Travelling Mac-less

This year our family got together and rented a three bedroom villa on the beach at Playa del Coco, Costa Rica. All but one of my daughters made the trip. There were seven of us in all: Me, my wife, two daughters, one boyfriend, one son-in-law and my 2-year-old granddaughter.

The place was beautiful. Built on the side of a 300 foot cliff overlooking the Pacific, the villa was fully equipped to accommodate our extended family luxuriously. With two huge picture windows facing the ocean, two “infinite” swimming pools that created the illusion of swimming in the Pacific, two roomy balconies with comfortable outdoor furniture for watching sunsets and most importantly, two big central air conditioners. It was Central America in July after all. The place even had decent cable TV and Internet service (even though all but 4 channels were in Spanish and the Internet connection was just 2 Mb/sec.) that kept running 95% of the time we were there.

When we got there I did what I always do when traveling. I set up my MacBook Pro on the provided desk and plugged in the portable hard drive containing my 300+ movie collection. This is quite handy when traveling abroad. A person can only watch so much BBC and CNN International. I also need to keep in touch with the business world back home from time to time. The world doesn’t stop just because I’m on vacation. I don’t spend much time on business, but I do try to monitor for catastrophes. I find it amazing how a well-placed email can often avert a crisis.

Anyway, everything goes perfectly the first day, but

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Apple & Big Blue…Whooda thought it?

This may date me a bit, but I remember the 1984 Superbowl commercial where the hammer gets thrown through the big brainwash screen. Then, the brainwasher was IBM and the hammer thrower was Apple. It represented the beginning of the Mac vs. PC battle that has raged steadily ever since. That same year is when Steve Jobs defiantly proclaimed Apple would not go quietly into that good night while “Big Blue” dictated terms to the entire personal computing world.

Fast-forward 30 years.

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Note to Audiophiles: Get Over It!

I must have read twenty articles today about Apple’s purported acquisition of Beats. Most of them droning on and on about how Beats headphones and earphones are a far cry from audiophile quality and what a mistake it is for Apple to blow $3.2 billion on the company. To all of them I say, “Enough with all the second-guessing, already!” I’m sure these pundits are loving yet another opportunity to dump on Apple’s business practices and to paint Tim Cook as some sort of buffoon, but in my opinion they are just a bunch of link baiters shooting their mouths off for attention.

When someone tells me that Beats aren’t audiophile quality cans, my first response is, “Duuuuuh!”  When I’m done being a smartass, I would say, “So what?” I would then ask them if anything in Apple’s product lineup (past or present) could be remotely considered “audiophile quality?” Let’s go down the list:

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Apple is DOOMED!

How many times do we hear that statement from tech journalists and/or market analysts in any given week? How about, “Has Apple lost its ability to innovate?” Or this drumbeat: “Tim Cook ain’t no Steve Jobs!” This drivel seems to increase both in frequency and intensity every week that goes by without Apple creating a new product category.

All those negative vibes have served two purposes. 1.) They provide link bait for the publishers of the rags they’re written for and 2.) they artificially depress Apple’s stock price. The first, while boring beyond belief, doesn’t really hurt anyone. The simple formula of providing fodder for Apple haters is a sure-fire way for “market analysts” to keep their page views up and their advertisers happy. But, sooner or later those chickens come home to roost. Negative sentiment serves as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that feeds on itself. When you have enough people saying AAPL is crap, every down-tick in the stock price vindicates their “analysis”. The poorer the stock performs, the more “analysts” jump on the bandwagon…

…until those pesky facts get in the way.

Like the ones revealed in yesterday’s earnings call. Again, Tim Cook and his minions prove the baiters wrong. With another near-record quarter that topped predictions, margins approaching 40%, a seven-for-one stock split, an increased stock buy-back and a dividend bump, Apple has proven again what a money-minting machine it truly is. This isn't rocket science. How can they continue to perform so well? They refuse to sell anything but premium products at premium prices BECAUSE THEY ARE WORTH IT!

I would like to personally thank all those baiters and haters for making AAPL one of the best equity values on the planet. Their inceasant droning convinced the investing world that the world's most cash-flush company wasn't worth the price of their stock. That's quite a feat if you consider: Based on yesterday's earnings, if AAPL were trading at the same P/E ratio as FB (Facebook), it's share price would top $4400! Those of us who refused to get caught up in all the “woe is Apple” claptrap and stuck with (or increased) our long AAPL positions,** just made 8% in one day!

I anticipate more good news for many quarters to come.

** In the interest of full disclosure: For the past 8 years, the MacTexan's portfolio has contained a high percentage of AAPL.

So You’re Gonna Quit Dropbox? You Phony!

I follow lots of tech journalists on Twitter. It’s how I get alerted to most of the tech news I read. Sometimes though, I really get a belly full of their liberal tripe. The latest example of this is the flap about many of them threatening to quit Dropbox (by far the best on-line storage company in my opinion) because of Dropbox’s recent decision to put Condoleezza Rice on their board of directors.

Really?!…

Really!!!!?????

I find this phony outrage almost laughable. Oh, I’m sure it makes these guys feel better about themselves for having taken the moral high ground in this instance (on a purely moral basis I tend to agree with them), but if they were truly genuine in their convictions there would be a whole host of other companies they’d also refuse to do business with. I suggest they look at the boards of Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, ExxonMobil, Chevron and a few others. If they are resolved to apply the same standards to all, then they will quickly find themselves forced to grow their own food and make their own gasoline.

My word to them: 

Stop thumping your phony, morally superior chest unless you’re truly willing to apply your morals universally. Until then, you’re being hypocritical, or worst yet, you’re just grandstanding for attention.