robertwalter

I predict the phone chargers will be a hit. At that price point, 5 year shelf life, and 7 hours talk time, there is every many folks will buy one to put in their "in case of power outage kit". 

The audio stability of my AirPods was great.  In general they are awesome gadgets. Problem was they continuously fell out. 

Apple is opening a market space for competitors with people like me. 

I recommend everybody with interest order and try the AirPods. If they don't retain well send them back for free to apple with a note in the box as I did. 

Don't think if I was an employee that I would be enthusiastic about a company t-shirt and a group think brainwashing card.

Only thing worse is if the shirt were a handkerchief and the card were laminated and pocket-size. 

Basically someone has co-opted the traditional holiday demonstration of gratitude to turn it into a company self-congratulatory promotion turning on an advertising t-shirt and an employee reminder of the company mission statement. 

As shareholders, my siblings and I are rather disgusted by this.

We thought AirPods would be both a great gift and a great advertisement of the company's generosity and a great advertisement. 

I was musing that an AirPods gift would hit the bottom line for 30 million until my sister (an artist, no less) said "you calculated with retail price, not manufacturing cost". (LoL.) So then its 20M$ for a bunch of happy employees and a lot of positive buzz.

Instead, I can't imagine another "gift" with better potential for making employees feel less motivated and possibly even insulted.

As a long time Airport fan (bought and recommended dozens of them), I am disappointed by apple's leaving this product segment. 

I buy Apple for security and simplicity and expected that to begin at my router/firewall. 

At at first I thought Apple might be leaving because they got in to help spread WiFi and left when there were so many competent router makers. 

Now we see that the other router makers are not always so competent and I've begun to wonder if Apple exited because the felt they didn't have the wherewithal to make a router that wouldn't be comprised, so they would leave the bad PR to the other router makers. 

Eigentor!

I don't mind Tim's trying to get out front and lead on social issues. 

But if they do, the old saying (from Top Gun?) of having to do it "cleaner and better" fully applies. 

It can not be possible for any internal decisions to approve anything that contradicts Apple's stated publicly positions. To contradict one calls all into question.  One would also do well to remember Churchill's quote: "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on", so is it with bad news and the costs of countering bad news are higher and less effective remedially than just doing things right the first time. 

For Apple to continue to command a price premium they need to remain emotionally aspirational, they cannot focus strictly on the bottom line and they need to jealously guard their reputation and image.  

People like to know that they buy from companies that have positive principles; they even can convince themselves that some of the price premium is covering the costs of Cleaner and Better.