Apple has made a lot of people a lot of money. If you would have invested $1000 in 1980 and purchased Apple stock, that $1000 would be worth $500,000 today. I doubt you can find that rate of return elsewhere.
If true, that's an annual rate of return of 17%. While not too shabby it's really not all that awesome either.
If you invested $1000 in Microsoft in 1986, you'd have over $1 million today. Not counting dividends.
Amazon in 2001 would be $280,000 today. An average return of about 40% per year.
Intel in 1978 would be about $250,000 today.
I can find any number of companies that no longer exist after sustaining double digit return on investment for 10-30 years. RIM of course. Nortel (a neighbour of RIM than when from $100billion+ to zero 10 years ago). Yahoo, Digital Equipment, etc. Why do you think past performance has anything at all to do with the future?
Not sure what that has to do with the thread topic anyway. Today's story is that Apple is no longer a Trillion dollar company, and given that the Era of $2000 iPads and iPhones, $4000 Mac Minis, and no Mac Pros is here, their future is looking pretty bleak. It's been clear for years Apple is burning their future to make huge short term profits. It seems like you're only bragging about the short term profit while ignoring the fact that it will cost them the company sooner rather than later.
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I remember when the average cost of a car hit $10,000 years ago. That was a shock for many. But after awhile it became the norm, and then it hit $20,000, and now it's $30,000. Prices will continue to rise for everything. Heck, my house that I bought 32 years ago for $72,000 is now worth $230,000.
$30,000 today equals $9,800 in 1980. That increase from $10k to 30k is nothing but inflation. If the trend continues the same way, the car will cost $90,000 in 2056 (another 38 years from now). The car did not get more expensive, your dollars got less valuable.
Cars are also commodities at this point that are engineered to a point where they don't really drop in real dollars.
Apple has more than doubled their product prices since Timmy took over. While at the same time innovations across the tech world have led to massive price drops everywhere except Apple. Look at the minuscule storage in Macs at absurd prices and compare it to the industry normal prices for storage. Apple has become a ripoff, pure and simple. And the market is rapidly waking up to that.