Apple market value: We may need a bigger chart

Reuters ^ | 11/01/2017 | Noel Randewich

[House Atreides]

Yes, you appear to be compulsively drawn to things Apple...for strange psychological reasons you likely don’t fully understand —- since you are not an Apple customer. You come to the light but despise the light because you are drawn to it and can’t resist the compulsion.

[fireman15]

Swordmaker, thank you for another piece of fiction, putting words in my mouth and mischaracterizing our previous conversations. Yes, you not only make up stuff about what I have said in the past incredibly you actually change your own words.

You don't use Apple products and don't know them intimately at all.

I own and use current Apple products on a daily basis. And I have said on many occasions including in the thread you just responded to that many current Apple products are amazing.

I post actual facts, often with links to the those factual data.

Much of the time you include no links in your posts. I often include links in my posts sometimes from multiple reputable sources. Any that do not agree with your point of view, you either completely ignore or make a blanket statement calling them “garbage” or worse generally with no specifics.

You claim things for your predecessor devices that are simply not the same as what the Apple does.

You have made frequent claims that Apple has been the first to do many things and when your claims are refuted you move the goal posts and claim you meant something else. Historically Apple has not been the first to market with devices that do new things... they try to make it easier for the non-technically minded to take advantage of features that others have pioneered.

You live in the delusional world of extreme Apple hate.

That is completely untrue. Would an "Apple hater" say, "The modern iPhone and many other Apple devices have become technological marvels." Those were my words in the post you are responding to. As I said just above I own and use Apple products on a daily basis. I have made attempts to correct the record when you have made false or exaggerated claims about the history of Apple products. Your adherence to the truth is very tenuous whenever you are challenged and your frequent use of Alinsky like tactics is very disturbing.

I have been rebutting YOUR constant invasions of Apple threads.

This would seem to be a good example of your constant exaggerations. Anyone here can go through my posting history and verify whether or not I am constantly invading Apple threads. We had an animated argument on a recent thread and I am the one who started this thread. I am not sure how long it has been since last time that I commented on another Apple thread before these two. I think that it has been awhile.

Swordmaker, I admire your knowledge of Apple products; you are the undisputed champion when it comes to knowledge of Apple products on this forum. But when it comes to devices from other companies you have made many posts that seem to demonstrate that your knowledge of those devices is very limited. Is this because of lack of knowledge or are you just willing to exaggerate and lie to make a point? Actually I already know the answer to that question because you have lied and exaggerated about me and in previous posts you have lied about what I have said. Not that you would care, but you have lost my respect.

[fireman15]

Apple is a cash machine with $270 Billion in cash— more cash than the US treasury has on hand.

Swordmaker, you see there are things that we can agree on. Apple most likely has even more cash on hand than that. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these funds are in offshore accounts, and can't be repatriated currently without huge tax penalties.

[Swordmaker]

Swordmaker, you see there are things that we can agree on. Apple most likely has even more cash on hand than that. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these funds are in offshore accounts, and can't be repatriated currently without huge tax penalties.

You see, fireman15, I post an ACCURATE statement, based on the audited current Apple Financial Statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission THIS THURSDAY that by law already includes ALL of Apple’s off-shore liquid funds, and yet YOU IMMEDIATELY go with an exaggeration claim implying that Apple is somehow hiding funds in off-shore accounts they are not reporting in their official Financial Reports. If this were so, every officer of Apple would be personally liable for fines of $20 million and prison sentences of 20 years for each failure to report under the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, not to mention various RICO statutes and their felony penalties.

You ALWAYS imply that Apple is lying or doing something nefarious or underhanded. That is why it is almost always necessary to refute your posts!

[dayglored]

Hey, y’all can stop pinging me on your food fight. I ain’t reading the comments (no offense intended). You guys have a great time, but leave me out. Thanks — dayglored

[Teacher317]

that everyone else has been "stealing" from them.

Pretty much every successful corporation deals with internal and external theft... and the larger they are, the more they have to deal with. Walmart loses billions every year in thefts by employees walking out the door with merchandise. Many people want an unearned slice of any bigger pie. Why do you presume that Apple would be any different, and that thefts from them are worthy of quotation marks?

[fireman15]

You ALWAYS imply that Apple is lying or doing something nefarious or underhanded. That is why it is almost always necessary to refute your posts!

