It’s common knowledge that the products released on the market by Apple Inc. came with higher prices tags than the prices of the competitors; even so, the consumers were willing to pay for the quality of Apple products. However, recently some analysts see that the stock moves by Apple had lead to lower company’s profits. The release of the new generation of its MacBook Pro laptops includes models that cost $300 less than their prior versions. Other new products beneficiate of price cuts, such as: MacBook Air and iPhone 3G.

Industry analysts that got interest in Apple’s price cuts politics raise questions about the effects these cuts might have on the company’s profit margins. The graphic of the profit margins shows an elasticity curve on both products and the analysts think that these moves will help increase the selling of both notebooks and smart phones even though the future map will display ‘some modest margin pressure”.

Compared to Hewlett-Packard and Dell, Apple reported gross margins of about 34% for its last fiscal year, while Dell have come in between 18%-19% for the same fiscal year. The reason is that Apple products, especially its Mac computer line, are considered to have higher quality than many computer counterparts. Apple has confirmed that this year the margins will likely decline, due to several aspects that don’t depend on them: product transitions, price reducing on new products and increases in costs for products parts.

In recent quarters Apple had made low gross margins foretells, that finally ended up by surpassing those targets. The company’s estimations on the third-quarter margins will come in at 33% compared to the one at 34.8% reported one year ago. But if the history repeats itself, it is more than probable that Apple will rise above its forecasts, even if some analysts see a possible pressure on its margins and sales.

In order to offset the margin pressure, Apple would need to sell from 40% to 60% more products, which may seem aggressive, considering that the price points range from $1,199 to $2,499 plus on Apple’s products. However, not all are sold on the premises that Apple’s profitability is going to lower any time soon. Apple’s new price cuts strategy is seen as an “aggressive reduction” in MacBook Pro prices, but the new prices should generate enough sales to rise up to his estimated sales. The upcoming release of Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system should help offsetting a part of the decline in the median selling price and margins of Apple’s Mac.

Selling the iPhone 3G at half-price assures Apple of even more sales than the times when the company introduced the smart phone last year. It is currently estimated that over the next three semesters, iPhone devices demand should increase by 62% due to the price cuts.

The glossy screens of Apple’s unibody MacBook Pro are designed with a black border of the display that enables the LED-illuminated screen appear with vivid, high contrast color. The screen covered by glass is much larger that makes it hard to position and doesn’t allow you to get background glare. The margins around the screen pick up the background light sources reflecting them like in a mirror-effect.

The fact is that while working it’s better not to be positioned with your back to bright light. The glossy however is reportedly to be preferred by the customers. Glossy is not only appealing, but is more color accurate than a flat matte screen, which provides a softer image.

The question is: are the new screens too glossy? The answer is that next to a matte-finished Cinema Display the glossy screens are much more desirable to look at. The point is that now being accustomed with this glossy screen, we realize that the shinier a screen is, the more alive the contrast between white and black and the brighter colors appear.

Well, there is a dark side of this shinny little world opened in front of your eyes. As Queensland University of Technology stated there is a certain threat of some potential adverse health effects while using Apple’s notebook and other products that have high gloss screens. These effects can come from a prolonged use if precautionary measures aren’t to be taken. People using these high gloss monitor screens should consider the way in which the products are positioned and used as well.

In the advisory published by the Australia-based University is stated that there is relation between the angle of the monitor screen and the reflections and glare on high gloss monitor  screen, a relation that can determine the user to sit in awkward positions while viewing the monitor screen. The reflections can come from internal and external light sources, as well.

The advice is to thoroughly check the area in which these products are to be used and try to eliminate the sources of reflections and glare thus reducing the potential for injury. Another way to eliminate these reflection sources would be the use of window shades or blinds.

Unless the use of these Apple’s new high glossy screens can’t be avoided they also recommend a consultation with “Facilities Management Lighting” engineer to see if the sources of light can be repositioned in order to have the light for reading, but in an adequate positioning of the lamps or neon tubes; another advice is to adjust the contrast to a ‘low brightness’ setting without prejudicing the reading possibilities.

Either way, the Apple Inc. announced that the introduction of its all-new line of unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros comes with the glossy displays that would finally represent the new standard for its notebook lines having no other build-to-order options available for downgrading to a matte screen.

Part II of Macsimum Migration Kits offers the multi-part round-up of Mac software used for banking, both personally and by financial institutions. The features include:

Exabanque – which is the French package of Mac OS X compatible bank communication software; it supports Euros and Francs and can perform international transfers.

Financial Essential for Mathematics – contains specifically designed tools for traders, portfolio managers that have critical tasks in data analysis and strategy design. It introduces practical examples for a vast range of financial applications, together with financial Derivates, financial Time Series Toolbox, Fixed-Income Toolbox.

Finflow – it is a financial application that works for general purposes and enables you to solve simple and complex time value of money issues.

Finlease – is an advanced lease calculator to set up and calculate complex leases, in such a way that you can structure a lease that covers any situation.

Fund control – is designated for Banks with an integrated data base to track potential borrowers and provides documents, forms and reports.

Hardline extra – it is an analysis software combined with entry level multi-platform stock charting for beginners to regular investors.

