carnegie

Mr. Cook's tenure as Apple's CEO has demonstrated once more one of Mr. Jobs' most remarkable, and differentiating, abilities: His ability to see what was going to matter going forward and to focus on that rather than, and often at the expense of, what had mattered in the past. So many focus on what has mattered in the past because, e.g., it's easier or seems safer or requires less true insight. Mr. Cook was a great choice to be Mr. Jobs' successor.

On another note, Mr. Cook is set to receive 5.04 million Apple shares - worth around $750 million - today as the last vesting shares from the first equity compensation package he received as CEO of Apple.

22july2013 said:

It's Apple's OS. Nobody can force Apple to write its OS to their specifications. Even the EFF probably support Apple's legal right to decide what goes into their OS. This isn't a question of legality it's a question of morality, reputation and profitability. And that's fine.

For the most part people here are arguing what Apple should be doing, not what it legally must be doing. But even those people who are arguing that Apple should not be doing this aren't arguing that Apple legally must not be doing this.

I'm finding questions of morality to be rather boring. I'm interested in issues that are of legal importance.

People might not be talking about them as much, but what Apple is doing does raise some legal questions.

Apple is generally a private actor. But courts have found that private actions can represent violations of the Fourth Amendment under some circumstances. There are a  number of tests which can apply, depending on context. There's a function test which asks whether a given private actor was performing a traditional government function. There's a compulsion test which asks whether a given private actor was coerced by the government. And there's a nexus test which asks whether a given private actor was cooperating with the government. There's still considerable gray area on this issue as courts haven't agreed on how or which tests apply.

But one of the questions here is whether Apple was somehow coerced by government actors to implement this software and program. Even if Apple wasn't coerced, was it encouraged by government actors? And if so, what's the intent behind Apple's policy? Is it trying to help law enforcement or is Apple doing this for its own business reasons? If Apple is undertaking searches in order to help government actors catch criminals and not because Apple thinks this policy helps its business, then the Fourth Amendment might be implicated.

There are also questions when it comes to whether these actions would constitute Fourth Amendment searches anyway. If the only thing a hash-value scan can reveal is whether something illegal is present, then under Supreme Court doctrine (see, e.g., U.S. v Place (1983)) such a scan might not be considered a Fourth Amendment search because it doesn't implicate legitimate privacy interests. Notably this is a question which the 6th Circuit recently expressly left open in its U.S. v Miller (2020) decision.

lkrupp said:

I believe Steve Jobs worked for $1/yr when he came back. Yes/No?

Mr. Jobs received a $1 annual salary during his second stint with Apple, yes.

But he was otherwise financially well compensated. He received a RSU grant in 2003 which was valued at about $75 million at the time. When the shares vested in 2006 they we worth around $650 million. Those shares, if held today, would be worth more than $40 billion. (They aren't still held, of course. For starters, nearly half of them were withheld for tax purposes.)

Mr. Jobs also received an airplane which was initially reported as representing a total cost to Apple of $90 million.

Vanilla said:

crowley said:

The margin will be Apple's (revenue-costs)/revenue.  Payments to app developers will not be considered part of that equation, as it's neither Apple's revenue or cost, it's just developer revenue that Apple are handling and passing along.  

Apple's App Store margin is (Apple's take of app revenue - cost of running the App Store) / Apple's take of app revenue.

Wait, why? That's not how profit has been worked out before. In a brick-and-mortar for example, the Cost Of Goods Sold obviously includes the cost of supplying the goods from the publisher, so why not here?

Apple cannot make a sale without delivering the app licence, and the licence costs them 70%. It seems completely artificial to say that the relevant profit should be based on Apple's 30% cut rather than on total revenue.

How would it change profits in all other industries if supplier costs could be subtracted before calculating profit? It makes no sense to me.

In this context Apple is an agent not a principal because, e.g., it doesn’t carry inventory risk and doesn’t set prices. So it accounts for revenue on a net basis, only counting the commission it keeps from third-party app sales as revenue.

Beats said:

Makes no sense to me. 

Revenue will logically rise as people using the trial will have 2 choices: pay or don’t pay, instead of just “free”.  Then you have the 25% or more people who forgot to cancel their subscription. Revenue is gonna explode here!

The 2% yearly decrease of App Store revenue post-COVID makes some sense except he forgot that Apple is still producing new content and new shows/movies will be added in the months to come. Apple’s library is only gonna grow. They’re focused on being a big contender and already have a few “must-haves” that weren’t available day one.

CuJoYYC said:

Rod Hall advised clients to sell Apple a year ago and issued a price target of $58. Less than a year later, he's raised his price target by 43% to $83.00 and still maintains a sell recommendation.

Stopped clocks are more accurate than Hall. Not sure why or how he's still employed.

if he’s been wrong this much and still thinks AAPL will go down, he’s just shorting the stock. If that’s his job, then that’s why he’s still employed. It’s sick.

For people getting free Apple TV+ because they bought a qualifying device, a portion of the revenue generated from the device sale is counted as Services revenue. We (at least I) don’t know the actual numbers, but for example: From the $700 Apple might have gotten from an iPhone sale, it might take $30 and count it as Services revenue of $2.50 per month for a year. At some point that deferred revenue runs out, perhaps replaced by the user paying for the service or by nothing.