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doomed / decline its all semantics. If Apple were ever to decline it would be regarded as doom so they are one and the same.

I take your points and to an extent agree however where we differ is that I cannot believe that 16billion a year on r and d with all of that expertise will not yield significant and meaningful results at some point.

The watch is disappointing. True. It's simply a glorified fitness band that looks kinda cool however the long game is bound to be more interesting. The watch may at some point replace the iPhone in functionality.

Technology is all linked to a good user interface. Currently that is the phone. It won't always be. But until AR, VR and AI are fully matured this is still cutting edge for mass consumers. Five years down the line maybe not. Apple will not be resting on their laurels in the meanwhile.

Good interface? Springboard is not a good interface...its wasteful and scales terribly with no actionable info. What makes you think Apl can do an AR UI? OSX is not that much better. The $16B on Rand D at Apl is about learning to do ARM and a few services, yes they explored a car "ultimate mobile device" then knew it was too hard. Hopefully someone pointed out how a watch initially was beyond their design capabilities that thankfully the gave up on a car. Where is HomeKit why does Apl have to approve everything, while Homekit languishes.

I think you are not being critical enough about their last two "pillars" pretending the watch will somehow turn into something useful or even the Ipad finally takes off if people finally figure out what good is it for?..that's nothing other than wishful thinking. Don't you deep down think by now another thriving growing standalone product should have launched? Instead you get price increases, gimmicks and siloed services.

Apl really is simply too big to do anything , they need to resize and refocus their whole company...its an old model of success. Frankly more thought is spent on squeezing the existing users than trying to attract new ones with something cool. Their flagship product is now ten years old..been there done that. Why does every iphone come with #Gates? Seriously.

its sort of like a parent that raves wildly about their kid to everyone at age 2 and continue to do so at age 12...people just start to ignore that. its just background noise at that point.

Apl is a hardware device vendor...OK then show us the hardware. Bring on the "pipeline"
 
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As for exciting products, they've been released -- Watch, TouchBar, AirPods, 9.7 iPad Pro, awesome iPhone 7...all things that were in the pipeline and are exciting to me.

Your definition of "exciting products" is very different to mine.

If that really is Cook's idea of an exciting pipeline then heaven help us.
 
I'm sorry about arrogance at the negotiating table usually comes when you know you have leverage. Which is almost always the case with Apple. I'd also be guarded about acquisitions if I were them. The Apple culture is sacred to them and to just buy a large company wholesale is not really their thought. And, yes, if I were them with their war chest, I'd also have a lot of confidence in my own abilities to build things rather than acquiring them.
 
Yeah, but isn't most of that $200 billion Apple's sitting on, held off-shore?

A major deal would need bankers and lawyers to structure it to minimize any tax impact. For example, lets say they want to buy parts of Disney; Disney could spin off what they don't want to bring down the price; or if they want all of it move some subsidiaries HQ's overseas, spin them off and buy them with offshore money. It would be an interesting challenge.
 
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