> I've noticed apple cutting under-performing products over the years to boost their stock price.
I suspect you're wrong about the motivation. Steve Jobs was ruthless about cutting products that under-performed and/or stretched resources in directions that he didn't feel were strategic.
And Steve Jobs didn't really care much about stock price.
Apple made wifi products when the available options mostly sucked. Now that there are some pretty interesting mesh products out there, and Apple would have to do a lot of development work to match them, I can understand why they've stopped active development. Opportunity cost is a very real thing.
I don't like it, but I don't for a minute believe it has anything to do with their stock price.
You don't believe for a minute that financial decisions have any weight? Their stock split of a few years back shows Jobs' unconventional financial ideas were only followed as long as he was around.
I don't know of any other tiny, strong, so easy to use access points with style like the express from a company with a known track record. Doesn't need any more features, maintenance could be done on a shoestring, guess that's too boring though.
And yes, financial decisions are financial. But to tie the decision to stop improving a minor product line to "we must appease Wall Street" is quite the stretch.
Growth has plateaued, how do you expect that financials are improving? Through cutting costs. If you don't believe it, well you don't know much about large corps.
I suspect you're wrong about the motivation. Steve Jobs was ruthless about cutting products that under-performed and/or stretched resources in directions that he didn't feel were strategic.
And Steve Jobs didn't really care much about stock price.
Apple made wifi products when the available options mostly sucked. Now that there are some pretty interesting mesh products out there, and Apple would have to do a lot of development work to match them, I can understand why they've stopped active development. Opportunity cost is a very real thing.
I don't like it, but I don't for a minute believe it has anything to do with their stock price.