blastdoor

neoncat said:

blastdoor said:

What exactly are apples values?

Money. Which, I mean, is not some huge surprise or unexpected plot twist. It's just that Apple is two very different beasts: A massive corporate machine, one of the largest ever created, who's success makes it beholden to large swaths of the economy that expect it to keep producing returns and keep growing, and a formidable yet paper-thin construct of marketing, cuddly and beloved, representing every protected class, representing American entrepreneurism, representing the environment, representing creativity, representing... A whole host of things no corporation should ever take the place of in the hearts and minds of its customers. 

The two heads are often going to push in opposite directions, serving their masters. I agree with Blastdoor. For every concession and move on the chess board we hear about with regard to Apple and China, I'm sure there are 10 more we never will.

Re money vs other values.... I wonder if it's harder for everyone who isn't Steve Jobs to resist the money pressure. SJ saved the company and made shareholders a ton of money -- he could pretty much do whatever he wanted, and he stacked the board with his people. One example of how SJ could resist money pressure but TC can't is the dividend and stock buybacks. SJ hated dividends and buybacks. He wanted to hold onto the cash and wait to use it for something productive. But as soon as he was gone, the money guys went to TC and demanded their dividends / buybacks. TC caved pretty quick, but likely had little choice but to cave. 

I'm not in any position to know, but my hunch is that SJ and many Apple employees (probably including many in senior management) have values other than "squeeze every last drop of [profit out of this thing." BUT -- they don't own the company, nor do they have SJ-level credibility with shareholders. And so they cave in the name of short term profits. Maybe not as much as other companies, but they do. 

It would be interesting to see how Apple operated if it were a 100% employee owned firm. I bet there would be some noticeable differences. 

beowulfschmidt said:

I can't help but wonder why Apple would locate research facilities in a country that has a such lackluster record of protecting IP.  Is the cost of doing it there that much less expensive as to make it worth it?

I suspect they are just caving to CCP demands, hoping that iPhone sales will go back up. 

The scary thing to me is -- it's possible that Apple has caved to a lot of other CCP demands that we have simply never heard about. 

Or if they haven't yet, there's always the risk that they will. If CCP wants to cut Apple's market cap down to billions rather than trillions, they can do it. Apple has truly made a deal with the devil. 

Seems very unwise. So much for de-risking. 

9secondkox2 said:

But the sleeper dark horse would be the return of Jony. He’s had his rise, he’s taken his lumps, and he’s gained deep insightful perspective. Very similar to the rise, fall, and meteoric rise of Jobs. 

I don't think that analogy works because Jobs was an entrepreneurial leader who, from an early age, eagerly learned multiple aspects of how to run a business. CEOs needs to not just understand, but have a passion for, multiple aspects of a business. They need to balance competing priorities in order to achieve larger goals. Ive is more similar to Wozniak in the sense that he is a narrowly focused specialist. The world needs narrowly focused specialists (I'd put myself in that category, actually). But a CEO needs to be more of a generalist. 

Cook is somewhere in between. His speciality is operations, but specializing in operations is kind of like specializing in being a generalist (because operations touches so many aspects of a business), so it sort of works. 

Putting Ive in charge of Apple would be like asking Picasso to run Spain -- it wouldn't work. 

danox said:

blastdoor said:

Intel might be a year ahead of TSMC with their “20A” process. Sometime this year we might see the most competitive chips from Intel in a very long time. We will just have to see if Intel hits their targets.

Has Intel or Microsoft ever hit a target in an actual competitive market where they couldn't cheat or strong-arm someone?  

Yes. Intel was the undisputed leader in chip manufacturing for decades. It’s why Apple switched to Intel back when PPC was falling further and further behind.