Some readers have asked me for a post on the new Apple iPhones announced yesterday. I’ll get to that in time but prefer to do so when I actually have an iPhone 5S in my hands because I have a very specific column in mind. And no, it’s not the column you think it is. But this is still a good time to write something about Apple in general, which is how Cupertino appears to now stand at a crossroads.
There is a world of difference between Microsoft and Apple but one way they are similar is in facing a generational change. Another way they are similar is in having robust legacy businesses that both put a drag on such change (who needs change, we’re doing great!) and make it easy to wait or at least to go slowly. But no matter how much money they have in the bank, each company must eventually come to terms with how it is going to move forward in an evolving market.
Neither company has.
Microsoft is in the tougher position because its core business isn’t growing, but Apple can pretty easily plot its own growth and see where that will eventually peak and tail-off, too. Before then there is still room for plenty of growth as Apple enters new global markets and eventually adds all carriers (China Mobile, for example). In Apple’s case I’m thinking of them right now as a mobile phone company, because that’s, for the most part, what they have become.
Following past trends the challenge for Microsoft is what next to copy, for Apple it’s what next to re-create. Microsoft’s job is easier but is made complicated by the company’s innate need to carry with it the entire Windows ecosystem. Yet there are some places where Windows just doesn’t fit. Apple’s challenge is to both re-create and to do so without Steve Jobs. Not wanting to overstate or understate the value of Steve to Apple, I see his role is one of demanding re-creation, which as anyone who knew Steve will tell you has nothing to do with recreation.
Two years since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple is still trying to get its bearings. Plenty is happening in Cupertino, I’m sure, but how much of that will make it to market? There’s a big numbers problem here: Apple has grown so large that its options for new businesses are limited to those that can add tens of billion in sales. Selling six million Apple TVs in a year is still a hobby to Apple, because that’s only $600 million.
To some extent I think Apple has been treading water or has even been indecisive, but I don’t attribute that to Steve’s passing. I believe it was already happening back when Steve was fully in charge. Secrecy, you see, can hide a lot of things, even nothing when the world wants to believe that something is there.
You may recall I wrote a column a couple years ago about Apple’s huge North Carolina data center. This was just before we moved back to California. In that column I questioned whether anything was even happening in the $1 billion facility since nobody was driving in or out. It seemed overkill to me. Then recently a longtime reader (and you know with me longtime means a long time) told me about meeting a representative of the company that built all the servers in that Apple data center — all 20,000 of them.
Twenty thousand servers is a lot of servers. It’s certainly enough servers to run iTunes and Apple’s various App Stores as well as Software Update. Twenty thousand servers feels about right for the Apple we know today. But my friends who build data centers tell me that Apple facility in North Carolina could hold a million servers or more. The data center appears to be only five percent populated.
It’s one thing to build with the future in mind, but building a facility twenty times bigger than you need is more than that, it’s a statement, an obfuscation, or maybe it’s a joke.
For a company with a $600 million hobby, why not a $1 billion joke?
Google and Facebook have way more servers than that, so maybe Apple isn’t their competitor at all? And of course Apple isn’t, not directly.
My guess is Apple’s trying to keep its options open. There are sure to be competing forces inside vying to control which industry the company will next re-create. It’s probably fair to assume that decision has not yet been made. It’s also fair to predict that Apple would be smart to get on with it, whatever it is.
When Steve Jobs retired and Tim Cook took over as Apple CEO I predicted there was another shoe to drop. I simply didn’t see Cook, a manufacturing guy, as the one to lead Apple into its next stage of growth. I thought Steve had some grand plan, some big surprise. I even thought I knew who would be Steve’s eventual successor. Only when I wrote that, Steve reached out to me to say that — “yet again” in his words — I was wrong. It was the last time I ever heard from him.
I don’t know what’s happening with Apple beyond the obvious burnishing that’s taking place. Look at that iPhone 5S and you’ll see a piece of jewelry – a luxury item in the tradition of luxury meaning good design and craftsmanship, not just a high price. I can’t wait to get mine. But the iPhone 5S isn’t the future of Apple. That’s yet to be written.
I look at Apple and I think of how they coasted for a while after they kicked out Steve back in the 80s and then went into a slow decline. We’re about to see it now, I fear, unless a new Steve comes up and leads them. I can easily see them as becoming just another tech company, which is the worst possible thing to happen for Apple.
As for Microsoft, who knows? I keep expecting Google to eat into the Office business with their apps, but I haven’t seen it yet. Just like databases and Oracle, Microsoft and Office haven’t been replaced yet.
I think Microsoft Office will survive as long as the new version opens slightly older documents. Ever since Microsoft started having an installed base to worry about, backwards compatibility has always been their bridge between the past and the future.
This is 2013. Office 2007 came out 6 years ago. I still see people creating and using Office 2003 format files. They often have to click through warnings that those files include features that don’t work on actual Office 2003, every time they modify and save those documents. Being able to open Office documents like Office does is essential.
Google Docs turns those documents into weird formats, and they often look even worse than what is possible in Microsoft Office. Google Docs will grow slowly.
I’ll agree with the backward compatibility issue, but there is one incentive to move to Google Docs: cost.
I know of at least one local school district that converted from MS Office to Google Docs because it is hard to beat free. And since an organization like a school district has to answer to voters for school levies every so often, voters expect bang for the buck, format issues or not.
Exactly–MS’s main cash cows have been undermined.
1. Google gives away a mobile OS, why would anyone license WinMo 8–which is why MS had to buy an OEM.
2. Google gives away an office suite that is “good enough” and now Apple gives away iWork which is also “good enough” for 90% of the vast pool of users. Want to bet that Apple will also start including a free version of iWork with all new Macs?
MS doesn’t have a new cash cow. X-Box is MS’s AppleTV hobby.
