Latko

What does an affordability test mean when it doesn’t reckon 4 year old gear being sold for it’s original price ?

lkrupp said:

andrehinds said:

So many people complain that the iPad Pro can't replace their computer. 

Nope. It’s so many people posting on anonymous tech blogs that the iPad Pro can’t replace their computer. Apple deals with the real world and real markets.  The iPad naysayers are the crowd that, when Apple changes a single feature or option, blows a gasket because their “workflow” has been disturbed, making their whole installation “useless”. 

Then you must have lost your way here, as a happy member of Tim’s alliance of Facebook Pro’s with iPads that repeat his fake idea until they believe it themselves

mcdave said:

If I hear another “where’s the mouse” article, I’m going to scream, iOS should never have a mouse.  I really don’t get the external screen, I just don’t.

If you don’t see the benefits of a mouse in precision and control or a large screen for viewing so much more, your family must be eating with their fingers whilst looking TV on their phones

Better hire someone who knows how to sell Ferrari’s in Djibouti

Mike Wuerthele said:

Latko said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

Latko said:

Mike Wuerthele said:

Latko said:

Just look how much Jobs invested back versus how much cash has piled up since he died.
Steve was interested in product improvement, not in real-estate, luxury, or extreme wealth as such.
He warned against greedyness, and almost anything the current leadership prioritizes.
Pioneers shouldn’t be compared to milkers anyway

The data doesn't support your supposition.

Then please explain where those hundreds of billions come from, and what percentage of earnings became invested back over the years.
The problem is your micro-economic approach to macro-economic issues

We've discussed this ad infinitum over the last five years.  Your problem is your own micro-economic approach, meaning Apple not directly appealing to you anymore as a customer in a shift in focus to a different product line, to a macro-economic issue. On a per-unit basis, Apple is making no more money as a percent of what it costs the company to make under Cook, than it did under Jobs. The difference is the stunningly higher user base that the company accumulated.

I understand where you're coming from, but you're conflating several different issues.

My approach is macro.
I’m not looking at cost prices or margins, which is impossible because the prices they get at their volume are their best kept secrets.
I point at the immense cash reserves accumulated AFTER SJ and where that got directed to.
You seem unable to clarify those metrics from your micro-economical analysis and you avoid the questions I asked about them
Whether or not their portfolio is appealing is an entirely different subject - that has nothing to do with wealth attribution.
It’s not me who is conflating that.

I didn't avoid them, we've been writing about it for five years. Feel free to browse the history. A quick check of Apple's cash reserves back to 2006 shows that Apple had a proportionate stash to earnings for that entire time. Yes, even under Jobs, so to say that this is exclusive under Cook isn't accurate.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/cash-on-hand

The explosive cash reserve trend shown at https://www.statista.com/chart/5605/apples-cash-holdings/ pretty accurately illustrates what you avoid to mention: accumulated wealth that did NOT flow back to customers (the sole contributors) in the form of either investments, innovation, price/performance improvements, dividend or goodwill.
That different perspective by Cook (priority: money) and Jobs (priority: product) did benefit just Apple, in lieu of most other stakeholders:
It is fair to say Cook derived more money from indeed many more customers, but severely fell behind with transferring added value to his original customers (who never asked for volume but for top quality and an up-to-date product portfolio, ref. Jobs era products conforming to Moore’s law). 
In relative terms, Cook also left investors in the dark (=> compare stock price to wealth accumulation during his reign) but it is fair to say that Jobs wasn’t a great fan of dividends either.
Cook’s extreme expansion (/milking) strategy will cease to be sustainable when saturation arrives in the single product category Apple made itself dependent on. This is what makes fund managers very nervous - and not reporting sales numbers is only making that worse.
The lean and mean machine has become the massive, incumbent moloch, that it used to parody itself in 1984, where customers typically don’t benefit from. And with lots of additional (stock related) risk that can become unmanageable, even for Cook.