Apple: Losing Out On Talent and In Need of a Killer New Device (theguardian.com) 428
mspohr writes with a link to an interesting (and rather dour) take at The Guardian on the state of Apple, which holds that: "Despite its huge value, Silicon Valley developers are turned off by [Apple's] 'secretive, controlling' culture and its engineering is no longer seen as cutting edge." From the article: "Tellingly, Apple is no longer seen as the best place for engineers to work, according to several Silicon Valley talent recruiters. It's a trend that has been happening slowly for years – and now, in this latest tech boom, has become more acute. ... Or as Elon Musk recently put the hiring situation a little more harshly: Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper. The biggest issue for programmers seems to be a high-stress culture and cult of secrecy, which contrasts sharply with office trends toward gentler management and more playful workdays."
Bring back Woz (Score:5, Insightful)
The other Steve was what made Apple technically great
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Re:Bring back Woz (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Woz is a tech geek. Jobs was a salesman.
Apple put their money on style, market appeal and, in a word, "shiny".
Woz is much. But shiny, he is not.
Re:Bring back Woz (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bring back Woz (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. Woz is a tech geek. Jobs was a salesman.
Apple put their money on style, market appeal and, in a word, "shiny".
Woz is much. But shiny, he is not.
With Woz, we'd get actual great Apple products, they just wont appeal to Apple's core audience who dont care about reliability, modability and usability and just want to be told they're awesome for buying Apple.
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That's what state-of-the-art of the window systems were in the late 1980's.
http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/t... [utah.edu]
Compared to the early desktop PC's back then, the high-end print workstations that ran PostScript natively in true-color 24-bit mode window display. Hundreds of fonts to choose from of any size and italic slant angle, and in any size. What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get was the rule with a color laser printer. Steve Jobs had attended a talk on display systems and fonts and saw that as the future. In
Re:Bring back Woz (Score:5, Interesting)
Woz made Apple a great company in 1983. Considering they aren't selling many Apple II's these days, I'm pretty sure even he would disagree with the statement that he had anything to do with Apple's current situation.
Re:Bring back Woz (Score:4, Informative)
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Yea Woz who'd rather tinker on stuff than make products. Despite what the IT lifers think, Woz wasn't the key to Apple's brilliance.
Re: Bring back Woz (Score:3)
Steve Wozniack left Apple in 1983-84. The last product that Wozniack was involved with was the Apple //GS. What did Wozniack ever succeed in without Jobs? What did Jobs succeed at without Wozniack?
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And what does Apple do? They now offer pink iPhone case options. Yeah, sure, guys. Makes me want to work for you - such vision, wow! :)
As the article says, Apple "is no longer seen as cutting edge." If Apple puts out cutting edge products, then more creative hw and sw engineers will want to work for it.
Ummmm (Score:5, Informative)
Other issues aside with displays, you know Apple doesn't make their displays, right? The only thing they had to do with "retina" was the marketing term retina. Their displays are made by LG and Samsung. Apple doesn't do any LCD or OLED research, they just buy what the display makers can sell them.
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My guess? (Score:3)
My guess would be that until we see something from this, it is just random speculation from a business site. Given that this article is literally from a month ago and is all hearsay, well let's just put a hold on making and kind of conclusions until there some actual information, shall we?
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Re:Sad they are not doing anything much these days (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple can't do any of that stuff. They don't invent tech, they popularise it by selling to early adopters willing to pay over the odds for something shiny.
Take "retina" displays. Apple didn't invent them, they never made them. Sharp and LG pioneered the technology, and Apple was just one of the first to use it.
Synaptic developed the touch wheel. Siri was someone else that Apple just bought. Apple Maps was built in Nokia mapping technology. They bought that fingerprint scanner company. They use the same Sony cameras as everyone else, just with custom software that gives the output that photoshopped, unreal look.
Apple has two problems now. First, they are running out of interesting stuff to buy, and secondly everyone else cottoned on to their gimmick and started to out-innovate them.
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Apple does drive the hardware market because of the demand they cause. High res displays have been available for a very long time in the professional market, but it wans't until Apple's push for "retina" that it hit the mainstream and quickly fell in price to reasonable levels for consumers. I clearly remember a period of almost 10 years where all displays were 1080p. 27'' monitors with 1080p, and laptops were commonly 720p! And the tech to bump up the resolution was clearly out there, but all of the demand
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This is a common misconception. What actually happened is that Sharp and LG were both producing a lot of high DPI (compared to computer monitors) displays for phones. Not just Apple, in fact Apple's "retina" phones were low end by then as most other high end devices were 1080p or at least 720p.
