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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

That's a lot of temptation to fulfill someone's own prophesy. I hope Elon takes his security as seriously as he does batteries and rocket nozzles. If he left the helm the intellectual and visionary capital of Tesla might not change much, but the social and financial capital would drop fast and far. I kind of hope he watches too many Bond movies and decides to seal himself in a hidden lair and run things from there.

But Apple is still Apple after Jobs. Hopefully the same is true for Tesla and Musk, and we don't find that out for decades.

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> But Apple is still Apple after Jobs

The company is very successful, but does it innovate in the same way? Under Jobs, the introduction of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all groundbreaking compared to industry norms at the time, not to mention the focus on usability. I'm genuinely curious which innovations compare since those days.

Agree. In my mind the company is a dead man walking despite its revenue and profits. It's no longer the innovation leader and by 2040 will be viewed as Xerox came to be, barring some very unforeseen development.

LOL.

I don't know what's more amazing about this comment, the ignorance from not understanding their core competitiveness or the arrogance to predict something with regard to the tech industry in the year 2040.

Yeah, although that's one hell of a caveat that was laid down, "barring some unseen development". Isn't that exactly what we are talking about in how Apple has been able to keep releasing "unseen developments"?

> It's no longer the innovation leader

Who is and how do you define that? I'd say in some very important spaces they're leaders, such as performance per watt in the mobile CPU space.

> by 2040 will be viewed as Xerox came to be

If you mean PARC's transition from an innovator to the one trick pony Xerox of today I'd say the difference is Apple keeps delivering high quality products and services in an expansive set of markets - some in so much demand you can't even buy today if you have the money.

Those products are rarely if ever the first to market, but always highly competent and aspirational to own. Their consistency in achieving this approximately a decade after Job's death should be a good indicator that they have a robust research, design and marketing process that will keep them moving.

I'm sure detractors would put their money on marketing being the primary driver, while happily ignoring Apple's achievements in engineering market-leading SOC's.

> I'm genuinely curious which innovations compare since those days.

The M1

That was my first thought. Is the M1 the result of true innovation or simply vertical integration?

Yes

What's your definition of "true innovation"? No, Apple did not invent an ARM ISA CPU, but the they also pushed the hell out of all available technology in their design and implementation. The amount of innovation in that far surpasses pretty much anyone else in the mobile space. You should really read into what they've been doing with their in-house SoC team since the A7.

Ryzen 4000 is competitive at 7nm, given how huge the R&D budget was and how long the development time was, if the M1 wasn't as good as it was it would have been a let down

Apple was definitely one of the earlier backers of ARM through Acorn back in the 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Advanced_RISC...

Apple Silicon was started by Jobs

Jobs set the groundwork, but their silicon didn’t hit the ground until 2013 with the a7

Apple Watch and AirPods.

What set the AirPods apart from other wireless headphones at the time?

Weren't AirPods the devices which set the trend of having a charging case. Like I don't think they were the longest lasting wireless earphones but they were one of the sleekest designs. And the charging case just helped them achieve that. Now ever wireless earbuds come with a charging case.

They integrate well with a specific phone type.

I think the early innovation of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were a happy confluence of technology reaching a maturation point. We were in a place where batteries were good enough, low power chips were good enough, and everything else could be miniaturized enough to make a compelling and competitive product. I don’t think we’re to another inflection point like that yet. They also weren’t first in a lot of these pursuits, they just did it the best and delivered the best experience.

Today, Apple still delivers the best-in-class experience with their devices. They make measured improvement. AR isn’t to the point where glasses are viable. Foldable displays aren’t to the point where they’re viable in the mass market. When they are, Apple will make a big leap forward and “innovate” again. In the mean time, their innovation is simply to continue delivering the most polished experience possible in the marketplace and they continue doing that.

The Apple Watch now generates more revenue than the entire Swiss watch industry combined. Apple is the largest watchmaker in the world both by revenue and by units sold.

Things cost more, and markets are bigger now. It's like comparing wagon sales to automobiles.

Part of the argument here is that even with pre-existing technologies, the current players have essentially made markets.

Smartphones and tablets existed, but consumers didn't buy them in today's numbers until Apple/Android came along.

Most entry level swiss watches watches cost more than an apple watch.

So I'm not sure how this is relevant.

The price of a Swiss watch means nothing if they don't sell them in quantity. If you build an app that costs $500k to only one user that is still less income than if you sell the app at $5 with 1 million users. That's how it is relevant.

Yeah, that's true, but the swiss watch industry still sold 20 million + watches last year. So I still can't see how this applies.

It would also probably be fair to say that the swiss watch industry was decimated as carrying a phone became ubiquitous.

I think the comparison is relatively apt though. People have one left wrist, and even though the apple watch and a classic watch are different categories. You don't often see people wearing both. So there is competition there for a limited number of wrist slots.

And apple is selling more units than team swiss watch.

Now, if you wanted to have a conversation about total wrist market share, I'd still guess the swiss watch industry is winning. You don't have to buy a new mechanical watch every other year so units moved isn't as apt a comparison.

Source?

In numbers, not in revenue. The Swiss watch industry is still far larger as a business.

The swiss watch industry is also a small part of the total watch industry. Japanese watches sell way more than swiss watches as well. Think casio gshock (just the gshock is about 10mm/year), citizen echo drives (Citizen sells 200mm watches/ year), They are also usually the movement supplier for the junk fashion brands.

If you wanted to count apples share of the watch industry, not just the swiss watch industry) it would be less than one percent.

It's making a new market and gaining some ground but it's not the 'watch industry killer' that people like to make it out to be.

No one has been able to beat the success of the iPhone or iPad ever since. If you’re using those two products as the standard, nothing else will compare, not in a long time.

For all the hype around Tesla, their revenues for all of 2020 are less than Apple made selling earbuds and watches. These new products launched after Jobs. Add Apple Silicon to the list of things they're doing, I think they're fine on the innovation front.

I wonder how his will is structured. He's currently unmarried with a number of minor children, but he has a controlling (majority?) share in SpaceX... so who gets those votes in the interim until they come of age?

Maybe he has some arrangement where the shares are held in trust, and voting power lies with some trusted lieutenant like Gwynne Shotwell?

I'd hope so — central control over the SpaceX vision has been absolutely critical over the past decade, and needs to stay that way until Starships are landing on Mars, if his vision of Mars settlement has any hope of happening.

I would guess the majority would goto his brother.

I don't know the details of their relationship but that would not be a standard or default US will.

Afaik spouses come first, then children, then parents, then siblings, on and out.

I still wouldn't bet against Elon's ghost.

elon will reincarnate into XÆA-12

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