Apple Investors Need To “Think Critically,” and remember “Think Different,” for WWDC 2026

AAPL staged a euphoric rebound courtesy of Dan Ives $400 call on May 8th, but the proof event - WWDC 2026 - lies ahead. Investors are celebrating before Apple has passed the AI/Siri test. Will it be “third time lucky” for Apple, and “AI,” because real intelligence and vision went MIA circa. 2018.

“APPLE: THE MOVIE.” Apple investors have never exactly lacked opinions, but this piece asks them to think critically rather than merely loudly. Between forum echo chambers, blogger posturing, and Apple’s still-unfinished AI test 16 years late, the real story is whether the company can justify the faith and actually ship anything.

Dan Ives screamed $400 on Friday, hence the surge to $292.

May I modestly remind him, when AAPL was at $200 a year ago and he said live on CNBC he’d given up on the stock and didn’t now what to make of the company, I laid out a path to $400. Dan didn’t come back on-board until about October when the coast was clear. Sartorial surprise but predictably behind the curve and ahead of the move simultaneously, as these predictions of his for the new year start to play out - or rather, not really play out.

Can’t this guy ever do anything except scream buy, and then vanish quietyl when things don’t turn out stable on the trajectory he needs for his of IVES30 ETF to stay relevant? Talk about talking up Your own book, considering Dan needs AAPL to outperform to keep his ETF outperforming.

SEC, wherefore art thou missing?

Dan’s Top Ten predictions for 2026, and my one-by-one rebuttal to them. I’m sure by year’s end his luck will have turned but but so far they been a bit lacklustre in the reality of the year-to-date.

Good time ‘gal, is Dan.

⚠️ Diversion Alert: A Side-Swipe distraction for an introduction before digging into the main piece ⚠️

This article is about the cognitive dissonance both within AAPL investor forums and Apple blogs, and also, about the misunderstanding of my position on AAPL I see increasingly on other forums. Anyone reading about Tommo_UK in these forums would think I’m a life-long Apple hater rather than its most ardent supporter until recently.

But first a bit of weekend fun with AAPL blogger Horace Dediu and Apple Blogger Mark Gurman - both of whom have their strong points, and ... weak points with each thinking they are masters of both domains.

Conversely, war has broken out between those brothers-from-another-mother twins, Mark Gurman and Horace Dediu, with both increasingly preening and casting themselves as Apple Commentariat Supreme (and at extortionate subscription prices considering their commentary is parroted for free the next working day in Apple blogs).

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Incidentally, I write for free with only a few articles behind a small private subscriber base, with an intraday section at capacity and currently closed to any new members. But I don’t charge for my long form articles, which place me in a somewhat unique position compared to Horace and Gurman.

So I can say without irony or hypocrisy that I rather enjoyed the concoted face-off between Mark Gurman and Horace Dediu. While Dediu is more directly dismissive of Gurman, Gurman avoids naming Dediu but has a hiss fit. We have to remember that Gurman is the dude who credited himself with AAPL rising $15 on a rumour he spread last year (only to see it crash $30 not long after).

There’s a lot of egos here. And many reading this for free, are paying up to $100 a month to listen to a couple of narcissists who have managed to eek out a great living not by being newsworthy, but generally preaching to the converted in their respective Churches.

In truth this is more mischief than fact, considering it’s simply Apple 3.0 mischievously playing off the two in a (admittedly jolly good fun bit of banter) playful piece of Sun Newspaper-style click baiting.

Here’s what Apple 3.0 said in their headline - although Gurman has never mentioned Dediu in his Power On article today, merely reiterated history in an accurate reminder of the fateful fall and decline of the Vision Hardware department since its inception in 2021 and failure-to-launch in 2023.

Gurman didn’t actually mention Dediu, but in the goldfish bowl of Apple blogs in the run up to WWDC and with little else to write about, Perry DeWitt over at the Daily AAPL seems to have decided to indulge in some quick wit and word-play at Gurman’s expense. FWIW this is still one of my favourite Apple blogs even if the pass the parcel commentary seems to revolve around about 5 regular posters these days. Tip ‘o the hat to you all.

