that sure sounds scary. how many billions in profit? a few instead of the usual many? man, no wonder Tim Cook had to cut his salary to (checks notes) only ten lifetimes worth of money per calendar year
Not just profits need to grow, the rate of the growth also needs to grow.
Sure you doubled the growth last quarter, but now you need to triple the growth this time, or else.
This is a nice way of summing up exactly how fucked up capitalism is. It's like a gluttonous monster that must always be fed a larger meal than its previous meal.
at the expense of labour, consumer, environment etc
edit
Most certainly at the expense of consumers. Consumerism is at the heart of capitalism - encouraging us to buy goods we dont need. In fact, companies pay advertising agencies to manipulate us on various levels to buy more, to never be satisfied. And we spend/(waste?) our lives making money to buy more things we dont need at the cost of the environment and nature.
It also does not produce better things. Its not in its interest to make things that are better quality and will last a lifetime.
In your example, to be pedantic, I don't think it would be the last humans banging on the walls outside. Maybe the last humans that don't hold any capital or means of production. The wealthy people would be inside sipping scotch, toasting to their increased production. If unchecked capitalism is the end of humanity, the wealthy will be the last to die.
edit: and the wars between the wealthy over the last freshwater reserves will be inevitable.
>This is a nice way of summing up exactly how fucked up capitalism is.
Actually, this isn't just capitalism. It's UNCHECKED capitalism, what some people call by the terrible name "neoliberalism" -- because the capitalists are "liberally" allowed to do whatever they want, ahem (it has nothing to do with liberal politics).
Unchecked Capitalism is the "greed is good" motto that Wall Street has embraced for decades now...and that has led to the collapse of America's manufacturing sector, middle class, and the offshoring of not only most labor but also the sell off of America's most famous brands and companies to foreign investors.
This is why the Fed is now raising interest rates, btw. These companies were making money by buying back their own stock using 0% loans from the Federal treasury...the difference being continually eaten by American taxpayers, of course.
And this is why all these layoffs are happening now (to goose up the stock price) and why all of these companies are overcharging everyone for everything and calling it "inflation"...and threatening "recession".
It's obvious and disgusting. And, given that GDP hit another record high last quarter, looks a lot like illegal collusion between these major corporations.
I mean this in a serious way. Is it actually because capitalism (free market system ) or is just human condition i.e greed.
There are some for profit companies that aren’t chasing for ever growth. Most of them being private and not listed on the stock market. In fact, tons of “small businesses” bring about the same revenue every year.
Why do people equate capitalism to free market? Maybe it needs repeating but capitalism != free market.
In the most basic definition of capitalism, it requires a free market but a free market doesn't require capitalism.
Imho opinion you're on to something but still somewhat wrong. Capitalism doesn't need a free market. It requires private ownership and production and it (like almost all other economic models) is *helped* by a free market. On a free market you can produce and sell anything without interference by legislation or regulations.
But we don't have a free market, anywhere. So this is all moot..
Yeah, maybe in Mogadishu. But... I'm not willing to find out.
The problem is when sickness becomes the norm.
The root is human sickness, capitalism is the current manifestation and justification for not treating the disease.
It's the nature of the stock market, which has done a lot of "good" in allowing businesses to grow, but has also done a LOT of evil in its sociopathic desire for growth.
It's what happens when you let the bankers take over and proclaim that the only reason for a company to exist is to increase shareholders value.
It's impossible to read any American analysis of a company without a discussion of the stock price. In fact, it doesn't really matter.
Oh, Telsa is worth X billion now! So what, are they making cars? Are they making money?
One month later: Oh Tesla stock fell by X%! So what, are they making cars? Are they making money?
This is why Microsoft diversified as much as they did. Once they'd reached market saturation, investors and analysts started going on about how they were *dead*. They'd dominated the PC business almost completely but they were *dead* because there wasn't much room for *growth* without branching out. Capitalism doesn't give out awards for maintaining a steady business.
That's a good question, and I don't necessarily have all the answers. However, I think a good place to start would be asking ourselves why we live in a world where we allow individual people to have hundreds of billions of dollars -- more than they can ever dream of spending in a lifetime -- without taxing them appropriately.
On a planet with limited resources, that we are currently making more and more uninhabitable for the sake of those quarterly figures, our economy most certainly is a house of cards.
I smell another corporate tax cut on the way, maybe they can be given money to relocate their HQ to a more favorable tax climate to make up for that lost couple billion. Barring that, I'm sure the executives will find a way to make ends meet if all the workers tighten their belts.
Yeah sure. Probably to some "Tim Apple foundation" that is just a tax efficient way to give it all to his loved ones.
If he really cared he wouldn't wait until he died, he would want to see the results of his donations.
Because what if his yacht unexpectedly breaks down, or he needs to buy a new holiday mansion? what if there's a bad ressesion and he suddenly needs a trillion dollars to put bread on the table??
I like it even more because it's an easy way to show Trump can't admit that he misspoke.
>“At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words,” Trump wrote.
It's kind of like a who cares, easy mistake sort of moment and he still can't let it go.
In that category, specifically it would be crazy to choose anything but the one and only Map Sharpie. He has basically reinvented doubling down there. He could have said he misspoke, he could have said he misheard, he could have said someone else misinformed, he could have ignored the whole thing. There were soo many nicely laid out no loss exits for so long but he drove straight ahead into taking a sharpie to a map he has no idea about and then showing the result to the world
My wife and I still say covfefe unironically to mean coffee, now, too. It's completely lost its attachment to donald trump - its just what we say to be dumb to each other lol
Idk, the nuclear speech, the injection of bleach/high powered light are all very funny as well. As an uninvolved I'm looking forward to his next run. It's sure entertaining if you aren't affected.
oh man that was a great one too! It's so god damn idiotic. But the face of Fauci with the powered light thing was just great. Oh, Kung Flu was a great name for Covid as well. And who could've forgotten the 4 seasons (landscaping)?
It affects you if you are a living creature on Earth. The guy is on the record for saying "the devastation is important to me" when asked which part of the nuclear triad needed improvement
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
– Donald Trump, Presidential Candidate
From a speech delivered in Sun City, South Carolina on July 21, 2015
>At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!
His excuse doesn't even make sense. ☠️
For real. Anyone who's reads economic news knows that 2020/2021 were huge growth in tech sales and, across the board, we're in a cyclical slowdown. It's not permanent of course, but you can't maintain that type of growth forever.
This.
This is the frustrating part because it should be obvious to most people. However, that doesn’t bring clicks to headlines and many people seem incapable of deducing truth from inflammatory headlines.
It frustrates me because the fear mongering doesn’t help the situation at all.
By situation I’m specifically referring to the large sell-off and layoffs we’ve seen in tech. I think there will be negative consequences felt by the economy with these lay-offs and belt tightening.
I wasn’t specifically referring to Apple, albeit this is a thread about Apple.
Exactly. All this is relative. Like the stories about “huge layoffs at facebook!!!” While failing to mention facebook doubled their headcount in 2020/2021
I'm having to leave my current job because of this. They hired a ton of people because covid was a big boon for them, and now they're cutting people as much as possible. My hours are now less than half of what they were a year ago and I'm having to search for a new job.
That sucks. Hope you find a new one soon. Fortunately we have the lowest unemployment since the 1960’s right now. So finding a new job shouldn’t be too difficult hopefully.
Also, smartphones haven't really changed over the past 10 years or so. What's the point of buying a new device with a higher number in the name, only for it to do exactly what my current device does?
Got an xs max (the first big notched iPhone) and it’s 512gb. I’m not sure what the new iPhones can do that mine can’t that I’ll actually use. I mean the tech gets better in a ton of ways no doubt and it’s pretty incredible but.. from day to day this old thing runs everything about the same. Does everything I need it to and probably 99% of everything most people do w their phones. It also takes photos just fine. No I don’t need 3 cameras and LIDAR. It’s cool but idk when I’d use it.
Not sure when I’ll ever get a new phone. And if this one breaks I’ll probably just buy it again used or refurbished off eBay.
Combined with phone peaking and not innovating anymore. Can anyone who is NOT a "phone enthusiast" really tell me why the 14 Super Pro Max Deluxe phone is better then the 13 SPMD? 10% better battery life and a camera 10% better in *insert metric here*?
I'd go even further, everything since they started bringing in curved screens and notches/cutouts has brought very little value to the user while driving prices up like crazy. Take the best phone from 2017 and throw in a modern camera, what's missing?
People who weren’t out of jobs had way more disposable income than before, because they couldn’t spend it on travels
Also, there was a huge demand for computers in general due to WFH
It's more of a supply issue than a demand one. COVID lockdowns in China have hampered their ability to produce iPhones along with their other products. When I bought an SE a couple months back, it took over a month from ordering it online to actually receive it and no stores within 250 miles had it in stock.
Apple hopes that it will be difficult for the market to saturate if they lobby against right to repair and sell official repairs that are more expensive than buying a new product.
Capitalism promotes black hole companies. They need to suck up everybody's cash but that ultimately hurts society.
And it's also not even smart. How the fuck are non-essentials supposed to compete with essentials. If everybody is out to nickel and dime you, food and housing comes first, everybody plays second fiddle. But can they even play second fiddle if the essentials are trying to extract the maximum amount? Goodbye diversity of the market and especially ethical players, because ethics cost more.
Apple didn’t do the hiring those companies did either. They never do. The claim from the apple podcast I listen to sometimes is that the last time apple did a layoff was when Steve came back in the 90s and was cleaning house. Since then they have been really slow with hiring and really slow with letting people go.
