Racing against deadline: Thursday Apple news

Today, I'm under the gun to deliver a presentation and some analysis reports to a client, so I'm just going to point readers at a few interesting bits in the news overnight instead of writing any detailed analysis. In no particular order, these are:

• Apple's U.S. Mac market share rises to 8.1 percent in Q3 according to Gartner. IDC's number was similar but different, reporting a nearly 16% rise in market share. BusinessWeek claims that the new numbers make Apple the #3 computer maker in the US behind HP and Dell.
• Reviewers are coming around to Leopard. Tom Yager over at InfoWorld waxes rhapsodic about the inner beauty of Leopard's APIs, applications, and foundations. It's nice to see an IT reviewer that is willing to look below the surface GUI glitz. Oh, and by the way, people who are claiming there are no "secret features" in Leopard should consider this: application signing and signed app run-time enforcement was never announced prior to showing up in the 300+ features this week. While I understand this type of feature doesn't have the "Wow" of a new Finder or dock, I do claim it is perhaps even more important for future development. I also believe that some Leopard features present in the release code are not currently being marketed publicly, but I'll have to leave that for another article.
• Some writers still don't understand the iPhone development announcement. I started my newspaper reading with the Boston Globe today, who ran an Associated Press article claiming "In an apparent about-face, Apple Inc. will allow third-party applications to work directly on the iPhone, chief executive Steve Jobs said in a posting on the company's website yesterday." Then the article goes on to note "An unknown number of users have "unlocked" their handsets to work on other carrier networks. The Sept. 27 software update reportedly disabled those phones.". Huh? What does the SDK have to do with the carrier lock? Fortunately, the NYTimes did a better reporting job and separated the two issues.

Clearly, next week is going to be a huge Apple week, beginning with its earnings announcement on Monday and ending with the Leopard release on Friday. Because of client commitments, I haven't been able to release the new Analyzing Apple report yet, but expect to update that forecast soon. However, I will say that my current numbers and price forecast for Apple stock are nearly identical with the forecast in our last report, iPhone Summer Heat. Therefore, if anyone is trying to figure out if Apple stock is a buy or sell based on my analysis, the price prediction and forecast in that report is, as they say in politics, "still operational".

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