And the stock increased over 4% in after-hours trading, as increases in non-iPhone hardware sales and services overcame the decrease in iPhone sales. Earnings per share slightly beat the consensus forecast.
An interesting quote from Cook in the press release:
"The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"
AAPL is still undervalued compared to stocks like AMZN. Apple's P/E of 17 is amazing compared to Amazons 78. I'm not really sure why their stock isn't traded with the same enthusiasm that other tech companies see.
Stock values aren't only about earnings. Amazon continues to be a growth bet, and their low earnings are because their income has historically been reinvested productively to access new markets. A quick google shows their 2018 revenue was up 31% over 2017, which was up 31% over 2016, which was up 27% over 2015. You don't buy Amazon for a share of the amount they're making today, you buy them for a share of the much bigger company they'll be tomorrow.
Apple, on the other hand, sells boutique products into a rapidly commoditizing market, and is having a terrible time with growth right now (the numbers today show less than 1% revenue growth). So profit is the only reason to buy AAPL right now. And the profits? Down almost 13%.
It’s a commoditized market and Apple’s success blueprint is out for everyone to see, yet no one else can adapt mid century design principles and “high fashion” style marketing to technology. This sounds like shilling (and I do own Apple stock) but I’m serious.
Compare the Apple remote (with the iOS “emulator”), Apple TV, and Airplay to Chromecast’s UX, for instance. Apple does have special sauce. They make tools that work together and are understood at a surface level. Everything, including the new keyboards, fits a hardware market driven agenda (quiet, “appy”, small like a phone). Google and Amazon work backwards from services, and Samsung and co just aren’t even playing the same ballgame. They are much more like traditional prebuilt computer companies. MS is kind of coming close with just computers but they are not nearly as sticky as an everything tech company.
I hear that constantly, but it's my favorite remote. I did, however, buy a sub 10 dollar silicone case for it, with a strap. It's easy to grip, comfortable, doesn't slide, and it is always obvious which way is up/forward both visually and tactilely. I think the shortcomings are well addressed with such a simple fix. But, I also use a case on my phone to fix it's same shortcomings, so perhaps that's why it doesn't feel like such a leap to me.
On the other hand, it might just be that I can get used to anything. (Err, I also think the Apple TV UI is fine, too. But, perhaps I lack the imagination to envision a better UI.)
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted, I just got one and it's terrible to use. Mostly I get my phone out and use that instead. The original was better than the current one.
> Because it only contains a conclusion, no premises whatsoever. Which is basically fuel for a flame-bait.
I was responding to the parent's comment about Apple TV (the premise) with my conclusion, which is a subjective opinion. Which ironically is the exact same thing as what you're doing. Wasn't trying to flame-bait, but I really didn't feel the need to add more. In summary, compared to other devices, I really do not like Apple TV.
What is the alternative? It’s enough like a traditional TV guide experience that people get it, its remote uses similar touch physics as iOS (I typically tap directions rather than swipe though), your phone can act as a remote (with an identical UI) or a keyboard, and you can cast any arbitrary content pretty seamlessly. I also love that the iOS remote actually controls my AV receiver’s power and volume.
The music app can get too deeply nested, but in general it is above all a consistent tabbed master-view experience in every app. The apis exposed to developers all lend to a very good, consistent experience for everything I’ve tried except YouTube TV, which doesn’t utilize the standard media transport API.
In general I like the idea that casting, while still as deeply integrated as Google Cast, is supplemental to the hardware remote. It’s not an afterthought, and neither is the remote. Both are good IMO.
Truly my only complaint is that the app switching dialogue uses reversed/“physical” swiping direction (like switching desktops with a trackpad). This makes no sense to me, as nothing else does this, including swiping between album covers in now playing. I get it, but it’s inconsistent with the whole rest of the UI.
Having used both of them, I'd profoundly disagree with you on that statement. I consider CarPlay a much more elegant solution than Android Auto. Particularly that android auto will change settings on your head unit. The early versions of it also completely disabled your phone screen.
CarPlay is getting way better in iOS 13. E.g. you can finally run different apps on the car screen and the phone! It also has a nice "home screen" with useful widgets instead of just a grid of icons.