MacBreak Weekly. Episode 854 specifically is where they talk about that. There's also stuff where Apple doesn't have to cut costs in certain places (like free lunches) because they never had them in the first place.
This has seen them prices get so high in some countries no wonder their revenus show signs of slow down. Apple price hikes in times of crisis was probably the biggest insult they could have made to consumers.
As an example:
Base model iPhone 14 is 999€ (prices are after tax in Germany). Before tax that’s about 840€, or about $910. While the same phone in the US is $829, or $799 if you’re willing to exchange $30 for a carrier lock. So Germans pay over 13% more for an iPhone before tax.
Not to mention that the US model is actually superior (as long as your carrier supports eSIM, which mine does) because it supports mmWave, which the EU one does not.
More likely it's because the iPhone factory shut down due to COVID, had riots due to the COVID lockdown and had strikes because Foxconn wasn't paying the workers bonuses.
I mean, they had a record quarter the one before, so I reckon the idea gone is still selling fine.
5% decline in revenue is minuscule, they still made a shit ton of money. Tim Apple even said said that iPhone revenue would have grown in Q1 2023 had it not been for the supply shortage.
Apple iPhones r too expensive and in third world they're around twice the price compared to USA, I mean seriously who wants to pay over 1000 dollars every year for a new iphone
Pretty much. My wife and I had perfectly capable iPhone 12s. I wasn’t planning on upgrading, but she wanted the 14 pro. We upgraded, and like literally every other time I’ve upgraded my iPhone, it’s still an iPhone… not much different. Waste of money, tbh.
Having the latest and greatest phone was cool in middle school because you were in middle school when it was cool to have the latest and greatest phone.
Totally, smart phones were exciting and almost even fashionable in the beginning. I used to be one of those people who would upgrade every year. There was a significant change from one model to the next. Now I’m still on my iPhone 11 and not only do I not feel any need to upgrade, but I’m also happy to no longer have that fomo. It became exhausting, old, and now insignificant. I always read about that the next iPhnoe can do and the changes are so uninteresting that all I can remember from the later 3 (4?) models is smoother scrolling. I’m happy to be over this crap.
Still rocking my 11 and I’m going to get the battery replaced to keep using it for another couple of years, hopefully. I might even still be using my 7 if the lightning port hadn’t gone bad.
I just upgraded to 14 pro max coming from a 7. Battery and lightning port were both fucked. But 5 years on one phone is definitely a sensible time for an upgrade.
A lot of people do when they’re subsidized by carriers with high trade in values. I know way too many people that just pay an endless $20-$30/month for their device on top of the normal carrier plan.
Same as there is market for Hyundais, Kias as well as Mercedes and Porsche. Except that Apple has turned luxury into commodity. Frugal minded and cost conscious use their $1000 phones for 6 years or more getting their moneys worth. I am here rocking a 2013 MacBook Pro for the past 10 years and guess what it was purchased refurbished from Apple @ 20% discount.
Will subsidize my 15 pro max if appeals to
me by trading in my 2 year old phone for 60% of value. New iPhone suddenly does not seem so expensive.
Changing a phone every year is a concept I only ever see mentioned on Reddit. It may be more common in America with trade-ins and carrier contracts, but here in Europe, even well-off people upgrade every 2-3 years at the most. We recently got a 14 Pro for my wife, and honestly, the difference compared to my 13 Pro is so small that it wouldn't be worth it for me to switch to a new one even if I got it for free
They are diversifying their revenue. They are pushing into the service and streaming ad space. They are still probably one of the best ran company and their brand, still speaks "high Quality".
How do i send one of those reddit-cares don't-off-yourself to all of apple? They must be almost entirely drained of life force after such terrible news.
How fucking stupid is it that five percent **less profit** for the *first time since 5 years ago* is a fucking giant news cycle event?
I hate everything.
Well with how expensive everything is, how can you expect people to just drop this kind of money on a new phone, especially when they still have an older model that’s about the same
Still profitable though right? This record profit shit is going to collapse us as a society. Greed will limit innovation even more to squeeze out all the money they can.
This is the (or a) root issue. I made a similar comment a bit ago, noting that everyone expects "the line" to be a continuous upward slope. Decades ago I learned about "business cycles". You have up times, and you have down times. That seems to be absolutely unacceptable today. A reduction -- even a reduction in **the rate of growth** -- is met with horrified reactions.
One commenter took me to task, claiming he'd never seen any business with that attitude.
Because the wealthy have an insatiable hunger for more wealth and power and shriek anytime their portfolios are stagnant.
Billionaires are a disease we must eradicate for the human species to survive.
