Newsletter #349 Preview: The Pre WWDC Rant: Is Apple Losing its Mojo?
August 5th, 2006
All right, now that the obligatory WWDC 06 photo is present and accounted for, let’s get into the meat of this week’s newsletter rant.
First, and how can I put this gently, without sounding sensationalist? Well, let’s not be gentle at all, let me just put my cards on the table here. You see, when a person or company becomes a “star” in the public mind, every little thing they do is put under the microscope. Minor missteps morph into major catastrophes, just as quickly as a few good things blossom into major accomplishments.
Now on the eve of a very major scheduled event for Apple, the financial community was ravishing over stories about alleged financial shenanigans, about back-dated stock options and that sort of thing. At worst, it means Apple might be forced to restate profits for the past 15 quarters, which could be a major catastrophe, or maybe not, if it’s just a few million here and there. No, folks, I’m not going to even attempt to figure out the impact to Apple’s stock, stockholders and its executives.
There are other issues that might have more immediate consequences to those of us who reside in the real world. Depending on your point of view about using cheap, Third World laborers to build electronics, that recent flap about unsavory working conditions at a plant building iPods may be a reason to be concerned.
Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.
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We’ll just have to wait and see. But somehow I don’t believe it’s a coincidence Apple released this info at this time. I think they’ve got a few cards up their sleeve (if you don’t mind me following your lingo) that will dominate the talk the next few weeks. It will push these financial talks to the back… If they’ve really lost their mojo i’ll just have to dump my url http://www.macmojo.nl and think of somethin else. But like Al used to say: “I don’t think so, Tim.
I highly doubt this fuss is going to go anywhere since these stock options were handed out by a special committed which is separated from Apple’s execs and board of directors by a pretty hefty firewall. But if it does, nothing bad’s going to happen to Steve that isn’t also going to happen to Al Gore (who sits on Apple’s board or directors).