My personal hope is the general realization that its P/E of 14 is actually pretty low for a tech stock (Google = 20, Amazon = 136 (!)), and Steve Jobs’ passing hasn’t affected things as much as the cynics had believed (or hoped).

Anyhow, I bought a humble position at $450, and it’s working out better than expected. Maybe I can retire at 85 vs. 86. And I must append the reality check of the Netflix debacle: this post from last year… followed by this one.

Above and beyond the music, should be interesting as a preview to how this whole Apple TV Proper thing might fly, with Apple propping up the content end of things via live events like this one.

And now we have the iPhone app Path, some social thing, that uploads the contents of your Address Book for some friend-finding purpose that’s supposed to be really great.

Problem is, I’ve used my Mac’s Address Book for years locally, well before the iPhone with no expectation that its contents would be shared. If that’s really true, it would totally change how I currently use it. And so Path’s comment (in comments below that post) that contact sharing is a current “best practice” among iPhone apps is deeply disturbing. Really? Maybe among trendy social app developers, but certainly not to end-users. If so, the more accurate term should be “worst-practice.” I’ve long assumed the Address Book contents were private and would expect to be asked permission before sharing.

So the end result is bad for Path. I’ve yet to download the app and am now unlikely to ever do so. The damage is done; whatever coolness this app provides is now tainted by the “icky feeling” — they care more about that contact list or my data than me as a user, so the service they provide is a shady cover, really. And that ickyness extends to other social apps until this issue is resolved — hopefully Apple will lock the address book down like location and fire an alert asking for explicit permission — at least once.

And in the future, possibly years from now, I look forward to aged relatives saying, “oh… I don’t want to download those app things… I hear they steal your address book and spam all your friends.”

Thanks for nothing, Path. You just made everyone — justifiably — a little more paranoid.

Update: Path is fixing things. Still not motivated to try the app anytime soon, though.

Anyhow, watch the video and judge for yourself. My verdict: it ain’t getting past the spousal-approval test.

First, Siri and hand gesture control would do a great deal toward my present annoyance with too many boxes and remotes to control them. But my ultimate usability test will be the spouse — I look forward to visiting the Apple Store and plopping her before one of these manifestations of Steve Jobs’ final wishes… if she can figure out how to use this iTV with hand gestures or whatever within a minute or so, I’m sold.

Second, the whole “Minority Report” / Siri might put this device into an iPad-like strategy, where the device comes first and is so cool that the content holders feel the need to provide content for it, via apps, licensing agreements with Apple, etc. This device-first approach might be Apple’s only available strategy toward breaking the cable / reluctant studio stranglehold, anyhow.

Lastly, collaboration with cable companies implies that the TV may act as cable box, too. That would be such a huge coup on Apple’s part, I don’t believe it’s possible. But consider how through the iPhone, Apple already has relationships with AT&T and Verizon here in the states, both of whom provide cable services. Hmmm.

Anyhow — rather pointless to continue speculating about speculation, but at least the stock continues to benefit from the nonsense.

Yet I do believe the company is poised for a great 2012 and therefore, the stock has more room to run. Many reasons to believe it could continue to rise from here. One big one: the competition seems to be faltering. Google disappointed, now Amazon.

It feels like a pretty rich purchase at $450 per share, but I can see it crossing $500 sometime this year.

Perhaps this is nuts, but before iPad 3 and iPhone 5 seems like a good time to get in.

Well, maybe I’ll wait until after Greece defaults.

And of course, the cynical wonder if this was a fluke quarter. But looking forward to what Apple may have in store for 2012 — I believe this torrid, almost exponential growth can continue.

First, even if Apple plays it totally safe, we have iPad 3 early this year and iPhone 5 in the summer. The killer earnings of last quarter were for iPad 2 — a product nearly a year old. So: iPad 3 — even with incremental upgrades like a retina display and better camera — could seriously continue to dominate throughout 2012. Add something extra like 4G, and all bets are off.

