Apple is now an antifragile company
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The problem now is that they do everything so, now they have to be best at everything.
If you want to run graphics or ML on the Mac, you have to use Apple hardware and APIS, you cant use nVidia hardware or a lot of industry standard APIs, so apple is at a disadvantage.
If you want to develop on Mac, you have to use Xcode, you cant use any other tools. So Apple is at a disadvantage.
Try connecting a variable refresh rate screen to a mac, or a VR headset, or Thundebolt device, or just a USB device in to one of their mobile devices. Try playing the latest hot AAA game everyone is talking about. Try installing a better voice assistant, store, browser or music player and you will find that Apple has made it hard or impossible.
Everything that Apple itself isn't heavily invested in and market leader at sucks. Apple isn't leveraging the industry to its advantage.
Apple is fine now, because its great at a few things and good enough at the rest of the things it needs to find a large market. How long can a company not fail at one of so many things?
Apple is the industry. When you're the industry, you don't leverage it, everybody else attempts to leverage you.
If for some reason they find themselves needing to eg switch back to CPUs supplied by someone else because they can no longer be great at that - given their scale, Intel or AMD (or whomever) will get on their knees and crawl begging for the business.
None of what you're claiming are disadvantages are actual disadvantages unless they lose the iPhone's position. Unless that happens, they are the industry, they are the (increasingly) dominant ecosystem, the advantage is theirs to press. They're winning.
I don't think that's true even if you consider IDEs that target the OS X frameworks only. Intellij has a product, Flutter targets iOS, I am not an OS X developer but those two jump out straight away.
As for developing on Mac - it's a Unix & so a very capable development tool to target a range of platforms.
In Linux they would have been separate packages, but I don’t think the App Store has dependencies so how else are they going to get the required packages installed for their ide.
[1]: Yes, I know about WSL. No, that doesn’t count.
And this is not because no one wants to write a backend to target iOS, it's because Apple won't allow it. If you want to run native code on iOS, it must be built and signed with XCode on a Mac.
I will still note that debugging and monitoring are usually not going to work cross-platform - try to log to journalfs from a Windows system (wihtout using MinGW or similar).
if you want to build ios apps installing xcode is a requirement (to get the proprietary cli tools) but launching xcode is not required
to build native mac apps, neither installing nor running xcode is necessary, as you can build with the smaller cli-only tools which include only mac os headers/libs
As for those IDEs, they are a subpar experience of what the whole AppFrameworks are capable of, just like Borland of yore always playing catch up with Windows SDKs.
That's a bad analogy IMO. GNU/Linux is mostly POSIX compliant. There are some edge cases one runs into with C programming, but if talking about shell scripting, sticking to POSIX is definitely more portable. Bash would be a chrome equivalent, otherwise it's like targeting a subset of what every browser can do. Testing against Busybox/musl (Alpine) is a good way to assess portability.
Or asynchronous network programming with certificates, while using only POSIX APIs.
Dealing with filesystem capabilities, file locations, daemon configurations, port management utilities,...
Ah, and anything GUI related is not even part of POSIX.
They certainly have the cash on hand to actually do so.
> If you want to develop on Mac, you have to use Xcode, you cant use any other tools.
Unlike Windows you can do everything you want in free Xcode, only when you want to distribute your applications to others you need the 99$/year codesign certificate. Also, you don't even need full Xcode to compile programs, see e.g. Homebrew or MacPorts.
> Try connecting a variable refresh rate screen to a mac, or a VR headset, or Thundebolt device, or just a USB device in to one of their mobile devices. Try playing the latest hot AAA game everyone is talking about.
Most of what you mentioned is gaming, that has never been any market of Apple's - and besides, you can always dual-boot into Windows on the Intel side (and probably, soon enough into Linux on the M1 side). The other stuff (TB, USB on mobile) isn't well supported on the competitions' side too - all I can plug in into my Android phone and tablet is a mouse, keyboard and USB soundcard.
> Try installing a better voice assistant, store, browser or music player and you will find that Apple has made it hard or impossible.
Agreed on the voice assistant. The rest? I can download and install apps like I want, I am not depending on the App Store for anything. Browser? Chrome or Firefox (although I admit, I would be happier if Apple opened up and documented the ways that Safari can use to save battery life) can be downloaded and installed in minutes. Music player? Spotify and VLC have all you want, Amazon Music has an OS X app, and for the iOS side foobar2000 also exists.
> Apple is fine now, because its great at a few things and good enough at the rest of the things it needs to find a large market. How long can a company not fail at one of so many things?
Apple has enough cash on hand and cash flow from their current product line to wait out any "failure" - and they have the cash to buy so much advertising to make a literal pile of poo a bestseller anyway. They are so huge they literally cannot fail.
Are you comparing this to e.g Visual Studio now? Because most SDKs are free (.NET, even the C++ compiler can be used freely now afaik), as is vscode and there are of course several other free IDEs.
VS Code supports a subset of Windows development workloads, try to develop C++/WinRT applications or a WPF GUI in VS Code, for example.
VS Community is only free for open source, students or companies up to 5 employees with a specific yearly revenue limit.
The issue with macOS development is that there are simple things you pretty much have to do for even the most basic app to work correctly--such as build the menu bar from a nib or bundle icons--that require you to use closed source software like altool and ibtool that come with Xcode (and then, despite being command line tools, for some incompetent reason tend to be tied very tightly to the current version of the operating system, which makes stuff like CI extremely annoying).
So many examples that are beyond bare bones Win32 C calls.
Apple does not even have to be the best at everything, or even particularly great at everything. What they need to do is be good at integrating everything, which they are.
You need third parties (sort of) for scaling and long tail reasons, but it's always an uneasy relationship.
