Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet, “I wrote something as a bit of an aside in a recent TheStreet article about Amazon.com and Pandora: ‘He’s seems like a nice guy so I hate to say it, but Apple’s downfall will come courtesy of Tim Cook. With Jobs gone, Cook has already made a mockery of his legacy. First, a dividend and a buyback. And now rumors of something Jobs detested — a mini iPad. Next, Cook will travel off to China and smile for the cameras like a politician. Wait. He already did that. In many ways, he is the anti-Steve Jobs. And, while it might look like that’s good for business, it’s not. It’s very bad for business.'”
“AAPL bulls have made a profound error: After rightly heaping praise on Steve Jobs for Apple’s enormous success, many of them now discount his contribution, claiming that mere mortals can run the show without missing a beat. That’s wishful thinking at best, a good way to crush your retirement fund at worst,” Pendola writes. “The likes of Steve Jobs are not a dime a dozen. All it takes is a mere skim of two excellent books: Adam Lashinsky’s Inside Apple and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography to figure that out.”
Pendola writes, “As each piece of writing gets spray-painted on the wall, it becomes all the more clear that Tim Cook will run this company, maybe not into the ground, but into the sort of average status that will render Apple no longer distinct from pack… Jobs made the people around him better. He willed them to accomplish the impossible. This is not to say that Forstall, Ives [sic] and Cook, for that matter, are not talented men. Of course, they are. But, without Jobs, their impact cannot be quite the same. For this, Cook deserves a lion’s share of the blame.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We shall see.
As we’ve written frequently:
AAPL is like a buoy. Quick, it’s back on the surface! You there, analyst, and you, too, swim down and tug on the chain! Drag it under.. lower, lower… good! Now, quick, everybody jump on, and we’ll take a ride back up to the top again!
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Related articles:
Analyst reiterates: Price competition makes Apple stock a ‘sell’ with $270 price target – April 20, 2012
Apple slips into correction mode; falls 10% off high – April 20, 2012
Apple to webcast Q212 earnings release conference call on April 24 – April 20, 2012
And Tim is the number one liked CEO (better than Jobs)? What does Rocco know?
You don’t have to be liked to be doing a great job Tony. Usually it’s the opposite.
After the rumours came out about the apple tv GUI being rejected by Steve jobs. I started to wonder if this is the means to an end. Apple don’t need to be everything to everyone. It is simplistic in design yet very powerful. If tim cook unravels this then apple will go back to where it came from, struggling of the dregs of microsoft. It would break my heart to see that happen but tim cook needs to continue a legacy not try and remodel something that wasn’t broke in the first place
Rocco, you moron. If you can read at all, read this you fscking amateur:
“The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.”
Zeke: YOU are the f***ing moron. Who cares about statistics? Thats riding on Steve Job’s coat-tails. Its all “Jobs”. What’s actually happening is that Tim Cook has released an Map app. that is extremely important to the masses of users, and its inferior. Job’s would have NEVER, NEVER, NEVER did I mention…NEVER done that. In fact, he would have f%^&ing fired the asshole who came up with the idea, smashed a fuc***g chair over his head and threw the c**t out the window. And rightfully so at nearly $800bucks a share and the stakes at risk.
You dumb F**K. Jobs is rolling over in his grave.
In Spanish this guy’s name is Rocco Pendejo. Translation: Rocco Dumbass.
he isnt much of anything… “‘He’s seems like a nice guy”
1) he can’t spell
2)he doesn’t have/know about/understand spellcheck
3)no one to edit his “work” so what he thinks he knows, what he says.. isn’t checked, so is riddled with error(s)
It’s “isn’t”, not “isnt” and sentences begin with capitalization.
Your use of “…” is somewhat dodgy and your grammar is weak.
