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How About A Sound Bite? (12/22/99)
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Woooo-hoo! Apple's posted their yearly SEC-mandated 10-K report detailing their financial status for FY99! Oooh baby, Christmas certainly came a bit early this year, didn't it? So don't delay-- rush right over and read that whole... um... 220KB file... full of dry financial data... Hmm. It's not exactly for the faint of heart. More accurately, it's not for the short of attention span. If, like us, reading corporate financial data sends you straight into a narcoleptic episode, you might want to steer clear of the real deal, especially before operating heavy machinery.
Instead, do what we do: read the Cliffs Notes version, instead. Why dig through a 60-page report when MacCentral's churned out a convenient 5-page summary? Then again, five pages is still a bit much to folks like us, who tend to get distracted by all the pretty flashing lights this time of year. How about MacNN's one-page summary instead? Ah, that's more like it. We bravely struggled through it and extracted the info-bites we needed: unit sales are up 25% over the previous year; net sales are up only 3% due to lower-priced systems; sales are down slightly in the fourth quarter due to the G4 shortage and the Taiwan earthquake; sales are up all over the globe; gross margins are up; R&D expenditures increased 4%. For the most part, all good news. Whew... can we stop thinking, now? "Married... With Children" is on...
Oh, one last thing-- for those of you who would rather not wade into waters quite as deep as even one page of facts (perhaps you're just more interested in the "kiddie pool" analysis: what do the numbers mean for Apple?), you're in luck! MacWEEK condenses all that data into one simple statement: financial analysts are "happy, if not surprised," with Apple's performance. Really, what more do you need to know? Okay, we're out of here-- it's the two-parter where the Bundys move into the supermarket...
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SceneLink (1990)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/22/99 episode: December 22, 1999: Apple releases its annual 10-K SEC filing; just how much information do you need, anyway? Meanwhile, an environmental watchdog group dubs Apple one of the "greenest" computer companies around, and Microsoft's CFO heads for the Great White North-- does he know something we don't?...
Other scenes from that episode: 1991: It's A Green Christmas (12/22/99) You probably think the only green Mac comes in Lime, right? Well, think again: the Clean Computer Campaign has rated Apple as one of the "greenest" computer companies out there this year. The CCC, "a project of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition," took a look at twenty-one "major computer producers" and rated them on their friendliness to the environment... 1992: Escape From Redmond (12/22/99) Uh-oh... trouble in paradise? Well, okay, maybe Microsoft can't reasonably be described as "paradise" these days, what with the whole "Redmond Justice" thing going so poorly, but it's not like the company's hurting financially; the stock's up to an all-time high, profits keep tumbling in, and whenever another company threatens to compete, it's a simple matter to buy it out or crush it like a bug...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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