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Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

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Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#91

Apple's share price for the last year is up by about 10%, despite problems with disatisfation over MacBook Pro, no earphone jack, etc. Personally, the only thing I am really disappointed with is slow progress on web services. I was considering moving on from Apple myself, but decided that I like their hardware and my workflow is good on macOS and iOS (on a iPad Pro). I just bought a MacBook and when my Android phone…

Everyone I talk to in person loves their new MacBook Pro. They say it's their favorite MacBook ever.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#92
post #68

People are all up in arms about headphone jacks, USB-C, and dongles. When the real issue is Apple completely missing huge new markets. Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it. I never use Siri, she is nearly worthless, but I do use Alexa multiple times a day. Amazon is Leading the voice assistant market, and Google is right on their heels. Home automation was supposed to get bet…

The thing that just makes me throw my hands up in exasperation is that Apple could have been early to the "home hub" game with AppleTV but they just didn't see it.

Imagine if, instead of Apple Watch, they had put those folks into building the AppleTV into a home hub based on Siri. I feel like Apple Watch was to be their "always available assistant" but I just don't see it succeeding in that market for most people.

(Siri isn't as good as Alexa or Google's thing but that's a separate issue...)

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure Tim Cook doesn't care.

I'd argue he does care but isn't financially hurt. Being chastised by your peers isn't any less significant when you're rich.

As someone who has climbed the income ladder significantly, I'd beg to differ. My ability to laugh off chastisement has correlated very directly with my financial stability. In fact I'd say the converse seems more likely, in that for someone without financial capital, social capital is all one has, whereas financial capital can certainly supplement or purchase a lack of social capital in many domains.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#94
post #68

People are all up in arms about headphone jacks, USB-C, and dongles. When the real issue is Apple completely missing huge new markets. Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it. I never use Siri, she is nearly worthless, but I do use Alexa multiple times a day. Amazon is Leading the voice assistant market, and Google is right on their heels. Home automation was supposed to get bet…

I agree. They seem to be making the same mistake as Microsoft did in the Ballmer years. Yes, they are poking at some new markets, but quite half heartedly and believing their own ecosystem hype too much. It feels like all the protests about Vista back then. When in reality this was trivial compared to the fact there was virtually nothing exciting coming out from them and they misstepped on huge new markets. I honestl…

It shouldn't surprise anyone. Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer shared a similar roll when they were under their respective CEO/Celebrities.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#95

How is Tim Cook still CEO of Apple? Forget sales for a moment and just consider the damage Apple's brand is suffering. $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches. In may ways Apples becoming the butt of jokes, a symbol of ignorance. Apple's in total disarray right now and the most loyal followers, myself included, are either jumping ship or seriously considering. The mistakes bein…

Next upgrade I'm moving to MS Surface or something similar. The dongle thing did it for me, which is pretty sad. I was also a bit surprised to find out that 95% of the gaming market is still on PC [1]. Guess I was a disillusioned Mac user, but I thought Mac was bigger in games. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Part of it's probably availability of games on the platform (which has gotten better but is still poor), but part of it's because you can buy both a lower-end Mac (an Air, say, or an entry-level MBP) and build a pretty nice gaming PC for less than the cost of just a gaming-capable mac.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#96
post #18

How is Tim Cook still CEO of Apple? Forget sales for a moment and just consider the damage Apple's brand is suffering. $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches. In may ways Apples becoming the butt of jokes, a symbol of ignorance. Apple's in total disarray right now and the most loyal followers, myself included, are either jumping ship or seriously considering. The mistakes bein…

I don't understand why I can't plug the lightning headphone that comes with my brand new apple phone in my brand new apple notebook.

EDIT: Oops, the adaptor goes the other way. I didn't really think that through. Still, not being able to use your lightning earpods with your Mac isn't a big loss.

You can. Your brand new iPhone also came with a tiny little cable that you attach to your lightning headphones and now you can plug them into your Mac. It's really not that hard.

More generally, the reasons for ditching the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone aren't really applicable to the Mac, so there's no reason to remove that jack from the Mac, which means it still has it. And the iPhone uses lightning for a lot more than just headphones, whereas if the Mac got lightning, it would literally be for just headphones. So it's really kind of a waste to add a second port on the Mac that is intended for just headphones, even though you can attempt to plug other shit into it (like a USB charger), which would be confusing, and since the Mac already has a dedicated port for headphones. Oh, and your lightning earpods came with a little adaptor that makes it work on the Mac. Also, don't forget, Apple's really trying to push wireless headphones as the future, and wireless headphones work on the Mac just like they do on the iPhone.

So it's really not that hard to see why Apple decided not to put a useless port on the Mac that would simply cause a lot of confusion down the road, seeing as there's really no reason to do that.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#97
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray. Yes, I would be happy to take their recent results in my own business and wouldn't at all be disappointed. You could also point out that management may well be taking the long view of a post-Jobs Apple and giving Cook room to find that Apple o…

> Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray. Yes, but then again, those without a gift for prophecy had called Apple's impeding DOOM several times a year since 2001.

Yeah, and those people's wrongness was pretty well-established by Apple's ever-increasing sales, revenues, and establishing new market categories. All of which have ended.

I have, I think, a pretty nuanced view of Apple. It's looking increasingly like 2015 was the best year ever for Apple. 2016 was worse, and there's very little sign that 2017 will be better than 2016. That said, 2015 was the high water mark for a uniquely valuable company with a uniquely valuable product. There's a lot of value in Apple that doesn't require being literally the single most successful year in, like, the history of capitalism.

And I think that most of Apple's decline is due to secular, external forces -- basically, the maturation of the smartphone market -- not because Cook is fucking up. Probably any CEO Apple had would have had pretty similar results -- or worse ones.

But that said, all the people who are like, "What? No, there are no problems with Apple" are obviously wrong on the face of it. iPhone sales are falling. iPad sales fell off a cliff more than a year ago. The Apple Watch has not been successful enough for Apple to even tell us how many units were sold. This is not the picture of the company in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#98
post #33

How is Tim Cook still CEO of Apple? Forget sales for a moment and just consider the damage Apple's brand is suffering. $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches. In may ways Apples becoming the butt of jokes, a symbol of ignorance. Apple's in total disarray right now and the most loyal followers, myself included, are either jumping ship or seriously considering. The mistakes bein…

Oh how quickly the Steve Jobs era is forgotten. Remember the white iPhone 4 that was delayed almost a year after Steve announced it? Or when they changed from the 30 pin to Lightning? Or when they dumped the floppy and optical drive? Apple is focused on the iPhone because that's where almost all their profits come from. It's annoying for us long time Mac users, but even Steve was focused on iOS devices when he died.…

The hockey puck mouse and the iPod HiFi might deserve places on that list.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#99
post #45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have loved, Sure. Would have done, No.

The book took 8 years to make. He died in Oct 2011. He probably knew about it.

The problem is not the book, the problem is the pricing for the book which he had nothing to do with.

At 30$ or 300$ the company is not going to get meaningful revenue, or likely enough to pay the cost of production back. So, the pricing needs to relate to something else.

Re: Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals

#100
post #71
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a time machine, but why do you think he wouldn't have done the book? He was responsible for the ridiculous 20th Anniversary Mac ($7499 in 1997!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintos... That's a way bigger time/money sink than allowing your designers to put together an art book of Apple products.

I don't think he was responsible for the 20th Anniversary Mac, which was released in March 1997. Apple bought NeXT in february 1997, and Jobs only be became de facto chief of Apple after Amelio was ousted in July 1997.

That's fair, but I still think he would have loved the book and quite well may have known about it or even approved it.
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