"The two pillars -- car and headset -- for insane growth cited by analysts for their projections became vapourware." -- Tommo_UK
An unsolicited contribution that landed on my desktop Monday:
Since Google Glass and VR headsets first debuted at insane prices and limited application I poo-poohed any chance of Apple releasing their own, along with the Apple Car in the near term. Those are two chief reasons why I went negative on the share price when it grew helium heels after analyst upon analyst actually built in revenues and profits to their forecasts from the inclusion of these vaporware products and started calling for them to be released almost every year since 2020.
Needless to say, hindsight is a wonderful thing but well ahead of this absurd phenomenon I was utterly skeptical of any imminent release.
It isn't that Apple is not insanely great (although these days perhaps "dependably spectacular" might be more appropriate).
It was more that on no news or confirmation, wild predictions about Apple buying Tesla, or an imminent launch of a headset of some description to do something which nobody could describe a pressing need for, dominated stock price discussions and predictions and were evidently solely responsible for the wild ride up to $180. Driving AAPL up on wild rumourmongering was the play of the day.
At peak frenzy, it’s always wise to consider getting off for while to get some perspective, unless you are in absolute full agreement with the drivers to keep the momentum going. But the drivers weren't there. They didn't exist and the chances of these hotly anticipated products coming into existence by the then-next WWDC (or even the one a year or two later) suddenly became self-evidently infinitesimally small.
That wasn't a popular contrarian opinion to what by that time had become the de facto view of Apple's product roadmap, and therefore the chief driver for the stock and its imminent attempt to crush the German car making industry singlehandedly overnight driving Apple Tanks let alone cars, wearing Apple NightGoggles to conduct a blitzkrieg that not even Leopard 2 tanks would be able to withstand, on the poor, blighted automobile industry.
Except nothing happened, and Project Titan, just like the titans of Ancient Greek mythology, turned out to be just that. Mythological, at least in the form of an expected car anytime soon.
On that premise alone disappointing, the stock had to take a wild beating, totally irrespective of whether you think the company will continue its ever upward trajectory long term on just ever increasing iPhone, Mac, and service sales.
The two pillars -- car and headset -- for insane growth cited by analysts for their projections became vapourware. How could the price do anything other than crumble as the PE estimates stopped being cranked up relentlessly?
This is why I end up arguing so often with people who think I'm a glass half empty guy. It's nothing to do with how you view the company or its problems, or lack of. It has to do with the narrative on which the stock was elevated. If the popular shiny new narrative goes, the price plunges, irrespective of the ongoing success of anything else. The popular narrative was iEyes and iCars. Without them, we're back to "predicable everything else" and the top gets sliced off the rollercoaster ride up on the chart.
When there's a new hyperbolic narrative (or either of those products come to fruition or there's discussion of imminent release), up it goes all the way to $200.
In the meantime, incremental upgrades and another new iPhone are enough to keep the stock paced according to its organic growth (buybacks aside hat tip to Joe Bland), nothing more, nothing else, and subject to market sentiment.
Considering the components and production lines required for a car designed exclusively for Apple, and the state of the supply chain which sees even existing manufacturers struggling to meet demand, even if Apple does have a car ready, it is wise to hold off until components, manufacturing capacity and also a capacity to produce enough spare parts is guaranteed.
They're not there yet, and the headset now remains the single and most likely product to surprise in a positive way by being simpler than many expect, more useful than anyone anticipates, and cheaper than anyone imagined -- if it every comes out.
I am convinced if a headset appears at all, it will not be a niche expensive product but priced initially like the iPod and iPhone were to constrain initial demand to meet supply and test features, but aimed squarely at broad and mass adoption as widespread as sunglasses are, with regular and pro versions.
Has anyone considered they may include optical functions to replace rather than sit over prescription glasses? The technology to digitally scan the eye and retina already exists after all. Using an adaptive lens to deliver a bespoke image to the eye whilst overlaying the view with AR features would solve two problems in one: The need to wear an additional pair of glasses, and in wearing Apple Glasses which digitally adjusts to your eyesight, also offer enhanced perception through image adjustment, augmented reality through overlaid information, and a virtual reality mode for game playing. This also has health benefits -- Apple Glasses could give your eyes a thorough and daily health check and pre-empt many severe long term conditions, just by putting them on.