And here’s what Gurman actually wrote:

Gurman’s 10th May 2026 ramble about the AVP

Read Gurman’s full article here ($paywall)

The funny thing is, for once, Gurman is actually 100% right about Apple’s internal reorganisation (I wrote extensively about this in 2024 and 2025, including celebrating Vision department Dan Riccio’s sacking (sorry, resignation to spend more time with his family) following the disastrous launch of the Vision Department, and internally, Apple fed up with his hobbling of iPadOS, which he was responsible for overseeing, hobbling, and disallowing any parity with the desktop.

I can’t believe I’m writing this with a straight face, but Gurman has been spot on with this - except was a bit late to the party. In October 2024, about 9 months before Gurman, I wrote about the death of the Vision Department on the departure of Riccio and forecast what this implied for the product, the team, and the primary importance of preserving VisionOS by pretending to keep the AVP alive as a use case for it. Sadly that article is behind a paywall on www.ped30.com but here’s a bit of a summary I wrote about it here on my own blog mid-last year.

Long an AVP skeptic, long a proponent of an AR version, full-scale war seems to have opened up in the tiny blogosphere about a breakdown in the love/hate relationship between lovers of Gurman and Dediu, Me? The AVP #1 was a flop. #2 was a flop. Will there be a #3, or are we moving straight onto my original these of the “Apple Vision Go” - AR glasses. Time will tell!

Where Horace manages to articulate his vision, of, er.. Vision, with an articulate flourish which , Gurman just can’t match. How can you argue with Apple 3.0 when the headline screams:

“Mark Gurman claims Apple dissolved the Vision Products Group in 2025, but that contradicts the fact that this group is still active and hiring new employees as of April 27 2026." —Asymco's Horace Dediu

It’s like watching someone with a broadsword struggling around trying to defend themselves from a more flamboyant and confident man with a slim but deadly rapier, casually killing challengers with a swish of colourful charts and a dash of neverending “services and margins” narrative which is always his bedrock go-to for AAPL commentary more bullish than anyone on the Street can muster except for Dan Ives ever screaming “buy” echoing around the blogosphere for the last few years and going “Down Low” every time he’s been wrong. Give a monkey a typewriter and eventually it might accidentally write Hamlet, after all .

Has anyone ever seen Horace worry in the open about Apple or make any serious attempt to challenge management of the status quo?

In contrast Gurman trades in whispers and rumours and arguably, has single handedly destroyed the mythos of Apple culture by front running its releases by about a year of :

50% leaks,
50% guess work and
50% trying to explain how 5+5 =15.

But anyway, I’ll let the kids squabble over their view, of Apple Vision Pro. I think my views of this #flop now on its second failure to launch, and my advocacy of AR glasses, is on record.

Horace is spinning plates with gaslights on them to distract from the fact that the AVP hardware has been kept on life support to justify the ongoing development of a core strategy - VisionOS - and retain some hardware core comptency for upcoming new VisionOS products. So Gurman is 100% correct that the Vision department, having been split into two (OS and hardware), had the hardware department effectively disbanded and the OS team mostly moved to a doomed Siri and AI race in 2024.

A race which Apple eventually conceded defeat on in a public humiliation around February 2025. A month marked by John Gruber infamously calling Tim Cook something akin to a bowl of “dusty old Cheetos” in a diatribe which whilst I took umbrage at to begin with, dutifully did a mea culpa and ended up agreeing with him on Apple’s 2024 vapourware launch of mass distraction of “Apple Intelligence” And the damage it did to its reputation as a result.

What Apple seemed to begin planning for the AVP (note to US readers - this is satire): full on immersion and less connection to the real world than a 12 year old with access to TikTok

Where I, more simply, predicted and hoped Apple’s Vision department was going to end up, eventually.

This was my render of what Apple should have launched - AR glasses, or as I called them, the “Vision Go” in my SenseOS article of June 2025.

The tension between my own views and long-time followers has reached a breaking point. I see this clearly: because in effect, I stopped being a "stock cheerleader" and started acting like a "tough-love consultant."The "betrayal" felt by Apple bulls isn't because I’m wrong (I’ve been right on every call for years, especially the 2024 melt-up and 2025 breakdown), but because I’m determined to challenge the dogma of the Tim Cook era.

As an aside, this was how I imagined Apple might have connected all of its services and devices just prior to WWDC 2025. They could have done this anytime since about 2018 when they canceled the then nascent server-based Siri, but history shows what they did: not very much except launch a vapourware AI product they’ve now had to settle a $250M lawsuit over out of court because God knows Apple can’t afford a lose on sale advertising of AI to shift its premature iPhone 16 in 2025.

