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Apple Explains Why Its R&D Spending Is On the Rise (cnbc.com)
Apple has steadily increased its spending on research and development over the past few quarters. An executive with the company explained why that's the case. From a report on CNBC: Company's financial guru attributes the spending to something of a much smaller scale: chips. It may not sound like it, but that research is "very strategic and important" for Apple to differentiate itself from the rest of the industry, chief financial officer Luca Maestri said on Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. "Today, we do much more in-house development of some fundamental technologies than we used to do a few years ago, when we did more of that in the supplier base -- the work we do around processors or sensors," Maestri said. "It's very important for us because we can push the envelope on innovation, we can better control timing, cost, quality. We look at that as a great strategic investment." On Tuesday, Maestri also noted that Apple's "product portfolio is much larger than it used to be," and that keeping all these products moving along in parallel adds up, especially with smaller markets, like the Apple Watch. While Maestri said Apple drops a "meaningful" amount of cash on products that do not generate revenue today, these products are not very large "in the total scheme of things," Maestri said. "They add up over time, and hopefully, those are good bets that we are making for the future of the company," Maestri said.
They have not spent anything to update the Mac mini in a meaningful way since 2012.
Intel has been having major issues recently. Qualcomm has apparently been a thorn in their side. Apple is no longer willing to tolerate a lot of outside suppliers being in control, so apple will bring more and more production under their own control?
It makes sense, Apple's in-house processors have been a major competitive advantage, particularly at a time when Qualcomm has been leveraging patents to get a near-monopoly in the SoC space. Apple's chips have been a generation ahead of the competition for some time, although their infrequent release schedule mitigates that when everybody else catches up and then passes them before the next A chip is then released.
How many millions did it take to replace the headphone jack with a useless piece of plastic?
/snark
a tech company has to defend or justify spending money on R&D...for tech.
It is as if everyone thinks that "tech" just falls out of the ether like some magic pixie dust, and a "great" tech company is really only just a better tech integrator (like Dell) than everyone else. Or should be.
Carl Icahn I'm sure would not be amused at the frivolous and speculative spending of valuable shareholder money that should instead be used to enhance shareholder [his] value...today.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/carl-icahns-2-billion-apple-stake-was-a-prime-example-of-investment-inequality-2016-06-07
... Steve Jobs.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
making thinner and more apple only service takes a lot of R&D.
now what about a real workstation? Some kind of server or at least the rights to run os x in a vm on any base hardware?
Theres really no really research left that can make workstations better. I commend you for being so resistant to change, but Apple will lose money if they don’t stay ahead of the trend and unfortunately I don't think workstations are going to make Apple tons of money.
To me, the salient question is whether they are investing to increase profits, or to make better products. The lack of updates in most of the mac line, along with battery and memory issues that crippled the new Macbooks, are decisions about resource allocation - Apple simply isn't interested. This is especially strange, since they still have strong development on OSX. On the mobile side, there is a lot of criticism about a lack of innovation to drive new product sales—but what I see is Apple simply looking to R&D to stabilise cost and production, based on the goal of meeting market expectations more consistently. All of this is very Tim Cook, and not very Steve Jobs. For all his faults, Steve did seem genuine about his passion to make "insanely great" products. Tim seems committed to demonstrable returns stability.
It's a pathetic day and age when R&D has to be explained.
CEO bonuses and compensation? Nope.
Massive goodwill charges for buying some waaayyyy overpriced Silly Valley startup or some other takeover? Nope.
CEO's ridiculous retirement package? Nope (See GE)
Paying a CEO an obscene amount to fuck up the company (Yahoo! & HP) Nope.
Now if any of you would like a pay raise to at least be competitive with your peers at another company, well YOU have to justify it and sorry, it's not in the budget.
Sometimes, I just don't understand /.-ers.
Rights? In a EULA? Fuck that! Oh, but it's Apple's EULA? Nevermind.
WTF, guys. Either a EULA is unenforceable bullshit or it's not. So which will it be? Allow Microsoft to sell OEM copies Windows without the ability to return it, or run a legal Hackintosh or Mac VM? You can't have it both ways.
(Personally, I think EULA's are, or should be, unenforceable bullshit and that neither Microsoft nor Apple can legally dictate what happens to their shit post-sale, aside from outright commercial duplication and distribution.)
from them. They gave-up about seven years ago except for new cases for their iPhones. For nearly seven years they've made the decision to stop progress on the amount of supported memory on their laptops. They have stopped progress for nearly seven years. If someone said to you ten years ago that corporations would stop progress on memory for even three years, I would have thought you crazy. Instead, Apple is screwing us for seven years and there's no end to this on their roadmap. It's amazing the hatred of us that is required in order to do this.
