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The Economist on Apple, the iPhone, and Innovation
portscan writes "This week's Economist has a special report on Apple, Inc. and innovation. 'The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.' There is also an article on the business of the iPhone and the future of the company. "
I mean, hell, they've been a doomed company for what 10 years now? 12?
The last thing that enjoyed this much hype was Snakes on A Plane. Remember how good that was when it actually came out? I predict iPhone will share the same fate, and shares of Apple will plummet!
I keep telling that to my father.
Apple has cultivated its brand through sleek products and sexy advertising. The first major MP3 player (ignoring the obscure MPMan) was the Diamond Rio, which looked alright... until the iPod came out. Don't underestimate the importance of style when it comes to selling consumer electronics.
It's pretty much on-target within the Apple Product Cycle.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Oooh, Look At Me, I Read The Economist!
Isn't all this buzz just what Apple wants? I thought that Slashdot was part of Apple's unofficial marketing team. So we are just doing our part.
Bobo Mahoney
But let's not call iPhone a success yet. It had an exciting demo that got a lot of buzz. It hasn't sold a single unit yet. Expectations are sky high already, so if this one doesn't do as well for some reason -- or even if it just has a slow start for whatever reason -- the perception could be that it's a disappointment, under-performer, or outright failure. It's hard to imagine it being a complete failure, but at the price tag that they're commanding, it's not like you can guarantee its success.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again
Same with Microsoft, except it usually takes them three tries.
[Insert pithy quote here]
So when Apple bombs, its "Learning from Mistakes" and when they get the next version right, its "Insightful Market Understanding", but when Microsoft bombs, its "Rushing it out the door to crush competitors" and when they get the next version right, its "Stealing technology from their competitors". Everyone in business learns from their mistakes and improves their subsequent product, or fails to remain in business. Just look at the stability of the latest IIS vs the earlier ones, for example.
Is there anything to suggest that the iPhone is or will be a success? Perhaps it won't fail as spectacularly as their earlier try at a phone.. But it's facing hefty competition from dozens of windows mobile devices, blackberries, and even just plain old devices that only have one function, but do it extremely well. Hey, some of the windows mobile devices even look pretty stylish! Not to forget, you can buy 2 laptops for the price of the iPhone AND the 2-year contract that comes with it..
As for me personally, the iPhone is off my shortlist because I'm looking either for a nice phone that only does voice, or (ideally) for an all-in-one; and 'all' very much includes GPS in my mind. It's kind of a killer app for PDAs.
If fellow slashdotters have any suggestions.. the ipaq 6515w is a bit too wide for my taste, and it has a small square screen.. The E-ten M700 looks very good, but I'm not sure about the robustness of the handset and keyboard, the call quality(!), and the software support - I hated dicking about with 'unofficial' windows mobile upgrades on my Qtek 2020 (which incidentally had crappy voice quality).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
..."Plan to through your first efforts away... because you will"
But really, there's wisdom there. You never really know what will be successful until you've gotten something out and developed. If only business people understood that, they could likely leverage it to do exactly what this article recommends -- "fail wisely".
21st-Century-Citizen
What sort of political shilling is that?
/loose/ bankruptcy laws. It was GREAT for the "entrepreneurs" and loan officers working on "commission" when you could write a loan to finance your business, liquidate it, write off the loan having effectively pocketed the cash, then walk straight back to the bank to pull a new one for a new business, rinse, repeat and retire to the Caymans having produced absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the author should look towards Central Europe ca. 1991-2001 to see what economic wonders occur when you have
I'm on the verge of getting one, but it's kinda of expensive so I'm indecisive. But if they do release a SDK, that will be the deciding factor. Phone wise I don't care, but the PDA/computing options for it are just sweet.
I'm not bitter.
Not quite, they were developed at the same time. The Lisa project began in 1978 and released in 1983. The Macintosh, 1979, released 1984.
I tried telling my parents when I was in high school that those were *wise* failures they were seeing on the report cards. If only this article had been around back then...
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
The Motorla ROKR was designed to fail with the arbitrary 100 song capacity limit.
The last thing apple wanted was a successful ROKR that might have cannibalized sales from the iPOD and the Apple branded music phone that everybody knew would come out eventually.
If the ROKR were an Apple product, you could make a case that Apple "failed", in this case Apple succeeded, they held off the market until they could debut their own device that makes them money.
The iTunes-compatible motorola phones were always intended to fail from day one. They were severely crippled compared to most low-end MP3 players at the time. The only purpose these phones served was to see if there was a market for phones with iPod-like integration, but only with features so excessively limited that Apple could crush it at any time by entering the phone manufacturing business themselves.