Now that would be a world game changer. Prescription glasses at their simplest. A full eye checkup in the process. Immersive VR glasses at their most advanced and many functions in between, all by just using variations of technology built into eye sensors, adaptive glasses, and perhaps even variable lens opacity to act as sun glasses as well.
Most of these technologies are well tested and exist. All of the sensors have been tested in iPhones. Battery life and connectivity features have been pushed to the max in the Watch Ultra.
In my opinion an Apple headset is likely to be the complete opposite of what's been discussed. An optical health product combined with a genuinely useful AR device, with gaming option and produced in a ranged of perhaps three different styles of frame and colours (inevitable Silver, Space Grey or Rose Gold will be on offer).
I'm not going into the medical setting and specialist environment versions for industrial use purposes but they're self evident. Apple is a consumer product company first, the primary healthcare and industrial use benefits of any of its products may offer vital features but are not its primary drivers.
What if the processing power needed to drive them didn't need to take place on-board, or even delegated to a paired iPhone but instead the next generation of a Apple Watches, with advanced connectivity, battery life and speed trialled in the Watch Ultra?
The Watch could also act as a convenient way of controlling the headset and changing modes, and relieving it of the need for power-hungry always-on processing, Maybe they'd make for perfect companion devices, just like AirPods are for an iPhone - and a Watch.
Food for thought.
My take: A fun read, but I have two substantive objections. 1) Apple got repriced based in part on its Services revenue growth, maybe even more so than on Tommo's "vapourware." 2) In the last third of his item he replaces one vaporous piece of eyewear with another -- one that may sound appealing, but is even more gaseous and further over the horizon.
I plead guilty to thinking of Tommo as a half-empty glass kind if guy. And that I stopped reading at that point because it was so clearly personal.
1. He calls everyone else by their first name. He calls me by my second name.
2: The far larger reason Apple tumbled is the macro tumble by tech generally.
3. Apple was NEVER overvalued, not even, as it turned out. when it hit a P/E of over 40 a couple of years back. How do I know that? Because the return to that price in the selloff, which happened twice, showed a VASTLy reduced P/E ratio.
4. Apple, as everyone and their uncle has commented on, is coming out if the Great Revaluation smelling like a rose.
i will now finish reading the second massive Tommo tome that PED has seen fit to publish.
Maybe one of these days others here will get a chance to have THEIR say so massively published….
1. Kudos to PED for two salient points.
2. Kudos to Tommo for a meaningful and unique vision (no pun intended) on the potential of computerized eye-ware.
3. Thanks for the gracious acknowledgement that, on buybacks, I haven’t been talking out of my a$$.
4. Thanks for obliquely reinforcing perhaps the single biggest reason Apple has been continually under-rated practically from its very beginning, and continues to be under-rated: It sticks like JB Weld to it’s knitting. And what is it’s knitting? Computerization. Of everything. Ad Infinitum.
Regardless of timing AAPL still offers total returns well above the norm. That’s all we need to know.
Having said that I did say AAPL to $200 in the next year.
The only disagreement I have is when the “peak” was hit. I contend it was when AAPL was given a 40+ P/E ratio. Viewed as a continuum, its rise from then to what I consider the moderately fair valuation of its last ATH, which not coincidentally took place as the valuation shrank considerably, was the actual adjustment for that “overvaluation”.
In short, all of last year was significant over-kill.
I agree to the former and disagree to the latter.
IMO, the present battery tech solves one problem (barely), i. e., sufficient energy density, but leaves a host of others (principally, (1) scaling to size and the environmental impact thereof, and (2) the high cost of the batteries). It is possible (and, knowing what I know, inevitable) that much more scalable, higher energy density, and less expensive energy storage can be accomplished.
But the present approach ain’t it.
Thorium power plants exude this isotope like sweat from a pro athlete. Forget large lithium batteries, think of NASA power generators in future automobiles. They are incredibly powerful AND safer than lithium ion batteries. Current designs have multi- decade lives that could be scaled down to one year lives that would fit in a shoebox. The required isotope cannot be be modified for use in nuclear weapons.
