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Tim Cook Defends Apple, Teases Exciting New Products In The Pipeline (bgr.com)
anderzole quotes a report from BGR: Apple's earnings report last week saw the company report a year over year decline in profits for the first time since 2003. The biggest contributing factor to the decline, not surprisingly, is that year over year iPhone sales dropped by 16%. Notably, Apple's most recent quarter represents the company's first iPhone sales decline in history. Consequently, the usual contingent of pundits and analysts have come out of the woodwork, all exclaiming that we've reached 'peak iPhone' and that Apple at this point has nowhere to go but down. In an effort to inject a bit of good news and all-around optimism to a particularly negative Apple news cycle, Tim Cook earlier today appeared on CNBC with Jim Cramer where the Apple CEO teased that Apple's still has a lot of innovation left to do and some interesting items in the product pipeline. "We've got great innovation in the pipeline," Cook said to Cramer. "New iPhones that will incentivize you and other people that have iPhones today to upgrade to new iPhones. We are going to give you things you can't live without that you just don't know you need today. That has always been the objective of Apple is to do things that really enrich people's lives. That you look back on and you wonder, how did I live without this."
They need a new mac pro tower (the new one sucks and they are at risk of losing a big part of the creative market) and better laptops (stop going for thin)
Do you remember when instead of telling us that the next trick will be impressive, They would just do the next trick and let us be amazed? If you need an applause sign, you've officially failed. Just sayin,
Within the arms of tragedy, there is little comfort in being right.
If they're going to do new iPhones, they need one that costs $99 or less. He spends time talking about the Chinese market, but they're not going to grow in that market anytime soon unless:
1) the phone is capable and cheap, as the market of Chinese people who can afford a $699 phone is saturated
2) the phone is made in China and likely co-marketed by a Chinese phone manufacturing company as the Chinese government wants to move their industry up the value chain
Those two things will be really hard for Apple to do. Outside of that:
Apple Watch - a big misstep
iPad Pro - it's a cheaper version of the Surface Pro with a mobile OS instead of a laptop OS. A misstep
For that reason, anything "enterprise" related they're just not that good; they've gotten better in recent years but Windows and Office are too universal in the enterprise setting.
MacBook Air - this is a pretty good product
iPad Air - eh, good product but the tablet market is starting to wind down or be saturated so the growth isn't there
After that, what have they got? Apple Car? They're not a car company; how the heck is this going to work? I'm not a Tesla fan but Tesla's way ahead of them on advanced modern cars, and GM, Ford, Toyota, and Honda are still churning out millions of cars; I don't see how Apple actually launches this successfully unless it's some Apple developed tech that is licensed to a real car manufacturer. Besies, Apple is in the business of high-margin hardware; in cars margins are slim on the hardware and all the money is made on financing to the consumer. This would be a very strange business for Apple to get in to.
Apple Home Automation? Maybe, but I doubt it. As much as Nest is making missteps these days by force-bricking their old products, they're still way ahead of Apple and have Google's backing and there are plenty of other guys out there in this space.
The only one i see is some form of consumer healthcare product to make the Apple Watch a health sensor platform integrated with other Apple products, but the drop in FitBit's sales and stock show that step counters won't cut it; it needs to be something a doctor can act on and that means getting loads of doctors and research behind the use of something as well as getting FDA approval. That's hard and expensive, but something Apple likely has the resources to tackle. To me that's the best shot at a big growth area and fits their customer base who are generally hipster quantified selfers who would love to brag and share how healthy they are via iMessenger.
Apple was never the leader in features.
In terms of the competitors Apple always tends to be in the middle of the road. Even the original iPhone which set the cell phone industry 2 years to redesign their phone, still was a rather modest device in terms of features, And you could do more with say a Blackberry.
Apple at its best will come with a new idea for a new way to use a product, however they don't seem to go crazy on features. Apple at its worse is still rather decent quality product that looks good, but you have no use for.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As a disclaimer I have an Android phone, have owned two iPads (one is still used by my wife), but own a Surface Pro 4 now. My last laptop was a Macbook Pro with Windows installed, but now I have a Lenovo. I am certainly not an Apple fanboy but still feel they offer great products.
Apple's hardware is underpowered.
This is rarely true. Because there is only one manufacturer of Apple devices and they only refresh them about once a year, there are usually more powerful Android / Windows devices on the market for most of the year. But you rarely have to wait more than 6-9 months for Apple to catch up. Apple also tends to wait for the bugs in newer drivers to be solved, which as an owner of a Surface Pro 4 I can tell you is not how Microsoft handled their device launch. It took about 5 months before my Surface Pro 4 drivers started functioning properly all of the time.
The OS software is so oversimplified that it's hard to use.
This is probably only because you are a power user. I also sometimes find OSX difficult to use, but not for 95% of my usage. Only when I am trying to customize my experience do I run into problems, and I assume the primary reason is I am used to other OSes.
There aren't many useful applications unless you're doing audio or video editing
I would agree that Apple doesn't really have a killer app on the desktop, but in the iOS world they are clearly #1 in applications. You may not find those applications useful, but the majority of consumers disagree with you.
Apple hasn't innovated in ten years.
That is nonsense. It still takes innovation to incrementally improve products. You don't have to reinvent an industry to be innovative. I may agree that Apple hasn't innovated much in the last 2-3 years, but certainly not 10.
The Apple Watch was a mistake that tried to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Agreed.
Apple products are incredibly expensive but wouldn't even be worth the cost of a typical Android or Windows product.
The apple tax is mostly a myth, and at best comes to $50 on many devices. For instance the iPhone 6+ cost $50 more than my Note 4 when I purchased it two years ago. Apple also tends to only build devices with top of the line hardware, so they are more expensive that the vast majority of other devices. But when compared to Android / Windows devices with similar specs the prices are very similar.
Can anyone explain to me why anyone would use Apple products?
Overall I don't use Apple products because I don't think there is enough variation of products, and I generally feel a more open marketplace creates better products in the long run. For at least 5-6 years I have felt Android phones were superior primarily because I had more options to choose from. If I had to choose between Samsung and Apple I probably would have chosen Apple until 4 years ago, but I never had to make that choice since I also had Motorola / HTC / etc to choose from. Same thing with other Apple devices. For a short time I felt the Macbook Pro 17" laptop was the best on the market, so that is what I bought, but I don't think that has been true for a while.
But regardless of my complaints about options from Apple, they still make great devices. Its just not for me.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke