I am in the same boat. I grew up in Bay Area and had family friends who worked at Apple and have been part of their ride when Jobbs left and then when he came back. I have personally purchased over 30 Apple Computers for myself over the years, towers, laptops, iMacs, I have had lots freelance businesses and lots of personal computers, I still have a few 3,1's and 5,1 towers in my house I can't bare to get rid off, nothing else Apple makes now is better!! When Apple made the G4, Grey and White, it was the first computer I actually felt could compete with the PC world. For speed and peripherals. It finally was using standard PC architecture and I was able to edit video with Final Cut using firewire. It was an amazing setup. Fast forward almost 20 years I feel like Apple is trying to convince us of their innovation, and not really innovating. This all started with Apple KILLING the post production market with the TRASHCAN tower. I remember TIM COOKE staying, "who said we can't innovate" when the curtain fell and they showed their darth vader trash can Mac Pro. My first thought was COOKE your an idiot. First off you just killed the Pro market on OS X, secondly you just designed your self into a hole. Everything on the MacPro Tower is proprietary, nothing is standard, every time they make a new release of that computer they will have to Redesign the whole thing, and thats R&D and money out the door. The D700 GPU wasn't the fastest thing in the world when it came out, and its sauntered on there.. Now the Thunderbolt2 is now passed up by the Thunderbolt3 USBC world. Where is the MacPro tower now??? ITS DEAD.. ITS in "INNOVATION PURGATORY"
They did the same thing with the Laptops, INNOVATE by any means necessary.. If you want a SUPER SUPER SUPER LIGHT AND THIN LAPTOP, buy a MACBOOK, don't take the PRO LINE and make it a MACBOOK. Don't INNOVATE the "PRO" away..
Anyway, I think their main concern at the moment is keeping their stock trading as high as possible and that means, INNOVATION for the SAKE of INNOVATION. Convince the NOVICE public and NOVICE shareholders(who own PC Laptops) that APPLE is dominating the creative and innovative computer and technology markets, without listening to those creatives that made Apple, Apple. Investors don't really know the difference.. so everyone seems to be fine. A market 80% of investors, admittedly, don't understand.
Right now Apple can burn cash, they could loose more money than they made during Jobb's reign as long as the current iOS customers upgrade even modestly. And its funny because TIM COOKE is the king of the bean counters, and he is totally fine not making money how money was made in the past. Tim Cooke is kinda gouging the current Mac Users, to make money, the ones who have stayed loyal all these years. GRANTED PC Companies have done this since Day 1. Don't even get into backend and database companies.. they will take your house away for an update cost.
BUT IM still IN.. I love OS X and Apple for all its faults. Im still pissed at how messed up iphoto to Photo is, and how messed up iTUNES is now.. WHAT A MESS... but OS X is clean and fast, and as horrible as Apple is these days, they still make way better products than anyone else.
I was about to buy a new MacBook pro for myself, my company actually passed on them.. LOL. but I am waiting to see where all this lands..
I am not sure who can lead this company anymore.. I guess my 5,1 will still last until LINUX gets better or someone from Apple goes ROGUE writes a new OS.
what do we do withe the last 40 pages.
