443. Apple, Inc. -- I Hate It

BROWDERBOOKS

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What the point of it is, aside from denying it to anyone else, escapes me.  So far, it has proved utterly useless.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  But when some domain name registering outfit offered to register it for only $97, marked down from $300, I knew to immediately delete their e-mail.  

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                           Apple, Inc. -- I Hate It

Hate Apple, Inc., the company I love to love?  Until last Friday, such a thought was unthinkable.  I hate Big Tobacco, loathe Big Pharma, and harbor undying enmity for Big Oil and certain other conglomerations that pollute our lives, but for Apple, Inc., as longtime followers of this blog well know, I nurse a love that throbs to the very crux of my being.  And this when Big Tech -- such monsters as Apple, Amazon, and Google --  are being called to account worldwide.  Why this passion of mine?  Many reasons:

• It gave me my computer, an ancient Mac desktop that I have had for years, ancient but still gamely functioning, the best computer I have ever owned.
• The nearby Apple store on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, spacious and flooded with light, has served me well.  Smiling young people in blue outfits greet me at the door, answer questions, and give directions, and on the top floor a Genius does wonders to repair or enhance my ancient desktop.
• Surging to new heights in the market, Apple stock is sexy.  It's "with it," it's "hot," it dazzles.
• As of 2018, Apple has the highest market value ($961 billion)  in the world, and is also, with net income of $59 billion, the most profitable.
• Years ago, on a modest scale, I made what's known as a "killing" in the stock.

          About that "killing": years ago, when Apple's cofounder and presiding genius, Steve Jobs, was rumored to be ill, the stock plunged.  Jobs was Apple's Wunderkind, the guy who again and again created gadgets that no one needed but everyone wanted, a master of invention and design.  Like Edison with the phonograph and the electric light, and like Bell with the telephone, he changed the way we live.  In photos he himself was West Coast casual.  In contrast to the more formal jacket-and-tie look of Wall Street, he had the California look: super informal, with either a sweater or a shirt with an open collar, and plain, old, ordinary jeans.  Which mattered not at all, for his gadgets flew off the shelves, and his computers were slender, sleek, and sexy.  But now the market was saying that, without him, Apple would lose its magic, its fantastic moneymaking ways.  

Steve Jobs, displaying a Mac laptop in San Francisco, 2008.
Matthew Yohe

          I disagreed.  Even without him, I figured, Apple would keep its pizzazz, continue to innovate and dazzle. And so, following the old rule, buy when everyone else is selling, I bought.  Not a huge amount, just what I could manage, but I bought.  And soon enough, it happened: the stock bottomed out and soared, soared, soared, and with a few slumps along the way, has been soaring ever since.  Oh glory!  A modest commitment, but the best investment I have ever made.  I still get a warm, oozy feeling in my innards knowing that, just this once, I was right when everyone else was wrong. And so, through thick and thin, Apple and its stock are precious to me: my one and only corporate inamorato, my sine qua non, my Big Rock Candy Mountain.  Maybe Ayn Rand was right: greed is good.  (Of course.  But for whom?)

          When Jobs, who was indeed ill, left the company, I held on to my stock.  Likewise when, in 2011 at age 56, he died of pancreatic cancer, for I had faith in the company and in Jobs's successor, Tim Cook.  Though born and raised in Alabama, Cook was another tall, lean, spectacled Californian who favored unpretentious jeans (except when admitted to the Oval Office).  And gay, too, as he announced in 2014, the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to do so.  He did it, he said, after getting letters from young kids struggling with their sexual orientation.   

          One more reason to hang on to my stock: in 2012 Cook declared the first dividend since 1995.  It was modest, as dividends go, but a dividend.  What else could he do, being under stockholder pressure, with the company sitting on $100 billions in cash?  And those billions took him to the White House, whose occupant respects fortunes and success, and to meetings with foreign heads of state as well.  Such is our democratic aristocracy.  Movie and TV stars have money, fame, and glamour, but CEOs have power and respect, and it takes them far.  

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The gray-haired Cook on the right.  We know who's on the left.
The subject of their talk: trade.  April 25, 2018.

          Even if Apple could no longer trot out amazing new gadgets, I was sure that just updating the old ones would keep the cash flowing in.  And if it opened stores in China, where a new middle class was yearning for Western paraphernalia, and especially for the magic of Apple's products, the inflow of cash could only increase and accelerate.  (A concern that took him to the White House for a talk on trade and tariffs.)  So I, who dislike gadgets and keep them to a minimum in my life, have continued to love Apple, Inc., and its products.  All corporations have their faults, and Apple is no exception, but the very thought of the company still warms me to the cockles of my heart.  Until now, at least.

          So why this change of heart?  Last Friday I made a momentous and long-delayed decision: I would get a new computer.  My old one still worked well, but for many reasons it needed to be upgraded, and soon.  So I ordered one from Apple -- a desktop like my old one -- and paid an extra $9 for expedited delivery: it would come by 12 noon that very day.  Soon I got an e-mail telling me that it had left the warehouse and was on its way.  I was thrilled.  New vistas opened to me, things my old Mac couldn't do.  A new Mac at last: it was really happening!  

          Tracking it, I learned that it would arrive at 10:59 -- in ten minutes!  I got everything ready, knew exactly where I would lodge it, pending installation.  But 10:59 came and went: no computer.  I tracked it again: it would arrive at 11:30.  Hoping they would bring it up the four flights, I planned a generous tip, counted the minutes, paced the floor, waited.

          But 11:30 came and went: still no computer.  But they were pledged to deliver it by 12 noon; that's what I had paid for.  And at 12 noon, predictably now, no computer.  Yet tracking said it had been delivered -- an error or a flat-out lie -- for downstairs there was nothing, just an empty vestibule yearning to be filled.

          With difficulty I contacted Apple Support by phone, got profuse apologies, was told that they would refund my payment -- not just the $9 but the entire cost of the computer.  So my wasted morning ended with the letdown of letdowns:  I would have to buy the damn thing all over again!  

          Like a dank fog, disillusion crept in, dampening my affection for Apple.  It had betrayed me in the worst way, raising high hopes only to deflate them.  Will I order another Mac?  Of course; I've already done so, and it should come next Tuesday.  Will I continue to see in Apple, Inc., the object of my dreams, my sine qua, my Big Rock Candy Mountain?  Tuesday will tell.  Meanwhile, that mountain is beginning to look a bit worn, a bit barren, and maybe more rock than candy.  Alas.

Coming soon:  As promised before, either a scientist once hailed worldwide but now forgotten by us, or a killer of 52 billion people. Unless, of course, some personal crisis barges in and plants itself in my psyche.

©   2020   Clifford Browder