In 1997, Apple was on the ropes. The Silicon Valley pioneer was being decimated by Microsoft and its many partners in the personal-computer market. It had just cut a third of its work force, and it was about 90 days from going broke.
And:
On Thursday, Apple became the first publicly traded American company to be worth more than $1 trillion when its shares climbed 3 percent to end the day at $207.39.
And:
Apple’s ascent from the brink of bankruptcy to the world’s most valuable public company has been a business tour de force, marked by rapid innovation, a series of smash-hit products and the creation of a sophisticated, globe-spanning supply chain that keeps costs down while producing enormous volumes of cutting-edge devices.
A nice little rags-to-riches appreciation piece from the New York Times.
I’ve bought Apple stock a few different times over the years, just trying to be part of the company to which I’d hitched my wagon. One particular investment sticks out.
Apple was valued at about $12 a share (I believe it was in the late ’80s or early ’90s) and their book value was about $16 a share. In other words, Apple had hit a moment in time where the shareholders valued the company as less than the value Apple would have if they completely liquidated all their assets.
Apple hit the magic trillion dollar market valuation yesterday, and Tim Cook sent out an email to employees in appreciation. You can read the whole thing here.
Om Malik wrote a very interesting story today on time. I usually try to post a paragraph from the story to give you an idea of what you’re going to read, but this whole article is interesting, so just go read it.
> Apple on Tuesday reported that it sold 3.72 million Macs in its third quarter, which spanned April 1 through June 30, the fewest in any single quarter since it sold 3.47 million in the third quarter of 2010.
And:
> There are a number of possible explanations for the decline, including consumers increasingly shifting towards the iPhone and iPad. Together, those devices accounted for 65 percent of Apple’s revenue last quarter, compared to just 10 percent for the Mac. Apple even markets the iPad as a computer replacement. > > The bigger reason, however, may have been that nearly the entire Mac lineup was outdated last quarter. Beyond the iMac Pro, released four months before the quarter began, no other Mac had been updated since 2017 or earlier.
I find it no wonder that Mac sales are down. The only updated machines have been dogged by the keyboard reliability issue. As I said yesterday, I think the new warranty and anti-crumb membrane are enough to make me bullish on the new MacBook lineup.
The other Mac elements that need to line up here are the new Mac Pro and the Mac mini. The question is, does Apple truly care about the Mac as more than just a balance sheet line item?
Apple just killed the App Store Affiliate Program. Presumably, the goal there is to maximize services revenue.
Apple is holding fast to a paltry 5GB of iCloud base storage. Presumably, this goes to maximize services revenue as well.
Is this “maximize revenues” logic correct? Apple is not communicating any other message, even in the face of howls from their loyal base.
Is the Mac becoming an afterthought? Will we ever see a new Mac mini? How about a new Mac Pro? And what’s the status on the AirPower charging mat?
My two cents? I think Apple should come out and address all of this. I get playing cards close to the vest, but sometimes you need to let the troops know you feel their pain, give them reason to hope.
We’ve stuck with you through thick and thin. But more and more, the relationship is feeling more like financial calculation than shared passion. Just saying.
Ran across this on Twitter (apologies for the lack of a hat tip, can’t find the original post).
Dan Luu:
I’ve had this nagging feeling that the computers I use today feel slower than the computers I used as a kid. As a rule, I don’t trust this kind of feeling because human perception has been shown to be unreliable in empirical studies, so I carried around a high-speed camera and measured the response latency of devices I’ve run into in the past few months. Here are the results.
Follow the link, check out the charts. Apple simply rocks at reducing latency.
My home computer in 1998 had a 56K modem connected to our telephone line; we were allowed a maximum of thirty minutes of computer usage a day, because my parents — quite reasonably — did not want to have their telephone shut off for an evening at a time. I remember webpages loading slowly: ten to twenty seconds for a basic news article.
And:
With an internet connection faster than I could have thought possible in the late 1990s, what’s the score now? A story at the Hill took over nine seconds to load; at Politico, seventeen seconds; at CNN, over thirty seconds. This is the bullshit web.
This is a tremendous read. I especially loved the take on AMP. Read it all the way to the end. Exceptional writing.
I just replaced my 2015 MacBook Pro with a brand new 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Lots has been written about Touch Bar over the last few years, so I’m going to focus on two things.
