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Since Apple has consistently refused to pay dividends to shareholders, actually they made nothing at all. (Unless they sold the stock, in which case thy are no longer shareholders.) I'm thinking of selling mine soon.

Tech companies generally do not pay dividends. It's about growth, not residual cash.
 
A $5 million bonus?

Mr. President! This bonus for a fatcat computer executive is outrageous! These computer companies just don't get it. Please levy a tax on them or take over their industry so their excessive wealth can be redistributed. http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/smile.gif

Truthfully, Apple's on top of their game BECAUSE of people like Cook. Well done and well deserved.
 
Do The Rich Actually Get Richer?

Post 170 by bedifferent...well said.

I also used to believe in our financial system, capitalism, etc. Now I realize so much of it is a complete sham. Not so much companies iike Apple that produce things of value, but the Financial/Banking/Wallstreet companies whose executives make obscene amounts of money while "borrowing" tax payer money and allegedly paying it back. And the value of these secretive companies who deceive, exploit, and cause periodic bubbles is.........(crickets).

In light of what has happened during the last few years, an Apple exec making several million is relatively benign. However, 30 years ago the top paid person in any company typically made only 10 to 20 times the salary of say, an engineer. Now that factor is more like 100 to 150 times, so yes things have changed.... a lot. And now everyone is used to it. Mission accomplished.

"Greed is good".....Ivan Boesky (uttered before he went to jail....well Club Fed...for well to do criminals).
 
STAND! Very well stated. I used to be one of them, one of the masses that would defend capitalism and Ayn Rand objectivism tooth and nail. However, having had the benefit of a global education, of living in many different countries and experiencing many differing cultures, after having a father who was an investment banker, after having experienced both sides of the corporate/capitalist culture, it's a complete misconception that capitalism "works".

Something I've always pondered: a woman who comes from a broken home, is divorced, has a child, and now works three jobs, 100+ hours a week, to make ends meet and barely has enough food on the table. A white male raised in a wealthy, privileged home gets into Yale with his family's contacts and barely passes, now earns 7 figures through a job he "earned" with his family's contacts. How can we justify this type of system? Who is to claim that the divorced mother doesn't deserve more, yet she works harder than the banker and doesn't have access to the privilege that he does and will never earn more than minimum wage? Now with banks and schools refusing to give more loans and funding to students who need it, the gap will become even more alarmingly narrow between the have and have nots. The fact remains, we have been and will continue to live in a class system. As long as we keep deluding ourselves that this system "works", and spew the rhetoric to defend said system, things will never improve. Instead, we will continue to fight each other and not the system, just as our politicians in Washington seem to have wanted for the past 30-40 years. Wake up people, the system doesn't work! It never did. It's a complete shame.



That's the inherit flaw with any system: humanity. Greed almost always rears its ugly head, and morals and human decency fall to the wayside. SOME regulation is always necessary, otherwise the children will play. Wall Street is a great example. Future trading and greedy hedge fund-ies went NUTS the past few years. In 2005 one of the many reasons gas prices went sky high is that future traders decided to raise the speculative price on oil, raking in billions for companies such as Exxon/Mobil while raking in millions if not billions on commission. It wasn't Katrina folks, the oil wells and refineries were meeting demand. It was the companies and "Wall Street" that decided on using Katrina for an excuse to drive up prices and rake in easy cash. Gotta love the "system". When the parents are away, the children will play, and play they have, at the masses expense.

[rant] I agree, there are so many people who just coast through life & earn millions of dollars because of family contacts or some other privilege while someone else has to work their a**es off and is still under poverty level. In my opinion, I would like to see more of a meritocracy/socialist system. Social where people's basic needs are met like food, a place to stay, basic health care & training. But if they want more than that, they have to work for it. While the more fortunate would have to pick up some of the slack of the less fortunate, this help everyone out. I don't even want to know how many new Michael Jordans, Albert Einsteins, etc. are out there but can't reach their potential because they are not allowed access to what they need. Although I do believe that, like many things, the idea itself may not necessarily be bad, it's the implementation that needs working on. They it is, the US's implementation of capitalism makes me sick.

While Tim definitely worked hard and deserves a good bonus, does he NEED that much money? If not, Apple could've lowered prices, not gotten rid of some of its programmers, etc. With all this focus on mobile devices like the iPhone & iPad, I feel Apple's missing the boat on the higher end, pro market (FCS, Mac Pros, etc.). Sure, these areas may still be gaining ground, but how much more ground will they have if Apple put as much focus into them as they seemingly are on the iPad? [/rant]
 
Substitute CEO for hire

Hey Tim! If you need a day off from time to time, give me a call and I'll keep the ship on course. My going rate is $160,000 a day. Cheers.:D
 
Those 75k shares are worth over 16 mil at 225 per share. So he gets over 20 mil for less than a year of work. Not too shabby.

