Tim Cook to Address Q1 Earnings Concerns at All-Hands Meeting With Apple Staff

[09872738]

Apple still is in a good position, coz people like its products (as compared to MS Windows, for example).
How about:

Macbook / Pros with user upgradeable RAM / SSDs?

Real entry level desktop (Mac mini starting at, say, 600? Reasonable upgrades?)

Entry level notebook, think "iBook" NT? 13" Full HD, bright display? 256 m.s nvme SSD? Starting at, say, 700?

What about the Mac Pro? If anything, just upgrade the cheesegrater for god's sake.

 

[poppy10]

​

Writing for Bloomberg, Gurman claims that stagnating smartphone sales mean Apple needs to look beyond the iPhone as its core product, but that the company shouldn't rely on its AirPods or Apple Watch lines because they're exclusively tied to iPhone use.

Missed a trick here. Apple watch could have been the new breakout product if it hadn't been restricted to iphone users. The android wearable market is basically dead and ripe for taking over.

 

[VulchR]

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.

Agree on everything except your sixth point. What should Cook and Apple do? Fight for social injustice?

 

[sir1963nz]

I can appreciate your personal circumstances and if I were in your position may also follow a similar path, however in the scheme of things your usecase scenario, albeit of no lesser relevance or importance than anyone else’s, is unfortunately a minority market. And market forces tend to dictate product releases.

Think of it like pruning a tree, if you keep on chopping, eventually the whole tree is gone.

 

[SBlue1]

The products don't have good value currently. I don't want cheap Macs or iPhones. I would pay for good value. So either make the products cheaper or make them better.

For example I get free phones from my company every other year. I get to choose anything I want up to 500 Euros, everything that costs more I pay the difference. 2017 I bought my iPhone 7 and payed 300 Euros cause by that time the phones were sold for 800 if I recall correctly. The iPhone 7 is a great phone although I miss the headphone jack and its a major inconvenience. So actually I could have used it longer but since I would lose the 500 Euros for a new phone I bought it again last fall for just 100 Euros. It is being sold by Apple for just 600 so that is a good value. The prices of the iPhone Xs and Xr are just out of touch with reality. What are they at Apple thinking?? No way I am paying 1200 Euros for a phone!

Apple needs to get out of their bubble and check out what other high quality phones cost.

 

[JosephAW]

Meanwhile I went to purchase a printer from the Apple Store app today on my iOS 10 device and it now says all 32 bit devices can no longer make purchases from their store app without buying a new device first or to now use their website to make purchases.

 

[triton100]

Think of it like pruning a tree, if you keep on chopping, eventually the whole tree is gone.

Sometimes you prune a tree allowing new growth

 

[lali]

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.

Two things come to mind if we look at it from their point of view:

1) Meet the $999 price point for the XS with adequate margins must have required the 64gb. Could have done 128gb but lesser margins with price point of $999

2) If they must keep 64gb it is indisputable that to add a fourth storage option (128gb) multiplied by the 8 potential combinations (XS, XS Max for multiple markets with specific product codes) and x3 colors is a big decision in terms of supply chain and inventory

But I like the 64/128 pricing gap of the XR.

iPhone XR:
64gb/128gb/256gb: 0$ / $50 / $150

iPhone XS:
64gb/256gb/512gb: 0$/ $150 / $350

Happy new year everybody!

Lali

 

[Nitrokev2]

I really hope they aren't planning on releasing the Mac Pro in the next month or so, because the price of this will probably start at $6000 and it will just reinforce how overpriced everything is becoming

 

[44267547]

The problem is Apple’s version of innovation anymore is nothing more then to make it smaller and lighter. Their products don’t really do anything very new and exciting anymore.

That’s not the problem at all, Apples terms of Innovation with the products has excelled with the Apple Watch, AirPods, Face ID with the iPhone, etc. The point you’re missing, is Apples prices are not reflective of the consumer society what they’re willing to spend for a smart phone. Apple seems to be on the level, if not more than some of the competitors in terms of Innovation.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

My thoughts exactly cook is blaming everything on other things but the prices of the products is what is hurting them I’d like to get a new Mac mini but I can build the same machine for about 500 if the would take it to about 600 drop the price to close to computing they would see a flood of money

He comes close to saying the price is too much by blaming a strong dollar. In other words the prices if not out of line in the USA are way out of line in much of the world. But obviously he couldn't find the courage to adjust the price in places where the phone is outrageously expensive.

