This position is currently held by Exxon Mobil, with a market cap of $278billion to Apple’s $222billion. It certainly isn’t implausible to imagine this happening within the year, given Apple’s strong growth. Assuming Exxon Mobil stays at the same valuation (unlikely, but bear with me…) Apple’s share price would have to jump from it’s current $244 to just over $305. A big jump? Yes. Unrealistic? Perhaps not. The NASDAQ give the 1 year target estimate as $315.

Taking the massive assumption that a year or two from now, Apple becomes the biggest (or should that be most valuable) company in the US. The next question is, how do they justify that position and won’t the stock be grossly overvalued by this point?

Before we go any further, it should be noted that I’m pretty unqualified to talk on the subject, but just wanted to make my thoughts public.

First of all, some reasons why Apple would be too highly valued:

The Steve Jobs question. Whatever you say about the ability of the rest of Apple’s employees, the truth remains that at the point Jobs is no longer CEO, the stock will tank. This high risk is something investors are going to be aware of and is unusual for a company this large.

Does it really make sense? Apple are a niche computer company who have started making quite expensive phones that some people like. Should they be worth more than Walmart, who have 3,500 stores in the US that are visited by almost half of Americans every week! When something seems too good to be true…

Google. The old rival was often seen to be Microsoft, but it is clear this isn’t the case any more. With Android beginning to outsell iPhone, the immediate smartphone dominance by Apple could be quickly eroded by a cheaper, more open platform that is supported by a wide range of manufacturers and carriers. Can iPhone keep up?

Losing the magic. With stories of App Store rejections and suicides at manufacturing plants, not to mention anti-trust and patents, it seems Apple is having to face up to the reality of being a really large company. People don’t see them as the underdogs anymore and are starting to question the control they have over all their products.

And some reasons it is reasonable for Apple to be the largest company in the US:

iPad. I said before the iPad was announced that I thought it could replace laptops for many people and I stand by that even more having owned one for the last month. The iPad has the potential to replace the PC (in the personal computer, including laptop, sense) in many people’s lives. It will take a while for many to move away from a proper computer to a “big iPhone”, but given time I really believe it will happen. Owning the new mainstream computing platform is valuable.

Owning the whole platform is valuable. Apple figured that one out decades ago. How can HP, Dell or Lenovo differentiate themselves when they are all selling Microsoft Windows, and therefore rely on Microsoft to provide their customers with a good experience? HP are starting to realise this, hence the acquisition of Palm, but have a long way to catch up.

Targeting the high end. Whilst the rest of the market race to the bottom with cheaper and cheaper computers (even if you take netbooks out of the equation) Apple stays firm at the premium end. Apple have a 91% share of computers over $1000 sold to consumers. This means profit margins can stay at a healthy 25%, which is when market share stops being so important.

Amongst my peers at university, more and more are choosing to spend their limited funds on a Mac. Because of this, for many (perhaps the majority) of my university friends, their largest ever purchase has been from Apple. Okay, so they’ll buy houses and cars and it won’t seem so big, but the fact is still impressive and shows how technology spending is not something people are scared of.

To conclude: Apple’s stock price has been incredible to watch over the last few years, yet I’m not sure Apple will ever reach the biggest company milestone and I am nervous about the things that could go wrong along the way. Despite this, I think they are well positioned to benefit from greater consumer use of technology and their stock can continue to grow.

Full disclosure: I hold a small, long-term personal position in AAPL.

Now I’ve nothing to do but revise, I thought I may as well cook myself some decent food. To keep me entertained and to somewhat decrease my intake of crap. The lack of utensils/pans/spices/oils makes everything that bit harder than at home, but I guess I’ll have to cope one day.

Some experiments the last couple of nights:

Tomato and Feta Pastry Tart
Serves 2

Time to prepare: 5 mins
Cooking time: 15 mins

After remembering to defrost the pastry (the main downside to this meal), spread the pesto, chop and place some tomatoes and crumble some feta. Cook in oven on a normal heat. Remove and serve with ripped basil on top.

Really simple, and tastes pretty good.

Caponata

Slightly more ambitious this time, I tried a proper recipe as opposed to a pile-stuff-on-pastry method.

Caponata by Yotam Ottolenghi

Took the best part of an hour, but turned out reasonably well and proved a nice meal served with warm ciabatta.

Next time, maybe I’ll see if I can branch away from Italian cooking. I’ll find it difficult, believe me. Any suggestions are welcome.

Welcome revisionstatus.com

The easiest way to explain what this does, and why it should prove useful, will be through demonstrating it.

Users log into a primitive user authentication system.

Once authenticated, they are taken to a list of all the lecture courses in their chosen year and subject. These are manually added, and currently only available for University of Cambridge, Computer Science Tripos Part 1B (Second Year).

The orange bars behind some of the lectures show the progress in that subject. This is calculated as an average of the progress of the ‘Course Topics’ that are defined below. As you can see, I have a way to go.

There is also a view which show the topics aligned next to the questions in the exam, on which they will be examined.

You can access Course Topics by clicking on any Lecture Course.

These are not as strictly defined by the University, and so I choose which topics I want to split the course into. Additional topics can be added using the box at the bottom of the screen.

If I click on a topic, I can change my progress or delete the topic.