Truth is, it's probably well worth it... he showed that there is "life after Jobs" in Apple. If Jobs left (by choice or by nature) without a successor of known quality, the stock would tank, easily by 10%, which would be a loss of value of over 20 billion by today's stock prices. Now investors can be sure that Apple's innovation/success will continue without Jobs at the helm.

I'm glad about this. I was worried about Apple's stability minus Jobs. Tim might be able to helm the company, but who will do the keynotes? Nobody beats Jobs at that. He's the ultimate Apple cheerleader. They need to start working with Honda's robotics department to make an enhanced version of Asimo that can recreate Steve's keynote performances. Just kidding, of course. No one person, or thing, could ever replace the passion and enthusiasm Jobs has for Apple.
 
We are free to get an education, work hard, and succeed; sometimes beyond belief. We are also free to not do any or all of these things but of course there are consequences. True freedom implies that there is a sense of personal accountability. I am responsible for my destiny; not the government, not you, not The Collective.

Freedom means you make those choices how to live your life. When people look to the government to "meet basic needs," that comes at a price. The government tells you what to eat. The government tells you where to live. The government tells you how much money you can have. Earn one dollar more and the government will take away your government house, food, etc.

The best way, the only way to live free is to end government entitlements altogether; certainly not increase them by "meeting basic needs." Rebuilding a concept of personal accountability is the path to this country's revival; not depending on the government to tell us how we should think, where we should live, and what we should eat.

What this administration is trying to do will be the end of America as we know it. Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried. What makes anyone think it will work here? Have a look at Cuba or China. Anyone here want to live in either of those countries? No matter what system you live under, there will always be rich, always be poor, and always be people somewhere in between. That said, I'd prefer to live in a place where I AM FREE TO DECIDE HOW I WILL LIVE.

Get the government out of your refrigerator, out of the exam room at your doctor's office, out of the free market, and as far out of the rest of your life as you can. You will be a far better judge of how to live your life than someone sitting in Washington, DC.
 
this guy doesn't need 5 million

Why? Because all people should be equal? Because superior intellect, drive, and ambition should go unrewarded? Because filling in as CEO while retaining duties as COO of a multi-billion dollar corporation is easy? Any one could do it?

Why?

Apple is aware of Cook's talents and wants to keep him around.

What if the article read, Tim Cook receives free iPhone and Mac Mini for performance during Jobs' absence? More to your liking?
 
The people who clicked negative on this story better not own Apple stock. $15 mill in stock and 5 mill in cash is nothing in the grand scheme of things. How many millions do they have in the bank again?
 
[rant] I agree, there are so many people who just coast through life & earn millions of dollars because of family contacts or some other privilege while someone else has to work their a**es off and is still under poverty level. In my opinion, I would like to see more of a meritocracy/socialist system. Social where people's basic needs are met like food, a place to stay, basic health care & training. But if they want more than that, they have to work for it. While the more fortunate would have to pick up some of the slack of the less fortunate, this help everyone out. I don't even want to know how many new Michael Jordans, Albert Einsteins, etc. are out there but can't reach their potential because they are not allowed access to what they need. Although I do believe that, like many things, the idea itself may not necessarily be bad, it's the implementation that needs working on. They it is, the US's implementation of capitalism makes me sick.

While Tim definitely worked hard and deserves a good bonus, does he NEED that much money? If not, Apple could've lowered prices, not gotten rid of some of its programmers, etc. With all this focus on mobile devices like the iPhone & iPad, I feel Apple's missing the boat on the higher end, pro market (FCS, Mac Pros, etc.). Sure, these areas may still be gaining ground, but how much more ground will they have if Apple put as much focus into them as they seemingly are on the iPad? [/rant]

In the UK the current Government has gone down the socialist route. It has done more harm than good. I'm happy that everyone can get free medical care and find the US policy abhorrent, especially since the medical companies are there not to help people get better but to make money.

However there are an increasing underclass of people in the UK who choose not to work because the State pays their rent, medical costs, food etc etc. These scum are everywhere now.

So becareful what you wish for.
 
No-one's work is worth this amount. It doesn't matter how many good decisions he made, or how much pressure he is under. At the end of the day his job is not thousands of times harder than anyone else's.

