Steve Jobs Presents Plans For New HQ At Cupertino City Council Meeting

While WWDC is still going on, Steve Jobs made an appearance at the Cupertino City Council meeting to present to the council Apple's plans for their new headquarters office they plan to build in Cupertino, not far from their old headquarters. Jobs wants to build one building that will hold 12,000 Apple employees on the former Hewlett-Packard property. Alexia Tsotsis, writing for Techcrunch:

Jobs began the presentation referring to the fact that Apple is growing “like a weed,” and that its current campus at D’Anza and the 280 isn’t enough — fitting only about 2,800 people. Apple currently rents buildings to house its other 6,700 employees in the area. The new building will augment the current campus. Paving the way for these plans, Apple purchased about 100 acres from Hewlett Packard in 2010 and added them to the 50 it owns adjacent. Jobs says he has corralled “some great architects … some of the best in the world” to come up with a design that will house 12,000 people in one four story high building on the property. The area is now mainly apricot orchards. With the futuristic design Apple apparently is relying heavily on its experience building retail stores, and it will be creating one massive piece of curved glass if the proposal goes through. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. The parking will be underground. Jobs also wants the building to function as its own power source, with an “energy center” as its primary source of power (“with natural gas and other ways that are cleaner and cheaper”), using the grid as a backup. The campus will include amenities like its own auditorium similar to Apple’s current Town Hall (“We’ve got an auditorium, cause we put on presentations, much like we did yesterday but we have to go to San Francisco to do them.”) and a cafeteria that will feed 3,000 people at one sitting. “We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Ideally Apple wants to move into the campus in 2015. The individual members of the Cupertino City Council seemed like they were in awe the entire time the infamously charismatic Apple CEO spoke (which isn’t surprising), asking Jobs for free Wifi and iPads for constituents as well as for an Apple store that’s actually in Cupertino and not in the Valley or Los Gatos. Jobs shyly responded to the requests, “I think we bring a lot more than free Wifi.”

Groupon Is Effectivley Insolvent; Like A Ponzi Scheme

Another good writeup I found that expounds on what David Heinemeier Hansson said earlier this week. Conor Sen, writing for Minyanville:

So a company that owes $230 million more than it has, and appears to be burning through $100 million or more a quarter, is using money raised from later investors to pay back early investors? Sounds vaguely familiar. I'm not accusing Groupon of doing anything illegal or unethical. Ponzi, Enron, and Madoff all swindled their investors by misleading them about the financial health of their enterprises. As Minyanville's Todd Harrison likes to say, "The only difference between intervention and manipulation is communication." Groupon is telling you exactly what they are in their filing forms and by their actions. Invest at your own risk.

Groupon: Spending $1.43 to make $1.00

David Heinemeier Hansson at Short Logic:

Groupon has filed its S-1 and hopes to raise $750M in its initial public offering. Given they’re currently losing a staggering $117M per quarter, despite revenues of $644M, they’ll be burning through that cash almost as soon as it hits their account. At the moment, it’s costing them $1.43 to make $1, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any cheaper. They’re already projected to make close to three billion dollars in revenues this year. If you can’t figure out how to make money on three billion in revenue, when exactly will the profit magic be found? Ten billion? Fifty billion? My wife shops Groupon a lot. I do not. Partly because I feel I don't need to spend money on most of the things they offer and I know if I simply ignore Groupon, I will save money. I feel the bottom is going to drop out from under Groupon in a few years and everyone in the tech media will raise their hands and run around shouting about how no one saw this coming, how could this happen, etc. For the record, I saw it coming. ( 1:00 PM June 3, 2011 - for future reference)

Apple's Cash to Exceed $300 billion by 2015

Andy M. Zaky, writing for Bullish Cross:

If it then carried that 2013 0.00% growth rate into 2014, the company would have $230 billion in cash or just about $250 in cash per share. 2015 it would have $300 billion in cash or $330 in cash per share. Again, that assumes 0.00% growth for 2013, 2014, and 2015. So if Apple grows 0.00%, then by 2015, it will have more cash per share than the stock is trading at today. While the whole world already discusses Apple's massive cash holding, they have absolutely no clue just how major that cash flow is going to actually be. If Apple is trading anywhere close to where it's trading today 2-years from now, it would be able to take itself private with very little outside help. Just something to think about as wall street debates its daily moronic bullshit about whether there's an iPhone delay, whether Steve Jobs is coming back or whether iPad production is hurt as a result of some explosion in china. Indeed.

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 Book About Flies

I saw the news about the crazy price for this book come across one of the websites I visit and/or Twitter the other day. Today, I ran across an explanation of what was happening in this instance. Michael Eisen writes:

Amazingly, when I reloaded the page the next day, both priced had gone UP! Each was now nearly $2.8 million. And whereas previously the prices were $400,000 apart, they were now within $5,000 of each other. Now I was intrigued, and I started to follow the page incessantly. By the end of the day the higher priced copy had gone up again. This time to $3,536,675.57. And now a pattern was emerging.

