Ask HN: What would you invest in if you were the CEO of Apple?

On talent to maintain quality with Macs & OS X, instead of only having all top notch human capital into iOS.

1) invest heavily in a much better user experience: retail, hardware and software. Establish and organize deep, responsive feedback system. 2) invest in whatever it takes to eliminate all wires and adapters associated with Apple products 3) Double or triple the number of Apple retail stores. In addition to more big destination stores, develop smaller footprint stores that can go in smaller communities.

4) create entry level products for developing markets.

Nice try Tim. You almost had me with the p.s.

I’d invest in some moonshots -

Neural computer interface.

Bio-scanners so an iOS device can (further) become a medical diagnostic tool.

A high resolution (5k+) Apple screen that I can plug my laptop into.

More and more battery research.

500M-2B on launching Apple satellites, to scan the planet daily at sub meter resolution, data would augment many Apple endeavours and they could also sell

I would invest in improving Topsy.com /s

This is going to sound crazy, but I've been thinking about it for the past few months.

A fully digital city:

* Imagine a full digital office: all of your files at easy access all around you

* Imagine reading Apple News on a balcony looking out at the city

* Imagine FaceTime, but being able to walk around a room with your friends

* Imagine digital storefronts where you can look at 3D models, then conveniently buy with Apple Pay.

* Imagine what 3rd party developers could do...

Yes, it's a moonshot, mostly science fiction. But the tech is almost there. The real trick, of course, is giving it mass appeal - making it widely accessible. But if there's any company that's built on making things accessible, it's got to be Apple.

Mac OSX is outdated and buggy. Apple does not put much effort into fixing it. It's past time to create Mac OSXI. They need to hire more software engineers if they can't do better than what they have now.

Even though Apple is all about focus, I would integrate a little more data by buying Yelp and TomTom. Yelp for a time was pretty toxic but I think they're clean enough now.

Do something crazy. Completely embrace FOSS.

Do something conservative. Invest heavily in battery research.

Make hardware the focus, make it incredible. Support software with money and project governance, but let the ties to the hardware go. Win purely on incredible hardware.

I'd invest in yourself, Apple.

Get your house in order. Fix OSX. Fix or scrap iTunes. Invest in FOSS. Fire your designers... Write a love letter to your developers in the form of fast, upgradable hardware. Write a love letter to gamers in the form of cheap but fast gaming machines. And make a laptop I want to own.

- Buy Tesla and spin out project titan to the acquisition. End the distraction and get back to base business

- Quadruple down on e-health. Microsoft gave up. No one should trust amazon, google or fb to do this with any semblance of privacy.

- create “Apple seeds” - companies building tech for the ecosystem but too small at the present to be part of Apple. - imagine ubiquity being an Apple subsidiary like Claris was

I'd be bold and invest in creating a new product that will be of iPhone magnitude. I think if any company could do a google-glass like AR device and make it popular it would be Apple.

But do something. Don't miss NLP/AI because Apple is sorely behind and Siri is fast becoming a joke. In 10 years, Tim Cook may look like Steve Ballmer.

Also, hire more developers. good chat Tim

One word: privacy. They are already trying to create an image that what is on an iphone is yours, that osx does not send endless amounts of telemetry back to the mothership,etc.. But I think that in the next 5 years this image will become a very important differentiator.

In the near future there will be services like the amazon and google voice assistants that rely on you being the product and there will be services that you use in private without relying on them sucking up all your meta data.

Open Source OSX/macOS, at least versions prior. Microsoft is going to beat Apple to it if it doesn't happen soon.

ARM64 servers.

This one is quite a low hanging fruit.

Apple has the most advanced ARMv8 based core, one that can rival Intel.

And the market is enormous, larger by far than iPad, or Mac.

Of course Apple being Apple they would ship entire boxes, and not just the CPUs.

Battery technology? Having superior batteries would surely be a selling point for all of your products since most of them rely on a battery one way or another.

I’d be very cautious about buying anything big or lousy. Keep buying a series of small and easily integratable technology companies - like Powerbyproxi, purchased late last year. Have 3-5 internal investments on technology and products that nobody has thought of yet. Don’t be afraid to spend too much, but also make sure you can deliver to Apple standards.

If this sounds like business as usual the good. Apple has done very well so far.

Competent staff for our non core product lines, or kill them off.

If I were Tim Cook, I'd carefully consider the following problems:

1.) The input problem. Phones/tablets are great, but they can only do so much when our fingertips are still the best input device available. In the future, this will likely mean some kind of neural interface. But in the present, can we fill in the gaps with something better than Siri?

