6502

StrangeDays said:

6502 said:

tmay said:

BittySon said:

Those two aren't worth it.  Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.  
Steve would be rolling in his grave.  Or is.

Ahrendts is delivering one of the best retail experiences in the industry, you see it in every Apple store, and retail continues to be a huge win for Apple. 

Eddie Cue isn't my cup of tea, but so far, I'm not seeing the negatives that some others do, maybe because almost everything that Eddie does is behind the scenes.

I have no idea what Steve does in his grave, but rolling around doesn't seem like what he would waste his afterlife doing, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I don't.

Ron Johnson is the hero of the Apple store, not Ahrendts. And who spends hours and hours in an Apple store? You go in, evaluate a few products, buy the one you want and leave. I spend maybe 20 minutes a year in an Apple store.

As for Cue, AppleTV is overpriced and under featured compared to the competition. I don't use Apple Music but from what I see, it's not any different from any other streaming music service.

Few of them deserve a $19M payday.

Apple's iPhone and Mac hardware is still the best though. Siri on the other hand is nowhere near as good as Google's implementation. And I say that with no joy.

If you've only spent 20 mins a year in an Apple Store, then you're hardly a good judge of what makes them enjoyable. Johnson hasn't been with Apple retail for many years, he isn't running the stores or their recent global design. Further, he completely failed when he moved on to JC Penny or whatever it was, so it evidently wasn't all him.

Cue doesn't design the feature set nor the price of the ATV as far as I'm aware (but hey).

Apple Music is different than other streaming services, because it isn't (only) a streaming service. AM isn't a separate app and as such fully integrates with my personal library, creating one mass of music I can listen to at any time, with blended playlists of my tracks and AM tracks.

But I agree that executive pay is completely absurd, the ration of top executive pay to average salaried employee is 400:1 or worse and I don't believe they are actually 400x more effective. The people under the executive enable the executive, and without them the executive cannot deliver much more value than an individual. 

SpamSandwich said:

thrang said:

If Apple continues to follow through on some the vision of retail Angela put forth in the keynote, her impact for Apple Store 2.0 will be as great as the original efforts of Ron Johnson.

Johnson’s incompetence as CEO of Target tipped me off that the real genius behind Apple retail was Steve Jobs. I vividly recall the images of Jobs lecturing Johnson in the stores. Steve paid close attention to every detail.

StrangeDays said:

BittySon said:

Those two aren't worth it.  Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.  
Steve would be rolling in his grave.  Or is.

Oh yeah? How close were you to Jobs? How long did you two know each other? Amazing. 

Meanwhile, Apple is bigger and more successful than ever. Which is what performance bonuses are tied to (and not fansite popular opinions, thankfully). 

tmay said:

BittySon said:

Those two aren't worth it.  Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.  
Steve would be rolling in his grave.  Or is.

Ahrendts is delivering one of the best retail experiences in the industry, you see it in every Apple store, and retail continues to be a huge win for Apple. 

Eddie Cue isn't my cup of tea, but so far, I'm not seeing the negatives that some others do, maybe because almost everything that Eddie does is behind the scenes.

I have no idea what Steve does in his grave, but rolling around doesn't seem like what he would waste his afterlife doing, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I don't.

lkrupp said:

6502 said:

I wish Apple would just concentrate on tech and delivering great new hardware and software products. This is just a distraction.

That doesn’t cut it anymore. Apple can see into the future a lot farther ahead than we can. Look at Google for instance. They don’t do hardware much at all and they are focused on the same elusive goal. We will eventually get to the point where hardware is stamped out like license plates at the prison and will cost so little that no one can make a real profit from selling it. We’re already there on the low end of the market.