Coffee Joulies, the Kickstarter Project

  Due to the fact that my wife has had a lot of time on her hands lately, she discovered this kickstarter project last week called Coffee Joulies. The video above is from their Kickstarter project page. The concept is cool - or hot, I should probably say: > Coffee Joulies work with your coffee to achieve two goals. First, they absorb extra thermal energy in your coffee when it’s served too hot, cooling it down to a drinkable temperature three times faster than normal. Next, they release that stored energy back into your coffee keeping it in the right temperature range twice as long.

> This amazing feat of thermodynamics happens thanks to a special non-toxic material sealed within the polished stainless steel shell. This material is designed to melt at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and absorbs a lot of energy as it melts. This is how Joulies cool your coffee down three times faster than normal. Once it reaches this temperature, the special material begins to solidify again, releasing the energy it stored when it melted. This is how Joulies keep your coffee warm twice as long. > When we first spotted the project, it was on it's first day. If I remember correctly, approximately $2000 had been contributed. As of this writing, they've raised $88,197. It is now April 6. The project doesn't end until May 2. I predict this project could be as big as some of the other big Kickstarter projects.

The Fragility of Free

Ben Brooks writes:

The fragility of free is a catchy term that describes what happens when the free money runs out. Or — perhaps more accurately — when the investors/founders/venture capitalists run out of cash, or patience, or both. Because at some point Twitter and all other companies have to make the move from ‘charity’ to ‘business’ — or, put another way, they have to make the move from spending tons of money to making slightly more money than they spend. Kyle Baxter wrote a follow-up to Ben Brooks' article: Twitter’s value lies in it being a communication utility, where anyone and everyone can quickly communicate information. That’s incredibly powerful, and it simply couldn’t exist if it wasn’t a free service. This doesn’t mean the strategy Twitter pursued is correct; rather, it means their error was in being so cavalier about a business model. They assumed if they reached a critical mass of users, turning it into a profitable business would be easy—and they’ve discovered that isn’t really true. It takes just as much thinking as building the actual product does. Read the first article, and then the second one. Done? Good. You may now resume your normal #dickbar bitching.

Significant Percentage Of Verizon Android Users To Switch to iPhone

Some weeks ago I wrote a post regarding the iPhone coming to Verizon. My main point was to assert that I thought it would dramatically hurt Android sales. Today, a survey taken by a high-tech online research firm based in Los Angeles called uSamp, has given evidence that I may be correct. The results of this survey were published in an article on Fortune written by Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

From the article:

Survey: 44% of Verizon Android users likely to switch to iPhone on Day One

For Blackberry users it's 66%, and nearly a quarter are willing to stand in like to get one

Drawing from a pool of 4.7 million panelists, uSamp asked a sample of 700 AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) smartphone owners how likely they were to switch to Verizon's version of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone next Thursday, Feb. 10, the first day it goes on sale.

The results are posted in full below the fold. The key findings:

• Among Android owners, 44% are either very likely (19%) or somewhat likely (25%) to buy an iPhone on Feb. 10.
• Among RIM owners, 66% are very likely (32%) or somewhat likely (34%) to switch on Day One. Nearly a quarter (24%) of the Android and RIM switchers say they'd be willing to stand in line to get one of the first Verizon iPhones.
• Owners of AT&T (T) iPhones are less likely to switch (8% very likely, 18% somewhat) but the switchers are more likely (29%) than RIM or Android owners to stand in line that first day. Perhaps they have more practice queuing up for an iPhone.

Most Verizon Android Owners Are Main Stream Users

It is my firm belief that most Verizon Android owners are not open-source geeks/advocates who consciously went to (or stayed on) Verizon to buy an Android because they're anti-Apple. I would wager to say that most Android owners on Verizon are main-stream users who wanted iPhones but because they were unwilling to switch to AT&T. Instead, they walked into a Verizon store and asked a salesperson to give them a phone that was "like an iPhone". The salesperson handed them an Android and sold them on the idea that it was "just as good" so that's what they bought. A certain percentage of these users are not happy. They want to be able to use the same apps that all of their friends who have iPhones can use. They are not happy that the phone doesn't "work as good" as iPhones do (UI, ease of use, stability, battery life - things that Apple geeks can point out, but non-tech savvy users might have a hard time quantifying).

This has all changed. Some of these users will go to Verizon and immediately switch. Some of these users will switch to an iPhone when their contract is up and they can get the subsidized upgrade price. The main change though is that these users are now able to walk into a Verizon store and get the iPhone. Not a phone that is "like the iPhone" or "just as good" as the iPhone...but an actual iPhone. And that is why Android is in trouble.