2.) The health problem. Our phones have the potential to become a wonderful personal diagnostics tool. Hell, I can't think of any device I've brought as deep into my existence as my iPhone. That said, we could get better. In my dreams, I would love to bleed on my phone to monitor whether my cardiac enzyme levels are rising. I would love to be able to get a reliable blood pressure/pulse rating from my phone. And I would love to be able to track a wide variety of health markers. A tool that could collect biological data and relate it to nutrition and exercise choices would be revolutionary. A tool that could provide North American level diagnostics to remote third world villages would be life saving.

3.) The jobs problem. As automation eats up more and more jobs, we either need some form of basic income, or we need new sectors that will employ the masses. The alternative is a society where 10% are consumers and the rest can't afford more than subsistence. This represents a potential crisis for brands like Apple. I have no idea how Apple could solve this, though I do have fear of how the masses would respond to an Apple sponsored basic income program.

One of the problem is Apple has been following its rule of Asset less. Since Steve came back, do not own manufacturing, do not own x, do not own y. The less asset the better. The reason were simple, Apple wanted to stay slim and agile. It was the reason why Apple was so late into Datacenter, they kept using the cloud until it was unbearable. They were late to CDN, they kept on using Akamai. But today's Apple isn't the same any more, and I argue Apple should be adding more asset, like CDN, DC, and its own Fibre.

Apple Stores: I think Apple should own more of those Stores property outright. It should aims to have key location or % of Apple Store to be an Apple asset. I just dont like the idea of paying rent. I know many argues paying rent gives you flexibility, but I think we are at a time where Apple could own half of those Stores as base numbers. Not to mention the Apple Stores opened Internationally is still far too low.

Wallet: That is like being neglected, membership card, license, Bank ATM Card, shouldn't Apple be providing solution to get rid of these.

iPhone as a Services: Or basically rolling out iPhone upgrade programme internationally, and add free iCloud Backup to it. This will need a pile of cash in the bank since revenue are now spread out.

TV and Router. I dont trust the current selection of Router for its software quality. And Apple should make a TV Set.

Gaming: Forget about Apple's Services or App Store revenue. Because most of those are revenue from Gaming. And yet Apple doesn't care about games on mac.

Maps: Maps in Japan is shit, Maps in South East Asia is shit. Maps in China is ok only because the data are from government.

Homekit: What happen to it?

iTunes: Rewrite it or dump it.

Time Capsule for iOS: Not everyone has decent Internet connection, or fast connection for iCloud. We need a simple solution that doesn't require a computer.

So you ask none of these are really new. I dont need anything new. I need Apple to stop making those pile of crap that they left behind. Start making those things great again. Apple Music in Japan is a complete pile of bloody mess. And they now are working on TV series.

It is NOT Good enough.

To throw out something different, I would buy Sprint and provide either very cheap or very high quality wireless connectivity to Apple devices, and I would build it into all Apple devices by default. Connectivity is so important to Apple’s devices and experience that I would take away the weak/expensive third-party link in the system. Sprint would also give Apple an impressive global tier-1 fiber network, but thats more of a cherry on top. Sprint could probably be acquired for less (far less?) than $30B. Apple could push device updates OTA, sell apps books movies music and tv shows, provide customer support.. all without requiring a subscription services.

EDIT: I’m sure there are loads of opportunities to optimize communication if you control both the device and network design, like building in mesh networking. For example, AppleTVs, with their permenant power connections and room for better antennae, could do a lot of heavy duty LTE comm, and send the “last 10 foot” comm to my unplugged phone over Bluetooth or wifi. Or one iPhone could fetch an update Apple and intelligently share it with other devices over LAN to reduce the load on the network when updates are pushed.

The least he can do is hire a small team and rewrite iTunes. It's such a PITA, and there is no web client. Tried Apple music 3 times only to return to Spotify.

Buy Nvidia or AMD.

The race to AI will be won by hardware. Apple right now will lose to Google and Amazon without some serious help and market advantage. Sure google can build a fab or rent one out, but the army of engineers employed at either and the scores of patents would put Apple miles ahead.

It’d also give them a the back door they need into the enterprise market. Sort of how they won the consumer market back from Microsoft with the move to mobile. They’d have an AI hardware platform available for enterprise... A-nX ARM chips and insanely good graphics cards powering servers. see ya later, Intel...

Lots of big dreams here on what they could aspire to do.

The company is dangerously close to scaring off their customers because of poor software quality.

I’d set aside some money for QA...

Software quality at Apple needs a lot of help.

Every single product is suffering as a result.

I'd start building microprocessors based on carbon nanotube transistors. Researches have already built prototypes, but the industry didn't pick it up yet. Time to get started!