neutrino23

pmz said:

I like how the shareholder meeting has become just another venue for political lobbying. Diversity. Emissions. Human Rights. Can we talk business please? This is a company not a government.

Actually, this year I though the comments/questions were fairly reasonable and well expressed. Jesse Jackson spoke well. The woman from the EFF was very supportive of Apple. Considering Apple's size, their behavior has an enormous effect on lots of people who don't own Apple products. It is reasonable for people to have concerns about Apple's public behavior. 

Angela Ahrendts spoke a little in response to a question. I think that's the first time I've heard her talk at one of these meetings. As usual, there were not a lot of specifics, but she and Tim were fairly enthusiastic about improved Enterprise and small business activity.

Revenues in India are about $1.5B per year but Tim thinks this is the very early years and the investments they make now will pay off in large measures a decade from now. He said India now looks like China ten years ago.

Other tidbits:

Most iOS developers are now in China.

I may have misunderstood this but I think Tim said that four out of five smart phones sold in China last year were iPhones.

Apple has 116,000 employees around the world. 65,000 are retail employees.

One third of Apple revenue comes from emerging markets.

Tim Cook was supported for his position by over 99% of the shareholders voting. All board members got over 95%.

Tim Cook used an iPad Pro (space grey I believe) for his prepared comments.

Most shareholder proposals got well under 10%. The one proposal for Shareholder Proxy Access got about 33% support. It might pass in a few years.

I don't think we learned much that was new but the pictures were nice. The cloth covered tables in the design studio are always awesome to see. You look at those lumps under the cloth and try to imagine what is there. 

The video of the prototype store was cool. It was interesting to see a little of Angela talking about her work at Apple. 

It it would have been much more interesting if Horace Deidu or John Gruber could have asked the questions.