The Board Of Directors has structured Tim Cook's pay so his pay is dependent on shipping specific amounts of iPhones. This would be a good plan if the goal was

The Board Of Directors has structured Tim Cook's pay so his pay is dependent on shipping specific amounts of iPhones. This would be a good plan if the goal was to boost the stock price for the few years that iPhone seems innovative, compared to anything that Samsung can come up with. This strategy did work for several years, look at 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016. But the same strategy amounts to a plan for allowing the company to collapse in the long-term. Where are the new products? Where are the new ideas? Some people point to the vast cash reserve that Apple has and they view this as a source of strength: "Apple must be doing something right to have that much cash on hand!" But a large pile of cash can also be read as a weakness; in particular, it can be seen as a lack of ideas. For comparison, consider the last time Apple had super fat margins and a product that was light-years ahead of the competition: the 1980s. Apple did not pile up cash at that time, because it was still investing in the future. Profits were reinvested in new products. The leadership could see where the future was going, and they chased after it aggressively. The difference between then and now is obvious. Apple has a huge amount of cash, but they have no ideas about how to invest it. Tim Cook is a good operations guy, he has some talent for optimizing the supply lines between China and the West. But he has no ideas. And nowadays, given the growing number of problems, I think we have to wonder if he fully deserves his reputation for being a good operations guy.