As for Apple, just remember that even with Jobs in charge, it was 4 years between the iMac and iPod, it was 6 years between the iPod and the iPhone and it was 3 years between the iPhone and iPad. Meanwhile, Apple was doing a LOT of “little” things which would lay the foundation for the “big” things to become monster hits–the iTunes music store, podcasts, iTunes U, iBooks, Apple retail chain, iOS SDK, AppleTV, switch from IBM to Intel to ARM, (this was HUGE) Airplay, iPod touch, mobile versions of iLife and iWork, Logic purchase, server farms, etc.
And now we have a bunch of new “little” things like 64-bit mobile computing, fingerprint ID, dedicated motion processors, etc. I see these things setting the stage for a new generation of wearable computing, IT applications and apps and possibly even some new desktop computing options which no one outside of Apple has even considered.
And between DoMoCo and China Mobile Apple still has a lot of growth left in its core business, unlike MS or Google.
Any concept of how much it costs a large corporation to migrate all their Word documents every 4 to 5 years?
From a corporation’s point of view “MS Office is MS Office” and Word 2013 ought to be able to convert any previous version of Word documents to Word 2013. The fact that it can’t shows incompetence on Microsoft’s part for not designing Word to be backwards compatible from day zero.
I’m not an Apple fan but even I was looking forward to seeing them announce a watch done right.. after Samsung’s clunky try… Their actual announcement was disappointing.
Microsoft.. They helped bring developers a low cost development environment and make us feel wanted… but now they seem overrun with lawyers, mba’s and from what I hear, warring gangs of foreign engineers. I think I’d just be happy to see them disappear.
I like the “…warring gangs of foreign engineers”, JJones.
When the lunchtime cricket match out on the greenway gets overheated, they take it back inside the building and begin passive-aggressive scheduling of the conference rooms.
That’s funny… I was victim to one of those passive-aggressive conference room bookings.
The double booking battle became apparent half way through an interview!
Lol, a watch? Actually most watches are not on the arm for showing the time. A watch costing 10 dollars can show the time accurat. They are there because they show who u are, or want to be. Often bling bling, expensive pieces costing 1000 dollars. Who wants a geeky samsung/apple watch????
This guy is right and wrong at the same time for the same reason.
A watch IS a statement about you and it is precisely for that reason that people with even a hint of geek in them will buy one that “works” (we haven’t seen that yet) not because it is useful so much as because it says they value things that are useful – things that make them more productive.
Smartphones make the same statement. If they didn’t Nokia would still be on top selling cheap dumbphones.
I am very happy to note that you are not one of the group of Blind Technology Analysts that write about the Elephant Apple!!!
I don’t think the next Steve Jobs will work at Apple. I just hope the next Steve Ballmer doesn’t work there!
Hahahaha! Me too!
Apple’s announcement of the colored iPhones should bring back the memories of the colored iMacs that allowed Apple to move to the next phase of the company’s growth!!!
Apple’s announcement of the colored iPhones should bring back the memories of the colored iMacs that allowed Apple to move to the next phase of the company’s growth!!!
The mastermind behind the scenes for both of these is Jon Ive, who is still there at Apple, though the face of the Apple is now Tim Cook and not Steve Jobs!!!
Please look at Don Lehman’s analysis of the iPhone 5C at GIZMODO (http://gizmodo.com/the-brilliant-simplicity-behind-the-iphone-5cs-design-1291914052).
It is a very insightful analysis of iPhone 5C’s design! Only a product designer and manufacturing engineer can appreciate the brilliance behind the 5C!!!
“Only a product designer and manufacturing engineer can appreciate the brilliance behind the 5C”
And that’s exactly the problem. For a consumer electronics company you need to impress consumers not us boffins.
Kids (high school and college- including mine) are going to eat the 5c up just like original iMac caught on.
Aesthetics are “different” but compelling.
IMO will be immensely popular- especially a “chick” phone.
A lot of people will pay the current rate even if this phone is much less expensive to manufacture than 5S.
Price not really different than other smart phones when factor in subsidy and monthly carrier rates.
Price point will change later.
https://www.apple.com/iphone-5c/videos/#video-product- Jonathen Ives video walkthrough 5C design process.
Just when I was thinking of ditching my ATT legacy unlimited use small bz plan with 4 iPhone 5’s (doesn’t permit face time except Wifi) and getting cheap burn phone along with iPad and data plan the 5S “upgrade’ is almost compelling (especially camera/video).
I would pay rack rate for phone if possible to avoid 2 year shake down.
Screen size is right for portable general use.
Would use larger device/Pad for dedicated reading or video.
Those gigundo Samsungs, favored by mid 20’s- 30’s moms with who want to show off kids pics and videos and still want a phone, are too big to be cool.
It seems to md that the iPhone wax a one off in terms of profitability. Apple revolutionised desktop computing, mobile muic, mobile phones ands tablets, but while the others were very profitable businesses the phones wre something special. The special market conditions created by carried subsidies enabled previously unheard of margins. We may never hear of such margins again. That doesnt mean apple is doomed or that they won’t go on to revolutionise more markets.
Apple seems to be fixating on design for design’s sake, rather than design for the sake of utility. For instance, the company talked about how the polycarbonate body of the iPhone 5C was manufactured as one single piece with no joinery, etc. But it didn’t attempt to do anything with that to improve the phone’s utility. It didn’t say, “And by eliminating seams we are able to make the iPhone water resistant.” It’s as if the purity of design was all that mattered. Apple must consider that a hammer made out of a rock is a better hammer than a hammer made out of hand-tooled diamond encrusted Corinthian leather. iPhones, like hammers, belong in the hands of users, not in museum cases.
Users may not have the design language to describe why they prefer one device over another, but Apple’s emphasis on design ensures that when a typical user picks the phone up it feel great. When they pick up the phone of a competitor who doesn’t got these great lengths, they will think it feels like a piece of crap, even if they can’t say exactly why.
Frankly, cant see wacthes and TV’s being billion dollar business. More hobbies or niches to fill (although Apple TV has only generated 600M in hardware they do get a kick back from rentals) . Perhaps some servers to support BYOD in corporate offices. Have security, software deployment, etc. Still nichey but its a market they really haven’t tapped yet and one MS is trying to cater to with the Surface/Windows 8 line.
