It just feels like 15 years from now we're going to be reading articles in the WSJ and NYT headlined "How Tim Cook Pleased The Shareholders While He Destroyed Apple."
My next computer will be a Mac - at the looks of things now, probably an iMac - but if Apple loses the high end Mac market, does it really matter? Around 10% of Apples revenue comes from Macs and even less from high end Macs. If Apple becomes an iOS company and makes the iPad more computer like, it would be a win.
if Apple loses the high end Mac market, does it really matter?
Yes. Because there is far more to life than market share and revenue.
Especially at Apple, where the last two people in charge (Cook and Jobs) have both stated in public that they're committed to making better products, and that money is secondary.
For a company, there is nothing more important than revenue (well net income to be more precise.) Believing any company cares about anything else is naive.
Believing any company cares about anything else is naive.
It's very sad that your experience is so limited. There are plenty of companies that actually care about things other than profit. I had the pleasure of working for one once, and through that was introduced to others.
It’s called “virtue signaling”. Or do you believe that WeWork cares about the environment so much that they are banning meat and that Starbucks cares so much they are getting rid of straws?
At the end of the day, every company is beholden to their investors - who don’t put their money into a company for any other reason besides getting a return.
Or do you believe that WeWork cares about the environment so much that they are banning meat and that Starbucks cares so much they are getting rid of straws?
I know nothing about how WeWork or Starbucks operate because I have never been involved with the management of those companies.
I have been involved with the management of other companies which are truly altruistic. Just because you haven't doesn't mean they don't exist.
I find it inexplicable how people (you are just one example of a trope) say investors are only interested in the returns on their investments. Everybody has different interests, but every person who invests is a human being living in society with many interests - nobody is a pure abstraction whose only interest is profit, and almost nobody even limits their investments to just one stock. For instance, if I own $1000 of stock in an industrial company, is it in my interest for them to dump toxic waste into the river I live next to in order to make a few extra dollars? Is it in my interest for them to commit crimes against a competitor, especially if I also own stock in that competitor?
The idea that companies exist only to make profits by any means possible is the most anti-capitalist, nihilistic concept I can imagine, and I have never been clear on whether anyone sincerely believes it or if it is just a straw man.
How much of a change of direction did the activist shareholders actually influence over the corporation? How much did they raise employee wages? Get a benefits increase? Keep people from being laid off?
And yet and still companies pollute the environment all of the time just not in thier backyard. Of course they care about what happens in thier neighborhood. I’m not anti capitalist by any means. I am just realistic enough not to believe the platitudes of any company - including the one that I work for. The company is just a means to provide me a paycheck. They are not my “family”, management are not my “friends”, a company will pay me as little as they think they can get away with, and they aren’t trying to change the world - even the ones that donate some tiny sliver of thier profit to charity.
There was even a freakonomics episode citing a study that companies that do “virtue signaling” can get people to work harder for less money.
My next computer will be a Mac - at the looks of things now, probably an iMac - but if Apple loses the high end Mac market, does it really matter? Around 10% of Apples revenue comes from Macs and even less from high end Macs. If Apple becomes an iOS company and makes the iPad more computer like, it would be a win.