201–210 of 230 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think worker-owned businesses can mitigate this? After all, one of their pluses is supposed to be that the workers can choose to prioritise things other than profit.
Worker owned business can't even compete. Name one such company that is in the top 5 in any product category.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ever increasing apple taxes on the App Store. This rate was 30% since launch, right? How is it ever increasing? Apple recently reduced the fee for developers making less than $1M/year[0] [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/18/apple-will-cut-app-store-fee...
GP probably meant that people pay more and more for apps. They buy more apps or more expensive apps or more people buy apps. In other words, even with rate staying the same Apple has ever increasing revenue from the App Store.
Apple's increase in services revenue is primarily due to the incredible number of Apple devices in use, as well as the increased number of services being offered now.
I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…
I'd rather have a western company obey the CCP enough so that they can make money in the largest nation in the world than see them give the Chicoms the middle finger and be kicked out. If they get barred from of China, Chinese gamers will just have to play games by some "Yes man" company that grovels at the feet of the CCP. By building up a reputation in China, Blizzard would over time gain leverage to expose Chinese…
That’s been the US’s policy towards China for decades, and it hasn’t worked out the way we expected. Rather than Chinese consumers demanding western freedoms, we’ve gotten western companies doing whatever the Chinese government has wanted.
Blizzards reputation has been going downhill since the merge with Activision. Some of my veteran WoW friends returned with the release of classic and TBC classic, but no one stayed for long. Blizzard has been destroying all of their franchises WoW - convoluted imbalanced hot mess Diablo - repetitive. Diablo immortal. Warcraft III - buggy and laggy steaming pile of undelivered promises Overwatch - imbalanced. Overwatc…
Blizzard once made games for $60. Then inflation happened, and they had to pay their employees more. But gamers are stuck in a "back in my day candy bars were a nickel" mindset, and refuse to pay more than $60. So they had to hide the true cost of the games inside dark patterns and upsells. The end.
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> A smart watch and ever increasing apple taxes on the App Store. And incremental improvements to the iPhone. And Swift, and Apple Silicon, and FaceID, and HomePod (which hasn't been a massive success but is at least an attempt at something new), and a return to the Cheese Grater Pro, and massive improvements to Maps, and the perpetual autonomous driving rumors. What am I forgetting? Oh, Apple actually halved App Sto…
And you can’t talk about the Apple Watch without talking about the other half of its wearables: Airpods, which are near-universally lauded and undoubtedly innovative. And who was talking about wearables before Apple entered the game? Only nerds, pretty much. There is something to be said about Apple repeatedly setting trends in our society. Many will chalk it up to “Apple worship” or whatever, but I think the real an…
Are airpods innovative? I thought wireless Bluetooth headphones have been around for ages, including ones with better (subjective) aesthetics and sound quality than airpods.
This is a sincere question. I'm not familiar enough with airpods to know if they have some novel feature, or pulled off a magic combination of marketing+quality+features that predecessors had not, like the iPhone did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you can’t talk about the Apple Watch without talking about the other half of its wearables: Airpods, which are near-universally lauded and undoubtedly innovative. And who was talking about wearables before Apple entered the game? Only nerds, pretty much. There is something to be said about Apple repeatedly setting trends in our society. Many will chalk it up to “Apple worship” or whatever, but I think the real an…
> Airpods, which are near-universally lauded and undoubtedly innovative. Are airpods innovative? I thought wireless Bluetooth headphones have been around for ages, including ones with better (subjective) aesthetics and sound quality than airpods. This is a sincere question. I'm not familiar enough with airpods to know if they have some novel feature, or pulled off a magic combination of marketing+quality+features tha…
The case with a battery, seamless pairing, great battery life, reasonable EQ, and iconic style made them a smash hit.
I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…
I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…
Where to start?
Every organization that grows suffers from this.
At some point as you’ve noticed the ones that rise to the top excel at consolidation of power and expanding influence, by projecting success and gaining a network of support by carving out influence to cronies.
Part of this is because it’s necessary: The skills for building and running a small company isn’t the same as for a large one.
But this is where things fall apart: The same skills that took the small org to a large organization is also more rewarding and remains more rewarding than the core skills and values that was fundamental to the business in the first place.
The few orgs that succeed tend to keep someone who could be or was part of the core workforce calling the shots.
Even this isn’t a guarantee of success though (disruption). Sun Microsystems didn’t lose their way, but they didn’t adopt.