1.6% was better than the 1.2% economists expected, and sharply higher than initial estimates of 0.8%. Unit labor costs grew 3%, slightly above consensus (+2.9%), but lower than previous estimates of 3.3%. Manufacturing sector productivity fell 2.7%, its fourth consecutive decline. Earnings: Thursday After Close Guess? (GES): Q1 EPS of $0.35 beats by $0.06. Revenue of $441M (-9.8%) vs. $437M. (PR) Today's MarketsOverseas markets edged higher Friday and futures are also up. All eyes will be on the nonfarm payroll report at 8:30.

  • End Game

    This is my 603rd and last column for pbs.org. If you want to continue reading my work, please visit http://www.cringely.com, which is also in this week's links. Thanks for your support. Everybody in my line of work writes prediction columns for the coming year, but I wonder how many we will see this time around? The world is unsettled. It's not just this damned financial nightmare we have to deal with but also a sense of between-ness, like something has just ended yet still lingers slightly though it is obvious that something new is about to arrive. But will it be a good something new? That's hard to tell. So for this reason I think the prognosticators will mainly keep their heads down this year. Except, of course, for me. I'm too stupid to shut up. So let's get on with this experiment in humiliation. You know the drill. We begin with a look at last year's predictions to see how I did then jump into my predictions for 2009. If you care to follow along you'll find last year's predictions column in this week's links. For a real laugh you can find my predictions from many previous years in the archive. I wrote a year ago that we'd see the beginning of a shift away from PC-centrism with other platforms beginning to supercede the venerable PC. This is a slow process as I said it would be but generally I think I was correct. Sales growth for PCs slowed in general while growth for smartphones and netbooks increased. I never said PC sales were going in the toilet but it seems clear that the action these days is elsewhere, so I'm going to claim this one. I said the Digital TV conversion would be a nightmare, though the greatest pain would be felt in 2009 when the analog transmitters are actually turned off. I think this is correct. Poll your friends and you'll find most are in denial. While everyone has seen a DTV commercial, there are millions of people who still don't know what's happening. Free converter boxes are sold out, which ought to be good, but expected DTV sales have not met forecasts, so I say there are 10-15 million people who are going to wake up mad as hell in February. So I got this one right and claim it for 2009, too. While it may seem quiet now, February and March are going to be ugly. I wrote that Cisco would acquire Macrovision, which didn't happen. Two right and one wrong. I still think Macrovision has to find a landing place somewhere or the company is doomed. I predicted that venture capitalists would sour on start-ups with revenue models based solely on advertising, citing Facebook as an example. This one is hard to call because the general tightening in the economy has led VCs to push all their companies toward multiple revenue models and much tighter books. Still, I probably got this one wrong, though I'd say it is still coming. I predicted that Google would bid and win the 700 MHz spectrum auction. They bid, true, and made a good effort at shaping the deals that resulted, but Google didn't win so this was wrong. I am not worthy. I predicted that IBM would have bad earnings, would try to sell Global Services, and failing that might fund the sale itself. Wrong, wrong and wrong. IBM's earnings were saved by the weak dollar or I would have been right. They couldn't sell Global Services because no company was stupid enough to buy. But they didn't have to finance anything because the credit crunch came and it was clearly not going to happen. I'm the loser here. If you are keeping score it is pretty dismal, down to two right and four wrong. I said Microsoft would indefinitely extend the life of Windows XP. I might well claim this one but -- like Wall Street -- I may as well take all my losses while I can. Yes, you can still get XP, but if you are an individual it requires downgrading from Vista so you have to buy Vista anyway. In the long run this strategy really hurts Microsoft because the made-for-Vista computers that are being downgraded to XP don't work as well and Microsoft's reputation suffers even further, if that's possible. Redmond sees this as a clever success on their part, too, which says a lot about the company. Of course I had to say that Steve Ballmer was going to retire, too, though now I see him not following Gates for another 2-3 years. In the long run, though, he's toast, simply because things are going to get uglier and uglier for Microsoft. Two right and six wrong. Maybe it IS time for me to retire. I said Apple would embrace multi-touch pointing in its computers. They did. Whew! I said a 3G iPhone was coming. Yes! And an Apple subnotebook/tablet. No! This latter device remains in the wings, however. Four right and seven wrong. Apple didn't license ANYTHING, much less its embedded OS X. Silly me. Let's get this over with quickly. Apple DIDN'T license the Windows API, DIDN'T dump Akamai for Google (ironically Google became an Akamai customer), and Season 2 of NerdTV never appeared. Final score four right and 11 wrong -- my worst outcome EVER and the first time I dropped below 50 percent. Obviously I have to start making vaguer predictions or move into pizza delivery -- probably the latter. So, having lost all credibility, let's just leap into my predictions for 2009. Who knows, I might see a miracle and actually get one or two right. These are in no particular order, by the way. The economy and its many problems will clearly dominate 2009. We're in a recession that will last at least through the middle of the year and maybe longer. They way we'll buy our way out of it will affect the nation for decades to come. It is NOT a happy time. 1) The good news is that most recessions mean new IT platforms. The minicomputer hit its stride in the early '70s recession, the PC in the early '80s recession, client-server computing in the early '90s recession (notice these things happen every 10 years or so?), the Internet in the 2001 recession, and now we're about to see mobile take over in an even bigger way. Desktops will survive but most of the growth will be in mobile devices. 2) This one isn't what you'd expect. In 2009 there will be several HUGE cyber thefts as well as companies admitting huge cyber thefts that happened in previous years but were kept secret. The former will happen because the security infrastructure on the Internet is more fragile than ever while the latter will happen because companies -- especially banks -- will want to get every write-off they can while the news is so generally bleak. Who will care if they report losing $1+ billion or so to some guys from Russia or Nigeria three years past? 3) IT layoffs are going to happen, putting tens of thousands of technical people on the streets, yet STILL the big employers will be pushing for unlimited H1B visas to bring in technical people from South Asia. This mean-spirited and blatant age discrimination might be successful, too, unless the Obama administration does the right thing. 4) Intel will continue to dominate while AMD slowly suffers, but I don't see AMD being acquired in 2009. 5) Death of daily newspapers will accelerate and many papers will fail outright. When the Detroit Free Press announces it is ending home delivery on most days as they are expected to, well that's it. I thought this process would take longer but it is likely that half the daily newspapers in America will be gone in three years. 6) The next Yahoo CEO will dismember the company and sell it piecemeal, made possible by the fact that only the Internet companies have much real cash. The Yahoo name will survive but the company will not. 7) Microsoft will peak in 2009. By this I don't mean the company's shares will reach a peak value by any means, but its aggregate peak of wealth and influence will be reached and everything will be slowly downhill from here, accelerated primarily by the efforts of Apple. Microsoft hasn't been able to find a franchise to replace the PC. Games are big but not profitable enough. Mobile is too crowded. Content they simply aren't good at. That leaves Enterprise and Microsoft can dominate that only as a smaller company, so smaller it will become. 8) The catalyst for Microsoft's decline will be when the world's most influential IT analyst, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, writes sometime this spring that he can no longer see any reason to own Microsoft products. He could have written that story a year ago but it is taking Mossberg time to get up his nerve, but he eventually will. 9) Not only will Microsoft peak, Google will, too! Oh Google will continue to grow for another decade or more, but as a technology leader Android is probably the peak. The company is too fat and happy to be a technical leader for much longer. It's still a good investment, though. 10) If Microsoft and Google are down then what's up? Apple! This could play out a number of ways. Apple will certainly continue to grow its Macintosh market share. iPod growth may be softening but the iPhone will make up for that. Still, faced with Android I think Apple will drive its content business through an acquisition in the cheap-or-free networking space (remember it was Apple that came up with WiFi in the first place) to stake some claim on the last mile. But even more importantly, at some time next year Apple will take the gloves off and go head-to-head against Microsoft Office, driving margins down for Redmond and generally making trouble. 11) My last prediction for 2009 has to do with venture capital. While investments in technology will continue, the really smart VCs will realize there is a much better and more certain way to make a ton of money in the short term: start a bank. Look for the rebirth of community banks, in this case backed by VCs. Work with me on this one. There is no credit available because the big banks won't lend. But it takes only about $20 million to start a very fine little bank that WILL loan money because the cash can be acquired from the Fed for almost nothing and lent at high rates to technology companies that can pay it back. By creating banks the technology industry will become self-funding. And when the big banks finally stop being frozen with fear and want to take back the lending business, they'll have to buy all those little banks for at least a 10X multiple. It's not like starting Cisco or Dell, but a 10-bagger business model that can be replicated over and over again while actually helping the nation can't fail. That last one was my gift to you, America and the world. Thanks for 11 good years.

  • Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

    Even more firms may gain access to TARP. Sources say the Treasury may use some of its $700B rescue fund to buy stakes in financing companies such as GE's (GE) GE Capital and CIT Group (CIT). Presently the program only includes publicly-traded banks and insurers, although the Treasury is already mulling opening the door to some privately-held firms. The U.S. government could eventually own even more of the American financial system than first envisioned. Yahoo, Google tone down ad tie-up. Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) submitted a revised version of their search-ad pact to the Justice Department in the hope gaining approval. New provisions limit the scope of the deal, including shortening the agreement to two years from ten, and capping Yahoo's revenue from the deal to 25% of its search revenue total; previously there was no cap. The revised plan also gives Google advertisers the ability to opt out of having their ads displayed on Yahoo sites. It's unclear whether the changes will suffice to appease regulators who worry the deal will allow Google (GOOG) to monopolize online advertising. Separately, Yahoo said Monday Microsoft (MSFT) executive Jeff Dossett will take the lead position in its online media properties after veteran Scott Moore left "for other opportunities." UBS posts earnings, warnings. UBS (UBS) confirmed a Q3 profit of 296M Swiss francs ($256.3M) helped by credit and tax gains, with outflows of 49.3B francs from its wealth management unit and 34.4B francs from its asset management unit. The world's largest wealth manager, UBS had already reported much of its Q3 results last month when it announced a capital injection of 6B franc from the Swiss government and said it would unload $60B of risky assets into a central bank fund. UBS noted some positive client money flows in October, but warned 'difficult' market conditions would hurt fee-earning businesses and Q4 results would be weighed down by the accounting effects of transferring risky assets. Shares -2.6% premarket. Outlook sours for RBS. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) abandoned its full-year profit forecast after it wrote-down ÂŁ1B in October against assets connected to Lehman Brothers and Icelandic banks and as bad loans rose. It also posted ÂŁ1.4B of markdowns in Q3 before new accounting rules allowed it to claim back ÂŁ1.2B. CEO Stephen Hester said the latest writedowns, coming in addition to ÂŁ5.9B in H1, show the bank has too much risk and could face a full-year loss. RBS is in line for a U.K. bailout, and the government could own up to 60% of the bank unless investors buy some of the ÂŁ20B of stock to be issued later this year. Shares -14.9% premarket. Goldman hedge fund down $1B. A flagship Goldman Sachs (GS) hedge fund - Goldman Sachs Investment Partners - has lost almost $1B of its $6B since its launch in January, further evidence of the crisis facing the industry. "We anticipate that these results will lead to net outflows from the hedge fund industry," managers said, although GSIC itself imposed a two-year lock-in at inception. More than half of its 13% Q3 loss was on positions in commodities, basic materials, metals, mining, energy and agriculture. Tough 2009 for JPMorgan. JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon told employees the firm faces "highly challenging conditions" in 2009, but sees a possible "strong recovery" in 2010. JPM's recent acquisitions of Bear Stearns and WaMu will improve performance in the "longer term," he said. Dimon warned Asia is "going to get worse than you think" as the tidal wave that began with a collapse of the U.S. mortgage market washes over it. Still, longer-term, he sees "very substantial natural growth" in the region. iPod master leaves Apple. Tony Fadell, one of the fathers of the iPod, is leaving Apple (AAPL) for personal reasons, sources say. Former IBM (IBM) executive Mark Papermaster will take his place. During Fadell's tenure, the iPod grew from a curiosity into a major cash cow; Apple sold 54.7M iPods during its most recent fiscal year. But growth has cooled off as saturation becomes a factor in many countries. Still, Apple shows no signs of giving up any of its 70% U.S. market share. Dismal October for automakers. General Motors (GM) said October was likely the auto industry's worst month since WWII after its sales plunged 45%, Ford's (F) fell 30%, Nissan's (NSANY) declined 33%, Honda's (HMC) dropped 25%, while Toyota's (TM) declined by 23%. GM marketing chief Mark LaNeve said he believes there's plenty of pent-up demand, "but until the credit markets open up and consumer confidence improves, the entire U.S. economy, and any industry like autos that relies on financing, will suffer." U.S. auto sales are now down 14.6% YTD. "It's weaker than we were anticipating," J.D. Power's Bob Schnorbus said, warning leaders should take heed: "The auto industry is important to the economy and it should not be taken too lightly." Manufacturing paints bleak picture. The ISM's Manufacturing index fell to 38.9 in October, its lowest level since 1982, and worse than the expected 41.5. The only industries reporting growth were apparel and leather & allied products. Petroleum & coal and nonmetallic mineral products led the laggards. The weaker than expected data increases the risk the current slump will outdo the recessions of 2001 and 1991. Companies are cutting back on investments and hiring as Q3 consumer spending plunged by 3.1% - the biggest decline in 28 years. The survey "indicates a significantly faster rate of decline in manufacturing when comparing October to September," ISM director Norbert Ore said. "It appears that manufacturing is experiencing significant demand destruction as a result of recent events." Prices also rose at a much slower rate: the price index plunged to 37 from 53.5 in September - the lowest level since December 2001. Export orders dropped for the first time in 70 months. September Construction Spending fell 0.3% from August's revised numbers, better than the expected 0.8% drop. Residential private construction -1.3%; non-residential +1.2%. Earnings: Before Open Ameren (AEE): Q3 EPS of $1.17 misses by $0.08. Revenue of $2.06B (+3.2%) vs. $2.29B. Sees full-year EPS of $2.80-3.00 vs. $3.01. Shares -5.3%. (PR) Archer Daniels Midland (ADM): FQ1 EPS of $1.63 vs. consensus of $0.69. Revenue of $21.16B (+65%) vs. $15.98B. (PR) Autodesk (ADSK): Sees Q3 EPS of $0.53-0.55 vs. $0.55 consensus and revenue of $604-607M vs $624M. "The sharp downturn of the global economy is substantially impacting our business... Demand for our products fell dramatically in October in all geographies as the financial crisis worsened. (PR) Cimarex Energy (XEC): Q3 EPS of $2.19 misses by $0.07. Revenue of $576.5M (+67.7%) vs. $568M. (PR) Dean Foods (DF): Q3 EPS of $0.28 misses by $0.03. Revenue of $3.19B (+2.5%) in-line. (PR) Emerson Electric (EMR): FQ4 EPS of $0.88 beats by $0.02. Revenue of $6.7B (+11.1%) in-line. (PR) GrafTech (GTI): Q3 EPS of $0.55 beats by $0.10. Revenue of $316M (+25.7%) vs. $303M. Shares +6.7%. (PR) HCP Inc. (HCP): Q3 FFO of $0.71/share beats by $0.05. Revenue of $270M vs. $242M. Sees full-year FFO of $2.38-2.42 vs. $2.29. (PR) Holly (HOC): Q3 EPS of $1.00 beats by $0.13. Revenue of $1.72B (+42.3%) in-line. (PR) Louisiana-Pacific (LPX): Q3 EPS of -$0.38 misses by $0.08. Revenue of $390M (-17.5%) in-line. (PR) Magna International (MGA): Q3 EPS of $0.17 vs. consensus of $0.90. Revenue of $5.53B (-9%) in-line. (PR) Marvel Entertainment (MVL): Q3 EPS of $0.64 beats by $0.19. Revenue of $182.5M (+47.7%) vs. $146M. Sees full-year EPS of $2.45-2.65 vs. $1.93 and 2009 EPS of $1.00-1.35 vs. $1.94. (PR) Myriad Genetics (MYGN): FQ1 EPS of $0.30 beats by $0.16. Revenue of $74M (+52.4%) vs. $70M. (PR) NiSource (NI): Q3 EPS of $0.03 in-line. Revenue of $1.42B (+11.8%) vs. $1.36B. (PR) PPL Corp. (PPL): Q3 EPS of $0.45 misses by $0.15. Sees full-year EPS of $2.00-2.05 vs. $2.29, and 2009 EPS of $1.60-1.90 vs. $2.17. "Many of the pressures that affected our results in 2008 also are expected to continue into 2009..." (PR) Rowan (RDC): Q3 EPS of $1.00 beats by $0.13. Revenue of $527M (+5%) vs. $540M. "Continuing weakness in capital markets and commodity prices will, eventually, affect customer demand for our products and services, though we have experienced little impact thus far." (PR) St. Joe (JOE): Q3 EPS of -$0.12 misses by $0.12. Revenue of $32.8M (-57.6%) vs. $47.3M. (PR) Talisman Energy (TLM): Q3 EPS of $0.72 beats by $0.08. Revenue of $2.82B (+50.9%) vs. $2.89B. (PR) Tenneco (TEN): Q3 EPS of $0.01 misses by $0.22. Revenue of $1.5B (-3.8%) in-line. (PR) Tenet Healthcare (THC): Q3 EPS of -$0.06 misses by $0.03. Revenue of $2.14B (+5.2%) vs. $2.21B. Shares +14.1%. (PR) W&T Offshore (WTI): Q3 EPS of $0.79 misses by $0.03. Revenue of $290M (+13.6%) vs. $276M. (PR) Earnings: Monday After Close Automatic Data Processing (ADP): FQ1 EPS of $0.54 beats by $0.04. Revenue of $2.18B (+9.5%) in-line. Shares -2.5%. (PR) Coldwater Creek (CWTR): Sees Q3 sales of $225M vs. $265M consensus, and EPS of -$0.07 to -$0.09 vs. $0.03 consensus. "The overall macro-economic environment has proven to be substantially more challenging than anticipated." Shares -5.9%. (PR) Comstock Resources (CRK): Q3 EPS of $1.20 beats by $0.20. Revenue of $169M (+103.7%) vs. $158M. (PR) Embraer (ERJ): Q3 EPS of $0.32 misses by $0.07. Revenue of $1.55B (+8.1%) vs. $1.63B. (PR) EOG Resources (EOG): Q3 EPS of $2.34 beats by $0.10. Revenue of $3.22B (+226.5%). Shares +1.9%. (PR) Forest Oil (FST): Q3 EPS of $1.26 misses by $0.12. Revenue of $474M (+51.5%) vs. $465M. (PR) Herbalife (HLF): Q3 EPS of $0.89 beats by $0.03. Revenue of $M in-line. Sees Q4 EPS of $0.65-0.70 vs. $0.91, and 2009 EPS of $3.50-3.55 vs. $3.71. Shares -13.5%. (PR) MasterCard (MA): Q3 EPS of $2.47 beats by $0.22. Revenue of $1.34B (+23.7%) vs. $1.27B. Gross dollar volume rose 12.3%. "As we are not immune from the long-term effects of the current economic environment, we have significantly accelerated the focus on our cost structure..." Shares +8%. (PR) Mohawk Industries (MHK): Q3 EPS of $1.10 misses by $0.02. Revenue of $1.76B (-9%) in-line. (PR) Open Text (OTEX): Q3 