IDEA: Use your current favorite AI tool to summarize the financials and your commentary in the style of any 18th century author. Share the prompt and the summary.
Or some similar mashup.
I don’t read much Apple press, so I really enjoy a TidBits finsummary.
I don’t muck around with AI as much as I should, so maybe this will help alleviate some AI FOMO.
I enjoy taking a quick look at the TIDBITS summary of Apple’s quarterly financials. Since I rarely see any financial news, I would probably no see Apple’s results at all if I didn’t see them here.
I think the question is why this is relevant to most of Apple’s customers, and the only answer I can come up with is that it is important to see how well Apple’s different segments do relative to each other. So all I’m really interested in is a line chart that plots iPhone, Mac, iPad, etc. against each other, because that tells me something about Apple’s future behavior (e.g. the more Services revenue goes up relative to the Mac, the more ads for it I’ll probably see in Mac OS).
I think it’s useful to have these reports. After all it’s quarterly not daily or weekly. You don’t have to be a financial geek to read a quarterly report. It does seem to me that some basic awareness of Apples financials is helpful to anyone interested in Apple. And if you really are not interested, you can just read a different article.
tmansheim
I said yes, but it could be a briefer “wrap-up” or Graphic sidebar with links to outside more concise reporting… It may be harder to report Tidbits without Apple financials being at the ready. They are repetitive, indeed - Interesting how there’s a covid uptick that Apple has maintained and you can see that quite plainly in a graph. Apple stock performance is something else!
I tend to skip the financials, my interest in Tidbits is about using Apple products.
Perhaps there’s room for some analysis of the implications of the financials, for example: iPad revenues are down for the seventh year running raising the risk that iPads will be discontinued (should that unthinkable ever occur!), but the financials themselves are of no interest to me.
We invest via 401k, IRA, brokerage accounts, pensions, etc. into thousands of companies. I do not follow any of them for paper making tips or spark plug factories or diaper tech or farm equipment.
Best leave financial aspects with those experts and publications and stick with just Apple tech. Users before investors.
I think your time is better spent on other things. The numbers are covered endlessly everywhere else. I think TidBITS’ should not spend any time on financials.
Yes, please. I like your KISS style of reporting the Apple Quarterly Reports (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Anything else about Apple I can read on the news sites.
I get my apple news from TidBITS, so I’d be disappointed if the financials were eliminated. I do gloss over some of the results sometimes, but enjoy your commentary on the call/results even when it’s ‘well this is a bit repetitive.’ 
Please continue showing the charts breaking out the percentage of each line of business ( services, mac, iphone etc. ) . The summary of the results is helpful too. I could find these results elsewhere but not so neatly packaged and easily consumed. Thank you!
All the charts and graphs are pretty, but the details have already been published other places by the time they come out in TidBITS. I agree with josehill’s comments about saving space and maybe just note surprises.
The financials are of little interest to me, though any specifically interesting tidbits would be fine. I’m much more interested in market share numbers. On the other hand, the Category Revenue pie chart is interesting, just to predict what Apple is likely to focus on, and of course Mac sales deltas.
So, I guess keep it, but maybe add market share graphs (which I realize wouldn’t come from Apple)?
Adam, your joy is my joy.
I would like to see a summary of key numbers. Jason’s is too detailed for me. I also think graphs showing historical trends, e.g., growth in services, would be useful. I mean a single graph will all products or areas as lines in different colors.
I voted “No” - not because the coverage is not useful, but because I have access to coverage of Apple financials elsewhere (e.g. financial newspapers and Above Avalon) - but I appreciate the commentary.
If you like reporting on this, you should keep reporting it. Don’t worry about repetitiveness or the fact that this information is somewhere else. You can make that criticism of weather reporting and the folks who do that maintain a high level of engagement with that subject every single day!
When they’re repetitive, I’m not much interested. Any extremely unusual aspects of the financials would be worth covering.
We are long time Apple stock owners. My wife listens to the conference calls. But we both read your summary, and for me you are the only source. She will give me a very high level review but your report has all the numbers, she doesn’t keep notes. I send them along to her and she appreciates them as well.
I look at the financial highlights. Apple is a good investment.