Apple

Hedge funds responsible for Apple stock decline

Some of the biggest hedge funds that helped make Apple Inc a stock market darling lost faith and dumped their stakes in the fourth quarter, fueling the massive drop in the iPhone maker’s share price.

Noted stock pickers including Leon Cooperman and Thomas Steyer unloaded billions of dollars of Apple shares between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31, according to disclosure documents filed on Thursday.

Apple files response to shareholder lawsuit

Apple filed its formal response to the lawsuit initiated by Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn and blasted the complaint as being without merit and nothing less than an attempt to hold shareholders “hostage” by forcing Apple to acquiesce to a specific plan for the issuing of preferred shares that would primarily benefit Greenlight Capital.

This is going to be interesting.

iOS 6.1 released

iOS 6.1 is available for download and installation.

In praise of the Apple Store

Scott McNulty’s comments about the Apple Store got me thinking about the Apple Store, and my conclusion is very different from his.

Tim Cook on Apple earnings

Macworld summarizes Tim Cook’s own comments about Apple’s operations during his call with analysts yesterday.

Ranking the analysts

Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s ranks analyst winners and losers in the wake of Apple’s earnings call.

The market wants Apple to unveil a time machine

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Harvard Business Review:

The critics that are screaming right now are intellectually lazy. They’re throwing temper tantrums instead of looking at the big picture. Like two-year-olds, they don’t really know what they want. And they’re not happy when they get it, anyway. Apple could unveil a new car and they’d say Apple’s days are over because it’s just bet its future on an industry it knows nothing about. Not unlike, say, Apple’s entrance into the mobile phone industry. I bet that if Apple did unveil a time machine, they’d claim it wasn’t fast enough.

Tim Cook is taking exactly the right approach, staying the course, despite distracting expectations swirling around him. Apple is a marvel of human achievement.

Don’t worry, Apple fans. This too shall pass.

The importance of design to Apple

Nick Bilton:

What struck me about our brief conversation wasn’t that Mr. Cook was talking about two teensy buttons — this is Apple, after all — but that he never once mentioned the technology in the iPad Mini. Instead, he talked about one thing: design.

In all of the meetings I’ve had with Apple executives over the years, design is always one of the first things they talk about. There is an overwhelming sense of pride from everyone at Apple about the products they make.