I think Apple has nothing left, no more revolution just evolution. They need to “Think Different”
The iWatch and iTV are probably just a joke played on their competitors to slow them down, and to give Apple time to come up with thing new.
Well if Apple has nothing left then the other players, like Samsung, had nothing to begin with. Bigger screens and bumping phones to transfer pictures are not innovation. What markets have the others disrupted?
So tired of all people saying that Apple do not invent. Apple did not come out with new groundbreaking product categories (mac, ipod, iphone, ipad) every second year under Jobs! And just because the design itself does not change much, is it bad?
Let’s see… Apple makes ton of money. It comes out with new products all the time. Virtually every company in the world would be thrilled to be in Apple’s position.
Instead, the Wall Street guys “punish” them because they haven’t jumped to yet another level. People on the street get angry because Apple hasn’t blown them away for a good year or more. Just how many major product innovations do people expect? How fast? Is anybody else expected to do this?
Apple certainly has problems, faults felt directly by customers, and they can’t go grow exponentially forever. But, Jeeez…
64 bit computing on a mobile device, and all kinds of sensors? Surely this provokes all kinds of possibilities?
Makes me wish I was a developer…
You’re right. While none might be Earth shattering by itself, you can only imagine what might be possible in the way of health care devices because of the processing power and the MPU capabilities. Taken as a whole product area, it could be huge.
And, that’s just one arena.
Yes, the MPU strikes me as having great potential, especially in combination with an iWatch.
15 years ago the joke was that “Beleaguered Apple Computer” was actually their name, because every news item seemed to refer to them that way. Now the press gets their jollies by hyping every flaw and being disappointed at everything they do. “What, this presentation didn’t revolutionize computing like they did eight or nine times before?? Losers!”
But of course this was another incremental iPhone upgrade, as is their recent pattern. It’s the 5S, not the 6. Still, though: 64-bit, twice the speed, better battery life, better camera, Touch ID… not bad for an increment.
I grant the 5C is a bit underwhelming at that price point, but they’ll still sell tens of millions.
Aside from the obvious negative, I think Jobs timed his exit perfectly. With or without him Apple was/is going to have a really hard time making the kind of splash they did with iTunes, iPhone and iPad. No question they were brilliantly executed products, but in some ways those were the low hanging fruit compared to revolutionizing television. No way the media content providers go down the same path as the record labels did with iTunes.
Even Apple comes up with a new “home run” product, it’s going to be nearly impossible to maintain the market position and pricing power they have enjoyed for the past 10 years. Samsung is going to be a thorn in their side for a long time to come.
Let us know when Samsung disrupts a market, any market.
They’ve already disrupted a lot of iPhone sales. More than a few of the folks I know with S4s are former iPhone users.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Samsung have not disrupted any markets as Apple did with the iPhone.
A total new kind of device and phone.
Or, even less created new ones as Apple did with the iPad.
They copy. And put the phones full with in “air gestures” and “eye tracking”.
Who needs or uses those things??
Samsung isn’t interested in disrupting the market the same way that Apple does. They know their limitations, as they don’t have a Steve Jobs as the pitchman.
Instead, Samsung is focusing on outdoing Apple by filling a market with a lot of options. Apple is trying to steal some of that thunder back by introduction of the iPad Mini and now the entry level iPhone (which is what the 5c is), but that might not work. Apple might have changed things under the hood, but to a regular user is it enough of a difference to switch back from a Samsung?
I’d still expect Apple to sell gobs of their phones, but expanding the market is where they’re going to struggle. It’s like Microsoft back in the 90s: they had all this market share, but it became a struggle to grow it further. Going from 93% market share to 95% is a lot harder than going from 40% to 60%. While Apple doesn’t have 93% market share, they’ve achieved market saturation and their competition isn’t noticeably poorer.
Right about now is when Steve Jobs would have pulled a rabbit out of his hat and come up with a completely new must have device, but at the moment there isn’t one. If there is a new must have device, it’s the Google Chromecast.
I am really hoping that Apple comes up with a strategy for broadcast media that is all encompassing.
I cut the cord of cable a while ago because I could not take their incredible shoddy service.
It is my hope beyond hopes that they buy a company like Time Warner and really go to town on making it the best delivery service out there and go head-to-head with some of the things that Comcast is doing now they bought Universal and what Netflix is doing in the content delivery service.
I love the idea of a la carte. I just want HBO and a couple other stations. I would pay $30-$35 to get it.
My wife would want sports. $50.00 or $55.00 for HBO and a Sports Package would not be too much to ask.
Plus if Apple could take the data side of things and really run with it they could give Google Fiber a run for it’s money and show Uverse and Verizon how it should be done.
Just my $1.29 worth of thoughts. Curious to hear what you think.
I’m not so sure à la carte is the road to low prices. Most of TV is subsidized by ads that most of us ignore, often by fast forwarding. Similarly, the cable companies let other “broadcasters” pay them to put content on many cable channels that we also ignore. But that revenue keeps the price lower for the rest of us. So the choice may be to pay $80/mo for 200 channels and watch 12 of them or pay $10/mo for each the 12 we must have access to for a total of $120/mo, and not even have the option to see another channel unless we pony up another $10/mo.
I suspect you’re correct in general, Ronc.
The one missing piece with ala-carte television is the ISP. Most people get their internet service from cable companies, so Disney streaming all ESPN content directly to a paying customer wouldn’t be cost effective for a customer. A telephone company might be a viable option, but the cost for the bandwidth necessary for DSL to match cable is a bit prohibitive right now. The only way the streaming option becomes cost effective is if a disruptor in the ISP market appears, enabling consumers to drop cable ISPs for another, cheaper, option.
Like, say, Google.
You’re right.
I don’t think Google has the answer, though. Will the content providers let Google romp on the existing MSOs everywhere? Will Google be able to get tax breaks in every town and state?
The problem is as much or more a business problem than a technology problem.
Will Google be able to get tax breaks in every town and state?
Well, nobody ever went broke underestimating the amount of tax breaks a politician will give a corporation to come to their locality. Because, ya know, they can say they are a “Job Creator!” when it comes to re-election time.