Anyway, until then the margins on LCD panels were so thin and demand for >1080p so low that there had been little effort put in to improving yields on such displays. Once hundreds of millions of 1080p phones starte
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First, they are running out of interesting stuff to buy, and secondly everyone else cottoned on to their gimmick and started to out-innovate them.
Everybody just out innovated Apple by copying their gimmick?
No, the problem is that you can innovate only so much before your product becomes a Rube Goldberg machine. Just how many different ways can you innovate on the "portable device with a touch screen" category of gadgets? What Apple has been doing is merely tweaking the basic round edges iPhone design, which it borrowed from the iPod. The iPhone was basically a large iPod with phone functions, while the iPad was a large iPhone. So, yes, the title is correct. Apple is in need of a new killer device category
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The sad thing is that Apple would be uniquely positioned to introduce a whole range of new technologies into the consumer marketplace.
Totally agree; I like nailing things together, and have probably spent too much time and money doing so, but friends and colleagues like stuff that "just works".
As I age, I'm coming round to that point of view too...
People spend tons of money on high-end AV brands, (my neighbour proudly showed me his new B&O come cinema setup the other day...it was great, but for 50 fucking grand it should be).
I'm sure that type of person would be ready to buy an Apple TV, (not the little shitty box, but a real TV) for
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Apple doesn't need a killer device. (Score:2, Insightful)
It just needs a device that everyone can afford and needs. Such a shame that they priced their phones way above what the majority can afford, They would be WAY more popular if they had focused on the base instead of the "Elite".
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Go create a 500 billion dollar company catering to cheapskates. Go on. We'll be waiting.
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Apple is affordable luxury. I see children of ordinary average families with iPhones every day. Sure, many of them will be hand-me downs from parents. But that means the parents have upgraded their iPhone.
Most people buy their phones through a contract, which means that even if iPhones are more expensive, they are quite affordable over 18 months.
Apple is of course very successful at what they do. Let other less good companies serve the cheap end of the market.
Being an analyst means... (Score:5, Insightful)
...never having to say your sorry.
When the P to E is high, that means the stock is a bubble and everyone should sell. When the P to E is low, that means there's no confidence in earnings and everyone should sell. Meanwhile they are compared to Facebook's 109 P to E in a completely serious manner.
Still increasing sales of desktop computers means the non-phone side of the business is being ignored.
Moving 8 iPhones for every Windows Phone means the former is dead and the latter is a viable product.
Apple's non-iPhone revenue is comparable to Microsoft's *total* revenue. The impact to Apples revenue due to just currency fluctuations is comparable to Facebook's *total* revenue. Maybe a case could be made that that is a business in decline, but no one seems to be doing so.
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As a guy who bought a 128K Mac in 1984 and has been with them all this time (except for a brief period in late 90s) I would have never dreamed a statement like that would someday be true (and oh do I wish I had, and bought the stock!)
Be insainly great. (Score:5, Interesting)
The imac. It was colourful, compact, got rid of legacy ports. It was insanely great. The iPod put a Hard drive in a MP3 player, and made it easy to hold your entire music collection.... The others on the market just were shite in comparison. This was insanely great. OSX, bringing together open source Unix, with a Java JVM installed as standard, using open API's and with a GUI that was far ahead of anything at the time...... Insanely great.
But now....
Soldered in Ram - not insanely great. Non upgradeable SSD - not insanely great. no USB ports on latest macbook, and charging premium for a USB-c adapter. not insanely great. Charging $1,099 for a 2012 model laptop with 4gb ram and crappy i5-3210M processor......FFS, not insanely great.. For heaven sake, I remember Steve jobs reducing prices of models every single mac world presentation. No more.... Not insanely great.
Apple are dead. Maybe not in the financial sense - they have enough money to keep them going for decades. But, in the sense of what brought them back from the brink of bankruptcy back in 1998, they are dead and buried. I only wish Microsoft were a better company so I could switch back.
Re:Be insainly great. (Score:5, Insightful)
And apple canceled it. They replaced it with a soldered ram, duel core, which isn't as powerfull as something you could buy 4 years ago. For fuck sake Apple - this is what Commodore did, releaseing the Amiga 600, several years after the Amiga 500, which was no more advanced....... and we all know what happened to Commodore!!...
