Apple’s biggest risk is not innovating like it used to under Steve Jobs, The Motley Fool‘s Geoffrey Seiler writes this week. The company is also not growing anywhere near as fast as it did under the visionary Jobs.
Geoffrey Seiler for The Motley Fool:
Think about it — Apple just hasn’t been growing and innovating like it used to under former CEO Steve Jobs, and its stock multiple is not reflecting that risk. In fact, growth has been pretty lackluster recently. Revenue increased a scant 2% in its most recent fiscal quarter, and sales fell nearly 3% last fiscal year. Meanwhile, its price-to-earnings ratio has tripled since the end of 2011, the year of Jobs’ death. Do you think that Apple’s business should be worth 3 times the multiple it was in 2011? I don’t.
Especially because innovation has been lagging. While Apple’s Pro Vision augmented reality headset has gotten some good initial buzz, it is not a mass-market product at this time given its $3,500 price tag. It is also the company’s first major product category introduction since launching the Apple Watch nearly a decade ago.
See also:
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
With generative AI now starting to transform the technology landscape, Apple could find itself playing catch-up and being ripe for disruption. Once at the forefront of tech innovation, Apple has just not shown itself to be the same innovative company it was in the past.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Apple is not as innovative as it was under Steve Jobs who even started the company’s work on Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro, but the company — thanks to Jobs and Cook’s subsequent management of iterations of products and services conceived during Jobs’ tenure — now has more than enough money to make up for Cook’s lack of vision.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features.
See also:
• Apple acquired 32 AI startups in 2023, the most among major tech companies – February 8, 2024
• Gene Munster: Apple stock likely to get a boost when ‘good enough’ generative AI arrives later this year – January 9, 2024
• Apple caught flat-footed on generative AI; company preps AI features for devices, software – October 23, 2023
• Apple posts number of job listings seeking generative AI talent – May 22, 2023
• Apple reportedly to ‘re-examine’ Artificial Intelligence development – March 8, 2023
The glaring lack of a visionary who is immersed and invested in product design who is a single point of approval – Steve Jobs – means that early adopters have to take Jobs’ place en masse to perform similar functions – albeit over a significantly longer period of time – à la Apple Watch. – MacDailyNews, March 28, 2023
The Apple Watch certainly found its way – we, the users, were the Apple Watch alpha and beta testers, collectively standing in for Steve Jobs, doing much of what the singular genius would have done before release by brute force and sheer numbers after release. It took four generations of Apple Watch, but we’re here now and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything! The same goes for Apple Glasses! — MacDailyNews, January 31, 2020
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Another risk is sometimes ‘innovating’ when they shouldn’t.
Apple sometimes breaks good design, good process or good user experience, for the sake of proclaiming their innovating.
Well, what are your examples of breaking good design for the sake of innovating?…
Hockey puck mouse, charging port on the BOTTOM of the current mouse, moving to SSD HDs which caused properly spec’d Macs to be priced too high, charging Apple Pencil by sticking the flimsy lightning connector in your iPad, ditching the 27″ iMac for a 24″ iMac, hiding the “Save As” option in the File menu, etc.
That said, iterative innovation is as important as revolutionary innovation. Prime example being the Apple Watch. The device that was introduced 10 years ago is vastly inferior to the current Apple Watch. Having lived through the Sculley/Spindler nightmare where Apple couldn’t innovate massively or minorly, I’ll settle for an efficient caretaker leader. For now. But Apple needs to be on the lookout for visionary and allow them some serious input into the leadership of Apple.
Excellent examples Synth, but hoping the “one and only” would answer to back up his claims.
Yes, the caretaker act has been going on 13+ years and its getting old day by day, as Microsoft and others, dare I say, are innovating. Meantime Cook is maintaining status quo for the the most part and me too CATCH UP with home speakers, goggles, etc.
The goggles have been out there for years and no surprise they charge a premium price and possibly its worth it. That said, Apple sells about one million iPhones a day and the googles have sold 200,000 estimated since launch.