That is ridiculous... I don't ALWAYS do anything. Anyone can look through my posting history to verify. Please Swordmaker tell us where is the vast majority of the $270 Billion dollars stored. It is not like this is a big secret... this has been going on for a long time. This is one more good example of you accusing others of being misleading when you are the one who has very little if any allegiance to “ACCURACY”.

You act like a bully much of the time, and your posts are often very misleading.

“Apple CFO Luca Maestri said during the company's conference call with analysts on Tuesday that $230.2 billion of its cash — 94% of it — was being held overseas.”

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/investing/apple-cash-overseas/index.html

“And Apple has increasingly stashed away its cash overseas for tax purposes. Apple CFO Luca Maestri said in February that $230 billion of its cash was held abroad.”

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/apple-cash/index.html

“May 1, 2017 - Update: Apple confirmed that its cash reserves now sit at $256.8B. Apple's cash ... More than 90% of Apple's cash is held outside the USA.”

https://9to5mac.com/2017/05/01/aapl-cash-reserves-amount-value/

[fireman15]

Hey, y’all can stop pinging me on your food fight. I ain’t reading the comments (no offense intended). You guys have a great time, but leave me out. Thanks — dayglored

Are you listening swordmaker??? You have been pinging poor dayglored and others in nearly every reply to me. Will you comply with their requests?

[fireman15]

Pretty much every successful corporation deals with internal and external theft...

Teacher I agree with you completely. And any company with over a quarter of a trillion dollars... 94% of that held in offshore accounts according to Apple CFO Luca Maestri. Apple is a huge target. But Apple has been pretending to be the world's biggest victim almost since its founding. Before the iPhone it was Microsoft who was the boogieman. After the iPhone it was Samsung. Apple has a long history of portraying its biggest competitors as the embodiment of evil.

For good examples of an Apple mouthpiece spreading this type of guano take a look at Swormaker’s posting history. But you do not really need to expose yourself to that level of nonsense. The stories have actually become ingrained in our culture so I probably do not need to give you any examples...

Thank you for your perspective, and thank you for the work that you do if your moniker is an indication of your profession.

[adorno]

"DON'T BOTHER ME WITH FACTS, MY BRAIN IS PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN DUE TO LACK OF USE."

Sound exactly like how you feel about anybody else's opinion regarding Apple.

Except that with you, it's: "Oh, no! Somebody insulting my second mommy, Apple. I must take immediate action to stop them! How dare they commit such sacrilege?!?".

[fireman15]

I did want to restate the impressive qualifications that you posted... minus the insults and inaccurate assumptions that you have made about my qualifications.

have owned a tech business for over 40 years supporting both Apple and Windows tech.

I've been maintaining the FreeRepublic Apple Ping List far longer than the iPhone has been in existence, fireman.

I've been a publisher, an editor, and a published author, writing reviews on computers, mobile devices, and software.

I've built computers from components up, and in fact, back in the mid-1960s as a high school student, I've actually made my own transistor from the silicon, doing the doping by hand, working on a project with Bell Labs.

I've programmed a complete accounting package including payroll from scratch and designed and programmed a client intake and management database package, as well as inventory control packages, also from scratch.

I HAD smartphones before the iPhone. . .

It might take awhile, but I am pretty sure that you told me previously that there were no “smartphones” before the iPhone, or something very similar. LOL...

You seem to have a very impressive background. I will not rehash my qualifications for you at this time. Suffice it to say that... our experiences are eerily similar in many ways. One of the things that you do not seem to realize about my level of experience is that one of the reasons people go into firefighting is that the schedule allows one to pursue other interests and opportunities.

My question to you as one of the preeminent Apple experts in the world, or at least FreeRepublic... is... with your vast qualifications why do you find it necessary to be so nasty to anyone who disagrees with your view of the world? If one goes through your posting history they will find that nearly every time you have a disagreement with anyone... you generally resort to insults and exaggerations immediately. If references are cited you almost always and ignore the message and attack the messenger You definitely have a take no prisoners mentality.

With your vast qualifications one would think that you would post facts and links supporting them more frequently than resorting to insults and other derogatory remarks. But this most certainly is not the case. I think that you would benefit greatly by spending a day rereading the vast history that you have created. A little introspection might be one of the best things that you could do for yourself. Is this really the legacy that you want to leave here? Whether or not you believe this... I present this as honest criticism and not an attack or continuation of our differences.

[fireman15]

Yes, you appear to be compulsively drawn to things Apple...for strange psychological reasons you likely don’t fully understand —- since you are not an Apple customer. You come to the light but despise the light because you are drawn to it and can’t resist the compulsion.

