[sbuttgereit]

Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, I would be happy to take their recent results in my own business and wouldn't at all be disappointed. You could also point out that management may well be taking the long view of a post-Jobs Apple and giving Cook room to find that Apple of the future... as opposed to being driven purely by short term results/quarterly reports: something that I think many on HN condemn in other contexts.

Still... think of post-Gates Microsoft. They had huge momentum (which showed in the financials as well), but everybody including me thought there was something deeply wrong with Microsoft, too. They were coasting on that momentum and doing very little aside from coddling their more conservative customers... just as you suggest Apple can get away with. Microsoft was losing their leading position and was getting on the slow death-march path. They may have turned that around while they still could.

No doubt, casting MAJOR screw-ups aside, Apple will not die as a company anytime soon. Apple and Cook are still completely in position to turn things around. But atrophy and possibility of ending-up as some sort of also-ran... that's not impossible and it's also fair to point that out.

[coldtea]

>Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, but then again, those without a gift for prophecy had called Apple's impeding DOOM several times a year since 2001.

[aetherson]

Yeah, and those people's wrongness was pretty well-established by Apple's ever-increasing sales, revenues, and establishing new market categories. All of which have ended.

I have, I think, a pretty nuanced view of Apple. It's looking increasingly like 2015 was the best year ever for Apple. 2016 was worse, and there's very little sign that 2017 will be better than 2016. That said, 2015 was the high water mark for a uniquely valuable company with a uniquely valuable product. There's a lot of value in Apple that doesn't require being literally the single most successful year in, like, the history of capitalism.

And I think that most of Apple's decline is due to secular, external forces -- basically, the maturation of the smartphone market -- not because Cook is fucking up. Probably any CEO Apple had would have had pretty similar results -- or worse ones.

But that said, all the people who are like, "What? No, there are no problems with Apple" are obviously wrong on the face of it. iPhone sales are falling. iPad sales fell off a cliff more than a year ago. The Apple Watch has not been successful enough for Apple to even tell us how many units were sold. This is not the picture of the company in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014.

[sbuttgereit]

Yes. And this is where people that are Apple investors have to try and sort out which side are they on: those that think the doom answer is correct will sell (or short) the stock and those that are on what seems to be your side (yes, I might be wrong) will buy. Over time, those that are right will profit (or at least not lose) and those that are wrong will (should) eat their misguided notions. Anyone else... simply is armchair quarterbacking and frankly, doesn't matter.

I am in the "doesn't matter" category... I'm less interested in Apple (I'm not an investor in Apple, in any sense of the word, nor even a customer) and more interested in how perceptions about a companies are formed and how companies in similar circumstances can have very different conclusions drawn about them. Emotional appeal, brand loyalties, etc. can have some interesting influences in this regard.

[guelo]

That doesn't mean they'll be wrong forever.

[coldtea]

No, a broken clock is also right twice a day.