[quote author=“coma”][quote author=“stkstalker”]SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—MarketWatch readers have given an overwhelming thumbs up to Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Inc., naming him the MarketWatch Readers’ Choice CEO of the Year for 2007.

Nothing like a proper Vote-O-Matic script . . . 

A friend of mine used to contract as a system tester and tended to find it very funny to skew these online votes by pounding them with a load testing tool.

[quote author=“wheeles”][quote author=“coma”][quote author=“stkstalker”]SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—MarketWatch readers have given an overwhelming thumbs up to Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Inc., naming him the MarketWatch Readers’ Choice CEO of the Year for 2007.

Nothing like a proper Vote-O-Matic script . . . 

A friend of mine used to contract as a system tester and tended to find it very funny to skew these online votes by pounding them with a load testing tool.

I used to have a url with 45k visitors a day. Ah those good old days redirecting it to voting links. How many stupid online beauty competitions, ... that closed theire voting system after a few days… Sold it now, money well spent in apple stock. Yet miss it (the power ) sometimes.

[quote author=“mtjsTMO”]I used to have a url with 45k visitors a day. Ah those good old days redirecting it to voting links. How many stupid online beauty competitions, ... that closed theire voting system after a few days… Sold it now, money well spent in apple stock. Yet miss it (the power ) sometimes.

Amazing what you can make from an amateur porn site!

Just kidding… How many shares of AAPL is a 45k/day site worth these days anyway?

More on the Bear Stearns note this morning:

Apple: Expecting 1Q08 Upside
posted on: December 06, 2007 | about stocks: AAPL  
Bear Stearns analysts Andy Neff, Bill Hand and Ted Chung sent a note to clients today regarding Apple’s holiday sales. Key excerpts:

MULTIPLE POSITIVE DATA POINTS. Based on favorable feedback from retail channel checks (strength in notebooks, higher iPod sales), feedback from Asia checks (which indicate seq uptick in Mac units vs. guidance for seq decline) and strong acceptance of new Leopard OS, we’re raising our rev/EPS estimates and CY08 target from $243 to $249. We continue to see AAPL well positioned for the holidays given the confluence of product cycles for Mac (new iMac, low channel inventory, Leopard OS, BBY store expansion) and iPod (strong new product acceptance).

EXPECT 1Q08 UPSIDE. Despite AAPL’s uncharacteristically strong Dec-qtr guidance, we still expect strong upside and are raising 1Q08 EPS from $1.65 to $1.75 (guidance is $1.42; Street at $1.54) on revs of $9.67bn (guidance is $9.2bn; Street at $9.33bn) based on Mac units of 2.2mm (up 1% seq vs. prior est. of flat seq) and iPod units of 25.0mm (up 145% seq and above our prior est. of 24.3mm).

STORY IMPROVING, FOCUS SHIFTS TO MACWORLD. Though we remain optimistic on AAPL’s ability to capture holiday demand, our sense is investors will focus on Macworld (1/15/08) to assess AAPL’s growth potential in ‘08. While we’re encouraged by AAPL’s evolution into a company w/ multiple growth engines—incl. our thesis that iPhone is emerging as a personal digital lifestyle device and view that video could be the next big driver—we note that AAPL will need incremental products (e.g., 3G iPhone, ultra-portable Mac, other products “tba”) in early ‘08 to buck seasonality issues.

RAISING ESTS. Given product cycles for Mac/iPod and Leopard OS uptake, we’re raising EPS for FY08 from $5.25 to $5.40 and for FY09 from $6.90 to $7.00.

RAISING CY08 TARGET. We’re raising our CY08 target from $243 to $249 (price of an 80GB iPod classic) using a P/E of 31x on CY09 oper EPS of $7.30 (on a reported basis) and adding projected cash/sh of $22 (or ~29x CY09 oper EPS of $7.85 on a cash basis, i.e., assuming iPhone revs recognized upfront).

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“mtjsTMO”]I used to have a url with 45k visitors a day. Ah those good old days redirecting it to voting links. How many stupid online beauty competitions, ... that closed theire voting system after a few days… Sold it now, money well spent in apple stock. Yet miss it (the power ) sometimes.

Amazing what you can make from an amateur porn site!

Just kidding… How many shares of AAPL is a 45k/day site worth these days anyway?

You can get a decent amount of cash from Adsense with that amount of traffic.

[quote author=“wheeles”][quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“mtjsTMO”]I used to have a url with 45k visitors a day. Ah those good old days redirecting it to voting links. How many stupid online beauty competitions, ... that closed theire voting system after a few days… Sold it now, money well spent in apple stock. Yet miss it (the power ) sometimes.

Amazing what you can make from an amateur porn site!

Just kidding… How many shares of AAPL is a 45k/day site worth these days anyway?

You can get a decent amount of cash from Adsense with that amount of traffic.

When I didn’t anything strange with it I used adsense to earn money. Yet I saw it schrinking after a year or 2 so I sold it knowing I would earn more from apple then from adsense Now it would be worth about 400 shares give or take.

iPhone 1.1.3 is imminent (Saturday?) and will bring voice capture, disk mode?

Not market moving news, of course, but I just realised that 3G has been made available in my mother’s village (where I am now enjoying one day holiday), which has no more than 2500 people. As I posted many times, 3G is being made available to more and more people every day. This is a huge investment that has been carried out by telecom companies for the last years, and it will necessarily make Apple to offer future handheld devices (iPhone, iTablet?) supporting that technology.

[quote author=“DawnTreader”][quote author=“Constable Odo”]Can Apple really keep those stores filled with buying customers?  Certainly not all three New York stores filled year ‘round.  If they can, then that would be totally awesome.  Talk about customers being served Big Macs and I don’t mean McDonalds Big Macs.