If you don't expand enough, or the market doesn't generate a solution, your platform has a gap. If you expand too much, third party developers feel burned and desert your platform.
Microsoft solved this by clearly staking its monetized territory ("the office suite"), and not really expanding in other directions (after those weird 90s attempts).
If you buy an X-Box, and the next Halo turns out to suck, you are still going to get your moneys worth of 3rd party titles.
The Wii was designed with different assumptions in mind, which led to a lean machine they could sell at a profit. Someone buying and Xbox and Gears of War was a huge problem for Microsoft, if someone bought a Wii and Mario Kart, it was just fine for Nintendo as long as the customer was happy: Every sale was profit, plain and simple.
I don't know about the Wii not being good for 3rd parties either, it's more that the Wii didn't do what the 3rd parties wanted to do (high tech edgelord games). So we got completely moronic things like a Castlevania fighting game, a Soul Calibur that wasn't a fighting game. How about Dead Space, a slow, ponderous horror title? Yeah, the devs turned it into a rail shooter, just about the most anti-horror genre choice imaginable.
In simple terms, they thought the Wii userbase were morons who would lap up anything - after all, they'd bought a motion control toaster to play technically really simplistic titles, and in the devs' world, technically simplistic = bad. So they gave people disrespectful shovelware, which, surprise surprise, bombed.
They had the opportunity to make solid titles - the Wii may have been a toaster, but it was still beefier than the PS2 or Gamecube which had a lot of really good titles and anyone who's played Metroid Prime knows those controls are crack.
I think the big miss with the Wii wasn't how good/bad it was, but communication. What was the philosophy behind the machine, Nintendo communicating that, the devs really trying to understand that.
Not really, the M1 is a smashing success with most techies. People seem to like the phones too. The watches are doing really well too. Oh, and the tablets are really popular also. Even with techies.
There seems to be a group of people sworn never to be corrupted by the evil Apple and their evil ways. I first saw it on /., and the same group has been ringing out death knells for Apple ever since.
iPads are doing exceptionally well, I'm surprised you are unaware. They're replacing laptops for a lot of users, especially those that did not grow up around PCs. It's just that you won't often see them in public.
Apple has a significant presence in Central Europe. Not overwhelming one, American market is obviously a stronger one. It might have something to do with purchasing power parity, which is still not that good behind the former Iron Curtain. But it is a big player here, especially in the richer demographics.
I have never used any Apple products, but I am tempted. People will sing paeans about how their gadgets just work and interact together. I am more of a tinkering-hacking type, so I do not really mind delving deep into my Windows or Linux installation, but Android messes with me sometimes.
Same with iPads. By far the most common brand of large screen device I see. Outside of office environments I see more iPads than laptops, and even in office environments I'm seeing more iPads today than even just 3 years ago.
There's definitely a huge market of people buying it.
Whenever I go out in major cities in the US, Canada or the UK, I'll always see someone with it
It feels similar to the end of MS's domiance. They were always profitable and had huge marketshare, but just because everybody was running Windows, that didn't mean they were really embracing the full MS ecosystem. Apple feels that way today.
I'm talking about a much more nebulous concept of a company as a thought leader, one that people follow. There was a time when the rumor of MS entering a market would cause competition to shut down. Now nobody blinks an eye when MS ships an actual product that competes with them.
And in that regard, I think we're seeing the end of Apple's role as a technologically interesting company (at least wrt software). For example it used to be pretty much only Apple and a few exclusive MacOS developers who actually cared about design. Now designing thinking has gone mainstream all while Apple seems to be busy ignoring everything from their classic HIG.
The Apple products I do have were either broken and given or sold to me to repair or found at thrift shops and pawn shops for deep discounts, and they are all going up for sale soon to recoup my expenses.
I don't consider myself overly dogmatic about controlling my devices or data but the thought of going all in on one tech company for my gadgets for the next decade or so is both gross and, to be honest, really boring. I don't see how I could get excited about tech when the only choice I get is what colour it is (or the storage space).
I don’t think of these things as gadgets anymore. In the past I’ve built a Linux DVR - so I know how to tinker and find it fun for certain things but not things I depend on and want to behave like appliances. I don’t tinker with my refrigerator or my automobile either.
Certain things with iOS are just overly difficult like getting files on or off or trying to add new music to the music app without a PC.
I'm sure you could find even better deals on eBay.
EDIT: its $149 currently https://www.walmart.com/ip/Verizon-Apple-iPhone-SE-2020-64GB...
Also GNU/Linux phones running mainline Linux kernel (but they don't exist for 5 years yet).
So yes the UX is great (I would not say amazing) and when the integration exists, the experience is almost always fantastic..
But I've always felt like it has come with trade-offs, and in recent years Apple has moved the balance enough that I no longer believe the trade-offs are worth it for me, at least when it comes to my daily driver computer.
I moved back to Windows (+Linux thanks to WSL2) in 2020 - after being a Mac-first user for almost 15 years - and am very happy with my choice.
Microsoft / Linux doesn't do everything, but if you need something specific you can bet that there is someone out there that provides that functionality for those platforms.
I have a friend who has a 2015-ish Macbook with 4GB RAM - and she is getting into Photoshop.
So her computer works well for her. The monitor is good enough, the CPU is good, and so on. 4GB just won't cut it.
Since she can't upgrade her RAM for $150 like she should, she has to get a new computer. But she likes the trackpad and the Apple UI so much, she is going to get an iMac with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1600, instead of a Windows PC with a top-line processor, 32GB RAM, 27" screen and 1TB+ of SSD.
There is simply no contest in reliability, you’re always expecting a new problem with windows - just yesterday, in fact, an OS update disabled my network card and I had to reinstall everything to “fix” it. You can use a Mac for years without even knowing what a driver is.
