Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy I never woulda pictured Jim drooling over an electronic gadget. Funny.
Originally Posted By avromark I can picture TDG drooling over Jim (And many of us LPers, even if we are 6ft tall.
Originally Posted By peeaanuut berol: from what I understand that will be built into the software. Not sure the HDD size but Im sure its scalable.
Originally Posted By Mr X Unless I missed something, there is no camera right? I wonder if that will affect popularity. If at some point they make an iPhone that includes a camera and a somewhat decent video camera, I'll pay any price (well...not ANY price, but right now I pay a lot for my cell phone, iPod, and digital camera and it would be worth it for me to have all in one). I wonder if those phones will work in Japan though. Looks like it's set up for America only.
Originally Posted By Mr X WOW. Is it a GOOD camera? How's the video? By the way, did you all know that if you invested seven thousand dollars in 1,000 shares of Apple just THREE years ago (prior to the iPod craze) you would have stock worth, to date, $190,000?? Wonder if the iPhone might up the anti?? (I'm thinking of buying a tiny amount of shares and forgetting about them for 10 years or so...but if you did THAT with Disney you'd have less than you started with!)
Originally Posted By mrichmondj ^^ Not true. My Disney shares have returned an annualized 8.5% over the past 12 years. Not by any means a winning lottery ticket, but also not worth less than when I started. Even if Apple sells a ton of iPhones, the margins in the phone business are pretty scanty. They need to generate commerce to the iTunes store and other add-on revenues if the phone business is going to be gangbusters for them. Phones are also fleeting in terms of their lasting appeal. Motorola has been riding high on the RAZR product line for the past couple of years -- but just announced disappointing results now that the RAZRs aren't in as high demand as they once were.
Originally Posted By Mr X Rich...you must have benefited from the nice runup, but you should have gotten out 6 years ago. If you purchased Disney back on January 3rd, 2000 (a "recent" high), you'd have paid $41.25 per share. January 3rd, 2007 close was $35.21, with no splits recorded in the meantime. Close to a 15 pecent drop on a six year hold. Granted, you'd have received a total of $1.66 in dividends per share, but still hardly worth the investment. Good info about Apple though, I was still reluctant to buy any shares as of yet and you've given me more reason to stay away. As for YOU...get the heck out of Disney bro. You're better off in a certificate of deposit...seriously. Try Chinese internet stocks, like Baidu (one hundred percent rise in the past 6 months!), or E-Future (600 percent rise from IPO), or other, USEFUL investments.
Originally Posted By Mr X By the way, NEVER in the past 6 years has Disney even approached that high of 2000 (unlike some other stocks)...it IS getting close now though. I wish you good luck in 2007, Rich, it looks like you might just manage to recoup some of the loss! (buy and hold, by and large, is a myth)
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< The 2 criticisms I keep hearing about iphone are only shops/apple can change its battery and speculation that it'll drain batteries like mad. >>> That's been a persistent problem with the iPods as well, but as someone that's been a devoted iPodder (is that the right word?) for 2.5 years now, I can say that it's not that big a deal. The iPhone battery is rated at "Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing Up to 16 hours Audio playback" which would seem to meet most people's needs for a single day's use. Although it's convenient to not have to charge a phone every day, it's not that big a deal to put it on the charger at night as long as you can get through a busy day on one charge. I'm much more concerned about durability. I drop my iPod constantly, and have broken a couple. <<< I am actually not a fan of combo devices (especially all in one printers....UHGH), however the iPhone seems to be able to do what it promises. >>> I'm in the same camp, but this phone looks like it's combo devices done right. It has true iPod functionality and storage. Maybe the "only 8GB" of storage will be an issue for some people, but I currently carry a 6GB mini and am not particularly interested in video, so the iPhone will actually be an upgrade on storage for me. And the phone appears to be "best in class" just as a phone. I'm so glad that it's a GSM device and not Verizon. So, it should work with T-Mobile as well as soon as Cingular's exclusive deal with Apple is up (or someone figures out how to unlock the carrier lock, or if as rumor has it the phone can be purchased directly from Apple without a SIM lock). Everything should work with other carriers except the visual voice mail, which requires special integration with the carrier. Also, the fact that it's GSM enables the calling features demonstrated on the Apple demo site to work fully: being able to have multiple calls active and/or on hold, and being able to join active and on hold calls into conferences, and so on. Many of us GSM users have been using those features for years, even though current phones don't have quite as slick an interface. Verizon and Sprint users tend to just scratch their heads when they see these features in action. Also, the fact that it's quad-band GSM means that it will work worldwide, so that users can use their regular phone and features when traveling. Well, worldwide except for South Korea and Japan, which are the only two countries to not use some flavor of GSM. Another nice thing about being GSM based is that since the SIM card is user-accessible, one can switch their service between phones as often as they want without getting the carrier involved. Many people have old phones that are no longer needed, and they can be used as backup phones or alternate phones. For example, I once shorted out an expensive phone one GRR at DCA. Now, I just switch my SIM to and old throw-away phone that I don't care if it gets broken before I go into the parks. This will allow someone who normally uses an iPhone to not have to risk breaking it in tough situations yet still keep the cellular service with them. Another thing that Verizon and Sprint users just scratch their heads at.