 

[sir1963nz]

Sometimes you prune a tree allowing new growth

Yep, but you don't prune and just hope for new growth, there needs to be good reason otherwise you are just lopping off branches.

I watched a company do this, they got rid of all the stuff that did not make enough profit, so the customer who needed it had to shop elsewhere, and while they were there they started buying a larger and larger percentage of their stuff at the new store until eventually they were no longer customers at the old store.

That old store closed up within 18 months, and it had been around for close on 100 years.

 

[ryanwarsaw]

does the dollar statement mean he thinks because pricing of all the products is one reason sales are bad?
Funny thing he mentioned because of all the lawsuits with the battery issues and people thinking they're phones where slowing down(and their battery software update) that less people are upgrading now.
Thats one thing that I didn't take to nicely to. A company that could of came forward and said phones where shutting off early and slowing down because the battery is going bad. But NOOOO they didnt come out with anything for years because people thought their phones just started aging and going bad.
They really need to start thinking about the customers first and catering to them. Its one thing they have lost. Not milking people for all they are worth.

That's exactly what it means.

 

[BuddyTronic]

I think it is incorrect to say “AirPods are dependent on iPhone”. AirPods work on Mac and many other Bluetooth things
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That's exactly what it means.

But the “bad” pricing has produced record setting revenue and earnings nearly every quarter, so it’s good business even if it is starting to get the customers chattering about it
[doublepost=1546558078][/doublepost]

He comes close to saying the price is too much by blaming a strong dollar. In other words the prices if not out of line in the USA are way out of line in much of the world. But obviously he couldn't find the courage to adjust the price in places where the phone is outrageously expensive.

Yah, but the shareholders would complain if profit margins dropped even a tenth of a percent probably. Money makes the next iPhones better and better. Without money, it’s harder to make the next model better.

But yeah, I have never seen so much complaining about pricing before. Maybe Apple will do something for everyone. Even if it doesn’t make sense, just to appease the complainers who care more about price than anything else - including function and features!

 

[neliason]

It’s good for Apple in particular.

Look at the cash just sitting there at Apple.

Look at the low interest rates over the last decade.

Look at the massive profits every year.

Look at their confidence in their own companies future!

How many years to double up when you have double digit growth rate? (Years = 77/%growth is the answer) Services revenues will be doubled from 2016 to 2020! Wow! Services must be growing faster than 15% per year. It is! Look at the scale of what Apple reports “services” to be - how many $Billions? It’s huge in of itself! It’s no wonder Apple has confidence In Their own stock isn’t it? They are a publicly traded company with responsibilities to shareholders. That is #1.

Should they take a chance and buy Tesla?

Netflix? Chipotle Grill? Lol. Look at the profits and looks at the earnings per share of Tesla or Facebook. Look at the Earnings Per Share of AAPL! Compare the stock price to earnings per share. P/E ratio.


Apple could/should Quadruple R&D? Yes maybe, but it will bite into the bottom line until the next hit product comes, and it’s not so easy to get return By throwing more money at R&D - probably they should know what they need to spend it on. This is a big company already! Inefficiency is a distinct possibility if you quadruple R&D. Look at all the Google half bakeries - super geniuses for sure, but it’s a country club not a money maker.

Triple the dividends? Yes, this is a good reward for the shareholders too. It does cause immediate taxes though

By reducing the number of shares outstanding, there are less dividends to pay out. I know some people will say it’s the cat eating it’s own tail, but they forget about the big picture. Apple is buying its own stock because it’s the best stock on the stock market! Lol. True.

Make sure when you look at Apple financial statements you are aware of the scale of things. Don’t mix up millions with billions. Make sure you realize they just announced $84 Billion for the last quarter! NOT a full year . Just that quarter!

Their product is good right? Ecosystem is huge too! It’s all huge!


