Apple's share price takes a beating: Quelle Surprise

Yesterday, The Telegraph newspaper in London reported that Apple saw almost $94 billion wiped off their stock valuation after analysts...

"..warned demand for its new iPhone would be weaker than expected."

What were you expecting?

I think I was hoping.

Hoping to be blown away.

I wasn't.

Neither were you, right?

Steady as she goes.

The same regular phrases about the iPhone being "the best iPhone we've ever made".

I don't doubt that.

The iPhone 16 is the best iPhone out there. It is incrementally demonstrably better.

When you sit back and look at what Apple has achieved and continues to achieve with these devices, the silicon, the software, the integration, the... everything. It's deeply, deeply impressive.

It continues to be deeply impressive.

The major question, though, is it £1,400 impressive?

I am thinking about upgrading my MacBook Air. I think it's about 2 years old. I don't actually know. I can't remember what it is. I think it's the M2. Let me see.

Ok I looked. It's an M2 2022. I haven't felt the need to upgrade but I'm thinking about it because I'm doing a lot more serious, demanding things than I was 2 years ago.

The basic version of the M3 is £1,299:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max with 512GB of storage is £1,399. One hundred pounds more.

We know this.

It's par for the course.

This is how it goes.

Last year I sat out the upgrade cycle and didn't bother buying the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

This year, I am seriously considering doing the same again.

Apple Intelligence was a draw.

Is a draw.

I'm not sure.

Well, none of us are. iOS 18 is here. But we won't get Apple Intelligence until sometime in December. Something like that.

Is it enough to cause me to want to upgrade?

Professionally, I think I'd like to experience how Apple have actually integrated this - so, actually, there is a key angle there that might convince me.

But...

I certainly haven't bothered reaching for the Pre-Order functionality yet.

Especially, dear reader, when Huawei are throwing things like the Mate XT out into the market and really showing a fascinating vision of how my personal mobile lifestyle could look. Apple looks deeply, deeply uninspiring.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say the whole Apple experience is in need of disruption. Serious, compelling disruption.

The app ecosystem, the app UI... none of this is good enough.

I'm having to work at the interface paradigm now. Every single day, I need to work at the Apple iPhone interface.

It's laborious.

It's become increasingly laborious, repetitive and annoying:

Oh, switch on the lights. Fire up Hue.

Oh, change the Sonos track. Fire up Sonos.

Check my bank balance. Fire up Monzo.

Arrrgh.

It's so boring. It's so annoying. It's so... unseamless.

Why am I having to do this. Why am I tapping and swiping up and tapping and sliding and ... why am I having to bear all this mental and physical cognitive load?

10 years ago this was flipping brilliant.

15 years ago, 2009, the app ecosystem was just astonishing, especially when you were comparing to Nokia's Symbian offerings.

Maybe what I need is a Generative UI.

I want the thing to do the thinking. I want it - the device, the "OS", my agent, whatever, I want it to be ready. I don't want to go searching for features, functions or capabilities.

I want it to be there. Ready. I want it to be totally contextually aware.

When I am sitting in my daughter's room in near darkness as she drifts off to sleep, there are a few obvious controls I need right in front of me: Sonos controls and lighting controls. So surface them.

I don't mean surface the Sonos app to me.

No.

I don't need a whole app. I need the control.

I don't want to go hunting for it.

I know I can pull down, swipe up, whatever, if I want to get to specific controls. But, why am I having to do the work? Why isn't it thinking for me?

Don't surface the whole app, just the feature I need.

Don't show me the whole Hue app. I don't need to be flicking through the kitchen lights and so on, to find the control I need.

But I have to.

It's the only way.

Yes, I know I can build various different menus and widgets and whatnot.

But I want this to happen real-time, dynamically.

Perhaps we'll see this with Apple Intelligence. Perhaps I'll need to buy the new iPhone and check it out.

As for Apple: It is fundamentally a brilliant job they're doing. I know I'm asking for the world here.

I'm sure their share price will rebound swiftly.

They're still making a ton of money from me (and you), even when I'm not buying new iPhones thanks to the default Apple 'Premier' subscription I am happily paying for every month: £37 x 12 is £444 a year. That's roughly equivalent to the 35-percent-ish gross margin of an iPhone 16 Pro Max, ever year, anyway.

I think we'll see a lot of people buy the new iPhone 16 over the next few months. I may well be one of them. I don't think the iPhone sales figures will be anywhere near 'record-breaking' but I would imagine they will be ok. Just ok.

But for context, "just ok" will be billions and billions of dollars!

Are you buying one?