Socialism has not failed everywhere it has been tried. Communism has been abused anywhere it has been tried, but socialism and communism are not the same.
 
The best way, the only way to live free is to end government entitlements altogether; certainly not increase them by "meeting basic needs." Rebuilding a concept of personal accountability is the path to this country's revival; not depending on the government to tell us how we should think, where we should live, and what we should eat.

This is the flaw, the assumption that humanity [generally] can and will be accountable for their actions. The error in this logic is that humanity IS flawed; greed, power, corruption - corporations in capitalist topography have proven countless times that decency and morality are not their primary concerns (I stated such an example with Walmart's corruption and tactics in surmounting case law in order to obtain a stronghold over small businesses in the U.S. - and global economy, google Rubbermaid and Walmart for more information).

The problem is catch-22; government [ideally] should be utilized to keep corporations in check, ensuring that laws are satisfied and new laws are enacted through the judicial system in order to insure that "by the people, of the people" is met and in place. Essentially, insure that corporations do not unjustly take advantage of the very people that it employs or competes against. Corporations need to ensure that they remain competitive while just, provide for the employees and the patrons that have established it as a successful business while abiding by the laws set forth to ensure the corporations remains just. The inherit flaw in both premises is ASSUMPTION; it is erroneous to assume anything with regards to humanity, doing so will almost always result in disappointment. In all accounts, humanity almost always becomes corrupt, in both corporations and government. No matter who oversees the other, it is always a collection of individuals that in most cases becomes corrupted. Altruism, if it truly exists, is paramount in ALL facets of humanity. Until proper ethics and respect is achieved and understood by all, greed and corruption will almost always be the self destructive force that is our downfall (ex. the Roman empire, and the current American "empire").

Thus, humanity is flawed, therefore capitalism and government will always be flawed. If humanity always did the "right thing" with regards to morality, government wouldn't be necessary.
 
Actually my parents brought me up business orientated (AKA Blue, but I think the National Party is very... bad at running a country) and my Grandfather is always giving me business advice for my website biz. Hes also always reminding me about how working for somebody else only pays the bills. (He used to be one of the top industrial chemists in NZ before he changed to natural therapy)

Business is all about Gimmie more money. Consumerism is all about Gimmie stuff. I admit I try squeeze the extra cash out of my clients through "Webmaster Services". When I was contracted to my old work to fix computers I would always try to get as much possible out of the practice manager.

I know what its like to work as top man and is why Im instanly disgusted by these giant payouts instead of investing it back into the business. Like instead of buying everyone in the design studio a new computer we decided on buying a developers licence for a shopping cart software we could use to expand our services. We now can provide clients with a cheap e-commerce solution and earn even more money than if we had fancy new computers. Infact it has, we got $10k in a week and can now pay for our next year of University, and that was only 2 clients.

Theres a difference between Negative and Humble.

Smart business is about focusing on quality. When your competition cuts prices, charge the same or more, but do a much better job. When you focus on money, you eventually produce a product that has no value. If you focus on providing the best product or service, money finds it's way to you.

The funny thing is, the better product you produce, the more some people hate you. One of the metrics we use to judge our performance is the number of death threats we get.
 
It does not surprise me the thread is full of people crying "greed" , too much money...all the fun soundbites we've been inundated with over the years..

Protip: People pay what they deem something is worth, and people are paid what is deemed they are worth to a company.

George W. Bush has set a very high bar for the "worst president in
history". It will be very hard for Obama to "do better".

Sure, but he's getting pretty close. And that's the sad part.

That mindset is the reason why the recession happened.

Someone flunked Econ 101. Or are you just mad at the world?
 
We are free to get an education, work hard, and succeed; sometimes beyond belief. We are also free to not do any or all of these things but of course there are consequences. True freedom implies that there is a sense of personal accountability. I am responsible for my destiny; not the government, not you, not The Collective.

Freedom means you make those choices how to live your life. When people look to the government to "meet basic needs," that comes at a price. The government tells you what to eat. The government tells you where to live. The government tells you how much money you can have. Earn one dollar more and the government will take away your government house, food, etc.

The best way, the only way to live free is to end government entitlements altogether; certainly not increase them by "meeting basic needs." Rebuilding a concept of personal accountability is the path to this country's revival; not depending on the government to tell us how we should think, where we should live, and what we should eat.

What this administration is trying to do will be the end of America as we know it. Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried. What makes anyone think it will work here? Have a look at Cuba or China. Anyone here want to live in either of those countries? No matter what system you live under, there will always be rich, always be poor, and always be people somewhere in between. That said, I'd prefer to live in a place where I AM FREE TO DECIDE HOW I WILL LIVE.