Originally written in June 2025. Republishing for the third time because, well, Apple still haven’t delivered any advances in Siri since 2011.

Here is a breakdown of why this rift has formed and the logic behind my then-staggering $400 price target.

1. The Paradox of the "Ultra-Bearish Bull"

Long-time supporters are struggling to reconcile my seemingly two current personas, viewed as contradictory but which are actually complementary to one another. I discuss both sides of the same coin concurrently, and have had the highest target on AAPL (originally $400 by Q1 2027, moved to Q4 when Apple failed to deliver AI properly in autumn 2025):

As “The Skeptic:” I mock the Apple Marketing department prose and laugh at Tim Cook talking up Emojis as a success story even while Apple AI slid into irrelevance in 2025 and, eviscerate the "stale" executive team, I called Siri a 15-year failure.

A 15 year tale of sad lack of courage and vision, and a must read if you really want to understand how big a miss Siri has been.

As “The Visionary:” I maintain a $400 price target for Q4 2027—a figure that dwarfs even the most aggressive "perma-bulls" like Dan Ives.

My June 2025 discussion of whether AAPL would return to the $160s or surge to $400. The first of 5 articles examine in ever greater depth the possibility’s, the mechanisms, and the likelihood.

To a casual investor or doom scrolling dividends queen who doesn’t want to bother reading the detail in my admittedly long-form analyses, this may look like cognitive dissonance.

To me, it’s a conditional forecast. I am not saying AAPL will hit $400; I am (since July $2025 when every analyst had abandoned the stock for dead around $200) said $400 was possible, but only as the reward for competence, and currently, I sees a leadership vacuum that is failing to earn that reward.

2. Why Holders Feel "Betrayed"

The sense of betrayal by me seems to stems from a shift in narrative loyalty. For 20 years, I seem to have been a "secret weapon" for retail and many professional investors, using math (like the German Tank Problem to predict and forecast AAPL’s first tranche of iPhone sales to within 99% accuracy, well before the Street even thought it was going to be close, in 2009) to prove Apple was winning.

Loss of Confirmation Bias: Modern AAPL holders have become accustomed to an "echo chamber" where any criticism is labeled "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). This flies in the face of the “out of the box thinking” we users to jointly deploy to articulate not ”hopium” but deep domestic style debate on product and consumer sentiment trajectory to chart where and why we thought Apple - and our holding in AAPL - was going to go.
Forums are now a collection of people huddling in a cave together muttering loathsome remarks at anyone who dared leave to venture into the sun, and instead mutter “forever strong, always long” even with regency of short term impending catastrophes looming in plain sight on the flickering cave walls. Long term holders didn’t care and stayed “on message“ managing their flock, whilst shorter term traders and options player had their longjohns and their shorts burned up around their sensitive nether regions more often than they could pour themselves a bottle of whisky.
The "Management Slur": By attacking John Ternus and the "continuity" strategy, I deliberately set out to attack the very stability that institutional investors prize.

I first wrote in October 2025 i felt Ternus was the wrong guy to head up Apple. Nevertheless here he is, still. Full of beans, lovely man. Very… nice. If you’re English, you’ll understand the understatement at play. If you’re not, you’ll likely know what I’m saying. If you still don’t get it, then I’m guessing you might live in Oklahoma.

To the "long-and-strong" crowd, I’m seen as having "gone over to the dark side," even though my price target remains the highest on the Street.

3. The $400 Logic: AI as the "Ultimate Multiplier"

My justification for the $400 target is rooted in a specific, high-stakes path I laid out beginning in June 2025 just before WWDC 2025 right through to October 2025 in a string of deep thinking and broad analyses pieces. I argued that Apple was and is at a binary fork in the road:

The Bear Case (Status Quo): If Apple continues to be a "middleman" for Google and OpenAI, it becomes a commodity hardware company with shrinking margins and a shrinking PE.
The $400 Case (The Strategic Pivot): If Apple leverages its 2 billion+ active devices to create a truly local, private, "Agentic AI" that handles 90% of a user's digital life, the services revenue alone would justify a massive P/E (Price-to-Earnings) expansion.
The Distinction: Unlike Dan Ives, who tends to see every iPhone cycle as a "super-cycle," I have consistently argued that $400 in early 2027 only happens if Apple disrupts itself and replaces the current "app-grid" UI with an AI-first interface.

