By John Moltz
April 7, 2023 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Exactly the right amount of Cooks
The big news this week is Tim Cook and lots of him! Also big news are things that already happened, like the Mac’s bad holiday quarter and Apple putting all its metaphorical eggs in China’s metaphorical basket.
What’s cooking with Tim
Since the dawn of time people have wanted to know more about Tim Cook. Finally, they can.
Writing for GQ, Zach Baron has a lengthy and fascinating interview with Apple’s CEO. Turns out he’s not your father’s Apple CEO! Just looking at you, I’m gonna guess that was Mike Markkula? Maybe Sculley.
“Tim Cook on Shaping the Future of Apple”
You have a lot of Tim-related questions, right? Of course you do. We all do. Many of them are answered in this interview. Such as, what does Tim do first after he wakes up? What are his likes and dislikes? What personal grudges does he hold? Where is Tim? What’s Tim thinking about right now? Is he thinking about me? (He’s not.)
If you love the story about Cook asking an executive responsible for an operations problem in China “Why are you still here?” and don’t mind hearing it for the twentieth time, then you won’t be disappointed in this interview. To be fair, it is a good story that does get to Cook’s understated, all-business style. And the one about him checking his bag at McDonald’s and deadpanning to the clerk “Where are my fries?” doesn’t have the same impact.
Overall, it’s a fascinating look at Cook, even if the man himself predictably toes the party line. The App Store is described as “a trusted place where developers and users could come together in a two-sided transaction” as if Apple weren’t in the middle taking its cut, and you won’t learn anything about Apple’s unannounced headset that you didn’t know, unless you didn’t know that Cook has a keen interest in AR technology. If so, I’d like to welcome any and all subscribers to Living Under A Rock Quarterly.
Apple doom update
This week Apple announced that it would release its second quarter 2023 results on May 4th, but some people are still talking about the previous quarter. We already knew that Mac revenue was down 29 percent year-over-year in the holiday quarter, but now analysts’ estimates are out to provide more color to the Mac’s very bad quarter.
As bad as it was, it seems it was one of those fights where you should see the other guy.
“Mac shipments fell 22% in the holiday quarter, but PC brands worse hit”
Still, things were so bad that Apple apparently halted M2 chip production in January because Mac sales had slowed so much.
All is not lost for Apple, however! (Look at you, thinking all was lost for Apple. You’re adorable.) According to Counterpoint Research, the iPhone 13 was the best-selling smartphone in China last year. Not only that, but Apple did pretty well overall…
…as three different iPhone models took the top three slots in the sales ranking…
While there are some things to be concerned about, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that Apple’s gonna be OK after all. Just a hunch. Could be wrong. Might delete later.
You gotta dance with who brung ya
Apple’s complicated relationship with China continues to be complicated and relationship-y.
This week Mark Gurman reported on “Apple’s Complex, Secretive Gamble to Move Beyond China”, noting the tentative, careful steps the company has made to having certain products manufactured elsewhere.
As someone who very distinctly remembers when Apple was about to go out of business, it’s very weird to be living in a world where Apple has to be careful about how quickly it changes the country where it manufactures devices in order to not create an international incident.
Go grab your dictionary. I’ll wait. Now, if you open it up to “thorny situation”, well, you probably won’t see a picture of this situation because there’s no entry for “thorny situation” in the dictionary in the first place. But if there were an entry for it… well, there probably still wouldn’t be a picture of this situation. How do you even photograph it? Also, what adult has a dictionary with pictures in it? Is this a Portland thing?
The point is, for years Apple has taken advantage of China’s ability to provide a sometimes literally captive workforce in an industrial center built specifically for making exactly the kinds of computing devices the company sells. And it worked great! Until it didn’t.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]