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Post by rickag on Feb 28, 2017 4:54:52 GMT -8
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Post by Luckychoices on Feb 28, 2017 6:12:41 GMT -8
Reminder. Apple shareholder's meeting this morning at 9 AM Pacific Time.
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Post by gtrplyr on Feb 28, 2017 6:54:45 GMT -8
Reminder. Apple shareholder's meeting this morning at 9 AM Pacific Time. View AttachmentLooking forward to your review of the meeting !
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Post by Apple II+ on Feb 28, 2017 7:16:18 GMT -8
Reminder. Apple shareholder's meeting this morning at 9 AM Pacific Time. View AttachmentLast year was interesting with the FBI news in the air and the news media presence. I couldn't make it again this year, but I'm curious to hear today's reports on that, other political matters, products, and cash return. Looking forward to attending next year at the Apple Park spaceship. Enjoy the day!
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Post by ericinaustin on Feb 28, 2017 9:19:50 GMT -8
I sometimes forget the great advantage that apple has doing their own chip design and development. It wasn't too long ago when we heard about apple putting the first 64 bit chip in a phone and all along the advantage in chip sophistication allows apple to do more advances and features quicker and integrate them into the chip set better than the computation. I think this will become a bigger advantage over time. The china oems still pretty much have to take off the shelf and integrate it into their design. apple works from the other end. likely will cont. to see better battery life without adding to battery size , faster boot and response rates, etc. etc. that in my opinion is why the overall ecosystem experience for the end user will cont. to be such a deep 'moat' and why user loyalty will stay strong.
I think that even if the form factor doesn't change enough to wow people the sales numbers will stay so strong and cont. to grow. The really big numbers of people reaching end of use and needing new phones have really started to become sig. over last several years and this will cont..
Im still very nervous about the age of this bull mkt. and the possible screw ups this new admin. could cont. to commit ( hope they don't , by the way) that I have this urge to strongly hedge my position but haven't yet. The Berk. Hathaway action this year has helped me calm down a lot.
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chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,431
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Post by chinacat on Feb 28, 2017 9:43:55 GMT -8
This article says: "The iPhone maker's annual meeting will gather representatives of its 26,000 shareholders for mostly routine tasks like reviewing auditor fees and CEO Tim Cook's $8.75 million annual compensation for 2016." I found the 26,000 number surprising. This chart says that there were 5.247 billion shares outstanding as of January 20, or a bit over 200,000 shares per shareholder. Now, I do realize Berkshire Hathaway held about 57.35 million shares at the end of last year, but even backing that out hardly changes the per shareholder number. My impression at one time, before Apple became the financial monster it is now, was that many fanboys/girls owned a few shares (say fewer than 100) when the stock was dirt cheap just as a sign of their love for the company. That was basically how we started out, just before the iPhone made the company finances explode, and we were lucky enough to get on the bandwagon while AAPL was still cheap enough to be affordable for our limited investment funds. Perhaps many of those folks decided to cash in once the big firms started the surge that we are still riding today. Or perhaps, more likely, many of us unsophisticated investors decided not to press their luck once they had, for instance, doubled their initial investment. So given that many of investment houses now have substantial AAPL holdings, even if not approaching Uncle Warren's, the number of non-institutional AAPL holders is much smaller than I would have guessed. I guess we are fortunate that a large percentage of the smart ones hang around AFB. ;)
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Post by carbonate24 on Feb 28, 2017 10:41:37 GMT -8
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Post by joel90069 on Feb 28, 2017 10:55:25 GMT -8
This article says: "The iPhone maker's annual meeting will gather representatives of its 26,000 shareholders for mostly routine tasks like reviewing auditor fees and CEO Tim Cook's $8.75 million annual compensation for 2016." I found the 26,000 number surprising. This chart says that there were 5.247 billion shares outstanding as of January 20, or a bit over 200,000 shares per shareholder. Now, I do realize Berkshire Hathaway held about 57.35 million shares at the end of last year, but even backing that out hardly changes the per shareholder number. My impression at one time, before Apple became the financial monster it is now, was that many fanboys/girls owned a few shares (say fewer than 100) when the stock was dirt cheap just as a sign of their love for the company. That was basically how we started out, just before the iPhone made the company finances explode, and we were lucky enough to get on the bandwagon while AAPL was still cheap enough to be affordable for our limited investment funds. Perhaps many of those folks decided to cash in once the big firms started the surge that we are still riding today. Or perhaps, more likely, many of us unsophisticated investors decided not to press their luck once they had, for instance, doubled their initial investment. So given that many of investment houses now have substantial AAPL holdings, even if not approaching Uncle Warren's, the number of non-institutional AAPL holders is much smaller than I would have guessed. I guess we are fortunate that a large percentage of the smart ones hang around AFB. Institutional holdings account for almost 60% of those shares. That leaves a little over 2 billion shares for everyone else. 26,000 still doesn't seem right. According to the SEC website, most brokerage firms will automatically hold your securities in "street name". Individuals are the beneficial owner but not listed as the owner on the issuer's books. That could account for hundreds of thousands more than the 26,000 shareholders the article indicates.
