charlesn

DAalseth said:

Yes he has done great things at Apple. But that’s in the past. the last few years are filled with Apple Intelligence, Apple Car, Declining quality, and missed deadlines. Even Michael Jordan knew when it was time to hang it up. If Cook stays in the top seat he risks being the Willy Mayes falling down in the outfield. 

Cook was the perfect person to replace Jobs, but that was a long time ago. 

Love the way the Cook naysayers love to have it both ways. The EV business has been an absolute proven bloodbath for virtually every carmaker who's in it except the Chinese--and I'll bet Tesla will join the club once the latest U.S. and China sales figures are reported--but it's a "failure" that Cook made the smart business decision to cut his losses and not move forward. According to the naysayers, if's a "failure" that he didn't forge ahead and maybe joined Rivian (which is at least still in business unlike Fiskar) in losing nearly $40,000 on every vehicle sold for the most recently reported quarter, up from about a $30,000 loss YOY. Or maybe Ford, which was losing $130,000 for every EV sold. As the song lyrics go, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away." And Apple is FAR better off for Cook walking away. 

Without Cook's vision for what Services could become, Apple would be in a world of hurt right now. We're not just past "peak iPhone,' it's past "peak smartphone," period, and there's no going back. The big doubt about Apple for years was, "What is it going to do when iPhone sales, inevitably, stall?" Cook developed and provided the answer: Services will eclipse iPhone profits over the next several years, not because iPhone profits are falling that quickly, but because Services revenue is growing much faster at margins near 80%. Apple is now the strongest it has ever been financially because it rests on the supports of Services, iPhone, Mac/iPad and Wearables. 

Cook has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's own M processors, introduced without a hiccup and giving Apple a price/performance advantage it has never before enjoyed over competitors. And now he has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's first-ever modem--again without a hiccup--which will save countless billions in licensing fees and give Apple the ability to exploit the advantages of its own chip going forward. 

But yeah, Cook has done nothing recently. Please give specific data about "declining quality" -- I'll wait. As for "missed deadlines" apart from Apple Intelligence... examples? The next version of Apple CarPlay requires individual negotiations with each car manufacturer, and I have no doubt that the apparent success of GM in abandoning support of both CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of a profitable system of its own has car makers considering whether they should follow GM's path. 

Interesting, well-written article that I think misses one crucial point: there's a vast difference between perceptions of tech site content creators and commenters and those of the mass market public to whom Apple is primarily selling. I seriously doubt that "out there," there's any perception of Apple being "behind" in the A.I race, or of there being an A.I. race among consumer tech product companies, period. For the mass market, Apple has done an especially brilliant job of branding A.I. to mean Apple Intelligence and to market its version of A.I. as protecting your privacy. I would agree that the marketing outpaces the capabilities, but I don't think that matters nearly as much to mass market buyers as it does inside the technosphere echo chamber. That opinion comes from thirty years of listening to how Apple is so far "behind" on features compared to the competition on virtually everything it has ever sold, how you get more for less with Windows, Android, blah, blah, blah... and here we are, with Apple at the top of the heap, the most successful and valuable company in the history of consumer electronics. 

Rogue01 said:

StrangeDays said:

Daily charging never bothered me, so does my phone. 

Daily charging of the watch blows.  That is the worst feature of the Apple Watch.  Because if you forget to charge it one day, it is useless.  Phones don't require daily charging.

I stopped wearing my Watch 5 at the beginning of the pandemic and working from home.  No use for it.  I wear it once in awhile if I go out, but other than that, it is just a decoration.  Amazon has the Watch 10 at a $100 discount, great price, but the new features are so minimal, no reason to upgrade at all.  The article is correct.  So few updates with each new release, not worth buying a new one, especially since battery life is still a measly one day if you are lucky....unless you waste $800 on an Ultra.  You would think after 10 years, they would have improved battery life, but nope, still the same one day battery life.

As they say, "YMMV," but Apple Watch remains THE most successful watch in the entire 200 year history of wristwatches, It eclipsed sales of the entire Swiss watch industry combined within just two years of its launch and it currently commands almost 50% of the global smartwatch market. So, call me crazy, but I'd say Apple's clearly doing something right for a whole lotta buyers, even if it's not right for you. Fast-charging, which you lack on the Series 5, has been a game changer. The Series 10 will get you from 0% to 80% in 30 mins. So if forget to charge your watch overnight, throw it on the charger while you take a shower or have your coffee and you're good for the day. Want to sleep track overnight? Give it 10 or 15 mins on the charger before bed and you're good to go. (Although I would point out that sleep experts agree that "sleep scores," "rem tracking," etc that smartwatches, including Apple's, claim to do is utter nonsense. About the only thing smartwatches can track accurately is how many hours you sleep.) 

danox said:

Counterpoint with their semiyearly Apple is doomed in some way posting….

Exactly. And how does Counterpoint come up with such precise numbers for Apple when Apple doesn't release this info. Well... wait for it... "that's a secret." Yes, just like the tooth fairy, you simply have to believe in the proprietary methodology which, you know, they can't possibly reveal!

That said, I would be surprised if this reported downturn in sales wasn't accurate. Functionally, the last few generations of Apple's watch have been doing all you need it to do and all it's capable of doing, at least for now. The design hasn't changed all that much over time, so minus compelling new features or new design, there's not a lot to drive new sales or upgrades from older models. I think everyone knows the holy grail for a new burst of sales would be accurate blood pressure and glucose monitoring, but that tech is still not here. Yeah, yeah, Samsung already offers a useless, crap version of it, but I'm talking about features that actually work and do so accurately. 

apple4thewin said:

The more I see the mock iPhone 17 photos, the more it grows on me and looks normal.

That may be because these are the first renders I've seen in which the camera bar is just a wider version of the camera bump we have now and for that reason looks pretty "normal," one could even argue better because it's a more balanced look to have the bar traverse the whole width of the phone instead of a bump in one corner. If we're going to have a camera bar--which still seems highly unlikely to me because it begs the question, "Why?"--keeping the clear acrylic material of the current bump looks a helluva lot better than the fugly half aluminum/half glass frankenphone monstrosities that we've seen previously.