On the surface the article is about a font that is more-or-less widely used in New York City signage, but that's not its true purpose. Its true purpose is to identify stuck-up asshole font nerds on/.
So far I'd say that it's doing a pretty good job at it.
Well, I was going to say that I would be waiting for/.'ere to explain to me why this is yet more evidence that Apple sucks but I see that AC has already started it.
If Tim Cook personally promised each and every Apple user sexual favors from their favorite movie star (upon request, of course) somebody here on/. would figure out how that was bad, that Apple sucks, that Steve Jobs would've done it better, and Samsung did it first.
I was wondering if a/. libertarian was going to show up. All you have to do is wait for the steady hand of the market. Just like apartments and airplanes, those scooters have to be used enough to pay for themselves. If they don't, the scooter suppliers will pick them up and try some other town.
This is one of the twice-daily Apple posts/. supplies so that Apple haters can take turns trying to out-do each other in slandering Apple product users and shouting about how much they hate Apple products. If/. doesn't supply them then the Apple-hating crowd have to go to Reddit to hate on Apple users.
You could've stopped right there./. is filled with trolls and people who think being contrary is the same as being intelligent and that being picky is the same thing as having taste.
Not enough has been said so far about Alex Garland's Annihilation, due out Feb 27, based on the novel by Jeff Vandermeer. Garland is the director of Ex Machina, itself a pretty good SF movie. Vandermeer has seen an early cut and said that the ending will be talked about the way the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey has been talked about for the last 50 years or so.
Case in point: The Apple-hater crowd on Slashdot. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they persist in believing that all iPhone owners are fanbois who just want the latest shiny, that Apple hasn't been able to innovate since Steve Jobs died, and that the next Samsung/Nokia/Motorola/whatever Android phone will be the "iPhone-killer."
I'm guessing you're a white man. Ask a woman or African-American whether they're better off than 50 years ago.
50 years ago the classified ads were divided into "Men Wanted" (engineers, lawyers, truck drivers, carpenters, etc.) and "Women Wanted" (secretaries, nurses, receptionists, etc.). If you were a woman you couldn't get just any job, no matter how qualified you might be. You could only get the jobs that people thought women were suited for. A woman's first job was to raise her family.
50 years ago African-Americans couldn't buy a house just anywhere. They had to buy a house in the neighborhoods that banks approved of for "their kind." They probably couldn't buy a house at all unless they could get a loan from a African-American-owned bank, if there was a African-American-owned bank anywhere around. They couldn't get just any job. They had to get jobs that were open to African-Americans: waiters, maids, servants of all kinds, laborers, etc.
I'm not even going to mention Hispanic people. 50 years ago there weren't that many in the U.S. and those that were here had even worse lives.
There seems to be no evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.
You said
based on what you wrote you can't prove he's a good CEO.
I offer two objective measurements, stock price and number of iPhones sold, that demonstrate that Tim Cook is an good CEO. I could've added other ways to evaluate him, such as the increase in the number of employees, Cook's support for privacy rights, LGBT rights, and renewable energy.
Your response is that
Driving a great company into the ground take time. Let's see how Apple is doing in another 10 years.
What are we supposed to take away from that? That we can't evaluate how good Tim Cook is as Apple CEO for another decade? What evidence can you show right now that Tim Cook is (or may be) driving Apple into the ground? Cook's been CEO for over 6 years. He has a track record. Based on that track record we have every reason to expect that he'll continue to be a good CEO.
By the way other stocks at record highs include MS and also Yahoo. Remember them?
As I said before, it is the nature of the tech industry for successful companies to gradually decline. Apple isn't immune. Other than that general observation, the decline of MS and Yahoo have nothing to do with if or how Apple may succeed or fail in the future.
