1,385 karma · joined July 27, 2012
When you hear about post-PC and how the computer market is changing, THIS is exactly what it means. Traditional computers and laptops are going to become more expensive, sell in less quantities and be very, very focused on some specific needs.
For companies like Apple, Microsoft, Dell, etc... this will translate into much simpler product lines that will update less frequently.
They have backtracked from decisions made, several times, and admitted to mistakes too. Apple Maps is a good example. MobileMe, the return of buttons to the iPod shuffle, price cut on iPhone... same.
The problem is that what you or I think is a mistake, it might not be one in the eyes of Apple.
A lot of the frustration I see these days can be summed up as "Apple no longer is making a product that I like, therefore it is making products that nobody likes".
Well, maybe. Time will tell. But I think they have a very clear vision about how they want their computers to look and feel (same for iPhones) and they are heading there full-speed. For some customers it will be a deal breaker, for others it might be what they need to jump ship and buy a Mac or upgrade from a Macbook Air to a more profitable Macbook Pro.
Also, Surface price doesn't include a keyboard.
Not even that. A lot of his failures saw the light of day, we have just forgotten about them. The same we will do with the current ones.
This, BTW, applies to all companies. To reach this point the Surface line has gone through a lot of mediocre products and bad decisions, we just don't think about them anymore. And Windows 10 still has some serious pain points that need to be worked out, specially on the Surface line with touch interfaces.
Graphics are not only for gaming. Id say the Radeon cards they choose seem reasonable for the Macbook Pro line, pending further testing.
Lots of "etc": Much better sound, larger and more comfortable trackpad, faster memory and SSD, jump to Thunderbolt 3, better microphones...
Argue away, I think TouchBar is far from being a gimmick.
Like all products, they can be improved and compromising decisions had to be made during the design phase, but I find this Medium think piece really lacking in perspective and context.
Like all reductionism, Horowitz thesis looks good in a business book, it makes the world simple.
Reality is complex and that statement ("a company works only well with the visionary at the top") it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy (the company is doing good. His CEO must be a visionary, then, since he anticipated the needs of the market).
There are other vendors that make Lightning headphones (Philips, JBL...) and plenty of wireless headphones in the market.
If you are an investor thinking in those terms, Tesla will probably seem like a terrible company. Overvalued and unlikely to succeed once traditional car companies start taking EV seriously. Like you say, there are no fundamentals to support current valuation and there will never be.
The only way to look at Tesla is to think about it on more broad terms. It is a car manufacturer, yes, but it also is a company that provides a long range EV support infrastructure (superchargers), the (soon-to-be) largest Li-ion battery manufacturer, a domestic energy storage provider, etc...
With that perspective in mind, SolarCity fits right within the catalog of product and services. Tesla is an engineering company focusing the different applications of renewable energy and batteries. Cars just happen to be one that offers an attractive market to address now and a personal interest for Musk.
And that, I think, it's more than just faith in Elon coming through. It is a measurable market, albeit uncertain and dependent on a lot of social transformation and full of regulatory hurdles.
My first insctinct when reading this article, though, is to question wether we put too much faith in the success of any service launched by Google and downplay any other competitor. Weirdly absent from Marco's list is IBM's Watson, quite a success story from a company that does not collect personal information on a daily basis yet somehow has been able to advance significally in the field of AI and Machine Learning.
Aside from that, maybe its me but I don't feel like Siri is so far behind serevices like Alexa or Cortana and until Google Assistant shows up in a more defined state, I wouldnt dare to put it ahead of the pack as well. There are a couple of things Alexa does better, but it mostly has to do with being open to third party services (which im assuming Siri will have soon) and better mic technology on the Echo, a hardware problem.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/paul-o...
And I'm not so sure they'll be able to go into ARM fabbing that easily. Margins of X86 are high, but they are selling less of them, so expanding to new market would have been a wise move.
To their credit, they tried twice and couldn't make it work. Not sure if things could have been different considering ARM is a licensable architecture other people can use.
My guess is that if Theranos had been a success, we would be reading about it as en example of how Silicon Valley is capable of transforming many industries. If it's part pof the club when it goes up, it should be part of the club when it goes down.
Good for Motherboard to wait and check. Unfortunately this means we will see this article now in all the outlets that published the previous one with a hand-washing disclaimer ("remember that article SOMEONE ELSE wrote that we talked you about last week, well...")
Well, time changes. We no longer face the threats of the barbarian hordes of northern Europe but we have modern day speculators that will torn down anything for a profit and not think long term.
And again with the culturally valuable. What is valuable today might not be years from now or viceversa, that's why deciding what should be protected usually requires quite a lengthy process.
> Can you imagine not having Independence Hall today because historic preservation statutes decided to preserve all the historic Chestnut Street homes that were torn down for it?
Or having it two blocks up from the current location? But listen, I'm not arguing that everything should be preserved for ever. And I don't know any preservation society that thinks in those terms. What I'm saying is that deciding what gets preserved and what does not is a tough call and a very complex issue.
You asked where's the evidence that historic preservation, as a whole, matters. I'd argue its pretty evident. Yes you are right when you point out that the system can be abused but that doesn't diminish the importance of building preservation initiatives, specially in country that has a short history.
Also, no such thing as survivor bias when applied to hypotheticals, for obvious reasons.
My guess? The "next valley" will be highly decentralized and a lot of big cities will act as innovation hubs.
Oh and remember that the valley happened well before the flock of young people to SF. Lot of factors played in, including the presence of well established semiconductor companies whose employees were far from the stereotype you are describing.
In all the historic places you visit and that, in some parts of the world, add up to a significant amount GDP thanks to tourism or related activities. There are some intangible values as well as they help shape the history and evolve a community around specific places (think West Village, Manhattan for example).
I know it can be frustrating and that sometimes is poorly implemented but historic preservation of places eventually pays off. Maybe not all of the landmarked buildings will pay off, but sure some of them will(not unlike startups in that regard).
And what is not culturally important today might be a century form now, or viceversa. You are applying survivor bias. Think of all the historic places no longer with us because they were not deemed culturally relevant or properly protected in first place.