Tim Cook is No Steve Jobs, Jobs' Ex-Publicist Says
*By Chloe Aiello*
Tim Cook is an excellent steward of Apple, but he's no Steve Jobs ー and what Apple really needs right now, is innovation, said Andy Cunningham, who worked with Jobs to launch the Macintosh.
"Tim Cook is an amazing steward of the assets he was left ... however, they have not been able to come up with the next big thing, which is really what they have to do. And Steve did it over and over and over and over again," Cunningham told Cheddar on Thursday.
Apple ($AAPL) stock plunged 9 percent on Thursday, continuing its declines from Wednesday for its lowest stock pricing since July 2017. The losses followed a letter Tim Cook wrote to investors on Wednesday, adjusting Apple's first-quarter revenue guidance down significantly to $84 billion from a previous estimate of $89 billion to $93 billion. The new outlook is about 5 percent less than the $88.3 billion in revenue it reported the same quarter last year.
[In the letter](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/), Cook mostly attributes the revision to "the magnitude of the economic deceleration" in emerging markets, especially China.
"Most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad," Cook wrote in the note, adding that lower than anticipated iPhone revenue "accounts for all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline."
The company has now lost about $420 billion from previous all-time highs, dropping it into place as the fourth largest publicly traded company, behind Microsoft ($MSFT), Amazon ($AMZN) and Alphabet ($GOOGL).
Although Cook blamed China and its decelerating economy, Cunningham said it's all really about iPhone sales.
"Apple missed on its iPhone and I think that's the real issue here," Cunningham said. "They blame the Chinese economy, primarily for the sluggish sales of the iPhone, but really I think underneath that issue is, I think, the fact that Apple really is in need of its next big thing."
Despite the company's sizable cash horde, Apple prefers to invent in-house rather than acquire new products, Cunningham said, so what the company really needs is "a product visionary," like Jobs, to explore new ideas. Barring that, the company could be in trouble.
" I think we are starting to see ー this may be an omen ー but we are starting to see the beginning of the last days of its heyday," Cunningham said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/member-of-macintosh-launch-team-talks-apple-troubles).
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug