I agree! I find earnings reports from many other sources, including the WSJ and Apple Insider.
I like the financials (quarterly) reporting on TidBits: It’s gives a good overview/analysis of what is happening at Apple. If I need more details, I suppose I could do some digging online elsewhere, but the TidBits summary for me is usually sufficient.
Not sure at this point how the reporting could be improved.
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A new Apple product that didn’t seem to be getting much, if any, mention of any significance Vision Pro from the press before, during and after the latest financials were released.
My guess is that Vision Pro is not delivering the sales. There aren’t many significant apps produced by Vision Pro developers, if there are or were any. It’s not like iPad, iPhone, Music, AirPods, Apple Watch, head sets, Apple TV and programing, etc.,etc., etc. have been raking in the cash since the days they were released. And the headsets, goggles, etc. aren’t cheap to manufacture either.
Should We Continue Covering Apple Financials?
Yes please. You mentioned Six Colors. I don’t think I ever visit there. Perhaps once or twice a year at the very most? Ditto Gruber, WSJ, etc. TidBITS features in my RSS feeds - they don’t.
Reading over the previous comments here, I think @Halfsmoke hit the nail on the head, for me, with “expert user comments”.
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As a stockholder, I’m interested in any info available from all sources.
Why would it? Prior to release the analysts were anticipating about 400,000 in sales in the first year, based on the high price and product constraints (the tiny screens on the Vision Pro are in short supply).
Then when the pre-orders were high they doubled that, only to retreat back to the original number when sales tapered. So basically we are where we expected, which isn’t bad. But even at $3500 a pop that’s not going to move Apple’s very large financial needle (only about $350M per quarter).
Them not mentioning doesn’t say to me it’s not been a success. I wouldn’t read much into it. It’s best to think of Vision Pro as a developer’s kit and not a mainstream product.
I fully trust Adam and the others here at TidBITS. Please continue, because you frequently are a handrail that gives me trusted opinions and realities against which I can interpret other analyses.
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I think covering the financials is part of TidBITS’ fundamental job. In times like these where the financials are generally very good and stable, it may seem duplicative of other sources, but there will be times when the financial condition of the company affects its operations and TidBITS should maintain its own ongoing credibility in anticipation.
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I typically do not pay attention to financial analysts reporting on financial results because their audience is shareholders and investors. I much prefer your approach as you look for things in the results report from a product or user perspective the analysts often ignore or just don’t get. (Remember how they just didn’t get why people loved their Macs because of quality and longevity issues when Apple stock was valued lower than their cash on hand–they just didn’t get it).
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Here’s what actually happened:
According to Ming Kuo, “ 1. Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400–450k units (vs. market consensus of 700–800k units or more).
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Apple cut orders before launching Vision Pro in non-US markets, which means that demand in the US market has fallen sharply beyond expectations, making Apple take a conservative view of demand in non-US markets.
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Apple is reviewing and adjusting its head-mounted display (HMD) product roadmap, so there may be no new Vision Pro model in 2025 (the previous expectation was that there would be a new model in 2H25/4Q25). Apple now expects Vision Pro shipments to decline YoY in 2025.”
This does look like Apple is rather desperate about Vision Pro.
Current vote is 49% to 51%. Can’t you Americans vote strongly one way or the other? 
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That’s the revised estimates after that same analyst doubled his original estimate. From this article last February “…analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says U.S. shipments of the Apple Vision Pro are expected to be 200,000–250,000 units this year.”
Kuo says this and then just a few months later he reports that expected sales are only going to be 400-450K down from some mythical 700-800K? The new “low” numbers are double his original prediction!
It’s all clickbait headlines.
The bottom line is that none of this matters. Even if Apple were to sell a million Vision Pros, it’s peanuts compared to Apple’s other revenue. It’s a niche product and will be for a while, which means we can’t read into sales numbers (or Tim not mentioning it during quarterly results) to predict its fate.
