“Apple Inc. said Chief Executive Tim Cook and other leaders received less total compensation in 2016 as the company missed its revenue and profit goals for the year,” Austen Hufford reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“According to a regulatory filing on Friday, Apple said its annual sales of $215.6 billion were 3.7% below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target,” Hufford reports. “As a result, company executives got 89.5% of their targeted annual cash incentive.”
“In all, Mr. Cook received $8.75 million in total 2016 compensation, down from $10.28 million in 2015. Mr. Cook’s pay fell 15% last year versus a 9.6% average decline for Apple’s other named executives, as cash incentives make up a larger percentage of his compensation. Pay for Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri fell 10% to $22.8 million, which includes about $20 million in stock awards,” Hufford reports. “In a filing last August, Mr. Cook said he received 1.26 million Apple shares, valued around $135 million at the time, that previously were restricted. Mr. Cook earned the bulk of the shares by remaining CEO for five years.”
Apple’s Tim Cook, operations geniusMacDailyNews Take: In theory, this would wake them up. In reality, they’re all fabulously wealthy many times over (How will Maestri ever survive on a mere $22.8 million per year? And, Cook, on just a paltry $8.75 million? Woe is them! Cupertino’s soup kitchens will be overwhelmed) and we worry, based on copious and ever-compounding evidence, that Tim, Jony, Phil, Eddy et al. have lost their motivation, which is, to remind, to delight and satisfy Apple customers, not to rest on their laurels, miss (or don’t even bother making*) shipping products during the crucial holiday shopping season, and saddle customers with buggy, inelegant software and services that do not measure up to the standards that we expect of Apple Inc.
*4K Apple TV, updated iPads, updated iMacs, salable Mac Pros, etc.
Steve Jobs worked because he was driven. He strived for perfection. He worked for Apple users, not for shareholders, or to promote personal agendas, or for whatever else Tim Cook thinks he’s there for, but isn’t.
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me. – Steve Jobs
Plus Steve was ‘the founder of apple along with woz’ : people who create businesses don’t do it for money, they do it to create something amazing that is their passion.
Cook is an employee CEO, his motivations will never be the as the founders of Apple, if they were he would do it for a dollar a year too.
The same Steve Jobs who kept quiet about the $5000 bonus from Atari and gave Woz only $350, half of the original $700 contract?
That’s business.
It happens all the time.
Missing the point.
Yeah, but Woz got the participation trophy, snowflake…
Maybe they can hire Woz.
You know what, I didn’t write the story. It was out there, even on Apple pages.
At worst I repeated bad information, but I did not “lie”because I didn’t originate the story.
You however are a TOTAL a-hole on your own merit.
Firsty: a little civility goes a long way. applecynic is not a liar, it’s well documented how Steve and the leadership team lined their pockets using backdated options. We get your point, but purity in compensation isn’t a trait Apple or any corporation offers. No matter whether a company makes or loses money, executives always gain big.
Thank you sir.
I’m pretty sure all those guys including Cook are “driven”.
Driven by what? The greatest leaders I know donate their bonuses to charity and reject pay increases so they can pay their employees more. Apple isn’t led by people like that, not now, not ever.
Let’s not get confuse compensation with dedication, or dedication with success. Cook is convinced he’s doing great because the iOS store print money. Unfortunately all of Cooks dedication to iOS has resulted in Apple losing the edge in absolutely everything else it used to do so well.
You do know that the stock options were not “backdated”, don’t you? (Guess not) You do know that the strike price of those options were based upon a questionable practice that at the time was common in the industry of choosing an optimal strike price from recent past months events? (Guess not) And, most importantly, you do know that Steve Jobs gave up those stock options when the issue arose that the there was some cloud over those options?
Steve never got any of that stock. He did not work for “backdated stock options”. That’s a simple lie. People need to stop repeating that lie.
Hey Jackass go eff yourself calling me a liar. It’s a well documented part of his compensation. Perfectionism wasn’t in his contract, that was a personal trait.
I love my job too, that love is not part of my compensation package. Only to me.
That was not a reply to you Shadowself.
Okay. Questionable strike price….
But I take you at your word. He was paid in stock though, wasn’t he?
In the poll following this article how about an option for Waiting until Apple gets back on track with the latest processor updates and hardware refreshes.
If you cut the compensation package of the bean counters and marketers they will just work harder to figure out how to get more beans to count and different ways to market the same old crap.
Right now the bean counters and marketers are in charge.
So… Cutting their compensation might embarrass them a tiny bit and it might get them to work harder, but it will result in more of the same. It will not change the fundamentals of where Apple is going at the moment. It won’t change the current trend of “Fashion and Thin & Light is EVERYTHING”. It won’t change the fact that the current thinking is that Apple’s new Taj Mahal of an office space will make Apple a better company. It won’t change the focus of increasing Apple’s cash flow based on Apple’s percentage of other people’s work (e.g., the recent news on the iOs related App Store) is the way to increase Apple’s bottom line as opposed to Apple just simply making better and leading edge products.
More and more it’s starting to look like the only way to correct Apple’s course is either a) Apple’s senior management realizing the way they were doing it 15 years ago was better for everyone (customers, Apple’s employees, and even the company Apple itself) or b) get rid of the current crop of executives and bring in fresh, much hungrier blood.