Design UI well enough? I guess it depends on what you are used to.
For me, Google will always be the company that high-jacked scrolling to use for zoom. That still trips me up every time I have to use Google Maps or any other mapping service that copied them on a laptop with a trackpad.
They could keep that default (misguided as I personally think it is) if they just provided an option to let scroll be scroll but they don't.
I'd much rather pay a premium for Apple's UI. I think they do a better job and it's worth paying for.
> For me, Google will always be the company that high-jacked scrolling to use for zoom. That still trips me up every time I have to use Google Maps or any other mapping service that copied them on a laptop with a trackpad.
So you use that for vertical scrolling. How would you do horizontal scrolling on a typical mouse then?
The default of holding left click and dragging the map across to move the viewport is far more intuitive.
I don't have an opinion on how this should be done on a "typical mouse", I haven't used a "typical mouse" for about 15 years.
Unless you have some supporting evidence that clicking and dragging is more intuitive I would suggest that it's not and that you're just used to doing it because you use a mouse and not a trackpad.
Two finger scrolling is used everywhere else on laptops. It handles horizontal scrolling perfectly.
It shouldn't be hijacked by Google for zoom without even the option to restore the default behaviour.
If Google were "good" at UI they would offer the option of pinch zoom on laptops and just leave scrolling alone.
While I completely agree, implementing pinch-to-zoom on desktop devices in the browser is next to impossible with current web apis (It _is_ viable on mobile devices). Source: I tried.
EDIT: I guess Google Chrome could go all `el.addEventListener('-webkit-pinch-zoom')` on us.
And design ? Google can design well enough. Their interfaces are easy and fun to use. Beyond that, regular people don't care.
I'm coming to the conclusion that some people are more sensitive to design issues than others. If you are then there isn't much choice, Google certainly isn't an option.
Apple has been selling computers that cost more than their competitors for over 40 years. Do you think they have been that successful just based on a “status symbol”?
The average person doesn’t even care about computers that much anymore.
Besides, computer sales are only 11% of their revenue.
The remote is horrible if you watch tv in the dark or have kids. Who makes something that kids throw shatter? Why have a totally symmetric remote design that takes your haptic sense more than 1 second to figure out its orientation. Why is the touch pad always waiting for input...
AAPL seems to have hit its peak in the device market, and can only grow revenues at this point by effectively raising prices on existing customers (that’s what the services category amounts to). This strategy can only take them so far.
Or continue to invent new products (iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Watch, Airpods ...) then iterate on those products over years and years. Also while simultaneously driving their services revenue, which continues to be a growth area for them.
These other devices are all cheaper and less popular than the iPhone. This quarter the category that includes the AirPods and Watch made one fifth what the iPhone did. To contribute 10% of company revenue growth, this category needs to double. Maybe the category has room to double once, but will it 10x over the next five years? You would need performance like that to justify a high PE ratio.
>AAPL seems to have hit its peak in the device market, and can only grow revenues at this point by effectively raising prices on existing customers (that’s what the services category amounts to). This strategy can only take them so far.
Which is inaccurate. They have continued to add new products, like the Watch and AirPods. So when do you think they hit "peak device" ? You mean peak iPhone? No argument from me, they might have. But there are ways to grow revenue without just increasing prices, as those other products have demonstrated. They have also proven that the can grow revenue with their services, which is now a bigger revenue generator than iPhone.
Apple will never get the same P/E love, because they only make like 4 things (Mac, iPhone, iPad, services).
Everyone loves to hate on Apple on multiple fronts (elitist, expensive, over the hill), whereas the hate on Amazon is really about one thing.. that ol "makes no profit" canard.
CLARIFICATION: I’m talking perception, not my beliefs. Uber’s a scam, as far as I can tell, but they will either pull off a miracle or be the biggest Groupon of all time. And Snap isn’t very good at being a public company.
> whereas the hate on Amazon is really about one thing.. that ol "makes no profit" canard.