Try not to throw stones when criticizing other’s writings? It’s not exactly your strong suit 😉
Absurd. Cook’s not a techie as Steve, but he’s a way better businessman. He’s responsible for Apple’s huge profits in the sense that his supply line expertise guarantees high margins. Cook may not be able to innovate new products like Jobs, but there are others in the company for that, and Apple really doesn’t need to do more than iterate for the next decade or two (their shares of most of the markets they are in are so small they can continue to grow even without new markets).
Wow, these guys are really trying to drive the price down. I hope they have all covered before earnings because the stock will be going to new heights afterwards.
I would F’ING love a mini-iPad! I’m not crazy about Cook, but Apple is poised to thrive for many years to come!
I don’t get the mini-iPad. I won’t get the mini-iPad. There is no profit in the market for the mini-iPad. AND I very strongly suspect that all rumors about the mini-iPad are BOGUS.
But we shall see, shan’t we…
Just because you have no imagination, and have no *personal* need for one, you seem to think you speak for the majority. I have news for you, I have an iPad (3), and an iPhone (4), and I could easily see a use for an iPad with a 7.85″ screen; that’s the size of a paperback book…
(just to give you a clue, like).
To each his/her own. But I seriously don’t see a market worth Apple’s attention. We shall see.
The mini iPad would be valuable to Apple even if all that it did was to divert millions of potential buyers of The Kindle Fire and similar Android-based products to the iOS ecosystem. Apple is positioned even more strongly than Google to make money from all aspects of the tablet ecosystem, not just one part of it.
No one get’s you!
You certainly won’t ever get me, anonymous coward stalker. If you did, you’d stop stalking me! And I know you’d rather be irrational than stop stalking me. You’ve proved that often enough. 😛
I would have to agree. An iPad Mini makes no sense whatsoever!
Just BLN in disguise here folks. Nothing to see. Move along.
I love how it’s a “rumor” so this guy believes it as truth.
Maybe someone should inform the “author” of this crap that the rumor of a mini iPad has been around forever, and it’s always a sure thing this time…
If they make/announce one, then we will talk. Until then, it’s just more FUD.
Well, Steve Jobs selected and let John Lasseter take over the reins at Pixar Studios and they seem to be doing just fine.
+1
This isn’t Pixar. I hope Cook doesn’t fuck up Apple!
Pendola and MDN offer equally weak analysis. But Wall Street appears to be locking in their Apple profits and siding with Pendola’s view for now. Doesn’t matter what shiny new gadget Apple comes up with, if they keep allowing copycats to erode the bottom of the market from them, history will repeat itself in mobile just as it did on the desktop — especially in today’s environment when Americans have been brainwashed by Walmart into looking only at initial purchase price to make a buying decision. It Tim Cook keeps giving away manufacturing technology to save a buck today, he will have created the competitors of tomorrow. It has happened to every prior manufacturing industry in the USA thanks to short-term management outlook, and look at where it got them.
Doesn’t matter what shiny new gadget Apple comes up with, if they keep allowing copycats to erode the bottom of the market from them
You don’t actually know what you’re talking about, do you? Nothing can erode the bottom of the market away from Apple considering that they aren’t even a part of the bottom of the market. They don’t produce low-margin, bargain basement landfill stuffing like HP, Acer, Dell etc. do, who are all more than welcome to take the bottom of the market while Apple owns the middle and top.
especially in today’s environment when Americans have been brainwashed by Walmart into looking only at initial purchase price to make a buying decision.
Exactly, that’s why Americans never buy iPhones. Oh, wait…
Your disrespectful retort is noted. I will spell it out for you: When the competition has successfully copied 80% of the functionality at 50% of the cost and got a decent amount of market share at the bottom, then they will start attacking the next price point up, and so forth. Remember, Toyota didn’t start challenging BMW with its Lexus line. First it made cheap econoboxes with manufacturing technology directly copied from Detroit. BMW ignored them. Toyota successfully moved into middle-market cars and trucks; BMW ignored them. In fact, BMW did a superb job nailing some of the best handling cars in that period. But they got complacent. Now Toyota is going for the high end, and BMW manufactures mostly bloated, overweight, Bangle-assed, over-complicated, cheapened-quality cars with less-than-stellar reliability ratings that appeal to snobs more than experienced drivers. And so it would be with Apple AGAIN if it takes its eye off the ball.