Money is not an issue with these folks, But hopefully a public slap from the BOD will be. No one likes to be publicly held up as a failure. The proper response would be to double down and make something happen.
The real issue is that these guys should NOT be making 20+ million a year if the company is not beating expectations! Even if they are barely making expectations they should not!
Tim Cook’s compensation over the past 5 years has been over $35 million a year when stock is included. Even if Tim Cook never made another penny, he’d be set for life. Cutting his income by just $1.5 million a year does not hurt his pocketbook one bit.
And, remember, there’s another huge stock grant looming for Tim Cook in four years as the original agreement was a huge chunk becoming unrestricted in five years with the rest becoming unrestricted in 10 years. I’ve seen nowhere that Apple has changed that original agreement. Thus a huge fraction of Tim Cooks compensation for last year and the next four years has nothing to do with his annual compensation.
Tim Cook could coast for the next four years, get his big stock package, bail out in five years and go buy an island somewhere to live on for the rest of his life. Apple’s customers be damned.
Money is the issue for customers, as Tim and company saw this miss ahead of us and that is why the MacBook Pros got a significant price bump and the same will Happen to the iPad and desktop Macs this year. If you can’t make something the masses want bump the price for the few that want what we have.
If Tim doesn’t introduce a streaming service w/4K TV soon Apple will left in th dust. Tim should have bought Netflix for 15B when he bought the trash BEATS for 3B. Now Netflix is 60B. 2016 was a year to rip off loyal Apple customers for Tim, Eddy and Co. Outdated new Non 4K Apple TV (pulling by a sting, still a hobby BS), outdated entir Mac line, outdated Router design, outdated IWorks, subpar by a mile Apple Music, destroyed ITUNES, no streaming, more watch bands for a compromised dud product, and compromised overpriced new MacBook Pro line. First in 4 years and lack luster. Time for Tim and Eddy to be fired
It’s really difficult to understand why AppleTV doesn’t output in 4K. Even the cheapest Android boxes can do that much. Exactly how much money is Apple trying to save? I don’t have a 4K TV but all the major brand streaming boxes support that resolution. One would almost think Apple is going out of its way not to support 4K. I’d think Apple should at least try to appear competitive with rival products but apparently they simply don’t care.
I could ask for those in charge of Apple to be fired but what guarantee would there be for Apple to be able to get a better CEO. Apart from Steve Jobs, I honestly don’t recall if there were any outstanding CEOs for Apple. It seems they all were rather lackluster. In fact, I’m scared Apple could end up with someone worse than Tim Cook.
No biggy! Apple just need to use some Slam Unblocker to release all the years of magic that’s stuck in that amazing pipeline Tim keeps harping on about. Then you’ll see his salary sky rocket again and we’ll all be able to sleep easy.
It’s hard not to get the sense that many/most at APPLE are full of themselves, thinking they are invincible simply because they are APPLE. My advice is to stop reading your own PR and start worrying about everything. Microsoft may still not be worth more that a warm pile of shit but those bastards sure seem to be working harder right now to gain mind share. Look at their efforts with the NFL where they are paying the NFL $400m a year for coaches and players to use the Surface. And look at all the TV and print ads for Surface. The thing may not be worth much but slowly they are making gains. And how is it we are not gaining on the desktop? WHO LET THAT SLIP?!!! FIRE THEM! THE MAC SHOULD RULE! GEEZ! WHY NOT DO ADS ABOUT IBM ADOPTING THE MAC IN MASS AT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS? WHO IS IN CHARGE OF ADVERTISING?
So, put down the latte, put down the latest press release saying APPLE is the coolest, and GET BACK TO WORK! And upper management… if you can’t think outside the box so that every scientist, artist and number cruncher wouldn’t be caught dead using anything but a Mac, then you need to be let go. APPLE BOARD OF DIRECTORS… we should be ruling the world, but are far from it. Wake up to the latest numbers indicating a downward trend on the desktop.
And while I’m bitching, how is it that Amazon, who wasn’t even in the game when SIRI came out now is considered the coolest thing in town? Hell, you don’t even hear anything about SIRI anymore. Everyone’s AI device is being mentioned more than SIRI. SIRI should be kicking butt. Good Lord, it’s too frustrating for someone who has used Apple since the late 70s, was the first on campus to own a Mac, sold everyone on AppleTalk networking when IT had decided on Ethernet, but couldn’t network anything with it at the time, and so on. So many of us owned the Mac and the stock during the horror years when it looked like the company was going down. And now, to see it showing signs of weakness and confusion when it should be taking over everything… well, it’s painful and especially frustrating.
The company is doing great things and creating great products but it needs to do more. We don’t want to become IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, DEC, SUN, etc. Those all should be lessons for APPLE management. In some of those cases it was rapid changes in technologies. But in the others, it was faulty management and a belief they were invincible. I worry we are seeing something similar happening at APPLE.
I will add that Apple is already Losing its cool factor with kids that Steve Jobs Worked so hard to build. Eddy Cue the fat barefoot buffoon you see courtside at NBA games and the creepy looking mid life crisis guy on th Ferrari board has destroyed ITUNES, Apple Music is a failure, storage prices on ICloud were so out of whack for months. Same guy who shows up late no socks for a Time Warner meeting so he screwed up the streaming service prospect. His idea of cool is Planet of the Apps. Fire him and get hungry people in there.
