4 ms·

> Something has fundamentally changed That right there's the problem, see. By then, it's usually well past the ideal time to sell.

pmorici 6y ago
The notion that you can ever sell at the absolute ideal time is a fantasy. The market typically takes a while to reflect fundamental change and does so gradually over time. Look at Nokia for example. From the day the iPhone was announced you could have sold at almost any time in the next 1.5 years and come out ahead vs acting immediately. Initially the market thought the iPhone was positive for Nokia, it took that long for people to realize it would be their demise.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It definitely wasn't clear that Apple was going to dominate the market for those 1.5 years. Most people expected that HTC, Palm, RIM, and Nokia were going to respond with better offerings for a better price. Most people in tech hated the early iPhones and thought it was going to be a failure. I wouldn't have sold my Nokia stock in the first 1.5 years.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Overall yes it wasn't clear to most commentators, but there were actually plenty of people who predicted pretty much exactly what would happen and why, Horace Dediu for example. When the iPhone came out I knew Apple would own the future, I could feel it in my bones not only because their software technology was so ridiculously far in advance of everyone else, but because none of their competitors except Google even seemed aware what was happening or why and Google at the time wasn't even in the game yet. A lot of my friends thought I was going a bit crazy, I was so sure Apple was going to utterly own the future. I was entranced by the early iPhones, they felt like something out of Star Trek except even better. Maybe part of it was I always hated mobile phones, they were so clunky and ugly and the tech was so primitive. The iPhone felt like an advanced graphics workstation in an era of teletype terminals. The problem was I was recently married, had two kids and we'd just bought our first house at a huge financial stretch, and had no spare savings whasoever. We were practically living hand to mouth. When we did have spare savings 6 or 7 years later I did consider buying some APPL, but I thought most of the opportunity cost had already passed and Android seemed to be catching up at last. Dumb. But honestly, imagine what today would be like if Andy Rubin hadn't immediately ditched their plans for Android to be a BlackBerry clone and switched tracks to cloning the iPhone. Microsoft genuinely didn't get it. They took 3 years to even realise there was a problem. Sorry, ranting, but thinking about this really triggered memories from that era.
    - close04 6y ago
      > there were actually plenty of people who predicted pretty much exactly what would happen and why You have the full spectrum of opinions on what will happen and why for pretty much every non-trivial topic. It's the power of hindsight that lets you select the correct ones and maybe even assume that it was indeed trivial, all the information was out there. Would you bet your life savings on that one person who predicts against the trend? That's not dumb, it's realistic and cautious. In some situations the risk isn't worth it.
  - pmorici 6y ago
    My impression of prominent criticism of the early iPhone was that it was shallow and self serving. The things competitors were saying about it, like implying it wouldn't be successful because people really wanted a real keyboard, seemed ridiculous as a serious rational. It is generally safe to assume, baring strong evidence to the contrary, that a large dominant incumbent will fail to adapt in the face of fundamental change to an industry brought by a new entrant. That there are still large groups of people that take the other side of this assumption is surprising to me. The most recent prominent example is everyone out there saying that incumbent car companies are going to out complete Tesla in electric or self driving cars. That view seems to be on the verge of being undeniably wrong.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      > My impression of prominent criticism of the early iPhone was that it was shallow and self serving. The things competitors were saying about it, like implying it wouldn't be successful because people really wanted a real keyboard, seemed ridiculous as a serious rational. That wasn't a ridiculous idea at all at the time. The lack of tactile feedback was (and is) a legitimate industrial design concern, and it had a learning curve that was difficult for many people.[1] I had many customers at the time who demanded continued support for their blackberries because of the difficulty they had with the iPhone keyboard. Heck, even I chose to go with an HTC device that had a hard keyboard, because I found it easier. Everyone now finds modern on-screen keyboards to be intuitive, partially because they've improved and they're larger, but also because people understand how they work. At the time of the iPhone launch, people didn't understand auto-correct or how they didn't have to worry about how their thumbs were larger than the keys. Even Jobs himself admitted there was a learning curve: "Once you learn to trust the keyboard, it’s a better keyboard."[0] 0: https://radarla.com/interview-steve-jobs/ https://radarla.com/interview-steve-jobs/ 1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1497367 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1497367

pmorici 6y ago

The notion that you can ever sell at the absolute ideal time is a fantasy. The market typically takes a while to reflect fundamental change and does so gradually over time. Look at Nokia for example. From the day the iPhone was announced you could have sold at almost any time in the next 1.5 years and come out ahead vs acting immediately. Initially the market thought the iPhone was positive for Nokia, it took that long for people to realize it would be their demise.