Then we have iPhone 5. Consider that the hot-selling iPhone 4S was an incremental upgrade — the same case design as the iPhone 4 and a mere incremental speed bump like the iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS (even I called it “disappointing”). So if an incremental upgrade resulted in last quarter — well, I can’t begin to imagine what a new iPhone 5 release will do. Even the safe bets — a slightly larger screen, a new case design will see huge demand. Add in 4G or NFC and again — all bets are off.

And this speculation doesn’t include improvements to the entire Mac line. Or iCloud. Lion. Or the possibility of an Apple TV proper. Or an entirely new, secret product.

But to sum up: here’s a final thought that didn’t even cross my mind until recently. Looking back over all of 2011, the only Apple hardware we purchased was the spouse’s Verizon iPhone (we got an iPad 2 as a gift). The last Mac I bought was a MacBook Air in late 2010; same with the latest Apple TV. So basically, in terms of Apple hardware, 2011 was a wash — I contributed essentially nothing to Apple’s killer earnings all year.

Which means — even if Apple sticks to incremental upgrades, in 2012 I can already see purchasing the iPad 3, iPhone 5 (my iPhone 4 contract will end just in time), probably a new Mac Mini and MacBook Air, and an Apple TV (whatever form it takes) — five hardware products — possibly more than I’ve spent in an entire year on Apple products ever.

To sum up: 2011 was actually rather light in terms of new hardware, yet Apple still knocked it out of the park. Therefore — at the risk of being proven wrong later this year — I can seriously see how they can push things even further in 2012.

There was definitely some prior indication that this would be a surprising, blow-out quarter, first a chart showing a huge jump in iOS marketshare from late 2011 sales, putting iOS on an even level with Android. Second, personal anecdotal evidence seemed to confirm this — I see iPads all over the place; folks holding them like giant books and laptop replacements  to the point of impracticality and slight ridiculousness — saw someone walking down the Embarcadero holding an iPad like a giant iPod, headphones plugged in and likely consulting a map. Lastly, the cheaper iPhone 4 and free iPhone 3GS shouldn’t be underestimated, as several acquaintances have picked those up.

But still, I wasn’t expecting this much of an upside surprise.

Now in retrospect we can see that Apple’s decision to delay the iPhone 4S until Fall resulted in some quarters where Android gained traction, but there were also a lot of consumers who waited to the latest Apple kit, so the delay didn’t impact things all that much and they made up the difference and then some this past quarter. And momentum could continue if the iPhone 5 drops this summer.

Second, iPad is pretty clearly owning the tablet space. The Kindle Fire may have had some impact but considering the entire Android tablet space = Kindle Fire, it’s not nearly as damaging as many of the Android fans had hoped for last year. And an updated iPad 3 is due to arrive sooner than a new iPhone.

Anyhow, this Apple shareholder couldn’t have asked for anything better from this announcement. The only can think of is a stock split or a dividend. But for now I’ll totally take an 8% pop…

Whoever the heck is writing crosswords these days — keep ‘em coming.

• Apple did their best to answer the chicken-and-egg problem of any content / consumer ecosystem: several big-name publishers are on board from day one, with very generous prices. Meanwhile, students will be tempted by the low prices, interactivity, convenience, and possibility they already have an iPad.
• Apple woos the content producers with a complete publishing platform: the allegedly easy-to-use iBooks Author and vacuum-tube-to-the-wallet App Store-esque iBooks 2. And the huge installed user base of iOS users should provide a huge incentive to any textbook publisher — students already accustomed to purchasing iTunes music and iOS apps will have no problem adding a few textbooks.
• The pricing of a $15 textbook vs. the more typical $75 seems like a deal too good to be true, but can be made up by the publishers through volume (check out this All Things D article): textbooks purchased by schools and then lent to students last about five years in the hands of multiple students, while the iBooks version would be purchased by the student with new textbooks purchased each year as a student moves on to the next grade.
• Challenges Amazon’s Kindle platform in a number of areas: interactive textbook content that will look and run better on the iPad, Mac-specific publishing tools, new relationships with textbook publishers and independent authors, rock-bottom pricing, and pushing the ePub format. But the largest implication for any student is to purchase an iPad and read Amazon content via a Kindle app, vs. a Kindle device.