EPS of $0.53 beats by $0.03. Revenue of $183M (+11.4%) vs. $179M. Shares -1.1%. (PR) Pepco Holdings (POM): Q3 EPS of $0.59 misses by $0.11. Revenue of $3.06B (+10.4%) vs. $2.73B. (PR) Pitney Bowes (PBI): Q3 EPS of $0.67 misses by $0.03. Revenue of $1.55B (+2.6%) vs. $1.6B. Sees full-year EPS of $2.75-2.82 vs. $2.85. (PR) St. Mary Land (SM): Q3 EPS of $1.20 beats by $0.08. Revenue of $324M (+31.4%) vs. $329M. Shares +1.2%. (PR) Viacom (VIA): Q3 EPS of $0.62 beats by $0.07. Revenue of $3.41B (+4.2%) vs. $3.32B. Shares +1.5%. (PR) Today's Markets Asia closed mixed Tuesday. Tokyo was the standout, +6.27% to 9,115. Shanghai -0.76% to 1,707. Hang Seng +0.28% to 14,384. BSE Sensex +2.84% to 10,631. European markets posted strong morning gains. London +1.75%. Paris +2.1%. Frankfurt +2%. U.S. futures are markedly higher at 7:00 AM. Dow +1.88% to 9506. S&P +1.96% to 988.50. Nasdaq +2.18%. Crude +1.16% to $64.65. Gold +1.49% to $737.60. Tuesday's Economic Calendar 7:45 ICSC Retail Store Sales8:55 Redbook10:00 Factory Orders5:00 PM ABC Consumer Confidence Index Notable earnings before Tuesday's open: ADM, AEE, AMSC, DF, DNR, EMR, ENTG, EXPD, FE, GTI, HCP, HL, HNT, HOC, JEC, JOE, LPX, MAC, MGA, MYGN, NI, NNN, NXG, PPL, PQ, RDC, TDC, TEN, THC, TLM, VNO, WTI, XEC Notable earnings after Tuesday's close: AMMD, BRE, CBL, DCT, FCH, HRP, JKHY, ME, NHP, PXD, UPL, USU, VTR Seeking Alpha editor Rachael Granby contributed to this post. Get Wall Street Breakfast by email -- it's free and takes only seconds to sign up. After you finish reading Wall Street BreakfastSeeking Alpha's Market Currentswill keep you current all day long.

  • The incredible shrinking Microsoft

    The financial and investing world seems to be going gaga over Microsoft lately, having been blown away by its recent quarterly earnings report which seems to indicate the company is having record quarter after record quarter. Some analysts are predicting Microsoft's stock price could hit $50 in the not too distant future because of these amazing results. So forgive me if I ask an impolite question:Then why does Microsoft's balance sheet keep shrinking when it is making so much money?Now this isn't normally the case. If we look at Apple's latest 10-Q (the official SEC filing where the company reports earnings and balance sheet information), we find that its assets grew from $17 billion to $25 billion between 2006 and 2007. That should be no surprise, since the company is making lots of money from Macs, iPods, and iPhones. As the company makes money, it invests that money unless it give it back to stockholders. Those investments show up on the balance sheet. Cool.Except when it's Microsoft. As I noted back in May, Microsoft's asset base has been shrinking over the past year, going from nearly $70 billion in June 2006 down to $66 billion at the beginning of the year and down to $64 billion as of March 31. It hit $63 billion as of the end of July. Yeah, Now that's a change of $7 billion that's gone poof from Microsoft's balance sheet. And it's not shareholder dividends -- those only account for less than $1 billion over the period.Now in Microsoft's latest filing (the balance sheet is on page 2), it managed to push those assets back up to $65 billion, so life should be good, right? Well, not so much. The problem is a little balance sheet item called "Goodwill". That ballooned from about $5 billion to over $10 billion in the last three months. Why? Oh yeah. Because Microsoft paid nearly $6 billion for aQuantive, an advertising company with about $450 million in annual revenue. And since Microsoft paid cash for that company, the value it received over and above the tangible assets go on the balance sheet as goodwill. For aQuantive, that's about $5 billion. But just because that value is on the balance sheet doesn't mean the asset is actually worth anything like that value. Goodwill values are typically carried for years and eventually written off because companies often overpay during acquisitions. Microsoft, despite its billions in the bank, is no exception to that rule. And if we subtract off Microsoft's overpayment from its balance sheet, the company's assets are down to about $60 billion. That means that excluding the aQuantive goodwill, Microsoft's hard assets have shunk $10 billion or 15% over 15 months. Wow. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.So where have those assets gone? Well, about $7 billion has gone to funding Microsoft's XBox 360 initiative, which has bought it the number two spot in next-generation video games. However, the company still loses money on each console sold and while it made money on the Halo 3 launch, there are no future Halo launches scheduled, so we expect that business unit to go back to its money-losing ways. We've already noted that the company has spent nearly $6 billion to get into the advertising business, with few signs of success there. And Microsoft's Online Services Business is continuing to lose money as well.Some other interesting points in the Microsoft 10-Q statement: the company is under an IRS tax audit for the years 2000-2006. Some of Microsoft's declining shareholder equity is due to a $7 billion increase in reserves Microsoft has booked to account for some of its tax provisions under the new FIN 48 rules, which it must record on the balance sheet if it has less than a 50% chance of its position being upheld. The result: net shareholder equity declined from $36 billion to $32 billion between 2006 and 2007.Now to be fair, I concede that Microsoft's Windows and Office businesses are generating billions in profit every quarter. But companies like GE, Apple, Intel, and others seem to use their billions to grow the net worth of their companies. Only Microsoft appears to use those billions to make its company smaller and worth less. And with 9.5 billion Microsoft shares outstanding, it doesn't take much dilution of value before one has to ask whether those shares are worth their current valuation, to say nothing of twice their value. After all, why pay a premium for a depreciating asset?So the next time someone tries to sell you on Microsoft coming back as the next big growth stock, ask them this simple question: "Why should I invest in a company whose that has lost 12% in shareholder equity in a year and whose assets are declining?" I'm not sure there's a good answer.Full disclosure: The author is not an accountant and has no positions in Microsoft, GE, or Intel. He does, however, own Apple and Google stocks, both of which some may view as Microsoft competitors.Technorati Tags: Apple, Balance Sheet, Financial analysis, Microsoft

  • TUAW Exclusive: Aaron Patzer on the future of mobile finance, Mint.com, and Quicken on the Mac

    Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, TUAW Interview At the age of twenty-six, Aaron Patzer founded the financial website Mint.com. In many ways Mint was much like an Apple product: it had a simple interface, it was easy to understand and use, and many of Mint's early adopters became very loyal evangelists. Word of mouth spread, and just 18 months after its launch (Mint officially went public in 2007), Mint had added its one millionth user. To the dismay of many, Mint sold to Intuit in September 2009 for $170 million. I say dismay because many users of Quicken products had been less than thrilled with Intuit's offerings for some time, and some people were concerned what a twenty-year-old company that seemed stuck in its ways would do with a popular user-friendly Web 2.0 startup. Out of all the negative press, perhaps Mac users could be forgiven for having the most anxiety over the acquisition. Many had abandoned Quicken Mac 2007 in favor of Mint.com. Mac users wanted to move on from the stale Quicken ecosystem and go with something simple and easy. Now, that simple and easy solution had moved to where the users had escaped from. Luckily, Intuit wasn't like other companies who buy smaller start-ups just to eliminate a competitor. Intuit recognized that Patzer and his team possessed the much-needed original financial software ideas and UI design mojo to put a spark in their aging products. In November 2009, Intuit made Aaron Patzer VP/GM of Intuit's Personal Finance Group -- which left him in charge of Intuit's personal finance offerings, including Quicken for Mac. It was January 2008. At Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs had just unveiled the MacBook Air. Over at Intuit's booth, the company was previewing an anticipated update to Quicken Mac 2007 - one that didn't require Rosetta to run and didn't have an un-Mac-like UI. Unfortunately, the UI that Quicken ended up with consisted of a Cover Flow-esque interface. It was 2008 after all, and Cover Flow was the hot new UI element, but this was a finance app. We didn't need glitz when we just wanted to see how much cash we had in the bank. That aside, the single-window interface was a welcome change. Intuit announced that Quicken Mac 2007's sequel, Quicken Financial Life for Mac, would ship in the Fall of 2008. Fall 2008 came and went. At Macworld Expo 2009, Intuit previewed a new beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac and delayed its release again until Fall 2009. I was an early tester of the new beta, and it was buggy; the user interface looked friendlier than it actually was - in other words, the beta was everything you had come to expect from an Intuit product for the Mac. July 2009 came around and, no surprise, Intuit announced it was delaying Quicken Financial Life again, this time until 2010. 