Atreides, sorry, Lol!!! I didn't notice your post earlier. You do crack me up. I am an Apple customer... I use their products daily. I have been deeply interested and involved in electronics and digital electronics since before small electronic calculators became available. I just cannot subscribe to Swordmaker's disproved revisionist history... mythology, or whatever you want to call it.

So thanks for the laugh. : ()

[fireman15]

I challenged you to come up with a predecessor phone that had a large multitouch screen. You point to a MP3 player/DVD player with a 4.1” single touch resistive screen.

This is just another good examples of your mischaracterizations and lies about what was said in another thread with no link so that people could verify.

I was not responding to any “challenge” from you. The device had no DVD player. DVD players of that time period had screens that were 7”, 8” or larger, and I do not remember any from that time period having touch screens. You are obviously not even familiar with them.

I did remember the original reason that I purchased the device. It had a slot for full sized SD Cards and I could take them directly from my digital camera which had optical zoom and advanced features. I could pull the card out of the camera and view the pictures that I had just taken or play slide shows on the device. The screen was significantly larger than that on my phone or my digital camera.

Here is what I actually said about it:

"I also have a “MP4 Player” which I purchased slightly before the iPhone came out which had removable storage and was capable of playing a wide variety of music and video files. It also could play video games and had other features as well. The screen was quite a bit larger than phones of the day. It was some type of Chinese device that had a lot of eccentricities but it was a capable device that was more inexpensive than a name brand “MP3 player”"

"I was trying to find it so I could post a few pictures of it. I wouldn't claim that it looked like the iPhone or had the iPhone’s build quality, but it was shiny, black, had a 4.3” screen I believe with large icons, was thin and was rectangular with round corners. I bought it simply to have an inexpensive media player and entertainment device with a decent sized screen that would play videos that I downloaded when away from home."

How does that square with what you claim that I said?

From article 63 of 66 at
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3597907/posts?q=1&;page=51

[Swordmaker]

I was not responding to any “challenge” from you. The device had no DVD player. DVD players of that time period had screens that were 7”, 8” or larger, and I do not remember any from that time period having touch screens. You are obviously not even familiar with them.

You were responding to a challenge to come up with prior technology. I did a search on Google for 4.3" MP4 player with your specifications in 2006 and multiple Chinese MP4/DVD players came up that had that appearance and had slots for full SD cards. . . and were black (among other colors) and had that 4.3" screen. I perhaps made an assumption. My apologies. . . but it DID have the 4.3" touch screen control you specified.

My overall point, however, still remains; you point to non-responsive technology that is NOT EQUIVALENT that you throw out as somehow germane to the issue when they are not at all of use to the discussion and are just red herrings providing no value and just obfuscating the discussion. That is something you repeatedly do. . . and that was what your MP4 game playing/ music/ photo viewer was, non-equivalent and not responsive to the challenge I had made to you to show technology that was functionally equivalent to the multitouch screens of the 2007 iPhone. You tossed that anecdote out as somehow useful to your argument.

I could not find a 2006/2007 listing for just an MP4 player for the period meeting your criteria, but Google is getting less and less useful for searches of that type. Again, my apologies for misconstruing your anecdotal description.

And, fireman15, I see you are still harping on "big icons," and "shiny, black with round corners" as if that was something dispositive about the design patent Apple has on the iPhone. This is exactly the "know nothing" nonsense I expect from posters who are completely ignorant of the actual facts of these issues. . . and you always go right to the standard talking points of those anti-Apple "know nothings" and parrot the myths and propaganda that I have been shooting down for years. Repeating those false claims shows you have no concept of what, or how, design patents work or how they are described. Apple did not patent rounded corners, etc. as the Samsung lawsuit propaganda they spread claiming they did when Apple filed the infringement suit. That language was merely part of the narrative in the legally required description of what the patent looked like. . . and really had NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT WAS PATENTED, which is only how the device is designed to appear.

In fact, Fireman, Samsung itself has U.S. design patents that include that EXACT SAME LANGUAGE, because they have design patents that have rounded corners and look similar but is different enough to protect with a design patent!

In the trial, the judge told Samsung's attorneys to quit claiming those words as meaning anything probative and prohibited their attorneys from mentioning it because it had no legal meaning. On the other hand, the layout and design of the icons were copyrighted and were supposed to be included in the suit, but Judge Koh forced Apple to drop those in the interests of expediting the suit. All you are doing is showing your ignorance of facts.