Regarding the software I use, I wouldn't say that it's any more stable on macOS than on Windows.
Windows is very solid and we rarely see issues with it on decent hardware which still costs 1/2 of what a lower spec Mac equivalent.
In my own circles (so anecdotally) I've had plenty of conversations over the last 20+ years about helping tech and non-tech people upgrade RAM on their computers, including laptops.. And in the last 5 years I've heard plenty of people be surprised (and bummed) that they can't upgrade the RAM on their Macs post-purchase anymore.
And of course maxing out the RAM at purchase time is a complete rip-off compared to market prices.
Every Mac I've owned (5 machines across desktops/laptops from 2006 through to 2016 I think), I eventually upgraded the RAM myself via aftermarket parts at reasonable market rates and it greatly extended the life of the computer.
Given the premium cost you already pay for a Mac, not being able to do this anymore is a deal breaker, for me at least.
I've literally never had a problem for years. Switching is seamless. I don't even have to manually switch, it happens automagically. Same for everyone I know with AirPods.
That's because many smart home devices are only supporting the duopoly OOB due to their market prominence, indeed both Apple & Google are doing something good enough to retain their *poly position.
If the smart home devices have open API, then there's no reason for it to work great with anything else. A case in point, put KDEConnect on Android, Linux Phone or Sailfish and you can even play the audio from your desktop browser on your phone speaker.
It’s funny that you take AirPlay as an example. I would have agreed with most other things, but AirPlay is light years behind stuff like Google Cast or Spotify Connect.
Smarthome is one place Apple fell down. I tried to add my hue lights and instead of just automatically finding the hub like Amazon and Google I was supposed to take a picture of a sticker? Could never get it to work. They also took far too long getting an affordable voice speaker for the home out. I'm not digging my phone out every time either.
Well, try connecting a VR headset to anything that isn't a Windows PC.
> Try playing the latest hot AAA game everyone is talking about.
Again, this is mainly because of the dominance of Windows, and also to some extent DirectX.
My personal take is that, when left to their own devices, developers and the industry will focus on the dominant platform first (Windows) and other vendors (Mac) will tend to be an afterthought. This was more true 10-20 years ago, when Mac wasn't as dominant.
Because of that, in order for Apple to be successful, Apple couldn't rely on the industry to make their platform great, so they had to build their own 'exclusives'.
Taken another way - in a parallel universe where Apple hadn't heavily invested in building a lot of this stuff themselves and relied on leveraging the industry, I'm not convinced that they would be alive today.
I have never tried a VR headset under anything that wasn't Linux, so our experiences differ on that point.
And Valve not supporting Mac again shows that relying on outside industry is not a viable strategy if you are not the dominant platform. Mac wasn't a big platform for them to sell VR titles as it's not used by many consumers to play VR titles, so they drop support.
As another example, the Oculus client only supports Windows (outside of the Quest etc). There are mac's out there with powerful graphics cards and lots of RAM, however they are few and far between compared to Windows boxes, so Oculus chooses Windows as the dominant platform - If you are going to support one, it will be Windows, and if you are going to support Mac, well it's not going to be the first-class citizen. If Apple wants VR support they are going to have to go out there and graft for it.
The overall point is just - Apple is successful because they decided they wouldn't wait for industry to support their platforms, and that they would just build it themselves if the industry didn't come. For instance, iWork is a direct result of Microsoft not bringing Office to Mac originally - The lack of good presentation software was going to be something that prevented professionals using Mac, so they went out and built Keynote themselves. On the flip side, Photoshop was a great app with best support on the Mac, so they never needed to build a good photo editor. The investments are all to fill in gaps where other people in the industry weren't bringing stuff to the party.
Yes and no - I think part of that was also that Apple is openly hostile to other app stores on the Mac. It's true that third parties are lukewarm in their support for Mac, but it's very hard to disentangle to what extent that's the effect of Apple's lukewarm support for third parties rather than the cause of it.
Unless you specifically need to target Apple, you don't come across their ecosystem of APIs, which makes it harder to maintain cross-platform compatibility.
Reportedly, Apple is "all-in" on xR, so wait and see I guess. But they're not on the public supporter list of OpenXR for now, as a datapoint: https://www.khronos.org/OpenXR/
When was that? MS Word has been available on the Mac since 1984, Excel since 1985 and PowerPoint since 1987.
Keynote was made because Steve Jobs wanted better presentation software than what others provided that was more like Concurrence on NeXTSTEP.
Do you often run ML jobs on workstations? Why? Yes, macs are not great for gaming, oh well.
You are talking about developers using a Mac, who also develop for the Mac, as if its this tiny corner case that isn't important. Maybe thats true. But it should be really important for Apple that those developers target the Mac, thats how Apple gets 3rd party software.
>We wont so good at partnering with people, where as Bill and Microsoft were really good at it. They learn how to partner with people really well. And I think if Apple had a little more of that in its DNA, it would have become more successful. And I dont think Apple learned that until few decades later. - Steve Jobs.
I think Steve Jobs was way way better with partnering in his return from NeXT. From iPhone with Cingular to patent signing with Qualcomm partnership. He really knew which battle to fight and which to work with. Tim Cook seems to have a very bean counting view on almost everything. To the point of not valuing much partnership. Which may be a good thing in Supply Chain but not so good with other businesses.
Apple relies heavily on a modularised supply chain. It designs its own chips, true, but relies on TSMC and Samsung to fab them. It designs its own camera system, yes, but buys the crucial components (the sensors) from Sony. It designs its own screens, but uses Samsung technology and production capability to do so. It runs its cloud services on top of AWS and MS Azure. And famously of course, they outsource production of almost all their devices to Foxconn.