Ahem [1], and while we're at it, [2]
My criticism to Apple isn't that they're being expensive; it is related to right to repair and their constant efforts to hamper that. Amazon just undercuts everyone, and Turk globalizes cheap workforce. For ridiculous low payment. These are just 2 examples you did not mention. You can read more in the sources below.
People have historically been willing to pay apple more because in part of how seamlessly integrated their products are. I bought a “repairable” android and it was junk / not updated. My old iPhones have kept value far better than friends androids after 3 years. Apple is doing something that preserves phones value (ie, they may actually maintain them for longer with updates etc vs their “repairable” competitors.
And I’ve never had a problem getting my phone repaired
Yeah as an investor I still really like Apple. They have a TON of cash, billions of highly qualified users that they can easily roll new products/services to (iphone owners), and all the while they're frugal and meticulous about how they use it.
I think the stock will pop once news breaks of another breakthrough product...whether its a car or something else.
Amazon makes a very small amount of profit for its sales. If they were forced to split out AWS, they would make no profit. Also a fact. That is a pretty scary place to be.
I wonder if the distribution side of the business will ever become profitable. I know the argument is that once they dominate they can start raising prices but these types of business are inherently low margin, competitors will see their profits as an opportunity.
> AAPL is still undervalued compared to stocks like AMZN. Apple's P/E of 17 is amazing compared to Amazons 78. I'm not really sure why their stock isn't traded with the same enthusiasm that other tech companies see.
I'm not so sure it's useful to compare stock valuations in this way. An assessment of "undervalued" should be based solely on the facts of that specific company, IMO.
Comparing a high-cost consumer electronics company with market dominance but little growth projection to an online retailer with enormous growth makes absolutely no sense. Comparing their P/E makes even less sense.
AAPL's capacity for sustainance is doubtful, when they are giving money back to investors. What is the growth path for them ? They will continue to milk successful product but no "next" strategy in sight.
No apple watch or AirPods, till there was, and guess what Steve Jobs isn't there. Wearables increased by 50% yoy. There are many different areas that Apple will move into, AR, automation, home, still plenty of room for growth
Steve Jobs was not magic, nor is he the only person with vision in the world. Expecting one company to continue to make paradigm breaking technologies every other year isn't realistic.
Because they're dependent on selling hardware, not software. It's not rocket science, hardware doesn't scale as easily as software, so it leads to a smaller multiplier.
AWS is their business and it certainly scales. Their goal in retail is market dominance through convenience and that still costs a ton of money. AWS does not cost a ton of money.
Apple has run out of people to sell iPhones to, Amazon is just getting started ("day one" as Bezos likes to say). P/E is about growth potential and the market is saying Amazon has lots more of it than Apple.
I can argue that in the last 10 years, the stock price for non-payers of dividends is no longer a function of KPIs. Take for example Pinterest. It was offloaded to the stock market when KPIs have been dropping for a very long time [1]. The company is likely doomed.
Yet the stock is above the IPO [2].
If one of these major launches is a MacBook Pro with the same (or better) specs (esp video graphics) as their latest MacBook Pro, but without a TouchBar, they will get at least $2,500 from me.
If one of these major launches is an iPhone X-like phone with a thumbprint reader (home button or otherwise), they will get at least another $1,000 from me.
I have an pre-touchbar macbook pro on my desk that I've been using as an in-place workstation. For some reason, I pulled it out of its place and opened it up this past week, and I was blown away by the improved typing experience.
I think that I'll be upgrading back to the old one going forward.
And I promise that the next laptop I buy (or my company buys for me) won't have a touch bar or a butterfly keyboard.
I used a 2017 at work for a year and eventually decided to move back to a 2015 -- I just couldn't do the keyboard any more.
I also recently purchased a refurbished 2015 with top tier specs as a personal laptop.
Apple has definitely lost out on thousands of dollars of revenue from just me due to the touchbar/butterfly keyboard feel/butterfly keyboard reliability/usb-c only decisions. And don't even get me started on my inability to replace my iPhone SE with a decent, small phone.
