Comment by sickbeard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sickbeard | Hacker News Reader

I'm really finding it difficult to follow the author's logic here.

He starts off with the title

"What Tim Cook's Apple has in common with Porsche's Cayenne?",

but then the only comment he makes regarding porche is ..

"Just think what Porsche’s hardcore users said when they first saw Porsche Cayenne. “Betrayal!”, “It’s not a Porsche!”. And yet it made a killing when it comes to sales. Think Mercedes A Class, BMW 1…"

The rest of the article goes on in the same vein with quotes here and there, peace time/wartime something or other but essentially what he's saying is..

What people who demand innovations from Apple don't get is they are resting on their laurels? Taking it easy and raking profits? Riding on the coattails of their previous innovations. We get that. It's obvious and it's a deadend. It happened to Cannon, Sony, Nintendo, Intel etc etc. That's why people who get it want Apple to innovate.

Don't forget more relevantly, RIM who had the smartphone market completely locked up but couldn't get comfortable with a large, keyboardless, touchscreen device that was graphically oriented despite Microsoft having created these devices before the iPhone explosion. The question is are the innovations coming out of non-Apple mobile computing on par with the touchscreen/gui revolution of the late 2000s. Water Resistant? Wireless Charging? Wearables? Voice Control? None seem likely to supplant the basic form factor.

After all, post 1995, there wasn't a major innovation in the desktop or mobile pc market that took over. Flat Panel monitors maybe. Desktops and Laptops are simply faster and possibly smaller versions of what we had then.

The point I'm making is that tech innovation is going to shif t to something outside handheld. Cloud, IOT, VR/AR, AI, Wearables, Voice are leading contenders right now and Apple is certainly thinking about all of them.

The author's point is that the proper and profitable way to run a company - once it's crossed the chasm - is the way Cook is running now.

You needed Jobs (or someone like him) to get Apple to where it is now by doing things that fit the early adopter market. But once you have done it, it becomes the wrong thing to do - because doing what the early adopters want/need will hurt the much larger, much more profitable part of the business and customers that actually do prefer the stability.

It's not a dead end - it's harvesting the field you've planted instead of neglecting it to try other fields/crops; it's what the shareholders would likely prefer and unsurprisingly they have done so.

Thanks for clarifying that. It's exactly what I meant :)

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