Apple Shareholders Meeting

We arrived for the 9 AM Apple shareholders' meeting at 8:45, but already we were too late to get into the main auditorium. The young guides with Apple badges herded us over to Building 4, where two large videofeeds had been set up. Before entering, we had to check in all iPhones, iPads, Macs, and any other electronic equipment. (It took 20 minutes to retrieve our items after the meeting, so for future reference it's recommended that attendees leave their gear in the car.)

Now that Steve Jobs is gone, there's little point in attending Apple shareholders' meetings. Today there were no product, dividend, strategy, or personnel announcements. The business session went smoothly--the controversy over Proposal 2, regarding shareholder approval of new preferred stock issues--had dissipated because Apple withdrew the proposal. The rest of the Board's recommendations passed overwhelmingly (for more detail see Barron's live blog). CEO Tim Cook fielded questions for half an hour and several times repeated that Apple wants to make the best products, not necessarily the most or the biggest.

Other comments:

1) the breakfast spread was generous and well laid out; shareholders could bring food and drink into the meeting area, unlike in previous years.

2) at the beginning it was announced that the meeting would be over by 10 AM, so it was obvious that there weren't going to be any big revelations today. At least with Steve Jobs there wasn't the feeling that he couldn't wait for the meeting to end; he would field questions until the audience was reasonably satisfied.

3) Concerning Apple's glorious new "spaceship" campus that will be ready in 2016, we are reminded of the words of C. Northcote Parkinson:

"During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters," he wrote. "The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done. Perfection, we know, is finality; and finality is death."

© 2013 Stephen Yuen

Tim Cook Speaks

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks to Brian Williams
About television: "It's a market that we see that has been left behind.....It's an area of intense interest. I can't say more than that."

About resuming manufacturing in the U.S.: "Next year we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States."

About Apple's mission: "Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn't know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can't imagine your life without it."

Okay, so the company isn't the same without the guiding hand of its founder. Yet, who other than Tim Cook should be at the helm?

Bill Gates, whose once-dominant enterprise has been struggling just to hold onto second place, Google's Page and/or Brin who are brilliant but maybe a tad unfocused, Mark Zuckerberg, whose company has yet to fulfill the extraordinary promise of its IPO multiple, or John Chambers or Larry Ellison, both of whom are experts at marketing to businesses, not so much to consumers?

Billionaire CEOs or former CEOs all, their companies' shares have not appreciated as much as Apple's since Steve Jobs died fourteen months ago.

Ho-Hum but Humming Right Along

Apple's product announcements attract widespread news coverage, and the iPhone 5 launch on September 12th was its biggest ever.

It has become impossible recently for Apple to keep key details under wraps. Because every move by the company, its largest suppliers, and partners is being scrutinized, tech observers have been able to make educated guesses about features and components of the iPhone 5 long before the official announcement. In fact many were let down, in part because their clever detective work removed the element of surprise.

But I'm not disappointed. The i5 is bigger, faster, and lighter than the 4S, without apparent diminution of battery life. The i5 is not revolutionary in the sense that a car that cruises easily at 200 MPH and gets 30 MPG is only an "evolutionary" improvement over a 100 MPH / 30 MPG vehicle. (IMHO, the "R" designation should be used sparingly anyway---for the first iPhone, iPad, and iPod.) So I'm going to get an iPhone 5.

Apparently, investors weren't disappointed either. Apple's share price declined for days leading up to September 12th--even through the first hour of the announcement--but then picked up when it dawned on everyone that the iPhone 5 would begin shipping on September 21st. The quarter will be better than analysts had previously forecasted because of the earlier-than-expected shipment of millions of new iPhones. Apple hasn't entirely lost its capacity to surprise.

[Update - 9/14: opening orders were so strong at midnight that delivery wait time is now two weeks (from one).]

AAPL hit an all-time high today (admittedly helped by the Fed's announcement of QE3).