“Investors are certainly frustrated with Apple as its shares languish below 100,” Michael Yoshikami writes for CNBC. “The price makes no sense given that Apple has $250 billion of cash in the bank, a price to earnings ratio much lower than the market and a massive cash flow generation operation despite slowing phone sales.”
“Some suggest Apple stock woes are directly related to the slowdown in iPhone sales,” Yoshikami writes. “But I have another theory as to why Apple’s stock price is low. Think back to when Steve Jobs ran Apple. In between product releases this cult-like figure would whip investors into a frenzy. While it certainly was not the official policy of Apple, one could certainly conclude that his efforts were focused on generating marketing buzz to keep excitement high about the product thereby supporting the stock price.”
“Cook was the operational expert who did not crave the spotlight when he worked closely with Jobs. When Cook took over as CEO of Apple, the pundits and many investors labeled him as too boring, too conservative, and too low-key. After all, coming off of Jobs, Cook certainly is a bit less exciting to be sure,” Yoshikami writes. “We’ve been here before. Remember back when Apple stock was languishing several years ago and Cook was considered the wrong man for the position. Then suddenly the iPhone 6 came out (as well as a larger iPhone) and then he was brilliant. My contention is Cook is doing just fine. My contention is he doesn’t have to be as exciting as Jobs…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
Those who underestimate Tim Cook are in for a rude awakening. – MacDailyNews, April 9, 2014
Tim Cook will be doing fine ONLY when software quality at Apple has returned to the level longtime users like myself come to expect.
I agree with you absolutely. A recent example of Tim Cook muddled vision for apple was his statement yesterday in Amsterdam essentially saying apple would never acquire or develop a wireless telecom carrier (i.e. wireless internet). What a gigantic failure of vision to expand the apple ecosphere into the future, instead he fixated and diverting talent on the next new device (car?, watch?). If he had kept all cash instead of buy backs etc. AAPL would be valued much higher and Cook could acquire any comcast, viacom, any company that would expand apple’s reach, instead we see failed negotiations… awful leader of such a great legacy company.
Steve often said he would never do something, … and then did it anyway once he was ready or changed his mind.
What a failure of knowledge you have of strategy. What possible good would come from telling carriers that Apple was going to compete with them, whether Apple eventually will or not? None.
As is often said here, Cook is not Jobs.. We don’t know if he also will follow suit and do something he says he’ll never do.
Yup, catastrophe. You know the solution — you don’t need to hope Apple will change. Just head down to the store and buy a bunch of Microsoft and Samsung gear. (Don’t bother to come back to let us know how it goes.)
Desperate lying in evidence again. Anyone want to bet on how large the stick is inside this guy’s butt hole?
I no longer see any point in bothering to even read your points. You’re just a little turd who likes to abuse others because you hate yourself. You post your hate and nonsense anonymously because you’d be embarrassed if anyone could actually look you in the eye and point out that you’re just a little turd who likes to abuse others because you hate yourself.
… I bet 10 inches. Ouch.
Hi Derek, I am sick and tired of reading your comments berating trolls. Why do you acknowledge trolls? You are merely giving them the recognition they deserve. It is dumkopfs like you who continue giving these moronic trolls oxygen. Just comment on useful things, otherwise people shut your trap. Stop acting like the little policeman turn who likes to tell others what to do because you hate trolls. Otherwise you simply become the troll’s troll.
If I continue to hassle you about his then I’ll be just as useless as you but I will just post this once – stop feeding the trolls, otherwise you become a troll enabler and little better than a smarmy smart-arsed troll yourself, and nobody wants that – not even you!
… Said the troll. I looked at your deliberate mis-spelling of my name and yawned. I have great fun troll-trampling and have, despite your incorrect assessment, chased untold numbers of them out of here through the wielding of my avenging sword of wrath and humor. Enjoy your sick and tiredness.
Derek, your comments are ok. You try hard to be a cool kid. But going off at trolls is the boring, uncool Derek.
Just give it a rest is all I’m saying. You’ll say more by saying less when it comes to trolls. Try harder at being cooler with your cool posts and funny pics and whatnot. Leave the troll hating to silence – nothing stops a troll faster than silence and no-one giving a damn about the troll.
Please stop feeding the trolls, Derek. Just focus on the good stuff you do.
Ultimately do what you want, but whenever I see you going off at a troll I just wonder, why the F do you bother. It’s a waste of your time and only encourages the effers.
I understand. Thank you for being kind.
Historically (circa 1995-96), myself, my brother friend Peter and a few other folks, notably including Daniel Eran Dilger, descended on the Macintosh computer related Usenet newsgroups and found them infested with idiotic, deceitful… trolls. The motto “Don’t feed the trolls” was well established. But we decided to throw facts in the face of the anti-Mac mythology being foisted in the newsgroups. We were remarkably successful. We perfected the art and strategy of troll-trampling, as I call it. It’s fun and provides great rewards, both personal and public. I say, if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not doing it right. That was of course stolen from discussion of another subject of note. I attempt to make it as amusing as possible for others who bother to read along.
Why do I bother? It all comes down to diversity, who’s good at what and how they contribute to the whole. This is one of my joyful skills. I consistently find it to be a useful contribution to the whole. I find that nothing stops a troll faster than burying them in insight about what motivates them to troll. If all of us treated the haters, liars and psychopaths with laughter and derision, we’d be a lot less stressed. We be far more enabled in our own positive tasks. The haters would feel threatened by us, which is a wonderful goal. They’d stew in their own problems and avoid pushing them onto the rest of us.