Get the government out of your refrigerator, out of the exam room at your doctor's office, out of the free market, and as far out of the rest of your life as you can. You will be a far better judge of how to live your life than someone sitting in Washington, DC.

Wow. I like your statement, your passion, and the eloquence of your simple writing style.

Unfortunately, many folks who identify with the "conservative" party for lack of a better term, have hypocritical attitudes. Arch-Christians who claim that they are "Christian", a follower of Christ, who wanted his disciples to love one another as you would yourself; however, by belonging to the "conservative" party seek to deny basic dignity and freedom to some segments of the population who are "different" than the mainstream or who are like themselves. Many of those who identify with the "conservative" party would seek to establish a theocracy similar to or in excess of the repressive Taliban government, where those who were in opposition are stoned to death or shot, because it's claimed that this country was founded on "Christian" principles. If you're different in any sort of way, Black, Hispanic, gay, transexual, you'd probably be strung up, shot, or burned alive.

Most "conservatives" identify with the message of "smaller government", which in itself is not a bad thing. A well-oiled, efficient, and cost-effective government should be the goal of all government entities. However, ponder the following:

If your house starts to burn, who is going to put out the fire? Firemen: government employees.

If someone starts to burglar your house, who will come to your aid? Police: government employees.

When you go to fly from one place to another, who coordinates air traffic? Air traffic controllers: government employees.

Sure all the functions could be fulfilled by private enterprise, but these are for-profit agencies. You'd probably be asked by whoever is fulfilling the role of 9-11 operators, and such "OK, Mr. XYZ; before we can dispatch aid how would you like to pay for these services? We accept Visa, MasterCard, or American Express." After 7:00 PM you'll probably pay a premium. Sure, you can try and defend your own home with your own weapons, but what if it's only you against a pack of burglars?

A common middle ground needs to be met. If you call yourself a "true" Christian, you let your actions be dictated by compassion, not lust for money, possessions, or pure ignorance and hatred of anyone different. That means supporting the wellbeing of your brothers and sisters, not saying "Na-ney-na-ney-boo-boo: I've got more money than you; I can afford healthcare and you can't." How sad so many are so hypocritical.

No political is system is perfect, and that includes capitalism: egalitarian? I don't think so; more like undercover elitist.
 
Smart business is about focusing on quality. When your competition cuts prices, charge the same or more, but do a much better job. When you focus on money, you eventually produce a product that has no value. If you focus on providing the best product or service, money finds it's way to you.

The issue that arises when larger corporations buy in bulk, quality is almost always sacrificed for a larger amount of goods at a discounted price. This is essentially what has occurred with the American capitalist landscape. Walmart has the capital to purchase massive amounts of product at an extremely discounted price, thus supplying more products at lower prices to their customer base. Small businesses are closing more steadily due to this very issue. Smaller businesses do not have the capital and financial stronghold that Walmart has to provide the same or better products at Walmart prices as they do not have the financial backing in order to buy larger amounts of such products for the lower price(s).

Walmart's business tactics are abhorrent and simply demonstrate the lack of morals and sense of decency from the capitalist landscape. If you want to blame any one company for the outsourcing of jobs to China "trend", start with Walmart. Walmart has strong armed such American based companies as Rubbermaid to produce their products in China, then using their closed factories in the states as strongholds to build a new Walmart and employ those ex-Rubbermaid employees. Walmart threatened Rubbermaid that they would pull their products from their shelves, which is roughly 50-60% of Rubbermaid's revenue. When Rubbermaid refused years ago, Walmart followed through with their threat, which resulted in Rubbermaid caving in to keep their company.

Corporations use loopholes in the laws that are established to protect consumers as well as the businesses attempting to compete in this capitalist topography. With large cash reserves, the law becomes "affordable", and attorney's are immediately dispatched to discover loopholes in order to circumvent the very laws established to protect consumers, the environment, etc. Certainly companies such as Walmart have worked hard and succeeded in becoming a financial force, however at one point does too powerful become TOO powerful? When other companies can not compete? When other companies are being closed down BY their competition through threats or through business tactics that tow the line of legality?

Trickle down economics does not work, this is evident from the economic disparity between Wall Street and Main Street, a point our elected President utilized countless times during his campaign. Has anything changed? WILL anything change? "Change" is collective, it will only occur for the betterment of all if we collectively allow it to occur. However, this means that humanity [generally] wants change. There is too much money at stake and there are too many elected government officials benefitting off the wealth of big businesses to allow the people to strive for change. Let them BELIEVE they have choice, choice is an ILLUSION. Choice is the new "cake", "let them have CHOICE". People, wake up! I find it amusing that some commentators who may never see $22 million in stock options of $5 million in cash let alone $1 million in a lifetime are defending any corporations choice in excessive greed. When is too much, too much?