And yes, most Americans do not buy iPhones. not by a long shot. You could have looked that up, couldn’t you?
Mike…… BULL
I have to agree with the other guy. I find your reasoning too simplistic and overly broad.
AAPL’s market share (PCs, smartphones) generates outsized industry profits while not participating in the low end of the market. This isn’t the mythical “premium” at work, this is the company mastering product design and logistics such that they can build it for less cost than the next guy, with better quality on multiple levels, and sell it for less than the other guy and make better margins at the same time.
And they’ve done that more than once.
And I think it is becoming apparent that the tablet wars appear to be following the iPod wars model rather than the 90’s OS wars model. Still early – sure – but the progression is firming up that way.
Urgh, not this “history will repeat itself in mobile just as it did on the desktop” talk again… The mobile just isn’t the same as the desktop. In fact, mobile is moving in the opposite direction. The “open” model just isn’t working in mobile in terms of anybody actually making any decent amount of money save for Samsung. And Samsung would love nothing more than to ditch Android and use their own Bada and have complete control of their own ecosystem.
HP and Dell are trying to find the most elegant way to exit the PC business. Apple, with only 5~6% marketshare in the global PC industry, is raking in 35% of the profits – way more than *ANY* PC maker. Apple’s cellphone (both smartphones and dumb feature phones) marketshare is now around 9% but taking in 80% of the profits with Samsung getting 15% and the remainder getting the scraps.
Now, tell me: over a period of a day or a week or whatever determined time period, would you prefer to sell 100 units of something and take home $1000 or 1000 units of the same kind of thing and bring in $100? Apple is doing the former while everyone else is doing the latter. The point of business is to make money, isn’t it?
Even Google has decided that it wants to emulate Apple’s “closed” walled garden or integrated model by acquiring Motorola. Does anyone believe that Google will keep a “wall” in between Google’s Android OS division and Motorola’s hardware smartphone division when Google spent over $12 billion on a money-losing business? After the acquisition, Samsung’s Chairman and CEO mandated that his company focus on software to reduce its dependence on Google so that they also develop and have complete control over their very own ecosystem. Notice Samsung now plans to announce what they call the S-Cloud?
What matters now to the manufacturer is the entire stack of OS, apps, hardware, media content, cloud services, and 3rd party developers and accessory makers in one seamless package that everyone now refers to as the ecosystem. Apple is really the only one that has it all. Some others may be stronger than Apple in certain areas but as far as having complete control from end-to-end and top-to-bottom, no one is even close to matching Apple’s breadth and depth.
Look at what Amazon is doing. Amazon is now a very strong platform and ecosystem provider with their own hardware. Facebook is obviously and seriously looking into providing their own phones and hardware interface. Google is going to offer their own Google-branded tablets and sell direct to consumers and compete with their hardware partners such as Samsung, HTC, Sony and everyone else. And then, of course, there is Microsoft, which is the laggard in this mobile platform and ecosystem race.
This isn’t *anything* like the PC wars of the 80’s and the 90’s. What the hardware manufacturers have learned from that war that really only benefitted Microsoft and Intel is that they’re not going to fall into that game again. But to really compete, one needs to offer the entire integrated stack and at least be reasonable competent in every component or you end up like Nokia and RIM. Why do you suppose Nokia and RIM didn’t license Android? They didn’t want to be mired in a race to the bottom and end up like defunct PC brands/makers AST, Gateway, Compaq, Digital, and countless others.
So, please, put this comparison to the PC industry to rest. The PC industry is a dinosaur and *no one* wants to see a repeat of what happened in the 80’s and the 90’s except Microsoft and Intel. This mobile “Post-PC” era isn’t going to be anything like it and thank God for that!