Tim has left education fall to Google chrome books because they only can concentrate on phones.. it now after 5 years of marginal updates now he desides to keep same design. Tripping over billions to save penny’s
Perhaps Steve Jobs was overly demigod, but he was not a peanut counting administrator. He understood computers, created Pixer and NeXT etc. He could predict where technology was going. That made him qualified to challenge Adobe Flash Player debacle etc. That background also made him foresee what people want. Without that, there would be no innovation. Tim Cook is probably an excellent administrator to juggle around logistics and manipulate numbers etc, but obviously no trailblazer. iPhone sales helped him much and he did contribute to pumping out the device as planned. But beyond that…
Now his role is almost over and Apple need somebody with engineering prowess and ability to see where Apple is going and what they want to be, not just saturating the market with one pony trick.
Thank you for your past great effort, Mr. Cook, but it’s time for change…. Obviously….
Recall how I was boo’ed vehemently here last year when I predicted Apple would fall out of the top five in market cap by the end of 2017 if Cook was still CEO? The board has got to get rid of Pipeline Timmy, he’s bad news.
With everyone here piling on the “Fire Tim!” narrative, I would like to hear the much more important of that story: What then?
Exactly WHO do you want to hire as the replacement? Obviously, not a Christmas wish (a person that in a million years wouldn’t leave what (s)he’s doing today in order to run Apple after Tim), but a viable, real candidate?
It isn’t that difficult to fire someone, or force them out. Populist movements throughout the world have successfully deposed various dictators and despots. In many cases, however, the movement to remove the useless leader stopped short of planning for the day after, and the outcome was truly tragic. Look at many of the Arab Spring countries. While the Libyan scenario was helped along by the US, the movement originated, and was driven, by the organic movement against Qaddafi. With no real plan for succession, the place simply spiraled into chaos.
Apple is obviously no Libya, but some lessons are still valuable. If you truly care about the future of Apple, an inseparable part of the drive to remove Tim should be the plan for the day after.
How about somebody with charisma (even an ounce would be an improvment), who doesn’t just repeat/rephrase Steve Jobs’ quotes, but actually lives by them, and who who truly cares more about Apple and than about trying to be the gay RFK?
Well then, exactly who do you suppose should line up those replacements, vet them, and hire them? Clearly, this petition doesn’t suggest any such thing; input only goes as far as firing Cook. Do the petitioners themselves take on this duty? Or do they hire a consulting company, or a headhunter to do this?
The point of my question is (I can’t believe I actually have to explain this), exactly WHO will take things over once Cook is out (and the petition wants him out yesterday; not two years from now, when the replacement has been found and properly vetted)?
Before kicking Cook out the door, find first the person who will actually be better.
You have a problem with reading comprehension. I repeat and repost:
“You line up the best replacements, vet them, hire them off the record until you lower the boom in a press announcement. Duh …”
Did it sink in yet, brainless? 🙈🙉🙊
You either are pretending to be dumb, or really are.
Once again, exactly WHO do you think will run Apple when Cook is kicked out?
The petition people AREN’T waiting for you to line up your candidates, vet them, hire them, then announce the replacement. They are demanding that Cook be kicked out NOW. Your replaacements will take a year to two to find, properly vet and hire. So:
(for the third, hopefully, last time): WHO will run Apple during the year(s) after he is kicked out, while you are lining up candidates, vetting them and hiring them?
I hope you are finally understanding this question.
And let us not even bother discussing the complete impossibility of executing on your plan. Secretly seek a CEO to run the biggest company in the world? How do you propose that to be kept a secret, if the talent you’re seeking is the most capable (and consequently, quite prominent and exposed)?? Apple can’t keep product pipeline a secret any more, and you expect headhunting for a replacement CEO for Apple can be done without ANYONE actually finding out? Unless you are talking to some anonymous no-name would-be executives (and it is exceedingly doubtful you’d find a next Apple CEO among such talent), any replacement CEO search done in secrecy would very quickly cease to be a secret. And when it does, it would be most certainly a bonanza for the Wall Street speculators, sending the stock down (or up) and back like a roller coaster.
I’m seriously dumb continuing to reply to someone who is incapable of reading comprehension, and more importantly, reading BETWEEN THE LINES.
PipeDREAM Tim needs to be replaced A.S.A.P. Nuff said …
Take a sedative and wait to see what happens this year. Tim is not stupid, Apple is not stupid, they know they have to deliver this year. Intel’s got some new chips ready, let’s wait and see. At this point, I’m not worried about Apple- everything could blow up literally because of Trump and his affect on the entire planet. Maybe we should all buy what’s available Right Now.
“At this point, I’m not worried about Apple- everything could blow up literally because of Trump and his affect on the entire planet.”
Ooooooh, Trump the intergalactic bogey man with the omnipresent power to stop the earth from spinning on its axis. Next up — Trump is responsible for global warming, the rising of the oceans, plague, disease, feast and famine worldwide … 😂
I don’t particularly want Apple’s executive pay tied to annual profitability, and what they were able to ship in any particular quarter. I want them worrying about the long-term.
Having said that, I *would* like to have Apple executive pay tied to battery life and iCloud understand-ability.