Meanwhile, the roads have potholes in them and the police/firefighters haven’t had a raise in a decade…
Apple won’t buy Time Warner Cable. TWC doesn’t actually own any content, but licenses it from various hostile companies. If TWC tried to do something friendly with that content, then the content owners would immediately revoke the licenses and sue them for breach of contract. And copyright infringement. Just see what’s happening to Aereo.
You can get this now !!!!!
Try NimbleTV (google it).
You will probably want a smart TV or a big monitor.
I think I pay about $40 a month. I teach overseas in 4 month blocks, with 2 months off in between. I can alacart what I want to receive (hbo) and I can alacart which months I want the service.
It’s not great, but it is good, and it is available now.
From the FAQ:
1) Can other members of my household watch nimbleTV from a single user account? Currently, only one person can watch on one device, from a single nimbleTV account. In the future, we plan to offer family accounts so that other household members can sign in and watch from one primary account. 2) Can I use nimbleTV with my existing cable/satellite television subscription? No. In order to enjoy nimbleTV you need to subscribe to a cable/satellite provider through us.
The question I have is… what is Apple supposed to innovate? What market needs disrupting? Is putting iOS in refrigerators and washing machines innovation? Apple disrupted mobile 6 years ago. Since then we’ve seen nothing from other players except copying and evolutionary improvements, feature bloat. Not innovation in my book.
I think the obfuscation idea is correct, but I think you’re looking in the wrong place. I think the Apple iWatch rumors were just that…rumors, leaked by Apple themselves. I don’t think they ever intended to do a watch, nor will they in the future (unless that market blows up, which I still really don’t see). I think that it got their main competitor/partner, Samsung, to dedicate enormous sums of cash to build something there really isn’t a demand for. And the rest of the also-rans are following in suit, just on the rumor that Apple would create something in the market.
To quote the line in the movie, “Now You See Me”, “The closer you look, the more you miss.”
I think Juan Miguel is more on track; a million servers is about what You Tube utilizes at peak, and that number would serve a lot of on demand video to the East Coast. I still am betting on Apple’s next re-creation to be the home entertainment hub and disrupting the concept of cable TV.
I think it’s significant that Cook never used the word “watch”, as I recall he said the “wrist” was of interest. Generally, I find that we all make assumptions about what Apple is thinking, and how they think- namely, like us.
Samsung’s strategy is to go volume, not just in products, but in ideas. Throw anything and everything against the wall and see if it sticks. The cost of all those dry holes are paid for by the gushers that pop up. Case in point is the smart phone. They went “balls to the walls” throw everthing at it and flood every market to keep from losing their business in cell phones following the introduction of the Iphone. They survived. Blackberry, Nokia it appears, and perhaps others did not. The Note 2 stuck to the wall, and they finally got some traction. I believe, Apple’s stock price peaked at about the time the Note 2 was introduced, but I could be wrong.
Samsung wants market share. That equates to staying power. They want to be in business 20, 40, 60 years from now. They need market share to do that. They don’t have particular skill at predicting what the market will be like 20 years from now, or 10 or even 5. But whatever the market looks like they want to have a position in it. So they’ll run down every hall and corridor just in case that happens to take off. This is how a lot of large east asian businesses run.
This is similar to the car industry in the 90s. When times were prosperous and oil cheap, and gas $1, GM, Ford and Chrysler went all SUV. In the mid 90s for even announced that it was discontinuing research in cars. They all had fat margins. 12 years later they were staring bankruptcy in the face. Meanwhile during the 90s, Honda and Toyota pursued research in Hybrids – at the very time the Americans were abandoning such research. Why? those companies want to exist 20, 40 years from now. They want market share then too. They don’t know what the market drivers will be. So what they do is stake out a position in every conceivable market driver. In 1990s, it was still conceivable that fuel efficiency would be a market driver in the automobile industry sometime in the future, so they kept at it.
When fuel prices started to jump after the turn of the century, there was toyota and honda ready and waiting with strong offerings in hybrid technologies. Toyota has sold over a million Priuses a lone, and they are arguably still the best value in the market place. I recently saw advertisements for them below $17,000, which means you can get a car that will comfortably hold 5 adults and stuff, and get roughly 50 mpg – since the average car on the road is over 11 years old now, for most people, owning a Prius would be like the price of gas being chopped in half. Btw, the era of the hybrid will soon be over, but I’ve strayed from my original point.
Throwing everything against the wall is Samsung’s business model. Who knows, watches might be a market driver 3 years from now. If it is, they already have position. If it isn’t , oh well.
Maybe 50 mpg but how many mpd (miles per dollar). Considering the high cost of electricity it may be more expensive. Consider the reason we install complex natural gas and oil fired burners to heat homes, hot water, and stoves, not to mention diesel for most high powered vehicles, like trucks and trains. The electric motor existed in the 1920s but has always required the most expensive form of energy. The advantage of electricity is the air pollution happens far away from the car.
I fail to see any reason why you can’t wait to get an iPhone 5s other than a slightly better camera.
A $600 Million a year business — a hobby! How many firms would kill for such a hobby? In my career I’ve seen this situation countless times. Firms pass on great business ideas because they are too small. It is a true shame!
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What firms like Microsoft and Apple and others need to do is to find about 10 “hobby” businesses each. With their cash reserves they can afford to invest, to take risks, and to grow their portfolio of businesses. What they need to do is to manage those businesses well and not let the bigger corporation stifle them.
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A few columns ago we discussed Google’s Chromecast. We are all suffering from the transition to HD, fragmented technology, warring content providers, poor interperability, terrible user interfaces, etc. Heck we’ve even been subjected to price fixing by the TV makers. Someone like Apple, or Microsoft, or Google could develop a much better platform. They could use their size and capabilities to produce lower cost products. They could give the whole industry the leadership and competitive kick in the butt that is needed. They have the technology, size, and scale to make a difference; but to them this would be a hobby business.
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My challenge to them is to kick the industry’s butt and to remind them they can make a very nice profit and return on investment for hobby business’s too. As Nike would say “Just Do It.”
