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Apple's Bad News Keeps Coming. Can They Still Turn It Around? (msn.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the here's-to-the-crazy-ones dept.
Besides pressure on Apple to make iPhones in the U.S., CEO Tim Cook "is facing off against two U.S. judges, European and worldwide regulators, state and federal lawmakers, and even a creator of the iPhone," writes the Wall Street Journal, "to say nothing of the cast of rivals outrunning Apple in artificial intelligence." Each is a threat to Apple's hefty profit margins, long the company's trademark and the reason investors drove its valuation above $3 trillion before any other company. Shareholders are still Cook's most important constituency. The stock's 25% fall from its peak shows their concern about whether he — or anyone — can navigate the choppy 2025 waters.

What can be said for Apple is that the company is patient, and that has often paid off in the past.
They also note OpenAI's purchase of Jony Ive's company, with Sam Altman saying internally they hope to make 100 million AI "companion" devices: It is hard to gauge the potential for a brand-new computing device from a company that has never made one. Yet the fact that it is coming from the man who led design of the iPhone and other hit Apple products means it can't be dismissed. Apple sees the threat coming: "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds," an Apple executive, Eddy Cue, testified in a court case this month...

The company might not need to be first in AI. It didn't make the first music player, smartphone or tablet. It waited, and then conquered each market with the best. A question is whether a strategy that has been successful in devices will work for AI.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

Apple's Bad News Keeps Coming. Can They Still Turn It Around? More | Reply

Apple's Bad News Keeps Coming. Can They Still Turn It Around?

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  • Yes, duh. (Score:4, Informative)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday May 25, 2025 @08:02AM (#65402683) Homepage Journal

    Apple is sitting on unprecedented and unparalleled amounts of cash, to say nothing of their liquid investments, or their other investments. Apple can afford to fail for a long time before they hit on the next big thing.

    • Re:Yes, duh. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <(ten.frow) (ta) (todhsals)> on Sunday May 25, 2025 @09:36AM (#65402789)

      Apple has been going out of business for nearly 50 years now. It's a very familiar refrain that's kept going even during the peak of Mac, iPod and iPhone eras.

    • Apple is in the end a hardware company with a side in services, which isn't a good thing in today's tariff war landscape. This is causing Apple to have a murky outlook. While I don't think anyone is claiming Apple is go bankrupt and close up shop, they might be in for a rough future.

      IBM was the biggest computer manufacturer until it wasn't, Sega was one of the biggest makers of gaming hardware (Genesis) until it wasn't. Blackberry was THE company for smartphones, until it wasn't. All of these companies stil

      • IBM was the biggest computer manufacturer until it wasn't

        IBM decided to be a services company instead of trying to revitalize their manufacturing business. Sega trusted Microsoft, never trust Microsoft. Blackberry is a pretty good example of failure they couldn't reasonably anticipate, but they had none of Apple's advantages.

        Apple is not indestructible and certainly not infallible, but they can still flail about for quite a while before they're in trouble.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by printman ( 54032 )

        Apple has tried for years to make more from services income, but aside from the App Store, they haven't done very well. And the App Store is heavily tied to their hardware, which leads back to the original issue.

        So Apple's services income for the last quarter was $26.6B. For FY2024 they brought in basically $100B for services alone, which would be enough to put them in the top 40 US companies - not struggling and certainly past trying to "make money" from services. Overall Apple (hardware + services) is #3 behind Walmart and Amazon with $383.4B in revenue for FY2024...

    • Apple is sitting on unprecedented and unparalleled amounts of cash, to say nothing of their liquid investments, or their other investments. Apple can afford to fail for a long time before they hit on the next big thing.

      Apple's future growth prospects are murky, so it's future stock price appreciation is murky. However, it's main asset is its brand. It's the brand that drives iPhone sales, and although sales are not growing much, they're also not dropping much (aside from China). Apple will continue to generate lots of cash profits. Even if it continues to be behind in AI, it doesn't matter. The iPhone is a device for other companies to run their AI, so AI that works elsewhere will also work on iPhones.