Let's do the numbers again. On the day Jobs died AAPL closed at the adjusted-for-split price of $54.04. Today it closed at $173.80. That's a 221% increase. By comparison, on 10/5/2011 the Dow-Jones index closed at 10939.95. Today it closed at 23439.70, for an increase of 114%. Clearly AAPL has outperformed the market.
My point still stands. Stock price is a valid measurement of CEO effectiveness, and by that measure Tim Cook is very effective.
Driving a great company into the ground take time. Let's see how Apple is doing in another 10 years.
So Apple will fail in 10 years therefore Cook is a bad CEO today? That dog won't hunt.
By the way other stocks at record highs include MS and also Yahoo. Remember them?
So because MS and Yahoo failed, therefore Apple will fail? Another non-hunting dog. Apple will almost certainly decline over time. It's the nature of the tech business. You could point to IBM, Honeywell, Dell, Digital Equipment, DEC, etc., as well. Apple may fail because of a failure in leadership, and the leader may be Cook, but we don't know that for sure and we can't predict the time or the reason.
Right now Apple is making money for its investors and suppliers and employing a lot of people. Those are indicators of a successful CEO. There's a lot of CEOs out there (mostly Apple competitors) that wish they were doing as well.
Thanks for the link to the Forbes article. Let's talk about those problems you mention:
1) Announced before being ready. This is SOP in the business. It's called "marketing." The Essential Phone was announced in May, missed its June ship date, missed its July ship date, and finally became available in late August. The Galaxy S8 was announced on March 29 with availability almost a month later, April 21. When other folks do it, it's okay, but when Apple does it, it's bad?
2) What real world problems does the iPhone X answer? Strawman argument. Why does an iPhone have to answer "real world" problems? What "real world" problems does the Galaxy S8 answer? What about the Pixel 2? Do Apple products have to answer "real world" problems when other smartphones just have to, you know, be smartphones? In any case, it seems to me that one "real world" problem it answers is that Apple wants a new product to sell. Selling phones is how they make money. And a really important measure of a successful CEO (we're talking about CEOs, remember?) is when the company they lead makes a profit.
3) Product confusion. Puh-lease. Let's see, right now Apple is selling the SE, 6S, 7, 8, and X. The 6S, 7, and 8 also come in a Plus model. I don't even know how to begin comparing its competitors. I don't even know the names of all the competitors. Samsung, LG, Essential, who else?
And before we go too far down the road toward a Steve Jobs hagiography, let's take a minute to think about the G3 Cube, the Apple III, the ROKR, MobileMe, etc. Nobody argues that Jobs was perfect. Let's not argue that Cook must be perfect in order to be successful.
AAPL closed at $54.04 on Oct 5, 2011, the day Steve Jobs died. On June 9, 2014 it closed at $645.57, up 1095%. That day it split 7 for 1. This past Friday AAPL closed at $174.67. If the stock had not split the share price today would be $1222.69. So, if you had bought a share of stock in Apple on 10/5/2011 then you would've made 2162% on your investment.
Apple sold 78.29 million iPhones in 1Q17.
It seems to me that this is evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.
1. Back in the summer I noticed that the screen of my three-year-old, out of warranty iPhone 6 was bulging out on the left hand side. I checked out the problem on various Apple web sites and determined that it was caused by a swelling battery. I took the phone to the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. The Apple employee took one look at it and explained that the battery was going bad but it would be "too dangerous" to replace it. Instead, for $79 (the price of a replacement battery) they took my failing phone and gave me an identical new (not refurb) iPhone 6. I was out of the store in 20 minutes.
2. A month or so ago a friend of mine (a retired college professor) asked for help with her iPhone. It's an iPhone 5S she bought in 2013 at Walmart with a StraightTalk plan. Let me emphasize this: A 4 year old phone she bought at Walmart. Of course it's out of warranty.
The phone was complaining that it had 0 free storage. She had managed to get so many photos on her phone that it literally had no free storage to do anything. It couldn't send texts or get email. I couldn't fix it so we went to the Genius Bar.