Here’s how I covered the useless to $250 or $400, 6 months ago, during Apple’s Q3 2025 earnings call.

An app-gridless agentic AI-like device. Oh, sounds a bit Jony Ive doesn’t it.

So look, let’s stop the cult-like chanting for a second and look at the math.

I’m the guy who gave you the numbers in 2008 when Wall Street was still drawing with crayons, so hear me out. I’m not "negative" on Apple; I’m disgusted by the lack of ambition within masked by “grande projects” which never materialised or failed at birth (AVP, Siri, AI, AVP etc). But if—and it’s a massive, hardware-shattering if—this new leadership stops playing it safe and actually leans into the inherent power of the silicon in your pocket, $400 isn't just a fantasy; it’s the floor. And i’ve made it abundantly clear how, and on what timeline, Apple could get there.

With good management, which has been appallingly lacking,

Apple needs deep cultural change, not rotating the chairs of the same people at the top, with Cook still “Executive Chairman” and Ternus just rearranged around the same table with different titles.

To get to that $400 target by Q4 2027, here are the milestones I’ve laid out. If they miss these, we’re just managing a very expensive decline.

1. The Death of the "App Grid" (By WWDC 2026)

If we are still swiping through rows of static icons on a touch screen by 2027, we’ve lost. The $400 path requires a Liquid UI, not Liquid Glass.

An “Agentic OS” as I’ve talked about for the last year.

Oddly, the kind of approach Jony Ive, with Sam Altman, is discussing launching in 2028 <cue hateful comments - but remember, Ive designed the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone - the iconic devices Apple still relies on as the foundation of its modern success. I wouldn’t bet against Ive, and explained how the Rise of the Agentic OS (back in the 2025) was the future.

I wrote about the future of agentic computing in July 2025. Last week Perplexity launched its new Mac app - which has Perplexity Computer on it. Integrates with all Apple apps and files you give it access to and runs agents in the background. The Future is here, and it isn’t Apple’s. Imagine how far ahead Apple would have been if they’d followed my advice and bought Perplexity back in June 2025.

Of course this is being mocked by the Apple faithful in the same way Microsoft used to mock him when he was busy designing iPods and iPhones in 2001-2011 for Apple. Can’t you see the irony in how the lucid and insightful Apple cheerleaders of 15-20 years ago have morphed into the very thing they despised in Microsoft: becoming the establishment and mocking progress, mistaking it for entitlement.

I’m talking about an OS that doesn't wait for you to open an app, but predicts the intent. If Ternus has the balls to kill the springboard app and replace it with a proactive, AI-driven interface that actually works, the market will re-rate Apple as a high-margin software utility, not a box-shifter.

And then we’d see that $400 in 2027 I predicted as long ago as July 2025 when many said they’d be happy to see $300 by 2030 in rather bland predictions.

2. Radical Privacy Autonomy (Q1 2027)

Currently, we’re renting intelligence from Google and OpenAI. It’s embarrassing. For the stock to hit $400, Apple must prove it can run Large Language Models locally on the device with zero round-trips to the cloud.

When "Private Cloud Compute" becomes "On-Device Absolute," the enterprise market will migrate to Apple en masse. But other companies are already half there (including Google, are renting their brains to Apple, securing Apple a competitive advantage. Jobs would have been fuming at this arse over tit decision (quaint English idiom for “stupid”)

How Jobs attitude to ensuring he owned the stack added up, versus Cook’s failure to do so resulting in a 999 (911 in the US) call to Google for a rescue for Siri.

That’s a multi-hundred-billion-dollar shift in valuation right there. Otherwise Apple’s AI efforts are going to be shrouded in a confusing multi-model and complicated plumbing underpinnings that has been the hallmark of other “Grand Projects” trying to catch up with the competition such as dot.mac and Maps, which took years to correct and arguably, never achieved any market dominance. One of Steve Jobs biggest regrets after all was not buying DropBox when it was offered to him, refusing to “overpay” for the service and seeing its multiplatform solution to the cloud, arguably a direct allegory to AI now in terms of user impact and data portability. Dot.mac had to be killed and totally re-written, destroying millions of peoples data in the process. I know - I was one of them.

Want the full, 45 minute detailed read of how Apple flunked it for 15 years, neé 40 years, with references and receipts? Take some time out, and read this, or just ask Perplexity to summarise it for you if you want to skip the snark (but also the juicy bits:

How Apple in 2026 has turned into the Microsoft of 2005 - uncorking how Liquid Glass is Apple’s “Windows Vista *lickable icons* moment.

