Can the title be fixed to include the comma that was inexplicably dropped from the original title?
Apple is a traditional business
61–70 of 248 posts
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#62Earlier 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…
I don't mourn the loss of Jobs as an inventor. I mourn the loss of Jobs as a person who could recognize great ideas for what they were.
I hear some version of "He didn't actually invent it" over and over again, and I think it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Jobs a visionary. Before the iPhone, nobody was making anything even remotely as good as the iPhone.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#63I've been an Android user for years; I recently decided to change to iPhone, and this article really captures the reason why: Apple seems to be the only company for whom a cloud backup of my phone book is a liability, not an asset to be monetised.
Shouldn't that be inverted? Your iCloud Addressbook backup isn't a liability.
Liability for Apple, they have more sensitive information that they need to protect.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#64(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…
Another way to look at it is that for the iPhone to exist, a long string of failures had to exist going back to the PDA market, the Newton, the iPAQ, nokia smartphones, etc because the intermediate steps has to be funded to cost and size reduce the components needed until an inflection point was reached.
Apple invests at inflection points, after massive R&D spending by others have created many of the pieces needed.
You could call it brilliant or you could call it parasitic, I tend to find it a parasitic freerider in a way, not publishing as much research openly, not acquiring or funding as much of the startup community, in general, not funding research for the purpose of research and taking the risk of uneconomical results. This is similar to a University doing research for decades on a Particular drug pathway or health condition and the a pharmaceutical swooping in, taking the end result and patenting a medicine. Sure, they still spend a lot of money on developing the drug and going through medics trials, but public investment on the basics that came before it is what enabled it.
I’d like to see more basic R&D funded by Apple, not just product development. More Bell Labs, IBM TJ Watson, Microsoft R&D.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#65Earlier 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.
He did not. But he DID repeatedly question the value propositions that Apple is based on, and produce a new value proposition that cannibalized the existing business.
Apple is now fundamentally following the course of milking the last value proposition that they were left with. There is a lot of profit to milk, but long term the industry will leave that value proposition behind and Apple will wind up one of the losers.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#66I'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...
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Re: Apple is a traditional business
#67The author of this opinion piece is praising Apple for its willingness to NOT innovate. I strongly disagree. The best solution to privacy concerns is not to stop innovating. Surely there are better solutions. Apple is leading the way on some consumer privacy issues and I applaud them for that. But surely if Apple halts innovation, it will die as all companies do. Let us hope they are smarter than that.
I think the point here is that Apple is not innovating in "stupid" areas(for the author) - like cashierless stores, automated cars, surveillance speakers etc. In a way, yes, that is admirable - I think all other tech giants are going in the "wrong" and harmful direction, while Apple still concentrates on making good hardware with matching software(their abysmal attempts at MacOs fixes notwithstanding).
How exactly is Alexa different than Siri on iPhones? Why is one a surveillance speaker but the other isnt? I'm near my phone far more often than I am in my living room.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#68Earlier 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.
Indeed, the iphone was coming with or without steve jobs. At the time almost everyone had a mobile phone, the only thing they didn't all have was internet / wifi / gps on their phone, and a capacitive/useful touch screen. When the iphone dropped it combined it all of this into a great product but nokia, samsung and others were all on their way with competing products that would have filled the void had the iphone not been there.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#69(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…
Yes, the guy's logic is whomever spends the most on R&D generates the most innovation (or something). How does he know what Apple is working on with R&D? What a silly statement.
Because other companies that spend a lot on research actually publish a lot of papers for other colleagues in the industry to read.
The fact that Apple rarely publishes research is part of the problem, because it’s relationship with scientific community is unbalanced and more of a taker than a giver.
Re: Apple is a traditional business
#70I'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…
If you go dig into my comment history I have several comments where I praise Richard Stalman and his commitment to open source. He is the zealot (and I use that word with both positive and negative connotations) that open source needs.
But I have to ask what ARE you running then? Intel? AMD? What about your phone?
If your going to make this argument in this way you better have a Stalman like response. If you are running closed source in your stack then your argument is selective.