Given that I was an equity analyst, I do know what CEOs do and more importantly, what they should (not) be doing. A typical Wall Street CEO does exactly what you would expect pertaining to capital allocation but tech isn't a typical industry and Apple isn't a typical company. Apple's roadmap had been set by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook has been a beneficiary of it. IMO the line between a COO and CEO is often blurry and this is extremely relevant for Apple.
I am not suggesting that Tim Cook should be involved in daily debugging but he should have active participation in product roadmap and design, just like Steve Jobs was. What kind of a CEO doesn't use his own company's products or isn't aware of what his design teams are even doing? Butterfly keyboards, excessive charges for RAM and SSD upgrades, long existing bugs are not things that leadership should ignore just because sales keep growing. That level of complacency will hurt as eventually competitors will catch up and execute where you are not. And iPhone sales have stagnated, hence why Apple doesn't release unit sales numbers any longer.
And regarding voting with your wallet, I've had a Pixel and and iPhone since 2020 since I have 2 phone numbers. Android has a cleaner UI now but I enjoy the practicality of FaceID and AirDrop (natively). My main phone now is an iPhone 14PM as Google has fallen into Wall Street's hands and unfortunately, their decisions to keep eliminating services show it. Apple is better in this regard and that's why I will not be buying a new Pixel.
Apple and tech aren't startup companies anymore. They are core businesses for pretty much everyone.
Apple under Jobs struggled. It needed innovation and taking chances. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didnt.
But they learnt quickly and adapted.
Today a phone is more likely to face competition from last year's model.
That's the same of any mature industry.
Look at upstarts that try to muscle in... Rabbit phone? It looked like a fanciful joke and proved to be from reviews of shipped items.
Hardware is now plenty powerful to do almost anything you want.
We aren't seeing exponential jumps in speed.
The roadmap now is steady as she goes. Hence they dip their toes in AI and Vision to find a way forward. Neither are really mainstream yet. But you can see the roadmap.
Butterfly keyboard is years old. It didnt affect every device. I have one. It's never missed a beat.
When Jobs died there was already a long lead time of products he had mapped out.
Cook just continued on for a while following that roadmap.
Yeah RAM and SSD are high. That's what Apple do.
I'm old enough to remember when Apple IIs were exorbinate (but then PCs were too in today's money).
To complain any tech is overpriced now - it's basically disposable.
The value lies in your files and content.
And experience has proven that Apple hardware is much more reliable longterm.
I rarely got 3 years out of a Windows laptop. I have 11 year old Macs that boot and work fast enough still to hand down to tech novices who can be productive on them.
As for bugs, Apple have always released updates often.
And started the free OS upgrades. Yes, I did the late night queues for new Windows OS releases. Hard to imagine anyone doing that now AND paying for it.
Google is indeed losing the plot. It's all monetizing the customer.
Do any of us really need a new phone every year or two or three even?
But there's no money stream if they dont keep releasing them.
OS bugs will always exist when the focus is on new.
My S5 Watch loses battery like crazy after OS10 compared to my S3 that still lasts hours longer.
Someone under spec'ed the battery or didnt bother to optimize the OS for that Watch.
Are they ever going to fix it? No... they hope you will buy a new one.
Sadly we live in a throw it away world. And that's the model companies work on.
But I've found Apple products at least have longer useful lives even if they dont get all the updates or bugs fixed.
