Comment by trap_goes_hot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trap_goes_hot | Hacker News Reader

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>What exactly was the threat for Apple in ~2008 or earlier when they started developing their own CPUs?

They had no differentiator, Apple products were seen as beautifully machined luxury trinkets. IBM, and then Intel had them by the balls because Apple couldn't improve the performance of their products unless Intel innovated on their chips - which they had no reason to.

This is a direct response to a perceived threat:

"We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution" - Tim Cook

https://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/458.html

>Or 5-6 years earlier when they started developing iPhone?

https://www.history.com/news/iphone-original-size-invention-...

"Apple executives worried that the iPod would lose market share once cellphone manufacturers figured out how to put MP3 players on their phones. But not if Apple beat them to it."

> "We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution" - Tim Cook

This applies to literally every single company that "just earns the same money doing nothing, or very little".

> Apple executives worried that the iPod would lose market share once cellphone manufacturers figured out how to put MP3 players on their phones.

Again, this applies to every single company in the same space

And yet somehow Apple spent those billions of dollars on R&D and others didn't. And on hardware side they keep doing it while the rest of the industry sort of just watches, doing nothing.

As an example: Samsung is entirely dependent on Google for software and on Qualcomm for chips. Unlike Apple, their entire product lines are literally under continuous existensial threat from multiple sides. Tell me, what exactly have they done to fix that?

Whereas Apple, the richest company in the world, either takes risks introducing completely new categories of products (new for them as a company) and wiping the floor with competition (see Apple Watch, 40% market share with Samsung a distant 10%), or managing seamless CPU transition for a two-decade old OS while again wiping the floor with the competition (see the entire M1 saga of the past few years).

Here's how we know they're real threats - They changed their entire business strategy as a response to them. They're own executives are telling us that these are threats. If you still don't believe those were real and tangible long-term threats to their survival then there really isn't anything else I can say.

>And yet somehow Apple spent those billions of dollars on R&D and others didn't. And on hardware side they keep doing it while the rest of the industry sort of just watches, doing nothing.

False. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/which-companies-spend-the-mo...

>As an example: Samsung is entirely dependent on Google for software and on Qualcomm for chips. Unlike Apple, their entire product lines are literally under continuous existensial threat from multiple sides. Tell me, what exactly have they done to fix that?

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/09/samsung-google-expand-wear...

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...

https://retailpartnerships.withgoogle.com/ads/success-storie...

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-announce...

--

This is my last reply. I wish you good luck and godspeed. :)

> Here's how we know they're real threats - They changed their entire business strategy as a response to them.

So, you don't know they are threats.

> False. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/which-companies-spend-the-mo...

What's false? Your narrative that "only Apple was under threat unlike those other fat companies that... are actually spending money on R&D"?

> A bunch of links

Most of those actions are very reactionary. And again don't prove your points.

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