
Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results - ucha
http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/apple-reports-record-first-quarter-results.html
======
hasperdi
Mac sales...

    
    
      Q1 2016 5312 units, revenue $6,746m
      Q4 2016 4886 units, revenue $5,739m
      Q1 2017 5374 units, revenue $7,244m
    

So people are buying more new Macs despite what the press, HN, Reddit crowds
are saying?

~~~
tptacek
After having owned a new (non-Touchbar) Mac for the last few weeks, I cannot
fathom what the meltdown on HN was about this thing. It's the best Macbook
I've ever owned --- and I've used nothing but Apple laptops since the Titanium
Powerbook.

I _hate_ the USB-C dongle and do miss MagSafe, but I wouldn't trade the new
machine for the old one.

After everything I'd heard, particularly about the keyboard, I put off buying
a new Macbook. Ultimately, I was forced by circumstance to buy one, or I'd
have coasted on my 2-year-old MBP for a few more years. I feel sheepish about
that plan now.

~~~
jclardy
I own one and I agree it is great. These seem to be the issues others have
with it:

1\. The price - Personally I don't think it is justified to essentially bump
the "actual" MBP (meaning touchbar and 29w processor) by $500 for what we get.
The original retina 13" were similar price wise at release, but the display
was a massive upgrade. The touchbar not so much.

2\. No kaby lake - this is an intel release timing issue, if you want Kaby
Lake wait a few more months.

3\. Questionable utility of the touchbar - I own one and it is useful for
anything with linear editing...so audio or video. Otherwise I just use it for
media functions just like I would with physical keys (I don't use the function
keys.) It could be more useful in the future given more software support.

4\. Dongles - This is another temporary problem until devices are all USB-C.

5\. No magsafe - Sad, but there is one advantage in that you can now do
power/display/connectivity all over one port...and I can't go back from that.
I have an LG 4k monitor with USB-C so I just plug in one cable and get my 4k
display, mechanical keyboard, and speakers just from that. And I can rearrange
my desk to put my laptop on either side of the screen. For me I'm either
plugged in at my desk or wireless elsewhere, so tripping over a cable was
never really an issue for me once we hit the 5+ hour battery mark.

6\. The keyboard - I love it, and switch off from my Whitefox with Cherry mx
blues on my desk. Most mobile keyboards feel squishy to me but the new
switches they are using give a lot of stability and a pretty solid click as
well, even though they have such little travel.

~~~
hackuser
> No magsafe

Has anyone seen or personally heard of someone yanking their laptop, of any
brand or model, onto the floor via the power cable? I haven't. I instinctively
think it's a risk, but reality says otherwise. It seems to me like a solution
looking for a problem; the only reason I ever suspected that it's a real
problem is that Apple made the Magsafe connectors - maybe they had some data
that I didn't. Now I suspect it was all to address unfounded fears in
consumers.

I've seen it happen plenty of times with cell phones, however. I wouldn't mind
a Magsafe connector for an iPhone.

~~~
yaegers
>I instinctively think it's a risk, but reality says otherwise.

What an argument. Do you happen to have Auto insurance? How about fire
insurance? Did your house burn down even once? Mine didn't so far and yet here
I am still saying fire insurance is very much needed if you own a house.

And that is exactly what the MagSafe was. Insurance incase this happens. And
as you can already tell by the other responses, this does happen. And even if
it only happens once, you will look at thousands of dollars worth of damage.

So, no thank you with the non MagSafe MacBooks. Having a choice if I want that
yanked off my table to the left or the right depending on which USB-C
connector I used to charge it is not a selling point.

~~~
astrodust
MagSafe made sense when laptops had such terrible life they were almost always
plugged in out of necessity.

Now if you're at your desk you're probably plugged in to power and a few other
things that aren't break-away. If you're not at your desk you're probably not
plugged in. The biggest snag I've always hit is the headphone connection. It's
the most likely to get yanked if your headphones get caught up on a chair.

It was a convenient solution at the time. Now it's a bit of an anachronism.

If you like insurance, get a break-away USB-C cable for each of your devices:
[https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-
po...](https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cable)

------
emdowling
The interesting takeaway for me is that services is now the equal second
biggest revenue centre at 9%. It is still way behind iPhone, but it is growing
at a phenomenal rate. By all accounts Apple is just getting started with
services (e.g.: rumoured original video content, video streaming service) so
we can expect this to grow even more.

Finally Apple is capitalising on its install base to sell more addons after
sale. This offsets slowing hardware upgrade rates, although not sure if it is
enough to offset iPad declines.

The narrative often heard is that if they want to shift to being a services
company, Apple would need to dramatically change its org structure. I may be
wrong, but no one has ever monetised consumers with recurring monthly revenue
as successfully as Apple has (utility companies and mortgage brokers
excluded!). And it didn't even need an org restructure!