China commands significant power over Apples manufacturing capabilities. Just take a look at Apples supplier list ^1 This is the opposite of antifragile.
Tencent, Pinduoduo, Alibaba are prime examples of how much influence the Chinese government is willing to exercise over companies in case it finds them to not be aligned with it's own interests.
The Chinese government effectively has access to the private iCloud keys for Apples Chinese users.
From an investors perspective I'm a bit bearish on AAPL.
^1: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...
Take getting videos off an iPhone for instance, something I have to do many times a week in my job.
If you have AirDrop it's effortless. But my MBP has a faulty bluetooth chip so bluetooth generally stops working after the machine has been running a few hours so I need to reboot every time I move videos from my phone to my machine.
Are there alternatives? Nope not really, moving iPhone videos to a PC, Which most video editing workstations are now because Apple neglected or fumbled the high end for close to a decade. You can't AirDrop so what do you do?
- WhatsApp? Nope has a 60 meg limit - Slack? Nope, for some reason trying to send video files 90% of the time stalls or just takes close to 20 minutes. I think they have some built in throttling to prevent my using their service as a AirDrop-drop in because airdropping then sending the same video from desktop is fast - Email? Nope, files are too big
Only real solutions are AirDropping to a Mac then sending on slack or over network or trying to figure out how to do it over the network via the Files app which is also slow and weird.
All that beautiful interoperability goes from being a benefit to actually making the product look bad the second it can't just interoperate with things you need to get your work done.
End of the day they can't do everything and are unwilling to create machines that are competitive in these niche areas but once you're in this niche the whole Apple philosophy starts to look like a bad one.
All it would take would be for them to release an AirDrop for Windows app which would make their platform look better, I'm still your customer even when I have to send a file to a Windows machine Apple... not providing that feature isn't making Windows look bad because the reason I'm there in the first place is because it outperforms even a $20K Mac Pro.
I think you can transfer photos and videos for free using a usb cable as well. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-an...
- Upload to a cloud storage service of your choice and download on the other end—Google Drive is very fast
- Use iCloud Photos (there’s client software for Windows too)
- Plug a cable in and drag and drop like it’s any other digital camera
- Create a Windows SMB network share (or Samba on other platforms), connect to it from Files, and use the share menu from Photos to put it in the network share
Yeah, this rarely works. It takes a long time to acknowledge there's any files, and then it tries to copy them, and then crashes instead. Over and over. Turning off the mechanism that autoconverts image files from HEIC to JPG helps (I never tried JUST video files, but those are unreliable either way in my experience). Obnoxious, overall.
Now I see in the comment above that cables often don't work.
I wonder if there're apps for saving files to USB memories
Although I agree with general sentiment. I used to have android phone and I really enjoyed that you could just connect your phone with cable and browser data with any file manager.
I always have a bad mood when I have to download/upload/sync something via itunes, e.g. voice recordings / pdf / documents / ebooks
I don’t even consider it an ‘option’ anymore while transferring files. I’ll just upload it to my server, since I know - by default - even on the same wifi network, AirDrop is as useful as picking a number in your head and having a friend guess it.
I can’t honestly think of a regular ‘service’ on iOS and MacOS that is as fundamentally broken as AirDrop. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about writing a device to device file sharing service, but - for instance - I just tried to share a file from my Mac to my iPhone. Didn’t work; don’t see my iPhone. Same wifi network - no firewall; no filters. This is a majority of the time.
But yes, Apple should have made it easier.
You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be your customer bases favorite choice. And Apple is great at delivering to and making money off their customer segment. No need to have a monopoly, no need to “slay the competition” they are just doing their thing making tons of money on a smaller segment of the total market. Imagine if people assumed the same about car brands, that there was only room in the world for a single car company. Sounds absolutely absurd doesn’t it?
Perhaps we can entertain the thought that Apple might not be going away even though they’ve been going out of business since 1976 according to public opinion.
They didn’t even write their own OS or browser or compiler. Microsoft at least does that.
> thanks to a diverse mix of strong products.
That is not quite correct. That is robustness: it means the company can endure stressors in a variety of ways. (Other commenters have pointed this out, and I agree with them.)
But the article does hint at a real argument for antifragility: cash.
Apple's cash position, plus their diverse mix of revenue categories, means that in bad times they will be relatively advantaged over competitors. For example, the company spends $40 billion per quarter or so on advance purchases from chip suppliers---meaning that, when supply shocks happen, they will be better off, because they will continue to have what they need but competitors suddenly will not. What allows them to do that? Money. A giant pile of money. That money contributes to robustness, yes, but when sector- or global-scale stressors occur, it will mean that they can actually improve their competitive position.
I can think of counterarguments, but I think that's the strongest case.
Extradite key people from Taiwan? Buy up ASML's inventory and next N months' production at an exorbitant premium?
Or, just weather the storm. Apple would be hit. But so would everyone else. I'd wager that hit could take out some of their competition.
I guess Samsung would benefit greatly.
Is that unthinkable?
https://unherd.com/2021/07/will-china-invade-taiwan/
Will China invade Taiwan? A panel of superforecasters considers the likelihood of an imminent global conflict
https://www.jonstokes.com/p/why-a-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan (Jon Stokes, the Ars Technica founder)
Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastrophe for China and the world. If they do it, it won't be for the microchips
Which inventory? As far as I know ASML is already churning out as many EUV machines as they can and yet they are still fully booked for the next few years. They're currently limited by personnel, factory space and their own supply chain.