2010 - four years after the last version of Quicken for Mac came out (2007 was released in 2006). This time Intuit released a statement all but admitting that the company had failed at providing the Mac with usable financial software: Feedback from Mac customers led us to rethink our approach to developing Quicken for Mac. We went back to the drawing board and are making changes to everything from what the program does to how it looks. We spent extra time building a reconcile mode for the new register, a robust Windows-to-Mac transfer function for new Mac users (and existing customers running Quicken on a Windows virtual machine), and redesigned the experience to make it look and feel like a native Mac application should. At the same time, Intuit announced Quicken Financial Life for Mac would be available for pre-order from Intuit's site on October 12, 2009. Guess what happened? That's right. But at least this delay was only two months. By the time the product actually did go live with pre-orders many, including myself, thought it was too little, too late. Luckily though, something happened at Intuit between the pre-order delay in October and the December pre-order release: Aaron Patzer was put in charge of Quicken Essentials for Mac (they scrapped the Quicken Financial Life name for a reason I'll get to in a moment). I interviewed Aaron by phone yesterday and he had a lot of things to say about the frustration Mac users have with Intuit. Perhaps that's because he experienced the same frustration with Quicken - and that frustration led him to found Mint.com. Speaking with Aaron, I could hear the passion in his voice for simple products that allow users to easily access their data in a straightforward way. Those original ideas and UI design mojo I mentioned earlier? Aaron put them to work right away. "When I first saw Quicken Financial Life, it had Cover Flow for no reason," he laughed. Cover Flow? No reason? Gone. "Quicken for Mac 2006 and 2007 were C/C++ programs that looked like bastardized versions of the Windows product. Little things matter," he told me. "In the old apps you would think you were supposed to press Command-A to select all of the entries in your registry, because that's what Command-A does on a Mac - it selects all. But in Quicken Mac 2007 it would actually bring up your accounts list. It's little things like that, that you could tell the people [writing the program] weren't real Mac aficionados." Aaron himself uses a 15" MacBook Pro. The team that he spearheads for Quicken Essentials is a group of "Mac guys who live and breathe this stuff." The team consists of "five or six developers and three guys on QA with product managers coming on and off and the graphics guys switching between the Windows and Mac versions." Speaking of Quicken on Windows, Aaron himself wrote the spec for the next version of Quicken for Windows (2011, due out later this year). Why is that important? Because Aaron has a clearly defined vision of what the future of financial software will look like. "You'll start to see the mess of all the [Intuit] products merged together. Longer term it shouldn't matter where you use your financial application, whether it's on the Mac, Windows, or Linux. I want to get everything to parity [on] the features and actually do the back-end so it's all a consistent single data model - probably based on Mint - and then just skin the front ends (applications) to look like a Mac product, to look like a Windows product, to look like an iPhone or an Android app - to take advantage of the unique advantages of those platforms. But the back-end would be the same so you can just migrate any time you want to from Mint.com to Quicken Essentials for Mac to your Android phone or iPhone." Well, that sounds awesome, but what about people that have years worth of old Quicken data? "Eventually we will make it so you can just one-flip click your 20 years of data into the cloud and pull it down on any of these devices - that's the holy grail and it'll take over a year to do that,' he says. "But you can see that already in using the new QEM - it's using a lot of the same user experience paradigm (the way you budget on the Mac, the way you click through the pie charts) and that makes the back-end easier." That's the larger picture, and after listening to Aaron's enthusiasm, if anyone can make it happen, it'll be him. Let's get back to Quicken Essentials for Mac, though. "It's called Quicken Essentials for Mac because it's what we consider to be essential for most users - about 80% of users." It's not just what Aaron and his team think is essential; it's what people tell them they want. "We do a lot of usability studies, that's why Mint turned out the way it did. We applied the same to QEM. We went to people's homes and watched them use it. The majority of them just want to know: How much do I have? How much do I owe? How much do I spend on gas and food? How many times do I go to this restaurant? How many times do I go to Starbucks? What investments do I have? Let me set a budget to control my spending." Yeah, but what about the thing many arm-chair reviewers talk about? "Only 6% of users across all platforms use bill pay," Aaron says. "Most people still go to their bank's website to pay a bill." What about other requested features, like deeper investment tools? That's where the future of Quicken on the Mac comes in. Intuit isn't abandoning the Mac platform anytime soon; in fact, they're embracing it: "For the next version of Quicken for the Mac we are planning two SKUs: Quicken Essentials and a Deluxe version which adds the deeper investment tools - history of investments, stock lots (buying shares of one stock at different times), etc." You may rightly point out that Quicken for Windows and even the old Quicken for Mac supported these investment tools and that Quicken for Windows supports bill pay (for the paltry 6% who actually use it), but give it time. Aaron has only been on QEM for four months now, but has already helped completely reinvent Quicken on the Mac in that short timespan (yes, it's finally a Cocoa app). Though many may complain of the lack of investing/bill pay features, I can only liken Quicken Essentials for Mac to QuickTime X. Both apps have been rewritten from the ground up to replace clunky legacy code that would have slowed their scalability in the future. Just as QuickTime X is missing some of the features of QuickTime 7, Quicken Essentials for Mac is missing some of the features of Quicken Mac 2007 - for now. But because of the clean-sweep rewrites, these new applications are just the launching point for the programs into a better, more feature-rich future. I've been playing with Quicken Essentials for Mac for a few days now (I'll have a full review of it on February 25) and I can already tell you, I'm a convert. I abandoned Quicken for Mint, but QEM has brought me back into the fold. It's worth it for the Cocoa rewrite alone. What else does Intuit have in store for the Apple community? Aaron told me that after Mint releases its Android app, the team will be adding features to the next iPhone version. Some of those features include adding manual transactions - the ability to enter checks that haven't cleared yet, and an easier way to enter cash. "Doing that on the iPhone is probably the most useful way to do it because you are usually paying cash in a cab or buying a quick coffee with it." Another thing under consideration is an ATM locator. "We know which bank accounts you have so we can tell you which ATMs in your area are not gonna charge you a fee." Also expect to see an iPad app. "Yes, it's something we've been looking into. Ideal implementation would be Mint's pie chart that you can click through and dive into to see Food-Dining-McDonald's, etc. Where you could use pinch to expand and contract." But the iPad app won't be available at launch and probably not before late summer at the earliest. What about Aaron's brainchild? I use Mint for all my US accounts, but what about my UK bank accounts? Will the rest of the globe soon be able to utilize Mint.com? "Mint is working with the Global Division at Intuit, planning how to internationalize our code base." As Aaron points out, that's one of the advantages of such a large company taking over a Web 2.0 startup - the startup can use the company's resources to go further than it could have on its own. As for that large company? Well, something tells me that acquiring Mint and Aaron Patzer is the best thing that could ever have happened to Intuit - and you can take that to the bank.TUAWTUAW Exclusive: Aaron Patzer on the future of mobile finance, Mint.com, and Quicken on the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Aaron Patzer - Quicken for Mac - Intuit - Quicken

  • 50 Killer Mac Apps For Under $50

       Who doesn't need more for less? We present 50 Mac|Life-approved applications--many free, all under $50--that'll guarantee you get the most from your Mac without traumatizing your wallet. The Internet is full of noise--countless different applications for every occasion, with reviews everywhere that love and hate them at the same time. While that’s hardly news, it’s still a hassle that isn’t going away. Say you picked up a spiffy new MacBook Pro, and it’s time to kit it out with the leanest, meanest software. After all, Macs have that rich history of garage-roots development, of a few folks in a basement brewing up quality software that smokes the big-name stuff. So you’ve got a feeling there’s great, affordable software just waiting for you to find it--and you’re right. But how do you sift through the zillion calendar apps and jillion media players to find the gems worthy of your hard drive space? And more importantly, your time and money?We’re here to help with a compendium of essential software. It didn’t come easily--we debated, argued, haggled, and even pleaded to secure a prized position on this list for our favorite, most useful applications. But by limiting the software we’re highlighting to 50, we’ve guaranteed you the best of the best--no Internet spew here. And by capping the cost of the software we’ve selected at $50, we’ve made sure you can reasonably buy what you need. You may love your Mac already, but you’re not gonna believe how much it can do once you load up even a few of these choice applications.   