Ian Verrender

They have invested in artificial intelligence, but they've been very specific in the investments that they've made, whereas a lot of the other companies have just splashed huge amounts around on everything.

Now,

By doing that, they've actually returned quite a bit of money to shareholders.

So the shareholders aren't particularly upset with the strategy so far.

So that's what I'm saying.

It is a very interesting time for Tim Cook to be leaving right now.

But his replacement has a lot of experience within Apple.

Yeah, but look, but his replacement has been involved in every major product, you know, iPad, iPod, Macs, you know, everything.

And look, this is really important for Australian shareholders as well, just ordinary Australians, because our big super funds have something like $9 billion worth of Apple shares, right?

And I think AusSuper, Australian Super, has around about one third of that.

So, you know, there's a there's a major incentive here for a big hope, I guess, from Australians that this actually does work out because Tim Cook, the profits that he generated while he was chief executive, rose tenfold during his reign.

Yeah.

And as you mentioned before, the supply chains, I mean, you know, Apple is a kind of a design company in many ways, and it outsources all its production, a lot of it to China.

And of course, Donald Trump's China approach and the tariffs and the trade wars with China really put Apple in

in the middle of that fight.

So there's been a lot of politics that they've had to try to delicately sidestep their way around there.

And look, if you think about the way Apple has conducted itself and the supply chains by having huge amounts of components and things manufactured all around the world, in many ways, it's actually stopped the piracy that other companies would have experienced.

Because if you've got a massive operation in China, there's a real incentive for them to keep generating an income from you

rather than to go out there and just try and pick up an iPhone, pull it apart and reverse engineer it.

So I think in some ways they've managed to maintain control over their processes.