enature

anantksundaram said:

jdnc123 said:

 iTunes sucks.  iCloud sucks.  They have more resources than any company that has ever walked the face of the planet and they can't get software/services working well or grow at all.

What an utterly idiotic post. 

 jdnc123 is a voice of reason here and understands deeper issues going on with AAPL. However, members like anantksundaram do a real disservice to this forum by their childish insults, who need to take your rose-colored glasses off and stop pretending they are true experts. Making a lot of posts (anantksundaram has over 16,000) does not turn quantity into quality.

kraytinprime said:

Google only makes $15 billion in profits a year and Apple makes $53 billion.  Even if Apple's profits tanked 75% they would still make more profit than Google.

If you understood that the stock price is determined not so much by actual profits, but by the rate of change of profits, perhaps, you'd understand why AAPL is a sell. If Apple profits tanked 75%, an unlikely scenario as it is, the stock would tank mightily.

thewhitefalcon said:

The analysts all seem reasonable here. Cook did well with the messaging overall, I think. 

Every time I read comments on this forum, no offense, but I keep being taken aback by the naïveté of many posters. They think Tim Cook's messaging can improve stock price or that analysts are not bullish enough. Yes, Cook can boost stock for a few weeks (as he did with his "messaging" about "positive China" in 2015). And an analyst's upgrade can help for a little bit, but all of this can't repair fundamental Apple weaknesses.

Cook is not a product guy, Cook is not a service guy. He does not understand what makes consumers tick. And analysts, most of the time, are behind the train, too afraid to point where AAPL actually is going, which is down. Safety in numbers. The only analyst who said AAPL goes to $60 got fired. And if anything, the guy is an optimist. 

Analysts hopes about iPhone 7 catapulting AAPL to $140 are befuddling. How can iPhone 7 be a hit, when what surrounds and supports it, and most importantly cloud services, suck under Cook's management?

Let me remind you how vitriolic many commenters were here when I insisted that Apple needs to produce iPhones will larger screen sizes back in 2013. Now when you look back, their comments seem very... naive. 

rogifan_old said:

enature said:

I don't know if you are valuation blind or what. I've been following this stock very closely for the last 11 years. It is clear as day, that AAPL profit growth can't support its current stock market. Please, do not refer to Apple's low P/E ratio or other backward statistics that essentially boils down to "look, Apple was great in the past, so it must be great in the future"

At the very heart of the ongoing demise of Apple is that its products are not that impressive relative to competition as they had been before. As Jobs said, Cook is not a product guy. Job's foresight is evident in the several misguided steps that Cook took in product development and personnel.
For example, take a look at Cook's promotion of Jony Ivy. The guy is a very good hardware designer but he is not a software guy. Ivy tries to perfect minute OS details like curvature or spacing of letters (San Francisco font anyone?), but fails to address the elephant in the room: Apple sucks, and sucks mightily, in the cloud! Without a strong cloud and everything that comes with it (effortless syncing, AI assistance, ability to move smoothly from one device to another), today's smartphone or computer company can't succeed. Apple Watch is another manifestation of Ivy's misguided drive for perfection. I could go on but am afraid Apple die hards would call me a troll (you probably would call me a troll anyway because you are so invested in Apple that it hurts to hear the painful truth).

In short, under Cook's wings Apple products are not so much above and beyond the competition to justify Apple being the most valuable company in the world. The profit growth will decline, low P/E be damned, and with the lower profit growth so will go AAPL price. Mark my words, the day is coming when Apple will be dethroned from its "the most valuable" title, as said as it might be.

I think you're quite confused as Jony Ive has nothing to do with Apple's cloud services nor does he run Apple's software engineering teams. Eddy Cue is responsible for running iCloud and Craig Federighi software engineering. But again, Apple stock is down for one reason: rumors of iPhone production cuts. We've already gone through this before while Tim Cook was CEO; in 2013 the sky was falling, Apple was Doomed™ and Apple investors were scared shitless over Samsung, the Next Big Thing™. I swear this is just a cycle Apple goes through and anytime there is even the slightest whiff of possible bad iPhone news the nervous nellies run away from the stock in a panic.