Hey, I like Tim Cook. I’d like to take him out to dinner.
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In Steve’s lost interview he gave an insightful explanation on how firms like Xerox and IBM get stuck in the mud. At some point the technology is taken for granted and the people who can make the most difference in the business are the people who can sell more. Over time the “sales” people take over the leadership of large companies. Their companies lose the ability to recognize a good idea, even when it is staring them in the face.
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Tim Cook is NOT a sales guy. Apple has had a few sales guys run the company with disastrous consequences. Tim is a gifted and visionary ENGINEER. He could well be a great leader for Apple. Look at how many CEO’s HP went through! The last thing Apple needs is a revolving door on the CEO’s office. Lets give Tim the time he needs to lead Apple into the future. He’s certainly not hurting the company. Given HP’s and Yahoo’s recent CEO’s, that’s saying a lot.
Hey, can you give a link to that stuck in the mud bit? I’d love to share it with some folks at work. 🙂
It is from the ‘Steve Jobs, the Lost Interview”. It is a great 70 minute video between Steve Jobs and Bob Cringely. You can buy the DVD or download the video
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Here is the download — https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-The-Lost-Interview/dp/B008GJVAW4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378999004&sr=8-1&keywords=steve+jobs+the+lost+interview
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Here is the DVD – https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-The-Lost-Interview/dp/B008NA3HZY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378999065&sr=8-2&keywords=steve+jobs+the+lost+interview
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Or you can go to Amazon and search for: Steve Jobs The Lost Interview (2011)
Steve Jobs (Actor), Robert X. Cringely (Actor), Paul Sen (Director)
Bob,
It seems that Apple in its current state is Microsoft in that it’s milking its cash cows for as long as possible, until such time as they’ve sucked the public’s teat dry. The main issue is that barring China, and following yesterday’s tepid announcement, the consumer’s patience and appetite has waned. So expect yet another last minute product announcement soon highlighting a new phone that will somehow not be as good as a Nexus 4 or Samsung, but still be an improvement over an iPhone.
They have work to do.
I think Microsoft is interesting and trying to position themselves as Sony killers. Imagine an Xbox with a Windows phone controller. Use the phone to order from Netflix or Hulu, and stream it to your TV via the Xbox. So who needs a Sony phone or DVD or PlayStation?
Not likely MS will pull that off however. But easy to envision.
How many companies have dominated mobile for so many years? iPhone 5S/C should perpetuate this for another 2 years at least. Nokia, Motorola, RIM, all had their brief time but apple has remained different, even post Jobs.
I think the new devices along with ios7 and iCloud really set up the future pretty well. This was a pretty significant mid-cycle launch. Wall St seems to have missed this or manipulated it.
Bob,
The future I see for Apple lies in iCloud, iEntertainment, and iSecurity.
I do have to wonder about iSecurity.
Cloud and Security are two items not typically found together, particularly public Cloud. If –and this is a big if– Apple can provide Cloud service for a Public Cloud that can provide some real data security, then it could make huge inroads in the corporate market. Backups are great, but corporations don’t want their data stolen.
With the NSA will an American Company be trusted to provide Security?
You could make that argument of about any country, you know. It’s only that in some countries, people who release that amount of data simply disappear. Kind of like how the Chinese government has collective amnesia when you ask about Tiananmen Square.
I don’t know how much of Apple’s revenue comes from its more traditional line of products, computers (call them media authoring devices) and from new products, tablets and cell phones (call them media consumption devices) and from media content delivery (Itunes and the App store).
The better positioned company has a position in all three of these, it would seem to me.
I’m not sure how dependent Apple is on sales of devices, except, if they don’t sell the devices, they can’t sell the content. Fortunately they have the high end – people more willing to pay for content and apps. Android get people like me, free loaders. I think I’ve only bought one or two apps (though that is about to change).
But if device sales are important, and if volume of sales is important (and Apple seems more concerned about margins rather than volume) Apple appears to be heading for an, ahem, a comeuppance.
A recent article I read, I believe citing a Gardner study, said that 80% of people with a smart phone now want there next smart phone to have a larger screen than they currently have.
80%.
That means they won’t be buying Apple.
I hope they enjoy their large margins, because they won’t be getting volume if that survey runs true.
If they don’t have some new devices soon that impact the market then this starts to look like the Apple of the 1990s.
Who knows. When the time is right, maybe they’ll pull Woz back in to lead the company.
Wozniak would be a horrible choice for CEO.
He hasn’t been active in Apple affairs in decades. He’s an engineer who would be much more interested in playing with geeky toys no matter how awkward, rather than shaping them into polished products. He might still have some brain damage from his airplane accident.
The lack of bigger screens hurts Apple, but just because you want a bigger screen doesn’t mean you’ll choose a phone based on it. Apple could be seen as a relatively safe choice, like the proverbial Nokia dumbphone. Keeping the screen options limited also makes it easier to create well-designed apps. Besides, Gartner doesn’t have a good recent track record in predicting mobile. The operators are still pretty important. We’ll see what happens.
I was joking about Woz, of course.
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For all I know, Apple has other things up their sleeves. And you are probably right, not all people are going to go for big screens. For me it was a must have. I have a gigantic Asus Fonepad. It’s a 7 inch monster. I am a law professor who teaches over seas, in 4 month buckets. Hauling books around is a huge pain for me. So for me the driving ap is the ereader, by a pretty big margin. The smaller the screen the more irritating it is to read (though higher ppi count helps some). I’ll gladly put a dinner plate up to my head to talk if it gives me a better reading functionality. So now I have one device, phone, ereader, etc… The Ipad Mini might fit in my pockets, if just, but there’s no phone function. Anyway, I hope I’m good for nearly 2 years now on that, by which time maybe google glasses type thing will allow phones to get smaller again, and I can buy into another design paradigm.
Before criticizing Tim Cook we need to give him another four months or so to release all the products they have been working on for the past two years.
