No. of Recommendations: 8
I still like Apple. My largest holdingI have similar thoughts. And Apple is, by far, my largest holding (much larger than 16%, even after some stock sales at the end of last year) at this point after 2+ decades of owning it.
I first used their products in 1982 (I still have a printout). I've used Windows at various times, mostly in the '90s and '00s, but about 20 years ago got my first modern OSX Mac mini and it would take an extraordinary change (negative at Apple, gangbusters amazing at Microsoft) to flip me back. I lost count of how many Apple devices are in my house - they're used by everyone, for 100% of their work, professional and personal.My first use of an Apple product was the iPhone early on. Probably 2008 or 2009, it was an iPhone 3g. It was far better than any other cellphone at the time, and I had been using blackberry for more than a decade AND I was developing similar products at one of my employers in the blackberry years. My first mac was in 2012, a Macbook pro with the new high quality display (I think their marketing term was "retina display"). I'm also an engineer, and thus much more empirical than fanboy. I also use PC on a regular basis, or at least I did use them until I retired a few years ago. And I still use Android on a regular basis, some of the phones I use for games are android phones.
When I first got cellphones for all my kids, the carrier sent us 5 windows phones. Over a period of months (literally MONTHS) they couldn't get them to work properly. I worked with the engineers at the carrier for many hours to try different things, and they could not get those phones to function properly. There were intractable bugs in the phone (I had other phones at the time that could be tried side by side during all this testing). Finally they gave up, took back the 5 windows phones and sent us 5 android phones (LG brand) instead. Those worked fine for a while, but then my kids caught the iPhone bug and all wanted iPhones. I then upgraded each of them to various used iPhones, pretty much from eldest to youngest over about 2 years. Now they will only use iPhone. For a while, when they were still teens, if they misbehaved, a joking threat that we would use as parents, was to tell them that we will switch them to Android if they don't improve their behavior. And at this point, 3 out of 5 kids choose to use a macbook and will only use a PC when forced to for work, and the remaining 2 chose to use only a PC laptop.
At this point, we have tens of Apple devices here. Let's see, 8 iPhones in regular use, probably 6+ old iPhones used for various games and testing stuff, still have 5 iPod touch in a box but those aren't in use anymore, 4 watches, 4 macbook air/pro in regular use, 3 older macbooks of various types, 6 iPads of various vintages, one Apple TV device, so far 12 airtags, probably 9 of which are in use, and 3 are still in the box until someone needs them for a new piece of luggage/etc. And there are probably some others that I've forgotten. Oh yes, a whole bunch of assorted earpods and airpods. My latest airpod is the pro 2 and I've set them up for hearing assistance as well, but I don't wear them on a regular basis, I mainly use them while at the gym on the elliptical or while watching video sometimes (I prefer my Bose over-the-ear headphones for watching video at home).
Their 10ks and 10qs show no signs of distress or concerns. Their leadership is top flight.This is indeed true. However, there are some things that don't appear in the 10k or 10q. The main thing that doesn't appear, or at least doesn't appear in any prominent fashion, is valuation. If you look at a PE chart of Apple, you will see that it has trended up over the last decade, and you will see that it is at/near a high, and you will see that it has been there for a while now. That means that the stock price is growing faster, sometimes way faster, than earnings are growing. Obviously that can't keep up forever. So that is something that must be taken into account investing-wise.
Here's a link to such a chart -
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/app...
