When Apple reports its fourth-quarter earnings today, investors are hoping–actually, expecting–that the iconic computer company will look a lot now as it always has.
In other words, don’t go changing and it will please us.
In fact, Wall Street is anticipating, as it has throughout the econalypse, another estimate-beating performance.
Here’s a lovely video BoomTown did last night at our All Things Digital annual BBQ, at which the crackerjack team at our little rogue operation inside Dow Jones goes analog, gnaws on some ribs and trades tech tales.
Last night, of course, much of the chatter was about what went down at the Apple event in San Francisco yesterday, at which CEO and Supreme Leader Steve Jobs made a grand reappearance onstage after a liver transplant.
Walt Mossberg and Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski were there and give their spicy reports.
Oh, BoomTown fears this is not going to end well for the weensy little smart phone Palm is debuting today on–what an amazing coincidence!–the very same day Apple is throwing its big product bash in San Francisco, at which Mac fanboys fervently hope that Supreme Leader Steve Jobs might even appear.
You don’t step on Superman of Silicon Valley’s cape, of course, but the device with the aggressively cute name of Pixi is apparently attempting just that.
Thus, this fairytale might have a not-so-happy ending.
Yesterday, in a BoomTown post about the latest unproven rumors that the world’s most iconic computer company, Apple, was in “late-stage” negotiations to buy Silicon Valley’s latest pretty young thing, microblogging service Twitter, I wrote:
“Oh, the very notion of Apple and Twitter is a Techmeme dream-ticket, sure to be chewed over for days on end. (I once considered doing a post that just said “AppleTwitterAppleTwitterAppleTwitter…” for 1,000 words to see how much idiotic traffic I would get.)”
Well, I reconsidered.
With bootleg copies ripped on the Internet or not and with an $87 million opening weekend for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” it looks like the nerdiest summer movie season ever is off the races.
Hollywood, caught in the digital maelstrom, certainly is fine and dandy making bank by co-opting all the techie themes, gadgets and special effects, with a slate of movies over the next months that are like catnip to geeks of all kinds.
Including BoomTown, for example, which plans to fork over a lot of dough to pay for all the techtastic entertainment that those old media moguls can dish out before they collapse.
Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.
And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.
It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.
Besides getting, well, the whole country to run today, President Barack Obama is now taking a geek-tastic new ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to his new home, which should more than satisfy his clearly gadget-loving persona.
Say hello to the spanking new Presidential limo, which the Secret Service is calling the “Beast.”
The last time General Motors improved on the car was at outgoing President George W. Bush’s 2005 inauguration, which means the struggling automaker is faster at upgrading than Microsoft is with Windows!
Now, it’s getting flat-out macabre.
That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting.
Rumors of his impending demise have been popping up periodically since the too-thin crisis of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and look like they won’t stop until it actually comes true.
My grandmother used to have a perfect rejoinder for this kind of funeral-chasing behavior, which was prevalent among her gang of Italian sisters, who–whenever anyone caught a cold–predicted the worst outcome: “Don’t be a crepe-hanger.”
BoomTown’s been just one week gone and yet another goofy, traffic-generating debate “erupts” in the blogosphere involving the usual suspects and the favored hyped Silicon Valley company of the moment, Twitter. The new bone being gnawed on is something I can hardly grasp the point of–some drivel argument about what constitutes the authority of a tweet. While tweet status would seem only important to, say, a Warner Bros. cartoon character like Sylvester, all I can think is: Who cares? That’s because the fact remains that Twitter is simply an unknown to most average people in a way other tech trends have not been.
Boomtown extends apologies to the late Francis P. Church, who penned the original “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” editorial in the New York Sun in 1897. But with a little rejiggering, his eloquent words work perfectly as a translation for Apple’s press release about its withdrawal from Macworld yesterday, which doubtlessly shook the Apple faithful to the core. Oddly enough, it matches up surprisingly–and a little disturbingly–well. Thus, here’s a little holiday inspiration to help those poor souls make it through these darkest of days.
Hey, did you hear that Apple is launching some sort of new notebook thingamabob today?
If you didn’t, it can’t be because the Apple-product-release-hyper-hype cycle let you down.
AllThingsD.com’s Johnny Apple-blogger John Paczkowski of Digital Daily will be there, of course, posting at the media-clogged launch, as it happens, and contributing mightily to the blog-smog that will start collecting over Cupertino at 10 a.m. PDT.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
As usual before yet another big Apple event, the psychic friends network is in overdrive in anticipation of the iconic computer company’s “Let’s Rock” media gathering in San Francisco tomorrow.
At this point, I think Apple could announce a change in the color of its bathrooms at its Cupertino HQ and it would be mayhem among the Mac faithful.
But some of the focus is likely to be on its leader, Steve Jobs, whose gaunt appearance was the talk of Apple’s last event.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview Walt Mossberg did with Sony Chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer.
The consumer electronics giant has been under enormous pressure to innovate and compete better in all its many businesses, and still has not proved it can knit them all together into a cogent whole.
In this video, Stringer talks about craplets and digital music players, including the iPod and Walkman-enabled Sony Ericsson cellphones, and takes questions from the audience about YouTube and the challenge of maintaining innovation and entrepreneurialism at a huge multinational company.
BoomTown is flatly fascinated by the rather incredible memo Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer penned to his troops yesterday, with news of the reorganization of its massive Platforms and Services Division and the departure of its president, Kevin Johnson.
In it, in a very rare public airing of its less-clean laundry, Ballmer actually named Microsoft’s two major rivals, Apple and Google, in a somewhat positive light, while still vowing to best them.
When Apple releases its third-quarter earnings after the close today, Wall Street will be looking hard for a solid performance from the company to help buoy a tech sector smacked silly by weak reports from industry leaders Microsoft and Google last week.
But more important to me is what is happening with the plethora of third-party apps now available on the iTunes App Store–both free and paid–for use on the iPhone platform.
That’s because Apple has finally built a platform for adults.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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