All in all, the most impressive thing is how Apple presents a new platform as a win-win for just about everyone involved (as opposed to Google TV where the platform arrives without content agreements, or WebOS with no apps). Well, unless you’re Amazon, or an employee of a brick-and-mortar school bookstore.

• March debut.
• “High-definition” screen.
• Faster processor (quad core).
• LTE.

All makes sense and falls in line with my earlier thoughts. And there is no hint of the biggest personal prediction I continue to stand by: no smaller form factor.

iPad 3 will be essentially a better iPad 2 (which was essentially a better iPad 1) with the same dimensions. And that will be sufficient to maintain charts like this for the foreseeable future.

• iBooks Content: Decent Kindle Fire sales may spur Apple toward defining the iPad as a superior reading device. There are rumblings of a content-related announcement at a January Apple event. New agreements with publishers would be nice — Amazon has more eBooks at better prices. Apple could also spotlight graphic-intense content (magazines, education textbooks) that show off the iPad’s better display and faster processor.
• Lighter: The Kindle Fire is light enough to hold in one hand while reading. I hope the same for the iPad 3, but with the same screen size as the current iPad. Maybe a tall order, but if anyone can pull such hardware alchemy it’s Apple (MacBook Air).
• Better display: A higher-resolution display and better backlight controls would improve readability. I’d personally like an even lower backlight level for reading in the dark.
• Better camera: I avoid using the current ones.
• Faster: Makes sense.
• No new design: The iPad’s basic, curved design is solidly simple and needs no overhaul. Like the MacBook line, it’s pretty much perfect.
• No 7″ iPad: Doubtful. Even with a retina display, smaller UIs for current apps introduce basic usability problems. Current periodicals would suffer from harder-to-read text. I feel a lighter device with the iPad’s current screen size would be the best solution.
• No iPad Pro, either: Seems better specs at the same price point would satisfy pretty much everyone. I don’t think there are demanding enough games and apps to break out a juiced-up iPad into its own “Pro” designation just yet.

First is mention of an already-built television locked away in Jonathan Ive’s studio, implying Apple has a product far along in development if not ready to go. And the rumored screen sizes are 42+ inches. The larger sizes will make upgrading from our current 40″ Samsung more justifiable.

Second, a possible reason is given as to why the Apple TV proper hasn’t been announced yet — lining up content deals with those backwards studios in order to create an “ala carte” model where users could subscribe to only the channels or shows they want, as opposed to the usual cable package containing channels you don’t really want.

I’d love to pick particular channels. Right now we’re cable-less, and use iTunes to subscribe to a handful of current shows, but it’s not cost-effective for a large number of shows. I’d gladly pay a monthly fee for say “Food Network” and be done with it.

And if you’re into conspiracy theories perhaps this article itself is a lever to loosen the negotiations between Apple and those stick-in-the-mud studios. Yes, there’s an Apple TV ready to go. Ive and Jobs worked on it; it’s surely awesome. There’s an ala carte model that most current cable customers would love. But it’s all being held back by those darned studios. So you can’t have it just yet.

Drool.…

I don’t do much video streaming or app downloading away from WiFi. The only thing I can think of regarding the increased data use is iTunes Match. That blows; another knock to Apple’s music service due to AT&T, holding back the future yet again.

What also sucks is I’m still technically on an “unlimited” plan, signed up for with my original iPhone which was supposedly grandfathered in for this iPhone 4 purchase. But obviously, I gotta put “unlimited” in quotes, since if AT&T can’t crack down on the amount of data, they can still limit the speed.

