Apple has become a the best smartphone & apps company on the planet. Giving its shareholders and relevant customers and developers great products, services, revenue and shareholder's value. They and Samsung are the only smartphone companies on the planet that make significant profit off their products. All other players are making do with razor thin margins. It's the predominant player in the tablet market. They have split the market into the consumer (iPad) and professional (iPad Pro). All other tablets are "meh" by comparison. Which brings us to the Mac... they have largely placed it in the back burner. Desktops are all but forgotten except for the iMac. Mac mini was released in 2014 & Mac Pro in 2013. The iMac Pro was introduced to please Pros and to see if it's adequate enough for their uses. I think the Mac mini hasnt changed as the demand is good enough to maintain the 2014 model but does not justify an updated redesign. Prices of 2014 parts have dropped down so much that margins has improved over time. Bhphotovideo has the $499 Mac mini for $399. This proves that Apple has a more than 20% margin if you buy it direct from Apple.com. I would hazard a guess that they're making as much as 50% margin on it if bought from Apple.com. At $399 makes the 2014 Mac mini Core i5 (4th Gen) very competitive vs SFF PCs (Small Form Factor) & NUCs (Next Unit of Computing) with 5th Gen Intel Core i3 priced below $276. Although at that price you would need to add a 500GB 5400RPM spindle drive and 4GB of RAM making it hit $399 like the Mac mini. Notebooks, Macbook, MB Air & MB Pro, get as regular as an update as the iMac. In spite of the reliability issue so long as Apple owns up to it (I'm looking at you Huawei's Google Nexus 6P) and correct it in the next refresh then I dont see it as failing. Apple dropped the "Computer" in its name in January 2007 to become Apple Inc. This may explain why they aren't putting as much money into the Mac as before. As I see it they treat the Mac as the iPhone & iPad developer's platform and selling it for other uses as a side project for them. I do not blame them though. Sales of notebooks and especially desktops have stagnated for the last decade extending the 3 year upgrade cycle to up to 6 years.
it was Jobs' Apple that lured me into the ecosystem (iPad 2 and iPhone 4s), but most of my products were bought during Cook's reign. software quality has gone down for the last 2 or 3 iOS releases, innovation seemed to have peaked (although that's true with the entire smartphone industry, not just apple). the iPhone X for me, was the most exciting thing Apple came up with in the recent past. despite all that, i still choose to buy Apple products because everything just screams quality and integrates very well with each other.
Mm...numbers don’t lie. Tim Cook has grown Apple, Inc. tremendously since he took the job of CEO. From strenght to strenght. He has my vote of confidence. So does Warren Buffet, the most successful investor in history. Berkshire Hathaway is now the 3rd largest stockholder of Apple, Inc. (stake is worth usd 40 B). You can’t get a better endorsement than that.
for me, tim cook is doing a very good job with the company's bestseller products, the iphones and the ipads. but not so much on the mac, since they probably don't profit too much from those products. however, i would really like apple to improve their next releases for mac, hopefully they'll bring out something good this june, without the keyboard issues..
Innovation-wise, I think Tim Cook's Apple has already peaked. Unless they come up with another out-of-nowhere industry shaking innovation like the iPad, iPhone and iPad all were. Software-wise, they are really regressing. Too many bugs and errors on OSX and iOS (not to mention some of their crappy apps, like the disaster that was Apple Maps). iTunes, despite the redesigns, has only gotten worse with each iteration that a lot of people hardly use it anymore (thanks to OTA updates, wifi syncing and iCloud backups). Hardware-wise, I think there really isn't much more we can expect from them. Maybe they can think of another gadget/device that we still don't think or realize we need right now. But as of the moment, I think their innovation well might already be drying up... although I sure hope it isn't. How I wish Steve Jobs was still around...
All i can say is i wish it still is steve jobs at the helm specially with every ios updates. Software wise, apple is now backsliding
Mm....innovation is not dead at Apple under Tim Cook. The new iPhone X (Tim Cook’s iPhone, not Steve Job’s), AirPods (very successful), Apple Watch (much better than other smartwatches) and Homepod (needs more functionality to compete better) are prime examples of Apple innovation under Tim Cook’s tutelage or direction. In fact, Apple is spending much more in R&D than ever before. All four products are chockful of new tech that serves to inspire Androids to copy. What has the competition introduced that outdoes Apple in the innovation front? Useless curved screen? Oh....copy the notch and charge half price. Fingerprint sensor.....on the back of the phone.
We can't discount the momentum the fundamental product line Steve Jobs left Apple (iPad, iPhone, Mac) BUT I'm really satisfied with how things are handled by Tim Cook. Apple is still leaps ahead in terms of R&D as previously mentioned. Software-wise, yeah, they could use more help on that front. Hardwares like HomePod is a prime example of how Apple is still leading the pack in design and functionality. I'm still blown away by the sound output of my HomePod tbh. Apple Watch is also one of those quietly great things about Apple post Jobs (as well as AirPods).
Some of the new Techs added to iPhone X, wireless charging, face ID, and OLED are not really new. Heck wireless charging's been standard for highend phones for the past 3 years. As for the Apple Watch, it didn't really bring any new to the market.The Homepod released 4 years after Amazon Echo is being hailed as the dumbest smartspeaker. Don't get me wrong, I still feel that Apple offers the best ecosystem but I have not seen any product release post Steve Jobs that I can consider revolutionary or magical.
Tim Cook took over and we saw a bigger iPhone and smaller iPad. I think we can safely say the Apple Watch, Apple Music Homepod and were his projects. If I'm not mistaken... Powerbooks were designed by Sony and when Tim Cook joined Apple, he found a more profitable way of making them... But personally, I think he missed it when we talk about software. Saw this article earlier... Apple is selling hardware in a software world | Fast Company *** IMO, In an "era" where Google, Windows and Amazon are trying to put their own software in front of us. Apple is still selling us hardware. Software that can only be accessed using their own hardware.
