7. "And we are investing in our direct enterprise sales force." What was that? Calling out for all to hear that Apple is paying attention to "the enterprise," also known as business customers, also known as the kind of IT buyers Steve Jobs despised? This part was truly interesting. It's not news, by the way. Apple has been quietly building its enterprise sales force for years now. But emphasizing it in the context of how and why Apple is investing for growth was extremely telling.
And then Cook summed up:
Simply stated, we don't see ceilings to our opportunities. All of this innovation and success have led to the generation of substantial amounts of cash, both domestically and abroad. We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business to increase research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments in capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out of our infrastructure, and you will see more of all of these in the future.
There's no question about it: Apple will not be able to grow over the next 15 years as much as it has grown over the last 15 years. Yet reading this list -- and reading between the lines of why Tim Cook chose what he chose to list -- it's hard to challenge the argument that this half-a-trillion-dollar company has plenty of room left to run.