Originally Posted By SuperDry I'll defiantely be at the front of the line when these things come out. Right now, I carry a RAZR as my phone, which I always have with me. And I ususally also have an iPod mini with me. The iPhone will allow me to have full iPod functionality and storage, and a phone with a better interface than the RAZR, and with only a single device. This is just the kind of device that Steve Jobs seemed born to create: lots of other people have tried combo devices like this, but Jobs is able to pull these things off correctly.
Originally Posted By SuperDry Regarding what this will do to Apple as a company, I think it has the potential of being huge. I see that AAPL is up about 10% on the iPhone annoucement, so before last week would have been a great time to buy , but I'm tempted to do so now anyway. <<< Even if Apple sells a ton of iPhones, the margins in the phone business are pretty scanty. They need to generate commerce to the iTunes store and other add-on revenues if the phone business is going to be gangbusters for them. >>> I don't know that I agree with this. The general belief about iTunes is that it's break-even at best, at least for music sales. It's there to drive sales of the iPod hardware, which is where the money is being made. I suspect that the same will be true with the iPhone. <<< Phones are also fleeting in terms of their lasting appeal. Motorola has been riding high on the RAZR product line for the past couple of years -- but just announced disappointing results now that the RAZRs aren't in as high demand as they once were. >>> But same could have been said about the iPod. But it's just as popular now as ever. I don't think you can over-describe what the iPod has done in the mp3 player market: the iPod has a market share that is so large that it sells twice as many units as all of the other competitors combined, and in a market where Apple was new and many of the competitors were decades-old established players in the consumer electronics space. And, the iPod has done this while being more expensive than the competition. That combination is just about unheard of for mass market goods of any type, let alone electronics. I think there's at least the possibility that the iPhone will dramatically change the marketplace for wireless phones in the same way. The potential is huge if Apple is able to pull it off. Let me describe how I see the current cellphone market: for the most part, the phones themselves are $0 or sub-$100 purchases by the consumer, with the carrier subsidizing the cost in return for a term contract. There's *some* willingness on the part of consumers to pay a bit more to get a nice phone (such as the RAZR), but not much. By and large the consumer sees the phone itself as a $0 or low-$ item and is unwilling to pay more. There's a very small segment of the market that pays several hundred dollars to get a high-end phone such as as Treo and sees the value in doing so, but it's a tiny portion of the market. Consider how many people pay top-dollar for their MP3 players by buying an iPod. Keep in mind what I said above about the iPod outselling all other competing devices by more than 2-to-1 even though it's the most expensive. What if the iPhone was able to do the same thing for the wireless phone market? It would be absolutely *huge* for Apple. And unlike the comment about the RAZR, I think if the iPhone was able to take off, it would be very difficult for someone else to come along and unseat them. Look at how many people have tried to do this for the iPod, and they all have failed. And we're talking big companies here: Sony, Mircosoft, and so on, that have been unable to do much of anything in response to the iPod. I see no reason that Apple can't do the same thing with wireless phones, even against established players such as Motorola and Nokia. I'm not saying that it will happen, but I think there's at least the possibility that it will, and if it does, well that would be good news for the AAPL shares I'm about to buy
Originally Posted By Mr X SD, I was thinking much the same thing. Also thinking how nice it would have been to buy AAPL 3-4 years ago when it was $7 per share! :O
Originally Posted By Mr X Hey SD, weren't we just talking about buying AAPL a few weeks ago? Why the heck DIDN'T we?
Originally Posted By Mr X Seems so. By the way, Baidu is still up a good $20 bucks from where I recommended it to ya.
Originally Posted By ecdc Huh. I'm not the least bit excited about it. It retails for $499.99 and $599.99? I can buy a full PDA phone for much less than that price that will do exactly the same things and more. You can buy a Palm Treo that has a web browser, music player, and phone for cheaper. You can also sync it to MS Outlook so you can receive email, appointments, etc. But then, I've never been an iPod owner either. Right now I have the Motorola Q and I can do everything the iPhone advertises. I have a 2gig mini-SD card for it; I load up music and videos all the time. I browse the web constantly, get my email, etc. It's how I post on LP when I'm at work, since my computer has limited internet access due to corporate security restrictions. If you're a fan of Apple and iPod software, then I guess I can see the excitement, but the way Apple portrays it, it's some kind of technological breakthrough; people have been doing this stuff on their PDAs for a while now.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA The new iPhone looks better than any other gadget on the market right now. And the elimination of the keyboard? Just short of brilliant.
Originally Posted By peeaanuut its not that its not been done before, its that its being done a little bit more seamlessly than before. To play a video on a PDA you have to get certain software that might cost. Than they only play from removable media. It comes down to a little bit better implementation. Of course its still all a mute point because they are not in the hands of the public which will really tell if they are all they promise.
