karmadave

anantksundaram said:

"Apple Cloud Services". A business oxymoron.

Haven't the finally outsourced it to AWS?

Nope. That's not to say they don't utilize IaaS providers, but Apple builds/owns/maintains a significant amount of infrastructure in order to deliver iCloud and other services.  Very few companies have outsourced 100% of their infrastructure to Public Cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft...

Tim Cook certainly doesn't need my advice, but nonetheless here are some observations and suggestions ;-)

- Macroeconomics forces certainly had some impact as the impact of the Trade War, Currency Fluctuations, etc. tended to suppress demand on in China. 
- Apple raised prices just as the major carriers ended subsidies on their smartphone plans. This suppressed demand since customers either went for less expensive phones or they simply upgraded on a 3-4 year cycle and not the 2-year cycle.
- Apple has become too dependent on iPhone sales which account for approximately 70% of revenue. Any softening of demand has a significant effect to Apple's revenues.
- Apple's Macintosh products are not as 'innovative' as they once were. Lack of a high-end modular Mac is a symptom of a larger issue...

I think Apple is still in a strong position, however like any big company they have become bureaucratic and a bit complacent. New, innovative products are Apple's lifeblood and they have spent the last few years refining existing products vs. introducing innovative new ones. Expect Apple to shake things up in 2019... 

Graham'sNumber said:

I love the watch but the Nike app is just not up to the quality of Apple's workout app. I find the Nike app incredibly problematic. Nothing more infuriating than getting back from a run to find the Nike app stopped half way through. Never have that problem with the workout app. Glad it isn’t just me.

I couldn't agree more. I own the Nike+ version of the Apple Watch 2 and quite frankly gave up on the Nike+ Running App and just use Apple's. The exclusive watch faces do nothing for me either. I am only on the fence as to whether or not to go with LTE this time around. For $10/month it seems like it's worth it not to have to carry my iPhone with me on runs or hikes. Anyone have thoughts on this? 

I was working at Apple, in Higher Education Sales, when NeXT launched. NeXT was busy poaching Apple HE Sales Reps so on a moment's notice we were flown to NYC and wined and dined for a couple days. It was basically a big party to remind people why the worked, at Apple, and Scully even showed to give us a pep talk. He needn't bother as most of our customers found the NeXT 'cube' to be too expensive and under-powered to run the object-oriented NeXTStep OS. Many of these machines ended up running various internet applications (www was even 'invented' on NeXT) or as they say 'expensive doorstops'. NeXT had a big booth, at Educom, in 1989 and Steve was giving demo's dressed in an expensive Italian suit. Good times...

mac_dog said:

herodotus said:

Sad. Most people who buy laptops for business and general use buy 15” laptops and now Apple has made them unaffordable and added capabilities most users don’t need or want while removing feature like hdmi, MagSafe, functions keys (touch bar is stupid) and USB-a that people need and they still have the worst most unreliable keyboard in the industry. Customers want a 15”laptop, 4 core, Intel only gpus. Now apple does not have an affordable 15” laptop. I am buying an dell XPS and running win10 and unbuntu. Apple just lost a customer. John ivy and tim should be fired for ruining the MacBook family. Apple is brain dead stupid. Steve jobs is crying in his grave,

Enjoy that dell. In other news, Apple continues to outpace its competitors in hardware sales...

Not sure where you got this data point. Apple ships less than half of what PC vendors, such as Dell/HP/Lenovo sell. Apple is growing slightly faster than the overall market but PC's are a very mature market.

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-pc-companies-sales-idc-market-share-chart-2017-4

Apple makes more $ on each sale due to a very loyal customer base. All this latest announcement does is bring Apple up to par with other PC vendors that are utilizing Intel's 8th Gen Core i processors and updating some of their unique (i.e. proprietary) features. Apple's main advantage is that MacOSX is vastly superior to Windows 10. On a pure hardware basis Windows PC's are still a better 'value'. YMMV...