What I missed from Tuesday’s keynote was Steve’s voice. Everyone did a nice job of telling us how wonderful the new kit is but Steve would weave it all into a story. He let us in on the thought process. When announcing the iPhone he did just say touch screens were great, he walked us through the problems with physical buttons and explained how the touchscreen was the solution. iPhoto wasn’t just nice, it was a solution to the shoeboxes of photos many people kept. I missed that clarity of thought on Tuesday. I missed the slide about how Apple is at the intersection of engineering and Liberal Arts.
“Look at that iPhone 5S and you’ll see a piece of jewelry – a luxury item in the tradition of luxury meaning good design and craftsmanship, not just a high price. I can’t wait to get mine. But the iPhone 5S isn’t the future of Apple.”
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The iPhone 5s is only half the story. Apple just spilt the iPhone line into two: An S-class (think Mercedes S-class) and a C-class.
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The S-class is going to continue as you say, keeping the position of a luxury item (note the new gold model) and being the model that pushes the edge of technology. The processor improvements, graphics improvements, and camera improvements are all focused there.
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This first model in the C-class is the iPhone equivalent of the iPod mini. Like the iPod mini, it’s only a little cheaper than its bigger siblings, and it doesn’t have all the features of the top-end model. It moves availability of a “brand new model of iPhone” down $100 in price, though. (And similarly, it’s the first model to come in a range of colors.) As the executive editor of Macworld, Jason Snell, tweeted:
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“The psychological difference between iPhone/old/older and Premium iPhone/colorful iPhone/older can not be understated.”
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It’s not “last year’s model.” It’s “the new one this year that comes in colors.”
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The C-class iPhones are going to be the volks-iPhones. There’ll be a new C-class model each year, and future ones probably WON’T actually be as powerful as the previous year’s S-class model. Instead, it’s likely that it’ll get a more moderate spec bump and a moderate reduction in price. Next year’s C-class iPhone will, in terms of price reduction but not form factor change, be the iPhone equivalent of the iPod nano.
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Meanwhile the S-class iPhones are going to be the MacBook Pros or Mac Pros of the iPhone range. They’ll get bigger spec bumps than the C-class iPhones, and their prices are going to be stable up at the top price points–at least for as long as the carriers in the U.S. continue to subsidize flagship phones down to $199 on contract. The S-class iPhones will continue the luxury cachet of the line, allowing the C-class to go after broader, more price-sensitive markets.
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The answer to how Apple is going to move forward in an evolving market is right there. It’s just not obvious yet because this first step, this first of the C-class of iPhones, isn’t the dramatic move downmarket that so many people were predicting or expecting.
20k servers… and they still can’t sync my Safari bookmarks across devices.
Tuesday was disappointing. And not because nothing (surprisingly) new was announced – I’m sure we’re all used to the leaks by now. It was disappointing because Apple reps spent most of their time talking about transistors, algorithms, and µ. It was dull, uninteresting, repetitive (don’t use “incredible” multiple times in the same sentence – especially when talking about blue or yellow or… salmon).
No energy, no new ideas. Remember this summer when they tried to wow us with Numbers spreadsheets in the browser? Like that was something NOT already 5 years old? They set the bar so high, so it’s natural things might come to this – but it’s still disappointing. They seem to be trying to make something out of nothing. They even gave nought a color: Space Gray.
Sigh.
I don’t think that was Steve Jobs’s specialty, but rather his focus on design. People are paying a significant premium for what are in some ways inferior products.
Apple still has room for growth. With Steve Jobs in charge, they could probably out Prius the Prius.
I think Apple should go the direction of Youtube and have their huge user-base create the content and Apple would then serve it back to them on an Apple TV device. In order to achieve that with any success they would have to “one up” Youtube by creating a new disruptive technology that taps into their existing “walled garden” (IOS, app store) and creates superior content to Youtube. Hundreds of millions of devices creating superior content being created and display to consumers on Apple devices. This would grow their walled garden substantially. Here is one way they could do it :
http://imgur.com/Tyymc3o
Regards
Peter D
Agree that what has been going on for awhile is burnishing. What we haven’t seen from Apple in a relative while seems the ability to surprise. The last what I would call “surprise” was the introduction of the iPad, at what was considered to be a very low price at the time to aggressively create a huge market.
Siri, fingerprint sensors, changes in size, etc. are not “surprises” to make the world sit up and take notice. They are enhancements.
Apple went a long time in its Mac only days without “surprises”. It didn’t work well for them (they tried with Newton). If it were easy to create a product to make the world sit up and take notice I guess others would be doing it. But if you are not a mass marketer (think Samsung) it’s more important for you than the others to do so.
There are surely only two contender industries which that data centre could possibly be built to reinvent: television and telephone. Apple has long had its fingers in both pies, and the reason we have not seen it filled is primarily not to do with the company’s desires, but their realistic understanding (which there can be little doubt Jobs, Cook and other senior executives fully understood long ago) that overthrowing entrenched markets can be a decades-long strategic chess game. Apple may have jumped the gun by building it (which they can afford), but I would guess they intended by now to be running mass, personalised, on demand TV, and are known to have been frustrated by the cable and broadcast networks. Telephony is an even longer play, which began (publicly) with iChat audio. I reckon the goal always has been to take out the mobile phone industry completely, replacing it with a 21st century voice- and video-everywhere IP-based service. I’ve always wondered why Apple pulled a video-messaging beta some years back, which seemed far ahead of its time (and Skype now does a limited version of). You can only build an enormous, unassailable ecosystem like theirs slowly and thoughtfully, putting the elements (software, devices, infrastructure, services, partner agreements, sales channels) in place piece by piece while trying not to scare the horses (i.e. the people whose lunch you want to eat). Then, when its too late to do anything about, the next stage of the master plan becomes clear. Those who say the Cupertino train is finished always make me chuckle with their short-sightedness: you can innovate in much more significant ways than mere ‘features’ you know.
Oh, very much this. Apple is clearly playing a long game, and they are in a great position to do so: they control the software and the hardware, have megatons of money, and a loyal user base. What I wouldn’t give for a look at the Ultra Top Secret Roadmap that Jobs no doubt gave Cook.