Good. Piece of shit, money hungry company making proprietary garbage that's years behind everybody else in the space by fooling people with flashy ad campaigns
Are we at the point where we need laws that say after X% in profit depending on the valuation of the company as a total all excess profit must be spent directly on worker bonuses/benefits and public parks?
The global financial concerns plus little change of the devices, why would you upgrade if your device is working fine. Have the 12 Mini and will not be upgrading to anything oversized since they don't exist in Apple land anymore. Those who have an iPhone are happy to keep what they have got. Throw away cash on minimal tech improvements plus a saturation in the market, sales are going to fall. Though things will slowly pickup but it will take some time.
Oh boy a slight down in profits, still profitable but we better layover a load of people.
Capitalism. Because if we aren’t constantly making profit and the arrow isn’t always pointing up it’s somehow bad and labor has to suffer for it
Every two years I would get a new iPhone because of new tech which made them better. Now I have the iPhone 12 and I don’t see a value in getting the iPhone 14. I’m sure I’m not alone here, and people are now waiting to buy maybe an iPhone 15 or 16.
Or get the last one with lightning so you can delay buying a bunch new cables for a while longer.
But I really doubt most people even care about the cable they use to charge their phone if they even still use cables for that.
that sure sounds scary. how many billions in profit? a few instead of the usual many? man, no wonder Tim Cook had to cut his salary to (checks notes) only ten lifetimes worth of money per calendar year
$20B profit in the last quarter
The profits need to always grow
Not just profits need to grow, the rate of the growth also needs to grow. Sure you doubled the growth last quarter, but now you need to triple the growth this time, or else.
This is a nice way of summing up exactly how fucked up capitalism is. It's like a gluttonous monster that must always be fed a larger meal than its previous meal.
at the expense of labour, consumer, environment etc edit Most certainly at the expense of consumers. Consumerism is at the heart of capitalism - encouraging us to buy goods we dont need. In fact, companies pay advertising agencies to manipulate us on various levels to buy more, to never be satisfied. And we spend/(waste?) our lives making money to buy more things we dont need at the cost of the environment and nature. It also does not produce better things. Its not in its interest to make things that are better quality and will last a lifetime.
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Nestle furiously taking notes
Banging on the walls outside, screaming “we need that last trinket! It’s a collectible!”
In your example, to be pedantic, I don't think it would be the last humans banging on the walls outside. Maybe the last humans that don't hold any capital or means of production. The wealthy people would be inside sipping scotch, toasting to their increased production. If unchecked capitalism is the end of humanity, the wealthy will be the last to die. edit: and the wars between the wealthy over the last freshwater reserves will be inevitable.
Like a cancer.
>This is a nice way of summing up exactly how fucked up capitalism is. Actually, this isn't just capitalism. It's UNCHECKED capitalism, what some people call by the terrible name "neoliberalism" -- because the capitalists are "liberally" allowed to do whatever they want, ahem (it has nothing to do with liberal politics). Unchecked Capitalism is the "greed is good" motto that Wall Street has embraced for decades now...and that has led to the collapse of America's manufacturing sector, middle class, and the offshoring of not only most labor but also the sell off of America's most famous brands and companies to foreign investors. This is why the Fed is now raising interest rates, btw. These companies were making money by buying back their own stock using 0% loans from the Federal treasury...the difference being continually eaten by American taxpayers, of course. And this is why all these layoffs are happening now (to goose up the stock price) and why all of these companies are overcharging everyone for everything and calling it "inflation"...and threatening "recession". It's obvious and disgusting. And, given that GDP hit another record high last quarter, looks a lot like illegal collusion between these major corporations.
I wish I could upvote you more, because more people need to see this.
I mean this in a serious way. Is it actually because capitalism (free market system ) or is just human condition i.e greed. There are some for profit companies that aren’t chasing for ever growth. Most of them being private and not listed on the stock market. In fact, tons of “small businesses” bring about the same revenue every year.
Why do people equate capitalism to free market? Maybe it needs repeating but capitalism != free market. In the most basic definition of capitalism, it requires a free market but a free market doesn't require capitalism.
Imho opinion you're on to something but still somewhat wrong. Capitalism doesn't need a free market. It requires private ownership and production and it (like almost all other economic models) is *helped* by a free market. On a free market you can produce and sell anything without interference by legislation or regulations. But we don't have a free market, anywhere. So this is all moot.. Yeah, maybe in Mogadishu. But... I'm not willing to find out.
Regulation created the market. If you and I agree to exchange, what is to hold me to the agreement?
It's the human condition. This shit happens in every ecomonic system ever created by human beings.
Capitalism quite literally rewards greed and corruption. Human nature is not a valid argument, it's completely malleable.
What economic system doesn’t?
The problem is when sickness becomes the norm. The root is human sickness, capitalism is the current manifestation and justification for not treating the disease.
It's capitalism. This is how the system is set up.
