Peter Thiel believes the ‘age of Apple is over’ | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel believes the ‘age of Apple is over’

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9 pointssndean3 comments

Should be retitled 'Peter Thiel believes 'age of smartphone innovation' is over. It's a mature product category and you'll be seeing diminishing returns on future investments. Right now this seems like a reasonable statement as we've witnessed the pace of innovation dramatically decrease. Refresh cycles are lengthening and overall sales are slowing. Meanwhile Apple is making a ton of money in that product category and are likely to remain doing so for the foreseeable future.

I think it's the destiny of pretty much any device category.

If you look at laptops for instance, obviously what we have in 2016 is miles ahead of the first laptops in terms of performance, but fundamentally isn't different from a decade ago (even two). The most meaningful innovation may be touch screens and/or hybrid/detachable screens, but that's not redefining the category --more like expanding it to cannibalize others.

I'm not holding my breath for smartphone innovation either. Maybe we'll get foldable/telescopic displays (think: Nintendo DS, but better), but that's just added comfort (more real estate in as tight a package).

The fact is that with the advent of AR (or 'hybrid/mixed reality, however you want to call it), the smartphone category will simply fade away in favor of glasses/lenses, if it's more convenient.

Deep down it's all just computers in various formfactors. We adapt the apps and ecosystem to suit these interfaces, technology only being as good as its ease of use (philosophy: "tool", starting with the silex). The real question is what computing can do tomorrow that it cannot today (AI probably being the next paradigm in that regard), regardless of the formfactor. Basically function VS form.

This is precisely where I think Apple has been stagnating, compared to Google and MS and Amazon for instance. They improve the form (and that's debatable, thinner with shorter battery life may not be much of a "form improvement"), but the functions are disappointingly the same (e.g. Siri is the worst of all personal assistants, it seems like Apple doesn't really know how to do deep learning to a meaningful degree for the user).

It's not about smartphone or laptop or whatever. It's about what you can do with, nevermind the physical shape of devices. In this regard, I agree with Thiel. Hopefully the richest company on earth can prove innovative again, but #2 (Google) is so much better positionned in this regard (from Quantum computing to AI passing by real-world apps and services quality). Microsoft and Amazon as well, especially considering Jeff Bezos ventures in space etc.

"Apple is not only devoting a lot of resources towards wearables research but is also very interested in a number of other areas, including machine learning, virtual reality and augmented reality."

Just like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

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