3. The "Siri 2.0" Revenue Pivot (June 2027)

The era of the free, lobotomised assistant must end. I’ve argued for a Siri Pro tier—a true digital agent that handles your banking, travel, and logistics with actual agency. If Apple can convert even 15% of the 2-billion-device install base to a $20/month "Intelligence Subscription," the Services growth curve becomes vertical. That’s how you blow past the Street's conservative P/E ratios, not by squeezing existing customers for “Yet another fucking subscription” they can’t live without once they’re in it, but a big enough jump in functionality that makes the cost worthwhile for power users even while keeping a free tier competent and capable.

4. Supply Chain De-risking (Ongoing)

You can’t have a $5 Trillion market cap if your entire manufacturing heart is one geopolitical sneeze away from cardiac arrest. The $400 bull case assumes Apple successfully pivots 30% of its high-end assembly to India and eventually the US without a catastrophic dip in margins. I argued for the de-China-ication of the supply and manufacturing chain as far back as 2018 and was shrill about the risk by 2022, just as Cook began realising the risk, and found every attempt to even openly explore spreading the risk to other geographies met with such fierce resistance from the Chinese government that ever the coward, he always backed down.

Look where that got him.

5. Hardware "Soul" Restoration (iPhone 18/19)

The iPhone has become a "boring" iterative slab. To justify the premium, we need a "leapfrog" moment—likely in foldables or AR-integration that doesn't look like a scuba mask or a foldable iPad with phone functionality just as people are beginning to yearn for simpler, smaller devices (apart from tech media tech fetishists of course - the same bunch who said the iPhone Air was going to be the Second Coming.

Just before it was crucified on the cross of consumer common sense. the Air was ”A Ternus Production” by the way, and Apple marketing used its “dead certain success” to attach to him quite publicly in a hugely embarrassing backfire.

We need a product that people buy because they want it, not just because their current battery is dying and they can get an almost-free upgrade via their carrier for a 36 month contract.

Right, let’s take a breath and look at the screen. $296.

We’re sitting at the doorstep of the three-hundred-dollar club on a Friday afternoon, 8th May 2026 because the Straits of Hormuz were apparently reopened and the market has the memory of a goldfish. They were closed again by the afternoon, and by Saturday, the Iranians and Americans were shooting up one another’s ships. But because Pistol Pete Hesgeth said “oh this isn’t a breach of the ceasefire, it’s too small to matter,” everyone just overlooked it. Even though there’s now a giant oil spill in the straits now, and Iran fired missiles, not just drones, on two US destroyers in the Straits who returned fire and quickly ran away.

So everyone is high on "rebound euphoria," patting themselves on the back because the tankers are moving again. Except they’re not moving - apart from retracing any moves.

If anyone thinks Trumps war is over, just because he says its over (and TACO has become NACHO), think again, Here’s the deep dive - skip to the very end to read why the battle to free the Straits from Iran’s tollbooth are vital to Apple’s global success story.

Apple is a global company. Hormuz controls the world’s energy supply and prices. And if you think you’re safe in the US, think about the possibility of $7 gasoline, and consider how the rest of the world is facing costs double that. Not the time to be launching a $3000 foldable and concurrently suffering tripling memory costs, really.

But look at the tape. And look what’s coming: WWDC 2026. Who goes short into WWDC?

That isn't just "peace in our time" buying; it’s a massive, slow-motion short-covering squeeze. The bears who bet against the resilience of the supply chain are being carried out on stretchers, and the "long-and-strong" crowd is front-running WWDC 2026 like it’s the Second Coming.

You want to know when I tear up the $400 roadmap and hit the "Eject" button? Even with the stock at $296, I’m watching for these three red flags. If these trip in June, this "euphoria" is going to turn into a bloodbath.

A. The "WWDC Nothing-Burger" (The Classic Trap)

We’ve seen this movie before. The run-up to WWDC is always a fever dream of "Apple will change everything." If Ternus walks onto that stage in three weeks and gives us "Calculated Polish,” and “here’s a revamped Siri in iOS27 beta, with even more Siri coming soon our best ever Siri with holograph funnily” instead of Architectural Change, I’m going to be crackalackin‘ with laughter.

