Apple is at the first major cross-roads since the passing of its late co-founder Steve Jobs 12
years ago. It finds itself still largely dependent on the product lines and businesses that Jobs left behind. Its Vision Pro has received mixed reviews on launch, while it is also facing several other headwinds including a major lawsuit against what the DOJ claims are its anticompetitive practices.
Apple managed to capture lightning in a bottle, twice. First by making a better Walkman, and then again by making that device a phone with internet access. They were able to leverage that success to revitalize their computer hardware business and act as a platform for selling accessories, and all of that made them very successful.
But the stock market doesn’t care about past success, it cares about growth, and without a major new, or buzz worthy product, investors might start to turn against Apple. Problem is, they have ridden the iPod horse about as far as it can go. They tried putting wheels on it, but that failed, and the jury is still out on whether tying one to your face will work out or not.
It’s almost like… endless growth is unsustainable.
Edit: Downvoted by a shareholder lol
“What if we just doubled the price?” - some genius executive that never created a damn thing in their life
That only works for housing and healthcare.
You forgot groceries, mandatory insurance, and utilities…
big part of apple’s success is that it successfully establishes itself as a status symbol - it is for a lot of people what car was for generation of their parents and grandparents.
so there will definitely be a clientele for that two times expensive whatever. some people will buy it just to show others they can afford it, same reason why people were buying overpriced cars.
IMPOSSIBLE!?
Yep. Doesn’t matter how healthy or stable a company is… when infinite growth is no longer feasible, investors would rather pick the bones clean than let it be.
APPL is second only to MSFT by market cap. So far, the stock market doesn’t care.
Yeah, but investors really don’t care about the price of a stock, they care about how much the price moves once they own it.
It’s the inherent problem with publicly owned companies. Even if you perfected a mode of profit, unless you improve upon perfection next quarter you’re in hot shit.
You can only squeeze so much profit out of any one gimmick, after that the only way to mimic growth is by cutting labour costs, and eventually diverting investment funding into profit for shareholders.
Not necessarily. Investors also care about dividends. Those tend to be the people who hold on long term. Blue chips, as a class of stock, are all about companies that don’t make big moves in price and pay out in dividends. They’re older companies that have built their product line, and while they still do R&D on new ones, they only do that to make sure they don’t get left behind.
Idk, more and more people are switching to mac and ditching windows. If their m1 thing continues being successful they’re going to have a more severe monopoly than Microsoft ever did. It’s one thing to patch Microsoft’s half ass attempts to embrace extend destroy Linux but that isn’t going to work out as well anymore once all the mainstream stuff is quarantined to an entire different cpu architecture and computers that no longer use off the shelf parts.
Luckily the only software they really have right now that Linux doesn’t is that s tier video editor and then no one wants to use their stupid Metal graphic acceleration so games are going to have a hard time taking off as well. Too bad most people think “command lines are too hard”.
The common person is going to lose access to computers as we know them today if Apple wins. If it gets to the point where the only modem mainstream systems left are M1 macs, everything computer related is going to get 10x as expensive. $1000 for a potato ass MacBook Air is already obnoxious but when that’s the only choice, that potato ass MacBook Air is going to cost $10k.
People aren’t ditching Windows. They’re ditching non-Apple laptops that happen to have Windows.
Cause honestly laptop offerings are sucky one way or another these days.
It’s shocking how bad the competition is in the laptop space. There are good options, but none of them have the great battery life, great screen, performance, and good trackpad all in one device. The margins being so low probably don’t help the situation. Developing for Windows native is meh edging on bad, so most apps these days are written in Electron or Qt and available on whatever other platform you use. The ship won’t sink because of Windows, it’ll sink because people aren’t buying the hardware that has Windows.
Idk if I agree with this. I feel like 1000 goes further for a Mac than 1000 on on an equivalent PC, least as far as user experience goes. Windows arm isn’t there yet as far as support from vendors goes. With apple everyone hopped on the train fast , it was a smooth transition for average workflows. It will be faster and/or more efficient. They certainly have their problems , mainly the base storage , and display limitations but at least they’re fixing the latter of the two.
Not everyone wants to navigate a computer with a terminal. Hell , apple silicon Mac’s have outperformed Mac’s that cost 3 times the amount. I think you overestimate the need of a more powerful laptop in that space. The real difference is that Mac has N AppStore and large enough dev base that unless it’s some obscure windows specific software or games , the app likely exists on Mac. Word , Spotify , adobe adobe apps , he’ll even epic has software coming to Macs for hospitals.
If the price just gets so absurd , the common person will just use cheaper and or older alternatives. But it’s not like apple hasn’t been competing in the mid to low range for iPhones. M1 Mac’s are still excellent deals to buy 3 years later and eventually they can offer Macs at a lower price point. They aren’t stupid enough to isolate the common man when other options will always exist
Fuck you WAP phones existed. Blackberries existed.
Apple made it better. There is innovation in execution (whether they “invented” things or not) and that is what Apple does. It’s why Blackberries are things of the past.
And they sucked ass by only half-assing the usability