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Apple may be greedy but they can’t be accused of bungling long term strategy. While OpenAI sells $2 bills for $1, Tim Cook was out there increasing service rev

by dangus 1y ago

Apple may be greedy but they can’t be accused of bungling long term strategy. While OpenAI sells $2 bills for $1, Tim Cook was out there increasing service revenue and profitability so that it was larger than Macs and iPads combined. Tim Cook presided over some incredibly lucrative product launches like AirPods, TV+, Apple Music, moved chip design in house which doubled Mac market share and has made the iPhone continually dominant, they’ll even drop third party 5G models soon. These are all incredibly shrewd long term strategy moves.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
Lucrative but not cool. There's no long term strategy if there's no new, category-defining, cool products. People will eventually sour on the same-old, same-old and expensive, fragile, unrepairable products. Excessive greed obliterates goodwill. You don't seem to understand sj placed cool first, while TC was the bean counter and continues to optimize this while jumping the shark. Current Apple has a deep, systemic lack of cool and lack of entrepreneurial leadership with good taste that will ultimately lose the crown.
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  Teen iPhone ownership is up to 88% (!) in the US. I generally agree with what you're saying, and unlike Cook I don't find it "hard to imagine" life without iPhones (an augmented reality future isn't that far out to consider), but they have a long runway. Gen Z and Gen Alpha define "cool", and they are committed to the ecosystem.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Except the little issue teens don't appear on the same rate as iPhones hit the store shelves.
- nunez 1y ago
  Misinformed take IMO. M-series chips are insanely cool (literally and figuratively) and have no competition even five years in. Same with the W-series SoCs on watches. Are there any third-party haptic vibration motors yet? Shoot, even their trackpads, which already stood alone, have gotten _better_ over the years. Nobody else will have their own vertically-integrated modem out in production. This will make budget iPhones (maybe all iPhones) so much cheaper once they show Qualcomm the door. That's before the advances they've made in software, like their camera processing pipeline (which only gets better; their video stack still has no equal) and differential privacy. Oh, yeah, and the Vision Pro, which basically everyone who has tried it has said that it is the most advanced technology they've ever used. Almost all of this happened under Cook's tenure. Apple is still in the business of building insanely cool shit.
  - SturgeonsLaw 1y ago
    Vertically-integrated modems are not cool. I mean, they are to me and likely other geeks, but to the general public? Their eyes would glaze over. Cool is the kind of thing people envy. It's the kind of product that gets namedropped in a music video.
    - MrDarcy 1y ago
      You’re not thinking two or three orders out. It’s not about the modem, it’s about reducing the resource allocation of a boring component to make space for increasing the resources of other exciting components, taking the whole into account. iPhone will get some new exciting feature and everyone will wonder how they managed to do it at the price point nobody else can.
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Name some "new exciting features" iPhones gained in the last 5 years that made their way into music videos like the iPod did
        MrDarcy 1y ago
        I’m excited to shoot my own music videos with my iPhone now. Last weekend my grade school friend visited and we took a boat out on Puget Sound. We followed two orca whales for 45 minutes and I shot multiple videos of them in 4k 60fps. They look beautiful and played seamlessly on my TV without any crappy ads. I shared them with our two families easily through airdrop and later through iCloud when we got back to land. That evening my son was dancing and signing he favorite songs with my friend’s son so I shot a “music video” of them and shared it again. Both these experiences were exciting to me. It felt insane to do such things with a pocket computer Apple hasn’t screwed up in nearly 20 years. Like I said, it’s the whole product experience that’s the point. Apple has earned enough of my trust to believe one will come and even if not, I’m satisfied with what I have today and will have tomorrow.
        1y ago
- pcdoodle 1y ago
  I'm on a M4 with nano texture display. It's IMO the pinnacle of what a computer should be. I hate apple and their anti repair practices but wanted to chime in about how good the hardware has become. If they push forward with local AI that can be somewhat trusted, it would be a huge win.
  - hnburnsy 1y ago
    > I'm on a M4 with nano texture display. It's IMO the pinnacle of what a computer should be. I hate apple and their anti repair practices but wanted to chime in about how good the hardware has become. > > If they push forward with local AI that can be somewhat trusted, it would be a huge win. How is that touch screen?
- 95014_refugee 1y ago
  “sj placed cool first” … in what universe? Steve placed “Steve likes it” first. Many of the things he liked were terrible. Cool things happen(ed) at Apple in spite of executive leadership, not because of it. The better E-team players know to stand back and not get in the way.
- dangus 1y ago
  What I’m saying is that these are all garbage opinions backed by nothing. “Cool” is “just your opinion, man.” They layperson thinks of Apple quite positively. Nobody cares what us nerds here think is cool. The bazillion people who happily bought AirPods don’t care that a tiny group of nerds are still mad that Apple took away their dork expansion slot and dweeb ports. Apple is more trusted than any other tech company with privacy in consumer surveys. Apple is the smartphone company with the highest customer satisfaction ratings (over 80%). Consumer reports ranks Apple first in computer support customer service. These are quantitative measures. Apple very clearly has command of their messaging and there really aren’t any cracks in their strategy.

