Tim Cook Talks Apple Watch, iPhone 6s, Apple TV, Cars, Privacy, and More at WSJDLive

[Benjamin Frost]

6.5 million Apple Music subscribers is awful.

Just think: there are at least 800 million iTunes accounts out there; probably closer to 1 billion by now. And you can be sure that a lot of the current subscribers have either forgotten to turn off auto-renew or are trying it to see if it gets any better.

Tim Cook should be ashamed of himself for this debacle.

 

[John Mcgregor]

It's nothing new, at the time the iPhone was first released a lot of forum members argued it didn't need 3G as Edge was good enough.

What they really meant was 3G wasn't available where they lived so why should anyone else have it.

4K today is like Apple Pay, so there is really no point. Anyone who has a good 1080P LED TV is just fine.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

It's telling that Cook feels 'fantastic' about customer uptake of Apple Music.

If he feels fantastic about such miserable figures, then his positive comments about the Apple Watch must be taken in the same light. I feel confident that were he to reveal the Watch figures, they would shock us with how low they are.

I love using my iMac for listening to music, but feel that Apple are losing their way in all areas of their business. That saddens me.

Re software in the car: perhaps I'm an outlier, but I'm not convinced it's as important as Tim Cook is making out.

I like to drive in silence, and most of the time, I know where I'm going. No need for an iPhone or any other gizmo.

Umm no he isn't.

Pantomime season hasn't started yet boys and girls.

 

[majkom]

The guy at the shop where you bought your xbone was selling you bananas. it can't do 4k, it doesn't even do 1080p. The maximum it can do, and that's not native is 900p, which in theory, nobody uses or needs

Cmon.. XBone can do full hd, not just 900p

 

[Eric87]

Cmon.. XBone can do full hd, not just 900p

Ok, ok, then game producers "choose" to do their games on xbone at 720p. The fact of the matter is xbone is not as powerful, graphically, as the PS4. So it "can" do fullhd, it's just that there isn't content for it.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

I'm happy with my Apple Watch, but it's not a 'wow' product. I understand where people are coming from with their criticisms, but don't forget, this is only v1. Neither the iphone, ipod, ipad nor MBA were 'wow' products in v1.

As I recall Apple didn't give sales numbers for the first ipad either. It was only when it got to ipad 2 or 3 that they gave comparative sales figures. It seems to me that the 'exceeded our expectations' answers are standard Apple answers for each of their new products at this stage.

Rewriting history much?

Every one of the products you cite were wow hits: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and the MacBook Air. The Watch? Not so much.

And your recollection leaves something to be desired. Apple gave sales figures for the original iPad from day one. Every quarter, they have reported iPad sales without fail. If Cook had any balls, he'd give us the Apple Watch figures. Our reward for his head in the sand is a stock in the doldrums and a disgruntled membership at MacRumors and the world at large.

 

[majkom]

Ok, ok, then game producers "choose" to do their games on xbone at 720p. The fact of the matter is xbone is not as powerful, graphically, as the PS4. So it "can" do fullhd, it's just that there isn't content for it.

We are offtopic, so I will correct u once again and wont continue discussing your nonsense - Destiny, Alien Isolation, Diablo 3, Tony Hawk 5, Witcher 3 partly runs 1080p on XBone

 

[Eric87]

We are offtopic, so I will correct u once again and wont continue discussing your nonsense - Destiny, Alien Isolation, Diablo 3, Tony Hawk 5, Witcher 3 partly runs 1080p on XBone

Destiny - can only do that when Kinect not connected.
Diablo 3 - does 900p stable, and 1080p with unstable framerates
Tony Hawk is probably the best example you could provide, too bad it's a 3.5/10 game.

Oh and on all of them, they got to 1080p after patches on xbone.

Apologies for the offtopics but trolling is something I can't tollerate.

ONTOPIC: reason why ATV4 would not have 4K is because there is no content for it. Apple would have to provide a slew of content if they chose to play 4K, which they currently don't possess. In this case, they chose to wait in order to market it to the maximum possible once 4K becomes mainstream not only in panel tech. Plus the cost of GPUs capable of rendering 4K is just too high at this point. Let's not forget we're talking about a company that sells insane margins, so squeezing lemons from all angles.

 

[Defender2010]

Is the video online anywhere?

 

[big-ted]

ONTOPIC: reason why ATV4 would not have 4K is because there is no content for it.

There is no 4K support on the Apple TV because Apple want to sell you a new model next year for that 4K support

No 4K content doesn't stop Amazon selling the new Fire TV with 4K support

 

[Eric87]

[QUOTE="Eric87, post: 22113533, member: 917528"

ONTOPIC: reason why ATV4 would not have 4K is because there is no content for it.

There is no 4K support on the Apple TV because Apple want to sell you a new model next year for that 4K support[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that as well, but it's also content. Think about it, when has Apple ever provided a feature without having 10 ways of making money out of it?

 

[maxsix]

The watch that he gave no hard sales numbers.
The TV that doesn't even support 4K and has no live-streaming deals in place.

The iPhone is literally the only thing Apple has.

True.

Apples cash cow is iPhone. The big question is what happens when suddenly it fails to sell in massive quantities. Nothing lasts forever, especially sales streaks like Apple has enjoyed.

It may not be Apple either. One big hiccup in the economy and the pricey iPhone may begin a downward slide.

 

[Rogifan]

What about aperture ?

Photos is an improvement on iPhoto , and a step backwards to aperture.