The first person we spoke to was stumped so he asked a superior to help. This Apple employee spent 1 hour and 45 minutes getting the phone working again, including doing a complete factory reset, restoring from iCloud backup, and calling StraightTalk to re-activate the phone. In mid-repair she had to call the manager to say that she was going to postpone her dinner break until she could complete the repair.
Do these stories help you understand why people might want to spend so much on an Apple product? In these two cases, do you think that Apple lived up to their responsibilities to their customers, even though both phones were out of warranty?
Do you think that my friend and I are likely to buy another iPhone when the time comes?
On an iPhone, holding the phone sideways (landscape orientation) changes the calculator app to a scientific calculator. Parens and trig functions are available.
The sooner people realize Apple is in it solely for Apple, and not to elevate their users, the sooner this disaster of a company goes away.
Except for Mr. Cancelled, who doesn't realize this? Is BMW in it for anything other than BMW? Is Tesla? Microsoft? Does Samsung sell phones to elevate their users? This shouldn't need explaining (except to Apple-haters). Businesses - including Apple - are in business to make a profit. Apple under Tim Cook is enormously successful at this.
Cancelled, you wish you had stock in this "disaster of a company." I do, and it pays for my iPhone and Verizon contract.
Don't take AdamStarks comment too seriously. This is Slashdot. He's just doing his job as a complainer. If it wasn't him it somebody else would step up. If there was a news item saying that Bill Gates had volunteered to pay supermodels to give Slashdotters blowjobs, some commenter would find a way to complain about it. "But I shouldn't be FORCED to get a blowjob from a supermodel!"
Slashdot Mirror
On the surface the article is about a font that is more-or-less widely used in New York City signage, but that's not its true purpose. Its true purpose is to identify stuck-up asshole font nerds on /.
So far I'd say that it's doing a pretty good job at it.
Well, I was going to say that I would be waiting for /.'ere to explain to me why this is yet more evidence that Apple sucks but I see that AC has already started it.
If Tim Cook personally promised each and every Apple user sexual favors from their favorite movie star (upon request, of course) somebody here on /. would figure out how that was bad, that Apple sucks, that Steve Jobs would've done it better, and Samsung did it first.
Meet my neighbor. She goes to web sites by typing the URL into the Google search window and pressing Enter.
Suggesting that she switch to DuckDuckGo would be like suggesting to me that I start speaking Urdu.
I was wondering if a /. libertarian was going to show up. All you have to do is wait for the steady hand of the market. Just like apartments and airplanes, those scooters have to be used enough to pay for themselves. If they don't, the scooter suppliers will pick them up and try some other town.
This is one of the twice-daily Apple posts /. supplies so that Apple haters can take turns trying to out-do each other in slandering Apple product users and shouting about how much they hate Apple products. If /. doesn't supply them then the Apple-hating crowd have to go to Reddit to hate on Apple users.
I wish I had mod points. +1 Insightful. /. has the
You could've stopped right there. /. is filled with trolls and people who think being contrary is the same as being intelligent and that being picky is the same thing as having taste.
I posted this link in an earlier Apple article, but it needs repeating:
"iPhone X was the best selling smartphone in the world in the December quarter according to Canalys and it has been our best selling phone every week since it launched." -- Tim Cook http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/02/apples-iphone-x-is-the-instant-scapegoat-for-samsungs-failure-to-win-oled-orders-from-chinese-vendors.html
"iPhone X was the best selling smartphone in the world in the December quarter"
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/02/apples-iphone-x-is-the-instant-scapegoat-for-samsungs-failure-to-win-oled-orders-from-chinese-vendors.html
No. The 1st Amendment only restricts the government.
Not enough has been said so far about Alex Garland's Annihilation, due out Feb 27, based on the novel by Jeff Vandermeer. Garland is the director of Ex Machina, itself a pretty good SF movie. Vandermeer has seen an early cut and said that the ending will be talked about the way the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey has been talked about for the last 50 years or so.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89OP78l9oF0/
The barn is back there. The horse is wayyyy over there.
