Most of these posts are strawman arguments because:
- all software has bugs
- you only cherry pick certain events
Ergo straw man.
Btw: #go Timmy
And you notice with all of the the Apple is doomed hyperbole Apple had a banner quarter.
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Steve Jobs Criticized Tim Cook as 'Not a Product Person,' Says Biographer Walter Isaacson
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- all software has bugs
- you only cherry pick certain events
Ergo straw man.
Btw: #go Timmy
And you notice with all of the the Apple is doomed hyperbole Apple had a banner quarter.
Uh huh
Blackberry had their best years on record *after* the iPhone was released.
Just sayin'
In technology companies, financial performance != likelihood of future success
Actually, what very often happens is that the companies that started mailing it in and stopped taking risks have some really amazing years financially. Right up until they don't.
Uh huh. With $250B in cash Apple has many years before the company goes under due to “lack of sales”.
Of course nothing is guaranteed in life. But repeating certain aphorism led so many times they become memes in an anonymous Internet forum , don’t increase the probability of occurrence. But you get an “A” for affort.
Umm, it doesn't work like that at all.
When earnings drop and profit drops and your P/E ratios get screwed up, management comes under immediate pressure to resolve the issue.
They then start a series of reactive moves to appease shareholders. These moves get stupider and stupider, hollowing out the brand in favour of quick and easy wins on the revenue side. Balance sheet looks great, but the loyal fanbase are alienated and underserved.
For example, Apple could hypothetically respond to a fall-off in demand for iOS devices (and the near-zero demand for MacOS devices) by cutting software projects and cancelling entire lines that are essential to brand loyalty, but are expensive to maintain and don't add a tonne to the bottom line. For example Professional software and hardware.
Then they would start dabbling in cheesy also-ran junk like fashion headphones, watch straps, battery cases, and home-made TV shows and Podcasts.
Oh, wait, never mind. That's exactly their current position. Screw the Pro users, screw desktop software, screw new markets. Watch bands and bluetooth speakers and car GoPro karaoke get AMAZING margins -- let's focus on those to keep the stock price high!
This is nothing but a financial straw-man as evidenced by the opening:”when a”. Sure anything can happen that I agree with but it may not be the way this hyperbole indicates.
They said the same at IBM, PALM, RIMM, and Microsoft in the 2000's.
When a technology company gets fat and lazy and confused about their mission, coasts on old innovations, and touts the high stock price as proof that they are well-positioned for the future, there is almost no limit to how far they can fall.
In the second half of the 90's, IBM would have told you that predictions of imminent catastrophe were wildly overblown.
After all, they were the inventor of the Thinkpad. They sold a huge fraction of the computing hardware and software that the world did business on. They had been a dominant player in desktops and infrastructure since the days of the punch card!
They were a hardware maker's hardware maker, and hardware had sold at massive margins into reliable demand since the turn of the previous century. AND it was the dotcom boom, meaning that every household in the developed world had a goal of spending massively on computing hardware. For the first time in history. What a time to be alive.
Fast forward to 2005 and IBM was fire-saleing most of their core businesses and scrambling to stay solvent.
Thankfully they found a way to reinvent themselves. But recall that for more than a decade, most computers on planet earth were referred to as "IBM or IBM Compatible". When was the last time you heard that term?
IBM today does almost none of the same things that it back when their stock price was through the roof and their business was basically a license to print money. Who knew that literally *every* market that a dominant technology company is in could melt away so rapidly, never to return?
Fast forward to right now, when iPhone has around 22% of the phone market and falling.
The trip from 22% to 10% to 5% to 0% is not far, especially when the major player already has 76%.
Just ask makers of the world's formerly dominant Mobile OSes -- PALM, BBOS, WinCE, and EPOC. Oh, wait, you can't find any of them since their business units were sold or dissolved...not long after each of them actually had a higher market share than iOS ever has.
The lack of major new initiatives coming to fruition, or interest in evolving to be ready for future markets, is why I think they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT.
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It’s a great “house of cards” opinion. Apple has been executing and I expect them to keep executing. When do you think they will hit $1.25T?
They have specifically not been executing...sales are down, adoption down, profits down.
Do you read Macrumors or just post here?
1.25T = never. aka ten minutes after bitcoin gets there
Or if they do do it, it will be the same as their many predecessors who stopped innovating and coasted on old ideas: they will peak shortly before their catastrophic downfall. That is why I think they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT
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They have been executing. $52B best June revenue ever.
Seems like we have the same questions.
Bet people thought they wouldn’t get to $1T either.
You and I are entitled to our respective opinions. Apple was supposed to have died in 2012, according to MR and yet in 2014 the company exploded. But I suppose we’ll keep having this conversation until Apple hits that $1.25T.
Sales of core products are all stalled and declining
They are cooking the books by hocking watch straps and thousand dollar monitor arms to crowds that laugh at them, then telling investors it's all rosy.
Friend is a manager at an apple store in my country.
The decline in iOS is real and very worrying to AAPL. They have a huge push on to try to reinvigorate interest.
