Keeping Apple
Apple introduced a new line of iPods yesterday, including a touch sensitive one that is basically an iPhone without the phone. However, the stock price dropped about 7% since the announcement. Why? Apple also cut the price of the iPhone by $200, or about one third. And that will hurt Apple’s profit margins.
Since I recently mentioned that I was keeping Apple and selling JetBlue stock, I just wanted to say that I wish I had money to buy more of Apple. I think their decision to go for market share by dropping the price will be very good for Apple in the long run. The stock price drop shows how short-sighted many investors are. I see this as a buying opportunity.
Despite being on target to sell their millionth iPhone this month, it looks like Apple is going to go for market share over profit margins in the cell phone market. Steve believes Apple made a mistake in the early years when, instead of pushing prices down and going for market dominance, it kept prices high, earned lots of money for a while and then lost most of their market share (and profits). Apple is still recovering from that mistake.
This time Apple is going to go after as much market share as they can. Their short-term profits are going to take a hit, but Apple is gaining a long-term, recurring stream of income. From all accounts, people love their iPhones and are very likely to keep using them. And Apple gets a cut of the monthly payments each customer is making to AT&T.
As for putting all my investment money into Apple, I’m going to follow Andrew Carnegie’s and Warren Buffet’s advice to keep all my eggs in one basket and then watch that basket closely.
Mephisto vs Movable Type
Recently, I changed the software I use to create my website from Mephisto to Movable Type. After using Movable Type for a few weeks, I want to say that I’m happy with the change. I really like Mephiso, but the new Movable Type 4 is just better.
First, Mephisto is written in Ruby. I love Ruby as a programming language, but it’s horribly slow right now. Using Ruby also limits my choice of where to host my site because Ruby support is still rare. Since I’m hoping to spend my time writing articles instead of programming blog software, I decided that the implementation language doesn’t really matter.
Second, Movable Type will “publish” my site by creating static pages instead of constructing each page dynamically. Because the web server doesn’t have to do as much work each time someone wants to read something, my site performs better.
Third, Movable Type has a much larger user-base. Anytime I have a problem or need a bug fixed or want to change something about my site, my chances of finding a solution are higher with Movable Type. Mephisto development has dropped to almost (but not quite) zero over the last 6 months.
Fourth, my biggest complaint about Mephisto is that it doesn’t support pagination, and that it’s authors don’t intend to add it. Pagination is those links at the bottom of an article that point to other articles. Not having them is a big pain.
I haven’t finished setting up my site the way I want it — the look of the site needs a lot of help — but I have found Movable Type to be much better at supporting what I want to do than Mephisto was.
Selling JetBlue
I few months ago, I purchased shares of JetBlue. The stock is down 12% or so since I bought, and I’ve decided to sell. I’ll be “locking in” a loss, but I need some cash to help pay for finishing our yard and had to choose between selling JetBlue and selling Apple. And I think Apple is a better deal.
I still think JetBlue is at the bottom of a cycle and will be up over $15 by next summer. However, I’ve decided to stay with Apple. They are announcing new products and services like crazy. And they seem to be the only major company that has figured out that making things people want to buy is a good strategy.
So, I’m keeping my winner and selling my loser. If I’m right about JetBlue, it should grow about 50%. Apple has about the same potential (which would put it over $200/share), but is more certain. I guess it seems more certain because I understand Apple and it’s market a lot better. Besides, don’t you love your iPod? And your Mac? And your iPhone?
Fate: A Tribute to my Grandfather
My grandfather passed away recently. It wasn’t a terrible surprise since he hadn’t been doing well for some time.
He lived across the country from me, so I didn’t get to see him much while growing up. However, I’d taken my family to see him twice in recent years and corresponded with him by email. He was a wonderful man and lived his life in kindness and service. His example still motivates me to be a better person.
A neighbor of his wrote the following poem about their experiences living next to him for many years. She very graciously granted permission for me to publish it here.
