JayVee

gmgravytrain said:

17B outstanding shares is really a huge number.  Too many, if you ask me.  I wonder how that number of shares compares to other tech companies.  I can only trust Apple knows what it's doing.

Apple is buying back a lot of shares, five years ago there were roughly 22B outstanding shares.

What I found most interesting was the $20B spent on share buybacks at a time where the share price had risen dramatically.  It shows they have confidence in themselves, and it should place a floor below the share price.  Let's see what they do with the dividend next quarter, considering it is yielding roughly half of what it does historically.

It's a shame that they didn't lower the base price overall since the CPUs etc weren't upgraded, but I guess one would argue that it would then compete with the new iMacs with the 8-core i9 processor...

I'd have thought they would have bought back shares more aggressively since they only bought back 8.7 billion dollars worth this quarter where the stock price was heavily discounted, but let's see what Maestri says during the conference call.

I feel that Apple has lost some of its "wow", the way it pleasantly surprised us all.  Remember when the iPad was first introduced, and all the analysts were certain it would cost at least $1000?  Jobs mocked them by unveiling a price only half that.  Remember how we were wowed when he pulled the MacBook Air out of that manila envelope?

I feel underwhelmed lately.  I bought an iPad Pro last week, only to remember after that I can't use my iPhone X's lightning headphones with it, and unfortunately there is no Apple lightning to USB C adaptor to be found.  I guess I could have used my Beats X wireless headphones, but those died on me a few months ago (after less than a year of use).  I wanted to buy an Apple TV 4K to wirelessly mirror my MacBook Pro's display to my 4K TV, but lo and behold, you can't mirror at 4K resolution.  The camera bump on my iPhone X means it gradually slides off (almost) flat surfaces.  I find the TouchBar underwhelming, and would have preferred buying a 15" MacBook Pro with the function keys instead, and presumably saving about $200, too.

I used to update all my software immediately, but over the past couple years I've decided to wait and see how it goes before I update anything.  There always seems to be a catch or caveat somewhere, and I don't want to risk anything.

This is also the first year I didn't buy a new iPhone, after having owned every iPhone since the original was released back in 2007.

I'd love to be impressed once again, to be wowed once again, to find a product irresistible once again.

I'm personally looking forward to an update iMac to replace my 2015 5K model, whilst we wait for the Mac Pro.  Ideally, I'd love an nVidia graphics card for 3D rendering on CUDA cores, but it seems we are stuck with Radeon cards.  I'd also be interested in a smaller sized iPhone than the iPhone X / XS / XR, whether it is called SE 2 or whatever.

Does anyone feel the same?