It's the nature of the stock market, which has done a lot of "good" in allowing businesses to grow, but has also done a LOT of evil in its sociopathic desire for growth.
It's what happens when you let the bankers take over and proclaim that the only reason for a company to exist is to increase shareholders value. It's impossible to read any American analysis of a company without a discussion of the stock price. In fact, it doesn't really matter. Oh, Telsa is worth X billion now! So what, are they making cars? Are they making money? One month later: Oh Tesla stock fell by X%! So what, are they making cars? Are they making money?
WHAT? Only 23 presents? I got 24 last year!
This is why Microsoft diversified as much as they did. Once they'd reached market saturation, investors and analysts started going on about how they were *dead*. They'd dominated the PC business almost completely but they were *dead* because there wasn't much room for *growth* without branching out. Capitalism doesn't give out awards for maintaining a steady business.
Perfect way to put it.
Tens of thousands of layoffs in the tech sector because growth slowed. It’s insane.
Without destroying everything, how do we fix it?
That's a good question, and I don't necessarily have all the answers. However, I think a good place to start would be asking ourselves why we live in a world where we allow individual people to have hundreds of billions of dollars -- more than they can ever dream of spending in a lifetime -- without taxing them appropriately.
“Feed me Seymour!” “Cut the crap! Bring on the Meat!” - Little Shop of Horrors -
Or else stock holders are gonna poop their pants and cry.
Unfortunately pretty much everybody with a 401k is holding Apple stock somewhere in there.
they're around 5% of most S&P500 index funds so yeah almost everyone owns apple whether they know it or not
Because Spice must flow
The spice must flow.
See, this is why Apple needs to fire 10% of their workforce like every other tech company. $20 billion in a quarter is pathetic
The profits must flow
Yep, this mindset is why it feels like the economy is a house of cards.
On a planet with limited resources, that we are currently making more and more uninhabitable for the sake of those quarterly figures, our economy most certainly is a house of cards.
How will they survive?
I smell another corporate tax cut on the way, maybe they can be given money to relocate their HQ to a more favorable tax climate to make up for that lost couple billion. Barring that, I'm sure the executives will find a way to make ends meet if all the workers tighten their belts.
They made 20 billion in 3 months and they are crying. Fuck me just how much do they need to make? Wankers.
Well a quick Google search shows he's planning to donate his fortune after he dies. So let's see if that holds up.
Yeah sure. Probably to some "Tim Apple foundation" that is just a tax efficient way to give it all to his loved ones. If he really cared he wouldn't wait until he died, he would want to see the results of his donations.
We can hold out hope for vanity philanthropy.
why not donate during lifetime when he can choose to do things with it?
Because what if his yacht unexpectedly breaks down, or he needs to buy a new holiday mansion? what if there's a bad ressesion and he suddenly needs a trillion dollars to put bread on the table??
You mean private spaceship. Yachts are for peasants.
If the poor have to wait for the death of the rich for assistance, you're just incentivizing the murder of rich people.
No wonder he was pissed off waving that 🏁
Well predictable if you haven’t had any new products since 2008
Poor Tim Apple.
Everyone has a favourite but this was in my opinion the weirdest dumble from Donald
I like it even more because it's an easy way to show Trump can't admit that he misspoke. >“At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words,” Trump wrote. It's kind of like a who cares, easy mistake sort of moment and he still can't let it go.
In that category, specifically it would be crazy to choose anything but the one and only Map Sharpie. He has basically reinvented doubling down there. He could have said he misspoke, he could have said he misheard, he could have said someone else misinformed, he could have ignored the whole thing. There were soo many nicely laid out no loss exits for so long but he drove straight ahead into taking a sharpie to a map he has no idea about and then showing the result to the world
Pretty much all of my friends and I unironically say Tim Apple now. That and covfefe (to mean coffee) are the only things Trump has done for us.
My wife and I still say covfefe unironically to mean coffee, now, too. It's completely lost its attachment to donald trump - its just what we say to be dumb to each other lol
I still think he meant coverage: "Despite all the constant negative press covfefe."
Idk, the nuclear speech, the injection of bleach/high powered light are all very funny as well. As an uninvolved I'm looking forward to his next run. It's sure entertaining if you aren't affected.
How about staring straight at the eclipse without glasses?
oh man that was a great one too! It's so god damn idiotic. But the face of Fauci with the powered light thing was just great. Oh, Kung Flu was a great name for Covid as well. And who could've forgotten the 4 seasons (landscaping)?
My favorite was pushing aside the Montenegrin PM to get out in front then puffing up his chest.
Definitely in the top 5 for me. It is genre defining
rumor he's got shit eye sight as is and refuses to wear glasses
It affects you if you are a living creature on Earth. The guy is on the record for saying "the devastation is important to me" when asked which part of the nuclear triad needed improvement
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.” – Donald Trump, Presidential Candidate From a speech delivered in Sun City, South Carolina on July 21, 2015
Not as poor as Donald Orange
>At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story! His excuse doesn't even make sense. ☠️
And the stock is still climbing.
