poksi

prox said:

ibill said:

Do you have a source for that claim, or are you just making stuff up?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3456654/Apple-refusing-unlock-San-Bernardino-terrorist-s-phone-ask-did-seemingly-let-China-secret-data-security-checks-year.html I think if you do a Google Search plenty more articles can be found.

DailyBollocks is your source ???  Aaaahahahahahahahahahhahahaha...

"...One of Cook's main hires at Apple was retailer Angela Ahrendts in 2014..."   I'd rather leave this out from the list of achievements....

makeintosh said:

thewhitefalcon said:

Bill's been a statist for quite some time, and he's nowhere near the 'nice guy' he's portrayed to be. 

Right...so if Bill disagrees with Apple, he's obviously a "statist" and not "nice guy he's portrayed to be". Thoughtful comment. Got any more gems.

Unfortunately, Bill is not a statist. This is also a clue, why he is not 'nice guy'. It's hardly a surprise he stood up for government. He was told to do so. He's 'government man' for at least 30 year, brut forcing public finances all over the world with his bulk licensing model and undermine every attempt of every federal and local government to turn to any other solution. But this is goes only by quid pro quo. By being 'government man' he's also a 'corporation's man' for for some 2 decades and if you believe he's just fighting malaria, go and educate yourself what are large 'charity' foundations really used for. Find out a bit about Monstanto, perhaps also about Blackwater, find out how GMO crops follows the trail of 'charity' foundations around poor and war battled (God know where the war came from, a? countries and you will understand, why he is not a good guy and why does this have nothing to do with his relation to Apple. Go and educate yourself, it's easy, if you try.

One word: pathetic...

TTIP is dicatorship of corporations that make their own laws and get compensated by tax payers money if they don't make enough profit, where 'enough' is defined by themselves, It's true form of fascism. Purest.

The only problem with Watch is that vast majority of apps for mass market have very poor Watch versions. Some on pathetic level. And everything is very slow... Apple hasn't figured out itself yet, how to change that, so Watch is used not much more than the wrist bands are. Sorry to admit that....

applesauce007 said:

rogifan_old said:

I figured this was going to happen when Google shot up after Facebook announced earnings. Wall Street loves so-called services companies right now, especially ones with little exposure to China.   Not sure there's much Apple can do about that. I hope Apple management doesn't overreact and start doing dumb things (like buying Time Warner) just to try and change the Wall Street narrative on the company.

Let's see, Google is trading at about 33 times its earnings while Apple is trading at about 10 times its earnings.
If Apple could trade at just 20 times its earnings, it would be worth over a Trillion dollars, let alone 33 times.

How can Apple Achieve this? 
Apple needs to offer more services that earns lots of money to offset the iPhone dependency.  (Like ApplePay, AppleTV, AppleMusic, AppleMaps etc...)  This can help Apple beat estimates more reliably in difficult markets and trade at a higher multiple.

From this point of view, it is actually a great idea for Apple to buy Time Warner and prop up the AppleTV service globally.
For example a full blown, first class AppleTV "service" offering News, TV Shows, Movies, Video Conferencing, Market Data to individuals and businesses would be a much bigger money maker than iTunes and would help sell a lot more iOS devices including AppleTV hardware devices.

They are simply not good at services yet they want to do everything by themselves. If they buy something, then they buy something small, so it can be easily swallowed and doesn't make and noticeable impact on company in general. They don't want that whether good or bad. It is frustrating to see Apple Music and iTunes shite compared to Spotify and other competitors knowing that iTunes is there for almost decade and half... Instead of Apple as pioneer serves an example, it is rather opposite.. Look at the Apple TV channels.... They are adding them at the crawling speed and very limited to certain markets, yet even very small companies are easily outperforming them in the field... Even local cable providers...
Still after soooo many years they didn't bother to support trial software and returns option on Appstore...
The only service that works well, where it works, that it, is Apple Pay. Unfortunately, they are so focused on stripe card infested US market, that they waste huge european opportunity. Possibly elsewhere, too. While there's very strong support from banks right from the start here in UK, they are doing ZERO on both attracting new retailers and customers. 

That is frustrating and not the bloody stock. Still, it seems that stock definitively picks quite a lot of what I wrote about and looking at how Apple is handling these things I wouldn't valuate it more than the market myself.

anantksundaram said:

poksi said:

Have you perhaps at any point considered that there's nothing else to talk about apart from "dollar vs. yuan" and stuff? 

I have, and you're utterly wrong. 

Apple has incredible talent, incredible design and product development skills, incredible resources, and a heritage of quality, ballsiness and  management skills developed in spades by SJ over a decade and a half. They have had a growth path that is beyond compare, and every one of their current senior managers (except Ahrendts) has been a part of that story and has witnessed that first hand. They have the ability to manage costs -- thanks to Tim Cook -- that few others, in this industry or any other, can match. They have opportunities in enterprise, health, education, automobiles, the living room, home automation, services, payments, India, etc (I am sure I am missing a few) that few companies can dream of accessing. 

What they lack is the ability to communicate their vision to the market under the current crew. And they have a Board that is populated with a bunch of mediocre has-beens. 

I wish I would be wrong, but what you are talking about are simply already recognised relatively distributed opportunities where Apple simply competes with many others. There's no big innovation here and honestly Apple is munching for ages in some of these areas. Like living room for one. Why would these deserve P/E more than 10?

anantksundaram said:

People can spin it any way they want, but this is just not good news. The market currently has absolutely no confidence in Apple's ability to generate value from future growth opportunities. And, we can criticize or chuckle at Google all we want (I often get in on it too), but they have a narrative that the market is buying in droves. As it currently does with Facebook and Microsoft as well.

Kudos to them.

Apple truly can and must do better on conveying some sense of who or what it wants to be 2, 5, 10 years out. This is not rocket science. Every major company does it in some form or the other. That's a huge part of what CEOs are paid to do. It involves much more than talking about "industrial era taxes", "dollar versus yuan", etc.

I realize a lot of people here do not own AAPL and therefore couldn't care less, but for those of us who have been very long-term shareholders of the company, this news hurts. There is simply no need for such underachievement. It's bewildering.

(And, please spare me the vacuous stuff about "Wall Street casino" and such; those are simply sound bites).

Have you perhaps at any point considered that there's nothing else to talk about apart from "dollar vs. yuan" and stuff? Numbers talk and services are still niche part of Apple's business without any clarity for the future growth. Cook can't really use Eddy Cue's stunts in this department to 'change the narrative' and let's be honest, Apple was lucky to hit the market with 3 new product categories within the same decade. It won't happen again in our lifetime. Now it is treated as any other hardware company with services, because market has matured and saturated in new categories where Apple pumped all its growth from.. On the other hand market believes Google is capable of rising the revenues despite this facts even in the future. This time I agree with them and I'm pretty much sure there won't be any Apple car or any other similar nonsense in the future. For any new product category you simply need another company, different mindset. This is as far as this one goes. I'm sorry about that, too.