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Any time a financial “analyst” references “market consensus”, you should ignore the entire article.
“Market consensus” is whatever the writer wants it to mean. It implies that there actually is some kind of consensus, which isn’t always the case. And even if there is, it’s just a summary of what other pundits have been saying - pundits who don’t have any more insider information than the rest of us. The fanbois will have glowingly high expectations and the haters will predict doom and gloom. Any “consensus” you may find is simply going to be a function of how many pundits like Apple vs those that hate Apple, and none of it means anything.
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“Market consensus” is whatever the writer wants it to mean. It implies that there actually is some kind of consensus, which isn’t always the case.”
“ What are Consensus Estimates and Why are they Important?”
“https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-are-consensus-estimates-and-why-are-they-important
And VisionPro ain’t exactly like when Steve Jobs pulled in “1984” results, when Steve Jobs had to go into extra super overdrive to build many thousands and thousands more Macs that the market was demanding.
I am fond of everything you choose to publish. With more and more “news” hidden behind paywalls or AI noise generators, your direct reporting is relevant.
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I always enjoy Adam’s associated commentary, so I’d like to see it continued. But if it is discontinued, will that mean we’ll have one less article per quarter, or will the time required to report on the financials be devoted to another topic of interest?
I think that article says the same thing I said. It’s an average of projections by lots of pundits who don’t have access to any more information than anyone else.
Unless their answer is so obvious that a blind squirrel could figure it out, you’re really just summarizing the biases in the pundits’ opinions.
And since there is no fixed set of pundits comprising this consensus (every news outlet has their own cherry-picked set of experts that they reference), I maintain my opinion that it means whatever the writer wants it to mean.
Nasdaq may put some fancy language in an article, but it all boils down to the same thing.
That having been said, consensus numbers are meaningful. Not as an accurate prediction about how a company will perform, but as a driving force behind stock prices, since people make investment decisions based on these consensus numbers, right or wrong. And when the real numbers end up differing from the consensus, higher or lower, the price quickly swings from one based on the prediction to one based on reality. Which is why these swings are called “corrections” in marketspeak.
WRT Apple’s manufacturing of AVP (or any other specific product), they have the exact sales numbers, updated every day (if not more frequently), along with the exact quantities manufactured. And they have their own experts analyzing their markets. All data that is confidential and is not reported to the public except as a part of SEC-mandated reports, and even then, usually aggregated with all other products.
In other words, Apple is making decisions based on their private numbers, while pundits (who comprise “the consensus”) are basing their decisions on old data and news articles that may or may not prove to be relevant. A good analyst may come closer to being right than a bad analyst, but none of them have the information necessary to make a truly informed decision.
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I voted “no” because I am more interested in technology trends and the use of various technologies than financial details. But I do find the trends interesting and useful.
The comments I find most interesting here are on something not mentioned in your analysis – the status of Vision Pro. I am much more involved in optics than in computer science, and over the years I’ve seen repeated efforts to bring 3D imaging and Augmented Reality to the mainstream. Anybody remember 3D TV or Microsoft HoloLens? Vision Pro is another product in that line, an alluring concept with serious limits arising from the nature of the human eye. The eye has to work hard to produce the 3D effect. It looks fine for a few minutes, but your eyes get tired. Canadian tests said soldiers should not use HoloLens for more than 30 minutes because after that point eyestrain became a serious problem. It’s a fundamental limit of the human eye that our technology has been unable to solve and tech companies keep beating their heads against.
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I just have to say that I hugely appreciate all the kind comments about our Apple-expert/financial-dabbler analysis.
And yes, I meant to say something about the Vision Pro (and I’ll go add that now), but it was conspicuously absent from anything resembling numbers.
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I won’t die of grief if I don’t see your reports – but on the other hand, I don’t care much for financial reports from financial types. :-) Getting perspective from people who care about Macs, not about the exact price of Apple’s stock, is a much more interesting way to learn. But I’ve no dog (or investment fund, as it may be) in this fight.