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