How about let's not? There are infinite possibilities you can imagine of things going wrong. Pulling one example out of an infinite list does nothing to address the argument itself, it's just fictional role play. And every time one plays a scenario out, they could always just go one more step towards a more catastrophic scenario, until we'd arrive at "A-ha, but as we see, Apple's strategy fails to address heat death of the universe! Got 'em!" Of course your suggested scenario isn't as absurd, and the global supply chains reliance on a few privately held companies is indeed problematic. But the discussion was about Apples strategy and how they prepare with more foresight than their competitors, succeeding better under pressure. Not that they are omnipotent gods that can control and prepare for everything.
That’s true, but as a Taiwanese I can tell you Taiwan being taken over by another country is definitely in the shortlist of plausible scenarios. Not particularly likely, but definitely not fictional at all, maybe somewhere around Pearl Harbor possibility.
Yes, there is a global supply chain fragility when it comes to a few companies controlling the supply of microchips. Nobody is suggesting that Apple somehow can do everything from scratch. Even if they had factories making the chips themselves, what if their raw material suppliers collapsed? What if a critical delivery route gets compromised, as happened with Ever Given? What if a war breaks out? What if, what if, what if... You can entertain any number of ideas. Everyone knows that the global supply chains have dependencies, and if something bad happens in the world, the economy and supply chains of the world suffer. This has nothing to do with Apple specifically.
You are wrong. This kind of example addresses the argument at its core.
Being "antifragile" is all about how you respond to low probability tail events such as this one.
If you become weaker as a result of such an event, you are not antifragile. You are fragile.
If you can withstand said event, you are not antifragile, you are just robust.
If you become stronger as a result of such an event, only then can you claim to be antifragile.
Or, if I am wrong, and indeed antifragile means immortal then I don't know why we are talking about antifragility rather than whether Apple is a company that cannot be affected negatively no matter what happens in the world. I'd also like to know why is there a need for a new synonym for immortality.
Now, you are right: there's a limit to antifragility. I don't think the book clarifies this point.
But anyway, Taiwan being consumed by China is exactly the kind of thing that Black Swan and Antifragile deal with.
I mean, that's the whole point of the book.
But these problems are way, way larger than one single company. Are we really expecting Apple as a company within the global capitalist system to just isolate itself from the network and do everything themselves without relying on anyone anywhere? At that point no company in the world is antifragile, and never can be if it works within the capitalist system or relies on any sort of co-operation between people.
That's not really what it's about.
I would say an antifragile system is one that adapt to changes (even unexpected one).
A good example are businesses that were able to adapt to covid and earn more revenue by doing things like providing delivery services among other things.
I don't think antifragility is achievable by some kind of process. You probably need live players[0] at the helm to take the lead and figure out ways to adapt to new circumstances.
Apple makes a premium product, which means that they can outcompete others, especially Android, for the remaining chips.
Even in the event that there is no new iPhone for the year they will still make money on their services, and a lack of iPhone will not make it less desirable. Other smartphone makers won't be able to stay in business.
Apple needs the best to keep its edge and justify the premium.
the only way to prevent this from affecting you as a corporation is to have enough military power to prevent the scenario from happening...oh wait, that's what the US military is for.
Japan takes a stance: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/26/1020866539/japans-position-on...
Issues in Philippines: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56474847
Things have been heating up in the region, for the last few years especially, and generally not trending in a direction I think most of the world wants to see. I don't think the scenario I proposed is that far fetched, and the probability is continually trending is a bad direction. China is a rising super power and by most accounts will rival/surpass the US in many ways, very soon. Within a decade.
One way to accelerate that is to throw a monkey wrench in the world economy while you are largely insulated from the results. At least more insulated than your competitors are. I wouldn't even say that hitting a few Samsung fabs in the process was out of the question. It's not like the response will be much worse than if they didn't touch Samsung and only took Taiwan. Might as well?
I hate thinking this way and I could very well be wrong in any or all of my arm-chair analysis. I absolutely hope so. China's stance on reuniting Taiwan back with the mainland has been growing as Taiwan's power has been growing.
> BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Thursday to complete "reunification" with self-ruled Taiwan and vowed to "smash" any attempts at formal independence, drawing a stern rebuke from Taipei, which lambasted the Communist Party as a dictatorship.
> China, which considers democratically-ruled Taiwan its own territory, has stepped up efforts under Xi to assert its sovereignty claims, including regular flights by fighter jets and bombers close to the island.
> "Solving the Taiwan question and realising the complete reunification of the motherland are the unswerving historical tasks of the Chinese Communist Party and the common aspiration of all Chinese people," Xi said in a speech on the 100th birthday of the ruling Communist Party.
> "All sons and daughters of China, including compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must work together and move forward in solidarity, resolutely smashing any 'Taiwan independence' plots."
https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-xi-pledges-reunification-taiwa...
The unique property is that the system can get objectively better from being stressed, not that it is a superhydra.
> Apple hasn’t had this problem. You can walk into an Apple store right now and pick up an iPhone 12 or an M1-based Mac.
I feel like this is only true right now because Apple already had this problem last year. I recall trying every store around me to get an iPad Pro, they were always out of stock with no indicator when they will get them. It was only possible to get one a month before the new one came out.
They have been pushing people to buy and pickup for the past few years.
Any method other than cash (with a mask - Apple stores use face recognition cameras) links your phone serial number to the payment card forever.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-chip-shortage-s...
I like Apple and their products. I own an iPad, MacBook, iPhone and AirPods but I don’t understand why so many regular people who aren’t this deep in the Apple ecosystem buy iPhones in such large quantities in 2021.
Go to a carrier store and these are so many modern looking Android devices that rival the iPhone 12. How are Apple still selling so many iPhones when the competition has caught up dramatically?
There's just no comparison.
> What has changed to make there be "no comparison" in your mind? I'm interested.