China is building thorium reactors for its electrical grid. Unless Congress reverses its position on funding nuclear research (cancelled in its entirety by Clinton) we will be buying all of our EVs from China in the future.
NASA are now testing a prototype nuclear rocket so they can reach Mars in a fraction of the time… what goes around comes around, eventually,
As far as batteries are concerned, Apple had an R&D programme looking into hydrogen fuel cell batteries (or was it membrane cells). There was the hybrid version which could charge from the mains and store electricity, or also be recharged by a hydrogen injector from a pressurised capsule so you could carry a charger around when you travel.
Not sure airlines would have approved of miniature pressurised canisters or batteries with hydrogen in the though and I believe the programme was axed due to the nightmare scenario of ever-more-exponentially-exploding iPhones in the headlines, a claim to infamy Samsung managed to achieve 😀
“But the present approach ain’t it.”
I have to respectfully disagree. The mighty oak sets it’s roots slowly. I drive a 2020 Tesla Model S, have solar panels and it’s been a beautiful, near-flawless experience. While you’re spot-on about the on-the-table concerns of the battery industry currently, what’s up and running now is coming along just fine.
As with any new promising paradigm, the child-like zeal distorts the perspective. We all want the best — now. The payoff with this impatience is that it quickly becomes the grease of competition. This ongoing healthy buzz and sales now circling EVs along with the requisite money and attention now pouring into this viable “next thing” will continue to grow organically, and this is a — albeit conditions tempered — beautiful thing continuously reaching new heights.
I’m completely confident we’ll get there. Start poppin’ the popcorn. We’re in for a good ride.
IMHO, the “other shoe” hasn’t yet dropped. H2 is going to give battery storage a real run for the money. I believe it so much I’ve filed for a couple of patents….
Please explain your stance.
And we have a Volt, enough to get us to town and back on all electric, meaning our monthly fuel costs are 0$ given the solar investment, excluding trips out of town we elect. And the maintenance on the Volt is FAR less (almost 0) than our Grand Cherokee ICE we have for snow days.
I say these things not to brag, but to illustrate what abject insanity it is to disparage electric cars and solar.
I did these things because I am cheap; but come to find out we much prefer the electric experience.
“…what abject insanity it is to disparage electric cars and solar.”
1. Labelling folks on this site is frowned on.
2. I’m not “disparaging electric cars and solar”: I’m a big fan of both, and a “user”.
3. I’m pointing out real issues. That’s not the same as disparaging.
4. The alternative to huge batteries is H2 . I can tell you for a fact the H2 storage issue is “solved”. It’s only a matter of time until it comes into its own.
My reply was actually speaking to comments I hear out in the wild; not specific comments here on Apple 3.0.
I have a large investment in a Hydrogen tech company myself; promising technology.
Until that potential is realized though; solar and EV’s are a great option for today.
“Perfection is the enemy of better”
Thanks for the level-headed response! Glad to hear it was a generalized comment.
For the record i should say that my style was intentionally somewhat hyperbolic, and meant as a dry mockery of analysts notes discussing their aforementioned vapourware. Perhaps I was too subtle, which really isn’t like me.
Nevertheless the difference is my gaseous vapourware speculation over the headset is that Apple actually has the technology available right now to scan the eye using existing iiPhone tech. Apple’s tendency to try and build health benefits into its portable and wearable devices lends credence to my totally baseless speculation about what Apple could (and should) include in any headset’s features.
Eye disease is no laughing matter and affects most od the population at one time or another. It can also red flag chronic conditions years ahead of them appearing (diabetes, liver and kidney problems and a host of other issues) and the diagnoses from simple eye scans are well proven and very simply conducted.
So while the vapourware predictions to date have featured absurdly overpriced headsets of an utterly un-Apple like design for gaming, my totally-lacking-any-foundation-devoid-of-inside-knowledge suggestion is based on features which would make the headset/glasses a paradigm leap forward in the same vein as the iPod, iPhone and Watch were, are feasible for virtually no cost considering how cheap and tiny the components are after years of miniaturising the iPhone notch (the sensors in which can do everything I have described) and fill a health, wellbeing, and entertainment narrative core to Apple’s wearable devices..
