General Apple Megathread

[Russic]

"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."

Holy ****. I hope this guy has a weird fetish for lawyers from Apple, because he might be seeing a lot of them.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Russic

Holy ****. I hope this guy has a weird fetish for lawyers from Apple, because he might be seeing a lot of them.

Would those be real lawyers, or only those pretending to be lawyers for "theater"?

What a doofus.

[chemgear]

Here is some more discussion about the "Applegate Hoax". What a sack of lies.

[worth]

Wow, I love This American Life. I'm going to listen to this Podcast right now. I listened to the original podcast about the Foxcon factory, and I am interested to know what is false. Thanks for the heads up.

[worth]

Originally Posted by woob

Any word on when the new Macbook Pros will be coming out?

Edit: Also, do you need to have the Airport to use AirPlay, or will it work with any WiFi network?

I'm looking at a Macbook Pro as well so I have been doing some reading. It seems the factories are already in production. They have apparently removed the optical drive to reduce size. Rumour is late April at the earliest.

[Azure]

So can someone explain to a noob like me why Apple would buy back shares? Looks like they expect to spend $45 billion over the next 3 years doing it.

[Red]

Originally Posted by Azure

So can someone explain to a noob like me why Apple would buy back shares? Looks like they expect to spend $45 billion over the next 3 years doing it.

To keep control of the company. With each excecutive coming and leaving they own less and less stock. Excectives get huge stock grants etc.
If you don't buy some of them back you could find that some person/corp owns larger chunk than Apple.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Interesting, one of "news" pieces that started the whole controversy about Apple in China turns out to have been a fabrication - they've had to retract it.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog...-apple-factory

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...460/retraction

Love the fact an Apple fanboy has his own little distortion field going.

Listened to the episode this morning, what a character that Daisy is. This American Life is top notch as always.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Red

To keep control of the company. With each excecutive coming and leaving they own less and less stock. Excectives get huge stock grants etc.
If you don't buy some of them back you could find that some person/corp owns larger chunk than Apple.

And they have to spend $45 billion doing this? I don't really get it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Red

To keep control of the company. With each excecutive coming and leaving they own less and less stock. Excectives get huge stock grants etc.
If you don't buy some of them back you could find that some person/corp owns larger chunk than Apple.

There are other aspects at play too - if you don't buy back some of the stock, and allow the number of outstanding shares to increase, they decrease in individual value. Which means you have to give ever an ever increasing number of shares to employees as a part of their compensation, which creates a loop where, as you noted, less and less of the company is under company control, but at an increasing rate.

The other aspect at play here is that if the company thinks its stock value will continue to climb, the shares that they buy back today can be re-sold, or re-issued to employees as compensation, at higher market values, forming another revenue stream, or source of salary relief, for the company. Even a 10% growth in the value of the stock over the three years they will be buying back likely outpaces any form of interest they can make sitting on the money.

Finally, there is corporate culture at play. Steve Jobs, and I'm sure the existing leadership team, have been publicly adamant in the past about their cash reserves and enormous market capitalization being a tool to ensure that the company is perpetually independent and free to choose their course and vision. During the dark days, they were relying on cash infusions from companies like (famously) Microsoft to stay afloat, and they didn't like operating under anybody's influence. Some companies are fine with being beholden to the wishes and whims of the majority shareholders - Apple doesn't strike me as one of them. I'm sure with some digging I could find the appropriate quotes - they came out during the shareholder conference calls in recent years.

[firebug]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

There are other aspects at play too - if you don't buy back some of the stock, and allow the number of outstanding shares to increase, they decrease in individual value. Which means you have to give ever an ever increasing number of shares to employees as a part of their compensation, which creates a loop where, as you noted, less and less of the company is under company control, but at an increasing rate.

The other aspect at play here is that if the company thinks its stock value will continue to climb, the shares that they buy back today can be re-sold, or re-issued to employees as compensation, at higher market values, forming another revenue stream, or source of salary relief, for the company. Even a 10% growth in the value of the stock over the three years they will be buying back likely outpaces any form of interest they can make sitting on the money.

Finally, there is corporate culture at play. Steve Jobs, and I'm sure the existing leadership team, have been publicly adamant in the past about their cash reserves and enormous market capitalization being a tool to ensure that the company is perpetually independent and free to choose their course and vision. During the dark days, they were relying on cash infusions from companies like (famously) Microsoft to stay afloat, and they didn't like operating under anybody's influence. Some companies are fine with being beholden to the wishes and whims of the majority shareholders - Apple doesn't strike me as one of them. I'm sure with some digging I could find the appropriate quotes - they came out during the shareholder conference calls in recent years.

^^^Possibly

Most likely issue is that Apple has loads of cash on their balance sheet for which the've been under pressure by some to dividend out to shareholders.

The end result of a share buyback is like a dividend except shareholders get to choose whether they want the 'cash' by selling their shares and taking capital gains or holding onto their position. If Apple were to pay a traditional cash dividend, it would force all of their shareholders to take cash whether they wanted to or not.

There can be other issues at play too, but that should suffice for this thread.

[EDIT: Read the article - Apple will actually do both, qtrly dividend and a share buyback. The buyback does provide some flexibility vs an increased dividend]

[metallicat]

Nevermind

[Rathji]

Anyone know if it is possible to pair your Apple TV remote with a Windows 7 PC (bluetooth capable of course) and use it to control a Powerpoint 2010 presentation?

My research has shown you can do it with Office 2008 and 2011 on a Mac, but can't find anything solid on using it with Windows.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by worth

Wow, I love This American Life. I'm going to listen to this Podcast right now. I listened to the original podcast about the Foxcon factory, and I am interested to know what is false. Thanks for the heads up.

Yup, I life their segment on the Euro economic crisis recently as well. It's sad to see them get linked at all with Daisey and his lies - "that he fully stands behind as theatre". It was so telling and awkward when they called him out on his fabrications.

[Jimmy Stang]

You could hear the disappointment in poor Ira's voice through the whole retraction episode. Although I have always believed This American Life to have a high standard for themselves and their listeners, my perception of their integrity is even higher after this whole debacle. They admitted their own mistakes with sincere regret, and delivered a point-by-point public bitch slap on Mike Daisey.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Anyone know if it is possible to pair your Apple TV remote with a Windows 7 PC (bluetooth capable of course) and use it to control a Powerpoint 2010 presentation?

My research has shown you can do it with Office 2008 and 2011 on a Mac, but can't find anything solid on using it with Windows.

Apple TV remote is IR, not bluetooth, AFAIK. Or are you talking about using an iPhone/iPod Touch running the Remote app?

[Rathji]

I was talking about using the actual Apple TV remote, which now that you mention it, doesn't make sense at all. Do Macs have IR, or how does that work?

I know there is an app that will do what I want, but an actual powerpoint clicker would be better.

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I was talking about using the actual Apple TV remote, which now that you mention it, doesn't make sense at all. Do Macs have IR, or how does that work?

I know there is an app that will do what I want, but an actual powerpoint clicker would be better.

Most macs have IR now. Not all do though.

[Rathji]

Thanks,

I will check out the app then.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

You could hear the disappointment in poor Ira's voice through the whole retraction episode. Although I have always believed This American Life to have a high standard for themselves and their listeners, my perception of their integrity is even higher after this whole debacle. They admitted their own mistakes with sincere regret, and delivered a point-by-point public bitch slap on Mike Daisey.

Yeah, the long segments of silence were brutal - I'm surprised Ira came across as so calm. I'd imagine most people would be going over the table to throttle the fat turkey.