kube-system 6y ago
It definitely wasn't clear that Apple was going to dominate the market for those 1.5 years. Most people expected that HTC, Palm, RIM, and Nokia were going to respond with better offerings for a better price. Most people in tech hated the early iPhones and thought it was going to be a failure. I wouldn't have sold my Nokia stock in the first 1.5 years.
- simonh 6y ago
  Overall yes it wasn't clear to most commentators, but there were actually plenty of people who predicted pretty much exactly what would happen and why, Horace Dediu for example. When the iPhone came out I knew Apple would own the future, I could feel it in my bones not only because their software technology was so ridiculously far in advance of everyone else, but because none of their competitors except Google even seemed aware what was happening or why and Google at the time wasn't even in the game yet. A lot of my friends thought I was going a bit crazy, I was so sure Apple was going to utterly own the future. I was entranced by the early iPhones, they felt like something out of Star Trek except even better. Maybe part of it was I always hated mobile phones, they were so clunky and ugly and the tech was so primitive. The iPhone felt like an advanced graphics workstation in an era of teletype terminals. The problem was I was recently married, had two kids and we'd just bought our first house at a huge financial stretch, and had no spare savings whasoever. We were practically living hand to mouth. When we did have spare savings 6 or 7 years later I did consider buying some APPL, but I thought most of the opportunity cost had already passed and Android seemed to be catching up at last. Dumb. But honestly, imagine what today would be like if Andy Rubin hadn't immediately ditched their plans for Android to be a BlackBerry clone and switched tracks to cloning the iPhone. Microsoft genuinely didn't get it. They took 3 years to even realise there was a problem. Sorry, ranting, but thinking about this really triggered memories from that era.
  - close04 6y ago
    > there were actually plenty of people who predicted pretty much exactly what would happen and why You have the full spectrum of opinions on what will happen and why for pretty much every non-trivial topic. It's the power of hindsight that lets you select the correct ones and maybe even assume that it was indeed trivial, all the information was out there. Would you bet your life savings on that one person who predicts against the trend? That's not dumb, it's realistic and cautious. In some situations the risk isn't worth it.
- pmorici 6y ago
  My impression of prominent criticism of the early iPhone was that it was shallow and self serving. The things competitors were saying about it, like implying it wouldn't be successful because people really wanted a real keyboard, seemed ridiculous as a serious rational. It is generally safe to assume, baring strong evidence to the contrary, that a large dominant incumbent will fail to adapt in the face of fundamental change to an industry brought by a new entrant. That there are still large groups of people that take the other side of this assumption is surprising to me. The most recent prominent example is everyone out there saying that incumbent car companies are going to out complete Tesla in electric or self driving cars. That view seems to be on the verge of being undeniably wrong.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > My impression of prominent criticism of the early iPhone was that it was shallow and self serving. The things competitors were saying about it, like implying it wouldn't be successful because people really wanted a real keyboard, seemed ridiculous as a serious rational. That wasn't a ridiculous idea at all at the time. The lack of tactile feedback was (and is) a legitimate industrial design concern, and it had a learning curve that was difficult for many people.[1] I had many customers at the time who demanded continued support for their blackberries because of the difficulty they had with the iPhone keyboard. Heck, even I chose to go with an HTC device that had a hard keyboard, because I found it easier. Everyone now finds modern on-screen keyboards to be intuitive, partially because they've improved and they're larger, but also because people understand how they work. At the time of the iPhone launch, people didn't understand auto-correct or how they didn't have to worry about how their thumbs were larger than the keys. Even Jobs himself admitted there was a learning curve: "Once you learn to trust the keyboard, it’s a better keyboard."[0] 0: https://radarla.com/interview-steve-jobs/ https://radarla.com/interview-steve-jobs/ 1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1497367 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1497367