It's bizarre to me that Apple has never understood that computers are a highly recommended product. The reason that Apple laptops are popular is that the tech crowd is highly loyal and recommends macs to all their friends, parents, grandparents, when asked. And the tech crowd provides every hardware forum in existence with lots and lots of free Apple advertising.
It was never about Apple having better marketing. It was about Apple owning tech loyalty.
When the macbook is no longer the favored dev machine, Apple is going to lose a lot of market share.
Personally, I just remapped capslock to esc, since I never use capslock. The touchbar does seem to hang more often nowadays, though. Especially when I'm trying to adjust the volume.
Not a physical one, but the hit area on the TouchBar for Esc is actually larger than the physical key was. As much as people like to complain, in my experience the Esc key is extremely easy to hit.
And take the escape key off the TouchBar. I hit it all the time by accident. I really wanted to give the TouchBar a fair shake but after two months I still think it’s beyond useless.
I feel your pain, it's my number one problem with the Touch Bar, the second being that it's almost entirely useless in its default mode.
I have two solutions for you, though: firstly, download BetterTouchTool[1] and install the GoldenChaosBTT[2] preset. It's the killer app for the Touch Bar, it turns it into a genuinely useful feature that you'll find yourself using all the time, and BTT in general is an incredibly powerful tool for customising the way you interact with your Mac.
Secondly, switching Caps Lock to the Esc key[3] has been one of the biggest productivity improvements I've made in the last decade, seriously. I wish I'd done it sooner. I've made the switch on every machine I use, even the ones without a Touch Bar.
Thanks for the tip. I got BTT and now I only have brightness and volume sliders on the Touch Bar and no escape. Much better. Will probably do some customization but it’s already a big improvement.
At the minimum I’d like to be able to disable the touch bar. I only ever activate it accidentally and there is zero feedback. I never look at my keys. I really like the fingerprint scanner but it’s not worth the disruption in productivity.
At least that, and the idea of making the touchbar an actual tray is a great idea, would like this to be natively done and keep the screen as free as possible for the actual apps.
As long as it's optional, I could see people not liking this.
There will always be other potential physical keys that aren't on your laptop keyboard. You could just as easily say that you shouldn't have to use modifier keys to trigger Page Down on a Macbook Pro keyboard. Where's my Print Screen SysRq key?
Because those keys are not used nearly as often as escape. And because osx has a different keyboard shortcut for screenshots so the print screen key is largely irrelevant.
That kind of highlights an issue for me though. If Apple were really on the ball with macOS they would have a better remap utility built in.
Instead we have Karabiner Elements which has been of mixed stability in my experience.
Many times I've had it completely disable the internal keyboard on my late 2013 MBP to the point where I have to plug in a USB keyboard to recover or if on the road do a force power reset.
Escape is in a relatively terrible location as well, the default ctrl location is just as bad, hence remapping escape there isn't really worse than escape in the top left.
That's not an escape key. Please don't apologize for this.
I use vim and switch between a butterfly/touchbar Mac (work machine) and a Thinkpad (personal machine). Using the Mac keyboard has actually negatively impacted my typing speed when I use other systems! I remapped my vim keybindings, and now my muscle memory has atrophied.
This dumb machine has actually made me a worse typist. I am so frustrated.
What's wrong with touch id? I never used face id, but fingerprint sensor on iPhone 8 is good. It unlocks at the same time I'm pressing on button, so most of the time I don't notice it at all. And I almost never getting false negatives. I can't imagine how face id might be better, but I can imagine how it can be worse.
In my experience, Face ID is much faster and more seamless. Basically it's like my phone isn't locked because before I'd even have a chance to think about it, it's unlocked. I was VERY resistant to losing the home button, but I find that the new gestures are much more natural for me. Obviously this is a personal preference thing, but for quite a while I had a touch ID iPad and a Face ID iPhone, and it was really night and day how much nicer Face ID felt to me, and how nice it is to not have a home button wasting space on the phone. If they found a way to suppport Touch ID in addition to Face ID, without stealing space from the screen, I'm all for it, but I can't imagine going back to the old style of phone with no Face ID and a home button.
