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Apple is a traditional business

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Re: Apple is a traditional business

#51

Post by primitivesuave »

emodendroket wrote: post #33
fhood wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

Steve Jobs did not single-handedly invent the iPhone.

Even a 1% shift in the direction of something as massive as Apple, compounded over an additional decade of Steve Job's tenure (assuming retirement at 65), could make a massive difference - whether this would be good or bad for humanity is another question and still debatable.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#52

Post by antris »

whatok wrote: post #31
ekianjo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right now. iPhones are a luxury. If you can recommend them it means you already belong to the richest part of the planet. For the rest, they jut can't afford it, and Apple was never interested in making anything cheap.

21% of Apple's quarterly revenue was from China. China is not well-known as one of the richest parts of the planet.

Apple is luxury in China too. Do you really think it's the average Chinese that are buying iPhones?

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#53

Post by jmull »

airstrike wrote: post #27

I only wish the author hadn't forgotten to mention the quintessential non-Apple company: SNAP[0] Many say the current game of musical chairs is overdue for a pause. My money (not literally) is on Tech stocks taking the biggest hit. But as the article put it, Apple isn't a Tech company -- it's a manufacturer (and superb retailer!) of products that are observably differentiated, as they clearly command higher prices fo…

> But as the article put it, Apple isn't a Tech company

That's not what the article says. In fact, it says "Apple is the perfect tech company..."

I'd like to hear a definition of "tech company" and doesn't include Apple.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#54

Post by zer00eyz »

fhood wrote: post #22
oflannabhra wrote: post #11

> ...this is a time when Amazon is pushing innovations that don’t solve any real-world problems but may create some: like smart speakers, with their threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase in convenience, or complex and expensive cashierless stores that won’t deliver much of an improvement to our shopping experience but may cost underprivileged people their jobs. This is a time whe…

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

Not worth it.

Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it.

Name a product apple invented that was HUGE? Go ahead and think about that. GUI & Mac was Xerox, the iPhone was Xerox and palm and...

Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things.

Lets look at the design side. MacBooks for all their glory are just advanced machining (cnc + automation) put to work at scale (and thats "new" but not groundbreaking). OSX is just *nix with a nice GUI (something open source could learn from).

Jony Ive leaves apple, then I might start to worry.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#55

Post by logfromblammo »

fhood wrote: post #22
oflannabhra wrote: post #11

> ...this is a time when Amazon is pushing innovations that don’t solve any real-world problems but may create some: like smart speakers, with their threat of big brother-style surveillance in exchange for a minimal increase in convenience, or complex and expensive cashierless stores that won’t deliver much of an improvement to our shopping experience but may cost underprivileged people their jobs. This is a time whe…

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

All I see is a bunch of proprietary connectors and dongles, and I sleep like a log.

Jobs was just the salesman. Those products aren't lost, but they may have had a harder time getting to market without the "visionary" around to hype them up.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#56

Post by xmodem »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #28
xmodem wrote: post #7

(Disclosure: I hold AAPL) Great article but a couple of points: On Tuesday’s call, there was just one question about innovative offerings, and it concerned health applications, an important driver of Apple Watch sales but not a potential world-beating sensation. Apple appears to be happy to think small and focus on its shareholders, not on pie-in-the-sky ideas, like other tech companies, including industry leaders. T…

> They don't burn cash on new ideas just because they can How much was spent on Project Titan (The car)?

No-one outside Apple knows, and we won't find out for at least another 5-10 years when executives start writing books about it, if ever. But you miss my point entirely.

Perhaps a better way of putting it is in this comment from Tim Cook in 2009[1]:

We believe we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

If there ever was a car-project (which there was enough smoke for that I think there probably was), it was because Apple's management genuinely believed at the time they could make a significant contribution to the automotive industry. The fact that, after trying for however long, they concluded the money had been pissed up the wall doesn't make the attempt any less valid.

[1]: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_coo_tim_cook_l...

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#57

Post by r00fus »

austincheney wrote: post #24
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

I probably now fall into this camp as well. I made fun of Apple for years, but while I still hold an emotional and likely completely irrational dislike for their products, if someone were to ask me for a recommendation on a phone today, the only phone I could recommend in good conscience is an iPhone, because it's the only option that takes privacy and security seriously right now.

I have an iPhone, but it is soooo painful to me that my awesome as hell MacBook Pro for work has USB C for everything, including power, and yet my phone does not. Meanwhile my team lead, sitting directly across from me, has an android phone that charges with USB C.

I actually am not bothered by that so much as that Apple did not produce a decent 1st party USB-C hub and most of the ones I've purchased produce a lot of signal noise (curse of sensitive ears + quiet home office) so I had to return (if I got around to it before return period) or donate them.

The issue IMHO would be moot if they included a USB-C charging adapter (and a USB-A dongle/converter) on newer iPhones.

Also it sucks that Amazon is so full of fake stuff. Hard to find/promote good accessories. Apple needs to step up and provide quality 1st party or heavily promoted 3rd party accessories.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#58

Post by beamatronic »

emodendroket wrote: post #33
fhood wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

Steve Jobs did not single-handedly invent the iPhone.

For those of us who were PDA users in the late 90s and Treo users in the early 2000s, the iPhone is an incremental improvement on those ideas.

The presence of ubiquitous wireless networking (I am lumping cellular wireless and WiFi in together) was the real game changer.

If you are not convinced, try this thought experiment: Imagine yourself in 1998 standing on the street in a major city holding a Palm pilot. It has an SDK, a TCP/IP stack and a POP email client. But no wireless connection.

Now add a wireless connection. Could you tweet or Facebook? Sure, if those things existed then.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#59

Post by Retric »

zer00eyz wrote: post #54
fhood wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally loose sleep, wondering what products were lost due to Jobs' early death. Edit: Ok, fine. I loose sleep wondering what ideas were out there that languished because Jobs wasn't around to see their potential and capitalize on them. The argument "he wasn't that important because he didn't actually invent X" is played out, and it fundamentally misses the point.

Not worth it. Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it. Name a product apple invented that was HUGE? Go ahead and think about that. GUI & Mac was Xerox, the iPhone was Xerox and palm and... Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. Lets look at the design side. MacBooks for a…

> iPhone was Xerox

LoL what?

Everything that's built with computers can be traced back to the guy who invented the transistor, but that does not mean innovation stopped then.

Re: Apple is a traditional business

#60

Post by erikpukinskis »

airstrike wrote: post #30
zeveb wrote: post #23

I'm very fond of Apple's business stance; my concern is not with it, but with their technological stance. Apple products are built on lock-in; they are proprietary and closed, not open. Frankly, at this point they're not even really all that good (in fact, sometimes embarrassingly bad — something not limited to Apple!). I want the freedom to tinker, the freedom to review, the freedom to extend. That's why I use Linux…

I'd settle for iMessage and FaceTime being open...

I’d settle for Apple allowing you to stay in your group texts after you deactivate iMessage.
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