Reddit:
In light of all the recent price hikes to Apple’s products I was reminded by a quote I read once from Steve Jobs. He was talking about why Apple started failing and almost went bankrupt before they brought Steve back into the company.
And the quote:
What happened at Apple, to be honest, over the years was the goal used to be to make the best computers in the world. And that was goal one. Goal two, we got from Hewlett-Packard actually which was “we have to make a profit”. Because if we don’t make a profit we can’t do goal one. So, yeah, I mean we enjoyed making a profit, but the purpose of making a profit was so we can make the best computers in the world. Along the way somewhere those two got reversed. The goal is to make a lot of money and well, if we have to make some good computers well ok we’ll do that… ’cause we can make a lot of money doing that. And, it’s very subtle. It’s very subtle at first, but it turns out it’s everything. That one little subtle flip… takes 5 years to see it, but that one little subtle flip in 5 years means everything.
To be clear, I’m not posting this as a comment on the current state of Apple. To me, Apple then and Apple now are two completely different beasts. But I did appreciate the quote, thought it worth sharing.
Another good assessment of the effects of the Shareholder Value Myth. It degrades great companies into purveyors of crap, ripe for vulture capitalists to dismantle.
I think this is mainly a challenge for the next generation of Apple leaders. The current generation worked with and for Steve. They seem to have the same ethos about building great products as their primary mission. Are they inculcating this in their successors? We’d hope so but we can’t know and we also can’t know how much those people were exposed to Jobs’ passion in this regard.
The 2006 mini (for $600) was single core at 1.5 ghz with a 60gb hard disk. The base model today is quad core at 3.5 ghz. So four times as many cores, well over twice as fast on each core, and twice as much storage.
Today’s base model mini is much faster than the high end mini from 2012, which also had four cores and cost about the same.
What’s stupid is the redditor is trying to suggest raising the price of, say, the mini, is proof that Apple has “lost its way” (barf).
The mini was released in 2005 for $500. In today’s dollars that’s at least $650 per the inflation calculators. So for $150 more (new price is $800) they ditched all the laptop components and packed it with desktop components and the latest fast I/O ports like TB3. That’s worth $150. And the whining continues.
The non-pro iPad is still $330.
The excellent XR is $250-cheaper than last year’s X.
Etc. Sorry but no, Apple isn’t going to give up on its margins just to make forum nerds happy, who want top-tier specs and components at bottom-barrel prices. Ain’t never been Apple’s way, and they aren’t about to start.
“To be clear, I’m not posting this as a comment on the current state of Apple. To me, Apple then and Apple now are two completely different beasts. But I did appreciate the quote, thought it worth sharing.”
It’s still the quote Tim Cook need to remind himself of regularly though.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/profit-margins
Gross/Operating/Net profits all lower TODAY than the time of Steve Jobs’ death.
And the original Mac was $2495 in 1984. In today’s dollars, that’s at least $5900!
yes, it really puts it perspective. the entitled whining is unprecedented.
do you have any indicators that they’ve stopped living to build the best computers in the world? i dont see any. my macs and mobile devices today are the best iterations ive ever owned. they are the best computers in the world, and there is no other consumer computers id want in their stead. that wasnt the case in the early and mid-nineties, as Jobs noted.
having expensive products isn’t a problem, or the problem. they’ve always been more expensive than cheap commodity PCs.