[Swordmaker]

Please Swordmaker tell us where is the vast majority of the $270 Billion dollars stored. It is not like this is a big secret... this has been going on for a long time. This is one more good example of you accusing others of being misleading when you are the one who has very little if any allegiance to “ACCURACY”.

Talk about "misleading". . . my post to which you are responding had absolutely nothing to do with what bank or country Apple was holding its liquid assets in, so why should I even address it?

That was not my point.

My point had everything to do with your deliberate and I think underhanded implications that Apple was holding and perhaps hiding MORE cash than they were legally reporting, something they were REQUIRED TO REPORT, WHERE EVER THEY WERE HELD. In fact, fireman15, I did indeed touch on the fact it mattered NOT where those liquid assets were held in that US Securities and Exchange Commission report.

For all your flurry of historical links, fireman15, SO WHAT? I was NOT challenging the fact that Apple's cash was off-shore, a fact I have posted on FR many times. . .and not trying to hide or obfuscate at all.

No, fireman15, I was challenging your completely specious innuendo that Apple was holding more than the ~$270 Billion that Apple had reported just two days ago.

You pulled that completely false innuendo out of your nether regions and just tossed it out there with ZERO evidence to leave it festering in the minds of readers. Admit it, fireman15, you don't have any evidence that Apple has MORE than the $270 billion, do you. You made that claim up, didn't you? If you do have evidence, POST IT!

Here is a link to Apple's 2017 10-K, the SEC filing for the fiscal year. . . read it, and understand it. FIND THAT EXTRA CASH!

Get a clue, fireman15. I've read it all.

Nothing in your current reply containing links to past data from the Apple Financial Calls from February 1st and May 1st referring to where Apple's cash may or may not be held rebuts the current figure of ~$270 BILLION which was also reported by Apple CFO Luca Maestri on November 2nd 2017 showing the GROWTH of that cash. Why would you even think it would? I bet you did not listen to those Financial calls, did you? I did. I posted the recaps on FR, just as I did for this Thursday's call.

Your reply was just a triple blizzard of out-dated data that has NOTHING to do with today data and rebutting nothing I posted: Luca Maestri also reported on Thursday the amount that is currently held off-shore. But, fireman15, WHERE it held is irrelevant to the total amount which is the important and accurate data.

But also it is not held there, as you imply, just because of tax reasons. . . as if the fact is somehow important the way you put it:

"More than 90% of Apple's cash is held outside the USA"

Then I find it interesting that you chose to cite CNN's Left Wing echo of the Democrat take on the reason Apple keeps its cash out of the US:

“And Apple has increasingly stashed away its cash overseas for tax purposes."

CNN's use of the phrase "stashed away" is used deliberately to imply to CNN viewers that Apple had sent it's profits AWAY from the US. . . choosing to not tell the truth that Apple had never brought those profits HOME in the first place! You've blindly accepted that false-to-fact mischaracterization and are adopting it as your own when you post that quotation.

You are therefore deliberately Implying for other FR readers that Apple somehow chose to nefariously TRANSFER those earnings offshore "away" from the USA to avoid taxation. The fact is, fireman15, Apple has already paid ALL US income taxes due and payable on those funds legally held overseas WHERE THEY WERE EARNED.

The fact is, however contrary to CNN and YOUR implication, these earnings were not transferred abroad—as your innuendo surreptitiously implies for the uninformed reader—they just cannot be transferred to the United States without incurring a punitive 35% TRANSFER tax that is charged by ONLY TWO COUNTRIES ON EARTH for patriating out-of-country, already income-taxed earnings of their citizens and businesses.

The only other country which has such a backward tax policy is Niger, a landlocked African dictatorship, which has ZERO multinational corporations that headquarter within its borders to incur such a tax. Even Niger's tax to repatriate money earned abroad is not as punitively high as the USA's tax.

Tell us, fireman15, would you voluntarily bring YOUR money—money that you've already paid income tax on—into the USA if you had to give more than one-third of it to government just for the privilege of doing so? If so, please tell us why you would do such an insane thing.

This entire post of yours is your attempt to re-direct the issue away from your innuendo to somehow again be about me and my failings, not your methods of debate. It is an entire deflection by ad hominem attack. I am really quite amazed.

You started with the innuendo of hidden cash, then you escalated to innuendo of tax evasion through stashing profits abroad to avoid US taxes. . . you're always assuming Apple is operating in a"shady" pattern and looking for non-existent evidence from others who assume the same.