  • Heard this before (Score:3)

    by methano ( 519830 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @08:10AM (#65402687)
    I bought 100 shares of AAPL in 1989. So I've paid attention. I've seen this same story a bunch of times over the years. Although it always feels like "this time it's different", it's been best to ignore these stories.

    • Re:Heard this before (Score:5, Insightful)

      by evanh ( 627108 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @08:25AM (#65402697)

      Sam Altman might try to spin "AI" as something amazing that everyone needs but reality is the consumer is not asking for it ... and so far is not inclined to pay for it. The extraordinarily large setup costs are being borne by his investors. I can't fathom how that'll ever be recouped. Not to mention the running costs.

      And all that without making a single device.

      • Were people "asking for" any of the other things Apple's known for? Seems it took Apple for people to realize they needed to start asking for a lot of things.

        • Re: Heard this before (Score:4)

          by zawarski ( 1381571 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @09:24AM (#65402763)
          Yeah. The Walkman, the portable phone, portable computer. Have not heard anyone asking for some stupid AI deviice.

          • Ever feel like you weren't being tracked enough? I think we all have moments where we ask ourselves how much more we could do in our daily lives, to help Big Tech keep an eye on us. After all, wealth transfer doesn't happen unless we all pitch in and make a purchase.

            Introducing AI.Lump. The discreet talisman that brings you one step closer to a billionaire. Put it in your pocket today.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by evanh ( 627108 )

          The Mac was a no-brainer as an idea but very ambitious for its time. And of course was fighting an impossible fight against the rampant PC dominance. But even so, the Mac became the last one still standing against the PC.

          The iPod, for sure, was being begged for for years and arguably is what saved the Mac from a slow death. The music industry seriously dropped the ball on that one. And still are dropping the ball. The lack of engagement and coordination with the Internet is a jaw dropper. They just se

      • I dont remember anyone wanting a tablet until they brought it out.

        • I had a TC1100 for work for a while. It was a really nice machine.

          It's a tablet. It predates the iPad, but looks rather similar if a little thicker.

      • but reality is the consumer is not asking for it

        Consumers don't ask for anything. No one asked for email in a web browser. No one asked for a phone without buttons. No one asked for a touch screen. Heck, no one asked for the motor vehicle. Technology development is designed to fit a potential need, and marketing exists to describe that previously unknown need to the consumer to create a demand.

        That said I agree the money doesn't make sense for AI.

      • Yup. They're lost with their heads up in the clouds that also happen to be their own behinds too. All this money is being wasted on capabilities of marginal utility.

    • That has pretty much been their history, and with about half of my net worth in AAPL stock I hope it continues. There are some real differences now though; they aren't the underdog anymore, and people like Eddie Cue have constantly pushed the company in bad directions. Apple can easily do another share repurchase to push up the stock price, but they haven't managed to keep evolving since Jobs... they just made purchases that brought in some innovation.

      It will be interesting to see if the next five years pro

    • I don't know what will eventually kill Apple, but I am confident it won't be "fell behind on AI." They can license that.

  • Im not really sure. Business can use it to replace data scientists, researchers can use it to simplify analysis. But what do consumers do with it?

  • What do you expect (Score:3, Informative)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @08:55AM (#65402717)
    When the president of the United States runs his office like a gangster criminal, "you voted for this"

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Donald Trump has significant influence over some fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list of challenges for Apple:

      two U.S. judges, European and worldwide regulators, state and federal lawmakers, and even a creator of the iPhone

      The federal court cases predate Trump. EU and other regulators around the world have been looking for excuses to extort Apple for years. State lawmakers do what they want. The most influential and powerful federal lawmakers are in Congress, and they don't always do what Trump wants (especially because of the Senate "filibuster" rule). Jony Ive started his company before Trump got elect

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        Donald Trump has significant influence over some fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list of challenges for Apple:

        A 25% tariff on iPhones is a bit more significant than just "a fraction of one half of one item in TFA's list." It is a major threat.
        https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]

      • There is a lot more basis to advise the EU antitrust office of acting like gangster criminals. They've ended up losing a lot of their high-profile cases against (the EU arms of) big US companies.

