Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing

Hodejo1 writes "Apple traditionally has big product announcements in the early spring, so around February both the mainstream press and the tech blogs began to circulate their favorite rumors (the iWatch, iTV). They also announced the date of the next Apple event, which this year was in March — except it didn't happen. 'Reliable sources' then confirmed it would be in April, then May and then — nothing. In withdrawal and with a notoriously secretive Apple offering no relief the tech journalists started to get cranky. The end result is a rash of petulant stories that insist Apple is desperate for new products, in trouble (with $150 billion dollars in the bank, I should be in such trouble) and in decline. The only ones desperate seem to be editors addicted to traffic-generating Apple announcements. Good news is on the horizon, though, as the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference starts June 10th." This was in evidence last night, as Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to the press at the All Things D conference. Cook's statements were mostly the sort of vague, grandiose talk that gets fed to investors on an earnings call, but it's generating article after article because, hey, it's Tim Cook.

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

^ that is all

Re:Who cares?

[sycodon]

Apple is now Just Another Tech Company run by MBAs and Marketing jackwads.

If Steve were here, he would tear the entire iTunes team a new asshole and then fire them all.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The end result is a rash of petulant stories that insist Apple is desperate for new products, in trouble (with $150 billion dollars in the bank,"

It's sort of like having a small child or a puppy.

A small child or puppy with $150 billion of other people's money. And someday governments around the world will grow enough balls to take it back.

"I'd call on Apple Australia to either correct the record or provide further detail as to the way it actually prices its products for Australian consumers," Husic told the House of Representatives.

Husic said people may have "raised an eyebrow" at reports that Apple generated $6bn in revenue in Australia but "paid only $40m in tax – apparently because it racked up $5.5bn in costs", but "their eyes would've popped out" at the US revelations Apple had set up an offshore subsidiary that earned $30bn income but had apparently paid no tax to any government for five years."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/28/australian-companies-forced-disclose-tax

Re:Who cares?

[chrish]

While I agree with the first part (and hey, they can coast for a decade, so maybe they've got ample opportunity to get moving again), I don't agree with the second part.

iTunes sucked hard for many, many years while Jobs was at the helm, its awfulness isn't a feature of Tim Cook's days.

Re:Who cares?

[shmlco]

"A small child or puppy with $150 billion of other people's money. And someday governments around the world will grow enough balls to take it back."

People gave them money in exchange for a product. That's called business.

As to "growing enough balls", get real. We have corporations that make billions in profits quarterly, pay little to no taxes on them, and then the government turns around and hands them billions more in subsidies and tax breaks. And yes, I'm talking about you, Exxon.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

A small child or puppy with $150 billion of other people's money.

Sorry, did Apple break into peoples' houses and force them to buy iPads and iPhones and Macs at the point of a gun? Because I'm pretty sure they didn't.

That 150 billion is Apple's - they earned it, it's not "someone else's" money - unless you can prove that they have failed to pay the taxes required of them by law, in which case SOME PORTION of that money certainly belongs to the governments to which taxes are owed.

If Apple has satisfied their legal obligations under the current tax laws, then that money is NOBODY but APPLE's. If the governments want them to pay more money, then the governments should pass some new fucking tax laws, instead of whining about how Apple didn't say "Hey, we only owe $6 billion, but you know what, let's just round that up to $100 billion, and here's a check."

Your expectations and wishes do not constitute a legal obligation on other people. If you want to compel Apple to pay more, by all means - go for it. I'd even agree that they should be paying more in taxes than they are currently. But don't for a second think you're doing anything but whining like a bitch by complaining that they "ONLY" paid what they're "OBLIGATED" to pay.

Oh god, you thick cunts make me lose my mind. And I'm not even an Apple user. This "you didn't pay more than you're obligated to, therefore you're evil" rhetoric is just so retarded it defies comprehension.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sort of like having a small child or a puppy. It's when everything is quiet that you start to wonder what they're up to.

More like being in a cult. You expect your leader to hold weekly masses, and when he fails to deliver one sermon, some of the followers start thinking it's the end of the world.

Re:Who cares?

[tlhIngan]

That said, I completely agree. We are now reporting about non-news as news?

Because Apple stories bring in ad revenue. A lot of it, in fact. If you can attract Android fanboys and Apple-haters to the mix, you can count on a good chunk of ad revenue.

So Apple non-news is the media's attempt to bring some Apple story ad revenue back.

