4 ms·

Apple, despite its many hit products, is still open to criticism. Fred's prediction is not flamebait, it's just a prediction, and a totally fair prediction in m

by yef 16y ago

Apple, despite its many hit products, is still open to criticism. Fred's prediction is not flamebait, it's just a prediction, and a totally fair prediction in my opinion. I'm glad the startup and early adopter community recognizes Apple fanboyism. I hope they recognize their own bias toward Apple as well, which I've noticed here on HN.

akamaka 16y ago
Agreed, criticism is great. But what Fred Wilson wrote is closer to flamebait than well thought-out commentary. Kind of like Gruber calling Eric Schmidt "creepy".
- Samuel_Michon 16y ago
  The post in question: http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/creep_executive_officer http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/creep_executive_officer Some choice quotes: Here’s my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. I think he’s a really weird dude. Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google and privacy: "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." Schmidt said: "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating that serendipity can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically."
protomyth 16y ago
I think some of the stress over this predication can be broke down in the "Apple lost to Windows therefore Apple will lose to Android" argument combined with "there can be only one / highlanderism" and a lack of historical context. With all this going on, articles in the class seem to be thrown into the link-bait category. In 1985, the PC had around a 48% market share. Commodore had a higher market share than Apple. This was the year after the Macintosh introduction and the Apple II and Macintosh combined didn't amount to Commodore 64 sales or the larger PC sales. So all this Macintosh had the market and lost it to PCs is basically and untrue premise. It's not fanboyism to say a critique is not fact based, it is just good thought process. If you were really looking at this, ask how the Commodore 64 gave up all its market share to IBM or why (unlike most of the consumer electronics industry) a company was able to take 90% of the market. This of course ignores the example of the iPod (which was done by the current management team) and the fact that the current management team was not at Apple from 1985 - 1996 to make decisions about the Macintosh.

by yef 16y ago

akamaka 16y ago

Agreed, criticism is great. But what Fred Wilson wrote is closer to flamebait than well thought-out commentary. Kind of like Gruber calling Eric Schmidt "creepy".

Samuel_Michon 16y ago
The post in question: http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/creep_executive_officer http://daringfireball.net/2010/08/creep_executive_officer Some choice quotes: Here’s my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. I think he’s a really weird dude. Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google and privacy: "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." Schmidt said: "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating that serendipity can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically."

protomyth 16y ago

I think some of the stress over this predication can be broke down in the "Apple lost to Windows therefore Apple will lose to Android" argument combined with "there can be only one / highlanderism" and a lack of historical context. With all this going on, articles in the class seem to be thrown into the link-bait category. In 1985, the PC had around a 48% market share. Commodore had a higher market share than Apple. This was the year after the Macintosh introduction and the Apple II and Macintosh combined didn't amount to Commodore 64 sales or the larger PC sales. So all this Macintosh had the market and lost it to PCs is basically and untrue premise. It's not fanboyism to say a critique is not fact based, it is just good thought process. If you were really looking at this, ask how the Commodore 64 gave up all its market share to IBM or why (unlike most of the consumer electronics industry) a company was able to take 90% of the market. This of course ignores the example of the iPod (which was done by the current management team) and the fact that the current management team was not at Apple from 1985 - 1996 to make decisions about the Macintosh.