As the markets continue to put our money on a roller coaster ride of speculation, for the average investor, those who don’t make hundreds of trades a day selling stocks for 2 cents more than you bought them for, there are very few companies with such great investing opportunity as Apple, Inc. As the broad market downturns scare away would-be investors, I have been buying up Apple stock like it is going out of style. Why, you ask? Here are a couple of reasons:
Apple has a 52-Week high of 202.96 and it is currently trading at less than half of that. It would not be far fetched to say AAPL could easily hit the $150 price point in 2009. This price point is easy to hit because when you look at Apple today vs. one year ago, nothing has changed. Apple still dominates that consumer smartphone category, they are still the #1 notebook on college campuses, and sales of Macs have never been higher, their stock price is just getting hammered due to overall economic uncertainty.
To summarize, I am long on Apple, but expect the stock to hit $150 in 2009.
Disclaimer: I am not an analyst, so don’t take my comments to the bank.
My newest microcommerce (yea, I coined that term) is dedicated to providing avid Apple Fans access to low cost Zagg InvisibleSHIELD cases for their Apple branded devices.
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With the release of a software update for Apple TV, version 2.2, there are many new and exciting features being brought to Apple’s revolutionary product. The most notable features being written about include:
- HD TV shows - Finally watch and buy HD TV Shows on your Apple Tv
- Genius playlists - Create a Genius Playlist directly from your Apple TV
- On-The-Go playlists - Add a song to your playlist without your computer
While all of those features are excellent and much needed additions, the most exciting feature to me is Music Video Playlists (finally!). Before this update, no matter if the music videos were in a playlist or not, the Apple TV would refuse to play through all of the videos (even though iTunes will). If you have spent a small fortune on music videos and want to use them at say, a house party, the Apple TV came just short of expectations, but as always, Apple seems to come through in the end.
The funny thing is that I sent Apple this exact feature request about 1 week ago via their Apple TV Feedback Form. Maybe I am starting to get some pull these days. Thanks for the update guys.
After a long night of work, there is nothing worse than the dreaded sound of an alarm clock going off, loudly letting you know that two hours of sleep goes by faster than you could ever imagine (theory of relativity anyone?). With all of the advances in technology, why is it that my alarm clock doesn’t slowly monitor my awareness and gradually bring me out of a state of rest? While the latter would be nice, I found what I would call alarm nirvana using software that is available today.
Honestly, I was not looking forward to reviewing software that, quite frankly, I didn’t think would be that interesting. Enter Awaken (by EmbraceWare), easily the best alarm clock software for mac and by far superior to the old-and-busted annoying as heck alarm clock you currently own. Awaken combines an innovative set of features and a superb visual interface to create an alarm clock that is actually fun to use on my mac.
Of the many features of awaken, the ones I like the most are:
- Volume + Screen Fade - Because your alarm should not startle you every morning with sheer volume.
- Integration With iTunes Genius Playlists - Wake up to a new “Genius” mix every morning.
- Fully customizable alarm “repeat” settings - Never forget to “unset” your alarm again!
- Awaken automatically wakes up your computer - Let your computer sleep while you sleep, Awaken takes care of the rest.
During my normal everyday use, as shown above, I have no need to ever worry about changing my alarm based on different days of the week, as I have a pretty routine schedule. My accounting class is only on Tuesday and Thursday, which is why Awaken only wakes me up at 8:00 am on those days and 11:00 am on MWF. Pretty intelligent eh?
Of course this application is not quite perfect, although it is pretty dang close. The one feature I would like to see implemented in a future release is the volume + screen fade for the snooze alarm. Hitting snooze will definitely make sure you get up in 10 minutes when your computer plays music at full volume all at once.
All in all, Awaken is easily worth the $12.95 price tag it carries. Trust me, you will never feel good about getting waken up until you try out Awaken. Also included in the pricetag is unlimited lifetime updates (major + minor), what a deal!