The Trigger: If the keynote is 90% "new emojis and custom lock screens" and only 10% AI, the "Sell the News" event won't just be a dip; it could be a rout.
If they don't show Agentic Siri—Siri actually doing things in third-party apps—then the $400 path trajectory for Q1 2027 is dead. Like a Monty Python Parrot, Dead, an Ex-target which has ceased to be.

2. The "Rent-an-AI" Admission

If Apple’s big AI reveal is just a more integrated "Google/OpenAI Sidebar," and a “plug in whatever AI extension you like in your system but it won’t integrate properly with your apps for safety reasons.” then Apple will have cemented itself as a Sony - a first amongst equals but no leader anymore.

They’ll be saying ”we’re a luxury shopping mall for other people's genius to rent out shopfronts.”

The Trigger: If they can't demonstrate Large Language Models running natively on the M5 and A19 chips without a handshake to a Mountain View server, the privacy moat is gone. Without the privacy moat, there is no $400 stock. There’s just a $200 commodity hardware company wearing a designer suit and pretending that somehow, cow-friendly fake “micro-weave fibre” is actually better and more luxurious than leather. I’m English. I love animals, but I also really, do, love leather accessories. Read into that what you will.

One word sums up my feelings on Apple surrendering to Google. No matter how you paint it, a 16 year head start has turned into a 3 year loss of leadership. The moat now belongs to OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Apple is having to buy an annual pass to get Siri and AI going again with a few Billion Dollars of a bung to Google to rent Gemini and run it on Google’s servers because Apple’s are running a year late aren’t properly configured yet.

3. Margin Erosion in the "Neo" Era

The "euphoria" right now is ignoring the math of the MacBook Neo.

The Trigger: When the Q3 earnings drop, if we see that the Neo is "cannibalising" the higher-end MacBook Air sales rather than bringing in "new-to-Mac" users, the margins will scream.
If the RAM shortage forced the ditching of the 256GB version, as it did the Mac Mini, then the base price US for the Neo will be $699 (or $999 in the UK and $1550 in Brazil).
If gross margins slip even 100 basis points because we’re chasing volume over value, the "Street" will punish Apple harder than a short-seller in a squeeze.

Why the Neo is gaslighting the world, and why this “$599” laptop is lying about its true cost everywhere but in America.

4. The "Chairman Cook" Shadow

The market loves the "continuity" of Tim Cook staying on as Executive Chairman this September, but I see a Leadership Limbo.

The Trigger: If Ternus looks like a puppet during the June reveal—if it’s clear he’s just reading Tim’s script—the market will realise there is no new vision. A company without a visionary at the top doesn't hit a $5 Trillion market cap. It becomes IBM with better industrial design and a bit of consumer polish using some Brasso to make the shiny bits blind people to the rough spots.

My Warning to the $296 Bulls:

Enjoy the weekend. Toast the tankers in the Middle East who have literally gone in circles.

But remember:

Short covering is not a strategy; it’s a mechanical reaction.
And this rise is short covering and options plays going into WWDC 2026.

We have seen this before in 2024. When I was still bullish, and following the launch of the iPad Pro M4 and what I heard in advance about Apple and AI, made me go all-in long, only to sell out a few months later in crushing disappointment at the IP16 launch and the quickly unravelling lies behind the Apple Intelligence began to appear.

The stock went from $189 early 2024 to $209 post WWDC 2024 to $240 and after dipping, topped out at $260 in December 2024 before crashing to $167 in April 2025 (a move I predicted a month previously to within $3).

If WWDC 2026 is just another "iterative" snooze-fest, the "sell the news" crowd will be joined by the "lost faith" crowd. I’ve held and traded around this stock for 25 years, but I’m not a martyr. If they miss the AI-Agent window in June, that $400 target isn't "delayed"—it’s deleted.

Closer to the event, I’ll draft the "WWDC 2026 Scorecard" I’ll be using to decide whether the company is showing vision for its vision and a pathway to the $400 I pinned on AAPL in July 2025, or dump at the opening bell the next morning in anticipation of the “plateau effect” returning with a vengeance.

The Times called Apple doomed again last year. It’s not doomed, but it’s currently sitting on Mount Boring, iterating its way up the “Wall of Complacency.”

The Bottom Line:

The "perma-bulls" hate me because I call out the rot in the executive suite.

