Apple’s lack of groundbreaking change in the years since Steve Jobs’ untimely death is beginning to take a toll that’s becoming more and more apparent with each passing quarter.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
This lack of groundbreaking change has taken a toll. Sales of the iPhone have tapered and are lower than where they were two years ago. The Apple Watch suffered a 14% revenue drop last year, according to analyst estimates. And overall revenue is only slowly picking up again after a stagnant stretch.
It’s clear that Apple needs something bigger and bolder on the horizon. But the speed of its innovation engine is slower. Whether it’s due to the company’s larger size, inertia or a cumbersome development process, things have changed: The days of getting frequently redesigned devices and a major new product category every few years are long gone.
The timing for this slowdown isn’t great. Apple is dealing with a more competitive marketplace than ever, with Chinese players like Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. popping out innovative new designs like foldable phones. Governments and third-party developers around the world are pressing Apple to rein in its business practices. And now tariffs are threatening its profit margins.
The company also can’t seem to catch up in artificial intelligence, which will make it even harder to create trailblazing new devices…
That said, Apple isn’t preordained to be the next BlackBerry, Nokia or Compaq. The company has the resources to evolve, buy up startups that can help it create breakthrough technologies, and design its way into new areas. It’s also true that hardware innovation has been a tough challenge for the whole tech industry lately. But Apple is undoubtedly in a lull.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in February 2024:
Apple’s time a having a caretaker CEO to milk products and services conceived and created under Steve Jobs will, hopefully, draw to a close sooner than later.
Apple is clearly 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
If Apple can manage to train its generative AI in an unbiased way – a big IF – Apple will be just fine in generative AI soon enough. The company has an install base of more than 2.2 billion active devices in the hands of the highest quality customers; even “good enough” generative AI will be just fine. Anything above and beyond that will just be icing on the cake!
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)… – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
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It’s a good thing that MacDailyNews Webmaster opines at a marginally useful online newsletter because what ‘they’ don’t know and/or understand about market saturation and running one of the most successful companies (ask Warren Buffet) would fill a free 747 from Qatar. Apple offers the most impressive, desirable and desired family of high-tech products EVER conceived on this planet. Looking back, Steve Jobs was ‘visionary’ but also a rigid manager when the company was 1/4 of its current size and he had the kinds of personality flaws that would not ‘work’ in today’s powerhouse Apple. Through sheer luck he was given a life-saving opportunity and excellent advice that he chose to ignore against an unrelenting biochemical foe that he didn’t really fully understand, and consequently he paid the ultimate price. That was foolhardy decision-making and apparently more typical of him than not. It’s also been written often that he had to be talked into working on and embracing their most successful products. In other words, MacDailyNews click-bate headlines and articles are space-wasting and unconvincing. Try harder.
You sound like a homosexual who’s upset that people are saying that your homosexual CEO god isn’t doing a good job when it comes to developing revolutionary hit products, which is demonstrably true.
You have no idea whatsoever how Steve Jobs would have run Apple into 2025. I posit, the company would be worth at least $6 trillion today, had it not been handicapped by a glorified parts-orderer whose one trick – make it cheap in China and sell it at huge margins – long ago ran its course, who fails at most every high-profile hire he makes, who cannot execute a live keynote address that doesn’t bore people to death, who blew $10+ billion on a EV car boondoggle, who flushed only God know how much on the climate change scam, who thinks virtue-signaling matters and doesn’t hurt the company more than it helps, who totally missed GenAI , who neglected Siri for a decade and a half,… But, hey, at least he forces his designers to waste time making watch bands and wallpapers celebrating deviant sexual practices. That’s likely all that matters to you.
MacDaily News has been a huge cheerleader for Apple, Apple stock, Apple products for decades. It knows way more than you. And it has provided excellent critiques as well as praise since its inception. And it is certainly entitled and qualified to voice its opinions. You can leave if you don’t like it. I appreciate their thoughtful criticisms. Do you have any idea how much Apple spent on Project Titan which reportedly at one time had hundreds or thousands working on its mysterious efforts which were shelved after over a decade pursuing an incredibly stupid product idea. Same with Vision Pro, an enormous effort chasing a market that does not exist in any serious size. Tim Cook is far too focused on woke politics and seriously under focused on innovation that fits Apple’s talents and its customers needs. Thank you MDN.
It’s the same tired, lazy trope from MDN. Name one Fortune 100 company that was able to replace its visionary CEO, at any point, with a new visionary CEO. It just doesn’t happen.