Journalists are hurting for money too, you know,

And Apple's positioned themselves to be the "premium, but accessible" brand. Unlike Google (who simply are ho-hum because they're splashed across the vast majority of web searchines), and Samsung (who you see everywhere for everything - from lowly crap to high end smartphones and appliances).

And Google I/O was a huge bust in terms of reporting. The PS4 and Xbox One announcements tended to be yawners.

Only Apple stories can bring in crowds from Apple fanboys, Android fanboys, Apple haters, and the general public - it won't be long until even the Apple-haters have haters ("I remember when hating Apple was COOL..."). Android stories bring out some Android fanboys, and a few Apple fanboys, but otherwise not much of a stir. Microsoft stories (including Xbox) similarly - the anti-Microsoft rhetoric has died down. Even Google can't seem to pull in crowds.

Except it seems that Apple has throughout its entire life a steady supply of fans, haters, and people interested in their product.

Hell, it won't be long until you see "Tim Cook - help a starving journalist and announce *something*".

Re:Who cares?

[QuietLagoon]

Yeah, maybe it's time to shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders. [with pointer to sarcasm reference]

You misunderstood what I said. When a company is at its peak, most think it will continue to perform at the same level. In Apple's case, that means very significant growth per year, a growth rate that is very unlikely for Apple to maintain. Apple's "market-changing" products seem to be fewer and farther in-between of late.

.
In May 2003, Apple's stock was around 8, it recently peaked at nearly 100 times that price.

Do you really think that Apple's stock price will increase another 100-fold over the next ten years? Do you really think that Apple can maintain the same growth rate over the next ten years?

Hence my comment that Apple's best days are behind it.

Re:Who cares?

[tnk1]

Hand-picked successors can certainly fail, but it isn't the same situation as being thrown out by Gil Amelio and the Board.

Needless to say, Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs, but that might be "acceptable". One might consider that the Board probably knew that the share value would tank simply because Steve Jobs died. If they were prepared for that eventuality, then they realize that *any* successor would be screwed. If they're going to fire him, they are going to want to do it based on a stock drop that Tim Cook is primarily responsible for.

Now, as for Cook's actual ability to be CEO, two things are unclear.

1. If Apple is tanking, is that simply because Apple's products were entering sort of an iterative phase even before Jobs died? Some had pointed that out in the past.
2. Can Steve Jobs be replaced by anyone at all? Was he like Alexander the Great or Charlemagne in terms of being able to build an empire where no empire should have been able to appear normally? If Apple was built solely on personal abilities of a particular person, instead of on collective leadership, it will need to change significantly to be able to survive without him.

On point two, however, one should point out that Alexander the Great's successors were actually rather successful at maintaining their still-large, if divided, holdings. Tim Cook may not be an Alexander, but he could shape up to be a Ptolemy. In that sense, he might still be the right man for the job, even if everything he does seems to look like failure in contrast to Jobs. Cook might ultimately be successful at maintaining as much of the Empire as he can, but he's probably still going to lose a good chunk of it no matter what he does.

Re:Who cares?

[mspohr]

I'm a little hesitant to reply to you since your tone of voice is so nasty but.. here goes.

When you buy stuff, you really should pay the entire cost of that stuff which should include the costs and benefits of the legal, political, education, and infrastructure (roads, communications, etc.) which went into making that stuff. Some of these costs are publicly funded by taxes.
That is why corporations should pay taxes.
I don't want to underwrite the cost of your latest gadget by paying for all of the public goods which helped create it.
You need to pay for your own stuff.

Re:Who cares?

[dgatwood]

How can any CEO keep their job after their stock value was chopped in half in less than a year?

First, it didn't get chopped in half. AAPL peaked at 702, and troughed at 390, give or take. Second, at no point did AAPL lose much more than about a year worth of gains. Every dollar the stock lost was a dollar that it also gained under Tim Cook, at approximately the same rate.

News flash: AAPL is prone to wild swings. Nothing new here. The only difference this time is that there's a whole new crop of pundits who don't remember 2008, 2001, etc.

Re:Who cares?

[spire3661]

You dont think business should be paying taxes to support the infrastructure that provides them with the opportunity to do business?

journalism

[Tom]

A good example to watch.

A successful company, ahead of its markets, does not need a new product every 6 months.
Journalists, on the other hand, do need news.

