Do I believe Apple is going to buy Tesla?

And leave me driving an iCar?

In a word, no.

In two words, no way.

Though I'm not at all sure it would be a bad idea for Apple to diversify in this way, I just can't see Tim Cook making that bold a move.  Plus, Tesla's stock price is so high right now that Apple would be paying a huge premium for the company relative to its income (as all Tesla shareholders are).

Having said all that, I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla and Apple were to partner on battery production and/or technology efforts. 

Just don't expect them to become one company.


Disclosure:  I own both Apple and Tesla stock, and I own some Apple products and a Tesla Model S P85+.  I have zero insider information about either company. 

My ideal notebook PC

In the course of a conversation at work today with Bill and Mark, I described my current (as of about 5:00 p.m. Eastern time) ideal notebook PC:

* Start with a MacBook Air. Keep its size and weight and display.

* Put in a 256GB solid-state "disk" that delivers the far faster (than current SSD drives have) sequential read and write speeds that Intel's been claiming its upcoming offerings will achieve

* Replace the graphics with something on the order of an NVIDIA 8800, i.e., something that can easily drive a 30-inch monitor

* Make the monitor connection able to drive a dual-DVI, 30-inch monitor

* Dual-boot Leopard and Vista, plus have the newest Fusion VM software ready to go

* 8GB of RAM

* Double the camera's quality, both as a Webcam and as a still camera

* Make the Time Machine/Time Capsule backup work for both the Leopard and Vista partitions

That's all I want. It's not much, not really. After all, I can describe it, so Apple should be able to build it.

For that matter, I'd take the same product from Dell or any other company, provided it's at least as sleek and attractive and, of course, has all the above features.

If you've ever wondered how much of a geek I was, the fact that I keep in my head and update often the specs of my ideal notebook should help you answer that question.

Apple's new iMacs

As tech geeks everywhere know, yesterday Apple announced its revamped iMacs. At one level, the announcement is a yawn: the iMacs remain all-in-one units that cost more than PCs and run Mac OS X. So what, big deal.

Except that they're beautiful: sleek, small footprint, aluminum and glass, and all the computing power most people need. Everyone knows that Apple excels at physical design, and with the iMacs they've done it again.

I don't understand why other PC vendors can't design equally attractive units. Sure, great design usually translates into units that command premium prices, but every major vendor now offers premium units, so why not well-designed systems?

I use MacBook Pro and Dell XPS notebooks every day. Both were top-of-the-line the day I got them, and they cost about the same. The Mac is simply more pleasant to use, feels slightly to significantly faster depending on the application I'm running, looks niftier, runs cooler, and weighs two pounds less.

I wonder how big Apple's market share has to become before Dell and HP and Gateway and Lenovo will start paying attention.