What is the best buy ? An iMac or MacBook or Apple Stock ?

[trs96]

Yesterday, December 12th, was the 36th anniversary of Apple's IPO on the NYSE. Stock was selling for around $22 a share. Anyone who had invested $990 in Apple stock then and held it would have roughly $350,000 worth of Apple Stock today. If you had bought a new Apple II for about $1200 at the same time what would it be worth today? Not much. You might be able to sell it to a Classic Mac collector for $50 if you're lucky. I know that Apple doesn't have as much upside as it did in the first 36 years after the IPO. As long as people keep buying iPhones and using iOS and macOS they're going to be profitable for many years to come. Even if they abandon the Apple Car project, they'll keep doing what they do best.

When I look at the younger generation today, teens and twentysomethings, their Smart Phone / iPhone is their most important possesion. It's something they won't/can't live without. Apple is going to make sure that their cash cow, flagship product, continues to be the best. When this younger generation starts earning some money to spend, it will go for the biggest, highest priced iPhones. This is to the detriment of Apple's Mac lineup which tends to get ignored for years while there's a new iPhone out every 12 months or so.

How will Apple stay on top and not falter over the next 10-15 years ? There are major barriers to entry into the Smart Phone market. Apple is the only company that makes a decent profit selling them. Samsung sells more phones but makes very little profit compared to what Apple makes from Smart Phone sales.

So the moral of the story is: Invest in Apple stock now and not Apple hardware if you want to retire earlier and build an awesome CustoMac with no compromises. With the money saved on your PC-Mac hardware, buy Apple's latest, phablet sized mega iPhone.

http://www.investopedia.com/article...ould-have-invested-right-after-apples-ipo.asp

 

[CaptainKernelPanic]

I miss the days of Steve Jobs when Apple was full of variety. Now everything is the same, IOS looks like MacOS, designs look the same, everything is the same. There is literally no variety. I still have my old iPod touch 4th generation and MAN that thing was the pinnacle of Job's time. My iMac 2007 was amazing too. If I had a 5k iMac, I don't know if I could say the same 10 years later.

While Jobs never did any actual developing, he was the glue that held Apple together, keeping it from going to one blob of color like it is now. He was a mastermind of sorts, in his own way. His expertise lay in marketing and producing, not developing. The only reason I would ever buy a newer Mac (and I would only buy the Air anyway) is to get access to MacOS. You notice even MacOS is subpar to what it once was. I still love it, but it seems to playskool for me, it's too much flat, too much color. I miss the amazing dock of the mavericks/mountain lion days, and the amazing window buttons of the snow leopard and previous days. MacOS has fallen so far, I still remember my first hack with Snow Leopard and iBoot, but now everything seems to generic.