The way you write about Jobs here reminds me of Hari Seldon from the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov. He is also a cult of personality, complete with something akin to a Reality Distortion Field, with far-reaching and deeply-convoluted plans for how the future will unfold … while simultaneously keeping his observers, who think they know his plans and their own place in them, surprised as twists appear in the plot … only to find out that, according to Seldon’s planning which they thought they were bringing about, they needed to be duped so that the “real” plan could unfold counter to their “help”.
I don’t do it justice with that description – the books are very good – but your writing of Jobs reminds me of that.
If Apple comes out with an iWatch, that is basically a watch + bluetooth display + pedometer, then we know the end is near.
But, Apple has the opportunity to make an iWatch that makes the entire smartphone market obsolete. If you could carry everything in an iWatch (well, access keys with most of the actual data in a now empty data center in NC) and use iPads, iPad minis and iPad nanos (which is what iPhone would become) as peripheral displays and I/O, then we’ll know Apple is not doomed. Bob, wasn’t it you who thought that something like an iWatch might let you walk up to any Mac, log in, and access all your data, treating the Mac as just a computing platform?
The need to create a $1 B new business is tough, and really limits the ability to innovate. Instead of starting small, and testing things out, you have to start on a huge scale, and either identify an enormous green field that nobody saw, or overcome big, entrenched businesses.
In the late 90s HP ran into that problem in the research labs. The pressure was on to create an exciting new Billion Dollar Business, but the labs (and company) only succeeded on spending tons of money on scale, and going nowhere. Probably the best new business actually created from scratch in that era was the optical mouse sensor business, which started small, and has now taken over the world. (Bob, if you don’t know the story of the optical mouse sensor, it is a great story, except the part where Carly sells half the patents to Microsoft.)
Perhaps Tim Cook, in planning for the long term, realised that while a large data centre would be required for the major milestone being planned, the servers can be added in stages.
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A data centre has a long lifespan, and with pressure on to spend Apple’s cash hoard it makes for a worthwhile investment. Plus you get the benefit of all of your competitors scrambling to understand why you made that particular move.
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And yes, it allows you to keep your options open. 🙂
Burnishing? Jewelry? One whiff of the new processors and 64 bit architecture tells me that Apple knows exactly what game it’s playing, while the other guys are still trying to find the field on their hands and knees. Apple doesn’t jam junk into devices without a purpose or two.
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The pricing levels say the same thing: Apple knows; others blow. Apple will not go gentle into the dark night, discounting itself into a ditch. Most cellphone makers are already in Dell Hell: Sell it and give the money back to the shareholders. Apple will fight the quality and premium pricing battle with hardware, software, services, design, and marketing. And it’s doing just fine. It’s must be cus’ Google, Microsoft, and soon Samsung are all imitating Apple’s integrated approach. Badly.
The only advantage of a 64-bit architecture is the ability to have RAM exceed 4 Gigs. If you don’t need that much RAM, then it’s just less efficient. But it sounds like progress.
I was thinking the same thing. For a device as small as an iPhone, there’s no need to have the ability to multitask to an extreme that 64-bit architecture will allow.
Wrong, Ronc.
It’s almost incidental that the new cpu is 64 bit (at least initially, later it will be important) – the important part is that it is the new ARM v8 architecture. New instruction set, better mips per watt, higher performance generally. Not to mention that a 64 bit cpu does *not* require use of 64bit pointers and integers everywhere, it just *allows* them. Nor does it mean code is twice as big; ARMv8 instructions are still 32bits.
For manipulating some forms of data a cpu that can do 64bit wide chunks is extremely useful – you munge twice as many bits in one go.Or you can do a 32×32 multiply and not have to worry about overflow.
For lots of code having twice as many registers is useful – less memory bus traffic, faster results.
Neither case requires 64 bit pointers nor vast amounts of ram.
And of course, if a 64bit cpu was of no use to mobile devices, Samsung wouldn’t have immediately announced their ‘me-too’ – they’re obviously too sensible to do that just to copy Apple.
Thanks for the input. My experience comes from the case with x86 chips. However Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson were recently discussing this mobile phone issue, in passing, on a recent podcast of Security Now. Here’s what Steve said “I would say look at the phone we have now and what it’s able to do with 32 bits. It’s like, that seems fine to me. I mean, everything scrolls smoothly. Nothing is jerky and hesitating. I mean, clearly you could engineer the phone around 32 bits if that was what you needed. I just think we’re going to see RAM get larger and ROM get larger. And the problem is, with 64 bits, it just in general is more hungry. Even though they apparently have really got power consumption down, too, on this thing.” In other words, it’s a better chip in some respects, but that could be in spite of being 64-bits. I should send your response as feedback on his website; I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one. Here’s a link to his transcript: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-421.htm
Once again you manage to capture all of the nuances of the situation and lay it out very nicely. Such a change of times there – on top of the financial game, selling appliances (phones and iPods) – and everyone suspecting they are slowly losing that innovation “air: I watched the press event and was struck by what a performance artist Steve was, and how far Tim does not measure up to that “something wonderful.” And still, I hold out that hope for that amazing “theres one more thing….” And yet, I too wonder if they are chicken to take those chances that only Steve had the balls to go after. Even those silly $600m “hobby” projects. We witnessed something unique in the industry; it will happen again. But hope fades it will be @ apple.
Is it not that too many are looking to Apple to create the next big thing when all those around are still standing like vultures waiting to copy?
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Expectation is probably too high. That’s really Apple’s problem; the markets are expecting, desperate even for the next big thing.
What if the “big secret” is there is nothing behind the curtain this time?
For Apple to go down in flames would kind of prove they couldn’t go on without Steve.. in a way a fitting memorial.. or a way to have the last word on the matter… just one last thing.
Ok, here’s why Apple did this.
There’s only one market they can get to for the required growth… financial transactions.
they want the Iphone to be the go-to device for wave/buy purchasing. This requires:
1) phone in every pocket (well… maybe just the well-cushioned pocket… so… maybe doesn’t matter)
and more importantly 2) a really safe,secure transaction mode—–biometric. Hence fingerprint scanner.
and also killable iphones.
and also really really large server capacity.