I did want to mention the disaster Eddy Cue is to Apple, who's claim to fame is now long outdated iTunes, but wanted to keep my post concise. As big a role as Eddy Cue has for Apple, Jony Ivy still looms large having the ultimate control of both Industrial Design and Human Interface parts of Apple. Now, can there be a successful Human Interface without a strong cloud? Gimme a break, you know it can't anymore.
Ultimately, I blame not Eddy or Jony for Apple's loss of profit growth, but Cook - the captain of the sinking ship.

josu said:

enature said:

Daniel Eran Dilger verbose posts supported by numerous charts give Apple investors exactly what they want to hear - that Apple is doing fantastic job and the bright future is ahead. Keep listening to this old DED tune, while AAPL stock melts down. And it will keep melting down because Apple products start to suck.
One fundamental problem with Apple that Cook failed to fix and DED failed to address is Apple's perennially weak cloud. Without a strong cloud, iPhone becomes more a jewelry item than a useful device (I know, the comparison is extreme, iPhone is still a good phone but I want to drive the point). DED barely mentions cloud in his post saying it "need to be fixed or improved." Right.... Eddy Cue can fix the cloud, and you know what else... pigs can fly.
One question every Apple investor should ask is this. Are Apple products as useful and as easy to use relative to their competition as they used to be? If not, then they do not justify the premium price Apple demands for them; Apple's popularity will go down and so will its stock.

Maybe iCloud don't work for you, but I'm a long time Apple used, and to me it works fine, I'm very happy with it, and had make me extend my user satisfaction of Apple products, handoff works fantastic, and all my important stuff is in iCloud and It syncs fast and perfectly. I know all the fame Dropbox have, but to me proved useless, something that didn't happen with iCloud. About AAPL stock, it can on can't melt whatever and for the time people want, but you can deny what you see, and that's what Wall Street is doing, but the real deal is that Apple is the most profitable company ever, and its not based on commodities booming as in oil companies had been. So they have pricing power. And based in its last 10-K and the guidance of the first quarter it will be this year again. So, go on, keep on dreaming of Apple going down the cliff and forget a stock that in the worst case scenario can give its shareholders 30$ per share cash, and still have enough money to outperform the rest of the tech industry.

I didn't think I had to spell it out but it appears that some folks here narrowly think "cloud" means just iCloud. Cloud means all the services, speed, computational power and AI (AI here means Artificial Intelligence  and not Apple Insider) that you get from the cloud. "Cloud" can't be created overnight because it requires vast investment in hardware and proprietary software, all fine-tuned and continually updated to keep the edge.
Currently, only two companies have a really strong cloud: Google and Amazon (even Dropbox rents Amazon cloud). Partly because of this advantage but also for other reasons not discussed here, I predict that Alphabet and Amazon will surpass Apple in market valuation.

Amazingly, in his two-part exceedingly long piece DED barely mentions the fundamental problem Apple has with the cloud. It can't be easily fixed and Apple appears to be lacking the right people to fix it. Cook had plenty of time to address the problem but failed spectacularly. 

I don't know if you are valuation blind or what. I've been following this stock very closely for the last 11 years. It is clear as day, that AAPL profit growth can't support its current stock market. Please, do not refer to Apple's low P/E ratio or other backward statistics that essentially boils down to "look, Apple was great in the past, so it must be great in the future"

At the very heart of the ongoing demise of Apple is that its products are not that impressive relative to competition as they had been before. As Jobs said, Cook is not a product guy. Job's foresight is evident in the several misguided steps that Cook took in product development and personnel.
For example, take a look at Cook's promotion of Jony Ivy. The guy is a very good hardware designer but he is not a software guy. Ivy tries to perfect minute OS details like curvature or spacing of letters (San Francisco font anyone?), but fails to address the elephant in the room: Apple sucks, and sucks mightily, in the cloud! Without a strong cloud and everything that comes with it (effortless syncing, AI assistance, ability to move smoothly from one device to another), today's smartphone or computer company can't succeed. Apple Watch is another manifestation of Ivy's misguided drive for perfection. I could go on but am afraid Apple die hards would call me a troll (you probably would call me a troll anyway because you are so invested in Apple that it hurts to hear the painful truth).

In short, under Cook's wings Apple products are not so much above and beyond the competition to justify Apple being the most valuable company in the world. The profit growth will decline, low P/E be damned, and with the lower profit growth so will go AAPL price. Mark my words, the day is coming when Apple will be dethroned from its "the most valuable" title, as said as it might be.

Daniel Eran Dilger verbose posts supported by numerous charts give Apple investors exactly what they want to hear - that Apple is doing fantastic job and the bright future is ahead. Keep listening to this old DED tune, while AAPL stock melts down. And it will keep melting down because Apple products start to suck.
One fundamental problem with Apple that Cook failed to fix and DED failed to address is Apple's perennially weak cloud. Without a strong cloud, iPhone becomes more a jewelry item than a useful device (I know, the comparison is extreme, iPhone is still a good phone but I want to drive the point). DED barely mentions cloud in his post saying it "need to be fixed or improved." Right.... Eddy Cue can fix the cloud, and you know what else... pigs can fly.
One question every Apple investor should ask is this. Are Apple products as useful and as easy to use relative to their competition as they used to be? If not, then they do not justify the premium price Apple demands for them; Apple's popularity will go down and so will its stock.