A new iPhone SE starts at $349. Cheap enough for you? BTW, calling Apple product owners "cult followers" identifies you as a member of the conspiracy.
Case in point: The Apple-hater crowd on Slashdot. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they persist in believing that all iPhone owners are fanbois who just want the latest shiny, that Apple hasn't been able to innovate since Steve Jobs died, and that the next Samsung/Nokia/Motorola/whatever Android phone will be the "iPhone-killer."
I'm guessing you're a white man. Ask a woman or African-American whether they're better off than 50 years ago.
50 years ago the classified ads were divided into "Men Wanted" (engineers, lawyers, truck drivers, carpenters, etc.) and "Women Wanted" (secretaries, nurses, receptionists, etc.). If you were a woman you couldn't get just any job, no matter how qualified you might be. You could only get the jobs that people thought women were suited for. A woman's first job was to raise her family.
50 years ago African-Americans couldn't buy a house just anywhere. They had to buy a house in the neighborhoods that banks approved of for "their kind." They probably couldn't buy a house at all unless they could get a loan from a African-American-owned bank, if there was a African-American-owned bank anywhere around. They couldn't get just any job. They had to get jobs that were open to African-Americans: waiters, maids, servants of all kinds, laborers, etc.
I'm not even going to mention Hispanic people. 50 years ago there weren't that many in the U.S. and those that were here had even worse lives.
FTFY
Let's recap. OP said
You said
I offer two objective measurements, stock price and number of iPhones sold, that demonstrate that Tim Cook is an good CEO. I could've added other ways to evaluate him, such as the increase in the number of employees, Cook's support for privacy rights, LGBT rights, and renewable energy.
Your response is that
What are we supposed to take away from that? That we can't evaluate how good Tim Cook is as Apple CEO for another decade? What evidence can you show right now that Tim Cook is (or may be) driving Apple into the ground? Cook's been CEO for over 6 years. He has a track record. Based on that track record we have every reason to expect that he'll continue to be a good CEO.
As I said before, it is the nature of the tech industry for successful companies to gradually decline. Apple isn't immune. Other than that general observation, the decline of MS and Yahoo have nothing to do with if or how Apple may succeed or fail in the future.
Urp. You're right. Thanks for the lesson.
Let's do the numbers again. On the day Jobs died AAPL closed at the adjusted-for-split price of $54.04. Today it closed at $173.80. That's a 221% increase. By comparison, on 10/5/2011 the Dow-Jones index closed at 10939.95. Today it closed at 23439.70, for an increase of 114%. Clearly AAPL has outperformed the market.
My point still stands. Stock price is a valid measurement of CEO effectiveness, and by that measure Tim Cook is very effective.
So Apple will fail in 10 years therefore Cook is a bad CEO today? That dog won't hunt.
So because MS and Yahoo failed, therefore Apple will fail? Another non-hunting dog. Apple will almost certainly decline over time. It's the nature of the tech business. You could point to IBM, Honeywell, Dell, Digital Equipment, DEC, etc., as well. Apple may fail because of a failure in leadership, and the leader may be Cook, but we don't know that for sure and we can't predict the time or the reason.
Right now Apple is making money for its investors and suppliers and employing a lot of people. Those are indicators of a successful CEO. There's a lot of CEOs out there (mostly Apple competitors) that wish they were doing as well.
Thanks for the link to the Forbes article. Let's talk about those problems you mention:
1) Announced before being ready. This is SOP in the business. It's called "marketing." The Essential Phone was announced in May, missed its June ship date, missed its July ship date, and finally became available in late August. The Galaxy S8 was announced on March 29 with availability almost a month later, April 21. When other folks do it, it's okay, but when Apple does it, it's bad?
