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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#171

Post by rootusrootus »

reducesuffering wrote: post #99
aworks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise he can probably defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit... +1 for Medicare for the non-rich, though. I'm a retiree and the monthly payment is about 1/4 of what I was paying for health insurance before I was eligible.

> defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit People repeat this but when I ran the math on earlier Social Security payments it seems like the accrued $, by the time you're eligible for the higher benefit, is plenty similar as bonus income.

Yeah it's definitely not one-size-fits-all advice. Depending on what your IRA/401k situation looks like, taking SS right at 62 may be the financially superior choice as it reduces your early draw down on the investments.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#172

Post by jmyeet »

havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I think Tim Apple [sic] has made 3 major errors, 2 of which got corrected:

1. The mid-to-late 2010s Cult of Thinness as the last gasp of Johnny Ive was terrible for the Macbook range. Butterly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air, Touch bar... ugh. I personally believe Johnny Ive got gently shown the door over all that so was corrected;

2. The Apple Watch didn't know what it was at launch. Remember the $10,000 Apple Watch Edition that was like gold? Part of the problem here was a mis-hire, Angela Ahrendts in charge of Apple retail. So the Apple Watch was originally launched as a luxury product and that just never made sense for an electronic product. This isn't a Rolex. It quickly pivoted to something way more compelling: health and fitness. So this too was corrected; and

3. Ai. This is Tim Apple's big fumble IMHO. Remember how well-regarded Siri was a decade ago? AFAICT Siri has pretty much stagnated ever since. I mean there are marginal improvements but this tech has massively improved elsewhere. One of Steve Jobs's most underrated moves was the 2008 purchase of PA Semi. This was pretty directly responsible for the competitive advantage of iPhone chips and ultimately the M-series in Macs now ever since Apple ditched Intel. But Apple is nowhere on the AI front. And that's a failure.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#173

Post by Someone »

doitLP wrote: post #69
jinushaun wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate what he does. It seems simple and obvious in hindsight, but if it were so easy, others would not be so far behind. A difficult thing done well looks easy. Reminds me of when Toyota disrupted auto manufacturing. Under Tim Cook, Apple has pretty much exclusive access to certain parts and suppliers. Apple buys up all the silicon. Competitors can’t compete at the same quality without paying a pr…

I’m not underestimating what he does, I’m asking what does he actually do to make it happen beyond setting priorities and holding subordinates accountable? I’m not questioning that he does many things well and right and even genius, I just want to know what those are! I’m sure Isaacson will cover it well in his bio!

I think a major difference is that Apple doesn’t see factories purely as stores where you buy the stuff they advertise they can make; it cooperates with manufacturers to get them to build things that they couldn’t make before.

They are willing to pay billions up front to get production lines built to their specifications and guarantee that they will buy X products over Y time, in exchange for exclusivity.

For example, when Apple decided they wanted to use CNC aluminum milling to build laptop frames, no factory could do that at their scale and desired precision.

And yes, you can only do that if you have lots of cash flowing around, but that’s not sufficient. You also need a process that gives you a very good chance that such investments pay out.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#174

Post by rootusrootus »

Barbing wrote: post #104
ecshafer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a joke. But when I was at Vanguard, something like 95-99% of our users literally just logged on, checked their balance and logged off. A decent percentage of the user base does that every day. So only a few percentage a day actually made a trade or anything else. I always found it pretty odd before I realized I only make a trade 1 or 2% of the time.

>A decent percentage of the user base does that every day. Do they weigh themselves every day too? Kidding, I’m sure I’m ignorant of the rationale. Thought weekly, monthly would be better to understand trends or not get unnecessarily worried. Maybe I’m so wrong the opposite is true.

I do weigh myself every day. But I only check Vanguard every week or so. I alkmost never actually do anything other than look, my investment style for my IRAs & 401k is "invest like a dead man" aka no touch.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#175

Post by et-al »

highfrequency wrote: post #138
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

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

Luckily there are two lines: the Air and the Pro.

The issue people had was from 2016-2019, the Macbook Pros sacrificed a lot of usability for thinness, when that should only happen for the Airs.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#176

Post by rootusrootus »

retired wrote: post #38
snowwrestler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook refreshing his 401k page every day to see if he’s ready to FIRE.

"Should I use a 3.5% or a 4% safe withdrawal rate? My house is paid off and I got a company pension, two dogs and a partner. Cars are paid off but our iPhones are on a payment plan till 2028. Net worth around $2.5 billion but highly concentrated in one company"

> Should I use a 3.5% or a 4% safe withdrawal rate?

Well...

> My house is paid off and I got a company pension, two dogs and a partner.

Kids? What are you planning for your estate after you croak? You can do a little better than 4% with an lifetime joint annuity for you and your partner, so long as you don't care about leaving anything to family...

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#177

Post by pjc50 »

MisterTea wrote: post #74
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…

> Another entirely missing Apple product line: rackmount servers, with all the proper stuff like ILO management. They tried. But the irony is MS is more deeply ingrained. I worked a short stint in a shop that no joke ran Windows server to manage a whole floor of Macs using Active Directory. The only other Windows PC was a machine hooked to a large format printer. I spoke to the admin (dyed in the wool Apple user) who…

> as much as he loves MacOS, it can not match the features offered by Active Directory like AD controller replication.

Sure, but that's a choice by Apple to not even attempt to offer such features, or integration with AD, or a comparable feature stack. That all comes under my "proper management features" handwave.

Even managing a few Mac Minis for CI is a massive pain. There's popups that can only be resolved by logging in on the desktop directly, which is completely unsuitable for proper "server" use.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#178

Post by 33MHz-i486 »

iwontberude wrote: post #167
ComputerGuru wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but recovered nicely afterwards After Ives was fired/forced out/decided to leave to pursue his creative vision.

I love that he instantly flopped repeatedly and showed it was actually Apple that was great all along.

OpenAI acquired his company for Billions. maybe the products flopped but he did fine for himself personally

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#179

Post by pjc50 »

simonh wrote: post #98
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…

Nobody "uses" rack mount servers as artefacts, the way people use other Apple hardware products. Not in the same sense, so I don't think Apple can really bring much of the kind of value they usually do. In practice Apple data centres are Linux facilities, and that's fine. Maybe if they could come up with a really compelling reason to put Apple silicon in a data centre, but we can do that now with racked Minis or Stud…

The Apple silicon is really good! That would be the #1 reason to put it in a data centre, if it wasn't such a pain to manage a rack full of Minis.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#180

Post by momojo »

steveBK123 wrote: post #20
havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

I'm all aboard the "Apple is simply waiting for the models to get dense enough to run on their hardware" hype train.

They're poised to consume the market for the "I want AI, but I don't want to sell my soul" demographic that is ever growing. Sure, the AI gluttony continues, and the vibes tell me people are only more and more willing to shovel their lives into the maw, but my thesis is people only value fire insurance after they've bought the house.

Put my down as bullish. Apple hardware is currently the worst it'll ever be, and gemma4 and qwen3.6 are the least intelligence-dense they'll ever be. Buy up taalas or spin up your own hardware. I'm confident Ive only scratched the surface of Ternus' 5-year plan.

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