Cook, simply not good enough long OVERDUE for a creative CEO to move Apple FORWARD…
Think how much extra time Apple would have to innovate if it didn’t spend so much time with religious observances all day long of homosexual and transsexual (sic) practices and pious worship of select skin colors and the communist ideology. These religious worship exercises take up about 60% of Apple’s time now. What if, instead, they focused on actually showing up at work in their big new HQ and making insanely great products.
Absolutely nonsense… but you know that already… which is why you’re saying it, to get people like me to comment… LOL!!! I just fell for it. Anyways… cheers everyone! Everything will be ok.
You lose the polling of the crowd on this one. You know I am right. You are just flummoxed because you are a communist stooge.
Kent demonstrates again what an uncivil asshat he is.
Steve Jobs knew and warned us what happens to a tech company when the product guys no longer run it. Steve also said that Tim isn’t a product guy. One of the great mysteries of Apple is why then did Steve let Tim be CEO
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-tim-cook-not-product-guy-walter-isaacson-interview-2019-7?op=1
Tim Cook was never the “sales guy.” He was always an operations genius, and someone who clearly understood, like Jobs did, that long-term thinking pays off. A typical sales guy would NEVER have invested the billions of dollars and years of effort to bring out the VisionPro. A typical sales guy would have cancelled the AppleWatch after a year when sales didn’t materialize as had been projected.
Yeah, Tim isn’t a visionary genius. But how many of those do you get in a lifetime (at least those who have the brains or the partners to realize something truly visionary)? Jobs couldn’t have succeeded the way he did without Wozniak (at first) and Johnny Ive (at the end), and a whole bunch of brilliant hardware and software folks in between.
Many of us thought Elon Musk was the next great American visionary, but (to paraphrase Top Gun), his ego is writing checks his brains can’t catch). Can you think of another out there today? I can’t.
Point is, he’s not a product developer guy. Innovation is not his dna. This puts Cook in essentially the same category as the problem with sales guys. As long as sales are good and supply stream is good the company is good.
To Tim’s credit, Apple has done very well for its investors. As a stock holder, I’m pleased. But as a consumer, I’m not nearly as satisfied. Innovation, software quality (multi update fixes) software development (Pages, Numbers, Keynote should dominate the market now iPhones, iPads are ubiquitous and Mac has largest market share in Apple history), releasing hardware/software before it’s ready (maps), Apple Desktop almost completely forgotten beyond iMac. Apple ecosystem has holes. You can block a phone # on your iPhone but it can still come though on Apple Watch. The list could go on.
Apple still makes great products. But the catch phrase, “It just works” doesn’t apply anymore. As is the phrase, “The crazy ones” who can change the world.
Apple once was about empowering people to change the world by making insanely great products that unleashed the creative power of its customers. Under Cook’s tenure, changing the world is done via woke ideology forced upon Apple’s customers. Customers never knew where Jobs stood on political/social issues. Not so with Cook. Not only do we know his positions, he uses his position at Apple and Apple employees to be pretty much in our face with his social agenda.
And then there’s China.
How about the REAL Elon Musk, not the one you are imagining.
Yeah, he’ll be huge in history.
“Many of us thought Elon Musk was the next great American visionary, but (to paraphrase Top Gun), his ego is writing checks his brains can’t catch).”
Typical libturd stupidity right there. Can’t imagine anything dumber.
DOJ: Biden is too senile to prosecute for corruption and treason
Liburds: It’s OK the let the lying, corrupt, racist, pedophile dementia patient continue as a puppet in the White House.
Having a dementia patient running the government shows us just how little we need the government and how fucking stupid libturds are.
Libturd stupidity has caused:
-Lying, corrupt, racist, pedophile, dementia patient and whore installed in the White House
–complete unquailed VP who is unable to form a single sentence
-two completely unqualified judges on the Supreme Court place there because of their race and sex instead of qualifications.