Perhaps it takes experience within this situational engagement to understand what it is all for and how it’s beneficial to all involved, sometimes including the troll. At my best, I point trolls into revelation about themselves and suggest they take the ever present choice of striving to become their best selves, as opposed to selling themselves, hating themselves, pushing their personal problem on others etc. If I didn’t find the end result to fit into my concept of positive anarchy, I wouldn’t do it.
Archetype: Angel Michael. – – IOW: An old role within human culture.
Hi Derek,
Well that’s a pretty darned good explanation of why you go to the effort of trolling the trolls, especially the really stupid ones. I am personally a massive Apple fan and user, and get quite annoyed at the moronically stupid anti-Apple articles that I see out there, and which people like those who run MDN and I guess you too like to rip into for their idiocy.
Another great person who does this is whoever is behind the Macalope – I so do love reading Macalope’s take-downs of the endless anti-Apple morons out there who couldn’t string two words of sense together about Apple if their lives depended on it.
So… in that case… keep up the good work, and sorry for having wasted your time trying to get you to stop doing what is ultimately a great service and a giant kick up the backside of moronic trolls.
Cheers 🙂
Thanks – This has been my sentiment for a long time.
Last night I was finishing up “Man In The Machine,” the CNN documentary – not all that flattering. But it reminded me about how safe we all felt when Steve was talking. I am not coming from the perspective of an employee, but from the outside. When Steve spoke, you felt that things were certain.
That is the painful lesson.
When we lost Steve, we lost a bit of certainty. Tim is just as as capable, but not as convincing. Really there is little we can do about that. Steve was an outlier, an anomaly.
Try to find someone “like” him, and the “new” guy will ruin Apple, because the vision will be completely different yet backed by charisma and certainty.
So what this all boils down to is that Apple’s fundamental business is doing very well. All that is missing with Cook running the company is the bullshit. Wall Street thrives on bullshit and nothing else matters to Wall Street.
With this sentimental and hard critics about TC, which is a great motivation for TC has tried harder and harder and harder until he is exhausted then he retired which what Wall Street wanted from him.
Trying hard to do what? Watch Bollywood movies and attend cricket matches? If that’s the hard work of a CEO, then I am more than qualified. But I assure you, as Apple CEO, I wouldn’t abandon the Mac professionals. You have to reinvest in the business to keep it profitable over the long term. Cook is just chasing after Google and Amazon most of the time, pushing services and subscriptions, letting dumbass designers ruin usability, and forgetting the foundation of what made Apple better than these companies. Apple’s business would have done no worse on autopilot than it has with Cook.
And those slowing iPhones sales…
50 millions of iPhones sold in 90 days. That is slow my friend. How can every anals redistribute this fact without understanding Apple sold, worldwide, half a million iPhone per day???
It is less than YOY, but come on! 50 millions for **ck sake!
Anals are braindead brainwashed little muppets operated by some people with an agenda.
For the rest, Tim is doing just fine. Tim will prove it, once again with the release of the iPhone7 and next year with the release of the iPhone8…
Remember that any iPhone model is also sold at more locations than practically any single model of its peers. I suppose it might make more sense if the 50 mil sales over 90 days was compared to either past sales or current sales of the smartphone market.
Where’s the 5 stars option for MDN take?
Nonsense. Steve never whipped investors into a frenzy.
Apple could use someone like Tony Stark. The keynotes would be electric, the media clamour would be extinguished, wall street would quiet down … and he already has the holographic wrist display.
If we are going with fictional CEO’s I suggest Sherlock Holmes.
Update him to Agent Pendergast and I’m with you.
Come on we all know the reason the stock is low, it’s Wall Street manipulating stock values to maximize there erring potential. They bring it down, buy low, then pump it up sell hi, then bring it down again.
MANIPULATION is their jobs, and they have done very well. It’s their expertise, they have their money and power to do so.
My contention is that Apple PR is in a coma.
Wake up! Wall Street is the playtoy of the 1% pirrahnas. We are their cattle. They float lies, calling them Analysis. They buy and sell in orchestration with their cattle prod analyst reports and Media buys their B.S. My money would be infinitely safer in Vegas than on Wall Street.
iPhone sales are low because we are in the end of the S portion of the 2 year iPhone 6 model cycle. Consumers are trained to wait to this fall to replace their model 6 or 6S iPhone with a new model 7. Smart investors will buy Apple stock now and sell after the big jump in new iPhone 7 model sales.
Not one Tim Cook critic on this page could do his job.
Apple’s issues are wide and deep. The CEO cannot hold everyone’s hands.
And most of the Tim Cook critics are homophobes.
… So we’re back to the “ENTERTAIN ME!” meme. Apple has to put on a song and dance show at every turn or the stockholders get bored and sell. Kind of stupid. Sorry kiddies but you’re investing outside of your interest and competence. Go invest in Hollywood or Broadway instead. Stay OUT of technology.
Others like Tesla and Google sparkle with innovation and showmanship, and glisten with promise, and steal the limelight for a time; but eventually observers’ eyes sidle back toward Apple, wondering if the sorcerer really is slumbering, or merely feigning decrepitude. They can’t be sure. The exact emotion is a tincture of fear and envy. Outwardly they are proudly dismissive, playing the odds that lightning doesn’t strike repeatedly in the same place. But it does; just not on average.