~~~
hyperbovine
> By all accounts Apple is just getting started with services ... so we can
> expect this to grow even more.

That's a very ... charitable way to put it. Another take would be that Apple,
whose former CEO, over a decade ago, simultaneously oversaw Pixar and sat on
the board of Disney, complete and totally missed the boat on streaming,
original content, and cloud services. Think back to 2006: Netflix was a
service that mailed DVDs, Amazon Prime was a year old, Dropbox was not around,
Spotify was not around, Google was still focused on core services like maps
and mail. Considering who their CEO was at the time, his connections, and
their first mover advantage on digital entertainment and cloud, it absolutely
amazes me that every single one of these companies was allowed to come in and
eat Apple's lunch in some form or another.

~~~
macrael
The common explanation for this is that the content owners did not let them.
Terrified of what iTunes did to the music business, they cut deals with not-
Apple to prevent a monopoly from becoming more important than they were.

I don't know how to prove that, but it's a story that resonates. For a while I
bought all my music exclusively from iTunes but now I subscribe to three
different video services.

~~~
maverick_iceman
I'm curious, is there a source for that? It would be interesting to find out
the backstory.

~~~
0xCMP
I've heard it before, but I don't have a source either. I wouldn't be
surprised to see some mention of it in a Wired article.

------
djrogers
Since September I've been reading nothing but how much of a failure the iPhone
7 is, and how removing the headphone jack was going to be the final straw for
Apple. Similar story for the new MacBook Pros.

It seems that the geekerati have very different priorities from the rest of
the world, and maybe Apple still knows what's it's doing.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
I love my iPhone 7. I've had it for a little over a month and I've already
taken some of the best photos of the last ten years, including dslr photos
I've taken.

~~~
seibelj
Every 2 years I upgrade my iPhone, and every 2 years I get to buy the best
phone I've ever owned. Not worth arguing in these places about religious wars.
I try to appreciate how amazing everything is rather than lose my mind over a
plug changing formats.

------
MarkMc
Meh. A bank account earning compound interest will achieve "all-time record
quarterly revenue" every single quarter.

Apple's quarterly profit is only up by 2.4% per share. Let's look at earnings
per share for each calendar year [1]:

2016: $8.35 (down 11%)

2015: $9.42 (up 27%)

2014: $7.42 (up 29%)

2013: $5.76 (down 9%)

2012: $6.30

Looks to me like Apple's growth spurt is over.

[1] Note 12 in annual reports at
[http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm?DocType=Annual&ndq_keyword...](http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm?DocType=Annual&ndq_keyword=)

~~~
bduerst
I've always wondered why people use EPS - What if Apple issued more
outstanding shares during this timeframe?

Wouldn't that skew this metric without representing that?

~~~
bkjelden
EPS is only really relevant if given in the same breath as share price.

P/E ratio is the more meaningful (and shares-outstanding-invariant) metric.

------
Dramatize
My new laptop is the buggiest Apple product I've owned.

Programs are always crashing, has issues waking up, and has connection issue
with the new LG monitor.

~~~
diminoten
I've had no issues, and am pleasantly surprised by how happy I am with the new
keyboard.

~~~
chadcmulligan
yes, I'm the same (15" MBP). I think it's the nicest laptop I've ever owned.
It's thin, light, incredible battery life, very powerful. I really like the
keyboard, the travel once you get used to it makes other keyboards feel heavy.
Trying to use the touchbar but maybe it will become useful as time goes by. I
use it for swift coding and I can't fault it.

------
yig
It was a 14 week quarter rather than the typical 13 week quarter. Multiply all
the numbers by 13/14 and you'll see it was a year over year decline.

~~~
retromario
From CFO Maestri on the Q&A call with analysts: "2:15 pm: We had the benefit
of a 14th week, but this was offset by several factors including less channel
fill than last year and a one-time $548 million patent judgment receipt last
year."

[http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/](http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/)

~~~
toyg
Channel fill is fairly irrelevant (whose fault is it that your distributors
don't want more of your stuff "just in case"?) and the cash is also fairly
irrelevant - what matters for momentum is the number of units shifted and
that's lagging everywhere except iPhones (and, if you trust them, the Watch).