I’m not a member of the “FIRE TIM” movement. But I am a member of the “WAKE UP, APPLE!” movement.
First, some people in management have to go. They are not getting the job done properly.
Second, the organization probably needs some reconfiguring. It is not a panacea, as Balmer at Microsoft proved over and over and over again. It has to be done right and it has to be more than window dressing. It has to mean something.
Third, create some divisions where an executive VP is like the CEO of that division and will be responsible for designing great products. Maybe a Mac division, iMac, Mac mini, Pro Mac, Mac Server – separate this division from the laptops? Maybe a ‘small-shit-not-much-profit’ division – routers, screens, etc. Maybe software. Maybe TV has it’s own division. Because, right now it seems like we are losing stuff and not gaining stuff, and you hear more complaints about the quality of things. The facts will probably prove me wrong, but I get the sense we are shrinking, not expanding. That may just be because I’m not a laptop guy, even though I own one.
I’ll die an APPLE fan, but after 40 years with APPLE, I’m worried, the same way I was after the Mac came out and the market cratered and when the CEO (Guy Ameliano?) wanted to kill it by selling us off to SUN, or anyone. Remember, McNall(sp?) wouldn’t even buy us! Those were bad times. Now, we are worth more than everyone else in the world and yet you get the feeling things are beginning to fray, come undone.
Let me start with this. I miss Steve. I think he was the best visionary of his generation. Here’s where I’ll get somewhat critical…
No one is great at everything. Steve’s weakness seems to be finding people to lead in his absence. He went after Sculley. Scully didn’t have the great product DNA that Steve did. He tried to commoditize Apple and focus on profit above Apple’s loyalists.
Cook has shown similar patterns (LG Monitors instead of cutting edge, gorgeous Apple displays?!) where his focus is not on impressing the world with amazing technology. The iPhone, iOS, MacBooks, iPads, Mac Pro, etc. are more-of-the-same each year with nary an additional layer of makeup added for the “wow” factor. He needs to use his position to focus less on politics and on personal fancies and more on driving Apple to be what it once was and get back to changing the world through superior products.
There is always that “white knight”.
Wasn’t Jony Ives knighted?
I have absolutely no idea what he was “knighted” for but it was a big deal, LOL
But he has to learn first how to speak proper English.
The REALLY SAD thing is that so much of the trouble Apple today seems EASY TO FIX:
EXAMPLE:
Apple ALREADY has a wonderful OS for Mac. It’s not like the rumoured ‘car’ where they have to build everything from scratch.
Why aren’t they FULLY UTILIZING THEIR ASSETS like OSX/MacOS is hard to figure.
They should have COMPLETE ARRAY of lust worthy Macs built to people’s desires, updated regularly and MARKETED to the hilt and Macs (as JWW put it) should be ‘ruling the world’ instead of after years of exceeding it now falling behind PC growth rates.
(Msft has shipped 300 – 400 million Win 10 units and aiming for 1 billion and Macs have fallen to 7% or so market share — so the ‘no market’ is a myth).
Putting out Macs ADVERTISEMENTS is EASY, they’ve done it before so why aren’t they doing it , not even cheap web ads? It’s a puzzling conundrum for aapl investors and one of the bizarre things of current Apple.
(Note: Jobs produced a huge number of ads, one NEW Mac Ad a month under Mac PC guy — 66 different ads in 4 years — which dwindled to near nothing when Tim Cook took over. Note: Macs make more money than iPad and TWICE the ‘other products’ category that includes Watch, iPod, accessories, Apple TV etc yet Watch gets DOZENS of ads and Mac near none. )
Note Apple from dominating presence in schools (a KEY market as it trains new users) has fallen to 10% and Chromebooks to over 50%. Why aren’t they working super hard to fix this (for years now?) — maybe with ‘A chip’ powered iBook running a modified OSX (like iOS is a modified version) ? or SOMETHiNG…
They are letting such KEY SEGMENTS fall WHILE:
SVPSs seem to be working on PRIVATE HOBBIES NOW.
SVPs and VPs are designing Christmas trees, coffee table books, furniture for charities, sponsoring fashion shows like the Met Gala, debating Kanye West, working on mini series like ‘sex filled romp of Dr. Dre’s Life’ etc. (so it’s not ‘lack of resources or time ‘ apologists tout) while all kinds of things are languishing.
Like I said bizarre and troubling.
(and MDN readers many of whom have been posting about these accelerating issues for years seem to have been ignored by the 100,000 apple staff — none of them read Apple News? so no wonder they are out of touch… )
Steve used to work for $1 per year, his priorities were different.
This won’t make any difference, as they’ve been missing user’s targets for years now.
Stop! Just stop!
He worked for backdated stock options.
No. In fact, STFU, liar.
Steve Jobs worked because he was driven. He strived for perfection. He worked for Apple users, not for shareholders, or to promote personal agendas, or for whatever else Tim Cook thinks he’s there for, but isn’t.
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me. – Steve Jobs
Plus Steve was ‘the founder of apple along with woz’ : people who create businesses don’t do it for money, they do it to create something amazing that is their passion.
Cook is an employee CEO, his motivations will never be the as the founders of Apple, if they were he would do it for a dollar a year too.
The same Steve Jobs who kept quiet about the $5000 bonus from Atari and gave Woz only $350, half of the original $700 contract?
