mlchild

Also I clicked the "play" button at the center of the splash page about 8 times before realizing that it was not, in fact, a video, but merely advertising forthcoming videos.

NSLog(@"All the code that's fit to NSLog()");

Whether you agree or disagree with the piece, I think it's perhaps more interesting to try to put together the clues about Marco's next project.

My guess would be something like a new publishing standard or system that makes it easy to package good writing into an immersive mobile form, possibly via Newsstand. But just spitballin' here.

Is there an essay coming on your new findings? Not to pry but "How Not to Die" is one of my all-time favorites.

Tangentially, I thought Clayton Christensen makes a compelling argument that this type of analysis—focusing on IRR and returns on equity—creates an overabundance of "efficiency innovations" that liberate capital but don't really push things forward. Perhaps the wave of acquisitions is tamping down our ability to produce longer-term, "empowering innovations." (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/business/a-capitalists-dil...)

Think we're likely to see a similar pattern with Facebook—seems clear that the instagram acquisition happened because they were scared of someone capturing the photo-sharing "vertical" better than they do.

Considering that the answer to the article's question is essentially "no," this is a weak putdown.

Seems to support the power-law view that Silicon Valley is a better place to start a company than everywhere else combined.

This is a fairly shallow article, but I suppose most investors do fairly shallow fundamental analysis. Aside from whether or not you believe in the company, the management team, the product line, growth opportunities in China, etc., the profit story is simply too compelling for investors to avoid.

Zaky does a reasonable job summarizing (http://bullishcross.com/2012/10/apple-1000-why-its-time-to-b...), but the essential point is that 160-180 million iPhones next year (conservative estimate) means $66 eps/share, which with a 15 P/E is $990.

Even if you believe the unbelievably conservative P/E of 10 is appropriate (here's why that's nuts http://www.asymco.com/2012/10/12/what-is-apples-realized-pe-...), you're still making a tidy 18% return over the next year. And if you believe there is any growth coming beyond the next fiscal year...

There's two issues here. First is the supply-demand balance, which several commenters have addressed (would you rather have bottled water cost $5 a bottle during Sandy or not be able to find any bottled water because "gouging" law kept it at $1?).

The second is that studies of cab drivers during rainstorms show that cabbies set a goal for daily earnings, and then leave the streets once they hit the goal (causing supply constraints). Would be interesting to see if uber has been able to address that psychological response in any way (tweaked incentives that give an additional bonus for driving more per month, rather than per day, for example).

Good to know, thanks much.

Very interesting. Perhaps the empathetic and analytic systems are parallel to Kahneman's systems 1 and 2? (1 for thinking "fast" and 2 for "slow," to oversimplify an Nobel laureate's life's work.)

I agree that probably neither or those explanations is fully true, but I do believe that Jobs had the ability to harness conflicting personalities towards greater goals.

I do disagree with your last point, though —— I've watched every keynote for the past 6-7 years and Forstall has rocked the iOS presentations. Perhaps I'm biased, but I very deeply associate him with the greatness of iOS, particularly Apple's ability to steadily pick off the "low-hanging fruit" features (e.g. 3rd party apps in 2.0, copy-and-paste, PC-free) with regularity and elegance.

People's reactions to this announcement are overly focused on Forstall's assumed support for heavy skeumorphism (and their excitement at his departure as lead proponent). I think his record as head of iOS since its inception is a much more salient issue.

Forstall led development of the fastest-growing, most popular computing platform of the past decade or so with, to be sure, a few notable screw-ups, but mostly incredible innovation and efficiency. While his departure does sound like the result of a power struggle that needed to be resolved, I really believe we're shortchanging his incredible achievements. Forstall's departure is not unequivocally or even clearly a victory for those who are firm believers in iOS and its ecosystem going forward. The only reasonable reaction is that we'll have to wait and see.

I believe PG's point is that creating a company as successful as Groupon or Zynga from scratch requires an incredible level of psychological and man-hour commitment, in addition to constant creative and iterative idea generation. The idea that they are pump-and-dump schemes is absurd in light of this essential truth.

Thanks! Great piece, by the way — my goal is to be a successful starter and builder. And I agree that many seem to focus only on the former.

Stamped was a very well-designed, well-thought-out app, but its failure to take off proves no one has cracked the "anti-yelp" recommendation app yet. Someone's going to figure it out.

I think the key dichotomy here is between creating a successful product at the core of a company and creating a successful system that is able to repeatedly generate, select, and distribute products that fill market needs. Disney, 3M, and Apple are all great examples of "blockbuster factories" that are able to repeatedly innovate into the next field of play.

Yeah, I totally deserved to get called on that exaggeration. Your point passed through my mind as I was writing but I was in a swashbuckling mood and decided to go with it.

Let me make amends—"best reading experience utilizing pixels on a backlit screen." Apropos?

Instapaper for iPad is almost ethereal in the brilliance of its reading experience. I assume he wanted to maintain that level of quality for his new product.

Counterpoint: maybe just name it what you think is the best name and assume you'll be able to figure out the rest.

The more I've used Instapaper, the more I'm convinced that the version on the iPad (especially retina) is the best reading experience out there, period. And as a huge supporter of long-form journalism and technology lover, this is a dream come true. Hope it pays off for Marco.

I'm with you conceptually, but I don't end up using Flipboard much if at all—and I understand I'm generalizing from a minute sample, so bear with me—because I don't find it to be the best way to read anything. For news/text, Instapaper is king, and for Facebook and Twitter, I find that the Facebook app and Tweetbot win out.

Is there a type of content that you find Flipboard excels at presenting, particularly on mobile? Or that "the Pinterest layout" does, besides Pinterest?

A similar issue is the preponderance of hyper-image-oriented mobile app designs at the expense of content and usability. Examples that come to mind for me are Urbanspoon, Flipboard (perhaps a controversial view), the new Chef's Feed app—if I can't figure out how to navigate because I'm blitzed by so many photos, something's wrong.