He’s got ninety-nine million problems but being rich ain’t one, weird Chrome OS Flex but okay, and the Apple products you mustn’t buy: All the news, rumors, and tips you missed this week.
Welcome to our weekly collection of all the Apple news you missed this week, in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. Exciting reports this week of what the Guardian is calling a “shareholder revolt” at Apple. That phrase immediately evokes images of something like the Battle of Toad Hall, with executives brandishing cutlasses and somebody swinging off a chandelier. The reality is a firmly worded letter, but in its own way, this is equally explosive. The cause for concern is the pay packet awarded to CEO Tim Cook last year, which started with a hefty base salary of $3 million and just kept on getting bigger. Chuck in stock awards, bonuses, and various other perks and contributions, and you end up with the ludicrous figure of $98.7 million, a magnitude bigger than the $14.8 million Cook took home the year before. An advisory group has urged shareholders to vote against the payday, citing “significant concerns regarding the design and magnitude of the equity award.” There are two ways to look at this. The first is to ask whether Cook is worth that to Apple, in the stark sense of money in and money out. Does the CEO pay his way? Only the company’s own accountants could adequately answer that, but Apple not being a charity it’s reasonable to suppose that it wouldn’t pay out the money if he didn’t. And the upward curve of performance since he took over has been so astounding that we have even dared to argue that Cook is a better CEO than Steve Jobs –in some senses at least. That’s probably the basis on which most shareholders will make their decision. They will ask themselves one question: if we deny Cook his pay package, is that likely to raise or lower the value of our investment? Cook won’t be at the company forever, but based on the financial success Apple has enjoyed on his watch, my guess is that shareholders would like to put off his frequently (and perhaps strategically) mentioned retirement as long as possible.