Yeah, there’s some excuse about improving network quality but I don’t buy that for a second. Build more towers, don’t bitch at your paying customers. Don’t our monthly payments go toward that kind of stuff?

This Christmas communication from AT&T = a big lumpy coal reminder to go Verizon come iPhone 5.

Personally, those sizes are non-starters. Even with all my Apple love it’s really hard to justify a reduction in size no matter what this thing does. Here’s hoping there’s a 40″+ model in the works and this rumor is wrong.

The wearable computer has been a mainstay of science fiction but personally, never seemed all that practical for a variety of reasons — too heavy, power concerns, lack of input options. But many of those issues are finally clearing up, and its time seems nearly upon us.

And in a sense, wearable computers are already here. You can currently buy a wrist band and wear your iPod Nano like a watch. I use an arm band plus Bluetooth wireless headphones to turn my iPhone into a hands-free personal trainer. Many of us with smartphones already carry them everywhere we go; and just need better ways of attaching them to our bodies and interacting with them hands-free. Siri makes a lot of sense here. We could also see glasses containing tiny monitors.

I do worry about being a theft-target with that last bit, but watching the latest viral cat video to decompress during my mass-transit commute somehow trumps that.

“[A]ll he’s talking about is the computer thing,” Keaton recalls… he keeps talking about how everyone is going to have a computer in their life, in their world, in their home. And I’m going, ‘Right, Right.’”

(after which I imagine: well, la dee dah.…!)

Perhaps we have a candidate to play Laurene Jobs in that upcoming biopic I keep yammering about…

Can this stuff be added to the movie?

List of gripes:

• Cloud streaming is unreliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I know notoriously variable cell connections has a lot to do with this, but every time I tap on a song and it doesn’t play for seconds, or doesn’t play at all, I consider reverting back to local files.
• Songs that were once downloaded to my iPhone don’t stay there. There seems to be some logic that deletes songs to keep your iDevice from filling up. But sometimes I want those songs on there and to stay there, which means reverting back to the old sync method. Because:
• Turning on iTunes Match takes away the ability to manually sync tracks using iTunes. Meaning, if I want to get an album on the iPhone, I have to navigate to said album on the iPhone and tap “download all.” Which is okay for just a few songs / albums, but if you have a whole bunch, it’s not nearly as straightforward as the check box and sync method in iTunes.
• When ripping a CD, the files are stored locally, iTunes runs Match, and you are then able to download the same tracks from iTunes. The whole ripping and matching step seems kind of unnecessary. I guess this is for piracy reasons (insert a CD and download the tracks from iTunes immediately), but the intermediate step can be a big waste of time.
• Because it serves content to the Apple TV, I leave iTunes running 24/7. But Match periodically logs me out for “security reasons,” forcing a password re-entry every other day or so.

Now if point #1 didn’t exist, and streaming really worked as advertised, I wouldn’t feel the need to manage local files, and points 2 and 3 would be taken care of. But as it stands, iTunes Match isn’t currently working in a manner where I truly have reliable access to my entire music library stored up in that mythical cloud, and therefore I keep wanting some local files to listen to. Compounding the problem is iTunes Match resembles an all or nothing affair, where once you go streaming the ability to manage local files is largely removed.

As it stands, I haven’t yet activated iTunes Match on the spouse’s phone — she’d be even more confused than I when music just doesn’t play.

Here’s hoping Apple can get these bugs worked out before I try out Google Music…

• Apple already had Apple TV functionality within OS X, in the form of Front Row, which was dropped and is nowhere to be found in Lion. As far as I know, Apple never divulged a reason, but it indicates to me that the whole TV-thing will be focused on a non-Mac device.
• Let’s say Apple did want folks to have Apple TV on a Mac. Seems it would be added to the Mac Mini which sports an HDMI port; a very clear indicator that it can be a partner television. But this also doesn’t make much sense as the several hundred dollar Mac Mini is priced rather high in comparison to the $99 Apple TV, so low, it’s an impulse buy. I don’t think the Mac Mini would benefit much from having Apple TV abilities.
• Then there’s the awkwardness of screen size. Most want TVs of 30″ or 40″ minimum, designed for a viewing distance of feet. Could you imagine then sitting a foot away, trying to use that screen size as an iMac monitor? The current 27″ iMac is already overkill.
• AirPlay to an Apple TV is presented as a solution for routing video from iDevices and hopefully Macs to a larger screen.

