As we enter into the holiday season and approach the close of 2012, Apple continues to make headlines all over the world. Join us as we take a quick look at a few prominent stories that cropped up this week.
Apple’s Black Friday Sale
Apple is promising good things for Black Friday shoppers
In the U.S. this week, Thanksgiving will grace us with its delicious gluttony-inducing dinners, famous parades and must-watch American football games.
For the shoppers out there, the real fun starts the day after Thanksgiving, when stores everywhere discount items so heavily that they can instantly turn a nice, minivan-driving soccer mom into a crazy adrenaline-driven member of a rioting mob.
Black Friday is such a big event that even Apple can’t resist jumping into the pandemonium. A teaser recently went up on the Apple site announcing a “one-day shopping event” on November 25th. No word yet on exactly what’s coming but they claim it will include iPads, iPods, and Macs. Previous years indicate discounts of somewhere around the $100 mark for Macs and $40 mark for iPads.
Steve Jobs Had More Money In Disney Stock Than Apple Stock
The estimated value of Jobs’ shares
Bloomberg recently posted an interesting article discussing the idea that Jobs’ Heirs should sell some or even all of his stock as a means to diversify and avoid a fat $867 million in capital gains taxes.
I’m not convinced that Jobs’ family is going to up and sell all of his stock but regardless, I found the most interesting part of the article to be the revelation of just how profitable the Pixar Disney deal turned out to be in the long run.
According to Bloomberg, Steve owned 5.55 million Apple shares worth $2.05 billion. We Mac and iOS fans tend to see Apple as Steve’s most major asset and venture, but it turns out that his 138 million Disney shares more than double his Apple holdings with a value of $4.74 billion.
Will Apple Become the Largest Computer Manufacturer?
Will Apple take the lead in 2012?
Forbes is predicting that Apple could soon take the top slot away from HP as the leading computer manufacturer on the planet.
The long-time Apple geek in me has to stop and marvel at this. This headline would’ve been an utterly ridiculous suggestion ten years ago. I’m so used to Mac users being a sort of counterculture insurgence that I completely forget that we’re no longer rooting for the underdog.
People that owned Apple products used to be infamous for thinking that they were somehow better than everyone else, the products they used were superior to that mainstream crap that you used and you were crazy to think otherwise. These days though the Apple customers are the everyone else, so much so that it’s hard to find a household without at least one iPod or iPad laying around.
While Apple’s marketshare hits a 15 year high, everyone from The Washington Post to PC Magazine is constantly churning out stories about Apple’s continual success and whether or not anyone can bring them down. In fact, CBS News recently posted a graph showing how Apple’s revenue has not only caught but far surpassed that of the seemingly unbeatable giant Microsoft ($17 billion for Microsoft vs. $28 billion for Apple). It’s enough to make any pre-OS X Mac addict get misty eyed.
Conclusion
That does it for interesting Apple headlines this week. Leave a comment and let us know what you think of the stories and opinions above. Did you hear any other interesting Apple news? Let us know!