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chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,431
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Post by chinacat on Feb 28, 2017 11:24:42 GMT -8
For those who may be interested, Jim Dalrymple has posted his impressions of today's shareholders meeting on his The Loop site.
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Post by artman1033 on Feb 28, 2017 11:26:26 GMT -8
in other news Amazon's AWS is down.... It seems to be affecting many sites from which I download/stream.
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Post by rickag on Feb 28, 2017 12:44:06 GMT -8
Any mention of a dividend increase?
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Post by incorrigible on Feb 28, 2017 12:49:16 GMT -8
Any mention of a dividend increase? That comes with April earnings.
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JDSoCal
Member
Aspiring oligarch
Posts: 4,186
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Post by JDSoCal on Feb 28, 2017 14:02:26 GMT -8
Keep in mind that, if a feature is obvious, it is not innovative. One direction Apple seems to be going is no moving parts, judging from the solid state home "button" on current gen iPhones. Solid state "buttons" are both elegant and a magnitude more durable. And where are the remaining buttons? On the sides of the phone. It's not hard to imagine haptic "buttons" replacing the metal volume and on/off buttons, and the ring/silent switch, if the iPhone had glass sides. And no seams between the front and sides would look more elegant. Of course Apple could add "buttons" if they were haptic. Perhaps analogous to the Touch Bar on Macbook Pros. I'd like to think that, eventually, there will be no need to touch the home button to unlock the phone. Perhaps Touch ID will be integrated throughout the entire glass parts of the phone. And where are your fingers when you first pick up the phone? Typically on the sides. So immediate one-handed unlock already done by the time you have the phone raised to your face. Perhaps unlock even integrated with other tasks. You send me a joke in a text, I reach for the phone, I pick it up, and immediately select a 😂 emoji with my thumb that is also an unlock. Then again, iPhone 10 might be completely controlled by retina scanning (especially for those with small hands).
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Post by rickag on Feb 28, 2017 14:58:36 GMT -8
Any mention of a dividend increase? That comes with April earnings. Damn, I am getting old and senile.
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Post by rickag on Feb 28, 2017 15:04:16 GMT -8
Keep in mind that, if a feature is obvious, it is not innovative. One direction Apple seems to be going is no moving parts, judging from the solid state home "button" on current gen iPhones. Solid state "buttons" are both elegant and a magnitude more durable. And where are the remaining buttons? On the sides of the phone. It's not hard to imagine haptic "buttons" replacing the metal volume and on/off buttons, and the ring/silent switch, if the iPhone had glass sides. And no seams between the front and sides would look more elegant. Of course Apple could add "buttons" if they were haptic. Perhaps analogous to the Touch Bar on Macbook Pros. I'd like to think that, eventually, there will be no need to touch the home button to unlock the phone. Perhaps Touch ID will be integrated throughout the entire glass parts of the phone. And where are your fingers when you first pick up the phone? Typically on the sides. So immediate one-handed unlock already done by the time you have the phone raised to your face. Perhaps unlock even integrated with other tasks. You send me a joke in a text, I reach for the phone, I pick it up, and immediately select a 😂 emoji with my thumb that is also an unlock. Then again, iPhone 10 might be completely controlled by retina scanning (especially for those with small hands). That sounds very Buck Rodger's to me. Question though, if there are no buttons and activation is on the curved glass, what prevents inadvertent activation? Maybe Apple has solved this, they are very sharp engineers.
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Post by Luckychoices on Feb 28, 2017 15:25:42 GMT -8
For those who may be interested, Jim Dalrymple has posted his impressions of today's shareholders meeting on his The Loop site. Thanks for posting the link, chinacat. Dalrymple wrote an excellent summary of the meeting. My wife and I got there about 7:10 AM and there was already quite a line. The first person in line got there at 6:00 AM so next year I'm expecting folks will show up at 5:00 AM if not the day before like the original iPhone lines. I was surprised that the BOD didn't file into the room until 9:00 AM and the meeting started 5 minutes late. After introducing Bruce Sewell to run the formal meeting, Tim Cook came back on stage about 9:45 AM, after the formal meeting was over, and spent about 10 minutes giving his remarks. He showed the Apple Air Pod commercial that most of us have seen on TV (the guy walking on walls) but it was amazingly more impressive to see it on such a large screen with a great sound system. He started taking questions at 9:55 AM and called first on Jesse Jackson who said some nice things about Apple and Tim Cook in particular but, unfortunately, took a long 5 minutes to say it, which was 1/5 of the time devoted to questions. One of the questions that resonated with me is when a shareholder asked about some way to reward long term holders of the stock in addition to the dividend that anyone can get by just buying shares prior to the ex-dividend date. Tim said that he and Luca Maestri had actually discussed this but were unable to determine a workable solution. If I can remember anything important that I left out, I'll update the post but Jim Dalrymple's comments covered the meeting very well. I posted a few photos at the link below for anyone interested. Couldn't take photos during the meeting so they're all taken before or just after the meeting. I'm looking forward to next years meeting for two reasons: #1. It'll be held at Apple Park #2. I'm guessing this board will be well represented by those of you who live many miles away. Random shots from this morning's Apple Shareholder's Meeting====================================== Notes from Apple’s shareholder meeting
I attended Apple’s shareholder meeting at the company’s Cupertino, California headquarters this morning as a member of the media. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the meeting and received a standing ovation before giving a few brief remarks, including a look at next year’s meeting.