My thoughts on what Apple should do. (There is hardly anything about me to give these opinions any weight, but all the same I do think they make a lot of sense. And I’m glad Bob X has put up an article that give me the opportunity to express them.)
First and foremost combine, the Macbook Air and the Ipad.That is, make all Airs separable into a tablet something like the Asus Transformer. Even if you have to produce 8.9′ and 10′ Air’s and/or 11 and 13 inch Ipads and possibly have a larger number of SKU’s than apple likes. The main thing is they can run full OSX and all the OSX software that Air’s can run. They also need to able to run all IOS apps and they need to do a good job of integrating OSX and IOS. This is the difficult thing and it will need to be much better than the Win 8 mush, but this is the sort of thing Apple can do well. (This would a big and high risk project and would need someone like Jobs to make a lot of firm decisions even if they turn out to be wrong, Apple may sadly no longer have the cojones for this.)
If this can be done for less than the cost of an ipad + a reasonable windows laptop (or better but not possible, an ipad + any windows laptop) then they would get win OSX users that way who would abandon MS and Windows completely. Such users would have the opportunity to learn OSX gradually, while they keep their old Windows machine. Handled right, they could migrate a lot of Ipad owners from Windows to OSX over time. The main incentive for a user will be cost, but the real benefit is simplification compared to 2 different compute/data environments which would provide a long term appeal and endear Apple to many people. Selling such Macbook Air additions to an Ipad separately at cost or even a loss would be sensible way to gain market share.
If they could do the same for Imac’s and Mini’s then they could win over a lot of businesses too, but this would be harder as there would be no shared hardware. A high end Ipad which extra Ram and an additional intel processor and good connectivity for a keyboard, mouse, 2 medium cost monitors (so not lightening monitors at this stage), and ethernet might do it even if thicker and heavier.
It is the simplification over 2 compute environments, including not needing to synchronise, that is the key here. This fits in with Apples strength that is the ability to provide hardware, software and a UI that works well and without a lot of hassles. They could do the same with (the occasionally rumoured) TV, both it’s UI and integration with a hifi system and home computer network. There would certainly be a market for this done Apple style. They could partner with Bose, but partnering with TV manufacturers would not work. All the same they should try this, and if done right would cut themselves a substantial and loyal portion of the TV market they same way they did with mp3 players and phones. This is certainly higher risk than a combined Ipad Macbook Air and I doubt the cojones are there.
But I think the Market is crying out for such integration and simplification, these things are still a mess that all except the most nerdy of us dislike. They same would apply to an Iwatch (again done right of course).
Finally the plastic Iphone does concern me. It seems Apple is moving away from the high end sector of it’s market, even if it is exceptionally high quality plastic. This is the first time they have moved from aluminium back to plastic. I can only see the price being forced down over time by the perception that “it’s a plastic phone”. They will either have to abandon it or compete on price, neither of which will be good for Apple.
The “Win 8 mush” problem has been solved by “Start 8” and “Modern Mix” from Stardock. You can use Windows 8 exactly like Windows 7 and access the new apps (all in beta imho) via separate windows, or completely ignore them until they rise to the functionality of regular Windows programs. Apple has solved the Windows integration issue with Boot Camp and Fusion. But it appears that neither Microsoft or Apple want to solve the “mobile platform with desktop integration” issue. They both want to move most people and most of their business to the simplified and more secure model of mobile devices (iOS and Windows RT). Many of the apps are “good enough” to get the job done for “most people” even on the desktop. They envision an eventual thin client environment where heavy processing is done in the cloud and the apps are used to access that cloud. For now it’s Stardock to the rescue, at least on Windows.
I said elsewhere that a server farm could be a VW kombi van full of iPhones and now that is coming true with a 64bit SoC 5S. You just need the A7 in an iPod without the battery and you could make a server farm in a Mini.
Apple has tons of old ideas that have not fruited.
Intel’s outgoing CEO regrets not taking Apple up on the Atom CPU before Intel saw a need for it.
But that has been Apple’s downfall every time. Start a marriage and then have the better half run off with the furniture unexpectedly one day as happened to a friend. Jobs went to poor Bill Gates to make the Basic program in Apple][ and not appease Woz. And Bill became rich!
CPU problems abounded in Apple – Motorola, IBM, and even Intel all gave grief to Apple. Macs used old Intel CPUs because Intel’s new ones were crap some years back!
It took a lot of hurt on Apple’s part to finally realize that in-house is best!
And it uses ARM which it co-designed.
I still believe that Apple should not outsource anything.
Else where I’ve said that Apple could make supercomputers with say a server farm full of iPods – 20,000 iPods at $200 equals $4m. Add a bit more for profit say $5m. At those prices every country could make its own Atomic Bombs or shoe bombs or bra bombs. And Apple could send IBM to the poorhouse just like Nokia or Blackberry. How many Universities are there in the world. Apple sells (I don’t know but lets say) 200 million iPxxs a year that’s 200m divided by 20,000 that’s 10000 supercomputer or $50B year.
And in a year or two I could own a supercomputer to make my own nuclear bombs – that would make the NSA happy and the MIC happy at least while they were bombing us into freedom. But I’ll leave with a quote of that great Apple lover Douglas Adam’s “When the revolution came they were put against a wall and shot” of the robot manufacture. Ha Ha Ha, the way to kill the NSA is with humor, irony and sarcasm. Bring back “Get Smart”.*#^
*(I will add that the greatest danger to freedom was the CIA agent that sold Semtex explosive to the terrorists and the Iran-Contra affair, both in 1980’s run by Republican facists, who believed that that was what was needed to be free.)
# (I predicted many years ago that there may or may not be no 2016 Olympics but for sure NO 2020 Olympics — with them in Tokyo I’m in two minds adding no Tokyo city as well now!! Ha Ha Ha let the Japanese save face then! )
^(Marissa Mayer and a thousand other CEOs all in goal would be a great tribute to the 50th anniversary of King’s speech on freedom!)