Just an aside. Nice shot of cook and Williams. When shareholders make money it means customers are happy. And that means the board is happy. And that means the customers are happy. Not 100% of the customers. Because you can please some of the people some of the time but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
I actually work in executive levels of business - especially in business strategy. And there’s a conundrum when the CEO makes money because the company does well now. The CEO who worries about now is the CEO who wants to line their own pockets. The CEO who cares about the future, and leads the company not into the most money now but the most success in the long term is a real leader. To me, Tim Cook is good at making money. However, we all can see the software slipping, Apple wasting BILLIONS for years on car and vision projects that aren’t working. Apple has gone cheap at the expense of customers. So all these Macs for many years should have had 16GB of RAM, because they’re not upgradable. In the long term, customers will not understand why they have to buy a new Mac again when they just bought one as the newest AI isn’t working right as they only have 8GB of RAM on their Mac - same as a base iPhone.
This leads me to believe that Apple has truly built a fan base, but at the same time it has depleted goodwill with customers who will continue to feel skeptical about their next purchase from Apple, because they keep getting burned. Companies that are wildly successful often fail within a few years due to innovation. Think simple ones in tech like BlackBerry or Nokia. Both were strong. One of the BlackBerry duo CEOs said he hadn’t even seen an iPhone. That’s stupidity. Now, I don’t think Tim is stupid. I think he knows what he’s doing to make money for AAPL now. When shareholders are happy is when they’re making money now.
The investment side of it. Warren Buffet, amazing investor made a fortune on AAPL then got out of the stock. The reason is the money has been made. There’s no new innovation coming. The best Tim has done is an Apple Watch that insiders say Steve knew about. Other than that, AirPods? You think Steve didn’t think of that? What Apple needs is a leader that for ten years innovates again and who doesn’t cheap out at the expense of customers to ensure they make an extra $50m as their shareholders made money. It’s all a game. And game theory and strategy tells me Apple will struggle if they continue to only focus on money. They have gotten so big by being an anticompetitive bully. That’s not going to continue to work. Apple will end up having to open up the App Store all over the world - and it is fair. We bought the devices, and we should be able to do whatever we want with them. Apple has acted like a monopoly and governments will feel the pressure from citizens to regulate like the EU has done and even the US recently ruled against Google and Android.
The good thing is there’s hope. But Apple needs a visionary to restore order and say no. New ideas. Not what we think we want as we just want a faster horse like Ford said. No, need to innovate again, as since Steve has passed away, I feel Apple has only cared about the money and failed to innovate in any way other than a good not great SoC in the M-series chips. We see that Qualcomm now supposedly has a faster mobile SoC. The end of Apple’’s reign is near, unless they can innovate and quit nickel and diming customers so the top 1% can get wealthier. Customers may think they’re happy, but wait until something better comes along as Apple quit innovating…
