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Last week, Apple presented its latest earnings results, which disappointed.

Apple's stock is now around $95/share and it was passed Monday night by Google in terms of market cap.

Apple's Tim Cook spent a lot of time on the call discussing the global macroeconomic picture at the moment:

Our results are particularly impressive, given the challenging global macroeconomic environment. We're seeing extreme conditions unlike anything we've experienced before just about everywhere we look.

Major markets, including Brazil, Russia, Japan, Canada, Southeast Asia, Australia, Turkey and the eurozone, have been impacted by slowing economic growth, falling commodity prices and weakening currencies.

Since the end of fiscal 2014, for instance, the euro and British pound are down double-digits, and major currencies such as the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Mexican peso, and Turkish lira have declined 20% or more. The Brazilian real is down more than 40% and the Russian ruble has declined more than 50%.

66% of Apple's revenue is now generated outside the United States, so foreign currency fluctuations have a very meaningful impact on our results. Page one of our supplemental material illustrates this point.

That language surprised me, so I went back to look at what Apple said in January 2009. Back then, on January 21, 2009, Apple's stock price was $11.02. That was down 61% from their late 2007 high of $28.55/share (all in today's dollars - pre-split).

If Apple currently traded 61% below its all-time high of $132.64, its stock price today would have to be trading at $51.20/share -- or roughly half its current levels.

In January 2009, if you recall, the world was coming apart at the seams.

Yet, here was the only macroeconomic commentary Tim Cook gave that call from his Q&A that month about the broader market. And, by the way, Cook followed Peter Oppenheimer's opening commentary on the call. Cook didn't even provide any opening commentary on that call. More remarkable, initially the analysts didn't even ask about the macro environment. They asked about the health of Steve Jobs, about the performance of their then 25 retail stores, how the price elasticity of the iPhone (which only had recently launched) compared to the iPod and the Mac, and how gross margins were holding up.

Tim Cook even commented how gross margins were going to be doing even better for them in the coming quarter thanks to the collapse of commodity prices (which of course was due to a collapsing economy).

Finally, 5 questions in, there was a more detailed question about the economy (albeit indirectly):

Richard Gardner - Citigroup

Okay, thank you. Peter, I guess one for you and then one for Tim. First of all, you mentioned that you were giving a wider range than normal for guidance for the March quarter. However, the range is considerably narrower than the one that you provided for the December quarter. And I realize that you're building up a base of recurring revenue with the iPhone.

Is that the only factor that leads you to give a more narrow range for the March quarter? Or is there something else that's giving you confidence in the business going into March, which is traditionally a tougher quarter for consumer companies?

Tim Cook

Rich, I would just add that if you think back to the timing of the guidance, we were in a period of time where banks were going down, what seemed like every other day and it does seem like where things, where the economy is clearly in bad shape that it is not as unpredictable as it was in October perhaps.

The bottom line is that, although Apple is a much bigger company today than it was in 2009, we are not in 2009.

Apple, and all companies' management teams, are paid to manage currency fluctuations. The attention that Cook gave it on last week's call appeared to be over-explaining.

However, it's also helpful to recall that, in the 2009 crisis, Wall Street wasn't even raking Tim Cook over the coals about the macro-economy. He couldn't control that. What they cared about was what he could control: retail store performance, margins, etc.

Apple is a much more complex and large company today than it ever has been, but it also has - as Cook said - the "mother of all balance sheets" which enables it to hire people to help deal with this complexity.

The Tim Cook of 2016 should have coffee with the Tim Cook of 2009 and chat. I think the Tim Cook of 2009 would ask why he seems to be trying so hard to encourage others that his stock should be worth more. I think the old Tim Cook might say:

"What's with emailing Jim Cramer mid-quarter? Why do you go on and on about how you've had the biggest quarter ever? Why over-explain the currency movements? Why not just go back to the old earnings call formats where the CFO just provides some introductory remarks and you just answer questions? Just let the results speak for themselves."

Earnings calls aren't the place for macroeconomic forecasting. Let's leave that to the economists on TV or at Davos.

Tim Cook needs to remember the maxim: never complain, never explain.

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