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Bezos isn't following the example of Walton, Sears, or Montgomery Ward. Jobs didn't follow the example of Hewlett. Musk isn't following the example of Henry Ford. It would be a huge mistake for any startup to try to become the next Apple by following the example of Jobs. The Jobs worship has got to stop. He was a unique man in a unique historical circumstance. That time is over. Whether the next big thing comes from Apple or from someone else, it's not going to come from someone who is worshipping and trying to follow Jobs.

There's a difference between "following an example" and "learning from an example."

It's hard. Also, there wouldn't have been Steve Jobs without that crazy and convoluted history. Getting fired from the company, then founding a new one then getting brought back?

People focus too much on the 'nasty' side of jobs, but it's easy to be nasty, and a lot of people do that, what's hard is having the other aspects that might be more subtle

in his biography (or most likely I read it somewhere else), the group that worked with him had a whole way of presenting things to him, that "made" him go for the best solution. It was a ruse, which he might have been aware or not, but it worked. And of course people were on their feet to present the best products

Jobs had a very finicky way of thinking about products, but I guess that created a dynamic in which other people that worked with him also stood for things that they believed in and that resulted in a balance of qualities that is lacking

Also Apple is not thinking about experience. When they took the floppy disks from the Macs I assume people were more than happy to see they go. Heck even display port has some advantages (you need one tiny interface to plug whatever kind of monitor you want).

Now we get a crapfest of different very similar cables with USB-C with different ports that look the same (charging/display/etc) and we killed an existing interface that for the most part works

And guess what Apple, your Keyboard and Mouse may be wireless and bluetooth but they still need an USB cable to be charged! Which cable comes with it? USB-A

I'm assume Steve would be testing the aerodynamic properties of the latest MB line, if you know what I mean

> When they took the floppy disks from the Macs I assume people were more than happy to see they go.

There were a lot of complaints, even more than you're seeing now.[1][2] At the time it was still the main way people transferred files.

[1]http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB901747560996300000 [2]http://articles.latimes.com/1998/may/11/business/fi-48540

> if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players

This is a great pitch for an early-stage fund. Sort of like the kind pg peddles :).

(I mostly agree with the analysis, but the bias is worth noting.)

As a customer, I wouldn't buy such a device from a new entrant out of fear of the dreaded "Our amazing journey" blog post when the start up is inevitably shuttered or acquired. The existing players are likely to still exist for the 4+ year device lifetime, which is handy for security updates, warranty and service and replacement purposes.

Although it would be helpful to remember that:

1. The big companies also shutter projects. Minus the "amazing journey" blog post. Their announcements usually have the tone of "Thanks for being part of the gigantic data collection experiment although you wouldn't quite know that yet. Here, take this gratuitous 6 month window to take your data out and then go f yourselves."

2. The security updates, warranty and service and replacement etc also involves occasionally bricking perfectly running systems (ala Windows 10), so it is hardly a comforting thought.

The point is shuttering a product is rarely the end goal for a larger companies product.

It is the end goal for almost every startup in the current climate.

Yes that's the difference between early adopters and the mainstream market. The early adopters will take a risk but companies typically need to change strategies to go beyond that. For details see the classic business book "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore.

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062292988/crossing-the-cha...

That means your needs are being met by current devices. That means you are not the target audience for a new disruptive technology. The initial users for this new company are desperate.

True, Graham offers a naive reading about when hardware startups can win. Yes, a start-up came up with the smartwatch(pebble), and another came up with the wireless earphones. And those were pretty good products .

Did they ever had a chance against Apple ?

No, because "pretty good" isn't good enough when your competition is Apple.

If we're honest is the Apple Watch even better than "pretty good"?

The watch2 is, watch1 no I wouldn't say it is.

> Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

Well, revenue is already falling [1].

If you look at the first graph (revenue) you'll see that revenue is declining. Click "Trailing 12 months" to remove the seasonal trends.

[1] https://fairlyvalued.com/company/AAPL

Disclaimer: Fairlyvalued is new tool build by alch- and me.

Apple is not into the next wave. If it were, it would be a powerhouse of deep learning hardware and software. The next wave is going to be robotics and conversational agents. You can't make a new Apple with slightly better laptops and phones any more. If, at least, they developed and opened up Siri in the last few years... but it's dead in the water.

Do you know any good resources on the future of conversational agents? In terms of what need they fulfil - I don't use Ok Google/Siri/Cortana, and rarely use my Echo but for music, and find it hard to understand where they fit in. Home automation is the only thing that comes to mind ("only").

Check out X.ai and Clara labs. Some of their blog posts highlight what needs they fulfil. These are not messaging agents but conversational nonetheless.

Has anyone stopped to think, "do people actually want to talk to a computer?" I think we are more simply interested in commanding them to get our tasks done easier, but this "conversational" nonsense and making it more human like is, well, nonsense.

>but this "conversational" nonsense and making it more human like is, well, nonsense.

Can't say I've ever been impressed when one of these systems fails to understand me and replies with a human-like response. Feels disingenuous.

The term they should be able to fulfill is natural interaction with a humans.

You should be able to crawl into your car and sputter "take me cough to the hospital" to which the car vocally responds "Right away" then drives itself to the hospital.

edit: Meaning, this interaction should play out exactly the same as if you had a full time driver/butler whos only job is to sit in the driver seat of your car and wait for your commands.

The next wave of what, though? Apple didn't get into search engines, or drones, or netbooks. They're a consumer products company. They make things they can sell. Let Google be Google, Amazon be Amazon and Apple be Apple.

Honestly I wouldn't be concerned if Apple never make a new category defining product in the rest of their existence. Jobs didn't spend his whole life dedicated to discovering new product categories, that's not how things like the iPod and iPhone happened.

Jobs biggest successes were matters of pure opportunism. Take the iphone. He couldn't have created that product in 2004, the hardware technology wasn't up to it. He was presented with a unique opportunity. A high quality OS core, world class developer and design talent, and mobile hardware that was just becoming powerful enough to run a version of that OS core. It doesn't matter how talented or how visionary he was, without those things all coming together at the right time the iPhone wouldn't have been possible.

People expecting Apple to come up with new products like that on some kind of schedule aren't taking into account how contingent these things are. Without the conditions for a new product category to emerge. Without the many different pre-requisite technologies coming together and without Apple having the right resources available to take advantage of them, these things simply won't happen. They couldn't happen, even with Steve Jobs around.

The received wisdom seem to be that SJ simply willed new products into existence and that somehow Apple should still be doing the same thing. That's magical thinking. But what they should be doing is developing their technologies and assets and applying them to new products and new problems. If that leads them into new product categories, all the better.