Gadgetopolis » Computing

First Thoughts: iPad at 35,000 feet?

George Thiruva — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:49:18 +0000

I just got hit by an eye catching story on Mary Kirby’s Runway Girl Blog regarding the iPad as a platform for In-Flight Entertainment. London based Bluebox Avionix has announced that they will reveal their iPad-based “bluebox Ai” inflight entertainment device at next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany. The high bar in the [...]

The Death Watch for Hard Disk Drive Technology Begins Now (Finally!)

Robert Giambitaq — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:10:04 +0000

Up until now Solid State Disk (SSD) storage was the Porsche 911 of storage technologies – screamingly fast (boot your computer faster than you can read this paragraph), expensive (up to 15X more expensive per gigabyte), and a little tight on the inside for heavy users (not much storage capacity). Now SSD is also more [...]

Is Apple Leaving Money on the Table? Part Two

George Thiruva — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:23:04 +0000

In Part One of this series on Apple, Inc.'s earnings potential, we looked into how Apple was playing in the multi-billion dollar home theater business. Consumer Electronics (not including laptop and desktop computers) is a massive multi-billion dollar a year industry. Apple, of course, made a splash with the iPod and iPhone product lines, but it is conspicuously underplaying its potential role in the living room with the underpowered Apple TV.

And yesterday, Apple delivered better than expected earnings of $3.38 Billion on revenue of $15.68 Billion for their first quarter of FY2010 which ended on December 26 (their financial year is about 3 months and 5 days ahead of the calendar year). “If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. It's kind of a stretch to annualize the Holiday shopping quarter. But if does that keeps up, Apple will soon crack the top 10% of the Fortune 500. They'd be even higher if the Fortune 500 were ranked on earnings instead of revenues.

It's wonderful news for Apple shareholders. But, I believe it could be even better - perhaps $1 Billion better with very little effort and almost no R&D. So in this part, we'll take a look at the long forgotten and once failed tactic of licensing the Mac OS to clone manufacturers.

Is Apple Leaving Money on the Table? Part One

George Thiruva — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:23:22 +0000

Given that Apple makes a fortune, am I serious about that headline? Yes! Really!

And I'm not talking about the Apple Tablet, iSlate, iPad or whatever is coming out on the 27th? I'm talking about tweaks Apple could make to its existing Mac product lines that could very easily juice profits up a little more. And Apple can do it with minimal additional R&D just by doing a couple of rather simple things.

In this part we'll take a lost profits with their Apple TV and Mac Mini products.

Let's check it out ...

It’s App Overload at CES!

John Hong — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:17:13 +0000

The two big topics at CES this year seem 3D and Apps. But app-mania (really app platform mania) seems to be a faster spreading disease than swine flu. And it seems liket every CE manufacturer has now caught it. We're not just talking about apps on cell phones platforms like iPhone and Android. Samsung, Vizio, Boxee, Roku, and even the Ford Motor Company. The real trouble with all of these new app platforms is many of them are all new platforms - incompatible with iPhone/Android. Are these companies really thinking that they can all attract thousands of developer to write to their API just because they said the magic word?