Tim sounds exactly like my boss.
It's everyone else's fault, never his.
He does nothing wrong, other people are the problem.
Perhaps my boss should meet Tim they'd get on well
Sounds like an ex too!
lol
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Tim Cook to Address Q1 Earnings Concerns at All-Hands Meeting With Apple Staff
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sounds like an ex too!
lol
Is anyone really inspired or have confidence instilled by this guy?
At least not enough people. Some Apple fans will continue to shell out the money. However, the loyal ranks are dwindling as prices go up for features and "improvements" that are nominal at best. Apple is plain ol' out of ideas.
I see a few problems. First, Apple doesn’t upgrade many of their products. For instance I had a family member who would buy a new iMac but he has the latest from over a year ago. The Mac Mini was shamefully old and the Mac Pro still is. And Apple has the nerve to charge the same price for old tech. It looks greedy.
Second, stock Apple products are often configured in a way no one would want forcing a ridiculously expensive upgrade. RAM and disk space upgrades are horrible deals.
Third, there are people like me who simply don’t want to spend what they charge for a new phone. There are also people like me who don’t want a giant phone. I want an SE size. I would gladly pay for a modest spec bump. I’m not alone.
Fourth, in the phone category the market is more mature. There aren’t the great leaps we had in the beginning. The tech holds up longer and we don’t have the same drive to upgrade.
Fifth, Apple Products don’t ‘just work for me’. I simply have too many problems with my various devices that go unresolved. I’ve lost some of my early enchantment with Apple products. They are still better than everyone else but I’m not excited about them as I once was. The idea that by controlling the hardware and software they avoid issues other OSs have simply doesn’t ring true for me anymore.
Sixth, Tim Cook’s social justice garbage harms the brand. The people who like it were likely mostly already Apple customers. But there are plenty of people who appreciate Apple products but hate the politics. Now Cook has created some resistance to them buying Apple products.
I didn’t realize this. Stock buybacks are really criminal. It is used to boost the share price. Analysis I’ve seen shows it is almost always bad for the company in the long term. The money could be better spent on R&D or even on lower prices to drive demand.
Second, stock Apple products are often configured in a way no one would want forcing a ridiculously expensive upgrade. RAM and disk space upgrades are horrible deals.
Third, there are people like me who simply don’t want to spend what they charge for a new phone. There are also people like me who don’t want a giant phone. I want an SE size. I would gladly pay for a modest spec bump. I’m not alone.
Fourth, in the phone category the market is more mature. There aren’t the great leaps we had in the beginning. The tech holds up longer and we don’t have the same drive to upgrade.
Fifth, Apple Products don’t ‘just work for me’. I simply have too many problems with my various devices that go unresolved. I’ve lost some of my early enchantment with Apple products. They are still better than everyone else but I’m not excited about them as I once was. The idea that by controlling the hardware and software they avoid issues other OSs have simply doesn’t ring true for me anymore.
Sixth, Tim Cook’s social justice garbage harms the brand. The people who like it were likely mostly already Apple customers. But there are plenty of people who appreciate Apple products but hate the politics. Now Cook has created some resistance to them buying Apple products.
I didn’t realize this. Stock buybacks are really criminal. It is used to boost the share price. Analysis I’ve seen shows it is almost always bad for the company in the long term. The money could be better spent on R&D or even on lower prices to drive demand.
You can't spend money on R&D if there is no innovation. IMHO, what Tim Cook should have used the money is the R&D in robotic manufacturing of iPhones and have the robotic factories built in the US. The problems with China were coming, and Cook was clearly told so (by a certain person whose name we shall not mention here lest we should upset the moderators).
Apple has been leaving a lot of money on the table. Apple could have easily released the 5K monitor priced at $999 and held the highest market share, but Tim decided that monitors didn't matter anymore. Why? No idea.
Apple should have released 15" MacBook Pros geared to the enterprise without the gimmicky Touch Bar and with legacy ports for under $2,000 while the momentum for Macs in the enterprise was building. That momentum is gone now. I would not even recommend the Mac for the enterprise anymore even though in the past I was advocating for the Macs over Wintels. The MacBook Pro released in 2016 started a debacle for Macs in the enterprise. I'm not talking about creative professionals here. I'm taking about a regular business.
Apple needs to get the ecosystem in order. Family members on the same Family Sharing iCloud data plan should be able to share files and folders and not just storage space. Family Sharing should allow family members to share photo libraries, which they can't right now.
Apple Music should be allowed to be shared among family members at the price that the individual subscription costs.
Apple needs to launch its own streaming TV service that has been rumored now for over 5 years. Google has done that. AT&T has done that. Others have done that, but Apple is still waiting for something.
Apple got out of Wi-Fi routers last year. It would surely be nice to have that revenue stream now for a consumer-grade Wi-Fi mesh system made by Apple.
Apple could start manufacturing IoT smart-home appliances like cameras, etc. Why not?
There are ways to whip the product line in shape and squeeze profits from the market using new product categories. Why leave the money on the table?