Entertainment Sure, iPods and iTunes make music and movies easier to enjoy, but they're not without headaches of their own. That's where these awesome apps come in. They take the pain out of kicking back with your favorite flicks and tunes. Simplify Media Share & stream your iTunes library over the Internet.The iPod has made several portable music formats obsolete, and we sure don’t miss schlepping around fragile cassette tapes or heavy wallets full of CDs. But even the mighty iPod has its limits--namely capacity. That’s where Simplify Media (free, Simplify Media, simplifymedia.com) comes in handy. It guarantees that the size of your music library doesn’t matter by letting you stream music between computers via the Internet. Yup, this app will play your entire library on any computer (as long as the one that has your library is powered up and online).Stream your tunes from home or the next cube.Once installed, a simple login fires up your music. Simplify Media works with iTunes just like the built-in LAN sharing does, and the remote libraries appear under Shared, alongside any local shared libraries. Even better, you can add up to 30 friends’ shared libraries, and an iPhone app ($5.99) lets you pipe your music to your iPhone or iPod touch.  SuperSync SuperSync keeps multiple iTunes collections in sync. Speaking of iTunes libraries--streaming is great, but what if you want to sync libraries across multiple Macs? SuperSync ($22, SuperSync, supersync.com) makes it so. Sure, Apple introduced limited music-transfer capabilities with Home Sharing in iTunes 9, but that feature requires computers to be on the same local network. SuperSync one-ups iTunes by syncing iTunes libraries over the Internet. It’s perfect for anyone who uses multiple Macs, and SuperSync also has a bunch of other tricked-out features. In deference to the record companies, Apple makes transferring music from an iPod to a computer unnecessarily difficult. SuperSync handles the task with ease, making it a bacon-saver when the hard drive in your Mac kicks the bucket. SuperSync will even allow you to sync libraries cross-platform.SuperSync's color-coded interface helps you synchronize your iTunes tracks across multiple Macs.  VLC Media Player Never worry about video file types again. If most of your Mac video-watching happens in the form of DVDs or QuickTime movies, you probably don’t think too much about player software. But move beyond the most basic video types, and you’re asking for trouble. With the myriad formats, containers, and encoding parameters available, the simple act of playing back a cat video can become incredibly frustrating. VLC Media Player (free, VideoLAN, www.videolan.org) is like a Swiss Army knife for digital media. It’s open source and cross-platform, and the app will play back practically any audio or video file you throw at it. VLC also handles file conversions with ease, so you can use it to convert audio and video for use online or on portable devices.It plays, it converts, it makes toast (okay, maybe not that last one.)  RipIt Backup & convert DVDs with RipIt.There are plenty of legit reasons to rip a DVD. Backup copies of kids’ movies for the minivan, watching Glee on your iPod touch while you’re on the bus, or even just saving battery power on your laptop (playing back a file from a hard drive is much more efficient than spinning a DVD).RipIt's simple interface makes ripping DVDs seamless and easy.Once the domain of ĂĽbernerds, DVD ripping is a one-click affair thanks to RipIt ($19.95, The Little App Factory, ripitapp.com). And since it makes full rips, all of the menus, bonus features, and subtitles remain intact. You can play back the resulting files with DVD Player on your Mac or use a freeware tool like Handbrake to convert your rips into iPod-friendly formats.   Delicious Library We love the iTunes Store, but we still end up accumulating books, DVDs, console games, and, yes, even CDs. Delicious Library ($40, Delicious Monster Software, www.delicious-monster.com) helps catalog your collections by--get this--taking snaps of UPCs via your webcam and then automatically organizing your meatspace content onto virtual shelves for easy sorting and browsing. You can track loans to friends, post items for sale on Amazon, and publish Web catalogs formatted for your iPhone. That way, you can avoid buying another copy of John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require.   Connect360 We’re Apple-faithful, but that doesn’t stop us from engaging in a little Modern Warfare 2 on our Xbox 360. And since the 360 is much more than a simple gaming machine, we also use it to stream iTunes tracks to our entertainment center and view pictures from our iPhoto library on our HDTV--with the help of Connect360 ($20, Nullriver Inc, www.nullriver.com), that is. It works over wired or wireless networks, and it even streams H.264 video straight from our MacBook. Sweet!   Peel Pack rats, beware: Peel ($14.95, Hjalti Jakobsson, www.getpeel.com) can get really overwhelming, really fast. But if you’re an avid follower of music blogs, Peel can automagically grab new tracks as they’re posted. So forget all that pesky right-clicking and manually adding to iTunes. Just feed Peel a list of your favorite music blogs, and then kick back as tons of new, free tunes get downloaded straight to your Mac. You may never have to buy (or pirate) music again.    CoverScout Cover Flow is one of those features that looks great in a demo but doesn’t quite translate at home. iTunes can attempt to find the album art that makes Cover Flow actually useful, but it’s limited in scope and can’t make fuzzy matches. CoverScout ($39.95, equinox USA, www.equinux.com) scours the Internet to find your missing album art and presents you with multiple options to let you choose the best images. Don’t Cover Flow without it.   TuneUp For all of those untitled and mistitled tracks in your music library, there’s TuneUp ($19.95/one year, $29.95/lifetime; TuneUp Media; www.tuneupmedia.com). Like CoverScout, TuneUp can find and download missing album art, but its best trick is cleaning up your ID3 tags--the artist, title, and album info displayed in iTunes. A quick search is all it takes to clear up all those Track 1s and Unknown Artists in your library. It sure beats cleaning up metadata by hand. Next Page: Productivity Apps >>  Productivity Takin' care of business, every day. Takin' care of business, every way. Workin' on a Mac, it's all right. This productivity software is workin' overtime. WriteRoom Blocks distractions so you can write in peace.Proving the tired adage that “less is more,” WriteRoom ($24.95, Hog Bay Software, www.hogbaysoftware.com) is a light text editor with a full-screen mode. Start a new document, and everything else fades away--your Dock, your menubar, and other windows on your Desktop. You’re left with a black screen and friendly green text for a clutter- and distraction-free experience. The Escape key toggles between full-screen mode and windowed mode, which resembles TextEdit with a live word count.WriteRoom can save your work as plain text, rich text, or Microsoft Word’s .doc format. The preferences offer tons of customization: auto-save, character counts, the appearance of text in full-screen mode, and more. But WriteRoom’s real magic is how it gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you’re doing.  BusyCal One calendar application to rule them all.BusyCal ($40, BusyMac, www.busymac.com) is iCal on steroids. It dances circles around iCal, chanting, “Everything you can do, I can do better.” And it’s right. Sharing is a snap: You can set up two-way syncing with your Google Calendar or with other BusyCal calendars on your local network or the wide-open Internet. But even aside from sharing, BusyCal offers tons of calendaring bells and whistles: customizable views, sticky notes, weather forecasts, moon phases, graphical icons, a to-do list, notes, tags, and much more. And since it uses the Sync Services built into Mac OS X, your BusyCal calendars can sync with MobileMe and your iPhone. You can even switch back to iCal anytime without losing any of the events or to-dos you entered in BusyCal.So what if iCal is free? BusyCal is better.  Things Flexible to-do list syncs with iCal and the iPhone. For busy people like us, a good to-do list is beyond essential. But some that we’ve tried are so complicated that just managing your tasks becomes a chore in itself. So the light, easy-to-understand Things ($49.95, Cultured Code, www.culturedcode.com) is a breath of fresh air. You can go the full Getting Things Done route, adding contexts, priority levels, a tickler file, and so on. Or you can keep it simple, with one-off and repeating tasks and multistep projects. iCal syncing can get your deadlines on your calendar, and Things on the Mac can sync wirelessly with Things on the iPhone ($9.99 in the App Store). We’ve tried multiple task-managment systems, from Web-based ToodleDo to iPhone apps like ToDo to Mail’s built-in To-Do list to good old paper and pencil. Things is the cream of the crop for its good looks, quick entry, and easy syncing.Things uses tags to organize your projects in a million ways--or you can ignore the tags altogether and just work.  Express Scribe Transcriptions made easy... well, easier.Transcribing an interview, lecture, or other recording is hard enough, just with the listening and typing. Toss in the extra arm movement as you frantically click from your text editor to your audio-playback application every time you want to pause the recording or rewind a few seconds, and your transcribing job just got tougher and more frustrating. Express Scribe (free, NCH Software, www.nch.com.au/scribe) lets you set system-wide hotkeys for audio playback so you can stay in your text editor, fully control the audio, and never need to reach for your mouse.Express Scribe can also slow down your audio without changing the pitch, supports video, works with lots of file types, loads recordings from analog or digital audio recorders, and more. Plus, it’s completely free. Wahoo!  NoteBook The Mac is silly with note-taking applications (Evernote, Yojimbo, ShoveBox, MacJournal…shall we go on?), but Circus Ponies’ NoteBook ($49.95, Circus Ponies, www.circusponies.com) is a standout. If you subscribe to “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” NoteBook can be the place for notes, Web clippings, bookmarks, documents, voice memos, photos, and more. It struts its flexibility with ready-made templates for planning a trip, writing a research paper, collecting recipes, keeping a journal, and so on, while its fun spiral-notebook interface is a nice touch.    