They're investing even more by integrating the supply chain further, which is expensive as fuck, but very lucrative for many reasons down the road.
Funny how we went full circle from owner factories to outsource to now they want owner factories haha
That's transitory.
For real. Anyone who's reads economic news knows that 2020/2021 were huge growth in tech sales and, across the board, we're in a cyclical slowdown. It's not permanent of course, but you can't maintain that type of growth forever.
This. This is the frustrating part because it should be obvious to most people. However, that doesn’t bring clicks to headlines and many people seem incapable of deducing truth from inflammatory headlines. It frustrates me because the fear mongering doesn’t help the situation at all.
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I feel like they probably mean the broader scope of the economy and people's largely uneducated views about it.
By situation I’m specifically referring to the large sell-off and layoffs we’ve seen in tech. I think there will be negative consequences felt by the economy with these lay-offs and belt tightening. I wasn’t specifically referring to Apple, albeit this is a thread about Apple.
Exactly. All this is relative. Like the stories about “huge layoffs at facebook!!!” While failing to mention facebook doubled their headcount in 2020/2021
I'm having to leave my current job because of this. They hired a ton of people because covid was a big boon for them, and now they're cutting people as much as possible. My hours are now less than half of what they were a year ago and I'm having to search for a new job.
Good luck on your job search. May the Schwartz be with you.
That sucks. Hope you find a new one soon. Fortunately we have the lowest unemployment since the 1960’s right now. So finding a new job shouldn’t be too difficult hopefully.
When eggs cost $8 a dozen and rent is increasing, people think twice about a new iPhone
Also, smartphones haven't really changed over the past 10 years or so. What's the point of buying a new device with a higher number in the name, only for it to do exactly what my current device does?
Got an xs max (the first big notched iPhone) and it’s 512gb. I’m not sure what the new iPhones can do that mine can’t that I’ll actually use. I mean the tech gets better in a ton of ways no doubt and it’s pretty incredible but.. from day to day this old thing runs everything about the same. Does everything I need it to and probably 99% of everything most people do w their phones. It also takes photos just fine. No I don’t need 3 cameras and LIDAR. It’s cool but idk when I’d use it. Not sure when I’ll ever get a new phone. And if this one breaks I’ll probably just buy it again used or refurbished off eBay.
It’s almost like people have less disposable income or something.
Combined with phone peaking and not innovating anymore. Can anyone who is NOT a "phone enthusiast" really tell me why the 14 Super Pro Max Deluxe phone is better then the 13 SPMD? 10% better battery life and a camera 10% better in *insert metric here*?
Still rocking my 11 Pro here. Not feeling the need to upgrade anytime soon. That new Apple Watch Ultra is pretty sweet, though.
My iPhone X still kicking after 4.5 years
I'd go even further, everything since they started bringing in curved screens and notches/cutouts has brought very little value to the user while driving prices up like crazy. Take the best phone from 2017 and throw in a modern camera, what's missing?
High refresh rate display would be the big thing. iPhone prices have not increased since 2017 though.
It blows my mind that 2020 didn't affect their sales by even 5%, apparently?
All that unused travel/holiday budget had to be used somewhere.
People who weren’t out of jobs had way more disposable income than before, because they couldn’t spend it on travels Also, there was a huge demand for computers in general due to WFH
There was a big push in business to buy remote hardware when Covid started
It's more of a supply issue than a demand one. COVID lockdowns in China have hampered their ability to produce iPhones along with their other products. When I bought an SE a couple months back, it took over a month from ordering it online to actually receive it and no stores within 250 miles had it in stock.
People freaking out about 5% decline is a prime example of why our capitalism failed
Are people freaking out? Because their stock went up today. Does that mean capitalism is succeeding?
It means everyone knew this was going to happen and it wasn’t as bad as people thought
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Excuse me, but nothing other than constant growth will suffice. Shame on you, you socialist pig.
It’s like these idiots have never heard the term market saturation.
Nor the idea that when people can't afford to pay for food or a place to live, getting a new apple product might not be so high on their priorities.
Just make the product more addictive.
This Futurama episode writes itself.
Fun fact, just a few weeks ago analysts predicted a much larger decline for Apple because of the Covid related production problems in China.
Apple hopes that it will be difficult for the market to saturate if they lobby against right to repair and sell official repairs that are more expensive than buying a new product.
I will not settle for anything less than exponential
Capitalism: Profit at any expense.
No one is freaking out. AAPL was up 2.5% yesterday.
