WS doesn't get Apple. What is so unusual about this company that Wall Street doesn't understand. I thought WS was supposed to catch on eventually about Apple, yet it continues not to understand. Apple must run the most unconventional financial model ever conceived. This company must be built on unfathomable speculation. A company that continues to make money, but each quarter is a guessing game. I hear the stores are doing rather well, yet the stock is dropping once again all out of proportion. $9 drop in a week's time based on nothing.

Dell's net income dropped 63% during their Q1 FY'10 quarter

Dell's quarterly revenue also fell to $12.3 billion during the first quarter, a 23 per cent drop from the previous year.

Looks like Microsoft's advertising is affecting Dell, too? Or could some of this be the greater economic climate, @chucker?

I watch FAst Money and CNBC stuff occasionally. They swing from being correctly skeptical of govt. to being Ayn Rand ranting, myopic corporatists, but at least they are honest. And when they talk about Apple or Microsoft, they might as well be talking about Hyundai and GM. They look at technicals and commodities without any reference to creativity or technological paradigms.

No wonder Wall Street drifts from reality as often as it does. I told a good friend who is a San Fran investor about 6 years ago to buy Apple. I had no money to do it and he reasonably gave me all the "trader" reasons why he wouldn't and yet because he didn't read Apple Forumss every other day he had no idea what I was seeing emerge. Apple eventually did what we back then thought it could do - though not as quickly - but he couldn't perceive the gestalt that was there the whole time.

Reductionism in finance works like reductionism in Science and Tech. For a while it makes things seem easier ... until you hit a wall where the complexity of reality makes your tools ineffective and you have to go with your gut or develop new tools.

The sales numbers might increase because of the price reduction, but that doesn't mean profit will increase, esp. if Apple had to slash margins to make the cuts.

Dell's net income dropped 63% during their Q1 FY'10 quarter

Dell's quarterly revenue also fell to $12.3 billion during the first quarter, a 23 per cent drop from the previous year.

Looks like Microsoft's advertising is affecting Dell, too? Or could some of this be the greater economic climate, @chucker?

Dell's sales dropped, but that was caused completely by a drop in enterprise sales. Dell's consumer sales actually rose, which is to whom MS is marketing to. So maybe it is helping...