Re:journalism

[SJHillman]

It does when "Buy The iDevice++" is their business model. There's a lot of 3 to 5 year old iDevices out there that are still perfectly suited to what their owners actually need, but Apple has made a metric fuckton of money by convincing people to upgrade every year even if they don't need any of the new features. At it's heart, Apple has become a marketing company that happens to also sell what they market. Without that marketing power, iDevices would have all the popularity of the Zune.

Re:journalism

[shadowrat]

While device buying is profitable for apple, i don't think their model entirely revolves around getting you to buy the next device. It's more about digital purchases and locking you into their ecosystem. They are perfectly happy for you to keep your 3 year old device as long as you continue to use their cloud storage, buy mp3s on itunes, and get every new angry birds.

Re:journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually everything I have seen says that Apple makes little to nothing on selling music, apps, storage, etc. Sure they generate tons of revenue, but Apple claims most of that revenue pays for the service, royalties, etc. Remember Apple only gets 30% of every dollar in Apps sold. A lot of apps are free, in which case Apple is losing money operationally. Only Apple and the record labels know how much Apple hands over to the record labels on every song sold.

However, making the ecosystem work with all the devices makes you want to buy an iphone, then an ipad, then an iMac, then an AppleTV, etc.

famous for being famous

[shortscruffydave]

Apple seems to be more about the rumours and the stories about their products nowadays, more so than being about their product innovations. Makes me think of 'C' list celebrities, who are really famous for being famous rather than for anything substantive that they might actually do

Re:Apple is in trouble

[Xest]

Android was designed with the potential for arbitrary screen resolutions from the outset, in contrast Apple pretended fragmentation was an Android problem rather than accept the reality that fragmentation is a necessary fact of progress (because for progress to occur, hardware has to change).

The net result is that with iOS you often end up with programs where they either just zoom in and create a pixelated wreck of your lovely retina display, or they just use up an absolutely tiny fraction of your total screen space.

That's what he's referring to, Apple's complete lack of foresight and the horrible mess it leads to if developers don't update their app each time Apple has a screen change.

What's Apple Famous for Again?

[neoshroom]

What's Apple famous for again? Yup, they are famous for being famous.

Well that and popularizing the graphic user interface everyone uses in the first place.

And for having a pretty decent Unix-based operating system while Ballmer drives Microsoft off a cliff.

And for designing the first mp3 player that the mass-market embraced.

And for ushering in the change from feature-phones to smartphones.

And for creating an earthquake in the tablet market such that in the future it is predicted more tablets will sell than PCs.

But yeah...they are just famous for being famous...

...Until they release a TV with a kinect-like interface running iOS. And then Sony's PS4 and the Wii U crashes and burns, (which is sort of already happening...sales on the Wii U are very poor and Sony's electronics wing isn't doing well either), while everyone is playing Angry Birds on their new Apple TV platform and we get umpteen-million articles about the "New Console Wars," which are now between Microsoft and Apple.

Of course then a couple years will go by and people will forget all of history and again claim that Apple is just famous for being famous. Such is the cycle of Slashdot.

Re:What's Apple Famous for Again?

[drinkypoo]

Apple has had great timing.

All of this stuff was bound to happen around when it happened. Apple saw these things coming and was there at the right time, as opposed to first. But then they always just make a shiny shiny, and half-ass it, because that's enough to get most of the dollars. You know, just like everyone else.

Re:What's Apple Famous for Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has had great timing.

All of this stuff was bound to happen around when it happened. Apple saw these things coming and was there at the right time, as opposed to first. But then they always just make a shiny shiny, and half-ass it, because that's enough to get most of the dollars. You know, just like everyone else.

I have to disagree with you here. I think Apple created their own timing. The only thing they waited on was broadband internet access. When it was introduced, the iPod blew people away; the iPad did something that Microsoft failed to do for over 10 years: get a tablet to be accepted and used by the general public. I would guess that you could give MS another 10 years and they still wouldn't understand the tablet market without what Apple had done. Google wouldn't have even considered creating Android. MS and Google were happy with the status quo in terms of computing devices. Apple really introduced the computing appliance.

Re:Jonesing?

[Sockatume]

When faced with a new word it is often prudent to attempt to deduce its meaning from context. Given that the article is about journalists "in withdrawal" and "cranky" due to a lack of new Apple news, what do you think that "Jonesing" could mean?

Like my profession's image could get any worse...

[robp]

To any tech journalists upset that Apple isn't spoon-feeding them product news: Get out. Just leave the business. Please?

Seriously, if you don't know to do your own digging for a story or don't want to, you're in the wrong line of work. And there are plenty of other people who would gladly take your place.