Apple Reports Second Quarter Results

It would appear that the new iMac is very much a product of the same designers who brought us the 2015-2019 MacBook fiasco.

Poor keyboard layout (arrow keys), compromisingly thin for the sake of looking different, dearth of ports.

The only redeeming quality of the current Mac hardware lineup is the cold, hard engineering that went into the M1 and MacOS.

Covid had a lot more to do with it. Mac is at an all time high yes but the last iteration of Intel MBPs was only slightly different from what we had while Ive was still around, and Mac is still a relative small % of overall revenue which has increased a lot.

I don’t really get the Jony Ive hate. The only particularly bad thing I can think of him being involved in was the butterfly keyboard, and the fact that the Apple Watch is the only real success among smart watches more than makes up for that.

Speculation on why Jony Ive pursued "thinness above everything":

- for the first x years of apple, everything was legitimately thick

- so each generation Ive wanted to make things thinner

- it entered the culture (of the design division perhaps) that you had to make each generation thinner than the last to please Ive

- Then when things got to a comfortable thickness for users, people kept making each generation thinner to please Ive

- Ive never told them to stop making things thinner so they didn't stop.

- snowball effect and we got those horrible products

- he had to leave to stop the cycle

And yet, Apple just released its thinnest iMac ever last week.

M1 is meaningless. To 99% of their market it is just a new vague number to justify an upgrade (like ram sizes, 3/4/5G, etc).

What is masterful is how they redirected the desirable-number-du-jour to be something that is both 1) proprietary (unlike RAM, radio generation, etc) and 2) not cutting into their service revenue (e.g. larger storage = less people shelling out for cloud storage)

I’ve been considering dropping Spotify for the “Apple One” plan, looks like I’m not the only one from that huge jump in services.

The macs are unfortunately still a sideshow compared to iOS devices (written on an iPad now).

Sorry, I doubt AMD would be where they are now had they not been a second source for Intel’s x86 chips, that’s what really bootstrapped them.

I was looking to buy a m1 Mac mini but went with Intel only because I need 32gb ram and apple for some reason only offers up to 16gb on Mac mini. I bought the Intel one with 8gb and manually upgraded it to 32gb. The m1 can’t be upgraded manually which is a bummer (but makes sense as that’s what makes it even faster).

I wish running multiple iOS and Android simulators didn’t need so much memory.

M1 is a very impressive chip, but it can't compete with the Threadripper/Xeon club. It really has trouble with the high-end laptop club too.

You can say "16gb is enough if you swap efficiently", but I run models that need 100+GB on the regular. I'd love to see what a super high-end Apple core can do to that workload!

I bet what 2/3 non-Intel? That means an extra (complete stab in the dark) 1/2 a billion ish $ in extra profit every quarter, maybe more!

Have they been perfect? No. Keyboards, App Store, still not entirely sure what the iPad Pro does, etc.

But you know what Tim Cook didn’t do? He didn’t screw it all up. Which sounds like faint praise, but I really think it’s inarguable that Jobs remade Apple, stem to stern, blood to bone, software to hardware. And to step in and take over a company that had been reborn like that, and not nickel-and-dime it into mediocrity? Remarkable.

I don’t think anyone is really arguing Cook is a product visionary—I certainly don’t think Cook is himself. But just navigating the political landscape alone is truly impressive.

> When Steve Jobs passed in 2011 I was certain that Apple would lose its way and start diluting their products/brand. To the contrary the last 10 years where an absolute tour the force in expansion of the spirit of Apple.

Under Jobs, they would regularly create whole new categories and concepts of technology and revolutionize others. I don't recall it happening since; they capitalize on everything that was created under Jobs (and do it well).

I'm not sure if 5 years of stagnation in the Mac lineup is a blip. Perhaps as a percentage of revenue? In terms of customer satisfaction, it was rough. Those keyboards were really bad, and not everyone has the ability to just swap them out with the new fancy computers coming out now, so many will be feeling them for some time to come. Same thing with the Mac Pros. But yes, things are now looking pretty amazing in the hardware department. Unfortunately, the concern is now with the software. macOS has been going downhill for a while, and Big Sur doesn't give me a ton of confidence.

Of course, the Mac is some insignificant portion of the Apple's footprint these days, but I have to say their mobile offerings have been kind of a yawn too. Don't get me wrong, perfectly competent, no need to switch or anything, but iPod to iPhone happened in 6 years (!), and I don't think the Apple Watch is anywhere near that level of consistent culture defining technology that kind of defined "the spirit of Apple" from the original iMac to the iPhone (I'd like to say "to the iPad", but unfortunately the product has been kind relegated to a side purchase vs. the Mac-replacement I think it honestly had the opportunity to be -- and I guess could still be, its not like any "window" has been missed, just hasn't really done much in the last 10 years either, in terms of definitive changes in workflow like the iPhone did).

As a customer, the subscription stuff is honestly just somewhere between boring and annoying. "Apple One" with its 3 different plans and still tremendously confusing options (if I let my parents have access to the movies I've purchased, they can no longer buy their own movies -- what? why? It's strictly more profitable for Apple to let them ALSO use their credit card instead of locking them out of being able to make their own purchases just because I shared my content). Honestly, I have to strain really hard to remember what "Apple One" includes aside from Apple TV+. Oh right, News or something? The ability to not get annoying iCloud space errors that users remain not fully comprehending?

Now, flip that around, and investor-wise, you are spot on! I am LONG $AAPL, just short Apple products (software specifically). Which is unfortunate, because they are still probably the best, just no longer... "good". It used to feel like a premium experience, for a premium price, now just the latter.

> When Steve Jobs passed in 2011 I was certain that Apple would loose its way and start diluting their products/brand.

They are doing well in hardware and services. Software, not so much. Design they have gone downhill.

A number of people have already pointed out that a corporate fiscal quarter doesn't necessarily align with the calendar year. There are assorted benefits to this, usually around the seasonality of income. Some companies with multiple sub-corporations may choose to have differing fiscal years for all the corporations which can somehow create a tax advantage (although beats me how that works). It's interesting to note also that there's a (smallish) tax disadvantage to not aligning with the calendar year in that typically tax brackets adjust upward from year to year and having a non-calendar fiscal year means that income might be taxed at a slightly higher rate since the tax rate is based on the year the fiscal calendar begins. At large corporation scale, this difference amounts to a rounding error.

Apple's fiscal year (internal accounting year) ends Sept, 30th instead of being aligned with the calendar year.