-Burning cities
-Occupy movement
-Doubled gas prices
-Gas pipeline shut down
-US emergency oil stockpiles drop to lowest level since 1983
-Unaffordable healthcare insurance
-Legalization of marijuana
-Baby killing
-Wants to ban gas stoves to save children but has no problem killing unborn children
-Destroyed economy
-Crashed stock market
-Upcoming recession
-Highest inflation in 40 years
-Weaponized IRS
-Destroyed school system
-Open border crisis
-Illegal aliens getting drivers licenses
-Illegal aliens getting free medical insurance
-Illegal aliens getting tax-payer money
– National Guard pay delayed after congress celebrates itself for spending $1.7 Trillion
-Trading a useless, athlete for a notorious arms dealer (Merchant of Death), while leaving behind a USMC veteran, because she is an anti-American, black lezbo.
-Releasing a notorious arms dealer (Merchant of Death) while trying to deprive Americans the right to defend themselves with gun control so we can protect ourselves from violent libturds
-Red flag laws
-Voter fraud enabling
-No voter ID
-Illegals allow to vote
-Illegals given drivers licenses
-Labeling all non-libturds as domestic terrorists
-Labeling all non-libturds as racist
-“Extremists” used to be real terrorists, now it people who want to secure the border or keep pornography out of elementary schools
-Electric car mandates during electric crisis
-Woke bullshit
-“Identify as” bullshit
-“Inclusion” but only what libturds want to include
-Kneeling for National Anthem
-Woke hirings preferred over actual competence
-Obese, mentally ill person installed as head of health
-Mentally ill, genderfluid ‘puppy’ thief installed at Department of Energy
-Jill Biden gives biological male “Women of Courage” award
-320 genders
-It/that, them/they, and WTF pronouns
-Misgendering bullshit
-Epstein client list hidden
-Russia collusion bullshit
-Destruction of free speech
-Transgender perversion forced on children
-Drag queen story hours
-Boys in the girls’ bathrooms.
-Tampon dispensers in the men’s room
-Boys in girls’ sports
-Mentally ill man pretending to be a woman on a beer can
-Mentally ill man being a model for women’s underwear-
-Cancel culture in the name of “tolerance”
-Not OK for a child to pretend to be an Indian for a game, but OK for a man to pretend to be a woman in real life
-Men can get pregnant
-Record underemployment
-Defund police
-Soft on crime policies
-Zero bail laws
-Record high crime
-Obese, ugly men winning female beauty pageants
-Food shortages
-Corruption of Legislators
-Corruption of Judges
-Corrupt FBI
-Corrupt CIA
-Corrupt media
-Corrupt social media
-Acceptance of Socialism and rejection of Capitalism
-Election and reelection of incredibly stupid, mentally unfit politicians: AOC, racist Omar, We have to pass it to find out what in it, Pelosi, Guam will tip over Hank Johnson, brain damaged Fetterman, Dementia Joe—just to name a few.
-Ukraine gets: $200 billion, Congress gets: 41% pay increase, Taliban gets: $85 billion, Iran gets: $200 billion, American get: $7 eggs, $4 gas, 50% increase on electricity, free crack pipes, open
borders, fentanyl crisis, toxic spills
-The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and…
And you are so fucking stupid that you think you are the smart ones!
You want to start a revolution, but you can’t even start a lawnmower.
The next civil war will be fought between Americans and libturds. One side has 300 million firearms and trillions of rounds of ammunition, the other has strap-on dildos and toilet plungers.
Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck libturds
What’s a “WOMAN”?
WriterGuy, you are a fucking idiot
Please fsck yourself and all like you. Thank you.
Sam, the cut/paste master, shadow boxes against concepts his haterade rightie media convinced him somehow hurts his feelings. whine hard, sam. that’s all you can do, beeeatch. be a victim instead of solving a problem. we all know how well your disgruntled attitude plays out. the only effects of your lies and whines are to make yourself unhappy and annoy everyone else you encounter. you are pathetic
Buy this man a beer. Or two. Maybe a Sam Adams. Just because.
Cook sales job was to sell the company to suppliers and manufacturers while technically not a “sales guy,” enjoy your anal semantics the Left revels in.
“Operations genius” is highly debatable. Thousands of VPs are capable of the same success with the volume and reputation Apple brings. Tim was in the right place at the right time handpicked by Jobs. Cook and company took advantage of NAFTA a few short years after it was passed for Communist CHEAP slave labor you have no problem with as a long-time sycophant supporter of Cook.