Comparing the Motorola phones to the Lisa probably has every Lisa in the world rolling over in their mass-grave.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I wonder what their response will be to the failure that will be hitching their reigns to Cingular for 5 years.
Did anybody notice ex-Apple VP of iPod Jon Rubenstein is now Chief XYZ at Palm? Does the investment firm that took the Palm stake have any other Apple ties?
I mean, if Apple acquired Palm, and Palm already has deals in place with Verizon, Sprint, NexTel, et. al., well, Apple couldn't very well not honor those commitments. And Palm just happens to be re-tooling their XScale phone to run on a small Unix OS (Linux). So, it wouldn't very well make sense to develop two completely different yet entirely similar products, would it?
But, hey, I've been known to claim the 3GHz promise was just a strawman to excuse sacking IBM. Steve learned from his NeXTMachine failure that a software company is better off using cheap commodity hardware.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And they havent even sold one unit!
I really can't wait for the iPhone to come out.
I've been dying for a phone with 3G capabilities and a decent web browser, bluetooth, and the ability to play all my divx files and nes games!
All for the reasonable price of 150 bucks!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Yeah but whereas Apple fail through success, Microsoft succeed through failure*.
There's a lesson there, I'm just not sure what it is.
* and bastardry
And who could forget Apple's incredible followup to the newton? Oh wait...
Agree with ya on the iPhone hype. I own two iPods and an iBook, but I have to fault Apple with the promotion for the iPhone. The best example of the promotion is their iPhone advert about how the iPhone accesses the real internet. I mean, that's a bad one.
Support the Chagossians
One definition of an expert is someone who has triewd every conceivable way of doing something wrong.
One was waiting for something like this. It is clearly the top, at last, and its time to buy the long term puts. When the Economist writes laudatory articles about a company just before it releases a product which is a huge gamble, you know. They ring a bell at the top.
You just have to know to listen for it.
There are rumors from people who have (supposedly) seem/operated the iPhone who say it operates about how you would expect. Regarding the slow network connection, it may be slow when using the Cell network (what can Apple do about that?), but it should at least be decent when within range of WiFi.
The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.
Wait, what? What does that have to do with Apple having a few flops and then having later products succeed? Apple never went bankrupt.
"Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple."
No, NeXT, was a real honest-to-goodness failure, not just the "appearance" of one. The only NeXT technology that appears in Apple computers is BSD.
Don't forget about the new product-unveiling product!
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
They aren't. I've used one. It's better than the ads make it look. The interface is fast and smooth like you wouldn't believe. Even the 2.5 G seems to load content very rapidly. Far faster than my Razr does. I assume they are using prioritized data and a special proxy which compresses/tidys html, and possibly pre-caches referenced files (css, images, etc...) before the Safari instance on the device asks. It's faster than it should be:)
Any of you posters who dismiss and disparage the iPhone's chances of success would still be impressed if one of your friends had one. You'd think he/she had something going on, maybe that they were affluent and stylish, maybe that they were lucky to be able to play with one, maybe that it reflected badly on your own utilitarian tastes, home-built computers, t-shirt wardrobes, and dorm-room outlook on life.
If you don't wear the likes of Armani and Rolex and think you never will, or if your car is generic and that's good enough for you, and if your diet consists of a lot of fast food, and if you are basically an ordinary person, then the concept of a luxury item may be something you don't truly understand. You might think of it as a needless or ostentatious ploy to gain status, whereas in reality a good segment of the population considers such things to be affordable and desirable on merit alone.
"It costs too much" says a lot about priorities. The fact is, the iPhone is a great piece of technology, and if they were free, everyone would want one. (But some people would complain about any price.)
It's funny how the meme that Motorola's crappy ROKR was somehow Apple's design keeps getting replayed. Apple quite obviously floated Motorola's phone while also cutting off its legs with the Nano at the same event. Nobody mentions the iTunes client on the SLVR, which actually didn't suck (the phone, not the limited client).
It's like he can't resist tying an albatross around Apple's neck to desperately make the company seem less magical or something. Is it wrong to give the company some credit for blowing out amazing crap over the recent years? If so, I don't want to be right.
- iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse!
"In addition to showing off the iPhone's pretty interface as part of its first impression--including the Google Maps client Steve Jobs used to locate a Starbucks in order to place a crank call for a thousand coffees at Macworld--he also described the rationale behind the closed platform iPhone as a security and stability issue. Was he kidding?"
Wait, I know this one ... oh yes, put a 3G radio in it.
