Virtuous Cycles and Making Electric Cars

On Virtuous Cycles and Apple Cars..

On occasion, a little hyperbole can make one feel better. But malaise gives way to molar grinding when slavish sycophantism is offered up, instead.

Now that Apple has run out of roadmap for its flagship computer/smartphone/tablet hardware line, it makesperfect sense for the company to go make a car.

You know: if eBay money qualifies you for space travel, then iTunes lucre should get you at least a car company. And the sad thing is the press buying into this hook, line and sinker.

MarketWatch writers have even coined a new term to serve as the mantra for the We Must Be Smart or We Wouldn't Have All This Money dogma: Virtuous Cycle. Read here: http://goo.gl/Nud0K2

Now, I am old enough to have witnessed a couple of these virtuous cycles come and go. Not the least of them was Enron whose black box model for changing a gas pipeline company into a virtual energy company (their words, not mine) which could do no wrong in business was certainly a virtuous cycle. Of course, we know which square Enron landed on when the cycle's end became inevitable.

Forget that Apple has no experience making big things. They'll find folks who do, right? Sure.

Forget that we are nowhere close to being able to supply electrical power- from any combination of sources- to power a complete transition to electric vehicles in the next one hundred years.

And, forget the fact that a company which has never, ever successfully operated a commercial software initiative is expecting to enter into embedded, life-critical software applications development?

Must miracles abound to make this happen? Or just properly shaded glasses?





#apple   #applecar   #enron   #virtuouscycle   #iphone  #ipad   #macbook   #elonmusk

Is Apple's retail store doomed?

 

My first experience with Apple's retail store was in Timonium, MD. I went there to pick up a new PowerBook Titanium laptop.

Waiting for my order to be filled, I strolled between the stylish tables bearing laptops, towers, massive displays like a newly arrived Cardinal swaggering through a Vatican library. The deities were surely smiling down upon this place.

I admired the boxed software arranged neatly into wall shelves as I would have a Pollack or a Raphael. Yes, the current selection was slim but I knew this would be remedied as this new OS X operating system surely became the industry standard. Software providence would abound.

Cue Reality
Apple hardware suffered the same failures as any PC did; OS X wasn't really that much better than Windows and most business software tools we wanted never showed up for the Mac platform.

In the Apple stores, software shelf space shrank and computer hardware gave way to iPods, iPhones, iPads and headphones. The word entertainment made more sense than computing.

Changed World
Since Apple opened its retail stores the world has changed in ways which leave these outlets less useful.

Android has devoured the mobile market leaving Apple with but 12% of the global share. This means consumers are actually choosing between the three major platforms - iOS, Android and Windows - and this is being done at Target, BestBuy, the carrier's retail store or online. Not at the Apple store.

Adding to these woes, Google's Chromebookecosystem is chipping away at Apple's market share in the hardware channel. Microsoft's beta release of the cross-platform Windows 10 is experiencing record-setting downloads which may foretell a shift of Apple hardware users back to the PC fold. Happened to me!

Bricks & Mortar No More
Apple seems to be guiding itself toward revenue streams which offer little to draw consumers into their retail stores. Apple Pay and a new music delivery system won't need bricks and mortar to thrive.

Considering the costs to maintain these properties in high traffic, upscale areas, a shrinkage of the Apple retail system is inevitable.

The deities may no longer be smiling down on the Apple retail stores, perhaps.






#apple   #appleretailstore   #android   #chromebook  #windows10   #ipad   #ipod  

Do You Own That Apple Laptop?

It took only 60 seconds for Regis McKenna and Ridley Scott to cement the vision of Apple Computer as destroyer of evil empires with its 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh commercial.

Judging by the drumbeats on the blogosphere, Apple may be within a few internet seconds of being unmasked as a member of the very Legion of Evil it sought to vanquish. Logging browser URLs into its servers? Storing your text documents on the cloud? Without your knowledge? Tracking your every move with its IoT apps?

Before we start tossing out the finger pointing apologetics for reading every last word of all Terms of Service agreements we come across, let us ask this: do I agree to some hidden TOS when I buy a piece of Apple hardware?

Using software these days is a Faustian Bargain. The creators of the software assume that they can never be recoup what it cost to build (a vanity thing, I imagine), so a little trade is arranged to help even the score: you give up the right to privacy in exchange for using the software- even if your bought it. Pride goeth before a fall.

We assumed that hardware did not fall into thisBargain and we may have been wrong. Apple seems to have now separated the user experience from the hardware itself and justified the data collection there with a Stalinesque argument about it being for our own good. Sound familiar?

Apple Computer never seemed to miss an opportunity to lambast IBM Corporation for its corporate persona and reputation. IBM's history of having complete control over its installed equipment base and how it would be used made them an easy target for poking and prodding in media campaigns. IBM knew what the customer needed and provided it for their own good. Freedom! Democracy of data! Independence! Privacy! Apple!

Look at Apple now: operating a walled garden ecosystem that becomes more difficult to leave with each passing day. Is this another opportunity for another rebel to stand up against an evil empire? Only this time, rebel may be the people themselves. For our own good.

#apple   #security   #walledgarden   #ibm  #ridleyscott   #regismckenna   #privacy  

Apple: Chipped and Shopworn?

This has been a rough couple of weeks for Apple with iCloud security breaches, bend it like Gumby iPhones,it's now a brick iPhones, tax woes with the European Union- oh, where does it end?

As a kid, I went to a carnival once prepared to denounce my citizenship in Mrs. Smith's fourth grade class to become a roustabout.

I was really smitten with the lights, polished brass, the unusual people and that sense of excitement surrounding the whole carnival adventure. I was ready to set out on a new career.

I arrived just ahead of opening time and sneaked in somehow. The place was still quiet as I threaded my way through the maze of motionless rides and shuttered sideshows looking for the boss's office. 

Padding quietly, I began to notice that the folks who were so interesting the night before were pretty average looking in the daylight. And, the vivid colors that shimmered in the wake of flashing colored lights at night were pretty much dirty, chipped and shopworn.

I never made it to the boss's office that day. But I left with a stronger sense of how reality can be subverted- even distorted- into something it is not.

We may have arrived at daylight for a slightly chipped and somewhat shopworn Apple.

#apple   #iphone6   #iphonebending