HP and others are taking the pros away from apple.
Apple needs to have an system for pro work. They where the platform for media pros in the past.
'Uh, hey guys? Remember when we were a tech company, and not a branded-lifestyle accessory designer? We might want to go back to doing that thing again, since our pipeline is shit.'
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Regardless of if you believe a EULA is enforceable or not, setting up any kind of for-profit venture that is violating the EULA of literally the richest company on the planet is a fantastic way to get bankrupted through legal action. Never mind the whole "oh, you updated your server and now it doesn't boot because you're hacking the booter to make it run somewhere it wasn't designed to" problem.
I would much rather have Apple say that I can run macOS with the server app in a VM for added cost in their license than take the legal risks or run with zero support if a business requires it. And I say this having run many OS X servers in the past, on both Mac Pro hardware and both PowerPC and Xeon based XServe models.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
'Apple's "product portfolio is much larger than it used to be,"'
Wasn't that the problem that Steve Jobs fixed way back when there were too many products and not enough focus?
Apple needs to have an system for pro work. They where the platform for media pros in the past.
Why? "Pro" is a niche market and not a money maker.
Apple is spending millions a week on subversive activities designed to undermine the United States and its President, and putting it on the balance sheet as R&D expense.
Because the pros decide what everyone else uses.
Where I work there was a noticeable shift to OS X shortly after the Intel transition because the MacBook Pros were, quite simply, the best development laptops you could buy. They ran an actual UNIX, you could run X86 VMs on them, they were actually worth the added cost. Because the developers were using Macs it was easier for everyone else to use Macs too.
Fast forward several years. The PC world has caught up. Microsoft is adding a true Linux layer to Windows. Apple no longer makes the best hardware. (And, yes, there really was a time when you flat-out couldn't get a Windows laptop that truly matched MacBook Pros.) Their current offerings are worthless for pros.
So the pros all switch back to cheaper but more powerful Windows hardware, set up Linux as best they can (but mostly just use Windows thanks to corporate IT requirements), and all of a sudden the Mac ecosystem that made it so great dies.
And that's why you care about pros. Because they drag in non-pros with them.
Yeah, a long time ago in a galaxy far away when their hardware was actually different and performed graphic design rendering functions better and more efficiently than competing hardware. It is now the same, both chip and screen, making Apple just a style and price point difference.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And that's why you care about pros. Because they drag in non-pros with them.
Sort of like how iPads started out as the platform for pros, then become popular w/ the masses ... oh wait.
That theory's great, as long as you look at only one of Apple's successful products. But I'm guessing you are going to tell me that the entirety of Apple's hundred billion dollar success is down to developers choosing OSX.
The entirety of Apples hundred billion dollar success is down to producing gadgets for consumers. And, as you seem to insist, upon abandoning the 'Pro' market. Even though Apple forces 'pros' to use their platform to create content for their gadgets.
Now, when Apple chooses to open up and allow their iOS development tools to run on Linux or Windows machines, it won't be a problem. As it is, they're sorta shooting themselves in the foot as far as developer support.
Apple is an appliance company now, they have no interest in nerds because nerds are no longer cool, celebrities are cool. In an appliance market cost is everything and the cost of chips is the biggest variable they can get a handle on. So they are investing in chips.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
In Apple's case, R&D stands for Reconnaissance & Destruction.
Will Apple's chips be compatible with 3rd party salsa, or will I need an adapter?
...if you can only release a new "version" of i* devices every year, there isn't enough money coming in anymore. Solution, release the iPhone 8 in December, and the iPhone 9 in February, followed by the iPhone 10 in March to fix all of the annoying but awesome bugs and glitches in version 9.
Wait a minute...
The entirety of Apples hundred billion dollar success is down to producing gadgets for consumers. And, as you seem to insist, upon abandoning the 'Pro' market. Even though Apple forces 'pros' to use their platform to create content for their gadgets.
Now, when Apple chooses to open up and allow their iOS development tools to run on Linux or Windows machines, it won't be a problem. As it is, they're sorta shooting themselves in the foot as far as developer support.
Blahfoosle. The MacBook Pro, despite all the poopooing here by people who'd never buy an Apple anyway, is a huge success. In the "Pro" market
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Apple is an appliance company now
Now? The Apple I was an appliance - at least compared to the kits other vendors sold. Which was the whole reason for its success.
And stop pretending that "Pros" don't want appliances - even more than other people they want to work with their tools, not work on them.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.