All of this points to an Apple TV proper. Lastly, there’s the branding issue; a new product entirely. A huge iMac would be a Frankenstein device, and I don’t think people want to buy a computer to watch television — they want to buy a television.

I don’t think this iMac interim step will happen, and if it does, it’ll be the Mac Mini instead. What I do believe we’ll see on Mac OS X in regards to TV like functionality is more AirPlay buttons.

My first reaction: Bob Balaban.

Note: I am not in any way suggesting that said actor in many a Christopher Guest mockumentary should play Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic, but the unfortunate thought did cross my mind.

Well — not really; Hamm’s a bit too Cary-Grant-gravelly — just wishful thinking on my part for more crossover between my personal obsessions of Mad Men and Apple.

“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.”

But if your scalp still itches from your tightly-worn tin foil hat, some steps to turn Carrier IQ off on an iPhone:

• Go to Settings, General, About, Diagnostics & Usage. On that screen, make sure “Don’t Send” is checked (it should be unchecked by default, confirming that Apple’s diagnostic-gathering is “opt-in”).

All paranoid iPhone users: please do this and carry about your day…

Notable is a sense of whimsy and playfulness, which did wonders to promote the Mac as a friendly computing experience — a huge change from the blinking cursor and command-line interfaces of MS-DOS and Apple II computers.

And it’s surprising how some of the icons (available individually as “Classic Prints”) still evoke a strong emotional reaction — I wouldn’t want a bomb or alert icon on our wall, but would love a dogcow or the smiling computer.

Great news, as Sorkin’s work on The Social Network demonstrated a keen ability to turn boardroom business negotiations into high drama, which would be crucial in bringing the boardroom battle between Jobs and Scully as depicted in the Isaacson bio (back stabbing, grown men crying) to life.

Still wondering about the director, but Clooney would be more palatable if Sorkin were involved.

The goal: have my entire iTunes library playable on my iPhone. Short list of issues getting there:

• The matching process took a long time, mostly due to about a thousand tracks that didn’t match with Apple’s iTunes Store and therefore, had to be uploaded to iCloud. I let the process run overnight and it hung several times. But a fair number of those tracks do actually exist in the iTunes Store, leading me to believe the matching process isn’t quite there yet. Most annoying are are full albums where some tracks match while others don’t.
• Downloading higher bit rate songs from the iTunes Store is convoluted, involving creating playlists of the songs that didn’t match, deleting them, and then downloading from Apple. I had about 12 GB worth, which took a while.
• I am now concerned about the lower bit rate tracks that didn’t match up. I may have to re-rip from CDs at a higher bit rate (another project).
• Playing iCloud tracks via another computer or iDevice via WiFi works fine, but I’ve gotten pretty mixed performance on 3G. Tracks start and stop and struggle to play. The alternative is to download all the tracks beforehand, but at that rate you may as return to the old sync model.

Some of my troubles are self-inflicted. I think Apple intends us to not care about the discrepancy between bit rates — just upload all the mismatched tracks and don’t bother trying to get all your music to the same bit rate. And even if you want to download all the higher bit rate tracks, there’s no reason to do it all at once. You could just download them whenever you listen to those particular songs.

I then wonder if the iPhone will eventually fill up with music, but it seems Apple wants us to not think about this either. There’s allegedly some kind of caching logic where rarely-played tracks are deleted automatically, behind the scenes.

Also, if you active iTunes on an iDevice, you lose the ability to manage tracks via iTunes using the select tracks / sync model. The new paradigm is to play whatever tracks whenever you feel like it and just trust it will work (although, at present, it doesn’t really).