I'm asking the question because I genuinely have no idea what's changed in Apple products over the years. I was replying to someone who seems like they have and I was asking for them to explain what's changed and what makes them so much better/worse respectively.
Even if alternative smartphone exist, the iPhone is still all about status signaling. It's about implicitly communicating that you are part of the successful tribe. And Apple watches are now another such symbol.
But it is nevertheless useful to use generalizations and ignore the outliers (like you, for example) for understanding trends and social phenomena. People like us reading hacker news are statistically insignificant.
To some extent, I wonder what the future looks like for Apple. It's like some God gave them the golden goose, the iPhone, and I just wonder what happens when people are done buying those. (It's hard to imagine a world where people aren't buying $1200 phones, but it was also hard to imagine the world in 1990 where people weren't buying $1200 personal computers. So what does 2050 look like for Apple?)
Several years ago I would have had no idea that I would be able to hand-hold a 2-second low light shot with my iPhone camera.
What next?
As for who's buying, COVID relief checks will be at least part of the answer.
Airtags are different as there is no first party implementation, they're all 3rd party (Tile, samsung, etc).
I am not sure if it's simply bad marketing but I often feel like a lot of the features Android has are unknown to iPhone users (understandable) but also unknown to many Android users.
I remember a colleague of mine getting an iPhone after being on Android for years. I asked her why she switched and she told me that there were all these great features her friend had told her about that iPhones had. Turns out all those features already existed on Android, they were just unknown to her.
And yep, from the branding of those devices (which Apple can control much more closely since they provide both hardware and software), the perception is much more likely to be that the svelte, sleek white object protects your privacy.
Over a long timeline though, I don't know whether a closed source ecosystem can prove (or achieve) that.
Maybe the code inside all those components is equally pristine and it all respects your privacy as much as the corresponding advertising claims would suggest. Perhaps time will tell.
How old are you, gramps? This hasn't been the case since Android 4 days.
https://www.saturn.de/de/category/smartphones-498.html?filte...
No, it isn't. It is probably about $500 if you want to know the true price you'll pay over the duration of the contract.
Homekit may not be as good as Alexa/Google assistant for home automation but it makes an effort to keep all your data local and not in a cloud. A small minority of us really value that.
I understand for regular people though it's really just a status symbol. I spent X on a phone cause I'm doing well in life.
Are there really? From what I hear from non-techie friends and coworkers, what they care the most about in a modern phone is the camera (everything else being effectively indistinguishable to them); and you can count the Android phones competitive in this field on one hand.
And all of them make different tradeoffs and/or have outright problems that prevent them from being "the" iPhone killer, even if you care enough to dig into their details, which most people don't have the time or interest in. Apple is the "safe" choice as far as the general public is concerned, and not undeservedly so.
Which of the hundreds of models of "modern Android devices" should one get?
Reason is I'm fed up with all my Android phones after Samsung SII either lagging from day one or starting to lag after a few months. I think I have lost a few nice photos because the phone was busy doing something else when you picked it up to shoot a funny moment. It also compounds: I think I reached less often for my camera phone when I know it will fail me.
I'm also tired of Samsung stalling OS updates to sell new phones.
I'm also didn't enjoy Sony adding Amazon link on the home screen of my phone during an OS update: It is a minor thing but it nicely proved they didn't understand it is my phone after I have paid them for it.
I've also given my three oldest kids used iPhones. iPhones are easier to repair and generally nicer, easier to get covers and screen protectors for and my kids prefer them.
Taking a step away from Google is a nice bonus.
(No Apple products before 2019 except a company laptop in 2009 - 2012.)
I'm not a tech person like folks around here. I'm good with tech such that dozens of friends and family use me for tech support, but my skills can't touch what HN users can do. I don’t even work in tech. Never have. I'm also someone who has been an Apple user since before there was a Mac.
The idea that the competition "has caught up" sounds like a specs kind-of comparison. I wouldn't know, but I assume it's true (especially ignoring Apple chips). All in all, I assume any major capabilities are widespread. Here are the things I see among average US users I know who are using iPhones and glad they do. Of course, they can afford any iPhone cost premium, but none of what I see is from people who are big spenders, the type who regularly get a newer model. For example, one friend is still happy with his iPhone 7 and a relative recently asked for iPhone recommendations when the screen got shattered on a 5S.
But here are the things I’ve noticed among the people I know, in no particular order:
1. Overall, they actively like the Apple UI and UX. It’s not that it works and that they can do whatever they want, it brings them a measure of pleasure. For all I know it’s as simple as the colors used, but there are experiences there (unknown to me) that delight them. Delight is powerful. Remember in the original iPhone intro when Jobs discussed showing the prototype to a friend and that person said something like, “You had me at rubber band scrolling”? That’s delight.
2. Apple Stores. Average users like knowing where to go in advance should they need full-on help. When making a platform switch, that’s reassuring and apt to come to mind. I think there’s a dual-action thought process—they’re comforted that they just know where there’s an Apple Store (not too far away for most Americans) and they’re at best ambivalent about the carrier store experience for a non-iPhone.
3. Accessories galore. The Android ecosystem may be just as bountiful, but most people believe the Apple ecosystem is bountiful. Other than a case they probably don’t know if there are even accessories they want, but they like the comfort of knowing there’s anything they can imagine if they get a need.
4. The iPad. If you're a tablet user (ignoring e-readers here), being all-in on one style of UI/UX, along with any Apple integrations—the notes just sync!—has value and allure. Since the iPad is the tablet, Apple has kind of cornered that multi-purchase market.
5A. Network effects. These remarkable, ongoing iPhone sales numbers, combined with ideas like I’ve described above, are going to have network effects. Whether it’s blue-bubble peer pressure, nearly 15 years of iPhone TV commercials seeping into minds, whatever… hundreds of millions of satisfied users are going to have network effects.