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Re:Be insainly great. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're buying them for aesthetics and user friendliness.
And reliability, and security, and because of the third party app support, and because if they do have any problems they can go into an Apple store and have their problems solved without being conned or fleeced.
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The harddrive in the iPod was not the thing that made it (there were other, cheaper, bigger competitors already). Their advance was the rest of the industry was doing the bare minimum 'dump stuff in a directory and we will play files'. Apple recognized people wanted to think of their music organized the same way as they always did, by Album, Artist, etc. So they invested in an application and an on-device interface catering to that sensibility.
The iPhone was their other *huge* thing. In my opinion, the
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The one area where other companies just cannot compete with Apple is with the seamless transition between devices. All my hardware is too old so I've never tried it, but I just read that Microsoft ditched their Windows Phone and I don't know anyone who both runs Chrome OS on his computer and has an Android phone.
The other place where companies are trying anything to see what sticks to the wall is that IoT craze, which I don't want anything to do with.
Re:Be insainly great. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that they don't seem to know where they're going.
The new MacBook should have had not one, but zero ports, because the MacBook is a home device. You're not going to use it for anything that legitimately needs a wired connection. Wired charging? That's barbarism. It should also have been water resistant, because I might want to keep it around when I have a beer which I might spill. It should have had the best webcam on the market. Pricing should have been about $900 for the lowest end model.
The 2015 MacBook Pro is the model that should have had two USB-c ports, in addition to its other ports. The MacBook Pro is power-hungry enough that it probably needs wired charging too, but that's fine sine it's often going to be wired to things in the office (or home office) anyway.
The Pencil for the iPad Pro should also have had a better charing solution. And the iPad Pro is not really a professional device, so it should have been named something else. And the lowest end model should have been at least a hundred bucks cheaper and it should have shipped with the Pencil, because optional add-ons for a device always fragment the software market for that device, which is a very bad thing.
Tesla graveyard? (Score:5, Funny)
Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper.
It seems that whatever entity it was that possessed Steve Jobs and gave him his boundless arrogance has found a new host.
Re:Tesla graveyard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Musk's statement is not incorrect. Tesla is a company that has a different management style and goal compared to Apple. Apple exists solely for profit and returns, Tesla exists solely to create scientific advancement, innovation, and push for technical/engineering projects that nobody else will do. Tesla is subsidized on the merit of advancement rather than returns.
It is only a logical conclusion that Tesla will have all the engineering/science talent, while Apple will have all the marketing/design psychology talent.
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I've worked at Apple three times, starting back in 2002
When was the last time you were there? 2002 is a looong time ago.
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2002 was only a long time ago if you were born yesterday.
And the meme of being shouted at by VPs is a lot older than 2002.
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and nobody ever yelled at me.
It's almost like Apple is the biggest company in the world and that one person's experience may not be representative of company culture on the whole. I've been working for the same company now for 7 years, in 4 different places around the world. No one has ever yelled at me either. That said I have heard of someone who it has happened to.
Your department sounded like a good place to work. I'll leave my judgement on the company itself because quite frankly all we have is anecdotes.
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I haven't worked at Apple, but I've had to work with Apple. You'd have to pay me 3 times what I get paid now to work in that hell hole (that'd be a bit shy of half a million a year for the record). I think one of the requirements to work there is you must be a condescending ass. I've never met so many people who thought that everybody else was inferior to them. And this isn't just my experience, everybody I've ever talked to who's worked with them has had a similar opinion. This is across multiple comp
Don't worry - Apple will end up like Microsoft (Score:2)
Just as Microsoft drifts along in a sort of commercial terminal velocity, so too will Apple.
Tech companies that size can't do anything dramatically good or bad in the short to medium term because of their size. There are no dramatic systemic risks in their business model or market either - unlike oil companies with their exploding wells, or pharma companies with their lethal drugs.
Few companies last more than a couple of generations in any case. I would expect Apple to be around in a quasi-zombie state for
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At the moment Apple is the most successful company in the world.
They COULD jump the shark like Microsoft did. But everyone that's been suggesting that's already happening have been wrong for the last decade and a half. Chances are you are wrong too.
An alternative is that Apple does to the Motor industry what they did to the Phone industry. That would give them a continued future of growth for a long time yet.
link bait, and utterly stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, let's see, Apple is a high-pressure workplace, to which people go when they cannot make it at Tesla. Wait, what???
