What Company Should Apple Buy Next?

[Clie]

[FONT=Georgia]Hot Damn! I can't believe this thread is still alive. Cool. I think there is great energy in a lot of these ideas. I wonder what the likelyhood that anyone at One Infinate Loop lurks this board. Wishful thinking.

- Rixio, and Corel certainly stir my juices, however I pull back at the thought of an Apple Office product. Its my opinion that the only reason MS doesn't slit Apple's throat is because of the dependable revenue stream Mac Office provides. Should that cash flow ever deminish, the relationship (love/hate) such as it is will tilt toward hate/destroy. Four billion dollars cash in the bank verses fourty-eight billion in the bank, is not the type of odds I'd want to go up against, my love for underdogs not withstanding. I would hate for Apple to become distracted because of having to magage it's relationship with Redmon from an even more negative vantage point.

- I agree that the reason Apple exist today is because they refocused on who they are at their core. It would not shock me if you saw Apple spin off the iTune, iPod venture after a succession of profitible quarters (say 8-12 quarters). Apple would of course keep a controlling interest in the new entity.

Hey, I'm always happy to offer pennies two at a time.

[cogito]

In the most logical sense, apple should buy IBM. It would boost apple productivity accross the field. IBM is an innovative powerhouse... just imagine the IBM thinktank under apples controll...

[Arden]

Originally Posted by Clie

[FONT=Georgia]Hot Damn! I can't believe this thread is still alive. Cool. I think there is great energy in a lot of these ideas. I wonder what the likelyhood that anyone at One Infinate Loop lurks this board. Wishful thinking.

- Rixio, and Corel certainly stir my juices, however I pull back at the thought of an Apple Office product. Its my opinion that the only reason MS doesn't slit Apple's throat is because of the dependable revenue stream Mac Office provides. Should that cash flow ever deminish, the relationship (love/hate) such as it is will tilt toward hate/destroy. Four billion dollars cash in the bank verses fourty-eight billion in the bank, is not the type of odds I'd want to go up against, my love for underdogs not withstanding. I would hate for Apple to become distracted because of having to magage it's relationship with Redmon from an even more negative vantage point.

- I agree that the reason Apple exist today is because they refocused on who they are at their core. It would not shock me if you saw Apple spin off the iTune, iPod venture after a succession of profitible quarters (say 8-12 quarters). Apple would of course keep a controlling interest in the new entity.

Hey, I'm always happy to offer pennies two at a time.

A) You have to close tags for them to work; you can't just leave a [font=] tag open.

B) I don't think Georgia is one of the supported fonts for viewing text on this board.

C) I doubt Microsoft could do much to touch Apple without being smacked up with anti-trust legislation like the DoJ's own personal bitch. Sure, they would hate for Apple to cut off their bloated, overpriced cash cow of MS Office, but Apple has every right to make their own, competing office suite. Microsoft may stop supporting Macs very well, but then there's nothing new in that arena.

[mi5moav]

ProQuest... I think they have great backing and a great future. But then they are a public traded company and what was the last public traded company apple bought.

[Randman]

Belkin. The Media Reader and voice-recording are perfect for Apple's iPod. Ok, Griffin too, for the iTrip.

[cellfish]

Corel is a good idea for a purchase, and they seriously need to be exclusive to one market because they seriously aren't cutting it on the PC. Corel is trying to move into the Linux 'market', but how much money can you seriously make with WordPerfect on a platform that gives OpenOffice away for free?

Corel has decent graphics applications (Corel Painter being one of them) that OS X could use more frequent updates of and Corel Office is pretty darned good and it would be cool if that would be Apple's replacement for the (excuse the language) shitty Appleworks suite. Corel could sell its own PhotoPaint to replace Photoshop if ever Adobe decided that the Mac is no longer a profitable market. PhotoPaint isn't fantastic like Adobe's product, but it would definitely be a decent temporary alternative in a worst-case scenario.

I think Apple users would embrace the purchase of Corel because Apple users love to root for the underdog in general.

[mdnky]

Sun Microsystems...Nextel...AOL

[Randman]

AOL? God forbid. I still say Real.