I guess the contract could have been modified, but I don’t think we will see anything change before 2012. Apple can’t keep up with demand now. They could sell 8 million iPhones on Verizon without blinking an eye.

I do agree that things are going to slow in the US over the next couple of years. If Apple could have handled the demand, this year would have been prime to go to multiple carriers.

I think AT&T is just trying get into a defensive position. If they can broaden their base, it may help reduce defectors.

If someone replies to an earlier post, does that post get bumped to the top? (it doesn’t seem like it). Would we want it to? (and can it be done?)

I really like the “Most Recent Comments” nav on the right, but today there were so many comments that some of them likely rolled off the bottom, resulting in me manually looking through a bunch of older posts that I really liked to see if there had been any new info added…

I agree with Rastard. The Most Recent Comments is useful but I have several improvements to suggest.

- time stamp of some kind, either “18 minutes ago” or straight out time stamp
- ability to select how many are displayed: either N posts OR some kind of “more” button
- ability to sort by either Poster OR Thread, so “Nicu on …” OR “What a mess! has 5 new posts”

I understand that this means more work for you, but I feel this would deliver a large increase in usability for the time invested.

Okay don’t laff. Seems funny though. I think some users may not be able to see the charts. According to wiki, “Daltonism” (color blindness) 7-10% of the population have difficulty with color, mostly males. [red/green-orange/lime.green : is the commonest] The -3 months, 10 Days/Price, 10 Days/Volume charts would be tough or impossible for some to see. Wiki’s article : “Category : Articles with images not understandable by color blind users” provides some clues. I think this is why Forbes, Silicon Alley Insider, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance … and maybe even Apple’s OS UI etc, use Black and White, Blue, and Gray. Those 4 colors, lets call them that, are probably what everyone can see. This c.b. phenomenon, interestingly, exists in less than 0.4% of females. I’ve read rare females even have hyper color vision that puts them in the same category of being able to see colors like a bird or a butterfly. So when you see business websites using a very limited array of colors and tones, it’s because people get sort of aggressive or messed up if they have issues easily seeing the content, maybe more so if its intellectual in nature. And, like when did anyone ever hear someone complain about an inability to see a color or the differences between colors : never : odd too when 7-10% have Daltonism. I thought of this because when Calan was invited to TH his response was, the colors didn’t do anything for him. Otherwise, in my life time the 7 or 8 people that I’ve know and secretly followed or studied that had Daltonism proved to have certain qualities in common. Pattern recognition was one of them. I will go out on a limb and believe that throughout Art history the men who were sculptors probably were the likely ones who had trouble with color and chose form, tone and light instead. Architects too, to boot. jmho.

I ordered one tonight. I think it is going to be great for my iMac. Apple understands how to implement touch input.

I think they are actually quoting Arthur C. Clarke

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 (Clarke’s third law)

Actually the feet on the trackpad contain the buttons. Which is why there is a gesture for clicking on the right side of the pad or the left side for alt click.

more @1.94

wow, there is some late action there

You would think the idiot would learn how to spell. I love the same old arguments. Everything is cheaper and better than Apple products. Maybe he is kin to the idiot that wrote the piece about how Apple should give all of its cash to investors and take on some debt.

I saw the first article….what a joke…but what about those Discussion Board nutjobs…Matt goes away, Fonz shows up, and now this Jay dude….WTF????

Google-driven? Why do you (and Consh before you) say that?

Aside from a few snarky references to Apple at their developer conference a couple of months ago, I don’t recall ever seeing any actual anti-Apple sentiment expressed by Google execs, employees, PR, etc. I actually know a fair number of people who work at each company (and a number of them are actually friends with one-another), and they all seem to have great respect for the other company and each other’s products (I don’t know any Apple employees with Android phones, but a lot of the Googlers seem to have Macbooks and iPhones).

Sure, there are Tech Bloggers who try to increase their viewership by bashing Apple and/or Google and/or spinning some big controversy as existing between them (that behavior isn’t anything new for the media) and of course there are Android fanboys and Apple fanboys who want to one-up one another — but neither company is responsible for any of those folks.

Regarding Consh’s belief that Google perhaps manipulates articles on Apple. I suppose it’s possible, but a quick search on Bing News produces most of the same stories/articles. The Motley Fool blather about AAPL was up there yesterday (listed 3rd or 4th though, IIRC), and the #1 result for a news search for Apple iPad right now is the same stupid story about iPad owners being elite, selfish, wealthy:

http://www.bing.com/news/search?q=apple+ipad&FORM=YGNR&p1=NewsVertical+SortByDate%3d%221%22

I own a bunch of Apple products, and think they’re great. I use a lot of Google’s products, and think they’re best-in-breed too. Most people I know feel the same about both. What are you all seeing that that makes you think Google is driving anti-Apple hype, or that there even needs to be a battle between them?

As for direction of markets this week I am split 50/50. All three markets I watch are in the similar situation. They are all approaching major resistance and are at overbought levels on daily stochastic (DJIA, Shanghai SSE, London FTSE100). This should mean pullback. On the other hand, the very fact that they are the edge of those resistances could mean that any positive event during the week (and EU bank stress tests could be already providing this reason in part) could send them over the resistance levels and cause the breakout.
AAPL itself is in similar situation for little different reasons. As for MACD it is in very nice place as it just made bullish cross there. But days that followed the earnings last week AAPL was acting very weak, underperforming market averages during those days. You can see stochastic curving down way too early. I do not know if this is because of introduction of weekly options and pinning it to round numbers, as nolav mentioned, or if it is due to the general negativity about Apple in blogosphere (it seems to be fashionable among geeks to bash Apple), fear that antenna issues will slow the iPhone4 sales or increased costs (wages) at Foxconn causing fear of lower profit margins. But no matter what it is AAPL was acting weaker after the earnings.
I am expecting non directional volatile week, as there is enough ammunition for both sides. We are heavy on non-technological earnings this week in some heavy industries, oil, and defense among others. I have no idea how those will fare. GDP report on Friday may cause some caution due to uncertainty and aid to pullback toward the end of the week.

I blame this one on weekly options. Pinned to $260.

Imagine you are a big fund. You want to buy some shares to play earnings. You tell your media friends to go nuts over the antenna, and your analysts to keep talk about missing on margins. Every time it goes under $245, you start loading up. Simultaneously, you sell the July $250, and pin it to $249.90 on opex, as it expires just 2 days before earnings.

But you know Apple will smash earnings again, and you should sell after earnings. So after opex, you start selling covered weekly calls, at a price that locks your profit in. Get called out? No problem, you still keep the money. You unload a few on Wednesday at the open. You see it selloff all day. You don’t sell at the bottom, but you have a plan. Then you keep it under $260 all week. How? By setting massive sell orders every time it comes close. Everybody who bought $260 calls is seeing the IV evaporate away. Finally on Friday, you let it go over by 30c a few time, since IV has fled enough that it doesn’t matter anymore. By the close, make sure to pin it to $259.94 so you can screw even those who bought the calls on Friday intraday.

It was driving me nuts watching it all day. It was also making me a little bit angry.

I bought August calls with 10 minutes to go. I expect it will break out of $260 on Monday.