Apple boasts record Q1 as revenue tops $10bn

Apple announced its first-quarter financial results today, beating estimates from the Wall Street guessmen. But these were almost secondary. During the Q&A session that ended their Q1 earnings call, Apple spokesfolks skirted questions about Steve Jobs's health, dissed netbooks, reaffirmed their support for Apple TV, and fired a …

[Anonymous Coward]

what?

How about if you WANT "cramped keyboards" and "small displays"?? The *POINT* of a netbook is something you can stick in a pocket, yet still run Debian on it. If I wanted to haul around a hugeass laptop, I would do that.

The form-factor of the Nokia N810 is pretty close, with that nice high res screen. Shame about the nerfed OS though.

And I'm not EVER buying a Palm product again. I honestly hope Apple sues 'em into oblivion. If they do that, I might buy a Mac.

[retiarius]

Apple alumni wax nostalgic

The bit about Apple IP vs. Palm reduces to whether Palm either licenses

or cross-licenses from Apple. Likely not. The bad blood also has to do

with a few ex-Apple emps who went to Palm, including Donna Dubinsky,

Dave Nagel, and lately Jon Rubinstein and Fred Anderson, not to mention

Bono's interest.

It gets more interesting from a patent perspective in the case of Microsoft

buying Palm. Does Microsoft still have a patent cross-licensing arrangement

with Apple? Are patents transferrable across boundaries of a subsidiary?

About the "Pre", what does the physical keyboard do, anyway?

Seems like a redundant mechanically breakable softspot, and otherwise

a me-too product -- Apple copycats never seem to win...

[Ralphe Neill]

He doesn't get it, does he?

"He summed up his disdain for "the netbook space" by simply saying: "We think the products there are inferior."

Methinks he's missing the whole point of the netbook! I have three of them now and I wouldn't be without them. But I don't want to do graphics-intensive work on them ... I want to use them for the tasks they were designed to do well. And I want to be able to take them anywhere ... any time.

Mind you, in an emergency I did use an Eee PC 701SD to get a PowerPoint presentation on to a 30-foot video screen ... no other system would run it properly ... and it looked great.

[Jeff]

IP infringers?

He's probably talking about Pystar et al.

[Ed]

Netbooks

I wouldn't pay any attention to Apple's statements on Netbooks, it's missdirection. I'm pretty sure Apple are at least prototyping Apple netbook designs, even if they decide not to bring them to market. Apple are well known for dismissing a product category, then launching their own product in that category (e.g. video ipods). I'd guess the issue is that for Apple, they design and sell based on the features, rather than the price. Netbooks are price first, features second - I'd say it's hard for Apple to see how to compete there...

I'm more interested in them bothering to update the Mac Mini...

[Jared Earle]

Missing the point?

Apple isn't missing the point about the NetBook. It's just not a market they feel they can compete in. Leave netbooks to those who make netbooks. It's not like the market isn't already lively.

What could Apple bring (apart from Mac OSX) to the netbook market that would make you buy a MacBook Net as opposed to an EeeeePC? The Netbook is all about cheapness; not something Apple are very good at.

[David Simpson]

Steve's Cum ?

Palm have had touch gestures for years, but then considering Apple has been trying to trademark "multi-touch" what do you expect.

Apple repackage other people's ideas then patent them, all their own touch tech came from company called fingerworks in 2004, Apple don't innovate they buy up other peoples ideas and wrap them in white plastic or occasionally steal them.

Like Dashboard, which is a direct rip of Konfabulator, without a patent poor old Konfabulator just stopped making a mac client and moved to windows ending up as Yahoo Widgets.

Even Spotlight was grabbed by buying a german tech company, and the "pioneering" brick technology for their new laptops is just CNC machining.

Mactards are so uninformed they swallow Steve's juice without ever wondering where it really cums from.

[sleepy]

Netbooks

Tim Cook's Netbook statement is the simple truth. A simple minded interpretation is that it's misdirection and Apple will soon sell a netbook. Netbooks are certainly close to the core of Apple's market. For now, Apple doesn't care about Netbooks; it only needs a small share of PC unit sales; for example with 16% of US retail units, Apple takes 32% of retail revenue, and probably more than double that share of retail profits. Think about that - 16% of units; more profit than all the others put together. In other words, if Apple gets up to 30% of retail units, they may take more than 100% of manufacturer profit from retail PC sales. At some point they will attack netbooks, but there's no need just yet. If it's to be soon, I suspect (exclusive) carrier subsidy, plus proprietary IP to enance performance and battery life is the way Apple will begin to eat into the netbook market at decent margins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mis-reporting rather than mis-direction

It would help if El Reg wouldn't spin so much. Cook wasn't as dismssive of the netbook category as this article implies (go read the full transcript of what he said to help get a clue). What he was saying was that the quality of the hardware wasn't there for *Apple* yet, and that they also didn't think much of the software available (a dig at both Linux and XP). However, he clearly states that it is a category that Apple has its eye on and could enter once the time is right. Apple obviously have the software in place (OS X), especially so because of the iPhone, but want to get their timing right so that they don't enter the space as "me-too" types and instead have something unique to offer it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ David Simpson

If you are so informed how come you aren't aware that Konfabulator was a 'direct' rip of something that shipped in 1984 as part of the first Mac OS? All that Knofabulator did was amalgamate the "widget" concept with the concept of Sherlock or Copernicus. That is it. They couldn't have patented it even if they had wanted to as there were lots of examples of prior art, many of which belonged to and were invented at Apple.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We think the products there are inferior."

Doesn't mean they're not getting into the netbook market, it means that nothing out there right now is what they think a netbook should be like. Just like the way Apple considered phones before the iPhone to be "inferior".

[Anonymous Coward]

Coo!

Palm registered their lawyers.

Palm, it may be time to mobilize your lawyer corps. ®

Is this kinda like registering a dog? I mean my dog gets registered each year after he gets his rabies shot. It would seen good to do the same with lawyers.

I have the collar tag in my pocket...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Jared

>Leave netbooks to those who make netbooks.

Since its Asus that actually design and manufacture the better mobile Mac kit anyway [apart from the pretty enclosures and dodgy periphs] Apple couldn't possibly compete in this market.

Amazes me how many commenters still think Apple design and manufacture computers.....those days are long gone.