It was on a pretty steady upward trend until the end of 2024. The big fall was after Trump announced his tariffs.
Not exactly true ... look at 2020, where AAPL took a beating together with the rest of the industry ... only to make a gigantic recovery by the end of the year. So the question is, can we find a cure for tRumpism as fast as we did for Corona or is it a terminal sickness this time!?
It was on a pretty steady upward trend until the end of 2024. The big fall was after Trump announced his tariffs.
The stock price history is not a sure fire defense. The claim can be made that had Apple delivered on its promises, then the stock price would be much higher than it is today.
In other words the price increase from AI never materialized.
Isn’t the point of buying stock that you take a risk on supporting the company? How can you sue them?
When you buy stock, you are investing in the company. Often, the intention of buying a piece of a business is to make money. For many, buying stock is a business decision, not a show of support for the company.
As with anything, people get upset if they have been lied to in order to make a purchase. If you bought a car and an advertised feature was missing (or did not work) you might be quite unhappy at being deceived.
It is not unusual to buy shares of a company because you think the company will make money, and therefore your share will increase in value and/or pay you dividends. The public statements of a company are often important factors in that purchase decision. If you believe you were lied to in an effort to get you to buy the shares, then it would not be surprising if you get upset, and perhaps feel cheated.
Isn’t the point of buying stock that you take a risk on supporting the company? How can you sue them?
FWIW I had a very strong sense that Apple was spinning hard about their AI efforts judging by the language they used at the WWDC (2024 I think?) where they made a lot of big AI announcements. It had a strong flavor of "concepts of a plan."
By the time of WWDC '24, have no doubt that Apple saw AI as the potential "next big thing" to drive an upgrade super cycle. And I have no doubt that Apple was caught with its pants down in terms of how ready it was to deliver on AI. So its genius marketing dept--and I respect it as that, 100%--got to work and appropriated the very initials A.I. to mean Apple Intelligence. That's what I mean about genius. And Apple sold the crap out of that phrase at WWDC '24. But when you looked at the Apple Intelligence features roadmap they laid out for the next year, "modest" would be an understatement. It began with iPhone 16 shipping with no AI features until an update in late October provided what amounted to an amuse bouche of Apple Intelligence, and then the roadmap didn't call for anything of great significance until the revamped AI Siri, with its contextually aware features, was slated to launch in the spring. I mention all this because there was a huge gulf between how heavily Apple leaned on the phrase "Apple Intelligence" and the actual features they said they would provide over the next year. And Apple delivered on the features it promised, modest as they were, until we get to AI Siri.
It's at this point that we come to the big fork in the road where you can believe one of two things about AI Siri
1) It was a real product in development for which the challenges to bring it to fruition were wildly underestimated, leading to the debacle of non-delivery and no firm date set, even now, for when it will be delivered, OR...
2) You can believe that the braintrust at Apple: Cook, Federighi, Cue and Joswiak--who collectively have been working at Apple for 121 YEARS, with all four of them having worked under Jobs--got together one day and decided to go rogue and do something that has never been done at Apple: put the company's reputation with its customers and the public at risk by lying about and faking a demo of a product they knew they didn't have and wasn't even in development. Listen: you can believe what you want to believe but why would you choose #2? Why would you not give Apple leadership that has been with the company for nearly one and quarter centuries the benefit of the doubt when they've never done anything like that before? Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal just did a very extensive and tough interview with Federighi and Joswiak at WWDC '25 and asked them point blank if the "new Siri," especially the contextually aware features they demo'd last year, was just vaporware that didn't exist at the time. They both said it did exist and was functional, but unreliable, with problems they thought they could solve by end of March '25, but couldn't. I'm not minimizing what a black eye this is for Apple's software engineering team, and the company deserves harsh blowback for not just missing its delivery date, but being so in the weeds on this that the best it can promise for a delivery date is by the end of 2026. But there is just no precedent in the long history of these execs with Apple to justify belief that this was the result of planned and intentional dishonesty.
If shareholders want to sue anyone, it should be Tesla shareholders suing Tesla board of directors for not doing their fucking job reigning in that asshole Elon Musk!
Ridiculous lawsuit from clueless greedy ambulance chasing lawyers. How do these guys live with themselves? Have a great weekend.
Promised features that don’t exist in any of Apple intelligence. False advertising. I hope Apple gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They don’t look like liars, they are liars
So shareholders want to sue for vaporware? Good luck on that. This happens all the time with products in every business. Companies try and make a good faith effort to bring a proposed product to market but these products don't always work out. I'd challenge the stockholders to justify everything they've said they were going to do but didn't. The stock market is gambling, plain and simple. Sometimes you win, most times you lose. Deal with it!
You seem to think that the securities market is the Wild West, anything goes and caveat emptor. While this is true to a certain extent, the most obvious counter-example is Enron which engaged in grossly fraudulent misrepresentations that were aided and abetted by their accounting firm. There are many other less notorious examples of shareholders successfully suing public companies over lies and misrepresentations to the public and to shareholders.