The article is mostly based on the opinion of a single hipster jackass who felt that he was too good to apply at Apple, backed up by the opinion of a few other people who don't want to work there, and a recruiter. Note the lack of information from anyone who has actually ever worked there.
Remember IBM? (Score:2)
Not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been a lot of stories like this over the brief history of technology. IBM is a really good example. Their senior management is doing everything they can to sell off the company bit by bit while collecting money, and they still can't kill it. Microsoft is another excellent example, riding Windows and Office through to their current states. They're currently poised to pull the ultimate vendor lock-in trick with Azure and subscription software because they have loads of money to spend. Some companies, especially those with huge cash balances, can manage through transitions. Others will just keep beating money out of their cash cows for as long as possible (again, IBM is the perfect example.) Others, like Sun, end up getting bought at fire sale prices. All of the companies mentioned were absolutely dominant at one time or another. IBM is a total joke these days, but in the 70s/80s they represented the state of the art in all things computing.
Apple's problem is that they are now too consumer-focused and don't have a pipeline of expensive gadgets to sell them. Whether they'll use that huge pile of cash they have to buy into the next trend remains to be seen.
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BINGO!
Apple IS way too consumer. They slit their throats when they turned Final Cut into imovie and Logic into garageband pro.
Both of those were well on their way to becoming a defacto standard in the industry and pro worlds. Before they destroyed Final Cut it was being used on many many TV shows and Movies..... Then came Final Cut X and everyone ran away from it as fast as they could back to AVID.
Logic was starting to gain traction taking over Pro Tools.... and then they blew that up.
They now only ha
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Yeah, concentrating on the consumer rather than the pro market has certainly been a mistake for the tech company that has grown to be the biggest in the world in the last few years.
Duh.
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM is a total joke these days
Only if computers that sit peacefully in a closet (or server room) working for decades are a joke to you. Only if scientific computing is a joke to you. Only if enterprise management is a joke to you.
Yeah...... Elon just wants Johnny Ives. (Score:2)
And that right there is what can cause HUGE problems for Apple.
If someone get's Johnny Ives to leave Apple.. Suddenly a shitstorm of magnus proportions will start inside the company. I do think they have faltered a bit, but that is mostly because the guy who started the company is now gone.
This happens to all companies. Microsoft has been in a non stop turd fall since Gates left, HP, etc...
A hired CEO never has the love and drive for a company like the people that built it from nothing.
gentler management and more playful workdays (Score:5, Insightful)
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What a load of shit. How about engineers are more attracted to companies that respect a healthy work/life balance. That's it. Really. I'll come to work, bust my ass for 7-9 hours and go home, 5 days a week. You can keep your foosball, cafeterias, yoga, happy hours, . I'll take the perk where you pay me to go on vacation though.
Good for you.
Personally, I'll take all the perks and work reasonable hours. No need to choose.
Apple is overdue (Score:2)
.
The AppleTV is trying to find its niche within an already existing market, and in Apple-relative terms, is doing barely just OK.
So where is, what is, Apple's next attention-getting and market-creating product?
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>Outside of VR
If Apple wants to put out the iReality, a high definition stereo heads-up display with 3-axis motion detection, and some decent stereo speakers, I don't care if it's an overpriced bit of shiny white plastic with an inaccessible battery. Just because it's Apple there's a good chance it'd be a significant boost for the VR market.
If Apple wants to put out iGlasses and make a Google Glass equivalent that people would actually wear, that'd be awesome too. Not because I'd wear them (they'd inev
It's Work Environment, Not Tech (Score:2)
Re:Peanut Gallery attempting to manage Apple again (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... care to inform us what Apple has done marketing-wise but to claim they reinvented the wheel every time they came out with a new device?
Re:playful workdays?! lots of nonsense criticisms. (Score:4, Insightful)
Small companies and startups tend to be more "playful". The only two things they care about are that you have the skills to do the job and you can get the work done on time. if you want to put up pictures of your family/girlfriend on your cube wall, that's OK. One trend with employers is that of "hot desking". You just go into the building, find a free desk/computer, login and start working. Then you leave at the end of the day. Others give you your own desk. Some places just give you a desk that is 1 meter wide and you are sitting side by side with ten other people. Some companies have a "no personal belongings" rule in your workspace (avoids problems with theft). Animators/artists like to surround themselves with action figures, furry toys like giant penguins or spiders, so that rule would drive them nuts. Others have recreation areas like ping-pong tables, console systems, have after-hours Chess clubs, card games, and even Yoga clubs.
If you're late in by 15 minutes because of bad traffic, they understand, so long as you make up the time. Some large corporations expected you to be in by 8am on the dot, no excuses, with the result that everyone leave at 4pm on the dot. For lunch, some companies take a dim view of you going outside/away somewhere for lunch, they expect you to use the work canteen. Other employers are located right downtown, so going to a different eatery each day is expected since they don't have their own food service. And there will be team parties every quarter. You might just get 15 minutes to eat your lunch at your desk, or you get flexitime for lunch.
Some companies dislike employees socializing outside of work, and might just send a couple of "heavies" to keep an eye on you.
With project management, you might have the freedom to view all tasks in the current sprint using Jira, and the whole team gets to decide what the objective will be. Other companies, only the producer gets to see all the tasks and hands them out one by one in no particular order.
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Fun is...being creative.
Fun is...being trusted.
Fun is...managers that largely leave you alone and occasionally ask you reasonable -- i.e. non-cookie-cutter -- questions.
Fun is...systems that correct errors quickly. I know, I know, this almost never happens. But if you are doing some of the above, you might get there one day.
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In many of those companies I was thinking of, managers are either sitting right next to you. Some places just employ entry-level graduates, so they pack everyone from the project manager to the team and tech leads in together in school desks sitting together in one group. There's only been a couple of companies where managers had their own room and everyone else had cubicles.
Game and animation companies are more fun and creative than general IT software houses who use Jira, Agile and Scrum. But the downside
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure why I am bothering to reply to an AC, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
$76B in revenue and $18B in profit in the LAST QUARTER.
For a doomed company, that ain't bad. If you disagree, please point out another company that made more profit in 2016. Hint, that's rhetorical, there isn't one.
Apple may need "another killer device" to continue to grow to that predicted "1 trillion dollar company". But holy fuck, how is not going from the biggest market cap in the world to the even biggerest market cap in the world "doomed"?
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is doomed in the same way that Microsoft has been doomed for decades. Very profitable doom with very significant market share, but if you're not on an exponential growth trajectory then people think of you as as a stale relic.
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Well, by that argument we're all doomed because the universe will eventually slide into entropic heat death. In the long term every company that enjoys a dominant position is going to screw up and lose that position. So we need specific reasons why Apple is going to screw up in the relatively short term, and I can think of only one: the expectations game.
Apple's always had its share of product flops, but now that it's iconic leader Jobs is dead, we look back at his admittedly brilliant tenure with rose-tint
Re: Apple is doomed (Score:3)
He tripled their profits and doubled their revenue in his time there. Not Apple level perhaps but hardy incompetent.
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Re: Apple is doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has a subscription model. You buy a new version of Windows every one or two years. Except they blew that one up by constantly changing the GUI layout rather than simply polishing the fonts and theme to take advantage of higher resolutions.
Re: Apple is doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. In a nutshell, OS upgrades should not invoke learning curves.
Re: Apple is doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
should not invoke learning curves.
That's the worst. As the techie in the family (including the families of friends and distant relations), even though my job has nothing to do with computers other than I use them at work, I'm constantly bombarded with questions like why won't my internet work. Fine, I'll help, should take 20 seconds and save someone from a lot of misery. Wait, where did all of the settings pages go? Google for ten minutes, wrong version, google another ten minutes...an hour later the internet is working again. W.T.F. The only thing these people use a computer for are solitaire and chrome.
Google pulls the same crap. Yes, I can figure it out. Yes, I have much better things to do than learning a new interface for zero productivity gain. People have been using the same interface to drive a car for the last 100 years. If car companies operated like software companies, besides being all dead now we would have gone through joysticks, paddle wheels, slider buttons, push buttons, hand gestures, foot pedals, voice control and mice just to make a right turn. And the left turn would have yet another interface. And they would alternate between them on different models.
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine [forbes.com] about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today." Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)
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Old data is just that...old data. Apple needs to become much more price competitive if it is going to succeed in today's marketplace. Your name can only get you so far.
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Old data is just that...old data. Apple needs to become much more price competitive if it is going to succeed in today's marketplace. Your name can only get you so far.
Exactly. Look at all the high end products that are no longer with us because they refused to join the race to the bottom.:
Rolex watches - gone, should have made a swatch like $1.99 digital watch.