We bought our first home on a quiet little street,
where we met a man who was so kind and sweet.He walked over and said Hello,
I am your neighbor and my name is Mr. Cecil Reese,
but I prefer Cec,
just so you know.We shook his hand and said it is nice to meet you,
he said I saw you out here and wanted to come over and greet you.We said our goodbyes and watched him
carefully use his cane and walk home,
But not knowing at that very moment,
how often we would visit and he’d never be alone.Less than a week later we found ourselves at his front door,
Starting a friendship that would become greater than any we’d had before.Everyday after he’d open the door before we had the chance to ring the bell, He always had so many stories he just couldn’t wait to tell.
Time went by and our visits went to at least twice a day,
He loved to make the girls laugh and watch them play.One day he asked that we not call him Mr. Reese,
but he would love it if we called him Uncle Cec.He told us all about his church and things we did not know,
For the longest time when he started, I said I had to go.After some time I didn’t leave when he started talking about religion,
he said don’t believe the crazy stuff you hear about Mormons on the television.He showed us many pictures
of his family and his life,
And always told us he wished we had had
the chance to meet his Maisy, his beautiful wife.We watched him go from whipping around with just a cane,
to using a walker that drove him insane.The first time Maddie ever saw his walker with his new tennis balls
she laughed and said Uncle Cec, that’s silly,
He smiled and said I know I’m getting old,
so what can I do, really?Later that year he gave us a book with highlighted pages
that he thought we’d like to read,
We put it in a drawer,
since we didn’t see a need.A few days later out of nowhere came this voice
that prompted me to open this book,
I did and told Dave
to hurry and look.Inside the back of the book was a printed and signed letter from Uncle Cec,
telling us to read the book when the time was right,
Dave had read most of the book
by the end of the night.Our very first Book Of Mormon came from such a wonderful, kind, powerful man,
Who in October couldn’t wait to see Dave be baptized and hold his hand.Though I was happy for my husband I wasn’t ready to commit,
so I went on with the lessons and didn’t quit.Uncle Cec said he always knew I wouldn’t be far behind
and was so joyous the day I told him I had changed my mind.So in December it was set and Brittany and I became members as well,
Uncle Cec said he was so proud, but we could already tell.From informal lunches with bologna and cheese,
To Outback dinners, he was so easy to please.We talked of many things big and small,
and sometimes we didn’t need to say anything at all.We have grown to love this man more than words can say,
and we’ll always feel honored to have known him, all the rest of our days.He always said we kept him going even when the days were rough,
And coming back from vacation and seeing him in the hospital was very tough.We visited him there daily just as if he were home,
the girls sang him songs and he smiled and even there he knew he wasn’t alone.In less than two years time this man has brought us so much joy and love,
We know he’s smiling down and watching from above.So fate brought us here to our home on Stockton Road,
across from the most amazing man that we have ever known.© 2007 Rebecca Anderson. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
I wish I could have lived closer to this wonderful man.
Age and Creativity
Marc Andreessen just wrote an article about how age affects creativity, specifically targeting what age is best for entrepreneurship. He’s going to address the topic in two parts: first trying to get some real data, second to give his opinion.
He spends quite a bit of time quoting from the research of Dean Simonton at University of California Davis, who has spent his career studying how age affects creativity in different fields. I have to admit I’m sort of a junkie for well written research supported by hard data, and Simonton certainly qualifies.
What to Do About Taxes
After reading an article published by the Mises Institute claiming that President Bush has not cut taxes, I got to thinking about things. I’m convinced that Mises has got it right. The best, and only correct, measure of whether taxes have gone up is government spending.
Spending = Taxes
This makes a lot of sense for two simple reasons. First, if the government spends money, that money has to come from taxpayers eventually — if later, then it actually costs us more because of interest.
Second, if the government sells an asset it owns, like large sections of Nevada, then taxpayers are still paying for it because now we, as citizens, don’t own that asset anymore. This represents a decrease in our wealth — another way we pay.
So if government spending is the best indicator of taxes, both current and future, what should we do about it?
A Balanced Budget Isn’t Enough
The solution that has been proposed numerous times is to “balance” the budget by offsetting any increase in spending with a corresponding increase in taxes. Balancing the budget would probably work to some degree, but I believe it would fail to accomplish much because it deals with each spending item individually. A much better approach would be to deal with the issue as a whole.
Taxes Should Follow Spending
I think that adjusting taxes automatically to match spending would be much better. If some Senator wants to spend $223 million to build a bridge in his home state, fine. Next year, every taxpayer would have to contribute 74¢ for each person in their family for that bridge. Knowing that just might make him (or her) reconsider how happy his constituents might be about that bridge.
This would allow Congress to spend when they wanted to spend, but would deny them the ability to pretend that it doesn’t cost taxpayers anything. And since most taxpayers are voters, I think a lot of their pet projects, so-called “earmarks,” would get eliminated quickly.
Long-standing nation debt would have to be handled differently because it’s too large to payoff quickly. Perhaps setting a goal to eliminate it in 30 years would work. That’d be the same as putting 10% of our national spending (about $300 billion) into debt reduction.
Each year, the Department of the Treasury, Congressional Budget Office, and Government Accountability Office could get together an adjust taxes automatically based on actual spending for the prior year. All new debts would be scheduled to be paid off within 4 years.
Another problem needing a solution is what to do about promises to spend in the future. Social Security and Medicare come to mind. Currently, the government just ignores these promises when campaigning and making financial projections. The U.S. Treasury’s report for 2006 includes these commitments and should become the basis for starting to accumulate a nest egg to pay for them. Perhaps another 10% could be put towards the retirement of our citizens.
Basic Money Principles
So, as a nation can we put 10% toward debt reduction and 10% towards retirement while starting to live within our means? Does this advice sound familiar? It should. The best thing is that eliminating earmarks (congressional pet projects) would almost pay for both of these. Instead of a balanced budget amendment, maybe we should just try some basic principles of sound money management.
Java vs Objective-C
I’m a long-time Java developer (applications, not websites) who started doing a lot of Objective-C programming for Macs about a year and a half ago. I thought I’d comment on my impressions of both languages now that I have some experience in both.
Objective-C is a great language, but there are a few things I miss from Java:
- Not needing to worry about linking
- Having all relevant information in once source file (.java) instead of two (.m and .h)
- Not needing to think about file organization
- Having warnings printed every time I compile instead of just once, when the file is first changed
- Easy bulk renames in Eclipse (Java), which are much more difficult in Xcode (Objective-C) though I hear this may change soon
- Debugging in Eclipse — Xcode’s debugger isn’t very helpful
- No memory leaks
Overall, these issues aren’t big enough to annoy me anymore. I guess I’ve gotten used to programming for a native platform again. Hopefully, the new versions of Objective-C and Xcode coming out in a few months will eliminate the last 3 items from this list. That’d be great.
On the flip-side, there are a few things I really like about Objective-C:
- Being able to extend the built-in classes easily
- Creating a user interface in Interface Builder is dead-simple
I haven’t found that the dynamic nature of the language has been all that wonderful. It certainly hasn’t hurt though. I’m sure I haven’t used it to its fullest potential yet, so I guess I’ll reserve judgment for now.
Farewell Harry Potter
Cheryl and I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a few nights ago and really liked it. This book differs from the others by jumping right into an action sequence before slowing down dramatically. Like Ron, we got a bit impatient for the story to keep moving (which may have been Rowling’s point, I suppose), but the story picks up quickly.
By the end, Rowling has resolved all the loose ends and explained the secrets of the world she created including Snape’s history, Dumbledore’s past and family, how a wand “chooses the wizard,” and much more. I left the world of Harry Potter feeling a bit sad but very satisfied with how things ended.
Christian Harry Potter
Since religion is never mentioned in the books, it’s hard to say if Harry is Christian. But from what I understand, J.K. Rowling certainly is. Cheryl and I have been re-reading the books in preparation for the release of Deathly Hallows later this week and just finished book 6. We started wondering about what might happen in the last one.
Now, Rowling is notorious for not giving out any details about what happens or how her books end. However, she has mentioned that at least 2 characters die, but that the book is “not a bloodbath.” She won’t comment on whether Harry makes it through or not. So we tried considering Harry Potter in the light of popular Christian beliefs and came up with some very interesting predictions.
The Cheapest Days to Buy Stuff
Here is an article on Yahoo about the cheapest days to buy things like airline tickets, clothes, books, gas, groceries, and a few other things.
Reading the article reminded me a bit of the RideMax program we used when we went to Disneyland recently.