Twelve years after the death of Steve Jobs, the cracks are starting to appear at Apple
Twelve years after the death of Steve Jobs, the cracks are starting to appear at Apple
Apple is at the first major cross-roads since the passing of its late co-founder Steve Jobs 12 years ago. It finds itself still largely dependent on the product lines and businesses that Jobs left behind. Its Vision Pro has received mixed reviews on launch, while it is also facing several other hea...
People need to stop holding Jobs up as some deity of tech. He was a marketing and hype man that was in the right place at the right time and knew how to take advantage of that luck. Nothing more, nothing less. It is equally possible his leadership style would have squandered the opportunities Apple has had since his death had it been him and not Cook in charge.
By any metric other than "line must always go up" Apple is doing just fine.
"Oh no, they haven't found another multi hundred billion dollar product to release since the iPhone, even though there are no signs that the iPhone won't continue to be a very profitable business for years and years to come...better go dig up Steve jobs, shove a stick up his back, magic his corpse back to life, and beg him to save the shareholders profit margins", the horror.
Steve Jobs was a piece of shit human being who contributed nothing to technology.
That said, he was a hell of a skilled bullshitter/marketer. Most people fucking looooove to be bullshitted, and Americans more than most.
It's why we elect virtually no wonks/technocrats, even though thats who we should elect almost exclusively. We'd rather some snake oil motherfucker sell us on magical lies while telling us we're pretty.
Apple managed to capture lightning in a bottle, twice. First by making a better Walkman, and then again by making that device a phone with internet access. They were able to leverage that success to revitalize their computer hardware business and act as a platform for selling accessories, and all of that made them very successful.
But the stock market doesn’t care about past success, it cares about growth, and without a major new, or buzz worthy product, investors might start to turn against Apple. Problem is, they have ridden the iPod horse about as far as it can go. They tried putting wheels on it, but that failed, and the jury is still out on whether tying one to your face will work out or not.
Not like it matters because they're a silicon valley giant so even the next zero change iphone will sell morbillion units.
Yeah, like that lie they told for decades about how "mac can't get viruses!" they got sued in a class action lawsuit over that claim, which is why they don't EXPLICITLY say it anymore.
Or how apple can yoink anything you install off your apple devices whenever they want?
Yeah but in a person meetings are at an all time high and anonymous sticks of deoderant being left on peoples' desks is at an all time low.
Lol, the crack appeared as soon after his death. Steve Jobs : no ipad air, no dividend for the share holders.
Guess what been announced in the months following his death.
Yeah bruh Tim Apple seems to be holding his own.
TL;DR: Wahhh apple isn't jamming enough AI crap in their products.
Jobs was once asked about what helped to set Apple apart from other companies. In response, he spoke of his fondness of a quote from ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky who once said what set him apart as an ice hockey player is that “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
Yet this is exactly where Apple finds itself right now, especially in relation to generative AI. While it is true Apple has long integrated AI technologies into the iPhone and its other devices in the form of features like computational photography and Siri, it has also trailed in these areas as well.
Google, conversely, AI from the start, making it a centerpiece of its Pixel smartphone strategy from the moment the original Pixel device shipped over 8 years ago with Google Assistant its heart coupled with computational photography chops. It has been focused on bringing useful and advanced (non-generative) AI-based features to users on a much broader scale than Apple, such as Call Screening, Google Lens, Top Shot, Smart Compose, among many others.
Pffft. Fuuuuuuuuck that.
Starting? lol
"starting to"
Lol
Maybe Apple will have their Balmer moment but, as much as I would like to see that, I don't expect it any time soon.
Steve Jobs was an awful person, the brand was already cracked
Big companies with no vision of the future are often ripe for disruptive tech to harvest. We'll see what happens. The apple "visio pro"" is not the future of the company.
12 years... F...
Feels more like 20.
I think people love to hate Steve. The one thing people love more than a great figurehead, is hating one. I think that Steve had a great internal model of how to combine form/function.
iPhone wasn't the first smartphone, but it may as well have been. It brought the smartphone to the mass market.
Part of it was a great advertising campaign, which unlike the smartphones at the time, pitched it as a luxury good as opposed to an executive enterprise one. You owned a blackberry to answer emails wherever and whenever you were, you owned an iphone so you can check Google Maps. A large part of it was redefining both the form factor, and use case of a smartphone.