Wow! Now that’s a mouth full!
I smell the stench of FUD for the sake of driving down the AAPL stock price
…claiming that mere mortals can run the show without missing a beat.
NO ONE SAID THAT, FUD mongerer.
But, without Jobs, their impact cannot be quite the same. For this, Cook deserves a lion’s share of the blame.
FOR WHAT?! Apple has been doing great for YEARS under Tim Cook! Hello! Anyone home in there? Apparently NOT.
I don’t say this to people often, rarely even to nasty trolls and HATERS, but:
F*CK YOU Rocco Pendola. Your dick is showing.
++
Excellent new avatar Chrissy.
Thanks!
Get a room you freaks!
“F*CK YOU Rocco Pendola. Your dick is showing.”
It’s so small, how can you tell?
I was wearing my ashtray glasses at the time.
I couldn’t agree more (and am happy to have the company of C1 on this). Rocco Pendola is a complete bozo. I’d go to the original article and leave a nasty comment, but I don’t want to give the guy the click.
Let me underscore a point DC made about Cook: He has been running the company for years – for all practical purposes, since 2004 and Steve’s first bout with cancer. During that time Apple has essentially out-performed every publicly traded company on Planet Earth. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it won’t continue to do so.
One dark concern: I’ve seen several anti-Cook items of late and can’t help but wonder if it isn’t a case of homophobia.
You said it right!
No, I think it’s Hit-whoring. It certainly isn’t rational analysis.
Derek is CRAZY!!!!
Rocco needs to get a shave as soon as he can pull his head out of his butt. Hit whore journalism at its best, or worst depending on your view point.
Please iCal this dork. I want a good laugh when he’s proven wrong!
Trying to drive the price down? yep, and it is working!
cookiewuss.
Steve Jogs wasn’t always right. No one is always right. I hope I’m super wrong about Cookiewuss.
I just don’t get the idea that the guy any kind of innovative thinker. He might be god’s gift to manufacturing and supply chain economics, but technology visionary, I don’t see it.
I don’t believe he is the force majeure that Apple needs at the helm.
He’s the highest paid CEO in the country (world?) at 374 million per year. Does he deserve that? Seriously?
On the dividend thing he should have invited anyone not happy with with the return on Apple’s stock to take their investments elsewhere, maybe Microsoft. (Can you say CalPers?)
He should be at the very least threatening to fire everyone involved with iTunes and iCloud because the services are a bloated clusterfuck.
He needs to stay off the stage during those stupid pointless product announcement. He reminds me of Michael Eisner trying to be Walt Disney on the Disney Sunday programs. Just didn’t work.
I just don’t get what everyone is so impressed with.
“He’s the highest paid CEO in the country (world?) at 374 million per year. Does he deserve that? Seriously?”
I thought YOU were the highest paid CEO in the universe at $10 trillion per year, Thelonious Mac.
See? If you can make things up, I can too!
(You may want to look up Apple’s award of $374 million in restricted stock units (RSUs) to Cook–based on performance–over TEN years to be paid in installments in 2016 and 2021.)
He doesn’t make $374M per year Dumb F–k. That was a one time stock award that doesn’t fully vest for 10 years.
Learn to read.
Or learn to read the right thing. I got that from an AP report. You’re absolutely right. I am a dumb fuck for believing anything from AP/Forbes. His actually salary is a respectable $900,000 per year.
cookiewuss? is this an insult trying to be a joke? don’t get it.
Actually, I think this is Thelonious Mac’s attempt at homophobic humor.
‘…homophobic himour’.Exactly and deserving an ‘ahh bless’ in return.
I thought that China trip was peculiar also. What was that for? Who is in charge of his old job in Apple’s org chart? Near as I can tell, no one. I fear he hung on to the COO responsibility because that’s what he’s comfortable with. As COO he also led the Mac division. I don’t see much leadership in the Mac division right now.
