Linked List: January 15, 2013

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Aaron Swartz, in a 2009 interview with Ronaldo Lemos:

When I was a kid, I thought a lot about what made me different from the other kids. I don’t think I was smarter than them and I certainly wasn’t more talented. And I definitely can’t claim I was a harder worker — I’ve never worked particularly hard, I’ve always just tried doing things I find fun. Instead, what I concluded was that I was more curious — but not because I had been born that way. If you watch little kids, they are intensely curious, always exploring and trying to figure out how things work. The problem is that school drives all that curiosity out. Instead of letting you explore things for yourself, it tells you that you have to read these particular books and answer these particular questions. And if you try to do something else instead, you’ll get in trouble. Very few people’s curiosity can survive that. But, due to some accident, mine did. I kept being curious and just followed my curiosity.

(Via Dave Winer.)

Hard to Fool, Eh? ★

Jay Yarow:

Apple has gone from being a sure-thing rocketship to a train wreck, as far as stocks are concerned. Some people want to cry “stock manipulation,” but the stock is down 30% since the end of September. It’s hard to totally fool the market. Something is amiss with the company.

Hard to fool the market? In the long run, arguably. In the short run, that’s laughable.

As for Apple specifically, maybe “something” is, indeed, “amiss with the company”. But the WSJ and Nikkei reports yesterday claimed something very specific about what’s wrong. Apple’s stock was at $520 over the weekend; then the WSJ ran their “due to weaker-than-expected demand” story on the front page; today, the stock closed at $486. If this weak iPhone 5 demand report turns out to be the complete bullshit it looks like, how is this not proof that the market is easily fooled?

Why the WSJ Got the ‘iPhone Demand Is Crashing’ Story All Wrong ★

Fantastic analysis by Mark Rogowsky at Forbes. Best piece I’ve seen regarding yesterday’s “weaker-than-expected demand” iPhone 5 report in the WSJ, as well as an astute take on the competitive positions of Apple and Samsung:

Similarly, Cnet was very excited about Samsung’s announcement that the Galaxy S phone line had crossed the 100 million mark in total sales. The phone is so desirable, “Sales of the flagship Galaxy S3 reached 30 million units in 5 months, and 40 million in 7 months, with average daily sales of about 190,000 units.” You’d think that it’s the hottest thing going with those numbers. Of course, as we were just discussing above, in the quarter just ended, Apple will have sold about as many iPhone 5′s as Samsung has sold Galaxy S3′s in 7 months! This is what the “experts” are already calling trouble and they haven’t seen the numbers yet.

Now, of course, Samsung is also selling the prior generation S2, which Cnet tells us, “…is described as a steady bet after recording sales of over 40 million in 20 months.” So that’s about 2 million a month for that model to go with the 17 million S3 phones Samsung apparently moved in Q3. In other words, if we just compare the last two generations of phones, Apple sold somewhere around 35-45 million last quarter while Samsung moved about 23 million. It’s certainly true that Samsung has a number of less-expensive entry models and will outsell Apple in raw numbers. But when one looks at “profit share” and wonders why Apple will continue to earn more of it in smartphones than Samsung, those numbers tell the story.

Read the whole piece, it’s spot-on.

Jim Cramer Explains How the Stock Market Is Manipulated ★

Via Rene Ritchie, in this Branch thread.

Bobo, the Accidental Hit App ★

Claire Atkinson, reporting for The New York Post:

Bob Tedeschi, the Times’ Gadgetwise columnist until last June, who covered the app world, went undercover in 2010 to develop an app — and helped create “Bobo Explores Light,” an award-winning best-selling iPad app, The Post has learned.

Tedeschi undertook the project using the pseudonym Craig Fusco so Apple wouldn’t give him any unwarranted favorable or unfavorable treatment. In a recent interview, he said he was moved from the tech beat after telling his editors of Bobo’s success. “I was floored by how well it did,” Tedeschi told The Post. […]

Ironically, Tedeschi’s app creation was first discussed with a Times editor as a possible story that would address how hard it was to make a living developing apps. The story assignment was eventually dropped — but Tedeschi continued pursuing the idea.

Makes you think The Times wasn’t looking for the answer to whether it’s possible to make a living developing apps, but rather only wanted a story that concluded you can’t.

Facebook Graph Search ★

So Google got into social networking with Google Plus, and now Facebook is getting into search. Here’s Danny Sullivan’s take.

If You Lose Your Cellphone, Don’t Blame Wayne Dobson ★

GPS glitch with Sprint is pointing “Find My iPhone” results in North Las Vegas to this guy’s house:

Dobson’s misadventure started in 2011, with a knock on the door around midnight on a weekend. He opened the door and found an upset young couple demanding that he turn over their phone. Dobson was confused.

“I’m standing there and I’m thinking, ‘What are they talking about?’ ” he said. “They might as well have said, ‘Give me my horse back.’ “

Now a Bunch of Analysts Are Saying iPhone 5 Demand Remains Strong ★

This is how far we’ve sunk: I’m in complete agreement with Shaw Wu.

Corporate Silence ★

A 2001 CNet article by Sergio G. Non:

For years, publicly traded companies have been citing rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as reasons not to discuss almost anything related to corporate operations in the weeks preceding a quarterly report. “SEC-mandated quiet period” often becomes a boilerplate phrase for public-relations personnel when earnings are less than a month away.

Yet it’s not even an SEC rule.

“The quiet period phenomenon is a matter of practice rather than regulation,” SEC spokesman John Heine said. “You’re not going to find a regulation that says ‘you have to be quiet for 30 days’ or something like that. However, there are provisions in securities laws that lead people... to be careful in how they handle certain types of information.”

Via Virtual Pants. Whether it’s a matter of choice or their interpretation of legal requirements, Apple says nothing in the month leading up to quarterly results — and everyone knows that. So I don’t think the timing of yesterday’s WSJ report of “weaker-than-expected demand” was a coincidence.

Suppressing AAPL ★

Compelling piece by Joe Springer on Apple’s stock price, from back in November:

So here is our logic to being patient. It is threefold:

Apple had an enormous amount of call options speculation related to its Summer surge

A huge share of this was calls with a strike of around the current price of $550 and higher that expire January 19 2013

The institutional money managers that wrote those call options and bought common stock to cover will make a lot of money if a) those options expire worthless, and then b) Apple runs after that expiration date

Billions of dollars at stake if AAPL stays near or under $500 a share until January 19 and then makes a run after that. No tinfoil hat required to see the motivation here. (Via Loren Brichter.)