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I think the only value that article has is to dour people on the stock. I disagree with almost every point he made:

1. Apple not innovating.
Qua? Apple just moved it’s entire Mac platform to a new processor, not a small thing, and did so ahead of schedule, and from where I’m sitting, gracefully. They aren’t sitting back and keeping an out of date hardware platform and charging a premium for the case. They did that back in the early 90′s and got eaten for lunch. Industrial design? Best in the industry, but mostly because of the, dare I say it, innovative use of existing ideas. Widescreen displays, backlit keyboards, iLife editing, photo, music. It’s all there and continues to be improved. The next round of innovation is with the MacPro Tower. I’d withhold judgment on ‘innovation’ because each of Apple’s products is best in category, and not just best of category for a Mac, but best of category for ALL LAPTOPS. Because of…

2. Moving to Intel was a mistake.
Hmm. This author should probably talk to Mike and Jerry the creators of the most popular webcomic “Penny Arcade” who have made great fun of Apple’s little ‘island’ choice of processors. What happened the minute Apple switched to Intel? They BOTH bought iMac Intels, and featured them on the website. Why? Because Mac OS X was awesome, yes, but because they could dual boot. They’ve both said they work in Mac now most of the time, and switch to PC when they want to run something not available on the Mac. They aren’t the only ones, I got rid of my PC because I have both. Do I ever need to buy another PC as long as I’ve got my Intel Mac? Nope.

And who’s getting the hardware money? Apple.

It’s a dead simple thing to ask a consumer, “You want a computer that runs half of all the software available, or one that runs EVERYTHING?” Mistake? Hardly. Common sense. Think about the thing you’d want to buy. People who want the cheapest will always buy white box PC. Gateway is sure getting rich doing that. Oh wait… no they aren’t. But yeah, Dell is… what, they bought Alienware to increase their perception of ‘quality’? Oh right.

And back to point one, Innovating? What about 10.5 on the way later this year? Yeah, I’d hold off on that argument a bit more.

3. iTunes isn’t what people want.

He says” Oh and iTunes. It?s a decent service, but that market is getting more and more competitive as services like Rhapsody, Napster, allTunes (I personally use this one), etc, chip away at iTune?s marketshare. Good luck Apple. $1/song might have been appealing to users a few years ago, but in the tech world, times change really fast, and now people want dirt-cheap, non-DRM, flat-rate music downloads.”

Riiiiigggghhhht. What he is saying is this, “$1 a song? What people want is nearly free and unprotected music.” People have voted with their pocket books and flat rate downloads are not what people want, because a) to burn it to CD you have to pay MORE money, b) it doesn’t play on an iPod and c) people don’t have a sense of ‘ownership’ to the song. Even if someone figured out how to make it play on the iPod, do you think you’d want to be the person to explain to consumers that as soon as they stop paying $15 a month their entire music collection disappears? Please.

As for unprotected music for cheap from major music labels? Sure, I’d love to have a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents a gallon that I could borrow from my friend so it would run in BOTH our cars for the same price. I’m sure that business model would survive. What universe does this analyst live in? It has to cost enough to make money, but not so much or be so restrictive that it drives people back to piracy.

Let’s sum up this person’s entire article.

Apple hasn’t impressed me in the past three months, except for the MacBook which impressed me, but cost $200 more than it should. So I guess that I am still impressed, but I think the stock should still take a ding.

And this guy makes money writing this way? How can I get HIS job?

Nice article I love everyone who dogs aapl. The stock believes in ownership theft, ie using stock options allocated by the management to attact employees. As a result, revenues are up but revenues per share are flat or down (over a decade). ipod, just another mp3 player. aapl are overpriced computers. Seems they are marketing in schools, to get kid addicted to the aapl lifestyle.