​Apple made two moves recently which launched a never-ending wave of tech articles along the lines of “Apple is now all about services.” Apple made Apple Music available on the Amazon Echo, and they put iTunes on televisions from other manufacturers, two moves which no one saw coming, myself included. Some analysts have even suggested that Apple isn’t thinking like a hardware company any more. They are wrong, and here’s why.

​I get a kick out of all of the Apple pundits who publicly acknowledge that they never use 3D Touch without any sense of shame. As if their stupidity or lack of memory has nothing to do with the fact that they can’t seem to remember to use 3D Touch. Somehow it’s Apple’s fault?

​Technology analyst Ben Thompson made an appearance on The Talk Show with John Grubera week ago where he made the case that Apple’s App Store policy is unjust. Only, he really didn’t. 

​Jeffrey Rosen wrote a thought-provoking article for The Atlantic in which he tackles the question, “Is democracy dying?” 

​Dieter Bohn wrote a ridiculous article at The Verge trying to make the case that it would be moral for Apple to bring iMessage to Android.

​I wrote the post below on January 16, 2016. Every word of it holds true today. 
 
The short-term price of AAPL isn’t that big of a deal to Apple’s strategy because Apple isn’t reliant on the equity markets to fund their operations. However, from a long-term view it matters because the CEO reports to the shareholders. Tim Cook can say that he isn’t interested in profits all he wants but at the end of the day that is where he’s judged. 
 
As long as Apple stock is doing well, the shareholders will let him say whatever feel-good platitudes he wants. But if AAPL tanks long-term, we’ll see just how much power Tim Cook really has.
 
In any matter, since Apple is flush with cash it’ll be business as usual for now. The price of the stock is simply Wall Street’s assessment of how they believe the future looks. And they’re not privy to Apple’s future plans. 

​I really like the iPhone widget screen that is always to the left of your home screen. It’s completely configurable. You can can pick and choose which items you want to see and in what order. However, I don’t really use it as much as I thought I would. That’s mainly because once I dig my iPhone out of my pocket and unlock the screen, it’s no less work to open the app versus look at the app widget. So instead of using the weather widget, I just open my favorite weather app.