Besides portable hard-disk and thumb or pen drive in my shopping list at the just concluded PC Fair at Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, I was looking for some other gadgets such as GPS System or maybe Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL, stock) iPhone. I was particularly fascinated by my Singapore friend’s GPS device that literally could bring him to anywhere within Malaysia. It doesn’t make sense to have a Singaporean who could find Ipoh’s famous “Lou Wong” shiny chicken and juicy bean-sprouts instantly while I was struggling doing so for the first time. That’s because he has the GPS device while I don’t.

There was this RM499 promotion for GPS System at the PC Fair. At first I thought I need to pay subscription fees to gain access to the map but then I was told I don’t have to *silly me*. You just need to pay a time price but the catch is you only have access to Singapore, Malaysia and certain part of Thailand’s map. If you wish to use your device in Hong Kong, then you have to pay for the map. However the GPS system is not intelligent enough to show you the road with least traffic jam. The salesman also smiles when I asked him about the cost of repairing. Maybe I’ll get it when the cost of ownership goes down further.

I was quite excited to see that iPhone was on sale but at $2,900 a unit, I decided not to become the pig and get slaughtered. I’m not going to become the laughing stock when my friend got one for less than RM1800 in Philippine. Luckily I’ve all the patience in the world for such gadgets. And talking about Apple the stock was slaughtered today to below psychological support of $90 a share. Well, you can’t stop people from speculating after Steve Jobs was reported to be skipping the coming January 2009’s MacWorld Conference. Almost instantly his health problem (pancreas) was again highlighted as the possible cause. There was even rumor that Steve Jobs had died of a heart attack in October *naughty rumors*.

Now only will Steve Jobs not be able to give his presentation, the January event will also be Apple’s last appearance. The company said that it was scaling back participation in Macworld (Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris) because trade shows have become far less important for its marketing than its retail stores and Web site. With unlimited budget deficit during such economic crisis New York Governor David Peterson also proposed “iPod Tax” on downloaded music. I suppose desperate situation requires desperate measures.

The Bernanke’s boys might have cut the interest rate to almost zero (0.25 to 0 percent) but it couldn’t stop negativity that such drastic measure means the global financial turbulence is really serious. Also such measure does not means that people will start borrow or spend since many are watching in horror how jobs evaporate into thin air. You must be silly to think that banks will start lending without more stringent check even with such low interest rate. Bottom-line is almost everybody from every sector is still very pessimistic about the whole story of global economic crisis. With such level of confidence you need more powerful weapons to be revealed by the Feds but the question is what other goodies are left in its arsenal?

Other Articles That May Interest You …

• Fast Scalp on Apple as good news don’t stay long
• What goes up must come down? Not necessarily
• Cash is King but do you have the bullets?

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December 17th, 2008 by financetwitter

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