Apple is cutting workers in SF Bay Area
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
It's also less than 0.4% of their employees there, according to the numbers in the piece. That doesn't feel newsworthy...or was Apple really never firing people in theseast years ?
It's newsworthy only in that Apple avoided mass layoffs while their peers slashed headcount aggressively. But the affect should probably have guessed it was coming - it seems a lot of the employees affected have "car" related skills - eg. mechanists, and famously their car program was recently shut down.
The stock price is taking a battering due to uncertainty of the legal battles and outcomes with EU, US, AU and other regulators of markets.
It could be argued that Apple isnt winning the PR battle. It also seems like Tim Cook's star is no longer on the rise.
On the one hand he has managed Apple to incredible levels of profit and market share, but on the other his actions and policies may have harmed the core of Apple's brand proposition.
The Car Project was an expensive write off, from what we can tell.
The Apple Visions Pro seems like a pompous vanity project that has poor product market fit. It's exactly the sort of product that you could see a modern day Steve Jobs walking in and cancelling immediately.
Their product line is now confused and bloated, driven by an obsessions to squeeze as much profit out of every product for as long as possible. Rather than actually selling what is going to be best for consumers driven by market competition and a desire and pride in their work from their engineers, product and marketing teams to deliver the best products they can to market.
Apple's offfensive pricing on SSD and RAM upgrades are the one that offends me the most. I feel like I'm being scammed everytime I look at spec'ing up a new Macbook. Which is completley different to the feeling I got when ordering a new Framework 13" for school use!
Apple Executives needs to get our of their gated palace and see what the world actualy thinks of them and their products.
Obviously we could argue all sorts of things about Apple, and we will never know for sure until it happens. :-)
I've been holding out with my 13" Intel MBP for that reason, I guess until the wheels fall off. Thankfully they don't really verify the education purchase program.