That’s business.
It happens all the time.
Missing the point.
Yeah, but Woz got the participation trophy, snowflake…
Maybe they can hire Woz.
You know what, I didn’t write the story. It was out there, even on Apple pages.
At worst I repeated bad information, but I did not “lie”because I didn’t originate the story.
You however are a TOTAL a-hole on your own merit.
Firsty: a little civility goes a long way. applecynic is not a liar, it’s well documented how Steve and the leadership team lined their pockets using backdated options. We get your point, but purity in compensation isn’t a trait Apple or any corporation offers. No matter whether a company makes or loses money, executives always gain big.
Thank you sir.
I’m pretty sure all those guys including Cook are “driven”.
Driven by what? The greatest leaders I know donate their bonuses to charity and reject pay increases so they can pay their employees more. Apple isn’t led by people like that, not now, not ever.
Let’s not get confuse compensation with dedication, or dedication with success. Cook is convinced he’s doing great because the iOS store print money. Unfortunately all of Cooks dedication to iOS has resulted in Apple losing the edge in absolutely everything else it used to do so well.
You do know that the stock options were not “backdated”, don’t you? (Guess not) You do know that the strike price of those options were based upon a questionable practice that at the time was common in the industry of choosing an optimal strike price from recent past months events? (Guess not) And, most importantly, you do know that Steve Jobs gave up those stock options when the issue arose that the there was some cloud over those options?
Steve never got any of that stock. He did not work for “backdated stock options”. That’s a simple lie. People need to stop repeating that lie.
Hey Jackass go eff yourself calling me a liar. It’s a well documented part of his compensation. Perfectionism wasn’t in his contract, that was a personal trait.
I love my job too, that love is not part of my compensation package. Only to me.
That was not a reply to you Shadowself.
Okay. Questionable strike price….
But I take you at your word. He was paid in stock though, wasn’t he?
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-jobs-dodged-the-stock-option-backdating-bullet/
Close to what you said. Why he really returned the stock, we will never know.
Nowhere is love mentioned.
Tim Cook’s worth in less than expected. Fitting. Hopefully the money Apple won’t be paying Cook will be used to find his replacement.
In the poll following this article how about an option for Waiting until Apple gets back on track with the latest processor updates and hardware refreshes.
I came here expressly to see what MDN would write about this executive pay cut and MDN did not disappoint!
The real issue is what MDN missed.
If you cut the compensation package of the bean counters and marketers they will just work harder to figure out how to get more beans to count and different ways to market the same old crap.
Right now the bean counters and marketers are in charge.
So… Cutting their compensation might embarrass them a tiny bit and it might get them to work harder, but it will result in more of the same. It will not change the fundamentals of where Apple is going at the moment. It won’t change the current trend of “Fashion and Thin & Light is EVERYTHING”. It won’t change the fact that the current thinking is that Apple’s new Taj Mahal of an office space will make Apple a better company. It won’t change the focus of increasing Apple’s cash flow based on Apple’s percentage of other people’s work (e.g., the recent news on the iOs related App Store) is the way to increase Apple’s bottom line as opposed to Apple just simply making better and leading edge products.
More and more it’s starting to look like the only way to correct Apple’s course is either a) Apple’s senior management realizing the way they were doing it 15 years ago was better for everyone (customers, Apple’s employees, and even the company Apple itself) or b) get rid of the current crop of executives and bring in fresh, much hungrier blood.
Money is not an issue with these folks, But hopefully a public slap from the BOD will be. No one likes to be publicly held up as a failure. The proper response would be to double down and make something happen.
Agreed. That’s the idea. But as MDN point out, these are people who get MILLION$ in pay anyway.
The real issue is that these guys should NOT be making 20+ million a year if the company is not beating expectations! Even if they are barely making expectations they should not!
Tim Cook’s compensation over the past 5 years has been over $35 million a year when stock is included. Even if Tim Cook never made another penny, he’d be set for life. Cutting his income by just $1.5 million a year does not hurt his pocketbook one bit.
And, remember, there’s another huge stock grant looming for Tim Cook in four years as the original agreement was a huge chunk becoming unrestricted in five years with the rest becoming unrestricted in 10 years. I’ve seen nowhere that Apple has changed that original agreement. Thus a huge fraction of Tim Cooks compensation for last year and the next four years has nothing to do with his annual compensation.
Tim Cook could coast for the next four years, get his big stock package, bail out in five years and go buy an island somewhere to live on for the rest of his life. Apple’s customers be damned.
Money is the issue for customers, as Tim and company saw this miss ahead of us and that is why the MacBook Pros got a significant price bump and the same will Happen to the iPad and desktop Macs this year. If you can’t make something the masses want bump the price for the few that want what we have.
Updated Macs could probably have put them at or above their original estimates.
FIRE TIM
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
I signed. It’s time for Cook to go.
