Apple Forecasted to Report First Quarterly Revenue Decline Since 2003

[tentales]

No idea what this is supposed to mean. How old are you?

My point is that you are the one that brought up comparing Jobs' and Cook's records. Well, facts are that Cook has managed to sell more phones than Jobs did, and has raised Apple's market value to much greater heights than Jobs ever did. You can have a separate debate (hopefully with someone else) as to who is the better CEO, but those are the facts.

People questioning maturity in others are usually in need of the same.

Seeing you have no idea and are just here to make noise, I will add you to my troll list.
[doublepost=1461884494][/doublepost]

All of you defending Apple are the reason Apple is having problems.
Nothing good ever comes from being blind to criticism. You all pout and pound your fists and cry at each other any time people criticize them. Dude, wake up.
Even Steve Jobs wasn't tolerant of mistakes and didn't keep a blind eye to criticism of his brand and legacy.
Right now, they're making mistakes, whether you'd like to admit it or not.
If you were a real fan, you'd acknowledge these mistakes and that way they can improve them and come back stronger. Instead, you'll literally defend them until their sales plummet.
News flash, they care more about the sales they could make than sales they already made. In other words, you are worth LESS to Apple because they already have you, as an avid fan, so why should they make changes to appease you? Whereas, the people who are packing up and leaving? Those are the people who make a difference.
We're being very clear about what we want:
1) You want a thinnovative, lightweight hipster MacBook 15" with one USB port and all that? Fine. but you KEEP a Pro grade notebook on the sku and don't try to tell us what WE want. If we want a laptop with two USB ports, two thunderbolt ports and a 4GB dedicated GPU so we can properly render Open GL ES environments, then keep that for us.
If I decide, hell no, I don't want some stupid paper thin notebook with the processing power of a 2011 MacBook Air, you can't tell me otherwise. It's my money and I choose to take it somewhere else. That's $2000-$2500 in a sale that they just lost. In the case of my department? We use 10 of them, and we all unanimously agreed that if Apple sacrifices ports and power for portability, we're moving on. It's a 15" Notebook, it doesn't have to be as portable as an iPad... That's what the iPad is for, to begin with.

2) Where the heck is the Mac Pro? That Sharper Image garbage disposal unit is NOT a Mac Pro. I don't even know what that thing is but I'm not spending $4000 on it. We've been getting by, inching even with a Hackintosh, but we shouldn't have to be doing that. We were willing to drop $4000 on a Mac Pro. Unfortunately the REAL Mac Pro is discontinued, and I'm not the only person to think this.

3) Stop putting all your eggs in one basket, or rather, all your technical features into one USB-C port. What if that port fails? Well I guess I'm screwed. Good thing I avoided the 12" iPadBook and stuck with my Retina Pro 13" for portability before upgrading to a 15". If I had bought the 12" MacBook, I probably would've just quit Apple instead of moving up to a 15".

I'm not saying you should get rid of those products, but stop introducing them at the cost of taking away the stuff that those of us didn't WANT you to get rid of. I have one foot out the door already.
But hey, you fanboys and fangirls, good job. Just keep yelling at us and telling us we're wrong. That sure makes us want to stay with Apple. And I'm sure Apple and Tim Cook will send you a thank you note for telling all of their lost sales and lost customers that they were wrong. "WE're better off without them Tim! I know what you and Steve liked, I know better, I'm faithful! It'll just be YOU and us!"

I usually don't read long narratives. Who has the time

You make a number of valid points and it's clear who the true Apple fans are.
MR used to be filled with intelligent discourse, nowadays it's more like the republican primary debates.

As someone that started with an Apple II in high school and Mac in college, I've also witnessed the ups & downs of Apple first hand. Back then it was easy to root for the underdog to the PC behemoth, but these days it's AAPL that's the 800 pound gorilla in the room and it's tradition to knock the high & mighty and to shrink the ivory tower back down to reality.

Analogies aside, Apple has become a technological fashion house. Not that they were ever a "form-follows-function" company, but pretty watch bands and trendy anodized colours in place of progressive technology is not innovation but rhymes on a theme and a set of ideas that are now long in the past.

I commend Tim for his stands on privacy and his SCM prowess, but it is blatantly apparent that the company's visionary has sadly left the building and blind faith in anything has never led to positive outcomes. Big fish investor Carl Icahn knows this and people would be smart to follow his advice.

Hackintosh is a stop-gap and many long time supporters are looking for alternatives. Not that we're holding our breath for Dell & co to come up with the "next big thing", but at least products like the new XPS 13 is what fans were hoping for Apple would do. Instead we get silly single port, crimped keyboard, crimped cpu, fashion coloured MacBooks for the coffee shop crowd that prefers to buy pink iPhones to show they have latest & greatest.

If Apple can survive on such vanities, more power to them, I'm really NOT rooting against them, but I am rooting for a new visionary to come along and get us excited again.

 

[SAIRUS]

Well your short certainly worked for you today. Congrats. But I'd take a glance at that $2.5 billion in R&D spend last quarter and try not to be exposed short too long at today's price. Apple has been spending R&D like crazy and it isn't just to make a thinner laptop. You don't burn through an extra 500 million in a quarter compared to last year working on stuff like that. There is stuff in the works, like the Car, that everyone knows about but the market can't even come close to valuing. Then there is other stuff (virtual reality is an obvious one) which Apple successfully hides. If the market comes up with a growth story for Apple that stock will run up.

Yep. All I will say.

 

[147798]

I usually don't read long narratives. Who has the time

...

Analogies aside, Apple has become a technological fashion house. Not that they were ever a "form-follows-function" company, but pretty watch bands and trendy anodized colours in place of progressive technology is not innovation but rhymes on a theme and a set of ideas that are now long in the past.

I commend Tim for his stands on privacy and his SCM prowess, but it is blatantly apparent that the company's visionary has sadly left the building and blind faith in anything has never led to positive outcomes. Big fish investor Carl Icahn knows this and people would be smart to follow his advice.

...
Not that we're holding our breath for Dell & co to come up with the "next big thing", but at least products like the new XPS 13 is what fans were hoping for Apple would do. Instead we get silly single port, crimped keyboard, crimped cpu, fashion coloured MacBooks for the coffee shop crowd that prefers to buy pink iPhones to show they have latest & greatest.

...I am rooting for a new visionary to come along and get us excited again.

Yeah, sadly, this ^^

 

[igorsky]

People questioning maturity in others are usually in need of the same.

Seeing you have no idea and are just here to make noise, I will add you to my troll list.

Awesome, great chat. Good luck.

 

[smorrissey]

That's because iTunes was essential for setting up, syncing and updating your iPods, iPhones and iPads back then.

I'm afraid still is....