I coded one of these for whatever was the latest Nokia handset ~2005. Live on-stage reveal and demo to the world's press by CEO IIRC. The software on the phone was supposed to run off our co-host server, but bugfixing down to the wire, so nobody knew but the demo was running off a half-built PC in my buddy's closet connected to his janky cable modem with us watching and sweating and praying. It would have been really, really bad if that demo had failed on-stage.
Unless people are investing their life savings in about-to-expire options, any ridiculous short-term fluctuations in the stock price aren’t affecting them at all.
Valid except for the issue that the live authenticity was part what Apple's culture and cult following attractive to many of the power-users and creatives that made the brand gain enormous value.
Playing it safe with media-trained MBA-centric thinking to avoid volatility works on one level if that's the KPI you're monitoring but it doesn't track the invisible damage done to the brand. Apple is at real risk of becoming a stagnant, Microsoft-like behemoth to the very users that made it cool and that can turn into an exodus that pummels the stock by more than 5-15% for a few weeks and would be much harder to fix.
Ternus hasn't impressed me so far - he's a safe choice and the iPhone Duo is a safe level of innovation alongside the predictable spec bumps to the regular phones and watches. Macbook Neo devalued the brand permanently despite its popularity it kills hardware margins and shows Apple is looking to move all its customers to recurring revenue models using the cloud such that low margin hardware is no longer a problem as it provides a ramp for more customers to the cloud. However that model is now being pushed by Apple like cocaine yet the tech-savvy creatives and heavy weight tech users want something not that. Apple's success or failure medium to long term depends on them not losing relevance to those demographics or the brand value will drop way way way more than 15% for way longer.
I'd say a big part of the problem too is the culture that developed at Apple after they moved into their new Giant Ivory Sphincter HQ building. It's isolated the company from users and allows their internal culture to disconnect from the real world. Such a shame as the HQ could have really been awesome.
I was about to downvote you because I read your username as reply to OP’s comment.
To add: at what point we stop dismissing the culture of our ancestors that we have lost as mere nostalgia? I hate how we cannot have a serious discussion about our modern culture without devolving to this cliché rebuttal. I guess I should keep praying for a coronal mass ejection to free us from our digital jails.
It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation.
Everything that was considered fancy and high-culture when I was in my formative years is fancy and high-culture now and everything after that is slop and mind-rot.
But it makes no difference: the older generations die and the newer ones take over either way, and what's acceptable or even high culture changes.
> It's cliche because every generation has said the exact same thing about the previous generation.
So this means that we have decided a priori that life can only improve in all aspects? That’s evidently absurd.
This is called a thought-terminating cliché. It’s as intellectually nuanced as putting your fingers in your ears and singing “la la I’m right”. It’s often used not because it is true, but because to prove otherwise is very hard and inherently subjective.
I’m assuming you’re implying that ASI will solve death. That seems to me like a possibility; just as the possibility that ASI will kill us all faster rather than solving death. I also don’t know what life will look like post-ASI, and whether it would be an enjoyable and fulfilling existence.
I’m curious about how is it that you’re fully sure that ASI will be a positive thing; it’s not at all obvious to me.
Yes, but for should care if it's 2 years vs 50 years. That's why timeline are important for predictions.
Anyone can predict lots of things that given enough time will eventually be true. "The sun will burn out", "humans as a species will no longer exist", "the US will collapse". That's useless. But those become meaningful if they will happen within the next three years.
It's the reason the saying "the market can be irrational longer than your can stay solvent" has such important meaning.
> Predicting things 5 years too early is often as useless as not predicting anything.
It depends on what type of thing you are predicting and why. Even something as simple as "Enron will implode" in 1995 has very different levels of usefulness if you are planning to short a stock versus figuring out what stock to buy and hold in your retirement account.
>Predicting things 5 years too early is often as useless as not predicting anything.
I dont think Zitron has predicted anything 5 years too early. 1 or 2 at the outside is probably the limit.
I remember during the original internet boom the people who were given the most shit were the ones who predicted the bubble popping a year or two early.
Zitron fits quite neatly in this category: most of the predictions of his Ive seen that are "wrong" are things which could still happen and things where he gave wrong timelines.
Realistically identifying a bubble and the stupidity associated with it just requires an ability to do the research and see through bullshit. identifying even roughly when it will pop really needs a crystal ball. Mass human delusions do not collapse in a predictable way.
My recollection is a couple years before it popped everybody (except tech CEOs going public or investing tens of millions in dog food delivery infrastructure) was in disbelief it hadn't happened yet
yeah I also remember a lot of talk about the bubble for 18 months to 2 years before it actually popped.
i think we're in that (quite long) stage with AI right now where most halfway smart people "know" but they're still invested due to the greater fool theory and still talking their book.
But what’s missing is manual in-browser testing, on the go.
This solves that.
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