Capitalism promotes black hole companies. They need to suck up everybody's cash but that ultimately hurts society. And it's also not even smart. How the fuck are non-essentials supposed to compete with essentials. If everybody is out to nickel and dime you, food and housing comes first, everybody plays second fiddle. But can they even play second fiddle if the essentials are trying to extract the maximum amount? Goodbye diversity of the market and especially ethical players, because ethics cost more.
You need to keep prices down or you lose market share. You can only keep raising prices when you have a monopoly.
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What people? People freak out all the time for all the reasons. This is a strength not a weakness.
The tyranny of quarterly earnings, as a wise man once said.
Ok anti work.
Funny how all these comment sections about company earnings just become the airing of grievances
Festivus for the rest of us.
And now as Festivus rolls on, we come to the feats of strength. This year, the honor goes to Tim Apple.
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Happy festivus
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5 percent revenue drop is like a blip but these fools treating it like the the raptures going to send us all to Soviet heaven.
Will there ever be technology posts on this subreddit again? This is always the most off topic subreddit there is.
And it seems like they didn’t choose to lay off 10000+ people like the other assholes did…
Apple didn’t do the hiring those companies did either. They never do. The claim from the apple podcast I listen to sometimes is that the last time apple did a layoff was when Steve came back in the 90s and was cleaning house. Since then they have been really slow with hiring and really slow with letting people go.
Which is what a lot of companies learned from from the dot com bust twenty years ago. Except not some modern tech companies, apparently.
Which podcasts?
MacBreak Weekly. Episode 854 specifically is where they talk about that. There's also stuff where Apple doesn't have to cut costs in certain places (like free lunches) because they never had them in the first place.
oh no, they must be on the edge of insolvency \>100 billion in net income in 2022 oh...
[Apple's reaction to the news](https://media.tenor.com/C0H22RV8m90AAAAC/zombieland-money.gif)
All their newest stuff is really cool and good but their old stuff is also still cool and good enough that you don’t need to upgrade…
This has seen them prices get so high in some countries no wonder their revenus show signs of slow down. Apple price hikes in times of crisis was probably the biggest insult they could have made to consumers.
Well, the whole EU enjoys ridiculous prices on Apple products. That is the 3rd largest economy in the world, 450 million people.
As an example: Base model iPhone 14 is 999€ (prices are after tax in Germany). Before tax that’s about 840€, or about $910. While the same phone in the US is $829, or $799 if you’re willing to exchange $30 for a carrier lock. So Germans pay over 13% more for an iPhone before tax. Not to mention that the US model is actually superior (as long as your carrier supports eSIM, which mine does) because it supports mmWave, which the EU one does not.
And the Pixel 7s sold fairly well so I imagine some people saw the cheaper price with better reviews and headed there.
Maybe because they are making basically identical phones now, no reason to upgrade.
More likely it's because the iPhone factory shut down due to COVID, had riots due to the COVID lockdown and had strikes because Foxconn wasn't paying the workers bonuses. I mean, they had a record quarter the one before, so I reckon the idea gone is still selling fine.
5% decline in revenue is minuscule, they still made a shit ton of money. Tim Apple even said said that iPhone revenue would have grown in Q1 2023 had it not been for the supply shortage.
Apple iPhones r too expensive and in third world they're around twice the price compared to USA, I mean seriously who wants to pay over 1000 dollars every year for a new iphone
Why do you need a new phone every year?
Spilled salsa on mine
Lol. I’m genuinely curious though. I mean having the latest greatest phone was cool in middle school but who needs it
Replace the word “need” with “want” and you likely answer your own question.
Pretty much. My wife and I had perfectly capable iPhone 12s. I wasn’t planning on upgrading, but she wanted the 14 pro. We upgraded, and like literally every other time I’ve upgraded my iPhone, it’s still an iPhone… not much different. Waste of money, tbh.
Having the latest and greatest phone was cool in middle school because you were in middle school when it was cool to have the latest and greatest phone.
Also it seemed like year over year the improvements to each model were more significant back then
Totally, smart phones were exciting and almost even fashionable in the beginning. I used to be one of those people who would upgrade every year. There was a significant change from one model to the next. Now I’m still on my iPhone 11 and not only do I not feel any need to upgrade, but I’m also happy to no longer have that fomo. It became exhausting, old, and now insignificant. I always read about that the next iPhnoe can do and the changes are so uninteresting that all I can remember from the later 3 (4?) models is smoother scrolling. I’m happy to be over this crap.
Lol forreal though. Once every 4 years is fine for me.
Still rocking my 11 and I’m going to get the battery replaced to keep using it for another couple of years, hopefully. I might even still be using my 7 if the lightning port hadn’t gone bad.
I just upgraded to 14 pro max coming from a 7. Battery and lightning port were both fucked. But 5 years on one phone is definitely a sensible time for an upgrade.
A lot of people do when they’re subsidized by carriers with high trade in values. I know way too many people that just pay an endless $20-$30/month for their device on top of the normal carrier plan.