HomeLoan Companion – an application that allows you to compare different loans or variations of the same loan, having monthly breakdown tables, graphs and more.

Intercash – enables you to automate the cash-flow in your company, uses the feature to optimize all your accounting.

Investor RT – traces and analyzes the market in real time to find solutions for day traders and active investors.

iStock – traces details of your stocks and portfolio

iuLoan – enables you to make loans and lease (for car lease, too) calculation from your Mac desktop, taking into account the calculation of Canadian and US mortgages.

Loan Vision – an application for mortgage origination, calculation and processing used by mortgage brokers and loan officers.

MacBanking Europe – software to manage your payments, produces electronic transcript of the payments to be made in a DTAUSO-Standard file and is able to verify bank routing numbers.

Mac Share Manager – tool for managing your shares, for individuals investors and portfolio managers

MoneyDance – financial management application with features like online banking, online bill payment, investment management, budget tracking, scheduled transactions, check printing, reports etc.

Mortgage Manager – application to trace mortgage and estimates deductible interest for any year.

Pay Maker – enters and manages payments offline, creates standard payment files to be transmitted to Swiss Banks.

Personal Analyst – displays various charting and analysis tools for significant highs and lows.

These being only a few of the applications you can find in the Macsimum Migration kit for banking solution.

The conception of the V-Cockpit GPS design is that of a real jet’s cockpit. The look is accurately rendering its design that almost makes you jump into a cockpit, strap your seat-belt and off you blast into the height of the sky. V-Cockpit GPS brings a subset of the controls of a inner airplane cockpit to your iPhone in beautiful details. Thanks to the receiver and motion sensors of your iPhone’s GPS, you can have fun in your journeys, even if they are taken in a Toyota and not a Cessna.

The calibration of V-cockpit GPS for iPhone is rendered by a screen which is to be setup with two options for the artificial horizon. The features are called “Calibrate all axes” – this one calibrates the horizontal axis when you press the CAL button and “Invert X axis” – that is useful when centripetal forces dominate, for instance in a car.

The data and measurements are displayed on 5 different devices: speedometer – measures the speed in the units one selects (mph, km/h, kts); its scale ends at 240, but for higher speed one can use digital display. There is the red needle that indicates the maximum value and it can be reset with the CAL button; altimeter – displays your current altitude in the chosen length units (m, fts) and has a large thin needle to display 0-100, the second needle to display 0-1,000 and the third one, the small thick needle to display 0-10,000. Another device is the variometer, that shows how fast your altitude is changing, the other one called accelerometer to show the acceleration in g units and finally the hud that holds for left and right scales to indicate the current speed and altitude, in the middle having the artificial horizon and above and below is the compass.

Working with these computerized data is performed simply by the means of tapping. In many cases, a second tap enables a moving chart to show a real-time data plot versus time. Other details include a night vision mode, mirror option, radio chatter and jet engine sound effects. It is pointed out that the V-Cockpit GPS is not meant to be used while driving or doing other tasks which ask for attention, so it is better when it is used by the passenger.

V-Cockpit GPS works with any iPhone running the iPhone 2.x software update and it is its fun app that makes you feel like you’re in an airplane cockpit, regardless how you travel.

If Silverlight potentialities were far behind the ones that Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR have in all the areas, now the Microsoft Silverlight 3 is catching up. Its applications can be performed in or out of the browser, online of offline, having a much more improved audio, video, and 3-D graphics.

Lately, rumors go that media organizations, such as Clear Channel Radio and MLB.com, are planning to adopt Adobe Flash Platform, in order to deliver “just in time” the multimedia information to the Web both live and on request. As to the Microsoft Silverlight, not a word about adoptions.

The explanation can lay in the fact that last year Adobe outran Microsoft in the area of media support, especially H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio and full HD video playback. All these capacities and many other are contained in Silverlight 3, which is at the present moment in beta, not including a “go live” license, but it will definitely be released in July.

Also the Windows and Macintosh desk operation was the area in which Flash and Flex excelled being ahead of Silverlight. A number of these Flex/AIR applications have become popular to include: Twitter clients through TweetDeck, Twhirl, Destry Twitter and Seismic Desktop.

Out of the browser - The other model of Silverlight, the Silverlight 2, didn’t possess a feasible way to run a desktop; a developer could only build a desktop WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application based on a comparable Silverlight RIS (rich Internet application). Silverlight 3 possesses those features in an easy-to-install applications on a desktop, in an updating them in place, in detecting Internet connections’ changes, and storing information both locally and securely.

Another thing that Silverlight 2 missed was the tool to cover all needs; Expression Blend 2 did graphical XAML design without being able to edit code, whereas Visual Studio 2008 did code editing , but couldn’t do graphical XAML design. But this deficiency will not be present in Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010, as they both have solid betas.

Lately, Flash and Flex have displayed some improvements in SEO (search engine optimization) have appeared through that that they use external JavaScript objects (SWFObject – for dynamic loading and SWFAAddress – for deep linking) for those to revamp their Flash sites. In this respect, Silverlight 3 directs both SEO and deep linking from the inside.

In this light can one see the Microsoft Silver 3 a challenge to Adobe AIR?