2) What real world problems does the iPhone X answer? Strawman argument. Why does an iPhone have to answer "real world" problems? What "real world" problems does the Galaxy S8 answer? What about the Pixel 2? Do Apple products have to answer "real world" problems when other smartphones just have to, you know, be smartphones? In any case, it seems to me that one "real world" problem it answers is that Apple wants a new product to sell. Selling phones is how they make money. And a really important measure of a successful CEO (we're talking about CEOs, remember?) is when the company they lead makes a profit.
3) Product confusion. Puh-lease. Let's see, right now Apple is selling the SE, 6S, 7, 8, and X. The 6S, 7, and 8 also come in a Plus model. I don't even know how to begin comparing its competitors. I don't even know the names of all the competitors. Samsung, LG, Essential, who else?
And before we go too far down the road toward a Steve Jobs hagiography, let's take a minute to think about the G3 Cube, the Apple III, the ROKR, MobileMe, etc. Nobody argues that Jobs was perfect. Let's not argue that Cook must be perfect in order to be successful.
AAPL closed at $54.04 on Oct 5, 2011, the day Steve Jobs died. On June 9, 2014 it closed at $645.57, up 1095%. That day it split 7 for 1. This past Friday AAPL closed at $174.67. If the stock had not split the share price today would be $1222.69. So, if you had bought a share of stock in Apple on 10/5/2011 then you would've made 2162% on your investment.
Apple sold 78.29 million iPhones in 1Q17.
It seems to me that this is evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.
Here's two stories that may help you understand.
1. Back in the summer I noticed that the screen of my three-year-old, out of warranty iPhone 6 was bulging out on the left hand side. I checked out the problem on various Apple web sites and determined that it was caused by a swelling battery. I took the phone to the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. The Apple employee took one look at it and explained that the battery was going bad but it would be "too dangerous" to replace it. Instead, for $79 (the price of a replacement battery) they took my failing phone and gave me an identical new (not refurb) iPhone 6. I was out of the store in 20 minutes.
2. A month or so ago a friend of mine (a retired college professor) asked for help with her iPhone. It's an iPhone 5S she bought in 2013 at Walmart with a StraightTalk plan. Let me emphasize this: A 4 year old phone she bought at Walmart. Of course it's out of warranty.
The phone was complaining that it had 0 free storage. She had managed to get so many photos on her phone that it literally had no free storage to do anything. It couldn't send texts or get email. I couldn't fix it so we went to the Genius Bar.
The first person we spoke to was stumped so he asked a superior to help. This Apple employee spent 1 hour and 45 minutes getting the phone working again, including doing a complete factory reset, restoring from iCloud backup, and calling StraightTalk to re-activate the phone. In mid-repair she had to call the manager to say that she was going to postpone her dinner break until she could complete the repair.
Do these stories help you understand why people might want to spend so much on an Apple product? In these two cases, do you think that Apple lived up to their responsibilities to their customers, even though both phones were out of warranty?
Do you think that my friend and I are likely to buy another iPhone when the time comes?
On an iPhone, holding the phone sideways (landscape orientation) changes the calculator app to a scientific calculator. Parens and trig functions are available.
Except for Mr. Cancelled, who doesn't realize this? Is BMW in it for anything other than BMW? Is Tesla? Microsoft? Does Samsung sell phones to elevate their users? This shouldn't need explaining (except to Apple-haters). Businesses - including Apple - are in business to make a profit. Apple under Tim Cook is enormously successful at this.
Cancelled, you wish you had stock in this "disaster of a company." I do, and it pays for my iPhone and Verizon contract.
Don't take AdamStarks comment too seriously. This is Slashdot. He's just doing his job as a complainer. If it wasn't him it somebody else would step up. If there was a news item saying that Bill Gates had volunteered to pay supermodels to give Slashdotters blowjobs, some commenter would find a way to complain about it. "But I shouldn't be FORCED to get a blowjob from a supermodel!"