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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

#141
post #96
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No I can't, it came with p2 to lightning adapte not the oposite.

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

#142

Like others I don't shed a lot of tears when an exec makes only 89% of their multi-million dollar target bonus :-) I asked an exec at Oracle once about how it was even motivating. For much of my career I've had some sort of bonus associated with my salary, at Sun, NetApp, Google all had bonus programs (with different tweaks). And for an engineer it could be a huge thing. At Google with all the multipliers in place yo…

Since it is impossible to give a precise estimate of each manager's contribution to the firm's output, it is inevitable that this process yields decisions that are largely arbitrary and dependent on hierarchical relationships and on the relative bargaining power of the individuals involved. It is only reasonable to assume that people in a position to set their own salaries have a natural incentive to treat themselves generously, or at the very least to be rather optimistic in gauging their marginal productivity. To behave in this way is only human, especially since the necessary information is, in objective terms, highly imperfect. It may be excessive to accuse senior executives of having their "hands in the till," but the metaphor is probably more apt than Adam Smith's metaphor of the market's "invisible hand." In practice, the invisible hand does not exist, any more than "pure and perfect" competition does, and the market is always embodied in specific institutions such as corporate hierarchies and compensation committees.

Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century

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

#143
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am waiting for a Windows phone to make the jump. I still have an iPhone 4S and have exactly zero interest in upgrading.

I keep thinking that it's a good time for Microsoft to make another push in that space—a decent Surface Phone might at the very least re-capture a small foothold. There appear to be a lot of people disillusioned with iOS and Android these days.

I think its coming this year. Few signs: 1. Surface range of notebook is doing well. 2. Latest Snapdragon 835 is compatible with Windows 10. 3. I've seen somewhere MS said or demoed plugging in Windows Phone to an LCD and run the full desktop version of MS Office apps.

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

#145
post #78
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the headphones are meant for the phone?

Since the iphone was released was posible to use the headphones with computer I don't get why this change.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my personal conjecture based on owning most products in the Apple lineup and trying to predict the future a bit. So far as I can tell the idea is Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer. All cables designed to provide power utilize a USB A connector - this is the majority of Lightning cables. In their current lineup this can be used to charge an…

> Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch. Unless we invent seriously good wireless charging, I just can't see that happening. There's too many cases where having your phone "docked" just doesn't work. Personally, I usually fall asleep with my phone laying on the bed next to me playing YouTube/Netflix/etc. No way to do that if it has to be resting on…

The Apple Watch doesn't use a pad charger - it uses a magnetic puck which attaches fairly firmly* to the device. Right now the puck is fairly large and thick, but I can hope that in the next 5 years Apple can manage to reduce its size a bit and provide an interface for it which works with the iPhone.

Given that general design I imagine sleeping with the phone next to you in bed or in a cup holder shouldn't be much different than it is now - if anything the rotational flexibility provided by the magnetic puck charger would be advantageous in both situations.

Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. One of the easiest ways to reduce a device is to reduce or eliminate points of ingress. An iPhone which has no port for charging and the updated speakers from the Series 2 Apple Watch designed for waterproofing would be more ideal.

* Firm enough that you can pick up and move the watch about using only the puck as leverage.

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

#147
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All he has to do, really, is just not fuck up what Steve built. Focus on continuous iteration of all profitable products. Maybe introduce a few new ones, but make sure they are best-of-breed, premium products. Apple's status quo is (was) elegance and excellence.

This is wrong. It's the tech industry. The world changes fast and requires companies to make big bets if they want to stay on top.

Well one kind of big bet is "Let's make 1 TB of RAM standard on all Mac Book Pros" and another kind of big bet is "Let's remove keys and connector ports", so I would have to say I prefer the first kind of big bet.

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

#148
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I to understand that most people in the market for a $1700 laptop are also going to be OK with replacing $3-10k of perfectly good other equipment at or around the same time?

Yes. They not be "OK" in principle, but they are the demographic most likely to do it (and to be able to do it) anyway. You mention: "monitors/tvs/keyboards/drives". Well, keyboards and drives are trivial, as they use USB. So those people can just buy a USB-A to USB-C cable for $10 and be done with it (no dongle required if the keyboard doesn't have a fixed cable, and hard disks don't have fixed cables in the first p…

I've had a couple dozen keyboards dating back to the AT over the years, and I can't recall any with a non-fixed cable. That'd be pretty cool. :-/

It's more that I can carry my 2014 macbook anywhere in my house or office or anyone else's and probably connect it to anything I want or need to, without an adapter. Works, say, 99% of the time. With the 2016 it would work 0% of the time today (well, audio equipment excepted I guess, since they weren't courageous enough to remove the headphone jack on the MBP, fortunately), and it would take a half-dozen dongles to come even close to that 99%. I don't expect the success percentage for a dongle-less 2016 MBP to go up much in the next 2 years. That makes stretching my 2014 for another year or two, or switching to another vendor, way more appealing than it might be otherwise, especially with the non-trivial price hike adding insult to injury.

[EDIT] OK, half-dozen was a slight overstatement. At least 4, maybe 5.

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

#149
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…

Steve and the unified vision is gone. While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me: - She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only USB C ports - She just got a new iPhone 7 from her new job, which is only a Lightning port She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. EDIT: a Lightning to USB C cable does exist now. That is still equivalent to a dongle in my opinio…

> She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle.

Is it still a valid point once USB-C to Lightning Cable is out?

http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

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

#150

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.

As someone how has to lug their MacBook from office to home everyday, i'm really looking forward to upgrading. As for the ports, a good 5k screen will work as a dock for the assortment of USB devices, headphones etc that I currently have to connect one by one each morning.
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