And ya know what? That Apple org chart is starting to look like one of those good old boy charts at GM or Chrysler. You know, those guys who can’t picture an automobile without a giant silver bumper with a company logo on it? The guys who can’t picture a car that isn’t fossil fuel based?
Maybe it’s time to reach into the guts of Apple or outside for younger CRAZIER people to channel the insanity and brilliance that was Steven P. Jobs. $374 million a year my ass.
That’s true–$374 million a year your ass.
Why keep repeating that stupidity? Why don’t you check your facts before posting, Thelonious Mac?
I’ve retracted that.
Still doesn’t change what’s obviously true about the guy. He’s a supply chain genius, perhaps savant. Apple was lucky to have him in that COO position.
His actual contribution to Apple in a true leadership role remains to be seen.
TM is a clueless moron who can’t get his facts even remotely straight and has no idea what kind of contribution that Tim Cook has made to the success of Apple. He should STFU.
By the way, you dumb f–k, Jeff Williams is the SVP for Operations, essentially the same position that Cook had.
Stock manipulation courtesy of Rocco Pendola.
Remember how Apple was hitting homerun after homerun when Jobs was on various bouts of medical leave and Tim Cook was running the show? Yeah, I don’t think this douchebag wants you to remember that.
Bullshit article to drive ad views.
The ecosystem is difficult to duplicate, the hardware makes it all possible. Right now, no one is doing this as profitably as Apple.
Pendola(?) has nothing of substance.
For years we had to put up with huge negativity about the awful Steve Jobs from assholes like the ones at The Street. Now that he’s dead he was a saint and whoever follows is awful. They will dream up anything to help fuel a bear raid, which I heard from traders was coming. They told me they were all shorting in the first part of April and the bad-stuff-about-Apple articles and blogs hit the wires shortly after.
It’s true no-one can adequately replace Jobs and I am ready to consider selling my AAPL if I see bad product decisions coming out, but I don’t think the ones mentioned qualify as bad.
Jobs knew he had more cash than he needed and was mulling what to do with it right before he died. I think he would have seen they stock as a product, one which inevitably will peak. So you have to start looking at dividends to stabilize it. I think he would have and also considered a split, which now has a good argument where it didn’t before. Jobs himself said changing one’s mind is a sign of intelligence, and I think he would be okay with this.
First time I’m compelled to put my 2 cents-worth in. I have to agree with the author’s assessment. Already, I see discouraging things. I’ll give three DIFFERENT examples than the author…First, Lion – OpenDoc has reared its ugly head and invaded – by way of Lion. The whole save-a-version thing, removing save as, is totally opendoc. I hate it. Also with Lion – hiding stuff that is important – very very microsoft-like….finally – Apple TV – new interface was PERSONALLY VETOED by Jobs, now a bunch of colorful bubbles in no particular order, I hate it…Yes, I know Lion came out before Jobs died – but he was pretty sick, and concentrating on iOS. Apple can become mediocre much faster than I’d anticipated. Too bad.
Jolly – Mac developer since August, 1984.
Eddy Cue – Internet Software and Services – Highly Unimpressed.
Scott Forstall – iOS Software – Still has plenty of juice in him.
Jonathan Ive – Industrial Design – ‘Nuff said.
Bob Mansfield – Hardware Engineering – Seems a bit conservative to me, but so far doing a great job.
After that it’s just finance, marketing, and lawyers.
Who’s the SVP for the Mac? Who’s the passionate firebrand that’s going to keep OS X leaps and bounds better than Windows?
Eddy Cue has already done an impressive number of things at Apple, including the iTunes store and the app store. He needs to keep pushing with the development of iCloud. It’s super important. And its success depends entirely on Cue and his team.
the Street is one of the biggest garbage cans on the web. not just stupid, but unethical too. why link to their trash?
One thing I know is I sure love my new iPad!