So, has Apple recently declared bankruptcy and nobody's told me? Is silicon valley full of brilliant successes who have declared bankruptcy several times?
The thesis of the article seems to be that learning from your failures is important. Fine, but just because bankruptcy allows a company to wipe their debts and reorganize doesn't necessitate that companies will start learning from their mistakes. It's quite a leap to make that Silicon Valley is created by good bankruptcy laws.
The first iPod also came with firewire when I had been loading previous devices over USB 1.1, painful even for the smallest of players!
It was amazing to see the transfer speed at work when you were used to a world of USB 1.1. That didn't hurt at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why is GPS the killer app? Are you lost all the time? Are you relying on your phone in the wilderness (in that case, are the phones you looking at loaded with topo maps)?
:-)
Easy Google Maps access is enough for me, as long as I know what city I'm in. That problem hasn't come up in years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wait, I know this one ... oh yes, put a 3G radio in it.
And then have zero to sell at launch?
They need to be able to get them here to sell them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I knew that any criticism of Yurp would make the idiots of Slashdot go into a frenzy. BTW, how are looser bankruptcy laws "conservative"? Slashdot posters are the most mindless drones on the internet.
HYPE HYPE OS X HYPE HYPE iPod HYPE HYPE HYPE iPhone HYPE HYPE iTv HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE Steve Jobs HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE ...
- sickofapple
After some experience with a few of these all in one wonders that have been recently released I have found they all fail severely on one point, battery life, having to charge the battery every day can become a bit wearing and the iPhone will suffer this to a greater degree due to its huge feature set. More features means more code, more code means a more power hungry cpu, all those pretty graphics on your phone will soon become your worse nightmare as you have to take a sync cable with you for your twice daily recharge.
Cool! I don't doubt Apple. I have owned most of their stuff since I purchased an Apple Portable for £8000 ($16,000 in today's money!) and am typing this on a Macbook black with 2gig RAM. They do deliver when they get it right and I plan to buy an iPhone soon as it's available here in the UK. BTW, I do NOT like the iPod. I find the interface far far too slow to navigate. however, the touch screen on the iPhone looks wonderful. Having played with an LG Prada, which is actually quite nice, I do believe that touch screens done properly are the way forward, in conjunction with a limited 'hard' controls.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Most buisnesses exist and function soley so that they can take as much of your money as possible;
I disagree. Most businesses are started because the founder(s) have a vision of what's possible, as with technology. The WOZ didn't design and build the Apple I to make money, he wanted a computer he could use at home. Much like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard he did the work in a garage. It's only later, usually after incorporation, that some turn to the idea of making money. But then they have shareholders they have to satisfy.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You could buy a copy of Tiger and install it on 1000 machines and Apple wouldn't care that much. But, they are a hardware company anyway. Their software is the "hook".
Apple is, or was, a systems integrator. They design the compleat system, hardware and software. This way it "just works". MS's Windows runs on more hardware because, until recently, MS has been a software company and Windows can be installed on many different computers made using many different parts. This however creates the problem where that the software might not work on every possible combination of hardware, and frequently the hardware manufacturers will write the drivers.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Just longer than FreeBSD's been dying if I recall correctly
Netcraft confirms it!
(In Soviet Russia Netcraft confirms YOU!)
*ducks*
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I think you are wrong in describing fashionable people as 'fucking morons who will believe anything they see on TV' . Lifestyle magazines are more influential than TV to those fucking morons.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Oohhhhh, Maria Bartiromo...
I have this phone and I'd love to see that.
+++ATH0
- January 10, 2007: MacWorld 2007 keynote, introduces iPhone
- Apple.com iPhone web site
- A couple interviews showing the phone, letting reporters hold it for a couple minutes
- A very few magazine articles with access to Steve Jobs and the iPhone
- Super Bowl "Hello" iPhone commercial
- June 3, 2007: Apple starts running four new commercials that demonstrate features of the phone
Really, this is far, far less promotion than you see for typical new products. Heck, hamburgers at Burger King get more hype than this, by far, in a six month period. Even though they probably eat a whole bunch of them, bloggers don't get excited and blog about it.Apple's biggest contribution to the "hype" came from keeping the project secret until it was up to a point where it could be demonstrated, and then keeping their mouths shut after the MacWorld Keynote, and refusing to answer questions about anything that wasn't demonstrated by Steve Jobs on January 10.
What we're seeing in the media, blogs, and in meatspace is, I think, genuine excitement. People can look at the information that's available, which is I grant you incomplete, but they can also look at the phone in their hand. They can tell immediately that several things they don't like about their phone are fixed by the iPhone. Visual Voicemail is damned exciting. A phone that can access the internet simply and easily is exciting. The Google Maps commercial makes girls squeel and giggle with delight when they see the pins drop... (try it sometime.) I don't think it's hype. I think it's genuine interest.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Bill Gates seems to have noticed. See "My Deepest Fear".
And I suppose Fox News is liberal?
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Super Bowl "Hello" iPhone commercial
The "Hello" iPhone commercial didn't air during the Super Bowl. You're thinking of the Academy Awards.
egads. I need an editor. Thank you for the correction.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Did I claim that apple was hyping this thing? No. I was pointing out that everyone and their mother is hyping this thing, particularly /.. (yes that was my FP) The only reason people are excited is because it's Apple releasing it. If it were MS, Nokia, Motorola, HTC, etc etc releasing it, it might make the back cover news. The fact that they're only adding very small improvements over other (cheaper) PDA phones makes this even more ridiculous. Oh, and they're taking steps backward in other areas too, but lets ignore that part.
The only reason people would really get excited is because they're suckers to marketing. The only real innovation I see here is the voicemail navigation, and I can't see why anyone would pay $500 for that feature. People will blindly buy this thing because it's got an Apple engraved on the back of it, and they see "4 GB of music" stamped on it. Nevermind the specs or any other competing devices that are already on the market. So as much as I wish this thing would DIAF, it's going to be successful because people are idiots to brand recognition.
I'm kind of hoping a private-equity firm or hedge fund buys out Chrysler and turns them around.
Were you being sarcastic? Because the first part of that already happened
I guess I'm behind the tymes, prior to reading the article you provided to link to I hadn't heard of it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Interesting thesis, but I'm not sure how valid it is. I mean, if the point is that "not all of Apple's innovations have been financially successful, but they've persevered in the same business space." ... well sure, that's stupid obvious.
But I suspect that if you look at the failures of Apple, they're mostly dead ends, not links in a chain to an eventual success.
Look at the Newton. Palm took up the mantle of PDA with handwriting recognition, not Apple. Heck, even the iPhone eschews the stylus and handwriting recognition.
The Rockr is a terrible example of TFA's thesis. When the Rockr came out, it was widely believed (and in hindsight, probably correctly) that it was doomed from the start. Feature poor, terrible appearance, small memory -- aside from the integration with iTunes, there was nothing there that suggested it was even related to Apple. And Apple didn't even call it an iPhone, which clearly they were reserving for this, their first real attempt to enter the marketplace.
If anything, the Rockr was a public beta, a way to test the waters -- I don't believe that it was ever felt by the higher ups at Apple that it would be successful in any meaningful way. Too bad nobody told the folks at Motorola.
'They pays their money and get nothing in return.'
They get something: Virus, security risks, planned obsolescence, forced incompatibility, dropped support, threats of lawsuits by their software supplier, automatic shutdown if 'Genuine Advantage' doesn't like their install, buggy email, monopolistic practices, mystery closed source code, an endless stream of fixes, patches. service packs, and second guessing...
If they don't like it - they can buy an Assembler and go Write their OWN Operating System, Applications, and so forth...
Write your own software, it is the only way to be sure of its quality and security...
They keep attempting to fail but fail at failing through saving themselves by getting rid of a complete nutter like Steve Jobs and by inviting back Jobs when he has eventually decided to live in the real world.
I don't know who they "should" have gone with, but we've been quite happy with Tmobile. My personal pet theory is that their coverage is quite mediocre but that the free phones have exceptionally good reception for free phones.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I do not have a Rolex. Perhaps I've never seen one; I'm not exactly the kind of person to have one. But I've heard a fair number of ads for them, and there seem to be some reasonable reasons why it might be worth a bit more than your average watch. (Which is not to say it justifies its cost!)
:) But that's just me.
It's shiny metal that doesn't corrode easily. I like shiny metal.
At least one model is self-powered by your motion, so it never needs winding or a battery.
My impression is that they are wonderfully, elegantly engineered. Every little thing and button is done the best way, not the cheapest way.
It's rugged and damage resistant - I think most have a one-piece metal shell with the space for the action machined out of it, meaning there's no way for it to come apart except where the glass is set into the shell. I believe they're also waterproof.
It's elegant and goes with very formal attire.
All of these things exist in other watches. Those last two are very easy to find independently but harder to find together, because to some extent they tend to conflict.
If all of these qualities are accurate, I might be interested in this watch for, say, $100 instead of the $15 a watch usually is. If it costs $3000, it better have $2900 worth of platinum in it, at commodity prices
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot