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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.
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)
One definition of an expert is someone who has triewd every conceivable way of doing something wrong.
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.
Don't forget about the new product-unveiling product!
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
This comment does come out of left field, but I think they are trying to make a point concerning Apple's risk taking when their financal prospects were less than steller, and thus risked bankruptcy. At least that's my interpretation.
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.
You seem to be totally unaware that some things are actually better than other things, and some things are purely about status.
Not all status symbols are actually good. Most decent restaurants are actually better than fast food, but what exactly does a Rolex do that a regular watch doesn't?
A good segment of the population are, to put it bluntly, fucking morons who will believe anything they see on TV. That does not exactly bolster your case.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
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.
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.
"The only NeXT technology that appears in Apple computers is BSD."
Well, there's Interface Builder. They got that from NeXT. But apart from Interface Builder and BSD, there are no NeXT technologies whatsoever in current Apple computers. Except of course for Cocoa, which is heavily based on NextStep/OpenStep, hence the fact that it has all those classes with names prefixed by "NS". But with the exception of BSD, Interface Builder, and Cocoa, there are no NeXT technologies in Apple computers at all. Unless of course you count Objective-C as a "technology", which NeXt licensed for programming in NeXTStep and OpenStep while Macs were being programmed in Pascal and C++. But I agree that apart from BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, and Objective-C, Apple computers are completely devoid of NeXT technologies. OK, I'll admit that Portable Distributed Objects also came from NeXT. I'll give way on that one. But if you discount BSD, Interface Builder, Cocoa, Objective-C, and PDO, current Apple computers are totally and completely free from NeXT technologies. Utterly without _anything_ from NeXT. Honestly. I mean, WebObjects, which is admittedly a NeXT technology, isn't even installed on most Macs, so _the majority_ of Macs are free from it. Well, they are. Really. So I can, without any pangs of conscience, categorically state that, with the exception of...
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
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?
What does a Rolex _do_.? It costs a lot of money. This will occasionally impress some people. If impressing people who are impressed by Rolexes is important enough to you to make the $3000 cost worthwile then by all means buy one. Being impressed by $3000 wristwatches is totally incomprehensible to me.
I wear a $29 timex ironman. It keeps almost perfect time (loses 4 seconds a year), it has a countdown timer and 2 alarms and runs about 5 years on a battery. Nobody is going to hold me up for my watch either.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
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.
AMONGST our items from neXt are...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's a sort of metalanguage there; you spend the money to communicate that you're committed to making an impression, which is a way of establishing group membership.
You know what? I never want people like that to talk to me. I will stick with jeans and t-shirts, because that gets me into conversations with people who have something to say, which is much more interesting to me than "a LOT of money".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
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.
I work in finance and I have no fucking clue what you said. It's Friday night after a real bender of a workweek. Care to translate that to humanese?
If you're saying you think Apple equity's headed down, I'm afraid you're as clueless and unvisionary as a Ballmer. If the '90s were given to blandness and hegemony—fuck, even grunge was corporate—the '00s are about stark simplicity and elegance, the exact environment in which an Apple can thrive. Shit's only gonna snowball after the elections next year. You think Apple's big now, just wait a few years. It doesn't take a lifelong Mac fanboy like me to tell.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
And I suppose Fox News is liberal?
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
I see your mistake. Your opinion that NeXT was a failure is the fault of a mis-statement in the Economist article. Aplle did not buy NeXT, NeXT acquired Apple for negative 400 million dollars.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bingo. My brother recently started a business in the construction industry and one of the first things he bought (on credit) was a nice, big, fairly new truck. He didn't buy it because he wanted it or needed it to do his job (a $5000 beater with 100,000 miles on it would've worked). He bought it because he was starting a new business, and making an impression on people that he was successful and could afford a nice, big truck is extremely important when forging new business relationships. I guarantee he would lose contracts if he pulled up in a cheap vehicle. Sometimes you have to buy stupid shit to impress stupid people.
Do you wear potato sacks, or do you wear clothes?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If they had something to say, they could use content as a reputation system instead of external symbology.
I know that idiots run my world; I'm an American, look who "leads" my country.
I guess, if high dollar opportunities are worth it to you, I'm very sorry for you. You may want to give some thought to the notion that there might be other ways of obtaining happiness that do not require you to put up with empty status games. You can make plenty of money to be happy and still wear jeans, t-shirts, and whichever watch at Target had the most buttons. (I'm dressing like that and making enough money to easily support four people, give stuff away, and still have some money left over to buy toys.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
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.
I think there is no way that Apple can justify, in its future financials, the level of expectations that are now discounted in its share price. I think this has been true for some time. However, the problem with these things is calling the top. The fact that it is fundamentally a ridiculous price can be true for a long time, and the price can still rise, as it has. So we have to find some moment at which there is a public and visible sign that all the possible good news and more is really in the public domain and discounted.
This just happened. It is like appearing on the cover of Business Week. There are no more surprises to come on the upside. All the surprises will be on the downside. Now, there could be bumps up. But if you are betting, the odds at this point favor the long term put buyer.
I think the iPhone will be a bust - in relation to expectations. But I don't have to be right about this to be right about the puts. The current price is discounting any possible performance. Look at Cisco. It was a great company in 2001. It still is. And you could lose money all the way down.
On the contrary, I think Apple equity is still terribly undervalued for the company's potential to become omnipresent in our lives, like a benevolent Microsoft or Whole Foods. It's taking longer than I'd have thought for institutional investors to realize this, but the foundations are there for future world domination.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
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?
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.
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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
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