"... it matters to you whether your phone has 64 or 128 GB of RAM"
Holy Cow! I want that phone! I've only got 8 GB of RAM on my desktop.
"The first iPhone had apps..."
The only apps the original iPhone had were the kind you could get on any feature phone: weather, stocks, etc... It wasn't until later that the app store opened and really changed things.
As a whole, the article seems incredibly uninformed about technology. I would give the author a pass, but their conclusion doesn't seem to agree with history either. When the iPhone and iPad were released they were incredibly expensive and dismissed as toys for geeks. Less than a decade later those two devices have revolutionized technology and given Apple a dominant position. Apple has already crossed the chasm. Not with MacBooks, but with iPhones.
>Holy Cow! I want that phone! I've only got 8 GB of RAM on my desktop.
They probably had in mind smartphone disk storage options.
That said, technically speaking, they are correct in a pedantic way: a phone's SSD is also RAM, as there's a constant time of accessing any random address on the drive.
I think MacBooks were created after the market crossed the chasm already. There was nothing revolutionary about those laptops. They just keep on improving them, making them… thinner.
Yeah, even if you argue that the sideloaded app stores and whatnot that you could put on a jailbroken iPod Touch (remember those?) and 1st gen iPhones existed for a little before the official App Store, it was hardly the experience people think of today when talking about apps.
As a shareholder, I have to admit I've lost a little confidence in Tim Cook. He's a fantastic operations guy, but lacks a founder's vision, drive and risk-taking mentality. I also think companies, unlike governments, are best run by dictators. With Tim, it seems like decisions are community (in terms of employee) driven instead of coming from his vision.
With that said, I'm still a huge Apple fan boy. The stock's fundamentals are off the charts, look at P/E, solid dividend, and huge piles of cash on hand. Not sold on the 1 billion investment in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi Chuxing (I can't connect the dots right now).
>He's a fantastic operations guy, but lacks a founder's vision, drive and risk-taking mentality.
If there's one thing I've learned in my corporate serfdom is that primadonnas can't handle other primadonnas. Do you think Steve Jobs would be able to work with another Steve Jobs? Jobs picked Cook because Cook wasn't Jobs, so Jobs was able to tolerate him. The problem is a company like Apple probably needs a Jobs-like character.
I see this all the time in the workplace. The difficult higher-ups always hire fairly milquetoast personalities they can easily control but when they leave, we now have a department of largely unmotivated 'yes men,' unable to do anything but take orders.
>As a shareholder, I have to admit I've lost a little confidence in Tim Cook. He's a fantastic operations guy, but lacks a founder's vision, drive and risk-taking mentality.
The same guy who's (from all we know) pivoting Apple into car making?
Dictators can run governments the best. too. The problem is they can be also the worst. And the whole inheritance thing.
Apple's problem right now is not so much Cook's objective qualities, but perception. And perception leads to positive feedback loops and self fulfilling prophecies.
If the market sees Apple as company in trouble, some part of it will also start seeing themselves that way. And the company will start behaving appropriately.
What people demanding innovation from Apple don't get is that as a corporation Apple cares only about profit. If the profit happens to require innovation then there will be innovation , but besides this it's pointless thing.
Usually the innovations in marketing are enough to keep the sales.
I'm really finding it difficult to follow the author's logic here.
He starts off with the title
"What Tim Cook's Apple has in common with Porsche's Cayenne?",
but then the only comment he makes regarding porche is ..
"Just think what Porsche’s hardcore users said when they first saw Porsche Cayenne. “Betrayal!”, “It’s not a Porsche!”. And yet it made a killing when it comes to sales. Think Mercedes A Class, BMW 1…"
The rest of the article goes on in the same vein with quotes here and there, peace time/wartime something or other but essentially what he's saying is..
What people who demand innovations from Apple don't get is they are resting on their laurels? Taking it easy and raking profits? Riding on the coattails of their previous innovations. We get that. It's obvious and it's a deadend. It happened to Cannon, Sony, Nintendo, Intel etc etc. That's why people who get it want Apple to innovate.
Don't forget more relevantly, RIM who had the smartphone market completely locked up but couldn't get comfortable with a large, keyboardless, touchscreen device that was graphically oriented despite Microsoft having created these devices before the iPhone explosion. The question is are the innovations coming out of non-Apple mobile computing on par with the touchscreen/gui revolution of the late 2000s. Water Resistant? Wireless Charging? Wearables? Voice Control? None seem likely to supplant the basic form factor.
After all, post 1995, there wasn't a major innovation in the desktop or mobile pc market that took over. Flat Panel monitors maybe. Desktops and Laptops are simply faster and possibly smaller versions of what we had then.
The point I'm making is that tech innovation is going to shif t to something outside handheld. Cloud, IOT, VR/AR, AI, Wearables, Voice are leading contenders right now and Apple is certainly thinking about all of them.
The author's point is that the proper and profitable way to run a company - once it's crossed the chasm - is the way Cook is running now.
You needed Jobs (or someone like him) to get Apple to where it is now by doing things that fit the early adopter market. But once you have done it, it becomes the wrong thing to do - because doing what the early adopters want/need will hurt the much larger, much more profitable part of the business and customers that actually do prefer the stability.
It's not a dead end - it's harvesting the field you've planted instead of neglecting it to try other fields/crops; it's what the shareholders would likely prefer and unsurprisingly they have done so.
[+] [-] joshuata|10 years ago|reply
"... it matters to you whether your phone has 64 or 128 GB of RAM"
Holy Cow! I want that phone! I've only got 8 GB of RAM on my desktop.
"The first iPhone had apps..."
The only apps the original iPhone had were the kind you could get on any feature phone: weather, stocks, etc... It wasn't until later that the app store opened and really changed things.
As a whole, the article seems incredibly uninformed about technology. I would give the author a pass, but their conclusion doesn't seem to agree with history either. When the iPhone and iPad were released they were incredibly expensive and dismissed as toys for geeks. Less than a decade later those two devices have revolutionized technology and given Apple a dominant position. Apple has already crossed the chasm. Not with MacBooks, but with iPhones.
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
They probably had in mind smartphone disk storage options.
That said, technically speaking, they are correct in a pedantic way: a phone's SSD is also RAM, as there's a constant time of accessing any random address on the drive.
[+] [-] paweltkaczyk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkane848|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|10 years ago|reply
With that said, I'm still a huge Apple fan boy. The stock's fundamentals are off the charts, look at P/E, solid dividend, and huge piles of cash on hand. Not sold on the 1 billion investment in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi Chuxing (I can't connect the dots right now).
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
If there's one thing I've learned in my corporate serfdom is that primadonnas can't handle other primadonnas. Do you think Steve Jobs would be able to work with another Steve Jobs? Jobs picked Cook because Cook wasn't Jobs, so Jobs was able to tolerate him. The problem is a company like Apple probably needs a Jobs-like character.
I see this all the time in the workplace. The difficult higher-ups always hire fairly milquetoast personalities they can easily control but when they leave, we now have a department of largely unmotivated 'yes men,' unable to do anything but take orders.
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
The same guy who's (from all we know) pivoting Apple into car making?
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
Apple's problem right now is not so much Cook's objective qualities, but perception. And perception leads to positive feedback loops and self fulfilling prophecies.
If the market sees Apple as company in trouble, some part of it will also start seeing themselves that way. And the company will start behaving appropriately.
[+] [-] scarface74|10 years ago|reply
Even before the iPhone was introduced, the phone market was huge by volume if not revenue.
[+] [-] zaro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sickbeard|10 years ago|reply
He starts off with the title
"What Tim Cook's Apple has in common with Porsche's Cayenne?",
but then the only comment he makes regarding porche is ..
"Just think what Porsche’s hardcore users said when they first saw Porsche Cayenne. “Betrayal!”, “It’s not a Porsche!”. And yet it made a killing when it comes to sales. Think Mercedes A Class, BMW 1…"
The rest of the article goes on in the same vein with quotes here and there, peace time/wartime something or other but essentially what he's saying is..
What people who demand innovations from Apple don't get is they are resting on their laurels? Taking it easy and raking profits? Riding on the coattails of their previous innovations. We get that. It's obvious and it's a deadend. It happened to Cannon, Sony, Nintendo, Intel etc etc. That's why people who get it want Apple to innovate.
[+] [-] kaspm|10 years ago|reply
After all, post 1995, there wasn't a major innovation in the desktop or mobile pc market that took over. Flat Panel monitors maybe. Desktops and Laptops are simply faster and possibly smaller versions of what we had then.
The point I'm making is that tech innovation is going to shif t to something outside handheld. Cloud, IOT, VR/AR, AI, Wearables, Voice are leading contenders right now and Apple is certainly thinking about all of them.
[+] [-] PeterisP|10 years ago|reply
You needed Jobs (or someone like him) to get Apple to where it is now by doing things that fit the early adopter market. But once you have done it, it becomes the wrong thing to do - because doing what the early adopters want/need will hurt the much larger, much more profitable part of the business and customers that actually do prefer the stability.
It's not a dead end - it's harvesting the field you've planted instead of neglecting it to try other fields/crops; it's what the shareholders would likely prefer and unsurprisingly they have done so.
[+] [-] mentos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aksdj|10 years ago|reply