------
breatheoften
I bought into apple after falling for osx during college right around the
financial crisis. I've been a fan of their approach to products since then.

But the new macbook pro's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the
apple store for a few minutes and could barely type on the (horrible)
keyboard. I played with the touchbar and immediately found myself trying to
touch the screen -- something that as a fan I definitely knew would not work.

Even with just a few moments use, it was immediately utterly clear to me that
to the extent that the touchbar is a good idea, a touchscreen would have been
a better idea ... The good idea within the touchbar is the attempt to
'augment' the keyboard/mouse user interface with touch -- augment, not
replace. Microsoft tried to make touch/keyboard-mouse interchangeable but in
real-life not all elements on the screen should be touchable -- the touchbar
realizes this and deserves props for getting that much right. But even after
acknowledging that success, the touchbar is just ... wrong -- its not any
easier to lift your hands from the keyboard and use the touchbar than it would
be to touch the screen -- its actually harder because you have to take your
eyes from the screen and look somewhere you would not normally look to aim
your fingers.

I hope the idea of 'augmenting' the macOS user interface introduced with
touchbar evolves to the main display -- where it might be a good idea ... I
don't know how this would be accomplished though -- maybe the api's created
for touchbar could be re-targeted towards user interface elements on the main
touch display ...

~~~
freyir
> _But the new macbook pro 's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the
> apple store for a few minutes_

Thank you for your in-depth review. Many people judged the new MacBook Pro
based on its press release alone, but you went the extra mile and used one at
the Apple Store for a few minutes.

~~~
breatheoften
To be fair to me, I wasn't trying to lie or mislead about the thoroughness of
my experience ... I suppose I was talking into a void but I at least was
conveying the truth of my experience.

My use at the apple store was enough to know I didn't want one -- which made
me glad because I sort of need a new macbook and was worried I'd buy one on
impulse.

I immediately did not like the keyboard (never happened on an apple laptop for
me before the one port Macbook which I bought for my girlfriend right when it
was announced sight unseen -- when using it I tried my best not to voice my
(immediate) criticism of the keyboard hoping that she would like my present
... She came from an old dell so anything was better than that monstrosity.
But at some point after having the macbook one for awhile she used my macbook
pro and commented how much easier the keyboard on my machine was to type on
...). I found myself unconsciously touching the display while playing around
with touchbar. Attempting to use the display as a touchscreen is something
I've never done before - even when playing with a microsoft laptop that had a
touchscreen on it.

Touching the little bar just 'felt wrong' to me ... This is certainly an
unfair assessment -- but I'm not used to that feeling with apple products -
the experience just legitimately felt bad to me.

I'm open to having changing my mind in the future or having it changed -- I'm
not really a cargo cult'er.

~~~
freyir
Sarcasm aside, it's an interesting point you make. Apple products often have
an immediate visual and tactile impact that leads to impulse buys in the
store. I haven't tried the new MacBook yet (not even in the store for a few
minutes) but you've piqued my interest.

------
bdcravens
At the end of the day, the MBP isn't built _only_ for developers and
creatives. We're a subset of the customer base, always have been. (I suspect
they sell more to soccer moms and college kids than "pros")

~~~
matt4077
This "professional" narrative is seriously annoying. I work on software 10h+ a
day, some of it is (hopefully) at the cutting edge of biology. I even get
paid. Use neural nets. And vim. So I should probably fall within the
"professional" category. At least more than "soccer mom", with regards to
gender, reproductive status, and offsprings' choice of sports.

I have never felt the need to plug in 6+ peripherals. 16GB work fine even with
a Linux and a Windows 10 virtual machine running. If I run out of battery
after 12h of working on a flight, I sleep – but I don't dream of replaceable
batteries.

Whatever all these self-professed "professionals" are doing, it sounds a lot
more like what I did in high school: spending weeks swapping components,
recompiling Linux kernels for 2% higher values at some useless benchmark,
building incredibly-convoluted setups to really finally create a media centre
rivalling Fleet Street etc.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I agree, for my workflow. I just bought a new laptop, and didn't even go for a
pro model. If I need more resources, I have a 60gig ram, 16 core VPS I can
spin up, but for most Java, Haskell, and other dev work, and for writing my
books, a plain MacBook is quite sufficient (after 1 week to get used to, and
like, the keyboard). I did toss my old external monitor for a LG 4K, a
purchase I am also really happy with.