In a world where ants can be taught to sense cancer in human bodily fluids which we can’t see without full body scans, I put myself firmly in the futurist seat and speculate the headset will confound surprise and anger almost everyone (especially Gurman) except consumers, who will buy into it like they did all other Apple wearables. The added advantage of an optical health checkup just seems like an absolute no brainer considering the emphasis on health in wearables and if not included would be a wild miss for the company in my opinion as the tech is already in your iPhone’s every-shrinking notch assembly. .
But I’m the end, it is exactly as PED described: speculation about vapourware but not without a good narrative and rationale behind it.
The commentary about the driver behind the rise and fall of AAPL over the last few years from the first half of my oped o stand 100% behind though and publicly posted my thoughts about – and my decision to bail along with predicted support and resistance levels – at the time, in real time.
I’m not so sure services had anything to do with the move longer term. While their disappointment may have led to a decline, the upward – almost vertical thrust – was from expected new products, not a continued rise in services revenue.
If that’s a contrarian unpopular opinion all I can say is whatever the reason, the timing worked for me for the reasons I wrote about. Hopes were pinned on new hardware. Those hopes have been crushed so far leaving no hopium left.
Like an addict we’re now waiting for a delivery from China to feed us some more to smoke and watch the stock price rise as we exhale a deep puff of hot air, a bit like this reply 🙂
(PS Joe I’ve nothing whatsoever against you at all and tend to agree with most of what you say in principle, and if you read my posts back in the Jobs era ranting about the lack of buybacks you’d know you have a natural ally here, but I just disagree with cheerleading when there are visible dangers – or even gaseous vaporous ones it behoves us to anticipate – No personal offence ever intended, just my sometimes adversarial style on the subject matter at the time.
Apology accepted.
As I said, the iGlass concept you disclosed is a brilliant “future-read” on where computer tech is heading. Hopefully, Apple has been traveling this offshoot for a while as well, as it has foraged along the “paths not taken” for potential computer tech.
But whether it is ready for prime time or not, the reality is that Apple has been and continues to be a pioneer in the arena of computerization. And it has been almost universally undervalued as such, including in its stock valuations.
IOW, I’m convinced that Apple deserves a continuous valuation well above where it presently sits, and it always has. Indeed, if it had been decently valued all along, it wouldn’t have had to resort to buybacks in the first place. But when you are mining out gemstones, and being valued as mining coal, it only makes sense to buy back your own stock.
It is therefore the height of irony that it’s the ignorant market, led around by a nose-ring, that gives these buybacks their incredible power. And over the last year, Apple has literally proven both those contentions
Well stated response and thanks for never letting us forget the blessings of the buybacks.
Let’s start a new meme to carry through the next few decades…
“Apple is doomed (not).”
The Reader’s Digest version can be summarized into a single sentence, that being: sans unannounced product rumors AAPL’s “PE” got too rich for me.
I agree, to a degree. I don’t think WS values Apple’s management team at all. I think WS believes products create value, but those products do not materialize out of thin air, and once they are available it is management decisions that control cost, while maximizing product quality, customer satisfaction and profits (most particularly FCF).
Apple is not a building with a logo slapped on its side, nor is it the products “Apple” develops and sells. In my opinion Apple is the management team that manages the Company’s resources such that it maximizes customer satisfaction, and investor value.
If we were to transplant (in its entirety) Apple’s management team to another entity, what we think of as Apple would cease to exist, the other entity would soon replace today’s Apple.
There isn’t a spreadsheet model in the world that accounts for the value of management, and that makes valuation estimates a guessing game. It is for that reason I use FCF analysis with ROI and ROE as my primary valuation tool. FCF, ROI, and ROE are the result of management, not any shiny new bauble.
That’s also why I reject the use of PE as an indicator of value. PE is nothing more than a ratio comparing equity price (value) to earnings per share. It is driven by investor sentiment and is therefore neither good nor bad. It is what it is and nothing more.
If a company generates massive FCF, high ROI and high ROE and a “PE” of 100, who cares what the “PE” ratio is? I’m buying the management team that made those 3 metrics possible.
None are better than Apple’s management team, very, very few match Apple’s FCF, ROI or ROE, so why shouldn’t AAPL’s “PE” be as high as the others?
As I stated many times before, PE is a horrible valuation metric, with or without rumor induced value inflation.