“This will be the last shareholder meeting in this room,” said Cook. “Next year, we will invite you out to the Steve Jobs Theater and we hope you can join us there.”
Of course, the Steve Jobs Theater is part of Apple’s new campus, Apple Park, which is scheduled to open in April.
As with all shareholder meetings, this one was about business first. There were a number of proposals that make up the formal part of the meeting. For example, the election of Apple’s board of directors, approval of executive compensation, and approval of Ernst and Young as the accounting firm. All of these were passed by shareholders.
There were a couple of shareholder proposals including a call for mandatory diversity on the board of directors and senior management of the company. There was also a proposal for Apple to disclose to shareholders all of the organizations it donates money to during the year. Both of these proposals were voted down by shareholders.
Moderated by Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Government Affairs, the formal part of the meeting came to a close after about 40 minutes.
Tim Cook’s Q&A
The most entertaining part of the shareholder’s meeting was when Tim Cook came back for an informal Q&A with shareholders.
Cook started by giving a few remarks on the company’s products, noting the iPhone sold 78 million units last year, becoming the top selling smartphone.
“Our goal has never been to sell the most, but sell the best,” said Cook. “But we did sell the most last quarter.”
Cook also noted that Apple Watch had its best quarter ever and, if Services were its own company, it would be a Fortune 100 one. Apple has over 20 million Apple Music subscribers but Apple sells subscriptions to other services like Netflix. Cook said there were 150 million subscribers that interacted with Apple.
Once Cook’s remarks were finished, he invited shareholders to ask questions.
Rev. Jesse Jackson thanked Cook and Apple for protecting customer’s privacy and standing up for citizens.
One woman asked Cook for a “really smart dumb phone” and she wanted it to be round.
When asked about its commitment to the pro community, Cook noted how important those people were to Apple.
There’s still a ton of revenue outside of iPhone,” said Cook. The Mac, Watch, services, iPad are all essential to Apple’s growth. You will see us do more in the pro area. The creative community is very important to us.”
One interesting question was about whether or not Apple had plans for a touchscreen Mac. At first Cook responded with, “We don’t like to talk about future products,” but he then made his position clear.
“Expect us to do more and more where people will view it as a laptop replacement, but not a Mac replacement—the Mac does so much more.”
The best quote I’ve ever heard from Cook on the argument for making a touchscreen Mac instead of, or in conjunction with, an iPad, came at the end of the shareholder’s meeting.
“To merge these worlds, you would lose the simplicity of one and the power of the other.” said Cook.
Well said.
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JDSoCal
Member
Aspiring oligarch
Posts: 4,186
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Post by JDSoCal on Feb 28, 2017 15:30:52 GMT -8
Question though, if there are no buttons and activation is on the curved glass, what prevents inadvertent activation? Maybe Apple has solved this, they are very sharp engineers. Yeah, of course Apple tests prototypes for an extended period in the wild (as we learned from the iPhone-left-in-the-bar episode). I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way. Keep in mind the haptics in the current iPhone are very rudimentary compared to where they may evolve to some day, based on some of the patents I've seen. I mean electric "buttons" that feel like actual raised buttons. Or, you know, nipples in the case of porn.
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Post by rickag on Feb 28, 2017 17:26:36 GMT -8
Question though, if there are no buttons and activation is on the curved glass, what prevents inadvertent activation? Maybe Apple has solved this, they are very sharp engineers. Yeah, of course Apple tests prototypes for an extended period in the wild (as we learned from the iPhone-left-in-the-bar episode). I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way. Keep in mind the haptics in the current iPhone are very rudimentary compared to where they may evolve to some day, based on some of the patents I've seen. I mean electric "buttons" that feel like actual raised buttons. Or, you know, nipples in the case of porn. I believe!
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Post by mrentropy on Mar 1, 2017 6:43:28 GMT -8
Question though, if there are no buttons and activation is on the curved glass, what prevents inadvertent activation? Maybe Apple has solved this, they are very sharp engineers. Yeah, of course Apple tests prototypes for an extended period in the wild (as we learned from the iPhone-left-in-the-bar episode). I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way. Keep in mind the haptics in the current iPhone are very rudimentary compared to where they may evolve to some day, based on some of the patents I've seen. I mean electric "buttons" that feel like actual raised buttons. That is the most compelling use of a "curved" display. Haptic buttons would be amazing
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