The point is Steve pushed out visionaries from Apple so that he could solely lead the company’s direction, and it worked for a while. Cook’s job was never to do the same job as Jobs. In fact Jobs surely picked Cook because he knew the company needed a different kind of leader, otherwise he would have picked Johnny Ive or Scott Forstall to replace him. Cooks challenge has been to build a company of innovators, to build a culture where innovation is broad. Its true, his results, so far, have been mixed, at best, but its not easy converting a monarchy to a democracy.
Microsoft Corporation is a Fortune 100 company that successfully replaced its visionary CEO, Bill Gates, with another visionary leader, Satya Nadella. Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and served as CEO until 2000, was instrumental in making Microsoft a dominant force in personal computing through Windows and Office. After Gates stepped down as CEO to focus on philanthropy, Steve Ballmer took over, leading the company through growth but also facing criticism for missing key trends like mobile and cloud computing. In 2014, Satya Nadella became CEO and transformed Microsoft into a leader in cloud computing (Azure), AI, and cross-platform innovation, revitalizing its culture and market position. Nadella’s leadership is widely regarded as visionary, with Microsoft’s market cap soaring past $3 trillion by 2024, earning praise for its “reputational turnaround.” This transition demonstrates Microsoft’s ability to replace one visionary (Gates) with another (Nadella), maintaining its status as a “tech innovator.”
Tim Cook is Apple’s Steve Ballmer.
Nadella is a good CEO and he has guided the company well (just like Cook has for many years.) The reason he is successful is that he’s an engineer and has the company focused on software, again. He speaks the language of the people who make up the core of what MS does. Is he a visionary? Not by my standards. What he did do is focus the company on Cloud computing, a well established market, and built teams of innovators. He built a culture of innovation. Is he the kind of leader that Bill Gates was, relentlessly, ruthlessly, personally driving the company. No. In fact there are rumors that Bill Gates is still involved in strategic decisions and is still calling the shots despite the fact that he’s no longer even COB… because he is a real visionary. Guys like Gates, Jobs, Musk and the DB at Meta only come around so often.
Cook should load up his gay, woke rainbow stinking alter in the Apple courtyard in a dump truck, and personally drive it to the landfill, and don’t come back.
BigX reminds me of the shopkeeper that used to be here, and then we had the Jeeve Stobs guy. The shopkeeper was the funniest though, just because Steve walked into the store, the shopkeeper dude thought he was “summin’ speshal”… when he was just a shop keeper. Who eventually closed his shop!
The products during each’s tenure speaks volumes.
“often that he had to be talked into working on and embracing their most successful products.” Using this as a measure doesn’t substantiate at all. In fact, it’s contrary to Cook. Maybe he was more agreeable? Look what he consented to…few landmark products and many product-interruptuses. Some of those were quite large in expense and resultant negative market waves.
I collect quotes…notable in some way. I have many from Steve Jobs and zero from Tim Cook. Why? Cook is a superficial, wooden and follow-the-crowd person. Bizarre to some as a measure, but observe where Cook has been obsessed with innovation…(though connecting innovation here is bizarre)–emojis. Trite & sophomoric media for unsophisticated life.
Climate is another issue, but clearly not as “trite,” but he has released himself from the long-held standard of acting on behalf of the shareholders and spent billions through the yrs on this pet project…which he cordoned himself off with his infamous f-you…’if you don’t like it–find another a stock” (not verbatim).
Speaking of pets, support of his gay community is like the climate diversion. The CEO’s objective to act of behalf of the shareholders, doesn’t mean “some,” but he has again, said f-you to a significant percentage.
Cook has financialized AAPL and because of the bow to Wall St has carelessly sought a symbiotic relationship to an authoritarian country. Few products of note and cornered.
Worth a high EPS/market cap?
This article has a selective viewpoint. Under Steve we had a six year gap with no new products. Remember the shower curtain iMacs? Remember Teve saying you weren’t holding the iPhone right? How about the white iPhone that was almost a year late? The G4 cube? Steve was great but had technology issues as well.
Under Cook we got M series processors, the iPhone shoots 4K video, slo-mo video, RAW pictures, satellite emergency messages, lifesaving crash detection and much more.
Steve and Tim are both great and flawed humans. Both successful in their own way.
As Always the level of Juvenile Ignorance in most comments above is mind-numbing !!!
UNREAL… and truly foolish!