proline

I have a lot of the Philips Hue lights and love them, but I have to warn you- Philips is a hardware company, not a software one. Their software started out terrible and has made it to mediocre after two years. So if you have concerns about the software of this device, say the lack of HealthKit, don't assume it will be addressed quickly. 

blastdoor said:

proline said:

I get it. If Cook cant deliver in 18 months the board should hire the guy who still hasnt managed to execute on his first master plan after 10 years. The guy who has never run a profitable company other than a shitty online payments one. The guy who has to go to the stock market every year asking for money, and uses sharholder money to bail out his other failing businesses. It makes PERFECT sense. Why wouldnt a board that makes 40 billion in profit a year want a guy like that in charge?

Given the resources available to him and the challenging goals he has set for himself, I think Musk is doing an amazing job with Tesla -- better, in fact, than Steve Jobs did with NeXT. 

Meanwhile, Cook has access to vastly greater resources but he seems to be having some difficulty making good use of those resources. 

Putting Apple's resources behind Musk's vision is something that the board might want to start thinking about in 18 months if the Apple product lineup is still kind of stale. 

My hope, though, is that the product lineup won't be stale and that Cook will have proved doubters like me totally wrong. 

Any lack of resources at Musk's end is due entirely to the fact that even after 10-15 years his companies don't make a profit and are nowhere close to making one. His most recent manifesto was supposed to justify buying out Solar City, but the more sober truth is that Solar City needed a bailout (and SpaceX had bailed them out earlier this year too). So now Tela will burn an extra few hundred million in cash keeping Solar City running. Elon is depleting his resources rather than growing them and that should scare Apple's board. Everything he makes is sold at a loss in small quantities- also scary. Would Elon stop overpromising and underdelivering (late, over budget, over priced) if we'd throw more cash at him? Maybe, but why risk it? His genius plan "make more types of electric vehicles and try to catch up in self-driving" is friggin obvious and not worth risking Apple's fortune to acquire. 

Meanwhile Apple spends billions on R&D and must have all kinds of stuff in the works. The fact that they aren't wasting their time on mature product lines like the Mac tells me they know how to focus on what matters. So it's time for you to shut the hell up and make some popcorn- Apple's next few years should be good.  

blastdoor said:

But
I'm becoming increasingly nervous about the pace of product improvements at Apple. There is a whiff of staleness throughout the 
However, if in 18 months those hopes are not realized and the product lineup continues to seem stale, then I will reluctantly conclude that Apple needs new leadership, and that a Tesla acquisition or merger might be something for the board to seriously consider, bringing Musk in as CEO. 

I really hope it doesn't come to that.

I get it. If Cook cant deliver in 18 months the board should hire the guy who still hasnt managed to execute on his first master plan after 10 years. The guy who has never run a profitable company other than a shitty online payments one. The guy who has to go to the stock market every year asking for money, and uses sharholder money to bail out his other failing businesses. It makes PERFECT sense. Why wouldnt a board that makes 40 billion in profit a year want a guy like that in charge?

gprovida said:

Aside from business models, technology protocols, etc., differences, does the privacy requirements of HomeKit really create the incompatibility with NEST and other Alphabet devices. My guess, this will be the big difference. Between Amazon and Alphabet the issue is not privacy, neither care, but rather ownership of customer data. 

Alphabet certainly could add the proper hardware to make their devices work securely on HomeKit. They won't. The future Alphabet wants is one where they can access all of your data be it to aggregate it for advertisers or help them design other products. With HomeKit the vast majority of devices would be made by other OEMs and the data would go nowhere near Google. Hence the drive to make a competing standard. The good news though is that HomeKit seems to be taking off, which Nest's competitor is going nowhere fast.

mj web said:

You don't need an analyst. Based on my own observations, I've been questioning what Ive and Cook have been up to recently? Rose gold products, a bland looking watch that requires an iPhone to use, Beats, the contorted non 4K Apple TV? Hell, I may cop a Skylake MBP soon, but the only thing I've seen fit to purchase from Apple lately is a .99 cent a month iCloud upgrade and one Prince song. This isn't Steve Jobs' Apple, and by any impartial measure, Cook and Jony simply aren't cutting it. They are the parties responsible for AAPL stock tanking.

You're damn right about that. Steve Jobs' Apple wasted six years between the iPod and iPhone which they filled with "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian" iMacs.