I'd argue the user is the looser, as they are told to use photos, removing choice.

I said Photos wasn't as good as Aperture. But Apple never marketed Photos as a fully featured Aperture replacement.

 

[Adithya007]

For a Moment, Baker looked like Steve Balmer!

 

[porky]

He should admit the Apple watch is one of those products that isn't for everyone, just like the Mac book he released! And that the Surface was good inspiration for him...

Personally I think he is Apple's version of Steve Ballmer. Slowly sinking the ship

Why doesn't he want to give the sales numbers of the watch? Only because it's in the same category as the Apple TV? I don't think so. It's below expectations. That's why, i Think. Even for Apple music he tells the amount of subscribers.
So most of the money still comes from the iPhone. That's dangerous. The new macbook, even the new iMacs are not for everyone like the iPhone. But they have enough money to hold on for many years to come.

 

[Paradoxally]

6.5 million Apple Music subscribers is awful.

Just think: there are at least 800 million iTunes accounts out there; probably closer to 1 billion by now. And you can be sure that a lot of the current subscribers have either forgotten to turn off auto-renew or are trying it to see if it gets any better.

Tim Cook should be ashamed of himself for this debacle.

Awful? Debacle? I can't stop laughing.

Apple said they had 11M subs in July; they managed to retain over HALF.

You can't look at the big picture. How many Spotify accounts are out there? And how many are active, let alone paying for the service...not to mention other streaming services.

If Tidal had even 1M subs, Jay-Z would leap for joy.

 

[Jim L]

Hey Tim, how about you fix the "broken" experience of:

• iCloud
• iTunes
• Apple Music
• Homekit

before you move on to more money grabs?

 

[navaira]

Apple said they had 11M subs in July; they managed to retain over HALF.

July was long ago. They MUST have picked more until September 30 (which is clear from Cook's statement that there are 8.5 million free accounts now). We have no way of seeing how large the percentage is unless we get 1) the amount of free accounts on September 29 and 2) the amount of paid accounts on October 1 AND November 1 (to rule out the "oh bugger I forgot to disable this" peeps).

You can't look at the big picture. How many Spotify accounts are out there? And how many are active, let alone paying for the service...not to mention other streaming services.

Last time I checked, Spotify had 85 million accounts, including 20 million paid ones, but that was somewhere around July indeed. It's going to be more by now.

If Tidal had even 1M subs, Jay-Z would leap for joy.

Well that IS absolutely right. TIDAL is the funniest failure in music business and when I am bored I google "tidal news" to have some laughs.

As for Cook saying they are feeling "fantastic" about the numbers, he's the CEO. What is he going to say? "To be frank we're rather disappointed, we really made a doo-doo there, sorry shareholders"?

As for Photos, I still can't drag a photo straight from Photos to Photoshop, therefore I went back to using iPhoto. Either Apple decided to cripple that functionality on purpose (why?) or they are aware of the issue and chose not to do anything about it (why?) – I don't believe that the ability to drag a photo straight to Photoshop is a massively complicated programming challenge requiring thousands of engineers to work 24/7 for many months.

 

[bushido]

let alone paying for the service...

about 14 million more than Apple Music and that was mid 2015

 

[MH01]

I said Photos wasn't as good as Aperture. But Apple never marketed Photos as a fully featured Aperture replacement.

But it replaced aperture. That's the problem. Many of us were forced to leave and find an alternative.

From the marketing I remember it was suppose to be a genuine replacement , though as delays hit, and features were cut, it just became an enhanced iPhoto .

Wish they continued with aperture.

 

[DaveMcM76]

Apple Watch is the first Apple device I own that i literally HATE.

Doing anything is taking forever and then the battery randomly dies within a half day since Watch OS 2.0 (tried re-pairing) and you have no idea why.
By the time the stupid thing shows me the weekly weather forecast i have gone down stairs, picked up my iPhone and checked it on there itself. Dont even bother trying to use any apps on it anymore, its simply a watch for me now with a sports tracker that also seems fairly unreliable.

If I was you I'd take it back and get it replaced because my 42mm Sport lasts all day every day (put on at 7am to taking it off sometime between 11pm and midnight) with ease, and I've managed to eke it out to 2 days on occasion by using power reserve overnight when I was away and forgot my charger.

I'll grant you the watch to phone app communication can still be sluggish at times but I've never known it be more than a couple of seconds before they respond and it is usually much quicker depending if the iPhone app was already running in the background or needed to be launched.

 

[Jsameds]

4K as it stands is nothing more than marketing hype, and will be pointless having until at least 2017. Forgetting the lack of access to content as that is being filled nowadays by Netflix and other methods of access (and soon 4K Blu-Ray) - the fact of the matter is most stuff isn't even filmed in 4K anyway, and even the stuff that is is downscaled to 2K in post production.

The majority of 4K currently (and for the next couple of years) is more like 1080p+ (or a 2K upscale). I won't consider 4K worth the investment until at least 50% of content is actually filmed in the resolution - so true 4K. For now I'd rather have a decent 1080p signal fed through an OLED screen, and a smooth user interface that isn't going to be bogged down pushing out the extra pixels.

 

[jsmith189]

I know it's cool to hate Tim, but I really like him. Sorry not sorry.

 

[blackcrayon]

And the Apple Watch is still useless.

I don't think the word "useless" means what you think it means.

 

[revjoel]

If Apple integrates Siri into the iCar, which I fully anticipate, will the car have to be plugged in for me to say, "Hey, Siri!"?