For fun, I am writing iOS and Android app versions of my cookingspace web app,
and the MacBook also performs well enough for that.

------
adventured
I fail to see how this was a dynamite quarter, in Cook's words.

Net income shrank year over year

Operating income shrank year over year

China sales imploded by another 12%

Margins contracted

Sales growth was a piddling 4% (it didn't contract granted, I don't see how
that's "dynamite")

iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

And there's Cook cheering on the results. It reminds me of the Steve Ballmer
days under Microsoft. The profits were there, the sales were there, and yet
you could easily spot the icebergs on the horizon.

~~~
criddell
> iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

I'm a bit surprised by this. I got to try out a iPad Pro with the pencil
yesterday for the first time and came away very impressed.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
But it also costs more than a mid-range computer.

~~~
criddell
You can buy a laptop with a built-in LTE modem for less money than many cell
phones, yet people still buy phones.

------
ihuman
If you want more graphs and comparisons, MacStories created some nice visuals
for the new data

[https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q1-2017-results-
billio...](https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q1-2017-results-billion-
revenue-million-iphones-million-ipads-sold/)

------
keyle
I wonder how much if "services" is due to the iCloud revenues because iPhone
keep getting bigger, and the free hosting is not getting bigger..... Bugging
people constantly to increase storage.

------
euyyn
From the first paragraph, record results mean the company keeps growing. How
does the YoY growth compare to other years, and to other tech companies?

~~~
BoorishBears
For me the screen almost made me impulse buy in-store, it's so much more vivid
than my 2015

------
wildchild
This is actually bad news because Apple will continue this weird strategy of
pushing fancy crap for fortune.

~~~
dashoffset
If you think their products are fancy crap, would it make a difference if they
suddenly decided to sell them for half the price?

~~~
wildchild
Yes, because price and quality matters. I have luxury leather goods and they
worth every penny because awesome quality and the rest of goods just junk.

Does not work with Mac, you pay a lot and a chance that you will be in a
trouble with it is very high. Like with last MBP. Apple must spend more money
for QA and offer better hardware. I will look on their new mac mini if it will
be updated this or next year, probably it will be my last device from this
company.

Apple business is one of the greatest bubbles.

------
EGreg
Looks like Tim Cook worked hard to claw his salary back :)

------
jpalomaki
Mac might be a victim of the high profit margins. Frequent updates and
competitive pricing do no good for the profit margin. Much easier to maintain
those if you sell a bit outdated hw (thinking about Mac Pro and Mini).

What would the "markets" think if Apple sold more Macs, maintained the same
absolute profits but let the margins slip? Would that be considered as a bad
thing?

~~~
nkkollaw
I don't know if I would describe 3-year-old hardware as "a bit outdated" :-/

------
econner
Possibly a dumb question, but doesn't 2017 Q1 end in 2 months? How are they
already reporting results?

~~~
stuckagain
Financial calendars are not necessarily aligned with actual calendars.

~~~
aetherson
And, yes, specifically Apple's year ends with Q3 of the "real" calendar. Their
fiscal year is aligned with their iPhone release cycle, which is probably a
good idea.

------
mpweiher
So why hasn't the stock price tanked yet? What's wrong with the Universe?

~~~
coldcode
17B profits should count for something. That more than 7 months of Facebook's
total revenue. Apple made more in service revenue than FB made in total.

------
erickhill
How many Macs sold from the Apple refurb-shop helped push those Q1 Mac sales
figures? I bought my brand new (2015) refurb model the week the new Macs were
shown, as did several of my colleagues.

------
samfisher83
China Iphone sales took a pretty big dip, but US sales looked good and their
ASP hasn't gone down. The Chinese Market is more price sensitive than US
market.

------
arrty88
I have the 2016 touch bar pro 15 inch. Love it

------
nrjames
I can't even fathom that amount of money.

~~~
archmikhail
Analysts remain "concerned" about $AAPL growth because world forests cannot
produce enough paper for how much cash $AAPL continues to print.

~~~
sparky_z
The good news is that the Irish government uses Euros, which are made of
cotton fiber, not wood pulp.

~~~
cgh
US dollars are made of cotton and linen.

~~~
sparky_z
I almost mentioned that too (basically nobody makes money out of paper, it's
too fragile), but it ruined the snappiness of the quip.

------
andai
For everyone asking about magsafe, you can buy a usb-c to magsafe adapter. (2
parts which separate)

------
freshyill
I searched and searched to find an Apple Watch for my wife for Christmas. I
got lucky and got one on Christmas Eve at Target. I'm not shocked at all they
they made bank this quarter.

------
jhack
So nothing's going to change. Great...

------
mi100hael
That dude on Reddit must be having a melt-down.