First, there seems to be a commonly held belief that the cost of the Touch Bar is $300. The logic is that the base cost of a 13″ 256GB MacBook Pro is $1499 and the base cost of the next model up is $1799.
Faulty logic. That $300 buys you a Touch Bar, sure, but you also get a faster processor (Dual core 3.6GHz bumped to quad core 3.8GHz), two extra Thunderbolt ports, better graphics, a True Tone display, and, biggest gain of all, a secure enclave and Touch ID. That’s a lot.
Better to think of Touch Bar as the new MacBook Pro default. Like it or not, Touch Bar is the new normal. Though you can buy a 15″ MacBook Pro without Touch Bar at your local Apple Store (old stock, clarify the model year before you buy one), you can’t buy one from Apple’s on-line store.
The second half of my Touch Bar ramblings concern the function keys replaced by the Touch Bar. I have long relied on the function keys, every one of which is tied to a KeyBoard Maestro macro. Those macros still work, but there are two problems I’ve not yet found a way to overcome.
The loss of a physical key means I can’t feel my way to, say, F2, without looking down at my keyboard. That breaks flow. There’s no way around it. I can tap the left most Touch Bar button (the escape key, in most cases) by feel, but my error rate soars the further from the left I go without looking down. It’d be like typing on my iPhone without looking at the keyboard. Maybe some people can do that, but I can’t, even after years of practice.
That aside, there’s a second problem. I can’t find a way to create a one-handed Touch Bar function key tap. To reveal the function keys, I need to touch the “fn” key in the lower left corner of the keyboard. To touch a function key, I need to look down and, in most cases, use my other hand to tap the function key. Compare that to my 2015 MacBook Pro. I can tap any of my function keys with any finger, all without looking down from the screen.
One solution is to use System Preferences to have the Touch Bar always and only display function keys. This works, kinda (no physical keys means loss of touch), but defeats the purpose of having the Touch Bar.
To be clear, I love the Touch Bar. I love the fact that I can touch and slide, all in one motion, to adjust screen brightness or volume. I love all the custom Touch Bar interfaces, customized for many of the applications I use. I would just like some way to set up a one handed set of customizable keys.
One idea: Is there a way to use the fn key as a modifier for non-function keys? For example, is there a way to tie a macro to, say, fn-z (z being so close to the fn key)? If so, I’d just replace all my function keys with the bottom row of my keyboard. As is, fn-z appears to just pass through as plain old “z”.
Sometimes, you just need Low Power Mode: the switch added to iOS a few years ago to conserve battery life when you need it, at the expense of full performance and background tasks.
There’s no such feature on Mac laptops, but there should be.
This is a fascinating read and this suggestion would be a perfect add to the System Preferences Energy Saver page.
It’s tough to overstate how GPS-dependent the world economy has become since the U.S. Department of Defense started giving the service away to the public in 2000. There are 2 billion GPS receivers in use around the world, a number that Europe’s satellite navigation agency estimates will hit 7 billion by 2022. Along with the telecommunications industry, banks, airlines, electric utilities, cloud computing businesses, and TV broadcasters require constantly precise GPS timing. Emergency services do, too, as do military forces. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has designated 16 sectors of infrastructure as “critical,” and 14 of them depend on GPS.
The world economy is increasingly dependent on these kinds of chokepoints. Heaven help us if/when they fail. It will make Y2K look like a walk in the park.
Moments ago, Apple announced that they’re killing the affiliate program, citing the improved discovery offered by the new App Store. (Music, books, movies, and TV remain.) It’s hard to read this in any other way than “We went from seeing a microscopic amount of value in third party editorial to, we now see no value.” I genuinely have no idea what TouchArcade is going to do. Through thick and thin, and every curveball the industry threw at us, we always had App Store affiliate revenue- Which makes a lot of sense as we drive a ton of purchases for Apple. I don’t know how the takeaway from this move can be seen as anything other than Apple extending a massive middle finger to sites like TouchArcade, AppShopper, and many others who have spent the last decade evangelizing the App Store and iOS gaming.
This has the potential to kill sites like Touch Arcade that use the revenue from App Store affiliate links to stay afloat. I think Apple’s stated reasoning for this action is utterly ridiculous and complete bullshit. But it also shows the danger for any site or business to rely too much on one source of revenue.