Facturds such as that "more cash" tossed off claim and reposting of well known, long factually debunked, agenda-driven myths as facts and repeated strawman mischaracterizations of what my arguments are actually about, like this one, are why I cannot take anything you post as truthful or any of your claims about the history at face value.

That is the kind of "always" I am referring to in your posts. You do it. Always. Repeatedly.

[fireman15]

You pulled that completely false innuendo out of your nether regions and just tossed it out there with ZERO evidence to leave it festering in the minds of readers. Admit it, fireman15, you don't have any evidence that Apple has MORE than the $270 billion, do you. You made that claim up, didn't you?

Swordmaker you have got a real problem! This another good example of you using your amazing imagination making stuff up and putting words in my mouth. Here are my exact words, “Swordmaker, you see there are things that we can agree on. Apple most likely has even more cash on hand than that. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these funds are in offshore accounts, and can't be repatriated currently without huge tax penalties.”

There is no innuendo or malevolent intent in those words. There is absolutely nothing that we even disagree on. What in the Sam Hill is wrong with you???

You said in post 15, “Apple is a cash machine with $270 Billion in cash— more cash than the US treasury has on hand—and generated a $48 billion profit in fiscal 2017.”

At that rate Apple has been making... $48 Billion dollars / 12 = $4 Billion dollars a month. So it is reasonable to conclude that even their most recent publicly released figures could easily be less than what they have a week or even days later. How do you think that they are able to even total that much cash everyday? So saying that they likely have even more than the cash they reported that they had on hand is an obvious conclusion.

Congratulations, you just wasted who knows how many paragraphs of vicious nonsense and your time over absolutely nothing. In the same amount of time you just wasted harping about nothing Apple probably made $10 or $20 million dollars. And you call other people all sorts of names and say they are stupid???

[fireman15]

“When the original iPhone first launched in 2007 it was little more than an iPod Touch with calling functionality added. There was no 3G connectivity, no multitasking and the hardware was pretty low-end and a hefty price tag.”

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/apple/16596/quashed-top-10-myths-about-apple-steve-jobs-iphone-and-ipad

Like every Apple product, the company’s new headquarters is a monolith meant to be worshiped at sight and by touch. Just don’t ask too many questions about how it works in practice. And work it surely will. Borg-like, the black, glass Apple mothership, with its perfect ceiling panels and regulated wood veneers, will shroud its engineers in the safe comfort of an unperturbed gait, such that they might yet craft the identical, future devices that shall still inspire the indistinguishable software that will yet run on them, so you and I might rejoice in their splendor.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-myth-of-apples-great-design/516093/

The near-religious devotion Apple achieved, perhaps has less to do with the magical qualities of the technologies it sold and more to do with mythic qualities of the brand. One fact stood out in the film for me: if Jobs had gone to prison for a financial scandal involving back-dating options (allegedly a real possibility considering the circumstances, though, Apple instead let two other executives take the fall), analysts suggested the company would have immediately been worth billions less.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezvy4z/how-steve-jobs-drew-on-myth-to-build-the-cult-of-apple

Back to incrementalism. I don’t understand why Cannold — and plenty of others — think that it’s at odds with Steve Jobs’ legacy. For every great leap forward Apple ever made, it accomplished at least as much through small steps that made its products easier, faster, thinner, lighter, more polished and/or more useful. Apple’s most important products may have been the game-changers, but its best products, always, have been those that benefited from smart, evolutionary improvements. And as far as I remember, Jobs never seemed guilty about the profits they brought.

http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/the-myth-of-steve-jobs-constant-breakthroughs/

In this study, we introduce the notion of a brand cult in an effort to better understand the extreme devotion consumers have toward certain brands. We use historical images plus interviews and observations with current Macintosh computer users to explore the cultic quasi-religious aspects of this consumption. We find several key sustaining myths, including a creation myth, a messianic myth, a satanic myth, and a resurrection myth. The accompanying video offers an account of what it means when a brand becomes a religion to its true believers.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253860500160403?src=recsys&journalCode=gcmc20

“”You have the hero myth of Jobs, who kind of ran the company into a negative place, and then he came back and saved it,” she said. “It’s been written about that he supposedly came to one of the early Christmas parties dressed as Jesus. ... It’s kind of urban legend.”
Microsoft, too, has a role in the story — as the “satanic” enemy, she said. “

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/religion-apple-dose-divine/story?id=11300758