Your fantasy that Steve could not survive without Woz and Ive is just that. Remind you it was Steve’s genius that also handpicked these guys to CARRY OUT HIS VISION.
You hate Elon Musk because he turned Republican, FREED Twitter from censorship of conservatives and knock him every chance you get, so spare us the pious homilies. Musk is not the richest, MOST INNOVATIVE person on Earth for nothing, he EARNED it.
Elon could accomplish more with Apple in three months than Cook accomplished in 13 years as CEO. Apple NEEDS Elon Musk more than any other human being breathing air on planet Earth…
get a life,
Spewing your stupidity does not make my post any less true, it just proves that you are a libturd.
It’s not a mystery. Tim Cook was the best guy for the job at the time. When you have a stacked roster of products you don’t need another visionary to invent new products, you need someone who is going to execute on manufacturing and selling the current and soon-to-be produced products for maximum ROI. He has done that for the past decade, better than Jobs could have. The notion that Jobs failed because he didn’t replace himself with an identical clone is absurd. Jobs knew he wasn’t a “operations guy, per se” so he chose the man that was.
If you’ve followed Apple for any amount of time you know that the preference for many years has been to hire internally. CEO of Apple isn’t a job you pluck someone out of the ether for. Read the biographies of Apple’s executives. Some have been with the company since the 80s, others for 15-25 years. It’d be a surprise if the next CEO wasn’t on the executive team already. You don’t roll the dice on an outsider when you’re a $2 trillion company.
Steve Jobs on what happens when a company is run by the sells people. Steve, why didn’t you follow your own advice?
Apple certainly has lost it’s shine.
Apple is doing with vision pro what it does best. Take an existing concept Meta/Occulus and move it forward. Time will tell if this is a successful product category.
Another issue is losing focus. Producing TV shows and movies? A business far, far away from computers. Same for cars. Why waste money and, more importantly effort, there?
Apple is DEC in five years.
The Motley Fool creature stated, “Do you think that Apple’s business should be worth 3 times the multiple it was in 2011? I don’t.”
Good for you! Do you think a super-profitable company growing at well over 40% per year should have a P/E ratio of 10? That’s what the market did to Apple back in 2011.
Payback’s a b!tch, right, Geoffrey?
Also, in 2011, the iPhone hadn’t taken over the world. It has now.
I’ve seen these click-bait posts from these Motley Fools before…. All intended to get your goat and they did here… It’s all psychobabble by wanna-be money managers at Motley Fool. I guess the M1-3 groundbreaking chips and the Apple Vision Pro isn’t enough innovation for these clowns. Id love to see them try and interpret an M2 chip diagram or write some basic code.
Steve Jobs bought P.A. Semi for $278 million in April 2008 laying the foundation for Apple Silicon, not Tim Cook.
Steve Jobs was the source of the “M1-3 groundbreaking chips and the Apple Vision Pro ” innovations you cite.
Tim Cook is merely the plain Jane milkmaid of Steve Jobs’ myriad cash cows.
I was a huge Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs’ Apple fan. Innovation, exciting products, and a visionary CEO that could give a GREAT presentation. I had multiple of pretty much every product Apple made for years. I MISS those days.
Now, Apple has turned into a woke cause company that puts training wheels on its products and lacks innovation. I agree, the iPhone and iOS are extremely polished and very secure. That said, the interface looks so dated and the product is too locked down. I recently purchased an iPhone 15 Pro Max (I was a long time iPhone user since the first one); coming from several years of using Samsung flagships (most recently the Galaxy S23 Ultra) and can say the iPhone feels like a step backwards. No customization, no excitement, camera is worse, I could go on. The only reason I went iPhone is iMessage for work; however, at least I have a solution to use it on my Samsung.
Come on Apple; I am an intelligent IT professional. Please do not restrict me to training wheels, I paid nearly $2K for this device and it should have as much flexibility and customizability as my Samsung device. Additionally, please focus on innovating and building great products rather than politics and social causes.
Apple will be ‘Nokia’d’ soon.
I hope the money Apple has doesn’t go into buybacks and bonuses, but instead goes to R&D and into a rainy day coffer.