        Going through the court system to have your case heard and judged on is the exact opposite of acting like gangster criminals. And several high profile court cases the antitrust office lost were on technicalities. And quite critically they haven't lost a case outright. Even when Intel's $1bn case got thrown out the court still found Intel breached antitrust law and Intel still had to pay $250million. In general the EU has a far higher hit rate than miss rate on these matters.

        You may not like it, but that doe

  • "the best"? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It didn't make the first music player, smartphone or tablet. It waited, and then conquered each market with the best.

    That's debatable. They certainly made the most polished products with the roundest corners, but from performance and technology standpoints you'd be hard pressed calling Apple "the best" at anything until Apple Silicon came along.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 )

      Sometimes, in fact very often the most polished, reliable, and understandable products are the best. It's not all about benchmarks.

      That said, Tim Cook's leadership is coming under fire even from the fan boys. The Apple car was an expensive wasted effort. The Visor is a clean miss at least for now. Apple blew it on AI, and their mad panic to slap something together had the side effect of a terrible bug infestation of IOS 18 and MacOS 16. I speak from personal experience on those. IOS 18 is currently fixed at

      • The AMD competition will need these qualities for AI needs:

        Strengths of Apple's M-series chips for AI:

        Unified Memory Architecture (UMA): This is a significant advantage. Instead of having separate pools of memory for the CPU and GPU (and Neural Engine), M-series chips allow all components to access the same high-speed memory. This drastically reduces data copying between components, which is a major bottleneck in many AI workflows. This can lead to improved performance, especially for tasks involving large datasets or models where data shuffling is frequent.

        Neural Engine: Apple includes a dedicated Neural Engine on its M-series chips (and A-series for iPhones/iPads) specifically designed to accelerate machine learning tasks. This hardware is optimized for common AI operations like matrix multiplications, which are fundamental to neural networks. The M4, for instance, boasts a Neural Engine capable of 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a significant jump from previous generations.

        Power Efficiency: Apple Silicon is renowned for its performance-per-watt. This means you can get considerable AI processing power with much lower power consumption compared to many discrete GPUs, making them excellent for mobile workstations and on-device AI.
        On-device AI and Privacy: The integrated nature of Apple's chips allows for efficient and private execution of AI models directly on the device, reducing reliance on cloud-based processing for many tasks. This is beneficial for privacy and can reduce latency.
        Optimized Software Stack (Metal and Core ML): Apple provides its own frameworks like Metal (for graphics and compute) and Core ML, which are optimized to leverage the full capabilities of Apple Silicon for AI workloads. This can lead to efficient execution for applications built within the Apple ecosystem.

  • Don't believe the press releases (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gtall ( 79522 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @08:58AM (#65402721)

    The press releases from la Presidenta is that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His and his sycophants know damn well that is an impossibility due to complex supply chains. What he's looking for is a payoff, either directly into his pocket or some stupid politicized "win" he can blow off his big mouth about.

    • Re:Don't believe the press releases (Score:5, Informative)

      by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @09:22AM (#65402757)

      The press releases from la Presidenta is that he wants Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. His and his sycophants know damn well that is an impossibility due to complex supply chains. What he's looking for is a payoff, either directly into his pocket or some stupid politicized "win" he can blow off his big mouth about.

      I think what he's looking for is to turn the US into a third-world country wherein people are paid four dollars an hour for long workweeks of back-breaking manual labour.

      That's his plan to "bring manufacturing back to America" - destroy the economy and rebuild it around literal wage-slaves. After all, that kind of economy eventually worked out for China, and seems to be working out - for some values of "working out" - for countries like Vietnam.