Maybe I’m not that good at explaining all aspects - but hopefully this opens your viewpoints on why it is very good for Apple in particular to buy the best stock. Their own self

Extrapolate the buyback to 100%. How many years would it take for Apple to buy all shares at this current price? Of course the price changes and if they take out 20% of shares every couple years then the shares themselves increase in price due to supply and demand. But does anyone not believe that huge Apple revenues are here to stay? It’s not like this 7% Revenue shortfall is doomsday. Cripes they have done amazingly well predicting guidance for a long time. 7% less is not the same as the sky falling. It’s still a ridiculous $84 Billion.

Warren Buffet want the whole company. Why?

I think it’s because of the fundamentals. As a small biz owner you’d be happy to make a 10% return yearly for the life of your business. More than 10 is terrific. Just imagine the worlds largest company doing that? No point to run my business anymore. Just liquidate and put all the cash into AAPL. Apple is doing the same.

Thank you for detailed response. I think I see your argument and there is some merit to it in that Apple does sit on a heckuva lot of cash. Of course they could also raise the dividend and return that cash to investors. Stock buy backs ultimately do the same thing in so far as they raise the share price.

 

[LizKat]

Think of it like pruning a tree, if you keep on chopping, eventually the whole tree is gone.

Hah, well maybe Apple is more modeled along the lines of the rogue maple tree outside my kitchen. I must have "trimmed" that thing literally to the ground at least four times now but it seems to figure that eventually I'll realize it was meant to be there and so rises up yet again with new branches and leaves.

Apple trims in accordance with their own designs and plans going forward, which we don't know about while they're on the drawing board, or else some of us might have been complaining (or celebrating) years ahead of time about assorted ports taking a hike.

Whatever Apple does to minimize software maintenance requirements and option-sprawl on supported hardware product lines can help keep the company able to offer OS and iOS upgrades and bundled applications free of charge.

The long tail of hardware support offered by Apple's concurrent support of multiple OS and iOS versions does seem pretty generous to me: it takes extra work to produce security upgrades for them, and to make newer software features available whenever possible for older hardware. Plenty of customers including myself may use a previous iPhone for quite awhile as a WiFi-only device after upgrading to a newer phone, or hand the thing off to a family member for use as a phone on a separate line, but only because the iOS on the older device is still signed.

It's part of what keeps people in the Apple fold in between investing in new gear, knowing that as it ages out, it does have good direct support.

And for another example, even though the current iOS level is 12, one can use an iPod touch still running iOS 10.3 as a trusted device for purposes of supporting two-factor authentication. This even though the iPod touch model may not be able to avail itself of all the bells and whistles of the latest iOS. That may well prove more convenient than say having to fall back on some trusted phone number to get a verification code.

In sum I have my own laundry list for Apple in both hardware and software categories, but still find the ecosystem overall well supported and enticing.

If I were not trying to save up more rapidly for an auto-start power generator for my home (recently re-motivated on that by a six-hour power outage on a cold night) then I might be looking to sink a little spare dough into a few more shares of Apple while it's not so pricey. On the other hand my laptop is getting a bit long in the tooth so I'm drawn to the Apple refurb section now and then, even though my mid-2012 has done very well so far after an upgrade to Yosemite.

Guess I'd rather shop for the laptop than for more shares, at least for now.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Thank you for detailed response. I think I see your argument and there is some merit to it in that Apple does sit on a heckuva lot of cash. Of course they could also raise the dividend and return that cash to investors. Stock buy backs ultimately do the same thing in so far as they raise the share price.

Dividend tax rate vs capital gains tax rate. Also you have a choice when to sell. Dividends get taxed immediately.

Good management for your humungous pile of apple shares might have been to get margin account cash advances in a corporate holdings company you are president of. Never sell the shares, just borrow against their value. Interest can be deducted too in many countries. Eventually you gotta pay the taxes, but you do that way way down the road. Capitalism and finance powers these moves on all sides. Tim Cook is thinking about the shareholders as much as the hippies.

Apple is a bit of a special case with these monstrous world record revenues. Whoops. I mean world record minus 7% I guess. They Did miss! But so what really

 

[neliason]

Agree on everything except your sixth point. What should Cook and Apple do? Fight for social injustice?

If they really wanted to be countercultural then yes.

My point was that some of the specific programs, policies and statements may be promoting positions that some potential or current customers don’t hold and are even strongly against. Whenever you mix in politics you risk alienating people. Some of the problem, as I see it, may be that Tim Cook has been much more vocal. Promoting certain positions might be less of a problem if this was done more quietly.