It does not surprise me the thread is full of people crying "greed" , too much money...all the fun soundbites we've been inundated with over the years..

Protip: People pay what they deem something is worth, and people are paid what is deemed they are worth to a company.

Sure, but he's getting pretty close. And that's the sad part.

Someone flunked Econ 101. Or are you just mad at the world?

Instead of insulting others, join in the discussion with facts. It is easy to [attempt to] discredit others, far more difficult is the task at intelligent conversation with facts instead of unpleasantries.
 
No, Government intervention in the housing market, requirements that the banks lower their standards for lending to include people who could not in reality afford home ownership...
It was more a matter of not enforcing laws. Housing inspectors jacked up the value of a home so the loan would be a smaller percentage of the final price., Morgage brokers lied about purchasers incomes to make them look like they could buy more expencive houses.


... and incentivising the lending market to make more and more risky lending decisions, and allowing those risky lending decisions to be bundled and sold as if they were much safer investments. Government intervention is at the root of our economic problems.

This was lack of regulation. Laws and regulations existed before to prevent this. These laws and regulations were taken off the books or ignored.

For many bankers, pay is incentive based. A relatively low base salary, with plenty of opportunity to earn more that is keyed to rewarding for results (sales of products). Take away that incentive structure and those sales people will follow the available money to another opportunity.

The problem is this incentive based pay is all about what you make for the company today. "We don't care if the deal costs us $500 million in 10 years, it will make us $5 million today."
 
Your comment made me vomit on my MBA.

Seriously -- not all of us are flipping burgers. $7500 bonus should be an annual maximum? This was obviously an idea from a poster who does not understand that for many people $7500 is, to be frank, chump change. I'm not disparaging people who earn little money, but the fact is, when you're a corporation with over $40 BILLION in liquid assets, no debt, and hit products left and right, and you're executives are very directly contributing to that immense profit (and Cook is recognized pretty universally as an amazingly competent executive), a $22M bonus is actually not THAT big a deal at ALL, compared to a lot of other industries.

Reality is -- Apple actually doesn't pay employees all that much, relative to other fields, liking banking, finance, etc.
 
I'm really not trying to come off like a douche with this comment, but dude, you really have no idea what you're talking about. I don't think you really know what it's like to "cocoa-ize" legacy software on the scale of Apple's Pro Apps, which have codebases in some cases over a decade old. I don't think you understand what 10.6 was all about and how profound some of its internal technologies are, and how it puts Apple years ahead of the competition is key realms that are very relevant to the future of computing hardware. I think if you call Webkit something that only benefits gadgets, you really don't have much of an understanding of web technologies, standards versus proprietary technology, open source, or browser-politics.

Feel free to post your ideas on forums such as this, but some of us who are perhaps a little older and wiser will call you out on garbage. :)

Why not protect one of the few assets that Macs have over PCs that is slowly being neglected? Yes they have more than enough money in the coffers to pay Tim but that guy got paid more in 6 months than most succesful company CEOs get in a year - Including Steve Ballmer/Steve Jobs.

The launch of Snow Leopard is as about as comparible as the launch of KDE4, touting all these new features but lacked the polish to even work. Even if Apple is transitioning into a gadget company at least look after the reason why those gadgets were so sucessful!

But then I could be making the mistake that Apple even has plans for its future as a Computer Software Company. A lot of things they actively support only seem to benefit the gadget business, like WebKit and CUPS. Yea they polished Cocoa, supported OpenCL and developed GCD. But theres not a whole lot of follow through. Most key Mac OSX apps still aren't even Cocoa. I can say the same about RedHat, that contributes about 50% to the Linux kernel and Linux technologies. But then RedHat actually follows through on its technologies.



A MacPro would be considered Pro again if they included the GTX285 and the QuadroFX 4800(?) (or ATI Equivalents) as customised options instead of extras you have to dig around for. Oh, and shaved about $250-500(NZD) on the price. (Thats the case for Media Production anyway) I have no gripe with the Hardware that Apple makes, its very good hardware and the easiest way to get a hold of an 8 core Xeon system in New Zealand. But theyre neglecting the Software, with Software being my Passion it hits a bit of a soft spot. I beleive Leopard was also pushed back for iPhone OS.



Car analogies never work. I thought Mac fans would know this the best!
 
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