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Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

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Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#171

Post by haberman »

coldtea wrote: post #130
haberman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thesis was "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable." Not "Larry Page's life is as hard as a poor single working mother." If you dismiss difficult aspects of a person's life because somebody else has it worse, then nobody actually has a hard life except for starving children in Africa. Maybe not even them: captives who suffer regular torture and indignity probably have it worse. Or modern-day slaves.

Even if "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable", what part of "he can quit anytime" doesn't still hold? Some parts of everyone's life are unenviable. That said, I don't think it makes much sense to comparmentalize working lives into "enviable" and "unenviable" parts. The end result is what matters, and the bottom line is that he has billions to show for it, can work as little or as much as he wants (the ot…

Notch took all his money and quit, only to feel lonely and isolated: http://mashable.com/2015/08/29/markus-person-twitter-billion...

Money isn't everything. Even if you have it, some things about life can be difficult.

Whether or not you feel sympathy for it, the difficulty still exists.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#172

Post by ufmace »

sangnoir wrote: post #155
ufmace wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I didn't know that actually. Seems GOOGL has a market cap almost as high and 2.5x higher P/E. Would make me wonder about Google a bit too. In my opinion, they don't really innovate at the market level like Apple does. They have the Search cash cow, Gmail was moderately innovative at the time, and most of their other stuff comes off as well-executed me-toos. Technically innovative, but not exactly opening…

> Gmail was moderately innovative at the time Say what now? Perhaps you do not remember that most free email providers had a 2 or 4 MB mailbox limit and you had to delete emails as soon as you read them. When I signed up, Google was offering a whooping 1 gigabyte of storage - an improvement of 3 orders of magnitude. Gmail allowed attachments of up to 25MB which only served to make Hotmail's 4MB mailbox look absurd. O…

I suppose it's debatable. I'm talking about stuff like the iPhone singlehandedly revolutionizing the touchscreen mobile market, and the iPad essentially creating the tablet market from scratch - they existed before, but were pretty much uniformly awful and I can't remember anybody ever wanting one.

It's not like email or webmail didn't exist before GMail, but I suppose you could argue that the revolutionary at the time use of AJAX plus gigabyte standard storage space, plus great spam filters was enough to transform webmail from a handicapped second-class citizen to something that tech experts would be happy to leave desktop email clients for.

But then, Google Maps was better than the competition, but enough better to be a revolutionary difference? I'd say no. But where do you draw the line between a good refinement of a pre-existing class of application to something that qualifies as revolutionary?

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#173

Post by seanp2k2 »

coldtea wrote: post #130
haberman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thesis was "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable." Not "Larry Page's life is as hard as a poor single working mother." If you dismiss difficult aspects of a person's life because somebody else has it worse, then nobody actually has a hard life except for starving children in Africa. Maybe not even them: captives who suffer regular torture and indignity probably have it worse. Or modern-day slaves.

Even if "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable", what part of "he can quit anytime" doesn't still hold? Some parts of everyone's life are unenviable. That said, I don't think it makes much sense to comparmentalize working lives into "enviable" and "unenviable" parts. The end result is what matters, and the bottom line is that he has billions to show for it, can work as little or as much as he wants (the ot…

Also, he has the choice, which can be very empowering. The poor don't have that choice. If they stop working, they get evicted and starve, and maybe their wife and children do as well. I have less than zero sympathy for billionaires because most of their problems at that point are problems they choose instead of problems they must face.

Hate your day job? Don't do it. Take the money and do something you'd rather be doing. Sail all day. Start a weird Russian nesting doll collecting hobby. Start a band and pay professional musicians to play with you. Whatever. Hate cleaning? Hire staff. Hate child care? Hire a nanny. Hate your wife? Get a divorce and hire / find a new one.

Most people don't have any of these options. They have the option to keep the short-term highest-paying job they can sustain in order to e.g. Pay for a mortgage and food.