Typical fucktarded analyst. Gibbering on about certainties regarding a product that doesn’t even fucking exist. To think people get paid for this fucking idiocy while regular folks have to work for a living is offensive.
+10
Nobody is Steve Jobs. That’s good and bad. But Tim Cook won’t be the reason Apple levels off at some point. Competitors will eat away at Apple’s lead. But it may be a long time before there’s a real competitor. Or it may come sooner than we think. It just won’t be Cook’s fault. He’s been given the impossible task of growing a company that has been on a tear. Job’s would have a problem keeping this rocket going higher. Android phones may not be iPhones but they aren’t going away. They activate more each day than iPhones. It’s a fact. I don’t want one but a lot of people do. Especially the 30 and under crowd. Again, it’s a fact. I like my 4S,new iPad,new 27″ iMac,Apple tv and iPod Touch but there are millions of people all over the world looking for an alternative product. You can’t fight that.
The thing is even Steve Jobs wasn’t always Steve Jobs. Steve reversed himself many times. His thinking and positions changed as he matured. Apple is changing without Steve, but it would have changed anyway.
The best chance Apple has to succeed is to stay focused on products and the customer experience and to keep the finance people and lawyers out of the decision making process.
Steve was never afraid to hire talent. He gathered the best people he could to run Apple. Tim is not as outspoken as Steve, but if you look at what he has said you’ll see he is committed to the customer experience.
Brilliantly put.
All these idiots write whatever wind blows… Oh Apple is unstoppable, oh… Apple is doomed.
Apple will continue to thrive wether the stock goes up or down.
Idiots will pass gas and other idiots will sniff it up, right Rocco?
The classics never grow old.
The Street’s Jim Cramer – Stock Market Manipulation – How he did it
You really gotta control the market. You can’t let it drift. You get a RIM it’s really important to use a lot of your firepower to knock it down cause it’s the fulcrum of the market today…now you caan’t foment, that’s a violation…you can’t create yourself…an impression that a stock’s down…but you do it anyway cause the SEC doesn’t understand it…
“Get people talking about it as if something is wrong with RIM,” Cramer advises. “Then you would call the (Wall Street) Journal and talk the bozo reporter on Research in Motion and you would feed that Palm has got a killer it is going to give. These are the things that you must do on a day like today. And if you are not doing it, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game.”
[snip]
How do you drive Apple stock down to profit from your short position–especially when the company is just about to announce it’s new IPhone?
“Apple–it is very important to spread the rumor that both Verizon and ATT have decided they don’t like the phone,” Cramer says. “It’s a very easy one to do. You also want to spread the rumor that it’s not going to be ready for MacWorld. And this is very easy, because the people who write about Apple want that story. And you can claim that it is credible because you spoke to someone at Apple. It is an ideal short. If I were short Apple, I would be working very hard today to get that. And the way you would do that is pick up the phone and call six trading desks. And say, listen, I just got off the phone with my contact at Verizon. And he has already said–we’re a Samsung house, we are a Motorola house. There is no room for Apple. They want too much. We are not going to let them in. We are not going to let them do what they did to music. And that’s a very effective way to keep a stock down.”
http://tinyurl.com/3dmuu4
And when Apple sells 10 million iPadMinis in the first quarter the “analyst” will then say “wait until next quarter.”
An iPad Mini would be far better to carry with my MBPro.
“Analysts” are merely word merchants pumping out columns to meet an editor’s demands so they get paid. Contrary Content is still content and it looks better than copying Walt Mossberg who wrote first.
Steve Jobs didn’t make Apple better than every other company on his own. He hired Tim Cook and others and they helped him to do so. Sure he is a loss, and maybe they won’t reach the same heights they would have gone on to, but they will still achieve great things because they’re talented people. Jony Ive isn’t going to start designing crap. Regardless of how much credit you give to Steve Jobs, and how little you give to Tim Cook and everyone else, the idea they will fail gives entirely too much credit to other companies.