I’m surprised someone from NYC would be asking that question.

Considering the Byzantine road and traffic arrangements in the City and sheer size of New York’s daytime (and evening) population, it’s not challenging to keep all three stores busy.

Considering there’s about a dozen Apple stores within a one-hour drive of my home and there are no concerns about market saturation, three NYC stores is certainly not a risk.

A lot of New Yorkers won’t even GO north of Greenwich Village. 

[quote author=“lumi”] iPhone 1.1.3 is imminent (Saturday?) and will bring voice capture, disk mode?

Nice features.  Probably were intended for release 1.0.0 originally.  If true, wondering now if we will see yet another upgrade announcement at MacWorld.

[quote author=“Slyboots”][quote author=“DawnTreader”][quote author=“Constable Odo”]Can Apple really keep those stores filled with buying customers?  Certainly not all three New York stores filled year ‘round.  If they can, then that would be totally awesome.  Talk about customers being served Big Macs and I don’t mean McDonalds Big Macs.

I’m surprised someone from NYC would be asking that question.

Considering the Byzantine road and traffic arrangements in the City and sheer size of New York’s daytime (and evening) population, it’s not challenging to keep all three stores busy.

Considering there’s about a dozen Apple stores within a one-hour drive of my home and there are no concerns about market saturation, three NYC stores is certainly not a risk.

A lot of New Yorkers won’t even GO north of Greenwich Village. 

I was thinking the other day how great it might be to open a retail presence right in the financial district.  You know everyone on WS really wants a Mac, maybe they just don’t know it yet. 

SFGate Technology: It’s a high-tech world - - we just plug you into it…

(12-06) 09:37 PST DALLAS, (AP)—
Dell Inc. is venturing further from its direct-to-consumer sales model and will start selling computers at Best Buy stores in January.
The companies said Thursday that Best Buy Co. will sell Dell’s XPS and Inspiron notebook and desktop computers at more than 900 stores.

This message has been edited to omit all references deemed irrational, exuberance remains in its original unedited form. 

CompUSA to shut down…. no tears will be shed from Mac users.

Report CompUSA Could Shut Down All Stores
Posted by Eric Savitz
Engadget is reporting a rumor that privately held CompUSA may be making plans to shut down all 103 of its remaining stores.

The post says that an internal email circulated at Best Buy (BBY) asserting that CompUSA’s holiday revenue is half of what it was last year, that store-restocking shipments are not being scheduled past February and that “additional liquidators are being called in to help manage closure of the 103 remaining stores.”

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]CompUSA to shut down…. no tears will be shed from Mac users.

Report CompUSA Could Shut Down All Stores
Posted by Eric Savitz
Engadget is reporting a rumor that privately held CompUSA may be making plans to shut down all 103 of its remaining stores.

The post says that an internal email circulated at Best Buy (BBY) asserting that CompUSA’s holiday revenue is half of what it was last year, that store-restocking shipments are not being scheduled past February and that “additional liquidators are being called in to help manage closure of the 103 remaining stores.”

We have one in Manhattan on 57th street and it’s awful.  Selection is very poor, add-ons for mobile gadgets are practically non-existent, and no one on the staff really knows anything.  Ironic that it’s on the same street as the Fifth Avenue Apple store, isn’t it?

Here’s the full text of Goldman’s Breaking News call on CNBC earlier. He seems to be stressing the strength of his source:

Jim Goldman: Apple Future Headline: New Products Including Super Laptop?
Apple Future Headline: New Products Including Super Laptop?
Posted By:Jim Goldman

A very good source of mine with good connections to Apple’s [AAPL 189.05   3.55 (+1.91%)  ] Asian manufacturing partners called me this morning with some news: Seems like Apple will be making headlines in the next few weeks and months with some of its hottest products: the iPod Touch, the iPhone and a new ultra-portable laptop.

First, the item on the Touch: this source is being told that a company involved with its manufacturing has increased production to 5.1 million units for the holiday shopping quarter. Piper Jaffray for one had anticipated Apple selling about 3.7 million units, so this production increase is significant. Incidentally, Piper had expected Apple to sell a total of 23 million iPods this holiday shopping season.

For iPhone, AT&T [T 38.32   -0.10 (-0.26%)  ] tipped Apple’s hand last week when the company’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, reported that a 3G version of the iPhone was coming in 2008. Most of the analysts I had spoken to, said they expected the release to be in the back half of the year, toward the end of the third, or beginning of the fourth quarter. This source now expects the 3G iPhone to hit store shelves by May or June.

And then there’s this: this source says he has now heard from manufacturing partners in Asia that Apple is preparing to unveil a new, ultra portable laptop computer at the company’s Macworld event next month in San Francisco.
The blogs have speculated about this, but he says he now has hard evidence that the smallest laptop ever from Apple is only weeks away. He says the device will feature a 12-inch screen and will be 50 percent thinner—and lighter—than current versions of the MacBook Pro. He says the product will not have a hard-drive, but rely on Flash memory instead and likely retail for around $1,500.
All of this bodes well for Apple into 2008. But early word of a new iPhone just a few months away, and a new laptop just weeks away, could cause some customers to rethink their holiday shopping plans.

That could be an issue if shoppers decide to put off new purchases and wait for the newer versions of these devices instead. Apple stock doesn’t seem to be worried about that. The company’s month-long rally continues today.
But if you brush those retailing questions aside, it seems clear that Apple’s innovation team is hardly standing still. The iPhone development is incremental, but necessary. The new laptop, if this source is right, could spawn even more interest in the company’s already hot computer business. This could be a very interesting MacWorld indeed.

Oh, and for what it’s worth: I did contact Apple this morning. A spokesman tells me Apple doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation.