Removing the optical drive was a much easier task, in fairness. It wasn't so much about a shift to wireless: it was about a shift from mechanical components (optical drives and spinning hard disks) to solid-state ones (USB sticks/NAS and flash drives). Mechanical components are big, power-hungry, slow and prone to mechanical failures - while at the same time, we had mature replacement technology that had none of those drawbacks and was rapidly falling in price.
I don't see that same balance for wireless against wired technologies. We're shoe-horning wireless in to replace wired standards, and they come with the obvious convenience benefit of not having wires, but are worse in almost every other respect. They have unpredictable performance (but always worse than wired), are less reliable, consume more power and sometimes require proprietary technologies which don't interoperate with devices from other vendors. Take AirPlay vs cabled video output, for instance: it used to be that every laptop needed VGA in order to hook up to beamers; now it's been modernised to HDMI. If we go Apple's route and eliminate all cables, we have to buy AppleTVs everywhere to support AirPlay because it's a software protocol and they can break it whenever they feel like. That doesn't even bring us to the issue of wireless charging.
So the truth is that Apple is just pretending you don't need cables. The facts of life are that you do, and that having those standards codified in hardware is actually an implicit form of consumer protection against incompatible protocol changes. In practical usage, you will need cables, often at unpredictable times, and then you'll find out that you can't attach them without an additional breakout box. In short: it becomes incredibly inconvenient.
I sometimes get the feeling Tim Cook is 'acting' the role of Apple CEO. He's acting so like people think Apple should stereotypically act, that he loses track of the important points underneath it all. Usually, when Apple makes bold decisions, I can see a good technical and engineering reason behind it. Maybe I'm growing older and wiser, but increasingly Apple's products have little technical innovation and pitch themselves too aggressively as creative tools made by artists.
The Apple Watch marketing campaign was a massive shock to me. People often accuse people of being a fashion brand (that is: style but not substance), but they've always fought against that by making technically superior products and decisions. Then they just threw it all away and said "SURPRISE! We really are a fashion company! And in fact, we're so arrogant and conceited we're going to make a $25,000 version out of solid gold, only going to sell it in curated 'collections' to limit your personalisation options, and even then only sell it in high-end fashion stores!" Now they've had to turn back their expectations,
selling it for half-price and
expanding distribution to include mainstream electronics vendors like Best Buy.
It's like they want to be Burberry, who can sell a scarf for €400 because of their name. That has never been who Apple was (to me, at least). Yes, their products were more expensive than their competitors and yes, they had more style - but they also had more substance. Now they don't even care about pitching to you based on substance. They don't care about making a better product, the same way Burberry doesn't care about making a better scarf and Louis Vuitton doesn't care about making a better suitcase.
I'm torn about selling my shares. On the one hand, I think Apple is incredibly cheap based on where they are right now; on the other hand, I'm not impressed with their progress this year and believe they need some absolutely barnstorming improvements to get back on track.
The Watch2/WatchOS3 is going to have to really blow us away to get some momentum for that product. The AppleTV needs an enormous amount of work just to get where it should have been at launch. There are huge question marks over the future of the iPad. Apple isn't really ending 2015 in the sort of supremely strong position they're usually in.
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What ridiculous logic. The dude earned $10 million for a year's work leading a team of people who are also incredibly well paid (and, one would imagine, must be incredibly talented and competent at their jobs to deserve such money).
If other CEOs are getting paid more, that's the problem. Those are the people who should be making less.
If other executives at Apple are getting paid more, that's another problem. Those people should be making less.
I can't believe that people who don't earn a fraction of what Tim Cook just did, who probably have way more stresses and pressures in their lives than he has, are waving away cases of Chinese workers who literally work themselves to death in order to say that a man who made $10 million deserves more money.
You probably don't even understand how much $10 million is. You could probably add up all the money you'll ever see in your life, and it would be less than $10 million. He made just above 374x the average salary of people in the USA. To put that another way: Tim Cook earned as much every single day (including weekends and bank holidays) as the middle-of-the-road American makes in an entire year. And you're saying he should get paid more.
Now, he has responsibilities and such (well, not really... if he fails those responsibilities, he still gets loads of cash. If a janitor fails his responsibilities he's out of a job, in danger of losing his home, etc). Are those responsibilities really worth an entire year's worth of back-breaking labour (such as janitorial work) every single day?