TextExpander A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters could produce Hamlet a lot faster if they knew how to use TextExpander ($29.95, SmileOnMyMac, www.smileonmymac.com). This wonder app installs as a System Preferences pane and lets you define shortcuts for your most commonly used words and phrases. Abbreviate long URLs, your email signoff, even your own photo or scanned signature file. Then as you type those shortcuts, they’re automagically expanded to what you really wanted to say. Brilliant.   iFinance 3 Sure, Quicken is popular and Mint.com is free, but iFinance 3 ($29, Synium Software GmbH, www.synium.de) was built from the ground up just for Macs, and it shows. The intuitive interface makes it a cinch--dare we say a pleasure?--to track your accounts, keep an eye on your cash flow, set up a budget, and graph your expenses. It can also import from CSV and QIF files for easier data entry. Plus, a companion iPhone app lets you enter transactions on the go.  FlexTime This charming timer app ($18.95, Red Sweater Software, www.red-sweater.com) lets you set up multistep routines that run once or repeat ad nauseam. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text, or even running a script. Once your routine is perfect, you can export the audio to iTunes--great for following a recipe’s carefully timed steps or taking your favorite yoga routines on the road.   DEVONthink Personal Another great catch-all for storing, sorting, organizing, and searching information, DEVONthink ($49.95, DEVONtechnologies, www.devon-technologies.com) can take almost anything you can throw at it. Documents, PDFs, photos, multimedia files, bookmarks, webpages, iChat logs--all of those can be imported, sorted, and read right in DEVONthink. Searching is easy, and you can cobble together a brand-new document from items in your DEVONthink database and export it to your favorite text editor for printing or as HTML for posting.  Next Page: Internet Apps >>  Internet It's a wild place, that Interweb, so there's nothing like a few primo apps to tame everything from blogging to FTPs to Twitter and Flash banners. Transmit Traveling the two-lane FTP highway.FTP has been around forever. Social networking and cloud computing may come and go, but FTP is in it for the long hall. Fortunately, there are a wealth of great FTP clients for the Mac, and the best of those is Transmit ($29.95, Panic, www.panic.com/transmit). The client utilizes a split directory window that shows the path on your computer and the path on the FTP site. With in-app search and the ability to sync folders on your Mac and on the FTP site, Transmit helps alleviate the search and drag-and-drop blues of other clients. The sync feature is especially helpful for Web developers and designers. You can even create desktop droplets for quick uploads to heavily used sites.Two-window FTP FTW.  Mac-Journal Web-based apps suck.Blogging about your life is a faux pas. Blogging about anything else that people actually care about is the proper way of utilizing of the blogging systems available out there. The ongoing problem is that most blogging platforms are bit of a pain to use because they’re Web-based. Plus, if you’re somewhere without Internet access, you can’t start laying out your blog posts for your site. MacJournal ($39.95, Mariner Software, www.marinersoftware.com) solves that problem with an easy-to-use multiplatform blogging client. Lay out your articles offline with images, video, and audio, then save them for later posting. The app includes the ability to both write in full-screen mode so you won’t be interrupted by your Twitter friends, and to record an audio podcast in the client.Create blog posts quickly and without browser issues.  Tweetie Multi-account Twitter action.After wowing the world with its iPhone Twitter app, atebits decided to release a desktop version of Tweetie ($19.95, atebits, www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/). The app can handle multiple Twitter accounts, compose tweets in a separate window, allow you to change the account you’re sending a tweet from on the fly, and let you drag and drop pics and videos right into the Compose window. Don’t have the perfect media on your Mac for a tweet? Record a video or shoot a pic from your iSight camera directly in Tweetie. And since Twitter conversations can be difficult to follow, Tweetie displays the conversation you’re having in a timeline if you just double-click one of the pertinent tweets. The Tweetie bookmarklet in Safari also allows you to share links quickly from your browser.Have an actual conversation on Twitter with Tweetie.  Dropbox Stop, drop, and roll on home.Transferring large files can be a huge pain. Where the hell did you leave that thumb drive? External hard drives leave an unsightly bulge in your pocket, and all those cables are always getting tangled in your shoes. That’s a safety hazard, son. Dropbox (2GB storage for free, 50GB for $9.99/month; Dropbox; www.dropbox.com) is a cloud-based storage drive that you can access from any computer or iPhone. Just pop files into the Dropbox folder on your Mac, and it automatically syncs up with the online disk (which you can view on Dropbox’s website) and with any other machines you have the application installed on. You can even share folders and files with other Dropbox users. If the free 2GB box doesn’t cut it, you can upgrade to 50GB for $10 a month.Access your files from anywhere in the universe (with an Internet connection).  LogMeIn If you need to remotely access a Mac or (gasp) a PC with Windows on it, LogMeIn (free, LogMeIn, logmein.com) allows you to peer into your remote computer from anywhere. You can launch apps, move files, and adjust your preferences via a Web-based interface, as if you were sitting at that computer. For $29.99, you can get your iPhone in on the action too.   TweetDeck If you’re a Twitter power user, TweetDeck (free, TweetDeck, www.tweetdeck.com) should be in your arsenal of Twitter apps. The interface is a series of columns that displays info like your friends’ feeds, saved searches, mentions, direct mentions, and Facebook updates. You can also keep up with trending topics with just a quick glance. If there’s something you need to track on Twitter, TweetDeck can make a column for it.   Vuze Allegedly, BitTorrent steals medication from senior citizens, but isn’t it time to forget about all the evil things it supposedly does? Instead, focus on the greatness of Vuze (free, Vuze, www.vuze.com) and its ability to download legally available video files. After you’ve done the downloading, Vuze can convert your files for use on the iPhone, Apple TV, iPod, Xbox 360, TiVo, and PlayStation 3. It’ll even stream videos to your set-top boxes. Nice!   BannerZest Creating Flash banners is difficult, especially when you don’t know or own Flash. BannerZest ($49, Aquafadas, www.aquafadas.com) takes the pain out the process and gives you a simple way to create quick, beautiful Flash banners. From a standard gallery to an interactive experience, BannerZest comes with a collection of themes for different uses, and it uploads your banners to your FTP or MobileMe disk.    FileChute Sending large files over email can result in the dreaded bounced email. FileChute ($17.95, Yellow Mug Software, www.yellowmug.com) works with your MobileMe-, FTP-, or WebDAV-accessible Web server. Drop your file into the app, and it uploads it to your online server of choice and then creates a URL to add to your email. If you drop more than one file, you get an archive uploaded to your server. Adios, bounced emails!  Next Page: Content Creation Apps >> Content Creation Sure, Adobe's stuff is the gold standard, but you don't want to have to count on a good night at the poker table to pay for it, right? Cue these killer applications, which let you effectively draw, edit photos, render, animate, and even scratch for a very fair price. djay 3 Budgeted beats to grow on.You want to spin phat beats, but your slim bank keeps you from purchasing the high-end DJ equipment and software. That’s okay, young DJ-in-training, djay 3 ($49.95, algoriddim, www.djay-software.com) gives you everything you need to rock the house without losing your shirt. This surprisingly robust audio-mixing software integrates with your iTunes library and puts all the usual mixing and scratching right on your desktop. The application supports multitouch trackpad scratching and fading between tracks, so it’s especially perfect for the last few generations of MacBooks. And as you grow as a DJ, the application will grow with you thanks to its support for MIDI controllers. That means when you get the cash for those fancy digital mixers and turntables, djay will be right there with you.With your iTunes catalog at your fingertips, you'll find some pretty interesting mashups.  Audacity Free audio editor extraordinaire.Audio editing seems simple at first. Then suddenly, you’re knee-deep in samples, frequencies, and bitrates. Sound editing really is part science, part black magic, so we’re thankful that Audacity (free, SourceForge, audacity.sourceforge.net) removes one of the biggest obstacles: choosing a quality application and figuring out how you’re going to pay for it. Audacity is both terrific and free, which is kinda hard to beat. An audio-recording and -editing application, it captures up to 16 channels at once from multiple sources, features noise removal, includes a metadata editor, and supplies unlimited undos. It can handle most of the audio files out there, and it’ll work with multiple files types in the same project. Audacity is also is cross-platform, so if you’re a recent Mac arrival, you may already know about its awesome power.So many features, you'll second-guess the price: free.  SketchUp 3D for you and me.Maya, 3D Studio Max, and SketchUp--all of these will let you create magical 3D worlds. Only one will do it for free, and you probably nailed it in one--it’s Google’s SketchUp software (free, Google, sketchup.google.com) that brings the world of 3D to the average Joe. You can create your own items or utilize Google’s 3D warehouse to find models created by other SketchUp users. With all those models at your fingertips, you can create floor plans for your home, build a level for your favorite FPS, or export the files to animation software or Photoshop. The application includes tutorials that’ll get you up and rendering in no time at all… so now nothing stands between you and virtual-world domination!Build a virtual man-cave for you and your stuff.  