Almost right and lovely summary except crucially I mention the PE in passing, not focusing on it as my determining decision factor.
Remove the “PE” from your sentence and you’ve nailed me 🙂
I just wanted the last few years worth of verbal sparring to be summarised in a quick and descriptive manner so it was all in one place. A post just about the headset grew into your “dissertation” as I wrote, and wrote, on autopilot- and then became too long to post, so I sent it to PED unsolicited and told him he could publish it if he chose ..I suppose being called gaseous is getting off lightly 😀
Imagine if they did…
Software controlled reading glasses.
What if the next big product is already here? What if they rebrand a flavor of EarPods and add some extra software and marketing to the hearing impaired. They’d destroy the hearing aid market, save people loads of money, and improve people’s lives.
But overall, I think the view of the piece in question is a side of a 2 kinds of people thing. One view is that Apple needs a moonshot to justify its valuation. The other is that it is undervalued on the basis of discounted future cash from existing products, and new products (if successful, and they aren’t always) would be gravy. I’m of the latter camp.
Recall the history of the iPad from 2010. I believe it was the fastest sales ramp in history, even faster than iPhone. But then it leveled, and many wrote it off and still do. And yet, a dozen years later, I’m in IT and my boss just switched from a MacBook to an iPad Pro 13″ as his sole machine. And I’m giving a iPad Pro 13″ as a gift to a certain college grad student I know who prefers that platform. I think the iPad is the sleeper product, and it and the Apple Silicon MacBooks are making a pincer movement on the computing industry that we might look back on as a slow grind to higher market share that most were blind to while it was occurring. Steven Sinofski has rightly said Apple has achieved what MS failed to accomplish with “Windows everywhere”. It’s huge, and yet no one seems to recognize it. Eventually they will.
We got it in 2007 Jim, that’s why most of us are still here 😉
I’ve often wondered why Apple didn’t develop Air(Ear) Pods that could generate the tones used in hearing tests, then with a hearing test app give the user the ability to respond to what can be heard and not heard. The jackpot would be using those app test results to set the Air/Ear Pods active mode settings with a background noise option. Left and right Air/Ear Pods set separately.
How many times have I seen hearing aid users fiddling with hearing aid volume as a physical control. Transfer that fiddling to an iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch app for greater accuracy.
While I’m somewhat on the subject of Apple Watch, give the user the ability to remove apps not being used. THAT, in my opinion, would seriously reduce complexity by reducing/eliminating unneeded/unused complications.
staceyoniot dot com/the-airpods-pro-2nd-gen-as-smart-hearables-puts-a-smile-on-my-face/
In brief, based on Apple’s history – like the long anticipated Apple TV set that never happened – which morphed into Apple TV+ “a gateway” as a small box of software – Apple’s foray into the automotive arena will be similar:
Software. Not a car.
Conjecturing what the software will do is fun, but I want to keep this short. Anything that connects to Apple’s other products is a no brainer. CarPlay and Apple maps were obvious features.
BOTTOM-LINE: Think of it as a computer on wheels.
My opinion about all the hoopla over something else we haven’t seen yet – Apple’s AR wearable device – it will be for portable entertainment.
As such it will rely on software developers. In other words, more App store revenue.
BOTTOMLINE: Gaming.
It all comes down to incremental additional new revenue streams. That’s how they add to Apple’s stock price.
IMHO.
I dunno. That software has to be integrated into something. I still don’t think automakers will accept Apple software to provide core functions they think of as their primary business. Some new car manufacturer might well partner with Apple, but I just don’t believe the (usually crappy) vehicle interfaces from major automakers will be replaced by an Apple product.
Apple doesn’t need to manufacture the whole car. It only needs to make using the car more enjoyable. CARPLAY I, II, IIII.
I’m looking forward to dash displays using Apples micro-led technology, with a dash setup that allows the driver to put gauges WHERE THE DRIVER WANTS THEM, in sizes the driver deems appropriate, using touch controls.
NOBODY has this capability, and given current CarPlay popularity I don’t see a hurry releasing an auto drive component. When it’s released it will dominate the market. Still, I’m looking at 2025. Just too many announced technologies coming together that year.