      I'm sure the oligarchs are salivating at the prospect of restoring those enormous profit margins. The huge increase in class imbalance which would result is just a very welcome bonus.

      • I suspect at that point people will realize who outnumbers whom and set things straight.

      • Last I heard, US is the single biggest consumer market (or at least one of the biggest).

        Part of the reason is that workers get decent wages and so got spare money to spend on stuff.

        Cut the pay, and the biggest market may end up as a tiny market, since consumers need to be making money above their minimal needs if they are to spend on extra stuff.

        Not sure if the oligarchs will like that, unless they really are fine with destroying a huge market. I mean, current system of making cheap crap in China, etc, and

        • Last I heard, US is the single biggest consumer market (or at least one of the biggest).

          Part of the reason is that workers get decent wages and so got spare money to spend on stuff.

          Cut the pay, and the biggest market may end up as a tiny market, since consumers need to be making money above their minimal needs if they are to spend on extra stuff.

          Not sure if the oligarchs will like that, unless they really are fine with destroying a huge market. I mean, current system of making cheap crap in China, etc, and selling it to the biggest market has worked well so far. You make the biggest market into another China like factory, who else new is going to buy their shit?

          They may not care about selling "their shit". They'll have a country full of nearly-free labour to make and do anything they want, to be step-and-fetch servants for them, and with whom to enact Hunger Games competitions.

          I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense - but their current actions of killing off all kinds of social assistance while simultaneously tanking the economy seem as though they'll end up somewhere close to the scenario I painted, even if that's not their explicit goal. For all their cunnin

  • I do not believe for a second that some screen less device will replace devices with screens.

  • Shareholders are still Cook's most important constituency.

    Apple got to where it is today because it made customers their most important constituency. With that said, the quoted statement was not made by Tim Cook, but I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly agreed with it since he's spent much of his career in the finance side of business.

  • As Windows user since 3.0, who owns over $2000 of software, I am now stepping farther back from Windows because of "Recall". No I do not think that AI spyware is a feature.

    • I am now stepping farther back from Windows because of "Recall"

      I am not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch, but I'm also not one to overreact.

      Isn't this reaction to "Recall" overblown? Two mouse clicks and a restart and its turned off. For the people who don't want it, it seems pretty straightforward to me.

      • Will it remain off ? forever? Can some software update "mistake" turn it back on without informing the users? Will a million bugs allow it to be turned on and then exploited? Will they leave some network port open then refuse to close it by saying we should all have firewalls close that port? (which would not be a new thing.)

        Nevermind the 3rd party partners that have unprecedented access since windows 11 or so. Besides that, MS is just some bad decisions or bad CEO away from further abusing the trust you

  • They need to ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday May 25, 2025 @02:08PM (#65403193)

    ... bring back Steve Jobs again. Even a corpse could do a better job than the current management team.

  • The very premise of the article is that Apple is struggling (it's a click-bait article). They aren't. They're still minting money. Even the stock is up about 2% from a year ago - hardly a sign of a struggling company. Being 25% the peak isn't even atypical for Apple (just look at a graph of their share price going back 10 years).

    Apple, along with the rest of the computer industry, has a real problem with tariffs. These are going to reduce their business in the US. But guess what, they are an international c

    • Review the history of Intel's slide. They were also minting money and doing large stock buybacks while their R&D and fab technology fell behind.

      Apple is sitting on a string of failures now. The lead they have on CPUs is diminishing. This M1 is entirely fast enough and I do appreciate the long battery life in my Macbook Air. The Ryzen 4600G in my desktop is also entirely fast enough, including the built in graphics. Not coincidentally they came out the same year.

      Apple is stuck at the moment. They should

  • But you can't build it. And even if you did design it and build it, would anyone want to use it? Jony Ive was a big proponent of skeuomorphism which nobody wanted to use.

  • There's almost never a reason for it because smartphones can do it all. Totally worthless startup.

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