At that point, you could literally do almost whatever you want (except e.g. buy true love, fulfillment, etc). If working all day makes someone feel fulfilled, maybe do that, but billionaires all have the luxury of being able to not do that, or not do anything if they don't want, and be 100% fine.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#174

Post by seanp2k2 »

thringsaround wrote: post #169
ewzimm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is "has it good" isn't something that can be distilled into a score, as in Larry Page's 99.999 compared to starving child #42's 1.001. Many people would rather live as a poor child on a relaxed island rather than have the life of Larry Page. One of the great things about modern life is that you don't need to be a billionaire to have the things most people want: modern medicine, meaningful work, endless ente…

Except that if you are Larry Page but you would rather live as a poor islander you can do that , but if you are a poor islander and you would rather live as Larry Page you are still forced to live as a poor islander. This is nowhere close to difficult to score. Larry Page 1, poor islander 0, won in regulation.

This. It's the choice part that matters. He has basically 100% control over what he does any day. He doesn't really have to do anything he doesn't want to. If he does something he hates every day, that's his choice, and he's probably very aware of this fact.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#175

Post by thewhitetulip »

coldtea wrote: post #167
thewhitetulip wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be nitpicking, but light years is a measure of distance and not of time :-)

Not to be nitpicking, but parent didn't say it was a measure of time :-) "Light years ahead" is a common expression meaning "much more advanced". And there's nothing that says it refers to time (except if we insist on the idea that technology advances with time, so every related analogy must refer to time). But as an analogy it just as well means "it's much further ahead", as if we were speaking of a race.

I know I am going to get downvoted :D

Whilst it is true that parent didn't say that light years is a unit of time. But I find the general usage of the term incorrect :-)

Light years = distance traveled by light in 365 earth days!!

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#176

Post by ewzimm »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #174
thringsaround wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that if you are Larry Page but you would rather live as a poor islander you can do that , but if you are a poor islander and you would rather live as Larry Page you are still forced to live as a poor islander. This is nowhere close to difficult to score. Larry Page 1, poor islander 0, won in regulation.

This. It's the choice part that matters. He has basically 100% control over what he does any day. He doesn't really have to do anything he doesn't want to. If he does something he hates every day, that's his choice, and he's probably very aware of this fact.

Objectively, he could drop out whenever he wants, but choice isn't always that easy. People get accustomed to their lifestyle, whether it's forced or not, enjoyable or stressful. He's connected to people who have expectations, there's social pressure, internal pressure, pressure from his employees. Many people in positions like that do drop out, but do they always make a clean break? I think the point was that it isn't only the choice that matters, the power and freedom that comes with money doesn't trump everything else that goes into a person's life. While they might bring a lot of benefits, it's not all good, and the side effects of being in a position of power often make a person more powerless than ever. Once you're playing on a higher level, the competition is fierce and the expectations are sky high. That can trap a person into a certain path, even if they seem to have the resources to do whatever they want. It often seems like the people at the highest levels of power are the least free.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#177

Post by 6stringmerc »

aedron wrote: post #159
6stringmerc wrote: post #80

CTRL+F "music" & "iTunes" - only one result, as part of the framing by the writer. Unless Tim & co. decide to confront the reality that they're stepping up "vertical integration" model using the Robber Baron playbook when it comes to the actual arts, I think his "social responsibility" comments mean fuck-all. Go ahead, build a new environmentally friendly compound, that's great, good on you. And how's about that 30%…

Big interviews like this come with a price. They are always puff pieces.

Well I remember that approach tended to gloss over a lot of the newsworthy stuff involving Tiger Woods. Says a lot about US culture when serious "leaders" will only sit down to have their egos stroked. See also: Donald Trump.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#178

Post by sangnoir »

ufmace wrote: post #172
sangnoir wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail was moderately innovative at the time Say what now? Perhaps you do not remember that most free email providers had a 2 or 4 MB mailbox limit and you had to delete emails as soon as you read them. When I signed up, Google was offering a whooping 1 gigabyte of storage - an improvement of 3 orders of magnitude. Gmail allowed attachments of up to 25MB which only served to make Hotmail's 4MB mailbox look absurd. O…

I suppose it's debatable. I'm talking about stuff like the iPhone singlehandedly revolutionizing the touchscreen mobile market, and the iPad essentially creating the tablet market from scratch - they existed before, but were pretty much uniformly awful and I can't remember anybody ever wanting one. It's not like email or webmail didn't exist before GMail, but I suppose you could argue that the revolutionary at the ti…

> Google Maps was better than the competition, but enough better to be a revolutionary difference

When Google announced turn-by-turn navigation in maps, Garmin's stock price took a tumble. Also, Street View hadn't ever been done before, surely that qualifies?

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