They want the comfort of a $220 stock that grows at 5-10% a year.
I’m telling you that if they wake up, this thing is a $400 rocket ship. I have consistently called for this since June 2025. Why anyone can call me an Apple hater when I’m literally the only analyst to actually explain, over several months, how AAPL could hit $400 in Q1 2027 (now shifted to Q4 as of September 2025) shows how little appetite there is to engage with long form detailed analysis instead of forum echoes and soundbites designed to keep people in line and bowing at the pulpit.

A no holds barred melt-down I just couldn’t not publish. Remember, I write for myself, not the subscription model, and my articles are free to read, not republished blogrolls of other people’s work.

If they stay dozing at the wheel with Sleepy Tim still steering a straight but iterative path instead of a long and interesting winding road then AAPL is going to remain a very pretty, very expensive paperweight.

Are you holding for the dividends, or are you holding for the disruption?

Because only one of those gets us to the moon.

Specific "failure triggers" that would make me tear up this $400 roadmap and flip to a hard sell, or join Dan Ives and scream “Buy” in the weeks to come.

Last word: “Have Investors Lost the Ability to “Think Critical“ let alone “Think Different”

The Faithful are kept happy by The Preachers in the Holy Cave, nurtured by Cook, Federighi, and a can of hairspray with a match to turn into into a scathing flamethrower: how Apple and its unthinking followers (as opposed to its investors who actually indulge in *critical thinking*) are kept in line and dissent ruthless quashed.

There is a strong argument that the "Apple Community" has fractured into two camps:

The Devout: Those who see any skepticism as a personal attack. They ignore his $400 target because they can't handle my critique of the "Boring Apple" hardware. The preachers, the ever long, who even though they know the glory days of 11,000% rises are behind them, are happy to tell anyone else to buy whenever the stock moves 5%.

Iterartive commentary, ruthless suppression of dissent: Onece free thinking Apple blogs such as 9to5Mac and AppleInsider - and sadly to some degree even the venerable Apple3.0 have segments into Orwell’s “NewSpeak” and Big Brother-like editorial control from a subdued proletariat constructs to toe the forum line or risk expulsion.

The Realists: Those who recognise that I don’t predict doom but I do perform "Pre-Mortems" all the time. I try and articulate worst-case scenarios with detail showing how stagnation could or has set in, and then I specifically discuss how to avoid it.

That latter part of the sentence, for some reason, seems unpalatable to many holders, because to acknowledge the sense in the risks and solutions I outline, would mean embracing the fact that the risks I outline actually exist at all.

By arguing both sides with equal ferocity, I try to encourage my readers to think like venture capitalists rather than passive holders. In essence, I am saying:

“I am the biggest bull on Apple's potential, but the biggest bear on its current execution."

For many who have seen their portfolios grow solely because of Apple’s stability, that level of nuance is terrifying, leading to the "scathing" reactions you've observed.

Good luck in going into WWDC. May June deliver your the rewards you deserve. Which is a bit like saying, “may you live in interesting times,” but without any spite meant.

Honestly.

Meanwhile if Apple launch AirPods with cameras in them, watch people run a million miles away from privacy worries from anyone spotted with these once-iconic wireless $300 earbuds. Frankly I’m thinking of ditching this feature bloat and returning to $19 white wired earbuds. Maybe I’ll go get me a new-old Nokia 3310 dumphone as well. The “iFold” to me, is an iPad with a phone device attached and frankly anyone with any taste (ie. rest of world outside of the US and anyone under 18) is going to look on with few sniggers at someone holding up a folded tablet to their ear.

Apple, please, carry on with the Phablet Phones if you must, but give me a companion phone like the one I had in 1996 - the iconic Motorola Star Tac which looked like a Star Trek Communicator, fitted in the coin pocket of your jeans, and… <drumroll> you can change the battery out in seconds.

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. It’s sometimes also a signal to where consumer preferences tend to return to and at the moment, increasingly, people want simpler devices, not Swiss Army Knives.

The Motorola StarTAC circa. 1996. Bliss, amazing, simple, futuristic at the time. It managed to fit into the coin pocket of your jeans. There’s a simplicity to it that screams *“I don’t need a folding screen or cameras in my bloody AirPods”* sadly missing from today’s gadget fetishism where everything has to do well.. everything.Anyone know if I can get one that works on 5G networks? I’m a buyer.

As the saying goes: KISS

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.

Tommo_UK, London, Sunday, 10th May 2026

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