Mm...a company that is as matured as Apple does not need to be revolutionary all the time in order to be successful or continue to be successful. And Apple does not have to be first to market in order to be successful or continue to be successful. But when it does, its products are market leaders. If Apple under Tim Cook has failed to innovate, why is it that people continue to buy Apple products even if the competition are priced much lower or deemed “more innovative’? When Steve Jobs retired in 2011, Apple was selling around 20 million iPhones per quarter. Under Tim Cook, it is anywhere from 50 million to 80 million iPhones per quarter. The perceived “lack of innovation” is just that. A perception. Between hard numbers and perception, I’ll take the hard numbers all the time. Why? Because the best proof of successful innovation is not perception but how well Apple sells its products. Tim Cook does not have to please Apple’s critics. He just has to please Apple customers.
How would you measure a CEO's performance? One way is by measuring market cap growth. Apple has grown around 2.6 times in market cap since the passing of Steven Jobs, where it was at the 350 mark shown below. Today (May 18, 2018) Apple's market cap is 910. So one could say that Tim Cook has done well. If you benchmark other tech companies, you'd see that in the same period Google has grown market cap 4 times and Amazon 7 times, so using that lens Apple has done well, but not was well as those two companies.
Hmm. I'm taking about innovation and not necessarily being market leaders. "A company that is as matured as Apple does not need to be revolutionary" - seems like they're just sitting on their laurels and not attempting to be more creative in developing products that's not a bigger version of an iPhone or a smaller version of an iPad. The Apple Watch, and the Airpods may have been market leaders but they were released after Moto the 360 and the Samsung IconX and really didn't bring anything new. There's no denying that Apple is still a Juggernaut in the Tech space and yes the numbers will prove it but I don't see them anymore as the same innovative company it was a decade ago.
Again... Nothing against Apple... But this post is about the guy who approves the products they sell... You buy an iPhone 8/X and you can't plug the cable that came with it to your Macbook/Pro The earphones that came with your phone cannot be used on the Macbook. The iPod Touch's earphones will need an adapter if you want to use it on an iPhone The USB hard disk/thumbdrive you're using on the Macbook Air Mac Mini cannot be used on the Macbook/Pro Your wireless charging pad will not charge Airpods (as of today), iPad etc!
Mm..market cap is just one metric. Have you looked at net profit, which is much more important in gauging the effectiveness of Tim Cook as CEO? Amazon is wildly overpriced. The fact of the matter is Apple is the most profitable tech company in the world, by a huge margin. Other metrics to consider is customer satisfaction, which Apple tops regularly. The question of this thread is how well Tim Cook is doing. By any objective and measurable metric, he is doing very, very well. Steve Jobs couldn’t have chosen a better successor to helm Apple.
I'm a late comer to Mac, but I have a few friends who swear that the Apple ecosystem is so much better than Windows. When I decided to upgrade my devices to the Apple ecosystem - I started seeing what they meant. However, this can also be achieved in a Windows setting - as long as you also have pure Microsoft products everything is sort of "connected" too. But Apple did theirs better and I think they marketed their stuff so well that it appealed to consumers. However, little did I expect that I would spend so much in dongles and even consider getting AppleCare! But these days, I think I have missed the part when the Mac and the iPhones were so much better than what we are getting these days. The competition has also leveled up, and in many ways introduced innovations years ahead than Apple (example: wireless chargers - Samsung was way ahead, touchscreen laptops - PCs are way ahead, face IDs - PCs and some flagship Android phones already have this before the iPhone X). Anyway, having a competition is good anyway.
Mm....I think Apple is where it was the day Steve Jobs left Apple: still way ahead of the competition. Android is as fragmented as ever and Microsoft....well, Microsoft left the smartphone race because it never gained traction although, to his credit, Nadella has steered Microsoft into services and cloud computing which are tremendously profitable. That is why Microsoft is 3 times bigger now than when Steve Ballmer retired. Not bad for an uncool/unhip company. If you look at Samsung, Apple’s nearest competitor, their product line is still a mess. Beyond their Note (including the exploding kind) and the Galaxy, what else is there? All you have is a motley collection of products that does not make any sense. Android phones and tablets, Windows PC and tablets and Chrome Books? Does anyone here use Samsung laptops? Sari sari store approach. Fragmented. Sure....Keep on “innovating” by being gimmicky while Apple is still making the biggest bucks in the business.
The Apple's-software-is-getting-worse argument is getting old. Worse, it is mostly coming from people who supposedly know how software development works. People have to remember that when software was developed years ago, they did it pretty much in the same process as how hardware was being developed – years and years of product development and then they "ship" it. Apple, with its obsession on perfection and its philosophical take on products, excelled at this. However, it took them time to get there. Like decades. One can say they've "cracked" it when they developed the candy colored iMacs in the late 90s or early 00s. For context, Apple started in the early 80s. And then software development adopted from a years and years of development with a big launch at the end model to a ship early (and crappy) and iterate often along the way model. That's just how it is today. Sure, most software today are bare and has bugs. But we have it on our hands earlier. That's just the consequence of today's software dev't agility. Apple is trying to balance maniacal perfection vs ship fast and often. And they, being a huge organization originally structured for the old model, are still adapting. You don't just steer a huge ship that easy. Also, Apple followers know they skew towards perfection versus ship early because that's just who they are. For me, I like that that's where they skew. I don't care so much about the bugs. I am a mere mortal and I have other things I worry about.