On the car, I have never liked the idea of Apple making a car by itself. I think it is better for them to partner with someone else. To reinvent the wheel, pun intended, seems like a waste of time for Apple. With TSLA’s PE/Valuation coming back to normal(although with a big runup recently, it has gotten into more unreasonable territory), I don’t think making the whole widget here will get Apple a ton of extra revenue and market cap. I think Apple would be better sticking with hardware and software to help automakers make self driving cars safe and manageable. JMO though on this. Reasonable people can disagree.
As to the glasses, for me, this is where I think a reasonable expansion of revenues and profit can occur. Tommo brings up an interesting concept for the glasses to help correct for vision. That could really be a revenue driver, especially if they can be used to replace glasses(2 recent pairs of progressive glasses set me back quite a bit recently). Because of liability issues, I wonder if they would not be for something like driving a car, in case the batteries die or the device malfunctions. I still think the device will be used as more of a gaming/communication device until kinks are worked out. A lot of people would try it, because it is Apple. The question would be what kind of staying power it would have, if/when it gets announced.
I think the glasses have a better chance of being an actual product. Because of that, I think Apple is probably undervalued, unless they don’t deliver on this product. As for an Apple car, I don’t put any extra value towards Apple because of it right now because I really doubt it will become an actual product in the near term, unless it is part of some kind of collaboration with an auto company.
For me Apple has enough market share to grab with existing suite of products and services. The most important is to keep improving what’s being offered, and keep reducing cost of producing and supporting it. If any new product or service is launched in 2023 or beyond, that opens a new stream of cashflow.
But, if a moonshot does come along……wow!
Most obvious examples
iPod 2001
iPhone 2008 (globally)
*iPad 2010 (but that was just a big arse iPhone really, right?) 😀
Apple Watch 2015
*M1 Laptop 2020. (Same laptop, new cpu, not a moonshot)
AirPods, HomePods, AppleTVs and the like help in between major moonshots.
So the Apple Watch was the last “big thing” in April 2015
We’re overdue, thanks to covid and post pandemic resources issues (internal and supply chain). Something’s coming down the road soon. I’m getting a 7 year itch!
Expansion of what? The reason I doubt a moonshot is needed is that Apple grew to be the largest and most profitable corp in history with only a handful of products. Moreover, there is plenty of growth taking away business from competitors for years to come, and that doesn’t require moonshots. I think the latter path is a more plausible route to Apple’s continued expansion. If I though Apple needed a moonshot every 7 years I’d sell AAPL for sure.
In any case, I’ll quibble a bit for fun on defining a moonshot …
– iPod 2001 ok, but that line ended. It was a pivotal product for sure, but had no real future. Same with the Motorola phone with iTunes. Subtract a moonshot.
– iPhone 2008 – iPhone is the name for a shrunk down Mac OS (OS X at the time) with a touch interface. Which is to say, an 80’s era product, rejuvenated with 70’s era Unix, built on 90’s era tech Apple co-founded for Newton (ARM).
-*iPad 2010 (a big arse iPhone really) – I could be wrong but I believe the iPad was conceived first, though not released, and the iPhone was a small arse iPad.
– Apple Watch 2015 – Sounds about right
– *M1 Laptop 2020. (Same laptop, new cpu, not a moonshot) – Not a moonshot yes, but the iPad and the Mac now on Mx series chips is a very big deal in about every way. Just shows the irrelevance of the moonshot idea to begin with.
(Welcome to the blog – like your whisky, btw)
One could argue that the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch all grew out of the iPod (with some genetic material added by the Newton). The Watch in particular was an obvious follow-on to the iPod Nano, which I wore for years as a watch. Plug in a pair of EarPods, and you had music on your hike or bike ride. It had one major drawback: If I ever forgot and wore it in the shower, that was the end of that. I literally went through 4 Nano’s for exactly that reason….
The Google, Amazon and Microsoft I am sure have realized that the increased cost of money has significantly constrained their abilities to take too many moonshots. And they are still trying to figure out how to build successful hardware based consumer products.
Where they all fail is their inability to develop a compelling use use case with a user centric interface. They all think their respective “moonshots” are based on hardware.
No. Successful Moonshots are based on a combination of use case, software, user experience (interface) and hardware. Throw Apple into the mist and it is the only one that successfully incorporates all four elements.