With Enron, not only did Enron Execs lied to the public and shareholders, they lied to the SEC on their 10Q and 10K filings. That in itself is a very serious offense. Enron stock not only plunged because they "lied", it plunged when their true value was revealed. But the SEC do take lying to the public and shareholders in order to manipulate its share price, very seriously and its punishment is just as severe. Which is why the bar is set very high, when providing proof that a publicly traded company lied to manipulate its share price.
Here, notice that the lawsuit is not claiming that Apple "lied" to its shareholders. It's claiming that Apple "downplayed" of the delay of what was promised, caused AAPL shareholders to hang on to their shares pass its all time high in Dec. 2024, in the hope of more gains later. Then they claimed that further delay caused AAPL price to plunge in 2025 and thus Apple is responsible for the loss of nearly $1T (25%) in market cap value. In order to prove that Apple had "lied", they would need to prove that Apple execs were 100% sure that Apple would not be able to provide what was promised and that what was promised would greatly increase the sale of iPhones in order to retain or increase its market cap.
This isn't the first time Apple delayed what was promised. Back in the early 90's, Apple promised to deliver their new OS code named "Copeland" by mid 1996. Then it was delayed to the end of 1996 and finally canceled the release altogether in early 1997. The cancellation caused Apple to look outside for a new OS and that new OS ended up being NeXTStep. If Copeland was not delayed and then cancelled and Apple did not go outside looking for a new OS, Jobs might had never returned to Apple. Right now Apple is looking at acquiring AI firms to right their AI ship. Who knows, maybe Apple might end up with the "Steve Jobs" they need to get Apple AI on course. Imagine if shareholders had sued Apple (in 1997) for the 36% loss in market cap (YoY) by claiming it was caused by the delay and cancellation of Copeland and Apple ended up never acquiring NeXT for $427M. Of course, most likely not even the scum bag lawyers would had taken the case, as Apple did not have a substantial amount of cash worth suing for, at the time. Apple market cap at the time was $1.5B. (This is a classic case of you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards, as mentioned in Jobs Standford graduation speech.)
All Apple has to do is show that they made a good-faith effort on Siri in order to beat this lawsuit.
They can point to the incremental improvements like writing tools, image generator, et al as proof of that effort.
This case won't even reach the courts before Siri does in fact get an upgrade next year, making their case moot. These guys aren't serious -- they're hoping for a "go away" settlement.
So if you think AI is so critical why not ask IT why apple stock has declined. I asked chat GPT why the decline since December and it said :
"Apple's stock has declined since December 2024 due to several factors. Analysts have downgraded the stock, citing concerns over soft iPhone sales, particularly in China, and potential regulatory risks affecting its services business. Additionally, the company faces increased competition in the Chinese market, with local brands gaining market share."
"cos Siri is not as smart as me yet" was not what it said.
The debacle of Apple advertising “Apple Intelligence” before it was ready may be the beginning of the end of the Tim Cook era.
DOJ and consumers will take Apple to court on running ads for vaporware. Agree, this is the beginning to the end. It can take a while before he is replaced. Microsoft drifted for 10 years and behaved like a bond. We have seen Apple slide to #2, #3, and... well... the distance to Amazon makes it likely that Apple could drop one more spot.
As for his legacy we need to split CEO from COO. He was outstanding as COO.
The debacle of Apple advertising “Apple Intelligence” before it was ready may be the beginning of the end of the Tim Cook era.
DOJ and consumers will take Apple to court on running ads for vaporware. Agree, this is the beginning to the end. It can take a while before he is replaced. Microsoft drifted for 10 years and behaved like a bond. We have seen Apple slide to #2, #3, and... well... the distance to Amazon makes it likely that Apple could drop one more spot.
As for his legacy we need to split CEO from COO. He was outstanding as COO.
And you are all ignoring the elephant in the room. TARRIFS.
Which Tim Cook has nothing to do with and has no control of.
The debacle of Apple advertising “Apple Intelligence” before it was ready may be the beginning of the end of the Tim Cook era.
DOJ and consumers will take Apple to court on running ads for vaporware. Agree, this is the beginning to the end. It can take a while before he is replaced. Microsoft drifted for 10 years and behaved like a bond. We have seen Apple slide to #2, #3, and... well... the distance to Amazon makes it likely that Apple could drop one more spot.
As for his legacy we need to split CEO from COO. He was outstanding as COO.
And you are all ignoring the elephant in the room. TARRIFS.
Which Tim Cook has nothing to do with and has no control of.
Actually, Tim Cook does have some control over tariffs. He donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration fund, and that got Apple a temporary exemption from some of the worst tariffs. Cook could identify other ways to transfer money to Trump in order to exempt Apple from tariffs.
The challenge is that Trump is starting a side hustle selling cell phones and cellular service. This means we may be seeing carefully constructed tariffs that apply to all phones except for his. This means that a payoff from Apple would need to be large enough to compensate for the loss of Trump's cell phone revenue.
The debacle of Apple advertising “Apple Intelligence” before it was ready may be the beginning of the end of the Tim Cook era.
