An interesting article in my News feed this evening… If we only had decent foresight!
Well, I climbed aboard a tad earlier, as a long time Apple user, Mac user, thanks to one of our local User Group gurus, Roger, and there was some cash floating around from my Dad’s estate I was frittering away, it seemed a decent way to go… A '93, and a '95 buy-in has worked out well, added to dividend income in these later years… A tad bumpy at times, a LTBH, for sure…
Back in the late 1980s I bought some Apple stock. Back when Schwab (the ‘discount’ broker) charged $50 for a trade. Even though I used a Mac back then and liked it, I felt sure Microsoft would win out. If only I had forgotten about that stock and not sold it…
My first Apple product was a ][+. Than a ][e. Add peripherals like disk drives, monitors, and about 50 programs from Beagle Bros. Next up, a MacSE. Then another. Eventually wound up with 14 of them in the bonus room of my Chicago house, sending out newsletters by fax in the middle of the night. Had a T-1 connection in the garage; I’m sure the telco people thought I was running a bookie operation in there.
I moved on with Quadra’s and other featureless, uninspiring Macs, and by the time Steve came back I was sure the game was over and Microsoft had won. Still, I bought a translucent blue iMac when it first came out, the original with the CD player tray that came out to meet you, much to Steve’s angst.
Also had an iPod, a couple of Nano’s, and likely most anything else the company made - all the while shaking my head as to how such a good company could have been outrun so easily.
When Steve came back I ran out and bought the MacWorld issue with his picture on the cover (still have it), and I thought “I should put $10,000 into the stock just to show my support”, but I never did.
Along came the stores, and I have a T-shirt in an unopened box from the launch day here in Knoxville, and I’m on my 3rd iPad and who knows how many iPhones and MacBooks, and I kick myself for not believing.
As it turns out I did buy some Apple stock once, I forget exactly when, but it was just before one of those down periods when nothing was happening and the stock lost its oomph. I sold it a year later and took a small loss. I’m probably one of the few people who has managed to lose money on Apple shares, Google shares, and Tesla shares. Thankfully it’s all been peanuts, but I’m still angry that I didn’t show Steve the love when I had the chance.
Luckily I have a ton of Berkshire, acquired at various times since the 1990’s, so Apple has still been good to me, in a second-hand way. Even sad stories sometimes have a happy ending.
When Steve came back I ran out and bought the MacWorld issue with his picture on the cover (still have it), and I thought “I should put $10,000 into the stock just to show my support”, but I never did.
I had been an avid reader of all kinds of books about the history of Apple, the IBM PC, hackers, Microsoft, etc. Around the time of Apple trying to decide between NeXT or Be, or maybe it was closer to the time that the NeXT acquisition was actually announced, my wife and I bought our first shares of AAPL. We bought and sold more over the years. It’s done well for us.
I still think it’s dangerous to idolize any one particular person and to make that a factor in investing, but you don’t have to idolize Steve Jobs to know – even years before the iMac – that he was a vast improvement over the bozos he replaced and pushed out.
-awlabrador