 

[Williesleg]

So Tim Cook is like the inverse Elon Musk? Maybe the SEC should investigate...

 

[mtneer]

It's not just the pricing.

I mean, the pricing is stupid insanely high, but it's also the products. Everything Apple currently makes is compromised.

The Mac "Pro" is a joke. Five years old, it's still priced starting at $2999, the same price the same hardware had five years ago. And it was never a Pro machine, the 2012 REAL Mac Pro is STILL a better machine. I hope the new "modular" Mac Pro they're talking about actually has pro features, like, say, SLOTS. Lots of drive bays would be great too, I'd be fine with NVMe SSD bays, but non-standard is non-acceptable in a professional machine.

The MacBook "Pro" is stupidly thin and stupidly overpriced. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro with 4TB internal storage and 16GB RAM. That would cost me $5799 in a new machine, and I have to buy it with the machine, because Apple stupidly soldered the __ing storage (or maybe an SMD rework station, no idea if bigger chips will work yet). Now, I have two spinny platter drives installed, one is a hybrid drive, but let's say I wanted all SSD. I can get a 4TB drive for... huh, $697 on Amazon right now. I could have 8TB for less than what Apple charges for the 4TB upgrade, or 4TB and I could put my internal optical drive back for under a thousand dollars. If Apple had put a couple NVMe slots in a slightly thicker machine - 2TB NVMe drives are under $500. And while Apple finally released laptops with 32GB RAM, it's again stupidly soldered and stupid expensive (more than double the price of a couple 16GB 19200 SODIMMs), so no upgrades without a SMD rework station.

The last time I had a thousand dollar phone, it was the '80s, cell phones were new, and it was a bag phone. I'm NEVER paying that much for a phone again. But I don't even want Apple's new phones, Face ID is stupid, no home button is stupid, and no headphone jack is stupid. I'm pretty happy with my 6+, though I might replace it with a 6s+ just to get a bit more speed, it's occasionally a bit slow. I don't know what I'll do after that, I HATE Android phones.

Looks like you are well on your way to Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance and... "Welcome to Android"

 

[JosephAW]

His solution: everyone should upgrade.
[doublepost=1546570486][/doublepost]Apple is their own worst enemy. Just stop releasing iOS version for previous devices in order to force people to upgrade.
Or return to that original idea that was floated where iOS would show an ad before each call or text paying the way for free iOS devices.

 

[tubomac]

Well, well. When iPhone throttling gate started, Tim said it is not "planned obsolescence". Now that people joined the battery replacement program the same guy says that he is selling fewer iPhones because of the above program. Hey Tim are you lying or what?

 

[mossy]

considering we are entering a recession

Please explain this to me? What are the actual indicators you are referencing? Is there or has there been a DROP in US GDP over the past few months? Education is a life long process. Don't stop. Best to not let someone else do the thinking for you. Research is important. Avoid 'Echo Chambers' - the horrible technique use by news wire services and news organisations.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Well, well. When iPhone throttling gate started, Tim said it is not "planned obsolescence". Now that people joined the battery replacement program the same guy says that he is selling fewer iPhones because of the above program. Hey Tim are you lying or what?

Well no. In fact that $29.00 battery replacement program was a great thing to do for customers, and maybe it did cause a lot of people to continue using their old iPhones. If the battery was closer to $100 probably a lot more people would upgrade sooner, but the good deed Apple did for its customers with this battery program probably will earn a lot of loyal iPhone customers and in the long run it’s good for Apple and good for everyone. Short term though, it might have affected sales numbers negatively but it was a great customer relations thing.

 

[kvyoung]

For those that think high prices are not the issue, here is a simple comparison of Canadian pricing for a MacBook Pro 13" with i7 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD - $3,749 before tax vs a Dell XPS 13 with i7 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD - $1,899.99 before tax. Many of us are prepared to pay a premium for Apple's quality and ecosystem but double the price for essentially the same hardware? I love my Apple devices (MacBook 12, MBP, iPad Pro, Watch, iPhone X) but when my Mac's finally die I will not be replacing them for double the price of the competition.