Ringer Wham-bam ringtone, ma'am.We get tons of people asking us, “How do I make a ringtone for my iPhone?” Until recently, we told them to launch GarageBand, cut a ringtone, and export it to iTunes. Now we recommend Ringer ($15, Pixel Research Labs, pixelresearchlabs.com/ringer) as the quickest and easiest way to create ringtones from your favorite songs and audio files. Ringer has access to your entire iTunes library and works with MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V, and QuickTime files. Yeah, you can make a ringtone from a video file. A super-simple editor with waveform information makes it a snap to select the perfect section of audio, and you can fade in and out of the file and preview the ringtone before cropping it and sending it to iTunes for a sync with your iPhone.   Acorn Using an image editor doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. In fact, with Acorn ($49.95, Flying Meat, www.flyingmeat.com/acorn), you’ll get features like layers, AppleScript support, 64-bit support, drawing, and filters in a package that’s easy on the wallet. This easy-to-use software strips away most of the features most people don’t use and gives you a clean image-editing tool.   Inkscape While raster-based image editors like Photoshop are great at pushing pixels around, the vector-based drawing programs are where all the real action happens. The open-source application Inkscape (free, Inkscape, www.inkscape.org) is similar to powerhouses like Illustrator and CorelDraw, but with one important difference--it’s free. The app utilizes the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and includes a nice 3D drawing tool that allows you to set your vanishing points.    Screenflick With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced screen-capture into QuickTime, and it’s a nice feature if you’re looking to make a quick full-screen screencast. But if you want something that has features like fixed location output at up to 60 fps, Screenflick ($25, Araelium Group, www.araelium.com/screenflick) is an application you can get behind. It’ll highlight mouse clicks and keyboard events, adding a nifty visual cue into your screencasts that highlights what you’re doing.   Bracketeer While your eye can take in an amazing range of light to dark, your camera cannot. In order to help create images that include a tonal range that the average camera can’t capture, HDR applications and plug-ins have appeared on the market. These applications take a series of images that have been bracketed from dark to light and combine them to include the darkest darks to the lightest lights in one HDR image. Bracketeer ($29.95, Pangea Software, pangeasoft.net/pano/bracketeer) is a standalone application that does just that. Adjust the saturation, the contrast, and exposure from within the application. The application will even auto-align your images in case you got the hiccups while taking your pics.   iStopMotion 2 Home Most animators’ first animation was probably a stop-motion piece with Star Wars action figures. And whether those childhood lightsaber battles have you hoping to become the next Brad Bird, or you just love the look of stop-motion, iStopMotion ($49, Boinx Software, www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview) is a quick, easy way to create simple stop-motion animations. Use your iSight or connect a camera to your Mac and start making your own Wallace and Gromit short. You’ll feel the Force, Lu… sorry.  Next Page: Utility Apps >> Utilities Slick utilities can add crucial functionality to your Mac, so we've selected the best options for everything from secure password managers and system-troubleshooting tools to an app that will let you play Windows games on your Mac... without Windows! AppZapper Completely trash applications.Unlike using Windoze, installing and uninstalling apps on a Mac is painless. Drag an application’s icon into your Applications folder, and you’re pretty much good to go. Deleting them is just as simple--just grab them and toss them into the Trash. But if you’ve ever dug around Library or System folders on your Mac, you’ll see that even after you Trash an app, many of them leave crumbs in different parts of your machine. For cleaning up those last little bits, AppZapper ($12.95, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball, www.appzapper.com) is a must-have utility that’s also great for troubleshooting problems. Wiping out all of an application’s preferences and other random files can often turn a troublesome app into a perfectly behaved one after a clean reinstall. Completely remove unwanted applications with a simple drag and drop.  Hazel Clean and organize your Mac--automatically.Hazel ($21.95, NoodleSoft, www.noodlesoft.com) is kind of like Rosie the Robot for your Mac. Or it’s like OS X’s Folder Actions… if they were super-awesome, easy to use, and perfect for helping you keep your Mac’s folders and files organized. Hazel installs as a pane in System Preferences, monitoring locations that you choose, and performs actions on files based on your criteria. By creating simple rules, you can delegate repetitive and annoying file-management tasks to Hazel--for example, automatically add downloaded MP3s to iTunes or move DMGs to an archive on an external drive. Hazel can delve deep into metadata for complex actions like copying images into subfolders by ISO settings or reorganizing music files according to bitrate. You can even set up simple rules for auto-deleting items that have been in the Trash longer than a certain amount of time.  1Password Keep all your confidential info on lockdown.You’ve heard it before--secure, unique passwords are the way to go. Yet there you are, still using the same password for everything from your maclife.com login to your Gmail and your bank account. Do we even have to tell you again why that’s a colossally bad idea? 1Password ($39.95, Agile Web Solutions, agilewebsolutions.com) can help clean up your online act, creating and managing complex passwords for every online account and then logging you in with a keyboard shortcut. The app can also be used to securely store personal information like credit card numbers and addresses for use in Web forms. And since all of your passwords are unique, you won’t have to worry about your banking info being compromised because of a data breach at that sketchy Russian website you used to download MP3s for a penny.1Password securely stores Web passwords, logins, software licenses, and other important information.  iPhone Explorer Store & browse files on your iPhone.Breaking tradition with the iPods of yore, Apple doesn’t provide the ability to use your iPhone as a USB drive. iPhone Explorer (free, myPod Apps, www.mypodapps.com) is a simple app that will let you drag and drop files onto your phone for easy portability. The app itself is lightweight, and all it takes is a USB cable to view your iPhone’s folder structure. In addition to storing files, iPhone Explorer can be used to restore iTunes tracks from your iPod to a Mac or to rescue photographs from the depths of your iPhone’s memory. No jailbreaking is required, but more adventurous users with jailbroken phones can also recover contacts, messages, email, and other data. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s simple to use for the careful novice.  AppleJack AppleJack (free, The Apotek, applejack.sourceforge.net) is one of those things you’ll install once and never think about again—if everything goes right. But if, god forbid, your Mac starts acting weird one day--or stops acting, period--it’ll be AppleJack to the rescue. It’s a command-line utility for diagnosing and repairing problems with your computer. Use the menu-driven system to repair permissions, validate preferences files, and remove screwy cache files.  SuperDuper With Time Machine built into OS X, there’s really no good reason not to have an automatic backup. But Time Machine has its limits--a big one being the lack of bootable backups. SuperDuper ($27.95, Shirt Pocket, www.shirt-pocket.com) easily handles creating and updating bootable clones of your Mac’s hard drive so you’ll be ready to go when disaster strikes. Just plug in your clone, restart, and you’re up and running again.   CrossOver Games PC fanboys like to slag the Mac for having fewer games, but with CrossOver Games ($39.95, CodeWeavers, www.codeweavers.com), Mac users--and Linux fans too--can easily play games coded for Windows machines. The list of officially supported games is hundreds deep, and since CrossOver is based on Wine, you don’t even need a copy of Windows just to play Team Fortress 2.   Clean My Mac Hard drives are never big enough. Whether you have a MacBook Air or a Mac Pro, there always comes a point when there’s just not enough space on your internal disks. Clean My Mac ($29.95, MacPaw, macpaw.com) can help with that problem, scouring your Mac’s drive and tossing out all sorts of gunk you don’t need. Use it to toss unneeded language files, scrub extraneous code from universal binaries, and thoroughly clean up after deleted applications.   rooSwitch OS X’s Fast User Switching is handy for juggling multiple user accounts and their corresponding settings, but rooSwitch ($19, Rocket, rooswitch.com) allows you to maintain different settings on a per-application basis. Use it to manage Home and Work browser profiles, for example, or to have different profiles in your word processor for writing or editing documents. rooSwitch works with nearly any application, and it supports Automator and AppleScript for the ultimate in customizability.  Next Page: Wild Card Apps & Staff Picks >>  Wild Cards Not all Mac apps fall into your neat little categories. These five break the mold and completely deserve a place on your hard drive. Bricksmith Virtual bricks you can't lose or step on? Sold!Legos are the official plastic brick of Mac|Life--we’ve had many discussions about the empires we built in our childhood bedrooms and how much we miss “playing Legos” as the soulless adults we are today. Bricksmith (free, donations accepted; Allen Smith; bricksmith.sourceforge.net) lets you recapture the magic in a highly geeky way. It’s a 3D Lego-model creator, offering drag-and-drop construction using thousands of parts in every color of Lego’s rainbow. Tutorials and the one finished model that’s included show you the ropes, and once you’re done with your virtual creation, you can export step-by-step instructions to build it for real. There’s even a mini figure generator where you can design and outfit a matching Lego man and insert him into your model. This software couldn’t be cooler.We can't believe an application this sweet is donationware.  