~~~
fiatmoney
Who's "that dude on reddit"?

~~~
Gustomaximus
[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/5qprhh/by_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/5qprhh/by_popular_request_if_this_post_gets_5k_upvotes_i/)

------
scottmcleod
Now if only they would leverage their piles and piles of cash for humanity.

------
crispinb
Terrible news for developers.

~~~
crispinb
OK I'll add nuance: it's terrible news for _this_ developer (and anyone much
like him) that Apple is not facing enough commercial pressure to ever produce
another laptop that will serve his needs as well as his current MB Pro does.
This makes him sad.

~~~
tcfunk
I wanted to upvote your original post sooner, but it was previously flagged.

I am feeling some serious dissonance here as well.

I have been a MBP fan for quite some time now. I have watched the recent Apple
conferences with distaste as I see the target audience for MBP shift away from
me. I don't want to find an alternative, and I sincerely hoped the market
would not take well to the newest iteration. Looks like that's not going to be
the case.

~~~
crispinb
That original post was a tad obtuse! Anyway yes this is the point: OS X (or
macOS if I must) isn't perfect, but I have found it the best compromise for my
purposes. I very rarely have to futz with it, it's unixy enough, and it has
scads of truly excellent 3rd party software available. But the hardware
limitations might just force me to find an alternative. The latest MB Pros
tanking would have offered some hope.

------
knlje
I will never buy a computer again. You can find lots of very powerful
computers in trash bin (e.g. my current 2013 MBP). People buy a piece of very
precious materials and throw it away in 2 years. I think this is one of the
most unethical things a man can do.

You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and
you must stay up to date to remain competent. This is not true. You can manage
with less and you more than anyone else know how to handle a computer with
slightly less resources.

These kind of numbers from a company advocating this throw away culture makes
me very sad.

~~~
quickben
>You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and
you must stay up to date to remain competent.

Nah, I think I need a new computer because the $900 one I have (4 core haswell
oc to 4.6 Ghz, 16 GB ram, 3 drives) and the $600 server I have (4 core Sandy,
xeon, 32 GB ram, 5 drives), take anywhere between 2 days and 3 weeks to finish
the tasks I throw at them regularly.

Between the MLC SSDs, tons of RAM, ton of CPU power, for $1500, I wouldn't
even look at MBP from the current batch, let alone one from the last one.

I am a geek, I am competent, and I am fully planning on two new computers this
year. Just waiting to see how Zen turns out.

64GB Ram / ea. 1 GB SSDs, probably on ZFS, 8 cores / 16 threads (to stay in
the cheap consumer range). This will probably be doable for under $2k.

So, as a geek, this is what I do to remain competent, hardware wise.

TLDR: You can't just assume that because you don't need a more powerful
hardware for blogging or what have you, that the rest of us also don't need
one.

I can't manage with less, because life is short.

~~~
toor2
Can't you just use AWS or an equivalent cloud service instead of owning a
server?

~~~
quickben
I look into it every few months actually. It always turns out to be
substantially more expensive. The disk performance in vms also either arent
there, or are just too pricey.

Another part of the story is that if you roam the local sell forums, you'll
find an older Xeon servers for cheap.

So, that leaves electricity, which is not that bad.

------
piyush_soni
Wait. Isn't the revenue number _supposed_ to grow each year as long as things
are just going as they were? I've never understood Apple's fixation with the
word 'ever' for everything which is supposed to grow organically. Guess what?
Every year I get my 'highest ever' salary.

~~~
piyush_soni
People giving negative votes, do you have an objective reason for that, or you
just don't like someone bashing Apple for their hyperbole?

------
lolive
Christmas 2016 was my first time in an apple store since forever (i.e the
iphone 5). I went in and bought the last iphone with a headphone jack: the
iphone 6s.

I firmly believe a looot of people did exactly that too.

So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple (especially
since iphone 7 announcement :).

~~~
freyir
> _So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple_

I know it's 2017, but "best selling" is really more a matter of fact than
opinion.

------
bitmapbrother
Talk about setting expectations low so that they can beat the street again.

>Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2017 second quarter:
revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion

~~~
bekman
Well the coming quarter is a non-holiday.