Lamborghini - too bad they didn't copy the Yugo or Ford Pinto. Now they are on the dustheap of history
Rolls Royce - A sad story. Gone out of business because they just didn't realize that the only metric in cars is cheap.
The entire diamond industry collapsed because people know that it's just overpriced glass in those rings.
So many more examples where industry has found out that only attending to the lowest common denominator is the only path to profit. If you want cheap, buy cheap. Just don't assume that everyone does.
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Actually, Apple is already seeing it. Their forecast for iPhone sales is way below last year. Probably partly because people are looking for cheaper phones, and early because they are keeping their old ones longer.
Of course a lot of this has to do with the fact you can't sustain the growth of a high end product like the iPhone once you have already reached all of those who can afford it; the new customers are going to have to start coming from countries and income classes that just can't afford a $600 pho
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Go ahead, dump all of your 401K savings in Apple, I dare you.
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Go ahead, dump all of your 401K savings in Apple, I dare you.
Your logic is.... fascinating. Why would anyone, even the mythical most simpering hipster clueless Apple fanboi, engage in monoculture investing?
You have an interesting outlook on life. You should put out a newsletter or something.
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Not sure why I am bothering to reply to an AC, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
$76B in revenue and $18B in profit in the LAST QUARTER.
For a doomed company, that ain't bad. If you disagree, please point out another company that made more profit in 2016. Hint, that's rhetorical, there isn't one.
Apple may need "another killer device" to continue to grow to that predicted "1 trillion dollar company". But holy fuck, how is not going from the biggest market cap in the world to the even biggerest market cap in the world "doomed"?
Exactly. 90% of companies would kill for Apples worst performance. It's going to be a long damn time before anyone has even the right to declare a company as large as Apple as "dead".
$150 billion in cash reserves tends to give you that flexibility.
Let's put this another way. Apple products are 80% marketing and 20% technology. The only "killer" Apple needs to sustain is marketing peer pressure, which clearly hasn't been hard for them. In fact, they're the best in the world at it.
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Let's put this another way. Apple products are 80% marketing and 20% technology. The only "killer" Apple needs to sustain is marketing peer pressure, which clearly hasn't been hard for them. In fact, they're the best in the world at it.
That 20 percent Technology - does that include all of the OSX Only software I use professionally?
Since I also use Windows OS, I get to compare the different systems and software. My opinion is always wrong, but always based on experience.
And as for peer pressure, you haven't seen anything until you work for a PC centric group that tries to force you onto Windows only solutions.
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The idea that Apple is mostly marketing comes from people that don't understand why most people consider Apple the best available tech products. Either the one they buy, or the one they aspire to buying. Because they don't understand it they assume it must be mostly marketing rather than technology. But it's neither, it's design.
No, that's marketing. Without the marketing, people will see the nice looking device in shops, notice it's practically twice the price of equivalent models and move on. Sure enough they would still get sold but nothing like the numbers they do. You'll notice a lot of iphone users aren't exactly the premium customer.
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The problem is shareholders (Score:2)
Think of it this way: You know how every layer of Management exists to protect employees from the next layer? The Shareholders are at the top of that, and your CEO is protecting you from them. If a few lucky shareholders can drain the value
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Apple could pull the rug out from under Google anytime by making any other search engine the iOS default.
It has been leaked that Google pays $1bn for the privilege. What hasn't been quite liked is whether that was total up to some date, or per year, or whatever.
What could kill Google would be a search engine that isn't catered to advertisers but to letting people find what they are looking for.
Re: Apple is doomed (Score:3)
Your anecdote of "everyone you know", has exactly what statistically relevance?
Good thing we have data....
http://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/apple-maps-vs-google-maps/
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Funny)
Apple is dead. I don't see them ever launching another hit like the iPhone which by all means won't be the last massive hit in the tech sector. Apple will slowly fade away. Without their (relatively low yield) dividends and the massive 218 billions in cash the stock would be pretty much worthless now.
Michael Dell is that you?
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...With the technology available, a smart phone should start to rival a Star Trek Tricorder ... be a stud finder...
... personally, I'd prefer it if Apple added a babe finder to the iPhone if they absolutely have to start competing with Tinder.
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If I were them, I'd be going for the wearable PC. Not a gimmick for fitness, as so many watches/wearables are, but a full computer, just distributed around the body and worn. The main reason phones have taken off for computing devices is that they are convenient. So imagine something more convenient
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The smartphone combined the portability of a mobile phone with the internet access of a desktop PC. Being able to send and receive emails, view web pages (and then view maps, book taxis, train journeys and hotel stays) are the *must have* functionality for someone working.