You can also see the progress of any ‘Supervision Partners’. I am paired with two people for example here, and so I can see if they are ahead or behind me. Rather than creating a competitive aspect, the idea is to find out who you should ask for help from. If one partner is ‘Feeling Confident’ about a subject that you don’t understand then it may be a good idea to have a chat with them.

The system is obviously very limited in its scope at the moment, and I only expect three users during this exam period. However it is designed in a way that other degree courses, years etc. could be easily added with little work. Maybe if it works well for me this year then I’ll invest some time in making it more available to others.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should do some revision. After all, most of this tracking could have been done in minutes on a sheet of paper…

And now a painful confession: Last year your chairman closed the book on a very expensive business fiasco entirely of his own making.

For many years I had struggled to think of side products that we could offer our millions of loyal GEICO customers. Unfortunately, I finally succeeded, coming up with a brilliant insight that we should market our own credit card. I reasoned that GEICO policyholders were likely to be good credit risks and, assuming we offered an attractive card, would likely favor us with their business. We got business all right – but of the wrong type.

Our pre-tax losses from credit-card operations came to about $6.3 million before I finally woke up. We then sold our $98 million portfolio of troubled receivables for 55¢ on the dollar, losing an additional $44 million.

GEICO’s managers, it should be emphasized, were never enthusiastic about my idea. They warned me that instead of getting the cream of GEICO’s customers we would get the – – – – – well, let’s call it the non-cream. I subtly indicated that I was older and wiser.

I was just older.

It’s so easy to make excuses but you can come off looking so much better without them. Read the full Berkshire Hathaway 2009 report here. Interesting reading.

As commonplace as the laptop is, it still has many flaws and drawbacks towards a pen and paper. Sat in a meeting or lecture, pulling out a laptop puts a barrier in front of you and except in certain circles, this can be very off putting. Hardly anyone I know at University uses a laptop in lectures, even in Computer Science it’s under 20%. All the notes are available as PDFs, everyone has a laptop, but nothing beats pen and paper…yet.

A tablet as a computing device is much more likely to replace a (paper) notebook. It will sit flat on a desk, unobtrusive and subtle. In a lecture the Professor won’t see you staring into a screen, you will appear like any other person, making notes on a flat device, but I can go home and see all the same annotated notes on my computer and view them on my iPhone when I’ve got a few minutes to spare. I can even see a tablet being pulled out in a boardroom setting. A quick glance down to look at your notes, flip over to your calendar, look up some quick figures for the point you are about to raise.

We’ll see what happens on the 27th, but I’m sure it’s going to shake things up more than people think. Laptops don’t make sense and a tablet does. This isn’t an Apple Kindle.

As an additional thought, could this mean the resurgence of the Desktop PC as a hub in the home, with creative tasks in mind?

CSS3

With the launch of modern web browsers like Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome and Safari 4, a whole new range of effects have become available to web developers through CSS3.

One of the more exciting additions is transforms and animations. Skipping over the philosophical argument of whether or not CSS should be concerned with these action based functions, we can get some really impressive functionality.

Sadly, a lot of this work seems to be tainted by the lack of standards. Everyone is building in support for these fun new properties (it’s even promised in IE9) but we’re going back to proprietary CSS. Things are finally getting to the point were you can stop worrying about IE6 hacks but (for now) a transform property will have to look like this:

-moz-transform: rotate(40deg);
-webkit-transform: rotate(40deg);
transform: rotate(40deg);

It’s a conscious move on the part of Mozilla and Webkit to not support the standards until they become…standard (see W3C Draft Transform Standards). But for now it’s just introducing a whole load of effects which will only work in one browser or other…

Which brings me on nicely to what I’ve been playing with and which only works on Safari 4.

Stripy Box

When I was about 14, some of my friends formed a band. The Russian Wind Up Penguins (website still archived here) and obviously it needed a record company to release its version of teenage punk. Gave me the perfect excuse to play around and create Stripy Box.

It’s actually one of my favourite logos that I’ve created. At the time I spent a while trying to make a rotating cube using Flash which ended up horribly glitchy and slow.

Click on the image to see the old Flash site. When playing around with CSS3 I found a great demo of a spinning cube with text on all faces, so I shamelessly borrowed the code and stuck my Stripy Box images on the side. Twenty minutes later and I have a wonderful keyboard controllable, glitch free rotating cube.

Again, click the image to see for yourself (only works on Safari, remember). Mainly done using CSS3, in fact if I had a bit more time I could remove the keyboard control and have it rotate by itself with even less (maybe even no?) JavaScript.

Amazing what progress has been made. I look forward to seeing what else CSS3 has to bring. If you’re on Safari 4 (I really hope you are) then try out this demo of a flickr browser. Really awesome and so, so smooth.

Let’s just hope the standards get sorted before the community diverges too much.

I’ve uploaded a few of the better shots from the last few months of breaks round the UK and Ireland. Let me know what you think.

View them on flickr

Whilst clearing out cupboards, it becomes apparent that technology is
a very poor investment. Over 15 motherboards have been thrown away in
my household in the last week. Thousands of pounds worth of
motherboards that now won’t even make 99p on eBay.

So does that mean I’ll stop buying new stuff? Well, no. I’ll just try
and sell them on quicker in future.