humbug1873

CheeseFreeze said:

But first - the interview piece is just paid company  propaganda - not sure why AppleInsider would feel it’s worth posting and label it as ‘candid’. Nothing is revealed of Tim Cook. You’ll never get to learn who guys like that really are because they can’t afford that. Especially Cook and Apple - you can clearly see his marketing writing room weighing every damn word. All is scripted, nothing is real. Should I really believe he still often thinks about Steve Jobs? 

Of course he thinks about Steve. In the sense of "Insanely great, that Steve is not here anymore. He would probably pop in with some harebrained crazy design idea for that new machine we are designing, generating nothing but headache for my smoothly running money making operations machine. Ah here you go, just double the hight of the old Mac Mini and 'boom' done. Worked for AppleTV will work for the Mac mini studio. 

Still can remember when I was sitting in the 'stump the experts' session at WWDC 2008. They usually started with a 'song recognition' session at the beginning. Which songs where playing before the event. There was one guy who seemed to know them all and eventually admitted he has some 'new app' going which will come out soon. Must have been the beta of that Shazam app mentioned in the article. Didn't know they stared that much earlier.

Considering the amount of innovation coming out of Apple in the 00's with a much smaller staff and the rather meager results/staff member nowadays it's probably a good thing, if Apple starts to see things differently about growing like the crazy ones. The most creative ideas often come from lack of resources instead of abundance of resources.

designr said:

I'm sure we never will, but I would love to see a breakdown of the services revenue.

In the past I believe Apple has made statements implying that large chunks of this revenue is iPhone-independent. I wonder.

I believe stuff like Apple Care is under services. Yes, a "service" of sorts but probably not what most people think of. Rumors that Google's annual payment to be the search engine is quite substantial—possibly north of $10B—is also included in this revenue. And then App Store fees.

I suspect that the revenue from services like:

• Fitness+
• TV+
• Music
• Arcade
• Card / Pay

Is likely much smaller portion of the total than is being subtly implied.

The only reason I mention it is because I think Apple made this move to try to say "we're not just a phone company." But, if my suspicion is correct, they still very much are. That's fine. This could all just be PR smoke and mirrors for a bunch Wall Street analysts, etc.

P.S. If "Find My" is considered an Apple service, one also wonders if AirTag revenue is bundled under this category too.

Though I think as a standalone Service TV+ is a major loss leader still.

Jony was out for a long time.
To be provocative: When was the last time Apple made some big mistake that's largely due to design and product thinness. The 2016 Macbook. That design was probably fixed a year before (2015), since then Ive is (mentally) elsewhere.

Since then Apple stopped risking things in product design. Which I think is bad. If you don't risk you no longer impress. That's what happened at Apple. They no longer push the envelope further. The latest (totally boring looking) Air is proof of that. I think that is sad and will damage Apple in the long term bigger than any design flaw did in the past.

Yes we probably won't see another 'innovation' like the butterfly keyboard. But we probably won't see innovation, like the Unibody Laptop designs, flat panel all in one computer (started by Spartacus) etc either. New innovations will probably come from the bean counters: 'Let's make it cheaper to manufacture, looks are not important'. I would rather like to see Apple fail once in a while to over-design, than to bore people to death with 'things as usual'.

Tim knows that himself: While Steve always lead up to the new designs and generated excitement in his keynotes. Tim shows the 'product' up front and continues with lot's of techno bubble and costs. While Steve concentrated on 'how this will imrpove your live', Tim concentrates on lists and numbers.

The company will execute well based on the momentum generated by Jony and Steve (at that time Apple was always ahead of the curve), but no momentum has come after that. So enjoy it while it lasts.