If Tim doesn’t introduce a streaming service w/4K TV soon Apple will left in th dust. Tim should have bought Netflix for 15B when he bought the trash BEATS for 3B. Now Netflix is 60B. 2016 was a year to rip off loyal Apple customers for Tim, Eddy and Co. Outdated new Non 4K Apple TV (pulling by a sting, still a hobby BS), outdated entir Mac line, outdated Router design, outdated IWorks, subpar by a mile Apple Music, destroyed ITUNES, no streaming, more watch bands for a compromised dud product, and compromised overpriced new MacBook Pro line. First in 4 years and lack luster. Time for Tim and Eddy to be fired
It’s really difficult to understand why AppleTV doesn’t output in 4K. Even the cheapest Android boxes can do that much. Exactly how much money is Apple trying to save? I don’t have a 4K TV but all the major brand streaming boxes support that resolution. One would almost think Apple is going out of its way not to support 4K. I’d think Apple should at least try to appear competitive with rival products but apparently they simply don’t care.
I could ask for those in charge of Apple to be fired but what guarantee would there be for Apple to be able to get a better CEO. Apart from Steve Jobs, I honestly don’t recall if there were any outstanding CEOs for Apple. It seems they all were rather lackluster. In fact, I’m scared Apple could end up with someone worse than Tim Cook.
EXACTLY. It’s Cook and Company greed. Say 10 pennies but charge 20 panties. The company is in a very sad state
Maybe be able to shop ANY new product in less than. 2 months would have helped make numbers. Fire the COO
No biggy! Apple just need to use some Slam Unblocker to release all the years of magic that’s stuck in that amazing pipeline Tim keeps harping on about. Then you’ll see his salary sky rocket again and we’ll all be able to sleep easy.
MacDailyNews’ take is right on the money.
It’s hard not to get the sense that many/most at APPLE are full of themselves, thinking they are invincible simply because they are APPLE. My advice is to stop reading your own PR and start worrying about everything. Microsoft may still not be worth more that a warm pile of shit but those bastards sure seem to be working harder right now to gain mind share. Look at their efforts with the NFL where they are paying the NFL $400m a year for coaches and players to use the Surface. And look at all the TV and print ads for Surface. The thing may not be worth much but slowly they are making gains. And how is it we are not gaining on the desktop? WHO LET THAT SLIP?!!! FIRE THEM! THE MAC SHOULD RULE! GEEZ! WHY NOT DO ADS ABOUT IBM ADOPTING THE MAC IN MASS AT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS? WHO IS IN CHARGE OF ADVERTISING?
So, put down the latte, put down the latest press release saying APPLE is the coolest, and GET BACK TO WORK! And upper management… if you can’t think outside the box so that every scientist, artist and number cruncher wouldn’t be caught dead using anything but a Mac, then you need to be let go. APPLE BOARD OF DIRECTORS… we should be ruling the world, but are far from it. Wake up to the latest numbers indicating a downward trend on the desktop.
And while I’m bitching, how is it that Amazon, who wasn’t even in the game when SIRI came out now is considered the coolest thing in town? Hell, you don’t even hear anything about SIRI anymore. Everyone’s AI device is being mentioned more than SIRI. SIRI should be kicking butt. Good Lord, it’s too frustrating for someone who has used Apple since the late 70s, was the first on campus to own a Mac, sold everyone on AppleTalk networking when IT had decided on Ethernet, but couldn’t network anything with it at the time, and so on. So many of us owned the Mac and the stock during the horror years when it looked like the company was going down. And now, to see it showing signs of weakness and confusion when it should be taking over everything… well, it’s painful and especially frustrating.
The company is doing great things and creating great products but it needs to do more. We don’t want to become IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, DEC, SUN, etc. Those all should be lessons for APPLE management. In some of those cases it was rapid changes in technologies. But in the others, it was faulty management and a belief they were invincible. I worry we are seeing something similar happening at APPLE.
I will add that Apple is already Losing its cool factor with kids that Steve Jobs Worked so hard to build. Eddy Cue the fat barefoot buffoon you see courtside at NBA games and the creepy looking mid life crisis guy on th Ferrari board has destroyed ITUNES, Apple Music is a failure, storage prices on ICloud were so out of whack for months. Same guy who shows up late no socks for a Time Warner meeting so he screwed up the streaming service prospect. His idea of cool is Planet of the Apps. Fire him and get hungry people in there.
Tim has left education fall to Google chrome books because they only can concentrate on phones.. it now after 5 years of marginal updates now he desides to keep same design. Tripping over billions to save penny’s
Perhaps Steve Jobs was overly demigod, but he was not a peanut counting administrator. He understood computers, created Pixer and NeXT etc. He could predict where technology was going. That made him qualified to challenge Adobe Flash Player debacle etc. That background also made him foresee what people want. Without that, there would be no innovation. Tim Cook is probably an excellent administrator to juggle around logistics and manipulate numbers etc, but obviously no trailblazer. iPhone sales helped him much and he did contribute to pumping out the device as planned. But beyond that…
Now his role is almost over and Apple need somebody with engineering prowess and ability to see where Apple is going and what they want to be, not just saturating the market with one pony trick.
Thank you for your past great effort, Mr. Cook, but it’s time for change…. Obviously….
Steve Jobs motto: make products that customers adore and can’t live without. Financial success will naturally follow
Tim Cooks motto appears to be : make customers pay a small fortune for products they don’t need, dont want, messes up, and didn’t ask for.
Recall how I was boo’ed vehemently here last year when I predicted Apple would fall out of the top five in market cap by the end of 2017 if Cook was still CEO? The board has got to get rid of Pipeline Timmy, he’s bad news.
