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San Jose Mercury News, Calif., In Hindsight column: Aluminum MacBooks, grim economy or notOct 17, 2008 (San Jose Mercury News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Here's some news you may have missed last week, based on staff and wire reports. Monday Someday, maybe, we'll stop paying attention to the daily gyrations of the nation's troubled stock markets. Today, however, was not that day. After a wave of record declines, the blue chip Dow Jones industrial average (home to tech heavyweights Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft) gained a stunning 936.42 points, or 11.1 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index (a favorite here in tech-heavy Silicon Valley) skyrocketed 194.74 points, or 11.8 percent. Investors were cheered by the news that the U.S. and other major world governments would invest trillions of dollars to rescue the struggling financial system. The U.S. Treasury, for its part . . . Tuesday . . . said it would buy $250 billion in preferred stock in U.S. banks, including the nation's nine largest. Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, someday, maybe, we'll stop paying attention to every new product introduction from Cupertino iPod, iPhone and "I'm a Mac" computer maker Apple. Today, however, was not that day. Summoning the media to company headquarters, Chief Executive Steve Jobs introduced a new line of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers, each clad in a single piece of aluminum lovingly carved by robotic-controlled lasers. The new aluminum MacBooks start at $1,299 and go up to, well, a lot more expensive. Apple also introduced an entry-level MacBook model, clad in white plastic and starting at $999 (not the $799 rumored price In Hindsight irresponsibly reported last week). Kicking off the tech earnings season, Santa Clara chip behemoth Intel reported a $2 billion profit for its latest quarter that was up 12 percent from a year earlier. Chief Executive Paul Otellini tried to stay confident about the company's prospects in a tough economy, but acknowledged that "business levels are difficult to predict." Among investors, Monday's good cheer didn't last. The Dow dropped 76.62, or 0.8 percent, and the Nasdaq lost 65.24, or 3.5 percent. And the next day on Wall Street . . . Wednesday . . . was even worse. The Dow plummeted 733.08 points, or 7.9 percent, nearly wiping out Monday's gains. The Nasdaq plunged 150.68, or 8.5 percent. San Jose online-auction powerhouse eBay, meanwhile, reported a $492 million profit for its latest quarter. (By comparison, eBay had a huge loss a year earlier after recording a $1.39 billion write-down on the value of Skype, its Internet phone service.) EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe told analysts this probably would be a grim holiday quarter for the company. "These are turbulent times for which no one has the perfect playbook," Donahoe said, according to a Merc report. Continuing the parade of tech earnings . . . Thursday . . . Internet advertising juggernaut Google reported profit of $1.35 billion in its latest quarter, up 26 percent from a year ago. In this economy, though, even Google is cutting back. Co-founder Sergey Brin said Google intends to trim expenses by reducing the number of contractors -- about 10,000 -- who do work for the Mountain View company. Sunnyvale chip maker Advanced Micro Devices -- which competes fiercely with Intel in the market for computer microprocessors -- reported its ninth consecutive quarterly loss. At $67 million, though, it was a significant improvement from $396 million a year earlier. The Dow surged 401.35, or 4.7 percent. The Nasdaq jumped 89.38, or 5.5 percent. The next day . . . Friday . . . the Dow lost 127.04, or 1.4 percent, and the Nasdaq dropped 6.42, or 0.4 percent. For the week, the Dow gained 4.7 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 3.7 percent. In Silicon Valley, a lot of us are still working, at least for now. In the beautiful (if bureaucratically named) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, unemployment held steady from the month before at 6.5 percent in September, according to the state Employment Development Department. (A year earlier, though, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent.) Employers cut 1,500 payroll jobs last month, but the seasonal decline in September is usually closer to 2,500. Year over year, the valley actually gained 700 jobs, bringing total payroll employment to 916,300. Let's hope it lasts. Contact Frank Russell at [email protected] or (408) 920-5876. To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |