The Curse of Culture
stratechery.com
The Curse of Culture
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: The Curse of Culture
#2That's a great scene, with Jobs announcing that Internet Explorer would be the default browser on the Macintosh, and the crowd booing. Jobs has to stop speaking, twice.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#3I'm a huge fan of Stratechery and Thompson. They've given me powerful ways of thinking about the world.
Are there others out there? While Thompson does talk a lot about the intersection of technology with business strategy, he tends to focus on large, well-known technology companies that primarily have consumer facing offering.
I'd pay to read something like Stratechery for biotechnology, or enterprise software but to the best of my knowledge none of these exist.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#4I'm a huge fan of Stratechery and Thompson. They've given me powerful ways of thinking about the world. Are there others out there? While Thompson does talk a lot about the intersection of technology with business strategy, he tends to focus on large, well-known technology companies that primarily have consumer facing offering. I'd pay to read something like Stratechery for biotechnology, or enterprise software but t…
I had the same thought while reading this
I wish I could read an entire aggregator of different hybrid consulting+insight blogs.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#5Summary
Founders set the company culture, success ingrains that culture deep into a company's subconscious where it runs in the background regardless of whatever cultural reforms/artifacts are introduced - culture can only be changed when a new CEO (Jobs, Nadella) steps in and announces a huge change in culture, which usually stems from an otherwise unimaginable partnership (such as Apple/MSFT) that shows a concession to the realities of the market, which the company once thought it was above.
---
Author singles out Apple and Google as companies he is worried about WRT current culture.
Apple - threatened by "big data AI services": Author calls for Apple to partner with Microsoft to get access to cheap backend services (Azure) and/or frontend services (Siri + Cortana), ostensibly to play in Amazon AWS (compute as a service) and IBM Watson's (AI/marketing as a service) markets, respectively. Alternatively, Apple should open iOS to enable customers to muck around with the latest and greatest Android developments and set Google services as defaults on their iOS devices.
Google - threatened by users spending time on social apps: Should partner with Facebook by building a bot for Facebook Messenger and a backend for Facebook Messenger developers.
---
Questions/Comments
- It is unclear what unique advantages Apple would bring to the table for either the frontend/backend services market. Why break the intense in-house hardware/software coupling focus by leaning on MS for services? What backend services does Apple need to bring in-house through a partnership?
- What are the cool new Android services that iOS needs to integrate? I know the author says AI capabilities, but that is not a well-defined technology or use-case.
- I don't know a single person that likes using Facebook Messenger. Additionally, messaging applications have much, much lower barriers to entry than web browsers. Messenger is not comparable to Chrome. This is why Fbook purchased Whatsapp.
- Underlying premise: does Apple really need to play in the big data/AI space? Does Google really need to play in the social media space? Are these really going to be markets that drive future growth?
Re: The Curse of Culture
#6>> I’m worried for Apple…If the landscape shifts to prioritize those big-data AI services, Apple will find itself in a similar position as BlackBerry did almost a decade ago:
Maybe Apple is betting that AI won't be achieved in the next 15-20 years.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#7I'm a huge fan of Stratechery and Thompson. They've given me powerful ways of thinking about the world. Are there others out there? While Thompson does talk a lot about the intersection of technology with business strategy, he tends to focus on large, well-known technology companies that primarily have consumer facing offering. I'd pay to read something like Stratechery for biotechnology, or enterprise software but t…
Horace Dediu/Asymco, while covering similar turf to Stratechery, is well worth reading.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#8I'm a huge fan of Stratechery and Thompson. They've given me powerful ways of thinking about the world. Are there others out there? While Thompson does talk a lot about the intersection of technology with business strategy, he tends to focus on large, well-known technology companies that primarily have consumer facing offering. I'd pay to read something like Stratechery for biotechnology, or enterprise software but t…
Benedict Evans was like this and has since joined A16Z. His focus is mostly mobile, so you end up with a lot of overlap between the other people covering Google / Apple / MSFT, but he definitely has an interesting perspective (He formerly worked in research for an investment bank, so he knows the ins/outs of global telecom very well):
His annual mobile deck is usually really good;
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/3/29/presentation-mo...
Re: The Curse of Culture
#9Summary Founders set the company culture, success ingrains that culture deep into a company's subconscious where it runs in the background regardless of whatever cultural reforms/artifacts are introduced - culture can only be changed when a new CEO (Jobs, Nadella) steps in and announces a huge change in culture, which usually stems from an otherwise unimaginable partnership (such as Apple/MSFT) that shows a concessio…
- What are the cool new Android services that iOS needs to integrate? I know the author says AI capabilities, but that is not a well-defined technology or use-case.
I'd much rather talk to Google than Siri. It works about 10x better. But I can't set a default assitant on my device. Nor can anything else interact with Siri, as it has no API. I'd love to see them open this stuff up more.
I love Apple's hardware and I like their mobile OS. Their software/services? Not so much. I hate iTunes, I find Siri worthless, notes is a bag of hurt, Calendar has syncing issues, the iWork suite other than Keynote is a joke for professionals since it was gutted a couple years ago, and on and on... I use alternatives for all of these things. But they cannot be integrated well.
Re: The Curse of Culture
#10I've come to a conclusion that Cook's reign at Apple will probably mirror Ballmer's reign at Microsoft. Both are biz guys who inherited companies from technology visionaries with massive revenue streams and yet they both lacked vision and tech expertise to create successful new products. Ballmer tried it numerous times and Cook has tried it with Watch, Music and so on. Neither of them have succeeded. Apple's now become a "me too" company as they keep on releasing products that other companies have released already. Apparently, Apple is now working on their Amazon Echo and Google Home clone. They'll be third to market once it's out.
In 2014, when Apple bought an urban fashion brand that sells overpriced headphones, Google bought Deepmind for 1/6 of the price. That said it all about where both companies were headed. Steve Jobs is famous for quoting Gretzky's line about "skating where the puck is headed and not where it is" and it seems that Google's skating where the puck is going while Apple's skating backwards.
Apple's headed for a decade of stagnation... just like Microsoft was under Ballmer. My only question is: how long before Apple gets its own Nadella and who will be their savior? I don't see anyone in their executive ranks who's as good as Nadella.