The biggest improvements would be longer battery life and more CPU/GPU power. Something that could be worn like a pair of sunglasses with headphones and could provide augmented reality but without looking like Joe 90. So you could find you
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"Or maybe Apple could bring out the iTelevision."
They seem to have decided that a good set-top box is a better idea than branding the highly competitive commodity screen on the other end of the HDMI cable. What Apple TV still lacks is content. Apple is frantically trying to make the deals it will take to enable you to say, "Hey Siri! Play the X-Files Season One episodes that were directed by Joe Napolitano."
During the upcoming recession, watch for a giant entertainment industry buyout announcement.
Re:Apple is doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple vs. Tesla. They are really two different markets. Tesla is attracting engineers, because what they are producing seems something useful and world changing, while Apple products while nice, and remain to be great products. But Musk's empire Tesla, Space X, and SolarCity. are bringing grander changes to the world, Something that perhaps history will look back with fondness, on our generation and say we accomplished something. While the generation preceding this Apple was credited for the personal computer for the masses, the iPhone and iPads while wonderful technology are at best would be footnotes in history. We know about Edison and Marconi, Ford and Einstein, Jobs and Gates. Because of what they did to change the infrastructure of the world. However Apple is profiting off the infrastructure it help built, while Tesla is building a new one.
If you were to talk to your grand-kids in 30-50 years, what would you like to say to them. That you invented a slightly thinner iPhone, which would still look bulky to your grand-kid. Or that you were involved in making electric cars practical for average use, helping get us off the dependency of polluting oil, giving you cleaner air to breath, and slowing down global warming, so you have the ability for a prosperous life.
That is why Apple is now second tear for engineering. Their business is in old stuff like personal computing, the future is in green energy.
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" Apple is dead."
The bad news for Apple is that too few people are saying that right now. The last time everybody did, in 1997 when Wired ran that famous cover of an apple wrapped in barbed wire and captioned 'Pray', before the Intel switch and before OS X, you could have bought the stock for forty-seven cents a share in today's terms.
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The game is about to change again. The device isn't going to be as important was what is behind the device and the Human Machine Interface. Everyone knows this which is why the valley is pushing into machine learning, autonomous system, big data, and thinking/learning machines. This is where the next trillion will come from unless someone can engineer a phone that thought controlled.
Other big money areas are battery technology. Imagine if Apple could put out a smartphone with a patented battery technolo
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Did Netcraft confirm that?
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None. Therefore, Apple can pose no threat to any business model practiced by any of Musk's companies. Period.
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Not quite a period there. Apple is developing a car. Whilst they are not yet competing for customers, they are competing for engineers in specialisms to do with hi-tech cars. And this article is about competing for engineers.
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Exactly. Apple can only go so long asking $700 for a phone with only 16 GB of non-upgradable storage. You can easily go out and and buy something like the newest Moto G with 16 GB + Micro SD slot for a little over $200, one has to wonder how Apple gets away with charging $700 for a phone. Even the more high end stuff with Android like the Nexus 6p is $600, but at least it comes with 32 GB of storage. I don't see why anybody buys these super high end phones. You could easily just buy a new $200 phone every
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Apple can only go so long asking $700 for a phone with only 16 GB of non-upgradable storage.
About 6 months, until the next generation iPhone comes along. For sure there won't be a 16GB model. But don't expect the price to fall. Someone has to have the high end of the market, and Apple is very successful at being that one.
I bought a 6S. I wouldn't buy an Android other than the occasional one I have to buy for development reasons. The OS and the available apps are shit.
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"Now the idiots want to tackle an industry where they can't compete with the ruthlessness, marketing capacity, long history of car manufacturers that have established abnormal traditions to the craziest of details"
Not so long ago, we thought Tesla was crazy for attempting that too.
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I question Facebook, too. I can't imagine anybody in their right minds wanting to work in Menlo Park. IMO, the peninsula is the worst part of the Bay Area in which to work. From anywhere that mere mortals can afford to live, figure half an hour of driving at two miles per hour up 101, and an hour driving back in the evenings. That entire time is basically spent just going through Palo Alto.
And if you don't eat at FB's cafeteria (I assume they have one—I've never worked there, just near there), go