CameraBag Desktop Give your photos a new identity or some old-timey charm.We named the iPhone version of CameraBag one of our “101 Essential Apps for 2008,” and now the same fun can be had on your Mac, thanks to CameraBag Desktop ($19, Nevercenter, www.nevercenter.com). You drag in a digital image, and the app re-creates the look of a real film photograph--choose from Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema, or Colorcross.For more variations, click the Reprocess button, and all the options will change their look and coloring just slightly. Or check the Multi-filter box and experiment with adding multiple filters to a single photo. Of course, you can export your altered images back to your hard drive without affecting the original file. The novelty of taking an everyday digital snapshot and making it look like a Polaroid image or washed-out 1974 photograph never gets old.Your digital photos, plus extra personality.  SousChef Recipe database + shopping list + cooking assistant = one kitchen lifesaver.SousChef ($30, Acacia Tree Software, acaciatreesoftware.com) edges out MacGourmet ($49.95, www.marinersoftware.com) in the cooking-assistant category for its cloud database of recipes. Every time a SousChef user enters a recipe (133,000-plus at press time), it’s synced to the cloud, and you can search those and import them into your own library. You can also opt out of sharing your own recipes so Aunt Erma’s secret matzo ball soup stays in the family.Once a recipe’s in your library, you can edit, print, email, or blog it--or even add its ingredients to your grocery list. Click the Cook button for a full-screen view of the instructions that you can read from across the room, keeping your Mac out of the splatter zone. The Mac’s built-in speech recognition lets you advance the recipe’s steps with your own voice, or you can use the Apple Remote or a Keyspan Front Row Remote.  Temporis Attractive, drag-and-drop timelines make it easy to "show, don't tell."Everyone loves a good infographic, or at least geeky types like us do. (And the geeks shall inherit the earth, don’cha know?) Temporis ($24.99, Bartas Technologies, www.bartastechnologies.com) makes it easy to create neat-looking timelines on your Mac, which you can then print or export as PDF or TIFF files that are ready for importing into your presentation software, word processor, or page-layout app.Adding new events is just a Command-click away, and it’s a snap to drag the start and end dates around on the timeline. The Arrange button will automatically stagger your timeline’s events into the most logical and easy-to-read order, and the Inspector lets you tweak fonts, colors, titles, labels, and your timeline’s span and intervals. You can even export the event data separately as an XML or CSV file.  Manga Studio Debut 4 Create your own comics and manga, and even manga-fy your photos.Manga Studio Debut 4 ($49.99, Smith Micro, my.smithmicro.com) is a must-have for fans of Japanese manga or anyone who wants to make their own comic books. Its ingenious Beginner’s Assistant groups together the tools by processes so you can intuitively wind your way through a typical manga workflow: sketch, panel, draw, tone, and add character dialogue.You can scan or draw your own art (graphics tablets supported, natch), play with the included samples, purchase manga content from www.contentparadise.com, or even import your own digital photos and watch Manga Studio make them all comicky-looking. Draw speed lines, add dialogue bubbles, move your pages around, and then print or export your finished comic book. Manga Studio Debut 4 is the younger brother to professional-level Manga Studio EX 4 ($299.99), but Debut has plenty of advanced features too, including layers, templates, customizable patterns, and more. Mac|Life Staff Picks  Bass Tuner I’m a beginning bass player--like, very beginning. So it’s a huge help that I don’t have to worry about staying in key. This terrific, simple, and streamlined little app ($9, www.rustykat.com) lets me quickly get in tune in front of my MacBook using the built-in mic. With that necessity sorted, I can fire up some tracks and tablature and focus on struggling to play along.   Multiwinia Multiwinia ($19, www.ambrosiasw.com) offers crazy replayability. You devise a strategy for your stick-figure army, then watch them take on up to four other teams in six game types on 40 vector-graphic maps. Online multiplayer against Mac and Windows players works flawlessly and keeps me coming back for more. No Napoleon complex necessary.    MetaX If you need to tag a large amount of MP4 files, you could use iTunes’ painfully slow process. Instead I found MetaX (free, www.kerstetter.net) for all my tagging needs. The app will search the IMDB catalog and plug the information into the appropriate fields, then share that info via tagChimp. You can even scan DVD barcodes via iSight!    Bean For a word dork like me, word processors are a big deal. Bean (free, www.bean-osx.com) is a lightweight, open-source word processor. It’s missing many of the blinky lights and thingamajigs of the big boys, and that’s exactly the point. Fewer distractions equals better writing, faster. And for anyone who needs to hit a certain length, the live word count rocks.    Fluid I often find that Firefox has the tendency to crash when I have too many Web applications running. But Fluid (free, fluidapp.com) lets me create a site-specific browser out of my most essential websites, like Google Docs and Flickr. Simply plug in the URL, and voilĂ ! You have a separate application running that won’t go down if something else does.   Next Page: More Gaming Bang for 50 Bucks >>  More Bang for 50 Bucks Some of the Mac's best games are also its cheapest? Sweet!Fifty bones won’t buy you even one new Xbox 360 or PS3 game, but on the Mac, you can snap up a stack of premier games for less than that. Or at least, that was our theory when we gave Florence, our new associate online editor, 50 whole American dollars and asked her to max out her Mac with the best gaming that short stack of money could buy.  Man, did she score--check out the results of her diligent “research.” Plants Vs. Zombies $16, amazon.comLine up perilous peashooters and sun-soaking sunflowers against an abominable horde of zombies in Plants vs. Zombies.This animated tower-defense favorite pits you against a horde of zombies with one thing on their (decaying) minds--invading your home for brains! Pit your arsenal of zombie-fighting plants, each with their own spectacular organic weaponry, against 26 zombies and 50 levels of adventure. Fair warning: Once you start playing this excellent game, it’s incredibly hard to stop.  World of Goo $10, amazon.comStack up adorable globs of goo to build structures and watch them band together as you help transport them across various levels.World of Goo is another addictive and totally adorable puzzle game. Created around the idea that circular goo balls make adequate building materials (naturally), the game has you solving puzzles by dragging and dropping goo to create all kinds of crazy structures that enable you to transport your goo across the level. The oh-so-cute googly-eyed blobs pack the game with charm, and you can also connect online and play against other Goo architects around the world. Braid $15, playgreenhouse.comBraid's aesthetically appealing backdrop and profound storyline will keep you engrossed until the very end.Some games defy description, and Braid might be easy to pass over because it appears to be just a mix of platforming and time control set against a gorgeous backdrop. But it subverts and transcends those two well-worn clichĂ©s with brilliant design and an absorbing story that packs a twist that you’ll never see coming. Watch the YouTube videos if you need help solving its puzzles, but just make sure you see this masterpiece through to the end. Balcassa $8, openplanetsoftware.comBalcassa has a mountain of exciting brainteasers for the puzzle fiend.Balcassa feeds off those nightmares you still have about attempting to master that archaic, rainbow-colored Rubik’s cube. And while most of you probably never cracked the damn thing (we didn’t!), Balcassa gives you a second chance. The objective of the game is to slide the cubes into a specific sequence, pattern, or orientation. It may sound like a simple task, but much like fiddling with a Rubik’s cube, figuring it all out is the real reward. Freeware Fun If you’re interested in first-person shooters and MMORPGs, Quake Live and Second Life can give you hours of entertainment at our favorite price: $0.00. Both games perform smoothly on Mac OS 10.4 or later. Quake Live doesn’t require beefy hardware because it runs through your Web browser. But that doesn’t stop it from delivering all the fast-paced action of the classic first-person shooter. Second Life, while not as packed with storyline as World of Warcraft, offers a similar massively multiplayer world where you can meet people, customize your character’s look, and participate in a virtual world that’s just like our own. You don’t even have to watch the clock to make sure you’re on time for a player-versus-player raid!You don't need fancy computer hardware to frag your way through this beloved shooter. Vital Statistics on Our 50 Killer Apps Total cost if you bought all 50 apps: $1219.83Number of apps that are free: 13Apps that have an iPhone counterpart: 15Whaddaya waiting for? (apps that have a free demo): 39Number of countries these apps were born in: 7Apps named "iSomething": shockingly... just 3!Apps that require Snow Leopard: 1Apps that require Leopard: 14Apps that promise "iLife integration!": 9 

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