Last edited:
One way to brings Apple's prices back to sanity, and restore sales, would be to have all iPhone X models start with 128G of storage. The current configuration of 64G is way too limited and thus requires paying an additional $100 to upgrade to 256G, which is probably more that what most people need. In addition, drop the price by $50 and there will be a rush for iPhone upgrades.
Tim sounds exactly like my boss.
It's everyone else's fault, never his.
He does nothing wrong, other people are the problem.
Perhaps my boss should meet Tim they'd get on well
I'm convinced they teach deflection in CEO training 101. Everytime things go great for a company, it's the CEO who caused it and they deserve all the rewards from it.
whenever a company has issues, it's everyone elses fault, never the CEOs and they still deserve lots of money for the effort they put in (or a golden parachute making it expensive to fire).
I had a former CEO lay off 30 of us. the company failed to produce a single new product in 2 years. They spent millions developing software that nobody wanted. the CEO is still there. He was deemed "Doing a fantastic job", yet when suddenly financials didn't meet the goals? it wasn't eh CEO's fault. He still gets his bonus. But they had to lay of 30 of us just to hit those numbers.
funny, they didn't lay off a single person from the dev team, just customer support... you know how that's likely to work out
Apple products do cost more, but they also cost more to manufacture.
Apple is doing just fine. They came up 7% lower than their guidance apparently which is a surprising miss because they have been bang on for every quarter for so many years.
Their iPhones are built so well that it’s easy for many customers to justify holding off on updating I guess. I figured it’s well worth upgrading to the latest model, but I’m a big fanboy, and it’s my hobby, and I have a family and treasure my photos etc etc.
Regular people who are not fanboys like me often might not care as much or realize the benefits of all the latest features. Indeed, they probably do not update their car every year either, and maybe the magic price threshold has been reached? There are tons of price complaints here, but you can’t educate every customer to value the product I guess.
What other company is pulling in $84 Billion revenue in 90 days? It is incredible. For those who claim that growth has ended, I’d say that maybe they don’t understand that double digit growth in services and other areas of the Apple business means a larger and larger part of the revenue pie will be ultra high margin services.
Services revenues and software type products are like sex - you can sell it, and you still have it
. Hardware sales are tied to the endless tech development cycles, and while Apple is probably several years ahead in hardware tech, they indeed have pushed themselves to be the Porsche of consumer electronics. You gotta pay if you want to play. We are all addicted to this life changing device, and everyone knows you get what you pay for with iPhone. Right now the phones are so good that a three year old iPhone might be good enough for some folks.Anyways, Apple is a great company and the stock is the best value on the market even more so now with this big stock drop
I thought Apple's products weren't yet a victim of the trade war... what would happen if they are?
See the new Chinese phones, compare them on build quality, screen quality and memory and last but not least: price!
Huawei does give the customer so much more for customers money. If Apple keeps ignoring that and doesn't innovate at a faster pace, the only way is down.
To be fair, only a handful of people sniped about politics and sexuality in this thread. To be fair to them, it’s not the customer or the forum commentator bringing politics and sexuality into Apple’s business, it is in fact Tim Cook himself who does so, and quite prominently. He is the one shaping and implementing corporate policies that align with his own principles as an individual interested in the environment and social justice...but he slaps the Apple logo on it all. Which is fine, he is CEO and can do that. He’s certainly not the first or only CEO to do that nor will he be the last.
I don’t care that he does this, but clearly there are people here who wonder if he does so at the detriment to other aspects of Apple’s business that he should be paying equal or more attention.
The subject matter of this article is legitimately being argued as a sign Tim Cook is letting something fall through the cracks, that Apple couldn’t meet its stated projections.
And Spindler used to hide under his desk.
I don't think you are absorbing what the stock buybacks are all about and how they help the company. If you look into it, you can learn that it is the best move for Apple actually.
Don’t be so patronising. He was merely pointing out that he would be prepared to pay say a 20% premium for the best, but no more. He certainly won’t pay huge premiums for something that these days is arguably not the best.
As for all those R&D costs, tax, overheads that have to be included, every other business deals with and has to include them also, and still manage to produce excellent products at lower prices? Perhaps the thing they don’t include is that peice of the pie called greed or that other slice called profiteering
Profit is the amount that is left AFTER everything you have included in this list.
it's like people don't understand what Profit is and think that Profit, especially insanely high profits margins is required to keep business afloat.
This is not true.
People need to take some basic accounting classes before commenting on stuff like this.
REVENUES - EXPENSES = PROFIT.
can profits be used to increase future budgetary considerations? Yes of course, if you make 0 profit, you don't have new money to increase budgets.
But at the same time, you make 20 billion profit, but only increase next years budget by 1billion. that 19 billion essentially goes into a small amount of peoples overall pockets. (primary share holders)
Essentially this is what we're seeing with Apple's current financial direction. Their maximizing profits so a select group of ownership can maximize their net value. Rather than long term business planning and stability.
this overall isn't JUST a problem with Apple. But Apple, being #1 currently is a posterboy for this sort of corporate self congratulation of profits. When your executives renumeration is directly tied to the stock value, their motivation is to pump up the stock.
Last edited:
Yep they include all the tech at lower prices AFTER Apple has spent dollar on R and D in order for them to pull the product apart and copy, sorry ‘get inspired’ by without having to spend anything. What ridiculousness are you spouting. And if I want to patronise someone’s ridiculous apparent knowledge then I shall. Ok ? Nice. Now jog on son.
this is also been thourougly debunked.
Apple frequently is NOT first to develop technology. They do an amazing job refining it for consumer sale, But overall, the bulk of the technology in Apple devices was invented by other parties.
This isn't to take away from what they do a great job on and that's making these things generally work really well. But to believe that everything tech we have today was invented by Apple is ... well, wrong.
all your posts seem to be overly condescending to people who counter the points you make, which are so far from what i cans ee in this thread, wrong.
Breaking out the floggers and whips. Making sure the message they give is uniform with his.
I love all the trolls here....Apple doomed, no innovation, etc etc. So the are literally gonna make a FEW billion less than the approx 93 billion projected. Either way you cut that its STILL A GIANT LOAD OF MONEY. Its not like they only make a few million and now its down to a few hundred grand....or when they were literally weeks away from closing the doors in the 90s. Even if Apple, starting today, didn't bring in another red cent in revenue they could continue operating for years.
They have so much cash on hand (hundreds of billions) itll make anyones head spin, except the trolls of course.
Apple screwed up on pricing this year thats all. The phones are still amazing and everyone still loves the iPhone that uses one. This is nothing more than the captain explaining a minor course correction in the grand scheme of it all.
They have so much cash on hand (hundreds of billions) itll make anyones head spin, except the trolls of course.
Apple screwed up on pricing this year thats all. The phones are still amazing and everyone still loves the iPhone that uses one. This is nothing more than the captain explaining a minor course correction in the grand scheme of it all.
The China economy was on a slowdown cycle and the indicators have been there for well over a year. Don't know how Apple missed this. Did they or was top management just not willing to listen?
A price cut in the US won't help - so many sales and discounts on Apple this holiday season. The US was not the main impact it seems.
A year ago I moved from an iPhone 7 to Android. This year (actually late 2018) I looked at all the options going into 2019. iPhone XS Max, Razer 2, Note 9, Pixel 3, Mate 20 Pro ... Cost vs quality vs functionality. My choice was a Mate 20 Pro - didn't buy it due to lack of warranty availability in the US. The iPhone just doesn't cut it any more.
I have had nothing but issues with my IPP 12.9 G2 - on my fourth one. All quality issues. Looked at the new models. I looked once again at cost vs quality vs functionality. Found out I would need a new Pencil, new ASK, ... at the issues, at the benefits. The iPad just doesn't cut it any more.
Apple needs to get back to its roots. Great quality / functionality for the money spent.
Note: these are my opinions.
A price cut in the US won't help - so many sales and discounts on Apple this holiday season. The US was not the main impact it seems.
A year ago I moved from an iPhone 7 to Android. This year (actually late 2018) I looked at all the options going into 2019. iPhone XS Max, Razer 2, Note 9, Pixel 3, Mate 20 Pro ... Cost vs quality vs functionality. My choice was a Mate 20 Pro - didn't buy it due to lack of warranty availability in the US. The iPhone just doesn't cut it any more.
I have had nothing but issues with my IPP 12.9 G2 - on my fourth one. All quality issues. Looked at the new models. I looked once again at cost vs quality vs functionality. Found out I would need a new Pencil, new ASK, ... at the issues, at the benefits. The iPad just doesn't cut it any more.
Apple needs to get back to its roots. Great quality / functionality for the money spent.
Note: these are my opinions.
Agreed
I still love my max and my series 4 apple watch. The watch is so good with what it gives you it's made it impossible for me not to have an apple watch which means staying with iphones going forward.
The ecosystem still works so well.
Nobody is discounting the historical success Apple had going into 2018. What they're concerned about is exactly what you listed above.
Apple screwed up on pricing this year. (in addition to a few other items).
What will matter is not what has already happened, but if Apple learns and adjusts, or do they double down on their current direction.
think they have no choice but to learn and reduce prices if they want to sell millions and millions.
You and I have come to that conclusion. Has the CFO/CEO who make up these decisions? if not what conclusions have they made?
There was evidence starting in 2017 that the price increasing was going to lead to lower volumes. The Mac lineup already saw that affect in 2018. 2017 saw prices accross the Mac lineup increase. 2018 saw sales volumes the lowest they've been since 2010.
So Apple doubled down by increasing prices everywhere else.
I'm not sure what they expected. All I feel like I see from tim Cook is moves for maximization of immediate short term profit. Not long term strategic planning by growing the user base
Feels like they wanted to to push the customers and see how far they would go before not paying the prices
If we see no price reduction for the 2019 iPhones then I don’t know what to think going forward