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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#131

Post by jnwatson »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

That's a really good point to remember and counters the article's claim that there were no major recalls.

Still, the M series laptops are so much better than offerings from competitors I am hesitant to even put them in the same product category.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#132

Post by Nesco »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

I had this opinion until I actually had a new model and felt the weight difference.

The duality of Man

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#133

Post by jnwatson »

samsolomon wrote: post #100
ryandrake wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to dra…

Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Apple and AI. I think there move is in local, open source models. These are getting better and better for generic ChatGPT—type tasks. I'm kind of waiting for Apple to ship their own Ollama. And it's going to be a huge win for both them and consumers.

Apple is letting the market "commoditize its complements" without lifting a finger.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#134

Post by nekooooo »

a012 wrote: post #117
foobarian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

And dont forget the scissor keyboard and the fucking touchbar

loved the touchbar for things like timeline scrubbers and quick shortcuts in my pro software

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#135

Post by sroussey »

steveBK123 wrote: post #93
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

The other thing that always got me about the car was.. I wondered if the executives at Apple had all become too rich? Apple sells premium hardware but generally sells products in the 10s or 100s of millions of volume, so pretty mass market consumer good. The car seemed to be solving the "what if we could make a $100k car"? At some point of wealth people become so disconnected from normal everyday life of normal peopl…

The Apple Lisa was the first GUI computer Apple made. Starting price $9995 (or $35,000 in today’s dollars).

Yes, Apple has gone down market these days, but their history is really premium.

Or they start premium and then move down market like they did when they released the Macintosh ($2500 then or $8000 today).

And the Mac didn’t do much more than the Lisa and had no software. (The LaserWriter didn’t come for another year, and with it a use case of desktop publishing).

The iPhone came out around $800 (taking into account the contract with ATT) when most phones were sub 100.

If we had the innovative Apple of yore it would push out crazy new and very expensive products and iterate while bring the price down or forcing competitors to compete on tech and bring their prices up.

Apple today is just too risk adverse.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#136

Post by dgellow »

hattmall wrote: post #95
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

An Apple car would be crazy expensive to develop and not really a guaranteed sell at all. There's millions of people that are very loyal to Apple of iPhone and wearable but going to an Apple car is a HUGE jump.

Also, what would the margin be?

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#137

Post by bnchrch »

HardCodedBias wrote: post #112

Impressive Tenue, IMO. Apple Watch, AirPods, M1 Silicon, services. A few flops, like Apple Vision Pro and their confusion with AI. But that's ok given the wins. Overall, as a non-founder he's near the tops in CEOs over the last couple of decades. The only non-founders I would put above him are Satya (although he has a had a couple of rough years), Bob Iger, Jamie Dimon and maybe Andy Jassy. Taking a fair lens to this…

I'm not sure it's fair to call the Apple Vision Pro a flop in the traditional sense.

While it may not have sold millions of units and been a household staple.

It certainly focused the entire org on manufacturing a suite of chips and hardware that are on a completely different level than their competitors. Apple's now has a clear advantage in all dimensions that matter: compute, power consumption, size, capabilities, etc.

Apple Vision helped created a moat that will be hard for anyone else to cross for at least a decade.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#138

Post by highfrequency »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

Why do you prefer the laptop to be thicker and heavier?

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#139

Post by jmyeet »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

This was the last gasp of Johnny Ive. And yes, it was terrible. It got us ending the incredibly successful Macbook Air for the too-compromised 12" Macbook (1 port, remember?), the pointless Touch Bar and the terrible butterly keyboard (remember how dust could kill it and I'm sure Apple spent a fortune on replacements?).

Why did we get all these things? It wasn't just thinness. It was to raise to Average Selling Price ("ASP"). Someone at Apple decided the ASP was too low.

Ultimately the Macbook Air came back and it's really the SKU the most people should buy.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#140

Post by troupo »

ryandrake wrote: post #92
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to dra…

> IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it.

They both bought into hysteria and they've likely already wasted billions on it. Are you forgetting the interminable ads and announcements of "Apple Intelligence" from two years ago when even iPhones were marketed as AI-ready?

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