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$19 Billion and nothing to spend it on |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Monday, 05 May 2008 |
 Apple has approximately $19 Billion dollars in cash reserves right now, and is accumulating more and more. The question that Wall Street and lots of other people have is, "where is it going?" What will Apple buy or do with that much money? The even crazier part is that Apple is approaching Microsoft levels of "cash in hand".
Microsoft has approximately $26 billion in cash, Apple has approximately $19 billion. But here's the interesting part. Back in November of 2007 Apple had $15.4 billion. So Apple has managed to store away 4 billion in the last 6 months or so. Microsoft, however, is having the opposite effect. Before they pulled their Yahoo bid they were about ready to borrow money for the first time (Their cash in hand went from $64 billion four years ago to the current $26 billion).
People are speculating that Apple will buy some bandwaves from NextWave, hold out for a major merger, or continue to invest in it's people through economic hard times ( what Steve said they would do ). Either way, expect Apple to have well over $20 billion by the end of the year, if not over $25 billion. But competition for companies will heat up soon, Intel has announced that they are going to be doing active acquisitions in the upcoming year. How will that play out if Intel and Apple are both interested in the same company?
Apple reaching Microsoft's cash supply level (from 9 to 5 mac)
NextWave offeres up bandwidth for sale (from eweek via 9to5mac comments)
Intel announces acquistion interest (from FT.com)
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
 The MacBook Air has had some trouble recently. it appears that Apple designed the super slim notebook to be used by the road warriors of the world, not the heavy users. There are multiple reports of the MacBook Air freezing up due to excessive heat, especially in the upper left region.
At first it was blamed on Time Machine, but that appears to be inaccurate. It is starting to look like heavy CPU and disk activity combined will cause the temperature to rise to 70ºC. This causes freezes and apparently in some cases blown MacBook Airs.
There are a few suggestions on MacFixIt.com to deal with this, one of the main ones is a thermal grease reduction, and another is to always use it on a hard surface. Someone else commented that the app "coolbook" will fix it as well, as it will allow you to monitor and modify the voltage and frequency of the CPU chips.
Take a look at some of the other suggestions if you are having troubles with your MBA. Worst case, bring it back to Apple and have them fix it.
Read more at MacFixIt.com
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pleasure, knowledge, hope and anarchy |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Wednesday, 30 April 2008 |
Saw this little snippet posted originally in March. It's a small paragraph from a past chairman of the Apple Products division explaining the rainbow color Apple logo. Funny how they have now gone away from the rainbow to the monotone apple logo that they were so "anti" about before.
Summary : "We couldn't wish for a more fitting logo: pleasure, knowledge, hope and anarchy".
From culture xy blog via mytalk.at
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New iMacs come a day early. |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Monday, 28 April 2008 |
 Maybe it was to keep us all on our toes, but the new iMac didn't come out on a Tuesday (per norm), but rather today. The new iMacs top out at 3.06 GHz and are sporting the 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS. Apple's stats say it runs about 20% faster than the previous generation iMacs.
So the new iMacs are out of the question for WWDC. That clears up about 10 minutes of Steve's speech, maybe enough time to introduce the 3G iPhone in more detail, the new Mac Mini or another mystery product.
Apple's new iMac
Just the facts (specs)
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Apple buys PPC company for $278M |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008 |
 Here's one that kinda throws you. Apple just bought PA Semi for $278 million dollars, cash. PA Semi is a low-power semiconductor design company, the thing is they work with the "Power" chip architecture that Apple just abandoned for Intel chips. Say what? Yes, you heard me. Apple has just spent $278 million dollars to buy a Power PC chip design company.
Now don't go throwing away your new Intel MacPro's just yet. Even though the PA Semi does do Power chips, I'm sure that the Mac isn't jumping ship on Intel just yet. Chances are this is all about patents. I'm willing to bet that PA Semi (currently with 150 employees) has some patents that Apple wants for itself. PA Semi claims to have a process that makes a power chip three to four times faster than current chips of similar design and power consumption.
Maybe Steve just did this to keep everyone on their toes and guessing?
From Forbes via InfoWorld
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PWN to OWN exploit 1 year old |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
 Turns out the exploit used in the CanSecWest PWN to OWN zero day hack contest was known for about a year. The bug was routed in the version of Perl used by Safari. Perl had been aware of it for a year, but Apple never kept up to date with the releases or patches, so the exploit stayed open until last week.
Miller (who won the $10,000 & a MacBook Air) said he was not going to return the prize money, as he found it independent of the documented Perl exploit. This does bring up one of things that I think Apple does a bad job of, keeping up to date with the versions of open-source software that comes standard. PHP and Perl are just a few that lag behind current standards, and this exploit shows that Apple is not interested (right now) at keeping it's already installed software patched.
From PCWorld.com via Yahoo News
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Apple goes virtual, M$ plays catch up. |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Sunday, 20 April 2008 |
 Rumors have it that Microsoft is going to open up some retail stores. This doesn't look like it would be much of a problem for Apple, but it will be a rather interesting setup as Microsoft will have to "officially" select some systems as their models. Who would they go with? Whoever it is it would be a BIG boost to their stocks.
While Microsoft may be trying to play catch-up with the Apple stores, it looks like Apple is planning a step or two ahead. Recent patent releases by Apple show that they are planning a Second Life like shopping experience for it's online Apple store. This could turn out to be really cool if Apple can do it right. You could walk through the store with people you know, or talk to a genius without having to go to the store.
Read more at MacNN.com
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Psystar dead in the water, again. |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Friday, 18 April 2008 |
 Looks like nobody wants to team up with Psystar to go against Apple. PowerPay dropped Psystar's account due to violations of their terms (blatantly breaking EULA). They are now with PayPal. Let's see if PayPal wants to go up against Apple. Oh wait, we can't. The online store is down. Well I'm sure they'll find some third party service to process the money. Oh wait, what's that? The software needed (EFI V8) is now illegal to use as a direct or indirect way to make money? Damn. Now Psystar is going to have some problems.
Everyone is calling this a hoax now. Phishing (though I don't like the term because I'm a Phish-Head), scam, con, etc. Tom Krazit of CNet's news.com called Rodolfo (Rudy) Pedraza (owner of Psystar), he got through on his cell, but it wasn't Rudy who picked up. Tom is still waiting for the call back.
I tried looking up Psystar's PsyGate, their e-mail service, but all I got was info a bout a crazy looking party. No threads anywhere about email service. Surely someone would have mentioned it somewhere on the Web if they used it. Maybe we could find more info about Psystar Corporation, which is registered in Florida. There has to be some info on it. Well there is, but there are no annual reports yet, since Florida gives you until May 1st to file, and Psystar didn't become a corporation until July of 2007. In a few weeks we'll know how much business Psystar has actually done in its first 6 months of operations.
*Also note they have not changed the location of the corporation to match their new "address"*
Psystar's Florida Corporation Info
EFI V1-8 license update
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