Hacker News Reader

Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

The company you say is in "total disarray" still made $45.7bn in profit in 2016, and grew its share price by 10%. Those are the facts.

Outside of the technology bubble, most people don't know or care about many of the issues you cited, or what "loyal followers" on internet forums think. Major investors, who are the only people who could force Cook out, care about the numbers. And while Apple's revenue declined this year, it's still insanely good by any reasonable, and unreasonable, measure. Plus, it comes on the back of many years of growth, much of which was delivered under Cook's leadership.

If there's a continued decline of revenue and profits, then you might see Cook forced out in a couple of years, but to ask why he hasn't been forced out already only demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how business works.

View on HN

I completely agree. Very few people outside of HN and r/apple that I have talked to have negative opinions of what Apple is doing.

I see no evidence that Apple's products are becoming less popular. The iPhone is still the go to smartphone that I would recommend to anyone. I have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android since they came out, but I would never recommend an Android phone to a casual user. If they want the newest phone they get the iPhone 7. If they just want a phone the iPhone SE is a great phone for the price. It will last years and be secure with continued security software updates.

The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch I've seen bought en mass by non-techies.

The MacBooks are still the go to laptop for college students that can afford it. With the exception of some engineering circles where the Surface is popular, MacBooks are ubiquitous.

And while the AirPods had a delayed launch, they are in my opinion an amazing first gen Apple product. The ease of use and quality of the Bluetooth connection is not something I've experienced in Bluetooth before.

Up until recently Apple was sort of in a league all of its own, it had an aura about it of what I would perhaps describe as "justified hubris", before Apple perhaps only Microsoft has had that same kind of aura when it was firing on all cylinders. I think people are sensing that Apple has passed the top of its curve and is now losing momentum, the hubris isn't really justified anymore.

Apple will still be a hugely profitable and influential company, but it's no longer in a league all of its own.

Agreed.

Though for security of personal information it's still leagues above Android and Windows.

You don't think that declining sales and revenues are evidence that Apple's products are becoming less popular?

For certain categories of problem it seems the general public is ignorant. OTOH, the headphone jack seems to be the talk of my non technical iphone associates, and more than one regular upgrader has mentioned they aren't ready to upgrade their iphone 6's because of it.

My wife is the apple user in the house, and I think she is indicative of a lot of them at this point. She chooses apple because they are cool status symbols and her friends have them. The issues with the iphone7 modem (yah I went out of my way for the qualcomm and then had an entertaining conversation with her about it) and headphone jack were completely off her radar. The apparent short life of her iphone 5s battery, and the weird wifi issues with the ipads after OS upgrades/etc don't enter her head as problems with the devices.

Annecdotally, I know 2 long time iPhone users who I helped switch over to a Google Pixel and both of them have been happy. I've been surprised how little they complained or asked questions about anything after 5 minutes of android training.

Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, I would be happy to take their recent results in my own business and wouldn't at all be disappointed. You could also point out that management may well be taking the long view of a post-Jobs Apple and giving Cook room to find that Apple of the future... as opposed to being driven purely by short term results/quarterly reports: something that I think many on HN condemn in other contexts.

Still... think of post-Gates Microsoft. They had huge momentum (which showed in the financials as well), but everybody including me thought there was something deeply wrong with Microsoft, too. They were coasting on that momentum and doing very little aside from coddling their more conservative customers... just as you suggest Apple can get away with. Microsoft was losing their leading position and was getting on the slow death-march path. They may have turned that around while they still could.

No doubt, casting MAJOR screw-ups aside, Apple will not die as a company anytime soon. Apple and Cook are still completely in position to turn things around. But atrophy and possibility of ending-up as some sort of also-ran... that's not impossible and it's also fair to point that out.

>Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, but then again, those without a gift for prophecy had called Apple's impeding DOOM several times a year since 2001.

Yeah, and those people's wrongness was pretty well-established by Apple's ever-increasing sales, revenues, and establishing new market categories. All of which have ended.

I have, I think, a pretty nuanced view of Apple. It's looking increasingly like 2015 was the best year ever for Apple. 2016 was worse, and there's very little sign that 2017 will be better than 2016. That said, 2015 was the high water mark for a uniquely valuable company with a uniquely valuable product. There's a lot of value in Apple that doesn't require being literally the single most successful year in, like, the history of capitalism.

And I think that most of Apple's decline is due to secular, external forces -- basically, the maturation of the smartphone market -- not because Cook is fucking up. Probably any CEO Apple had would have had pretty similar results -- or worse ones.

But that said, all the people who are like, "What? No, there are no problems with Apple" are obviously wrong on the face of it. iPhone sales are falling. iPad sales fell off a cliff more than a year ago. The Apple Watch has not been successful enough for Apple to even tell us how many units were sold. This is not the picture of the company in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014.

Yes. And this is where people that are Apple investors have to try and sort out which side are they on: those that think the doom answer is correct will sell (or short) the stock and those that are on what seems to be your side (yes, I might be wrong) will buy. Over time, those that are right will profit (or at least not lose) and those that are wrong will (should) eat their misguided notions. Anyone else... simply is armchair quarterbacking and frankly, doesn't matter.

I am in the "doesn't matter" category... I'm less interested in Apple (I'm not an investor in Apple, in any sense of the word, nor even a customer) and more interested in how perceptions about a companies are formed and how companies in similar circumstances can have very different conclusions drawn about them. Emotional appeal, brand loyalties, etc. can have some interesting influences in this regard.

That doesn't mean they'll be wrong forever.

No, a broken clock is also right twice a day.

You can make profit for a number of years before things go badly; profits are a lagging indicator.

> The company you say is in "total disarray" still made $45.7bn in profit in 2016, and grew its share price by 10%.

Microsoft was very profitable with Ballmer at the helm, but it can be argued he put the company in a very bad position that took them significant effort to fix and right the ship.

Very profitable? Their stock flatlined for a decade while it's peers sky rocketed.

The stock was flat but they were very profitable. Look here: "Microsoft was very profitable during Steve Ballmer's tenure. As you can see from the chart, revenue doubled and net income doubled as well. Nearly $19 Billion in net income from $62 Billion in revenue is nothing to sneeze at, and that kind of growth is not easy for a company that large." [1]

[1] https://www.quora.com/Did-microsoft-make-a-profit-under-stev...

Many of these same type of things were said about Microsoft during the early Ballmer era. His emphasis of the bottom line over vision and innovation inflicted a lot of damage that Microsoft is still recovering from. Yes, total disarray is an exaggeration, Apple isn't going anywhere, but there are a lot of parallels with Ballmer's Microsoft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com