> Do they even do any R&D anymore?

Yes.

“Apple annual research and development expenses for 2024 were $31.37B, a 4.86% increase from 2023. Apple annual research and development expenses for 2023 were $29.915B, a 13.96% increase from 2022. Apple annual research and development expenses for 2022 were $26.251B, a 19.79% increase from 2021”

— https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/researc...

Regarding R&D: They have quite a few reports integrating their products with health.

Ex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41491121

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948739

Tested by community: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41799324

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42019694

VR was a 10 year or so project but agreed no product-market fit yet.

  > They seem to have lost faith in their own ability to innovate.

As they should. I mean they can, but they have to change course. All of Silicon Valley has tried to disenfranchise the power users. With excuses that most people don't want those things or how users are too dumb. But the power users are what drives the innovation. Sure, they're a small percentage, but they are the ones who come into your company and hit the ground running. They are the ones that will get to know the systems in and out. They do these things because they specifically want to accomplish things that the devices/software doesn't already do. In other words: innovation. But everyone (Google and Microsoft included) are building walled gardens. Pushing out access. So what do you do? You get the business team to innovate. So what do they come up with? "idk, make it smaller?" "these people are going wild over that gpt thing, let's integrate that!"

But here's the truth: there is no average user. Or rather, the average user is not representative of the distribution of users. If you build for average, you build for no one. It is hard to invent things, so use the power of scale. It is literally at your fingertips if you want it. Take advantage of the fact that you have a cash cow. That means you can take risks, that you can slow down and make sure you are doing things right. You're not going to die tomorrow if you don't ship, you can take on hard problems and *really* innovate. But you have to take off the chains. Yes, powerful tools are scary, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them.

Especially if you're the only one that makes GPUs for AI use

Okay, but $22.6B of their $26B revenue this quarter was from datacenter GPUs.

The only reason they are this big right now is because they are selling H100s, mostly to other big tech companies.

Why is market cap the most important metric? It does not exist in a void. Market cap + P/E or forward P/E, P/B, P/S, etc. are all metrics of high import.

Market cap is one piece of a complicated picture. On its own, you don't know too much.

Market cap is kind of made up. The stock is worth what people believe it to be worth.

Profit is the number that really matters.

if there are 100 shares in a company, but 2 people own them. person1 has 99 shares. person2 has 1 share. person1 sells their share for $100 to person3.

Does that mean the market cap is worth $10k? yes. is that meaningful if there are no other buyers at $100? no.