5B. The other network effect is all-time iPhone sales. What is it, around a billion now? Over nearly 15 years. That's a lot of phones getting replaced even by people who aren't the type to always have a sufficiently new model.
When a product reaches this many sales, it’s never about specific features. Nearly all buyers don’t know the strengths or weaknesses of the iPhone privacy features. Encryption? Most people’s first thought is a fear of getting locked out. Privacy? There’s a good chance they’ll install a Facebook, Instagram, or Google-made app anyway, all without a thought about privacy. The camera? They can see it's good. Apps? There are loads.
That’s why Apple keeps tacking on more small features or services. Keep the users happy. Users likely don’t care about the free Apple Arcade trial or home screen widgets or a new accessibility capability. But there’s something there for pretty much everyone. Maybe it’s the free season of Apple TV because they saw Ted Lasso. Or easily pinpointing a kid’s whereabouts. Or FaceTime because grandma has an iPad and she’ll know how to answer a FaceTime call the first time she gets one.
The product becomes something else at some point. And if Apple keeps them sufficiently satisfied, they’re unlikely to leave, especially since a smartphone borders on necessity in today’s world.
For me, every 2 years, I look for the best camera on an iPhone and my shopping is done.
Google focus on flagship models on their security improvements and Treble adoption related talks for a reason.
Frankly i think the biggest driver for iphone replacement is screens breaking. It's very costly to replace that on an iphone
2. 5G is a thing.
3. People are actually upgrading to 5G smartphone because they want their phone to last longer. Instead of buying another phone again.
4. China also has the largest 5G deployment. Their MNO upgrade to 5G is also a few years ahead of everyone else due to their needs from a high population density.
5. iOS 14 widget is surpassingly favourable among Android Switchers.
6. Google's reputation due to privacy concern is having some effect on Android market.
7. The urge to spend due to not being able to do much at home.
Basically it is lots of factors creating a perfect storm.
I still maintain the same analogy as 10 years ago, iOS / iPhone is a smartphone appliance trying to push upwards into a computer, while Android is a pocket computer trying to be like a Smartphone Appliance. Both have their appeals, but generally speaking I tend to prefer the less complex, simple model of iOS. But yes they are increasingly alike.
No. Nothing rivals the iPhone 12. Its Apple Silicon CPU makes it the most powerful smartphone by a wide margin. And Apple didn't make the galaxybrain decision to include a runtime with a GC. Because, you know, they care about the entire user experience, including battery life and everything running at a smooth 60fps.
Then when I go back to my windows PC and try to use apple music, or even try to transfer videos / photos, I started cursing apple again.
This was a valid critique a couple of years ago, but not now.
The build quality of macbook is more sturdy than its competitors like xps, thinkpad, makes me so confident and comfortable to bring it everywhere with me honestly.
macosx chokes hard compared to linux and any filesystem access suffers from it.
download a medium sized javascript git repo with node_modules `rm -rf node_modules && git checkout -- .` my shittier linux laptop crushes my macosx laptop.
To be antifragile you need to always have top talent and have them work on deep projects and produce top notch products.
Apple had that with Steve Jobs.
I don't think it has that now. I haven't seen anything really interesting from Apple after Steve Jobs passed away. Their macbook offerings keep getting worse: the touch bar is a UX disaster. The desktop keeps getting slower. The UI keeps getting flatter and worse.
Apple used to be a market leader: they would release a new product every few years and everyone would soon follow suit: iPhone, iPad.
Now Apple is just trying to mimick other companies: producing various sizes and version of iPhone and iPad.
Having a strong supply chain is not antifragile.
Disagree: AirPods are a cultural phenomenon with many copy cats and the Apple Watch is the most popular and profitable watch (not just smart watch) in the world.
It's not revolutionary but the new M1 laptops from Apple are one of the best hardware-related things I have purchased in the last 10 years or so. Presumably it won't bring Apple tens of billions in profits but they have managed to gain some developers' goodwill for the platform.
Not only that, but the M1 is a fantastic chip. If Apple is able to iterate on the M1 they'll outshine AMD/Intel in no time (if they don't already).
I agree that optimized supply chains and economies of scale are generally fragile. If other types of devices become popular, they'll have inertia other innovators won't.
But I don't think this question is black and white. Apple has fragile, robust and antifragile aspects.
I know, right!? It’s not like we haven’t heard the same opinions 1,000x before on each and every single previous Apple article.
Tim Cook should be looking to shift more production to India, Southeast Asia, Brazil, etc. That way, he doesn't have to engage in major acting performances at Chinese conferences, like saying that Apple shares China's vision of an "open" internet.
If you put (for some value of "put" - i.e. drop from 6 inches) a kettlebell on the human head, you will discover that the human body isn't all that antifragile.
Honestly the word I think the author is looking for is "diversified."
And that's assuming those competitors have no debt, which is false.
In order to be antifragile it should become stronger after each stressor is applied, but we can only see it becoming stronger by the stressors over the competitors not onto itself.
Still apples strategy is very good, but not as antifragile as something like a Linux OS which by not having hardware and being crossplatform may still grow market and show strength from such lack of hardware vendors.
"Blue chip" corporations like Apple fall more into the "Turkey Problem" i.e people expecting the big, to continue being big.
Nothing in this post has anything to do with anti-fragility.
This author also doesn't seem to understand basic economics. They seem to be confusing that PS5 is unavailable and Mac isn't as an issue of Apple doing better with supply, when the actual issue is that there's far more demand for the PlayStation.
This is not a person to learn from.