I really disagree. With TouchID my phone was unlocked before it even got to my face. With my iPhone X (which I've had since launch) I get lots of false positives. It also means I have to raise it, swipe as I raise it, phone gets in front of my face, small pause, faceid success, phone unlocks and displays home screen. This takes probably 1/4 to 1/5 of a second longer than TouchID where the device is already unlocked and at the home by the time I get it in my field of view.
Personally I would like to see an iPhone X with TouchID under the display WITH FaceID. So if I have gloves on or my finger is wet, no problem, FaceID takes over. If I'm laying in bed and holding my phone to close to my face, no problem, TouchID authenticates. It also means I can unlock my phone without picking it up off my desk with my finger.
You would get the best of both worlds and none of the drawbacks.
I'm the same way. I was an iPhone 7 hold out for a long time because I didn't see the value in Face ID or any of the other stuff and now I really regret holding out as long as I did. Face ID is so seamless and it's just so much smoother to do everything. Going back to my work phone is more than a bit awkward trying to remember how many times to tap or double press to do whatever. On the iPhone XS I have the gestures really make a lot of sense to me.
There's nothing _wrong_ with touch ID. It's just that FaceID is way better. It is faster and more seamless, it can work even if you are wearing gloves.
Plus, it lets the phone not display sensitive notification details until you are the one looking at the screen(with attention detection on, the default, you have to be really looking at it), only then it will display the details(including actual messages, depending on how it's configured). This is great in many scenarios.
Twins I know can unlock each other’s phone. Also, little kids can unlock parents phones for some reason. Would love to see internal presentations on the math behind this reason. Did they accidentally make a genetic discovery algorithm?
It doesn't work when wearing a balaclava, motorcycle helmet or ski googles, which is slightly annoying, but in those cases you'll likely wear gloves anyway. Sunglasses work fine for me.
Reducing from the 10% because of broken keyboards etc. is still not OK. I bet wallstreet would react if Apple lost 5% of revenue.
Alternatively, maybe Macs would increase from 10% to 15% if the product wasn't broken and over-priced. Maybe it would be 20% or 25% if Apple could cross-sell/convert those iPhone sales to Mac sales.
That's always the argument from the business standpoint. How much of their ecosystem is on a foundation of professional Mac users? A majority of the professionals I know won't buy the current touchbar model MacBook Pro. Does that market even matter anymore?
I would think a company with the resources Apple has would be willing to invest more in loss leaders that keep users fully in the Apple ecosystem, or in products which may contribute in small ways to their bottom line, like Macs. They can afford to make their primary metric market share, rather than profit.
iOS can't replace Mac OS (yet) for serious work. So instead of letting Macs atrophy, they should invest in making Macs the best possible desktop and laptop computers for serious work. Own whatever amount of that market they can. Keep those users in the Apple ecosystem.
If they could make an iPhone X-like phone with a headphone jack, then I'll buy it. I have zero interest in airpods or other wireless earphones though, so its a hard pass from me as long as that's the route they're going.
Have you considered that your question is a non-sequitur? Short of quitting my job and becoming a subsistence farmer, my company is going to supply me with a computer and a phone for the foreseeable future. The exact nature of those devices isn't really important. They're going to exist and they're going to cost the same order of magnitude as a Macbook Pro and an iPhone.
Yes, I thought about possible reasons why it might be meaningless to ask the question. (Maybe gonational already has billions invested in green tech, or maybe they consider Apple a more responsible GHG emitter than any of the other phone manufacturers even if he/she buys a phone for $400 and plants trees for $600.)
A false dilemma is not how you make a constructive pro-environment argument. It is unnecessary, and won't convince anyone. You could've asked what else they do for or against the environment, but that'd be off-topic in this thread I suppose.
> And the stock increased over 4% in after-hours trading
Because the shift to services is exactly what everyone has been clamoring for. Looks like a pretty great quarter for Apple. I think it is the biggest June quarter revenue wise ever.
>The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"
A nitpick, but I wish people in business would diversify their vocabulary and learn to use words other than "exciting" to describe everything. Calling something exciting does not make it so. Show why it's exciting, don't just claim that it is.
An interesting quote from Cook in the press release: "The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"