With everyone here piling on the “Fire Tim!” narrative, I would like to hear the much more important of that story: What then?
Exactly WHO do you want to hire as the replacement? Obviously, not a Christmas wish (a person that in a million years wouldn’t leave what (s)he’s doing today in order to run Apple after Tim), but a viable, real candidate?
It isn’t that difficult to fire someone, or force them out. Populist movements throughout the world have successfully deposed various dictators and despots. In many cases, however, the movement to remove the useless leader stopped short of planning for the day after, and the outcome was truly tragic. Look at many of the Arab Spring countries. While the Libyan scenario was helped along by the US, the movement originated, and was driven, by the organic movement against Qaddafi. With no real plan for succession, the place simply spiraled into chaos.
Apple is obviously no Libya, but some lessons are still valuable. If you truly care about the future of Apple, an inseparable part of the drive to remove Tim should be the plan for the day after.
How about somebody with charisma (even an ounce would be an improvment), who doesn’t just repeat/rephrase Steve Jobs’ quotes, but actually lives by them, and who who truly cares more about Apple and than about trying to be the gay RFK?
lol, “gay RFK.”
“Exactly WHO do you want to hire as the replacement?”
how ’bout Donald Trump Jr?
bwahahahahahahahaha
At least you have a concrete suggestion.
Although I sincerely doubt that JR would give up on his dad’s empire in order to run Apple…
well, maybe Ivanka then…anyone is better than Pipeline Timmy.
As much as you’d clearly love to see a Trump at the head of Apple, chances are literally zero that any of them would be willing or interested.
The same likely applies to people such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Marissa Mayer, Satya Nadella…
Ballmer may be interested, though…
I was being facetious.
“With everyone here piling on the “Fire Tim!” narrative, I would like to hear the much more important of that story: What then?”
You don’t know?!? Gee, what a surprise!
You line up the best best replacements, vet them, hire them off the record until you lower the boom in a press announcement. Duh ..,
Well then, exactly who do you suppose should line up those replacements, vet them, and hire them? Clearly, this petition doesn’t suggest any such thing; input only goes as far as firing Cook. Do the petitioners themselves take on this duty? Or do they hire a consulting company, or a headhunter to do this?
The point of my question is (I can’t believe I actually have to explain this), exactly WHO will take things over once Cook is out (and the petition wants him out yesterday; not two years from now, when the replacement has been found and properly vetted)?
Before kicking Cook out the door, find first the person who will actually be better.
You have a problem with reading comprehension. I repeat and repost:
“You line up the best replacements, vet them, hire them off the record until you lower the boom in a press announcement. Duh …”
Did it sink in yet, brainless? 🙈🙉🙊
You either are pretending to be dumb, or really are.
Once again, exactly WHO do you think will run Apple when Cook is kicked out?
The petition people AREN’T waiting for you to line up your candidates, vet them, hire them, then announce the replacement. They are demanding that Cook be kicked out NOW. Your replaacements will take a year to two to find, properly vet and hire. So:
(for the third, hopefully, last time): WHO will run Apple during the year(s) after he is kicked out, while you are lining up candidates, vetting them and hiring them?
I hope you are finally understanding this question.
And let us not even bother discussing the complete impossibility of executing on your plan. Secretly seek a CEO to run the biggest company in the world? How do you propose that to be kept a secret, if the talent you’re seeking is the most capable (and consequently, quite prominent and exposed)?? Apple can’t keep product pipeline a secret any more, and you expect headhunting for a replacement CEO for Apple can be done without ANYONE actually finding out? Unless you are talking to some anonymous no-name would-be executives (and it is exceedingly doubtful you’d find a next Apple CEO among such talent), any replacement CEO search done in secrecy would very quickly cease to be a secret. And when it does, it would be most certainly a bonanza for the Wall Street speculators, sending the stock down (or up) and back like a roller coaster.
I’m seriously dumb continuing to reply to someone who is incapable of reading comprehension, and more importantly, reading BETWEEN THE LINES.
PipeDREAM Tim needs to be replaced A.S.A.P. Nuff said …
Take a sedative and wait to see what happens this year. Tim is not stupid, Apple is not stupid, they know they have to deliver this year. Intel’s got some new chips ready, let’s wait and see. At this point, I’m not worried about Apple- everything could blow up literally because of Trump and his affect on the entire planet. Maybe we should all buy what’s available Right Now.
Your Trump hysteria is laughable.
Five stars for Sarah. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“At this point, I’m not worried about Apple- everything could blow up literally because of Trump and his affect on the entire planet.”
Ooooooh, Trump the intergalactic bogey man with the omnipresent power to stop the earth from spinning on its axis. Next up — Trump is responsible for global warming, the rising of the oceans, plague, disease, feast and famine worldwide … 😂
I don’t particularly want Apple’s executive pay tied to annual profitability, and what they were able to ship in any particular quarter. I want them worrying about the long-term.
Having said that, I *would* like to have Apple executive pay tied to battery life and iCloud understand-ability.
I’m not a member of the “FIRE TIM” movement. But I am a member of the “WAKE UP, APPLE!” movement.
First, some people in management have to go. They are not getting the job done properly.
Second, the organization probably needs some reconfiguring. It is not a panacea, as Balmer at Microsoft proved over and over and over again. It has to be done right and it has to be more than window dressing. It has to mean something.