DOJ and consumers will take Apple to court on running ads for vaporware. Agree, this is the beginning to the end. It can take a while before he is replaced. Microsoft drifted for 10 years and behaved like a bond. We have seen Apple slide to #2, #3, and... well... the distance to Amazon makes it likely that Apple could drop one more spot.
As for his legacy we need to split CEO from COO. He was outstanding as COO.
And you are all ignoring the elephant in the room. TARRIFS.
Which Tim Cook has nothing to do with and has no control of.
Actually, Tim Cook does have some control over tariffs. He donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration fund, and that got Apple a temporary exemption from some of the worst tariffs. Cook could identify other ways to transfer money to Trump in order to exempt Apple from tariffs.
The challenge is that Trump is starting a side hustle selling cell phones and cellular service. This means we may be seeing carefully constructed tariffs that apply to all phones except for his. This means that a payoff from Apple would need to be large enough to compensate for the loss of Trump's cell phone revenue.
That's not control. That's hope of an ephemeral break from Trump's whimsical outlook on what he calls economics. His "donation" was merely extortion by Trump. That's not control. The challenge is that Trump has no ethics in business or politics. He either can't or doesn't read the room or Constitution, when making decisions.
Neither Cook nor anyone else can know what he's going to do. Sure they can throw money at him and maybe get some "consideration". That's not control, not of the convicted felon who rose to the position of POTUS. That's submission.
What about the millions of dollars they've already made from AAPL? What about the millions they will make in the future when Apple rises to the top of the AI market? It will happen.
Why bite the hand that feeds you? Selfish creatures.
What makes you think Apple will lead in AI? Sure, anything’s possible, but as of now, there’s no real indication that they’re heading in that direction. Apple is excellent when it comes to hardware integration, but their track record with cloud services hasn’t been as strong as Google, Microsoft and other companies. Now they are also behind them with AI. What would make this time different for Apple?
This is just a "nothing burger" action from shareholders. Apple will win this case. However, Apple has already lost their credibility. Their reputation is damaged (a bit).
I don´t care about this case. What I want is that Apple just delivers what Apple showed at WWDC 2024.
Comments
Not exactly true ... look at 2020, where AAPL took a beating together with the rest of the industry ... only to make a gigantic recovery by the end of the year. So the question is, can we find a cure for tRumpism as fast as we did for Corona or is it a terminal sickness this time!?
In other words the price increase from AI never materialized.
When you buy stock, you are investing in the company. Often, the intention of buying a piece of a business is to make money. For many, buying stock is a business decision, not a show of support for the company.
As with anything, people get upset if they have been lied to in order to make a purchase. If you bought a car and an advertised feature was missing (or did not work) you might be quite unhappy at being deceived.
It is not unusual to buy shares of a company because you think the company will make money, and therefore your share will increase in value and/or pay you dividends. The public statements of a company are often important factors in that purchase decision. If you believe you were lied to in an effort to get you to buy the shares, then it would not be surprising if you get upset, and perhaps feel cheated.
It's at this point that we come to the big fork in the road where you can believe one of two things about AI Siri
1) It was a real product in development for which the challenges to bring it to fruition were wildly underestimated, leading to the debacle of non-delivery and no firm date set, even now, for when it will be delivered, OR...
2) You can believe that the braintrust at Apple: Cook, Federighi, Cue and Joswiak--who collectively have been working at Apple for 121 YEARS, with all four of them having worked under Jobs--got together one day and decided to go rogue and do something that has never been done at Apple: put the company's reputation with its customers and the public at risk by lying about and faking a demo of a product they knew they didn't have and wasn't even in development.
Listen: you can believe what you want to believe but why would you choose #2? Why would you not give Apple leadership that has been with the company for nearly one and quarter centuries the benefit of the doubt when they've never done anything like that before? Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal just did a very extensive and tough interview with Federighi and Joswiak at WWDC '25 and asked them point blank if the "new Siri," especially the contextually aware features they demo'd last year, was just vaporware that didn't exist at the time. They both said it did exist and was functional, but unreliable, with problems they thought they could solve by end of March '25, but couldn't.
I'm not minimizing what a black eye this is for Apple's software engineering team, and the company deserves harsh blowback for not just missing its delivery date, but being so in the weeds on this that the best it can promise for a delivery date is by the end of 2026. But there is just no precedent in the long history of these execs with Apple to justify belief that this was the result of planned and intentional dishonesty.
how can someone lose something they don’t have?
"Apple's stock has declined since December 2024 due to several factors. Analysts have downgraded the stock, citing concerns over soft iPhone sales, particularly in China, and potential regulatory risks affecting its services business. Additionally, the company faces increased competition in the Chinese market, with local brands gaining market share."
"cos Siri is not as smart as me yet" was not what it said.
As for his legacy we need to split CEO from COO. He was outstanding as COO.
Neither Cook nor anyone else can know what he's going to do. Sure they can throw money at him and maybe get some "consideration". That's not control, not of the convicted felon who rose to the position of POTUS. That's submission.
Must be a day that ends with a 'Y'...
Apple will win this case. However, Apple has already lost their credibility. Their reputation is damaged (a bit).
I don´t care about this case. What I want is that Apple just delivers what Apple showed at WWDC 2024.