Especially now that they are burning pros and Mac users. Which is why I think that they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT
LzZX
The fact that my town's second-largest Apple store is having meetings about the decline in iPhone sales is unprovable. Unless you're my friend who goes to those meetings.
It's all right there, unless you find Apple's graph about it's own core-area sales decline to be "anecdote" :
The fact that sales of core products are declining, and the difference is being made up by non-core products aka baubles, dongles, widgets, repairing their crappy laptops, and karaoke YouTube shows, is taken from Apple's own quarterly financials.
The fact that my town's second-largest Apple store is having meetings about the decline in iPhone sales is unprovable. Unless you're my friend who goes to those meetings.
It's all right there, unless you find Apple's graph about it's own core-area sales decline to be "anecdote" :
All your doing is taking anecdotal and factual information and coming up with an opinion.LzZX
The fact that sales of core products are declining, and the difference is being made up by non-core products aka baubles, dongles, widgets, repairing their crappy laptops, and karaoke YouTube shows, is taken from Apple's own quarterly financials.
The fact that my town's second-largest Apple store is having meetings about the decline in iPhone sales is unprovable. Unless you're my friend who goes to those meetings.
It's all right there, unless you find Apple's graph about it's own core-area sales decline to be "anecdote" :
I’m coming up with a different opinion based on other facts. I suppose that’s the name of the game.
Yeah... does anyone remember they wanted $10k for the LISA and sold about six of them... that one was not on Tim Cook iirc.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3041272...er-that-cost-steve-jobs-a-gig-kevin-costner-d
Yeah and Apple doesn't get up on the barn roof and yell about the next great thing until it's time for the keynote. Whatever comes off sounding like vaporware before a keynote has started with the rumor mills, not in Cupertino. Some of the next great things have been pretty much under the hood too, which is fine with me. I'm fond of stuff like the privacy tweaks to Settings in the iOS releases.
Fact: Apple's core businesses are changing. You know, keeping up with the times. Maybe Tim Cook watched Kodak just watch for too long as film faded from a picture big enough to carry the whole bottom line? Live and learn from other's mistakes is certainly a tactic favored by both COOs and CEOs of successful corporations.
Sales of other businesses up. That's not opinion either. $52B in a quarter, best June quarter ever. That's not an opinion either.
Yeah they said the same thing at Sony...right before they became a joke.
I want Apple to stop heading towards being a mockery of it's former amazing self.
That's why I think they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT
Apple (nor any other gear manufacturer) cannot unmake a mature market like that for smartphones. The upgrade rate shifts out, and that's fine for aficionados of the gear itself --i.e. the way it works, not the cosmetic tweaks for the twits who only want to buy 30 of them and flip them-- but it means the company can't sit around and expect to survive off tweaking iPhone looks or performance features either, they need to keep innovating their whole approach to being in business. And that's what they've been doing. It's what they'll keep on doing as far as we can see -- which after all is not as far down the roads they've elected to blaze out a little farther without tipping their hand too much in advance... and that stuff is what a CEO is paid to do: look down the road and figure what's out there past the curve.
Their accountants are doing fine btw. Cook's not an accountant and he seems to be doing fine as well.
Oh gee AAPL dipped today. Oh wait. That was from the Tweetbomber in chief saying oh let's slap 10% tariff on everything not already covered by previous tariffs in the trade war on China. So that's not entirely Tim's fault, is it. Gee, he must be so relieved.
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i couldn't agree more that they need to stop sitting on their duffs and re-packaging 2007's iPhone as if it was "all new" and "revolutionary" . That cow has been milked.
Where I disagree is in whether or not they are actually doing that. My point is that they need to do something huge and risky and brilliant, exploding or upending an entire industry the way they used to do when Steve was alive.
Nowadays they play it ultra-safe: skipping R&D, taking almost no risks, sticking mostly to iterations of things they already do.
When they go into a new market, they do it in a. Copycat way: oh you invented smart speakers and digital assistants? Well we will try our hand at that as well and see if we can put a spin on it.
it's a very accountanty way to run a business and a surefire way to run a technology company right into the ground. That it why I think that they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT
Well Jobs put a spin on borrowed (well adapted lol) tech that became the LISA, that bombed and they stuck him on the Macintosh project as punishment, more or less... so you never know, right?
imo we have enough CEO-types running around "upending" stuff for the sake of disruption. Not to hint further at politicizing the thread lol. Disruption might be about as fashionable any more as... i dunno, say the ruffles on Victorian taffeta dresses: quite striking when they were introduced, nowadays a matter of selectively applied nostalgia. Maybe a sigh while handing over the contents of those "dress-up" trunks to the great-granddaughters... but what woman wants to return to the social strictures of the Victorian age?!
What I mean there is that disruption for the sake of disruption can become a narcissistic form of anarchy, increasingly a rather unseemly approach in the eyes of most investors and even for consumers primarily interested in functionality of their gear. Maybe it works in politics. Not so much with bottom lines of publicly traded corporations. Sure Kodak sat around too long reminiscing about the glory days of film. But Apple has not been sitting around bathing in accolades over hardware lines or ports lol that Apple figures have about run their course. In fact Apple regularly takes flak for moving on... even as some consumers complain about ditching stuff they still like. A CEO has to thread those needles. Cook seems to be making the cut and then some.
