Apple's Middle Age
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Apple's Middle Age
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Re: Apple's Middle Age
#2 [A]s a general rule, challengers pursue interoperability while incumbents strive for incompatibility.
This is Strategy 101: seek to fight battles where you have the greatest advantage.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#3People have a soft touch for companies that are on death's door, proof in point is when a startup is closing door. it's their biggest boost in marketing they ever had. and people complain they didn't already know about it.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#4[A]s a general rule, challengers pursue interoperability while incumbents strive for incompatibility. This is Strategy 101: seek to fight battles where you have the greatest advantage. Should Apple buy a wireless carrier?
No.
If Apple bought a mobile carrier it would be competing with its customers. Most phones are sold through carriers - meaning the carriers are buying iPhones not the end user.
Besides, Apple sells phones worldwide. What would be the benefit of just buying a carrier in the US?
Netflix made a similar calculation years ago. Netflix actually created what is now the Roku, but decided to spin it off to a separate company so it could more easily make deals to have Netflix installed everywhere without being seen as a competitor.
In a completely separate market, another example is that PepsiCo use to own KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut. But that made it harder for them to do deals with other fast food companies because they didn't want to make deals with a competitor.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#5Tl,dr: “it makes sense to settle down”. Tells how much this is pure projection from the author (he’s open about it).
Apple has amazing bricks to build on (Watch especially) so to not settle down. Even iPhone X shows they can still bet big with their flagship.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#6My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed.
In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performance gains.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#7Tl,dr: “it makes sense to settle down”. Tells how much this is pure projection from the author (he’s open about it). Apple has amazing bricks to build on (Watch especially) so to not settle down. Even iPhone X shows they can still bet big with their flagship.
> Even iPhone X shows they can still bet big with their flagship.
Does it? The iPhone X (which is a great phone and one that I own) is a Galaxy S8 with a Face ID scanner. They didn't "bet big" on it, it was the only logical place to take their market.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#8Any article that speculates on Apple's future viability in the market would be remiss not to mention Apple's unprecedented cash hoard. Currently, Apple is sitting on $126B in net tangible assets.
With 100,000 full-time equivalent employees, that means that Apple could pay every one of their full-time equivalent employees (which, as a reminder, includes a large number of retail employees) an average yearly salary of $100K for 12 years while making $0 in revenue and still not deplete their cash reserves!
Or, to put it all in perspective, based on Wikipedia's cited estimate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Co...) the International Space Station cost $150B to construct. Personally, I'm looking forward to visiting the iSS at some point in the future.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#9My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…
IMO, that's more to do with Intel than to do with Microsoft and Apple. Sandy Bridge, released in 2011, was the last Intel processor that was more than 10% faster than previous generations. We used to see ~25% generational speedups from Intel. Since 2011 we've only seen 5-10% speedups.
Re: Apple's Middle Age
#10My Windows devices since 97 were consistent top of the line and rarely lasted more than 2 years before they slowed to an unbearable speed. In 2012 I switched to Mac and still use the same MacBook Pro which still runs as quick as it did 6 years ago. It was a huge investment at the time but turned out to be cheaper than the 4+ Windows machine I likely would have cycled through not to mention the boot time and performan…
You switched to Mac at the same time as Moore's law was winding down, heck, my 2010 Thinkpad T410 with W10 is my everyday machine.