One big danger for Apple is a further escalation of the US-China tech war. If China starts retaliating for the US sanctions against Huawei, Xiaomi etc by going after big US companies then Apple can be seriously hurt, even though they are probably not first in line.
However, we thought similarly about Nokia, Intel, SpaceX competitors, etc.
By that measure Google, MS, FB, Zoom etc are all Antifragile.
To be truly Antifragile a firm has to be able to benefit from a whole range of stressors.
I actually think FB may be the most Antifragile of the big tech firms. They have been stressed in a number of key ways already (eg shift to mobile, Google+) and seem to come out stronger.
( Takes a Deep Breath )
Why is it Chip supply again? Why is it TSMC again? This is very very tiring. No wonder why people stop reading any sort of media once they are pass certain age.
How about locking in all component supply? From OLED, NAND, DRAM, Modem to everything else down to speaker piece. The 26% YoY increase is exactly inlined with the current projection of 90M new iPhone in 2021.
X: But these are just rumours, we dont know for a fact.......
Look, You dont move 90 Million of leading edge / high quality / high premium components within a single quarter without pretty much anyone in the supply chains knows what you are doing. I mean, you dont even need to be inside the supply chain or connection with supply chain. Even if you work or have connection with logistics like DHL. Moving 90M smartphone without a short period of time is no small feat.
And the whole Antifragile thesis is based on Apple making record quarter, or specifically making Record quarter under supposedly market stress. This analysis is about as bad as the Apple is doomed narrative for the past ten years or Apple is doomed in 2019 because of a drip in sales in Greater China. [1] And it is the same thing happening again. Greater China manage to pull in huge increase of iPhone sales YoY. And it is now Antifragile? Not to mention that remote learning and Staying at Home drove sales of iPad and Mac to new height along with M1. Services Revenue because more people are staying at home with digital spending. ( Look at the Disney+ numbers ). 5G is driving Smartphone sales, whether you like it or not. But most ( if not all ) tech forums are still in 5G denial.
I see Apple as a Robust company. But Anti-fragility was not a results of Apple's doing within the pandemic period. It was preparation of product line and services that just happen to hit home during it. This Anti Apple is Doomed thesis has now turned into Apple is Booned. ( Sorry People I know Boon is not a verb, cant think of a better word though. )
[1] Which is the single biggest problem with Analysing truly Global multinational companies. None of those analyst understand a single thing about China. Zero. And yet China is representing 26% of Apple's total revenue.
iPhones get more updates sure. More durable? No. I'm pretty sure a Samsung Active can withstand more abuse. I'm pretty confident that my plastic backed with only a glass screen average Android phone could too.
Yes, it could be sturdier. But that would require other trade offs. Just because you don’t value those decisions doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. It just means your values were not the primary use case. Diversity is good because people value different sets of trade offs!
In comparison, something like an old iPod with a spinning HDD could have a storage failure from a fall.
That modern phones, not just iPhones, are these completely solid devices, packed to the brim, with no more moving pieces makes them surprisingly resilient.
They're even water and dust resistant now just as a standard. Dropping your phone in water was a death sentence a decade ago - it's whatever now.
Antifragile systems can get better from being stressed, at least to a limit. Muscles are antifragile, as one example. You stress them moderately, and you grow stronger. Stress them too much and you'll break, but within limits your muscles don't just endure the stress, they improve from it.
No physical phone is antifragile.
Out of all my Microsoft Surface computers and Android phones, only one phone ever had a major issue, but it was replaced under LG's two year warranty.
You should buy a lottery ticket with some of that hyperbolic bad luck.
I simply gave my own personal experience, stated as such, and am heavily downvoted, so it's hard to believe Apple cult followers about anything regarding their products.
Apple is devilishly brilliant at marketing.
> I don't think it's bad luck
I’ve owned around 30 iPhones, 20 iPads, 10 iPod Touches, 8 Apple Watches, 15 MBPs, 4 Mac Pros, 2 iMacs, 5 AirPods, etc etc putting them through hell in many cases (including testing unproven baseband, iBoot, and other firmware exploits), yet have never had an Apple device “basically become a brick, _all on their own_”. So either I have the worlds best luck, or my point stands about yours. I’m not calling you a liar, but at minimum your comment was hyperbolic.
>With the screen still holding strong, we decided to go even higher, using a step ladder to reach nine feet. Again this is not a realistic drop unless you happen to slide your phone off a second floor balcony, but we wanted to see how far we could take it.
We repeated this drop two more times... The frame had a few more bumps and bruises, but the screen still looked like new after three back-to-back drops from nine feet.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-12-scratch-drop-test...
> it’s antifragile thanks to a diverse mix of strong products.
I agree anti-fragile is often misused but the author takes care to define robustness first and contrasts his antifragility thesis to the robustness of the overall sound business.
That said, I would look at other companies for examples of “true antifragility” although it’s interesting to try to analyze how a top global company can still raise the limit of its performance in situations that hurt its competitors.
The distinction is whether it's "This is fine, we did ok through this" which is robust vs "This is something where we are now in a stronger position from being knocked about a bit."
A well made double brick wall may be robust and survive the cyclone looking good but is not anti-fragile.
Apple showed excellent robustness under the stress from the impact of COVID. It did so via strong capital reserves and diverse lines of business. Which is great, but it’s bog-standard corporate strategy. Very hard to execute well, though.
I don't see this happening in the near future since arguably Apple has never made better products than today, but you must understand that most of Apple's growth prospects come from them selling more wares to their existing customers than from Apple winning over new customers. In fact, I recently changed to an iPhone from Android, and the change was quite painful. The Apple store even called me back after sending out the order, wondering if me buying an iPhone as a new customer was a mistake (seems like that doesn't happen very often).