“We estimate that Apple’s iPad business accounts for 4% of the $267 Trefis price estimate for Apple’s stock compared to about 3% for Apple’s Mac desktop business,” Trefis writes for Seeking Alpha.

Trefis highlights the three factors that make the iPad more valuable for Apple than Mac desktops:

1. Pricing gap between iPads and Mac desktops expected to narrow over time
2. Unit sales of iPads will exceed Mac desktops sold (We expect Apple to sell 4 million iPads in 2010 compared to 3.8 million Mac desktops.)
3. Gross margins for Mac desktops are lower than iPad margins

Full article here.

“Apple, which holds its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, is enjoying healthy dollar growth in its Mac business, according to analyst firm Needham & Company,” James Rogers reports for TheStreet. “‘Apple’s discipline in holding Mac prices fairly steady in the face of plunging Windows PC prices translated into dollar share gains in the December quarter,’ wrote analyst Charles Wolf in a note released Wednesday. ‘The Apple story could contain an upside surprise if the Mac can sustain the relative growth rates it sustained in the September and December quarters.’”

“According to Wolf, Macs accounted for 10.5% of total dollars spent on home PCs worldwide during the December quarter, up from just under 4% in the fourth quarter of 2004,” Rogers reports. “Apple’s performance in the U.S. home market was even more impressive — it holds almost 20% of the dollar share.”
[Read more →]

“The Macintosh is back in the engineering segment,” David Morgenstern reports for ZDNet.

“Engineering, which was often lumped into the beat called ‘SciTech,’ once was strong segment for the Macintosh,” Morgenstern reports. “Then in the early 1990s, the platform’s position was weakened and then lost. But now the Mac appears poised for a strong return.”

Morgenstern reports, “One piece of evidence was the release by Computational Engineering International (CEI) of a Mac-native version of the company’s EnSight CFD, software for analyzing and visualizing computational fluid dynamics… In addition, German developer Graebert this week announced its ARES CAD platform for Mac, Windows and Linux, which supports AutoCAD-compatible command line and scripts.”

Full article, including a recounting of how NASA Mac users once got screwed by an idiotic policy of standardizing on Windows, here.

Using a Mac Pro as the keystone of his rural radiology practice in Bemidji, Minnesota, Dr. Hilton Bakker is able not only to reduce the costs of his own practice but those of the hospitals who use his services. Says Bakker: “If hospitals can use Mac technology to do radiology cheaper, that’s my goal. Health care costs too much. If I can do my little bit to make it cheaper, that’s cool.”

Apple today releases Safari 4.0.4 for Mac and Windows. Which is recommended for users to update for stability, performance and security including:

• improved JavaScript Performance
• improved Full History Search performance for users with a large number of history items
• Stability improvements for 3rd-party plug-ins, the search field and Yahoo! Mail

Detailed information here.

Download Link here.

Apple debuted a trio of hard-hitting “Get a Mac” ads today on U.S broadcast and cable networks that target Microsoft’s Windows 7.

In Apple’s “PC News” spot, “PC” reports that the launch of Windows 7 is causing “Upgrade Fever.” People just cant wait to upgrade to their new Macs!

“PC News Ads” – Direct link via YouTube here.

“Tetter Tottering” – Direct link via YouTube here.

“Broken Promises” – Direct link via YouTube here.

See the ads in various sizes via Apple.com here.

In the hands of an IT administrator, Apple’s iPhone Configuration Utility becomes an important security tool for iPhones on his network. The new 2.0 release sports some welcome improvements, though it could use better documentation and still falls flat in some areas.

With the 3.0 release of the iPhone’s OS, Apple added quite a few welcome features to help make the iPhone more useful in a business environment. The iPhone Configuration Utility (ICU) was released shortly thereafter. For the uninitiated, the ICU helps system administrators to create, maintain, encrypt and push configuration profiles—XML files on the iPhone which contain information crucial to the device’s secure communication on a corporate intranet.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time working with the ICU since version 2 was released, and it has mostly been a good experience. (Note: Since we don’t do any in-house applications, or preload applications, I’ve not used the Applications or Provisioning Profiles features of ICU 2.)

[Read more →]