I'll take an iPhone down the road a couple years that builds on the improvements I admire in my XR... or hey, maybe even a better SE... stuff that is improved under the hood or meets revived consumer demand is just fine with me. Count me as one of those thinking maybe the 12" MacBook is just snoozing, not dead, until after ARM chips come into their own in Apple notebooks. I always liked the idea of that smaller footprint, just wasn't quite ready to retire my MBP and then was mildly disappointed when they put a quit on further refresh of the MacBook...
Meanwhile I like Apple's expansive ventures into the services side of things. I will like to see improvements in their News+ and see how the TV offerings work out.
And again, we have no clue what's on Apple's drawing board do we really? There's probably something there that we'll eventually decide we need that we haven't even heard of yet. The Godfather had it about right..... just when I thought I was out,,,
they pull me back in.Jobs had vision and he took risks. He openly stated that he was out to change the world and he didn't care what that meant for the share price.Well Jobs put a spin on borrowed (well adapted lol) tech that became the LISA, that bombed and they stuck him on the Macintosh project as punishment, more or less... so you never know, right?
imo we have enough CEO-types running around "upending" stuff for the sake of disruption. Not to hint further at politicizing the thread lol. Disruption might be about as fashionable any more as... i dunno, say the ruffles on Victorian taffeta dresses: quite striking when they were introduced, nowadays a matter of selectively applied nostalgia. Maybe a sigh while handing over the contents of those "dress-up" trunks to the great-granddaughters... but what woman wants to return to the social strictures of the Victorian age?!
What I mean there is that disruption for the sake of disruption can become a narcissistic form of anarchy, increasingly a rather unseemly approach in the eyes of most investors and even for consumers primarily interested in functionality of their gear. Maybe it works in politics. Not so much with bottom lines of publicly traded corporations. Sure Kodak sat around too long reminiscing about the glory days of film. But Apple has not been sitting around bathing in accolades over hardware lines or ports lol that Apple figures have about run their course. In fact Apple regularly takes flak for moving on... even as some consumers complain about ditching stuff they still like. A CEO has to thread those needles. Cook seems to be making the cut and then some.
I'll take an iPhone down the road a couple years that builds on the improvements I admire in my XR... or hey, maybe even a better SE... stuff that is improved under the hood or meets revived consumer demand is just fine with me. Count me as one of those thinking maybe the 12" MacBook is just snoozing, not dead, until after ARM chips come into their own in Apple notebooks. I always liked the idea of that smaller footprint, just wasn't quite ready to retire my MBP and then was mildly disappointed when they put a quit on further refresh of the MacBook...
Meanwhile I like Apple's expansive ventures into the services side of things. I will like to see improvements in their News+ and see how the TV offerings work out.
And again, we have no clue what's on Apple's drawing board do we really? There's probably something there that we'll eventually decide we need that we haven't even heard of yet. The Godfather had it about right..... just when I thought I was out,,,
Risk means occasional disaster, plus frequently inventing incredible paradigms like iMac, OSX (which he was working on since NeXT -- you know that right?) and iPod+iTunes. And iPhone.
Apple hasn't done anything that changed the world like iPhone+iOS since...iPhone.
That was 2007, which is about a thousand years ago in technology terms.
No, we don't know what they are working on. But we know what they have not done, which is anything really big since Steve left.
They have "pivoted" to small, incremental, iterative, safe changes to their existing lines of business. Plus mild, low-risk forays into lines of business already dominated by other players.
For exactly the reason you specified: To keep stock owners happy by never messing with the P/E and quarterly earnings.
What you and the other owners should remember, though, is that tech giants who think they are "playing it safe" but really just coasting on old ideas sometimes (aka usually) die in a horrible flameout.
Because the old paradigms that they have enjoyed milking at huge margins are *guaranteed* to become obsolete.
Don't believe me? Just ask RIM.
That's why I think they should #FIRETHEACCOUNTANT
See I don't think Apple is playing it safe. They're reinventing the company from one with a basically unsustainable trajectory of just more hardware offerings and updating the bundled software that goes with the iOS or MacOS oriented gear.
Maybe we have to agree to disagree and just see what they come up with next. I still love their gear and the under-hood improvements. I also like their newer services. I'll leave profit margins to "the accountants" and still think that's not the slot Tim Cook belongs in. Careful steward yes, but someone who nurtures upcoming talent nonetheless. Jobs surely saw that the combo was a good one.
Yes I hope that you are right.
I have a hard time thinking of the 1998-2011 era (in which they shipped as much world-changing software as world-changing hardware) as "unsustainable".
I would argue that it was the pre-1998 scully era (slowly letting the business sink into the mud by doing industry-standard plays like licensing the OS and partnering with others) was unsustainable.
I actually think that for a trillion-dollar technology company, *not* changing the world every few years is unsustainable. But maybe I'm dead wrong.
As for "a careful steward who nurtures talent", I wonder whether Sir Jony ever posts here.