I’m with you Lalit, in hoping Apple is just as successful in India, as it has been in China. Frankly, because of China/US relations (that I don’t see materially improving in the next decade, I see India becoming more important than China.
Great responses =
Great information =
Great blog
Stationary bikes, rowing machines, and treadmills are tedious to use. But having rowed, run, walked, and biked in beautiful and interesting places, I know that if I could slip on a pair of glasses and see/feel not my dull basement, but the alps, a trail (even an interesting and immersive city street) a beautiful river or lake, I’d likely use those machines a lot more, and more eagerly/regularly “fill my rings”.
So: VR immersive workout backgrounds. It’s a concrete and graspable idea, there’s an addressable market with all Apple Health + users, and it serves a purpose that Tim Cook claims is Apple’s higher calling – making large numbers of people healthier.
IMO, the primary cause(s) were the result of just 3 singular men and why:
1. Vlad – ego, territoriality, worried about threats to his power and control. Long time KGB mindset wrt paranoia about the west, willing to sacrifice oil income, international market interdependence, and a lot of his own military forces and inventory in what he thought would be a 3 month blitzkrieg. Not a great military strategist. Now cannot disengage because of same ego. Quite willing to throw World and West into chaos, maybe that was part of his “plan”? And quite willing to sacrifice lives of his military, conscripts, and “draftees” along with another countries’ citizens.
His war triggered / exacerbated inflationary trends.
2. Xi – 6 months into the Covid Pandemic, Xi would not release or allow release of independent case or deaths numbers consistent with definitions used in the west, a classic case of denying/withholding Face-losing data. Xi decides to go along with its own vaccine development, resulting in a SinoVac vaccine that is at best about 50% effective. Prior Chinese medical and manufacturing scandals made much of the populace, including vulnerable seniors, very much vaccine averse. A year into the pandemic, Xi flatly turned down opportunities to import or license for domestic manufacture Western created mRNA vaccines, not wishing to undermine his nationalistic pride stance despite strong evidence of preventing major illness and saving lives. Instead, typical strong arm tactics of mass lockdowns came from on high and overzealous local minions implemented it badly. The fallout from outraged and lockdown fatigued Chinese citizens finally caused a pivot to Western model of living with Covid.
Xi was and is quite willing to risk his citizen’s lives, disseminate highly suspect and restrictively defined case and deaths data (again to save face and portray China as a “winner”) and even throw his own economy into tatters with his heavy handed “health” policies.
His (in)actions demonstrate his desire to retain and wield dictatorial power, ego in seeking only Chinese solutions, and IMO, fairly poor regard for his populace. The only saving grace was that Omicron is less virulent or deadly, and because it swamped out Delta, his people losses will be somewhat less last year and this year. So much for respecting your elders.
His actions caused upheaval in China’s and by extension, the world’s economies.
3. Fed Chair Jerome – The Fed must mint each chair in cookie cutter fashion because they all react the same way – copious amounts of very low interest and liquidity when things go south or the excrement hits the fan, or once in a century (hopefully) pandemics happened, and then abruptly and hugely reversing policy and course when “suddenly” inflation hits, much of which came from external macroeconomic sources. Yes, the American economy was buzzing along, maybe too buzzily to last, and recovered with so much demand, the rest of the world couldn’t catch up fast enough, causing supply shortages and price increases —> inflation.
By hammering everyone with higher interest rates in less than 9 months, Jerome not only slammed on the brakes but threw out several anchors around the world, and yet the economy kept pulling them up. Only today, almost one year to the day the above triple whammy started has the Fed now felt some progress has been made.
IMO, Jerome pretty much followed tech’s playbook, overspending when Pandemic demand rebounded sharply, then cut back abruptly when inflation “suddenly” (and without visibility to the Fed???) appeared.
While maybe only a few lives were sacrificed, the financial health of 99% of America (and some foreigners) was severely affected, and for some, irretrievably lost. This has been the Fed playbook every decade or two.
We and Apple/AAPL owe the last year’s roller coaster to these men and their egos. That Tim Cook, et. al. at Apple have deftly sailed through this maelstrom, not fully unscathed but “better than most” should garner thanks.