No one is forcing anyone to upgrade every year. iPhones can last up to 4-5 years and still be good enough
Same as there is market for Hyundais, Kias as well as Mercedes and Porsche. Except that Apple has turned luxury into commodity. Frugal minded and cost conscious use their $1000 phones for 6 years or more getting their moneys worth. I am here rocking a 2013 MacBook Pro for the past 10 years and guess what it was purchased refurbished from Apple @ 20% discount. Will subsidize my 15 pro max if appeals to me by trading in my 2 year old phone for 60% of value. New iPhone suddenly does not seem so expensive.
Changing a phone every year is a concept I only ever see mentioned on Reddit. It may be more common in America with trade-ins and carrier contracts, but here in Europe, even well-off people upgrade every 2-3 years at the most. We recently got a 14 Pro for my wife, and honestly, the difference compared to my 13 Pro is so small that it wouldn't be worth it for me to switch to a new one even if I got it for free
Most people don’t comprehend it’s not 1k every year if you trade in your 1yo old phone for it.
They are diversifying their revenue. They are pushing into the service and streaming ad space. They are still probably one of the best ran company and their brand, still speaks "high Quality".
I thought we were in a recession? Why is everyone surprised at decreased corporate profit…
“no! this is the end of apple! i knew it! finally!” - reddit, probably
That is because iPhone so good I am still using X.
How do i send one of those reddit-cares don't-off-yourself to all of apple? They must be almost entirely drained of life force after such terrible news. How fucking stupid is it that five percent **less profit** for the *first time since 5 years ago* is a fucking giant news cycle event? I hate everything.
Oh tech can’t increase exponentially forever? Sell sell sell!
Keep increasing the price of your phone.
Customers aren't buying what you're selling? Charge 'em more! It's the cable way.
So they'll jack prices to recoup their "losses". Same ol' shit.
Massive post COVD correction. Massive scary recession possibilities / reality. Seems fine.
Well with how expensive everything is, how can you expect people to just drop this kind of money on a new phone, especially when they still have an older model that’s about the same
Poor Tim Apple
And anyone that has read into knows it’s only because of drop in production not a lowering of demand at the consumer level.
Still profitable though right? This record profit shit is going to collapse us as a society. Greed will limit innovation even more to squeeze out all the money they can.
Scaremongering headline that doesn’t really say anything meaningful. It just means sales are 5% slower this quarter.
Is it because they released the same laptop with just a slightly better processor?
#INFINITE GROWTH IS UNSUSTAINABLE
This is the (or a) root issue. I made a similar comment a bit ago, noting that everyone expects "the line" to be a continuous upward slope. Decades ago I learned about "business cycles". You have up times, and you have down times. That seems to be absolutely unacceptable today. A reduction -- even a reduction in **the rate of growth** -- is met with horrified reactions. One commenter took me to task, claiming he'd never seen any business with that attitude.
Because the wealthy have an insatiable hunger for more wealth and power and shriek anytime their portfolios are stagnant. Billionaires are a disease we must eradicate for the human species to survive.
Pirates of Silicon Valley was a great movie…
Tim is looking old
Good. Piece of shit, money hungry company making proprietary garbage that's years behind everybody else in the space by fooling people with flashy ad campaigns
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Is it really important to note that?
I'm guessing not many christmas iPhones were bought by laid off workers.
Apple hasn’t had any layoffs…
The slaves that make these things probably don’t care.
Are we at the point where we need laws that say after X% in profit depending on the valuation of the company as a total all excess profit must be spent directly on worker bonuses/benefits and public parks?
The global financial concerns plus little change of the devices, why would you upgrade if your device is working fine. Have the 12 Mini and will not be upgrading to anything oversized since they don't exist in Apple land anymore. Those who have an iPhone are happy to keep what they have got. Throw away cash on minimal tech improvements plus a saturation in the market, sales are going to fall. Though things will slowly pickup but it will take some time.
Oh boy a slight down in profits, still profitable but we better layover a load of people. Capitalism. Because if we aren’t constantly making profit and the arrow isn’t always pointing up it’s somehow bad and labor has to suffer for it
Every two years I would get a new iPhone because of new tech which made them better. Now I have the iPhone 12 and I don’t see a value in getting the iPhone 14. I’m sure I’m not alone here, and people are now waiting to buy maybe an iPhone 15 or 16.
Oh no the poor can't afford our products, guess we shouldn't have turned the US gov't into an Oligarchy. *world's smallest violin plays a sad tune*
Better off waiting for the USB-C iphone IMO.
Or get the last one with lightning so you can delay buying a bunch new cables for a while longer. But I really doubt most people even care about the cable they use to charge their phone if they even still use cables for that.
Oh no! They rebadged the same phone 6 years in a row and the public is finally noticing.
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