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Comment by 3chelon | Hacker News Reader

Almost as soon as I heard the sad news about Steve Jobs I feared this would happen. It also coincides with the 15-year cycle that seems to happen in tech and certain financial markets. Let's face it, Apple can't be top dog forever. Google has lasted longer than it should have. And if I were Zuckerberg I'd be concerned what's around the corner.

And without the visionary leadership of a Jobs, a Gates, a whoever, these companies stop innovating and change into something else. At least this is the second time round for Apple. But I fear that without Jobs there may be no way back.

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That's why Zuck has been very aggressive with acquisitions, to future proof the company. He's bought two of his biggest competitors, Instagram and Whatsapp, and Oculus which could be the future. I'm pretty pleased with his corporate foresight.

You can only find your way out by buying and killing your competitors for that much time.

Sooner or later some one will do something you won't notice and suddenly you will be irrelevant.

Yes and Internet users are very fickle. In particular, users used to a free product evaporate when charges arise. The endless struggle to stay relevant kills them.

For examples see MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Twitter....

When Steve Jobs died, Apple was worth $300 billion. Now it is worth $600 billion.

So far, not only did Tim Cook live up to the expectations in Apple under Jobs (which would mean to keep the company value at the same level) but he even overperformed 100%.

Remember, this is the same investors who couldn't be arsed to check Pokemon Go's ownership before they overhyped (and subsequently crashed) Nintendo's stock.

Market valuation does not indicate anything about the inner workings of a company, nor about its long-term prospects.

There is a strong path dependency to how Apple is able to pull in record amount of profits. The fact is that any institution with considerable resources will be able to coast for a long time.

Mediocrity can easily sustain Apple on Wall Street for the next 10 years.

Worth has a low-pass filter. The effect of change takes time to determine.

I read somewhere recently that the exact same thing happened when Ballmer inherited Microsoft. As others have intimated, profits != future growth. The new owner can be very good at making money but will not tend to take risks, and there's the problem.

But I think Tim Cook is taking some risks, big ones even. That might backfire, who knows.

I think you're mistaking interia for vision.

Jobs left behind an inertia which these people sit and ride on.

The true measure of the post-Jobs era will be when they will run out of that inertia and will be on their own. Which seems to be happening around these days.

Has nothing to do with the CEO and everything to do with QE by the Fed.

Many tech and near-tech companies doubled and even tripled in value since 2011.

Apple should've made Elon Musk its CEO as soon as it could after Steve Jobs passed away. Now it's likely too late with the merger of Tesla and Solar City happening, and the merged company being on an explosive growth path. Musk is also likely too busy now with SpaceX's ITS system and the landing on Mars to worry about making great Macs and iPhones.

Musk is a good CEO because he his passionate about what he does. I'm not convinced he is that passionate about computers / gadgets.

Not to mention, deleting oil as an energy source is a far greater benefit to mankind than any possible innovation in computing.

Is this satire?

I don't think so. He didn't mention Javascript, Rust, or Go.

This is surely some markov-chain HN parody account. Do I win anything if I'm right?

You win 3D-printed augmented-reality goggles so you can relax in your self-driving car built on the blockchain.

Needless to say, the goggles are powered by scalable microservices written in Haskell, Go and Phoenix on a serverless, containerized architecture with a React/Redux front-end.

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