It seems Apple is pushing us to not care about a local music library anymore. You could delete your entire local music library and just download stuff whenever the urge strikes. This cloud future is definitely where things are headed, as seen by subscription services like Pandora or Netflix — access is what we’re paying for. Where the files reside or if they’re delivered by streaming or download shouldn’t matter, so long as you can play the music.

Italics were used because that’s a huge concept to get my head around. I’ve spent so much time over the past decade tweaking metadata, album covers, and cultivating a local library that it’s hard to let go.

But I can’t do so in full confidence until the bugs are worked out. The future — as always — isn’t here just yet.

My votes: Daniel Day Lewis, Christian Bale, or Ryan Gosling.

The hooks into Android aren’t worth much to someone with no Android devices. Apple’s iCloud looks to do pretty much what Google Music does across devices. Other than that, maybe it comes down to whether you like playing music in a browser or a dedicated app or device.

Apple’s iTunes Match announcement earlier this week has been a good distraction — I’m currently engrossed in upgrading old tracks to the higher bit rate (more about iTunes Match later). Not much bandwidth to figure out Google Music right now. And after getting my music library working with iTunes Match, I’ll be that much more invested in the Apple ecosystem.

I even had a vague thought that it might be amusing to upload my entire library to Google Music after it was upgraded to higher bit rate via iTunes Match just to try out the Google+ sharing ability. But it sounds like you can only share music purchased through the new music store on Google+, which means I’ll have nothing to share, since I purchase everything from iTunes.

The price of “free” is the most appealing feature.

So Google Music is a smart move to get Android devices feature-complete with Apple’s iDevices — Google can say “we have that too.” But from the point of view of someone firmly entrenched in the Apple way — I frankly don’t see much here to tempt me from my current garden to that one.

It’s easy to speculate “why” for this particular product (buggy software, prohibitive price) but the larger picture is that this Internet TV thing is hard. And it’s not a technology issue, it seems to be boiling down to usability and going up against firmly-entrenched businesses.

Usability: Things were way simpler when all we had to do was flip channels and settle for what was on. You could get by with one remote and a few buttons. But now there’s potential for a cable box, disc player, game console, DVR, and one of these Internet video boxes like a Roku, Apple TV, or Google TV. Each box with a different UI or different UIs for services within. It’s too complicated. Leading to Steve Jobs’ belief that nobody wants yet another set top box and the best way to fix this is to blow up the TV and start over.

But it’s also worth noting that the cable companies have an advantage here, what with required box for cable that is given to the customer for free.

Business: Many cable customers also get broadband from the same company. And the cable companies aren’t likely interested in enabling people to “cut the cord” and forgo those cable packages. Then note that some companies like Time / Warner have content rights.

So any Internet TV box from Apple, Google or streaming service like Netflix that gains traction could be stonewalled. Studios could pull content at will or charge dearly. They could install bandwidth caps to limit streaming video. Or — just like PVR — they could simply add this whole Internet streaming video concept to their existing cable boxes (forgoing Google TV, knowing what’s at stake here). The change would on the back end but to the user, merely cosmetic — Pay Per View and On Demand simply has a crap load more content. For the vast majority of cable subscribers who have never dabbled in this whole Internet-over-the-video-thing and purchased several boxes of dubious value — getting a new cable set top box would be the path of least resistance.

I currently hold out some hope that a new Apple TV injects something new that points the way forward. It could be apps. But knowing Apple TV is still a “hobby” and a recent Wired article saying that CBS balked at a Apple TV related subscription service are worrisome.

I’ll say that if Google and Apple aren’t able to make the TV / Internet dream happen within the next two years, the game goes to the cable companies. They may be as unloved as the music industry, but while the latter wasn’t able to get a service together to challenge iTunes, the cable companies may be forward thinking enough to stave off outsiders. I don’t like to admit this one bit, but this outcome looks increasingly likely.