I think that Tim Cook's response is more akin to "respect the complexity of what we're doing here". And could further be taken to speak to the complexity of what any tech company is doing. It's probably hard enough for someone in Tim Cook's position to know the consequences of bumps in the supply chain, let alone some random commenter on HN...
My interpretation is that it's (nearly) impossible to predict a company's revenue based on the various, and sometimes disparate, signals in the supply chain.
It's like asking a single potato farmer to predict how well Utz potato chips will sell this summer.
As somebody who's built analytics around a few massive-scale consumer goods companies, let me tell you: If you think you understand a company's supply chain as an outsider, you don't know the first thing about supply chains.
And if you do understand the supply chain as an outsider for some reason, you're going to be using this information to make large bets about the stock price rather than release it to the media.
Or place your bets and then release the information.
No, more like "ignore analysts."
If you're going that far, why not reduce it to zero words?