Lol, they won’t. These days their primary business MO is being anti-consumer, lobbying to be allowed to keep being anti-consumer, or outright public bribing of presidents.
Was it any different “other” days?
Early days yes, but then so was Google…
Microslop has never changed though.
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I was debating whether to post this, I was almost wondering whether this article is designed to mostly to promote engagement, but then I thought that perhaps I shouldn’t project my scepticism and local cultural attitudes in such a blunt manner.
A refresh is needed. Apple products under Cook – Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, HomePod, and Apple Vision Pro – haven’t been nearly as impactful as the iPhone or Mac. Coming up with novel hardware is a challenge – nearly everything has a processor nowadays. But a changing of the guard may open the door to new ideas.
There is no inherent rule that guantees impactful hardware developments in Apple’s segment of the market have to happen at a strict cadence. Sometimes you just reach a point of diminishing returns.
That wouldn’t have been my take.
Tim Cook was the one who should have been bringing humanity to technology. Aside from being gay, which makes him appeal to the LGBTQ+ community, especially important in these trying times, he’s just such a fun guy to listen to at keynotes. I’m sure behind closed doors, he might not be such a happy-go-lucky dude, but that’s the image he’s maintained over the last 15 years of his tenure as CEO.
Ternus is an engineer, an egghead. I’m hoping he makes Apple palatable to nerds again. A lot of nerds who use Apple say they use the “simpler” platform because they’re tired of being “experts” with Windows and/or Android. For example, for me, I got into Android when it was the only game in town — actually getting signal on an iPhone meant I would have to move to another place, because the carrier(s) that had it were not where I was. So it was like “the iPhone looks cool but I could never use it.” So I got into Android, and early Android phones sucked, so of course I was unlocking bootloaders, flashing custom firmware, rooting, and customising everything top to bottom. When I got the iPhone (6s), my previous Android phone (HTC One M8) would brick itself every week or two, and I had to repartition the internal memory. I was using Titanium Backup to keep everything backed up, so it was a minor inconvenience, but if I was driving, it was kind of a pain in the arse to have to wipe a phone and reinstall Android when I need the damn thing. Turns out HTC phones are nowhere near as good for modding as Samsung phones were (pre-Knox). Anyway, like the Green Mile meme, I just got tired. “I’m tired, boss.” I just wanted a phone that did what I wanted without having to tinker with it. Sure, I was smart enough for Android. I was also smart enough to find trouble that 99% of Android users will never see. I still have an old Android phone, and it’s got all the cool apps. Not Titanium Backup or AdAway (it isn’t rooted), but Nova Prime, Poweramp, and the Kustom apps (KLWP, KLCK, KWGT; they’re WYSIWYG live wallpaper, lock screen, and widget makers, respectively).
You said it yourself, the keynote vibes are not relevant to anything behind their strategy for the keynote/product introduction.
I would say these days both Android (from almost all OEMs/segments other than sub $150 devices) and Apple are basically equivalent. I haven’t tried all OEM UI lately, but it’s fact that they been refined since some of the stuff you saw with Android UIs (even Samsung with TouchWiz back in the day).
What’s a big smartphone innovation from the last ~10 years? These are mature segments, there are lots of iterative improvdments and some neat things
That being I think the US might be different with different carrier corruption and people using iMessage and Facetime (you never see them globally and if you do, it’s someone trying be a hadrcore fan; just posturing).
Oh, honey…
Yeah, that about sums it up lol
Thanks to the legal concept of fiduciary duty to shareholders
Imma stop you right there. That’s not a thing.
What do you mean? My experience with law is minimal, but I did a course on business law and I am almost certain there is a legal element to the concept.
When living in North America, I did get the impression the phrase was overused in NA and didn’t fully reflect reality (like with most things in life with enough high level connections, such rules don’t really apply).
Legally, CEOs have a duty of loyalty — they are legally liable if they are working on behalf of their company’s competitor to sabotage their company. They also have a duty of care — they can’t just withdraw the company’s cash and light it on fire.
There’s no law saying that a CEO must “maximize shareholder profit.” None. It’s not a law. It doesn’t even make sense. Non-profits have CEOS and they don’t maximize profit. How would you even legally prove a CEO failed to do that? Should Tim Cook be sued because he didn’t buy NFTs when they were on the ascent to maximize short-term profit?
As a practical matter, if a board doesn’t like the direction a CEO is taking or the CEO’s efficacy, then they can take steps to remove the CEO. But there’s essentially zero legal recourse for shareholders.
This myth comes from a paper from Milton Freedman (or one of his acolytes) that argued a CEO should be paid principally in stock to align the CEO’s interests with shareholders. But studies by actual economists show that leads to looting the company. E.g., fire all the employees, stock goes up, CEO cashes out before the shit hits the fan.
Friedmanites can get fucked, it would be good give them a taste of their own medicine, it don’t think they will like it.
Perhaps shareholder value maximisation can be seen as a function of loyalty and duty of care?
That being said I do believe the exact terminology may not have been used in country where I was doing my masters. But I believe there were legal cases that pointed to concept somewhat similar to shareholder value maximisation, even if it was in a roundabout way (we covered some US content too in thag course).
“Shareholder value maximisation” is indeed a polemical construct and that on some level doesn’t make sense, because no one has even defined timeframes and next 12 months, 1-2 years out, 10 years out can require different approaches.
That being said my sixth sense / BS meter did often go off when I heard that specific phrase used in the US. But that was also true of freedom of speech polemics; I didn’t find them convincing and the framing was often extremely ostentatious.
Keep in mind, I haven’t done any extensive, serious (or even semi-serious) work around business law since doing my Masters. So maybe I completely wrong.
Apple lost any claim at humanity when they sold the American consumer out to the Epstein class, their shitty pile of VR headsets can sit there and gather dust as a memorial to greed