Third, create some divisions where an executive VP is like the CEO of that division and will be responsible for designing great products. Maybe a Mac division, iMac, Mac mini, Pro Mac, Mac Server – separate this division from the laptops? Maybe a ‘small-shit-not-much-profit’ division – routers, screens, etc. Maybe software. Maybe TV has it’s own division. Because, right now it seems like we are losing stuff and not gaining stuff, and you hear more complaints about the quality of things. The facts will probably prove me wrong, but I get the sense we are shrinking, not expanding. That may just be because I’m not a laptop guy, even though I own one.
I’ll die an APPLE fan, but after 40 years with APPLE, I’m worried, the same way I was after the Mac came out and the market cratered and when the CEO (Guy Ameliano?) wanted to kill it by selling us off to SUN, or anyone. Remember, McNall(sp?) wouldn’t even buy us! Those were bad times. Now, we are worth more than everyone else in the world and yet you get the feeling things are beginning to fray, come undone.
Let me start with this. I miss Steve. I think he was the best visionary of his generation. Here’s where I’ll get somewhat critical…
No one is great at everything. Steve’s weakness seems to be finding people to lead in his absence. He went after Sculley. Scully didn’t have the great product DNA that Steve did. He tried to commoditize Apple and focus on profit above Apple’s loyalists.
Cook has shown similar patterns (LG Monitors instead of cutting edge, gorgeous Apple displays?!) where his focus is not on impressing the world with amazing technology. The iPhone, iOS, MacBooks, iPads, Mac Pro, etc. are more-of-the-same each year with nary an additional layer of makeup added for the “wow” factor. He needs to use his position to focus less on politics and on personal fancies and more on driving Apple to be what it once was and get back to changing the world through superior products.
How is raising his salary from $2 million a year to $3 million a year cutting his salary? Incentives were cut. SALARY WAS RAISED 33%!
Good detail, but MDN is correct on the big picture. Tim’s overall compensation fell. As it should.
Much clearer detail with total compensation breakdown here:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/tim-cook-and-other-apple-execs-miss-out-on-bonus-pay-after-disappointing-2016/
Cook, you ain’t Steve Jobs.
If you can’t handle the heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen.
Maybe this will wake them up to their customers’ demand.
Eddie “Clueless” Cue should be paying Apple.
I cannot think of one thing he is responsible for that is not FUBARed.
What Apple needs are people with “Fire In The Belly” and a desire to be the best. I have yet to see one Apple executive that meets that criteria.
There is always that “white knight”.
Wasn’t Jony Ives knighted?
I have absolutely no idea what he was “knighted” for but it was a big deal, LOL
But he has to learn first how to speak proper English.
Oh poor Tim – hopw he can live on the $8.6 salary he received, plus the $135+ million in stock.
Now maybe Apple can use that saved money to improve/offer the iMac at a reasonable price.
Really excellent posts from so many people today.
The REALLY SAD thing is that so much of the trouble Apple today seems EASY TO FIX:
EXAMPLE:
Apple ALREADY has a wonderful OS for Mac. It’s not like the rumoured ‘car’ where they have to build everything from scratch.
Why aren’t they FULLY UTILIZING THEIR ASSETS like OSX/MacOS is hard to figure.
They should have COMPLETE ARRAY of lust worthy Macs built to people’s desires, updated regularly and MARKETED to the hilt and Macs (as JWW put it) should be ‘ruling the world’ instead of after years of exceeding it now falling behind PC growth rates.
(Msft has shipped 300 – 400 million Win 10 units and aiming for 1 billion and Macs have fallen to 7% or so market share — so the ‘no market’ is a myth).
Putting out Macs ADVERTISEMENTS is EASY, they’ve done it before so why aren’t they doing it , not even cheap web ads? It’s a puzzling conundrum for aapl investors and one of the bizarre things of current Apple.
(Note: Jobs produced a huge number of ads, one NEW Mac Ad a month under Mac PC guy — 66 different ads in 4 years — which dwindled to near nothing when Tim Cook took over. Note: Macs make more money than iPad and TWICE the ‘other products’ category that includes Watch, iPod, accessories, Apple TV etc yet Watch gets DOZENS of ads and Mac near none. )
Note Apple from dominating presence in schools (a KEY market as it trains new users) has fallen to 10% and Chromebooks to over 50%. Why aren’t they working super hard to fix this (for years now?) — maybe with ‘A chip’ powered iBook running a modified OSX (like iOS is a modified version) ? or SOMETHiNG…
They are letting such KEY SEGMENTS fall WHILE:
SVPSs seem to be working on PRIVATE HOBBIES NOW.
SVPs and VPs are designing Christmas trees, coffee table books, furniture for charities, sponsoring fashion shows like the Met Gala, debating Kanye West, working on mini series like ‘sex filled romp of Dr. Dre’s Life’ etc. (so it’s not ‘lack of resources or time ‘ apologists tout) while all kinds of things are languishing.
Like I said bizarre and troubling.
(and MDN readers many of whom have been posting about these accelerating issues for years seem to have been ignored by the 100,000 apple staff — none of them read Apple News? so no wonder they are out of touch… )
The beginning of the end for clueless Cook and clueless Cue.
BRING. IT. ON!