Apple shares bleed red ahead of afternoon earnings report

Shares of Apple Inc. joined the broader technology sector in a brief free-fall early Tuesday morning as growing fears of a recession and slowing global economy weighed heavily on the Nasdaq stock market.

At one point, the company’s shares were down over $11.50 or more than 7.2 percent to $149.80 before fighting back to regain approximately half of those losses. Overall, Apple shares have steadily fallen more than 15 percent since the start of the new year.

The latest skid comes just hours before the company will release results for its fiscal first quarter ended December. Analysts on average are expecting the gadget maker to report earnings of $1.62 per share on sales of $9.47 billion. Read more

Apple slims Mac down; New laptop slim, powerful

Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show yesterday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it’s opened.

Jobs also confirmed the tech giant’s foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections 30 days after they’re released on DVD.

Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference. At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches, or about 1.9 centimres thick, at its thinnest, it’s .16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade. Read more

Apple Forecast Disappoints Wall Street, phone market

(AP) — Apple Inc. blew past Wall Street’s bullish expectations in the first quarter with a 57 percent jump in profit, but a dramatically lower forecast sent shares plunging on fears about slowing consumer spending on electronics.

The Cupertino-based company’s report, released after the market closed Tuesday, reinforced investors’ worries that even a hot company like Apple isn’t immune from sluggishness in the U.S. economy or fears of a recession.

The company forecast profit in the second fiscal quarter of 94 cents per share, far short of the $1.09 per share that analysts were expecting. Revenue is also expected to be lower, coming in around $6.8 billion, compared with the $6.99 billion forecast by analysts.

Apple’s guidance has historically been conservative, but such a divergence from Wall Street’s estimate spooked investors already skittish about the economy. Read more

2008 Security predictions Technology

First, the good news
Overall, compliance laws (and years of bad press) finally forced most organizations to encrypt more data and laptops by default. Chances are these days that if a thief steals a laptop it will be password protected and its data encrypted. More developers are utilizing SDL (secure design lifecycle) in their programming, taking into account from the beginning the malicious risks posed to and by their applications. Overall, exploits aren’t down significantly, but they are in the software where SDL is used. In addition, more organizations are using stronger password policies and two-factor authentication. The number of identity thefts has leveled out or even begun to drop. All of these trends are good.

Now, the bad news
Sadly, the overall computer security picture hasn’t changed much. The Internet is still a very dangerous place to compute. Malware, adware, and spam still make up a very large portion of Internet traffic. Professional criminals control millions of computers turning our futuristic Read more

Cue Radio CES 2008

The wheels of CES 2008 has began turning and various companies have made sure to showcase their best or their newest so as not to disappoint the gadget-loving attendees. Company Cue Acoustics, Inc. has taken the opportunity to release their very first product called Cue Radio.

Cue Radio is an AM/FM radio which using the universal iPod dock by Apple. Sam Millen, the company’s CEO boldly proclaims, “The Cue Radio is designed to outperform, outlast and outcast many tabletop audio systems on the market today.”

The Cue Radio uses a trademark control called “CueTouch” and is iPod compatible. It also features a high-red LCD which shows the time, station info, iPod menu content (if connected) and the alarm settings. Although designed specifically for the iPod, it can also be connected to other MP3 players. The Cue Radio costs USD$399 with an optional speaker peripheral available for USD$99. Read more

Now 10 things that won’t happen in 2008

Tis the season to prognosticate. It seems just about every reporter with a computer has rushed to provide his vision of the future with a laundry list of assorted projections for 2008.

Rupert will buy this, so-and-so will get bounced from a top job, or that technology will be the hottest thing since the invention of the curling iron. So, I’m gonna go in a slightly different direction for no reason other than, well, this is my column. And I can.

For those who aren’t already punch-drunk with prediction lists, here’s a list of the Top 10 Things That Won’t Happen in 2008:

1. The writers won’t win the current strike. Considering that I’m a writer, I’d really love to see the guys with the ideas get their due, not to mention a hefty stake in the new media riches (are ya listening BusinessWeek editors?). Read more

A Little ‘Intel’ on Apple’s Next Move

With Macworld Expo just days away, the pre-”Stevenote” buzz is building fast. The rumors about what Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs might unveil in his keynote speech run the gamut from a new movie-rental service for iTunes and Apple TV to a new tablet PC.

But when guessing what Apple (AAPL) will do in the coming year, it’s particularly helpful to look at the roadmap of Intel (INTC), which has been Apple’s only chip supplier since 2006. And from the looks of things, the chipmaker may help lead Apple into uncharted, possibly lucrative, territory starting in late 2008.
Subnotebooks: A Perfect Fit

A lot of the speculation has focused on Apple’s apparent plan to introduce a small notebook computer, and I think these rumors are pretty close to the mark. For one thing, beyond switching Read more

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