by dangus 1y ago

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Lucrative but not cool. There's no long term strategy if there's no new, category-defining, cool products. People will eventually sour on the same-old, same-old and expensive, fragile, unrepairable products. Excessive greed obliterates goodwill. You don't seem to understand sj placed cool first, while TC was the bean counter and continues to optimize this while jumping the shark. Current Apple has a deep, systemic lack of cool and lack of entrepreneurial leadership with good taste that will ultimately lose the crown.

Fade_Dance 1y ago
Teen iPhone ownership is up to 88% (!) in the US. I generally agree with what you're saying, and unlike Cook I don't find it "hard to imagine" life without iPhones (an augmented reality future isn't that far out to consider), but they have a long runway. Gen Z and Gen Alpha define "cool", and they are committed to the ecosystem.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Except the little issue teens don't appear on the same rate as iPhones hit the store shelves.
nunez 1y ago
Misinformed take IMO. M-series chips are insanely cool (literally and figuratively) and have no competition even five years in. Same with the W-series SoCs on watches. Are there any third-party haptic vibration motors yet? Shoot, even their trackpads, which already stood alone, have gotten _better_ over the years. Nobody else will have their own vertically-integrated modem out in production. This will make budget iPhones (maybe all iPhones) so much cheaper once they show Qualcomm the door. That's before the advances they've made in software, like their camera processing pipeline (which only gets better; their video stack still has no equal) and differential privacy. Oh, yeah, and the Vision Pro, which basically everyone who has tried it has said that it is the most advanced technology they've ever used. Almost all of this happened under Cook's tenure. Apple is still in the business of building insanely cool shit.
- SturgeonsLaw 1y ago
  Vertically-integrated modems are not cool. I mean, they are to me and likely other geeks, but to the general public? Their eyes would glaze over. Cool is the kind of thing people envy. It's the kind of product that gets namedropped in a music video.
  - MrDarcy 1y ago
    You’re not thinking two or three orders out. It’s not about the modem, it’s about reducing the resource allocation of a boring component to make space for increasing the resources of other exciting components, taking the whole into account. iPhone will get some new exciting feature and everyone will wonder how they managed to do it at the price point nobody else can.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      Name some "new exciting features" iPhones gained in the last 5 years that made their way into music videos like the iPod did
      - MrDarcy 1y ago
        I’m excited to shoot my own music videos with my iPhone now. Last weekend my grade school friend visited and we took a boat out on Puget Sound. We followed two orca whales for 45 minutes and I shot multiple videos of them in 4k 60fps. They look beautiful and played seamlessly on my TV without any crappy ads. I shared them with our two families easily through airdrop and later through iCloud when we got back to land. That evening my son was dancing and signing he favorite songs with my friend’s son so I shot a “music video” of them and shared it again. Both these experiences were exciting to me. It felt insane to do such things with a pocket computer Apple hasn’t screwed up in nearly 20 years. Like I said, it’s the whole product experience that’s the point. Apple has earned enough of my trust to believe one will come and even if not, I’m satisfied with what I have today and will have tomorrow.
        1y ago
pcdoodle 1y ago
I'm on a M4 with nano texture display. It's IMO the pinnacle of what a computer should be. I hate apple and their anti repair practices but wanted to chime in about how good the hardware has become. If they push forward with local AI that can be somewhat trusted, it would be a huge win.
- hnburnsy 1y ago
  > I'm on a M4 with nano texture display. It's IMO the pinnacle of what a computer should be. I hate apple and their anti repair practices but wanted to chime in about how good the hardware has become. > > If they push forward with local AI that can be somewhat trusted, it would be a huge win. How is that touch screen?
95014_refugee 1y ago
“sj placed cool first” … in what universe? Steve placed “Steve likes it” first. Many of the things he liked were terrible. Cool things happen(ed) at Apple in spite of executive leadership, not because of it. The better E-team players know to stand back and not get in the way.
dangus 1y ago
What I’m saying is that these are all garbage opinions backed by nothing. “Cool” is “just your opinion, man.” They layperson thinks of Apple quite positively. Nobody cares what us nerds here think is cool. The bazillion people who happily bought AirPods don’t care that a tiny group of nerds are still mad that Apple took away their dork expansion slot and dweeb ports. Apple is more trusted than any other tech company with privacy in consumer surveys. Apple is the smartphone company with the highest customer satisfaction ratings (over 80%). Consumer reports ranks Apple first in computer support customer service. These are quantitative measures. Apple very clearly has command of their messaging and there really aren’t any cracks in their strategy.