I recall a game done by Gartner Group in the 90’s. Every quarter, they would release a huge press release saying that software sales for Macs were declining. They only reported at the end of the article that the sales decline was based on an ESTIMATE of last quarter’s Mac software sales. Then, a few months later, it would turn out that the actual sales exceeded the estimate by a large margin – and Mac software sales had actually risen for that period. There was, of course, no press release announcing that fact. The only way you could find out about it was to wait until the next year and see that they were again using ACTUAL sales for comparison to the current quarter’s estimate. This went on for more than 4 years. Gartner Group was publishing one press release after another saying that Mac software sales were declining when they were actually increasing. It finally stopped years later after I published a web site showing the scam and enough people were contacting Gartner to ask them to justify their scam. Of course, by that time, Apple WAS in trouble, so they could stop this particular scam and move on to something else.

“… the more Walt spoke of Apple, the more uncomfortable Charley became, several time injecting “but, but, Microsoft – blah-blah-blah, but, but, Bill Gates.
Revealing.”

Actually, it was Rose who switched gears to CES and what Bill Gates said, and it was Walt who could not get his nose out of Steve Jobs ass long enough to address what he was being asked. Instead of responding to Rose’s questions about MSFT and Bill Gates, he kept on going back to Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, Walt is unable to separate Jobs from Apple, always referring to Apple as “Steve Jobs”.
For example:
“What did he say that made it compelling?” was the question about Bill Gates last CES address…
Walt Responded:
“He sketched out a very similar vision to what he has been sketching out for years, and it kind of hasn’t happened yet, which is the digital home of course with instead of Jobs doing it with Apple products he wants to do it with Microsoft products, and all of this media flowing…”
So Charlie responded, very truthfully, that it is too early to count out Microsoft…
So then Walt talks about the stuff Microsoft is making, and is unable to NOT compare it to the Apple TV, and then brings Jobs in to say Apple made it VERY clear they intend to be in the thick of it…
We KNOW Walt, you just spent the 1st 12 minutes talking about Apple – can you address for 2 minutes the questions about Microsoft? You did not bring up MSFT incessantly when discussing Apple, Why bring AAPL up incessantly when discussing Microsoft?

Look, I love Apple, I even like Walt, but just like Rose says: “Walt Mossberg is the WSJ’s guy…”, he can just as easily say “Walt Mossberg is Steve Jobs’ bitch…” – because Walt is an unapologetic fanboy…

Walter Mossberg
A discussion about Macworld, 01/23/2008

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/01/23/1/a-discussion-about-macworld

hylas

These so called “professional writers” fool no one that has basic reasoning skills, though I have seen some pretty funny things lately – such as Charley Rose interviewing Walt Mossberg last week on his show,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4994933864373374383

… the more Walt spoke of Apple, the more uncomfortable Charley became, several time injecting “but, but, Microsoft – blah-blah-blah, but, but, Bill Gates.
Revealing.

hylas

Whilst i can understand it gives Apple an additional revenue sharing stream, i believe the iPhone would have sold three-fold if it was a solus product.

I live in the UK where phones are heavilly subsidised and people are not used to paying for them when buying on contract. So the fact Apple have already sold an incredible amount to date (not sure of the official figure) in the UK is outstanding.

However, i have a sneaking feeling that Apple will eventually change the rules for this in the UK either through price reductions or through a new iPhone product.

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