John Gruber commented on Jason Snell’s post this morning lamenting on how he feels that Apple is a hardware and software company, and not a services company. Gruber said:
I think it’s even worse than that. I think Apple’s (Cook’s?) interest in increasing revenue from Services is keeping them from doing what’s right — increasing the base iCloud storage from 5 GB to something more reasonable.
I just don’t want to believe that Apple is keeping us at a minuscule 5 GB limit merely to increase services revenue. The problem is that we don’t seem to have any other reasonable explanation for the limitation. I have a 200 GB limit on my iCloud account that I pay for monthly, so I guess if that is the reason, it’s working.
We’ve been saying it for years now, but it’s time for a significant increase to the base iCloud storage.
The other day, Brad dropped me a message asking me about the topic of getting to know a brand new (specifically CSS) codebase. The kind of codebase that no one person truly understands any more; the kind of codebase that’s had a dozen different contributors over just as many years; the kind of codebase that’s never had a full-scale refactor or overhaul, but that’s grown organically over time and changed with new techniques, styles, and trends.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like to jump into a codebase like that.
Between dropping sales and controversial products, what does the Mac means to Apple in 2018? Yes, it’s the company’s first flagship product, but it’s also an increasingly small portion of its business. Pretty much everything that Apple sells, from streaming music and wireless headphones to the Apple Watch and HomePod, is designed with iOS in mind. The days of the Mac serving as your “digital hub,” as Steve Jobs famously put it way back in 2001, are long gone.
If that’s the case, what does the Mac mean to Apple (besides about 10 percent of last quarter’s revenue)? The answer can be found by looking at the one product category going through explosive growth: Apple’s services segment.
Many people will say Apple is ignoring the Mac and using the 13 percent drop compared to a year ago as evidence but here is the argument that the Mac is integral to Apple’s Services numbers.
Social media network Reddit said on Wednesday a hacker broke into a few of its systems and accessed some user data, including current email addresses and a 2007 database backup containing old encrypted passwords.
Reddit said they were notifying affected users. Christopher Slowe, Reddit’s founding engineer said the company recently hired its first head of security and noted that “So far he hasn’t quit.”
People love to try guess what Apple is up to—that’s true for the company’s education strategy as well. But often there’s not much to go on beyond press releases and speculation.
So when Apple’s longtime vice-president of education, John Couch, published a book this year with his thoughts on the future of education and accounts of his work at Apple, it opened a rare window into the company’s views on education.
It offers some anecdotes about how Steve Jobs thought about computers in education, including how he referred to computers as an “amplifier for intellect” the same way a bicycle amplifies the physical push of the rider. In the book, Couch writes that Jobs predicted this mental bicycle would “allow us to go beyond—to discover, create and innovate like never before.”
But the book is also full of Couch’s frustration at the slow pace of change in schools. He argues that the machines Apple builds are still not being used to their full potential in education.
My wife works in the education system and she echoes a lot of this frustration.
Renowned German film director and photographer Wim Wenders has hit out at phone’ photography’.
Speaking at an exhibition of his Polaroid works, he said photography was dead and thinks mobile phones are to blame.
“The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them,” Wenders says. “Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore, and they certainly don’t make prints.”
Wenders isn’t just some “cranky old man” we can easily ignore. I don’t necessarily agree with his overall premise but he does make some interesting points. Personally, I rarely take any photo that I don’t want to share with others in any number of ways.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has explained why the company is making a big push into original TV programming.
Last August, Apple said it wanted to spend about $1 billion acquiring 10 TV shows. Since then, it signed deals with Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, and Sesame Workshop, among others. It also hired Jay Hunt in October, a broadcasting executive best know for bringing “The Great British Bake Off” and “Black Mirror” to BBC’s Channel 4.
“We hired two highly-respected television executives last year and they have been here now for several months and have been working on a project that we’re not really ready to share all the details of it yet, but I couldn’t be more excited about what’s going on there,” Cook said, apparently hinting at a rumored subscription content bundle.
I find this aspect of Apple’s future business to be fascinating. They have the luxury of being able to take their time and “do it right” or, at least, do it their own way. I wouldn’t bet against them accomplishing whatever their goals are.
This is a great look back at Steve, freshly returned to Apple. This video is from June of 1997, just a few months after Apple’s purchase of NeXT was finalized.
