Because it ties executive compensation more to the whims of analysts and quarterly movements of the stock price at the expense of long term thinking not subject to the whims of the market.
There is nothing that mandates that performance compensation be tightly coupled to short term financial instruments. Performance should be tied to metrics that actually measure performance. Once of the principle problems with how the CEO compensation is actually implemented is that it is hooked to performance the primary strategic duties of an executive, but hooked to things that look like they are measuring performance (while actually more so measuring short range tactical decisions).
It aligns the CEO's interest toward short term traders, at the expense of the company as a whole, as well as long-term holders of the stock.
The absolutely trivial adjustment to that is to hook compensate to long term stock prices. Problem solved.
And yet there has been a lot of pressure from Wall Street and analysts to see that stock rise again.
Wall Street would have you pimp your grandmother out on a corner if it would make a quick buck.
the primary problem Wall Street has had is Apple sitting on a giant stockpile of money and not doing any productive with it other than just growing it bigger.
Wall Street isn't the problem as much as Apple employees whose either options or stock grants may be close to underwater. That was a flawed HR compensation problem ( issuing hyper inflated options/grants to employees).
Long term there are several forces that put pressure on Apple's stock price to go up. Short term it isn't a big issue. This Mac Pro as a short term gimmick to boost stock price is a joke. It will do no such thing.
So all of a sudden Apple doesn't make decisions based on profit? Especially given the downward trend of their stock.
The stock was irrationally prices by the market. There is no reason to loose tons of sleep over that. Eventually the correction was going to come because in the long run the irrational players tend not to win out in the market.
Apple makes GOBS of profit. They have money coming out of their eyeballs. Pragmatically Apple sits on top of one the world's largest hedge funds ( probably the largest single owner privately held one). The point is they ALREADY make a profit. They don't need new gimmicks to make more profit. What they make now is plenty.
Yes I know this product has been in development longer than recent troubles but my point to the other person was that Apple isn't some benevolent force for making the product simply better for you as he was arguing but better for themselves. Disposability certainly plays into that.
It isn't a disposable product. The characterization that this is in the same category tissuess , toothbrush , etc. is just spin.
There is no reason why a vendor can't make a profit and deliver a better product. It is just spin to couch that as mutually conflicting goals/objectives.
Is it really controversial to you that this new design is shortening the lifespan of the Mac Pro and is a step away from what the rest of the market standard is in terms of lifespan of such a high end product.
The lifespan of the new Mac Pro isn't going to get any shorter. The current one wasn't longer than Apple's standard support policy and they new one isn't going to be any shorter.
For users whose workload has largely plateaued relative to technology the Mac Pro will work just fine. Your implicit assertion that the Mac Pro usage lifecycle is only determined by those users who have a very high turn over in components is what is totally unsubstantiated. Standard depreciation typically lead to machines being cycled every 3-5 years. Those are bigger factors in the market than someone who needs to change GPU cards about as often as they buy a new item of clothing.
I'm not sure how shifting as you say or to put it better fragmenting your market helps you sell more but ok.
It isn't fragmenting the market as much as focusing on specific set of customers. Frankly it is more fragmented to chase after "everybody" with a machine that tries to do "everything".
. But I think your comment here misses my broader point about the value in general the Mac Pro use to have to where it is now with this design. It's not simply about the lifecycle but also the flexibility and cost to upgrade.
Outside of GPUs cards where is the major difference between this and other single CPU package workstations? Note the above doesn't include form over function.
Debatable. The early piece on this website wasn't impressive. Though those don't account for the increase in GPU and yes we will need to see code written to take advantage of that. But the step down from 2 to 1 CPU, less ram slots, and lack of PCIe all seem to be disappointing trade-offs for a lot of people on these forums.
The number of CPU sockets ( and associated DIMMs ) slots has little to with the major changes in design. If Apple is pulling out of the dual socket market whether this new Mac Pro is cylinder or rectangular shape does make that much of a difference. Lost of those other system vendors sell workstations variants without dual CPU sockets.
If alot of people on these forums were buying dual package Mac Pros they'd still be around. They weren't. Far more folks bought the single package version for numerous reasons.
that has absolutely nothing to do with Apple gimmicks to goose profits as the primary actors were and are the buyers not the seller.
Is Apple looking to focus on products on growing markets. Absolutely, purely a short term strategy? No. (e.g, the AppleTV which is much bigger now, but Apple pursued that for several years ).
Meh are you really going to take a bat to my choice of adjective? Outrage, disappointment, disapproval, anger, frustration - whatever. Most Mac Pro owners have been loyal to Apple.
Sigh, the "Apple owes us, we saved Apple" narcissistic cow manure. Whatever.
Is it really that childish to vocalize this frustration when Apple seems pretty careless with the relationship, no regular updates, bad updates, final cut pro x, etc?
communicating with apple with constructive feedback and vocalizing frustration/outrage are not the same thing. It actually is childish to conflate those two very different concepts.
In general I'm kind of surprised and disappointed by the attitude and antagonism of your post. It also doesn't seem like you read the post I was responding to.
Not sure why surprised. I'm pretty much on the anti FUD/blowing smoke side for whatever direction. I read the post. The characterization though of Apple's stock being low is just false. Likewise your characterization of the Mac Pro as a disposable product. It isn't. And yes the bulk of most CEOs compensation packages is based on performance. Do many of them meddle with the metrics used to measure performance? Yes. However, tht doesn't really make it non performance related.
