It was clear they had supply constraints a few years ago, and when those cleared up there was a huge bubble of sales. Expecting growth this year when so many regular customers just got a new phone would be silly.
And it's also a distraction - the problems facing Apple are
How poorly the company is responding to antitrust complaints.
The Vision Pro doesn't seem to be doing well, and their car project was so much worse they literally killed it.
Twelve years ago Apple was leading the industry on digital assistants... Siri was nowhere near good enough but nobody else had a "good enough" product either and Siri showed real promise. Now? WTF is taking so long? It's pretty clear other companies are very close to achieving what Siri failed and there's not much to indicate Apple can keep up.
He also sold before the buyback which caused the stock to raise 7%~. If he was insider trading, it would have made sense to purchase before a buyback, then sell afterwards.