Steve is sitting on stage, taking questions from the audience of developers.
The whole thing is great but, if your time is short, jump to 4:30, where the questions start. The first one, “What about OpenDoc?”, is a perfect opener. OpenDoc was a much ballyhooed architecture that Apple sold hard. When Steve came back, well, just watch the video.
Another earnings call, another excellent, detailed set of charts from Jason Snell.
Jump down to the section of Mac sales:
Mac sales were down 13 percent year over year, and revenue was down five percent. It’s understandable given the environment—the year-ago’s quarter saw new MacBook Pros being released in June, while this year they didn’t release until July, after Apple’s third quarter ended.
That last bit is critical. As you read the reaction to Apple’s earnings, you’ll no doubt run into the “Mac is doomed” take, based on the numbers released yesterday. But, as Jason points out, the new MacBook Pro lineup, with its third generation, membrane protected keyboard and Apple keyboard exchange program in place, kicked in after the 3rd quarter ended.
Too early for sales numbers on the new Macs but, I will say, I’ve been waiting for the keyboard brouhaha to resolve itself and this new warranty and anti-crumb membrane were enough for me to buy in. I bought my new MacBook Pro last week and I am really happy with it.
My experience, as well as chats with other folks I’ve spoken with who’ve also been waiting to buy a new Mac, makes me bullish. I think we’ll see a nice upward slope on the next set of Mac numbers. My 2 cents.
Apple on Tuesday announced financial results for its fiscal third-quarter with revenue of $53.3 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the year-ago quarter.
“We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.”
According to Apple, the company sold 41.3 million iPhones in the quarter, up from the 41 million it sold during the same quarter last year. Apple also sold 11.5 million iPads, up from 11.4 million in the year-ago quarter, and 3.7 million Macs, down from the 4.2 million sold this time last year.
Services accounted for $9.5 billion in revenue in the third-quarter, up from $7.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.
TV has changed a great deal since 2000. The expansion of cable networks led to an increase in experimentation, quality, and quantity that has since been eclipsed by the advent of streaming, to the point that the monoculture experience of that Survivor finale is almost entirely obsolete. With the understanding that television is going through yet another revolution, and that the boundaries and definitions of the medium could change yet again, it feels like the right time to look back at the past 18 years and determine the 100 best episodes of TV since 2000—the ones that stunned and entertained more than any others, and in turn made television what it is today. For those of us at The Ringer, this meant assembling a list that not only recognizes the best of prestige TV but also encapsulates everything that television has to offer: drama, comedy, variety, reality, game shows, and lifestyle-focused programming.
“…of the century” makes this a bit of a silly list but it’s still a fun read.
Speaking in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, as cited by Business Insider, Segall argues that Apple today is missing that aura that Steve Jobs created, which made customers “lust” for the company’s products.
“The passing of Steve Jobs created a completely different approach to marketing which we can see the results of,” Segall said. “As a marketer, I look at that and can see the difference between Steve being there — and not being there — very clearly.”
“These days, Apple does a different campaign for a different phone, which I always thought was a lost opportunity,” Segall told the newspaper. “They should be building a personality for the phone, a thing that people might want to be part of because it rises above the features of the moment.” He went on to argue that Tim Cook is operating with the advice of those around him, who are “a little vanilla.”
It could be argued that Apple is no longer the company that Segall used to work for in the sense they are not the “scrappy underdog” any more. They are a fully mature, consumer electronics company that no longer needs to be “edgy”.
Logitech has announced plans to acquire Blue Microphones—and we are super excited about it! Blue’s mission is to help our users find and amplify their voice by making the coolest microphones on the planet, and we’re going to keep doing exactly that. With Logitech’s vast resources behind us, we can be supercharged. We can be better, stronger, faster…
We have a lot in common with Logitech. Our products are all about the marriage of great design and stellar performance, and so are theirs. We both have strong brands in the gaming market. We make the most popular streaming mic, they make the most popular streaming cam. And we both want to put excellent, high-performance gear on every desktop.
Blue makes many podcasters’ favorite microphones. Logitech seems like they’ll leave them alone to continue to do just that.
A while back, on this episode of The Dalrymple Report, Jim and I argued about whether HomePod should be allowed to make phone calls. Bad news, Jim, looks like that day is coming.
