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This comment has a negative tone, but this doesn't seem to me to be a tragedy. Acquiring talent and putting them on the bench to stave off would-be competitors

This comment has a negative tone, but this doesn't seem to me to be a tragedy. Acquiring talent and putting them on the bench to stave off would-be competitors stifles innovation (re: Palihapitiya's criticism of Google). Acquiring talent and putting them to use on projects that achieve more scale and impact, sooner, than could happen at a small company -- that seems like innovation and the free market market at its best. It's not like these people had their work stolen -- they were compensated!! Presumably quite well.

rektide 6y ago
> Acquiring talent and putting them to use on projects that achieve more scale and impact, sooner, than could happen at a small company -- that seems like innovation and the free market market at its best. So, you're a fan of a free market, where free is defined as whatever direction Apple wants to go. Got it. Free for Apple to do as they please. I don't know if there's quite "consensus", but definitely one of the top 3 greatest, most important events in all computing was the Gang of Nine taking & extending IBM's AT Compatible bus to build the new, intercompatible ISA[1] bus. It took the fractured, proprietary world of microcomputers by storm, savaged many great company, by creating a genuine open market for personal computers. It commodified the system, allowed anyone to compete & to deliver peripherals & changes & innovations. The Gang of Nine freed a locked down proprietary computing market. Without their actions, we might not be typing on laptops, we might not have smartphones today. They freed the market. Innovation churned greatly, because there was so much going on, so much creativity, so many different things being tried. Today, only a very very few have the power to shape things. There are only two major smartphone OSes on the planet. There are only a couple scrappy hopefuls about, intent on freeing the market from this stagnancy, from everyone being on the same OSes for the entire next decade too: folks like Pine64, who are building a Linux PinePhone project, who are building great low cost open source dev boards, who are building DIY low-bandwidth long-distance LoRaWAN[2]. Society needs to support healthy competitive free market innovation. Simply measuring how quickly one company is free to do whatever it wants, how quickly it can iterate, is not enough. All great events in computing, the modern saga of computing as we know it, came from a genuine freedom to explore & tinker with what might be possible. Leaving Tim Cook in charge of this human project is drastically against the human spirit of liberty & progress, and there's no good in computing that has ever come from these kinds of totalizing powers, extreme vertical integration, & closed systems. These players have always ended up ossifying, off in some crystal palace they've built themselves, direly needing to be disrupted. Being free from competition, alone in your innovating, is a tragedy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Arc... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145684
- mushufasa 6y ago
  > Free for Apple to do as they please. What other definition of free do you suggest? The companies and employees they hired also had the freedom to reject the offers if they so chose. Freedom is consent.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Which ultimately ends in monopoly or oligopoly, and strips consent from all but a tiny handful of beneficiaries.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- spijdar 6y ago
  May I suggest the term you're looking for might be "open market" more than "free market"? Everything Apple is doing is empowered by the free market. As an aside, using the ISA bus as an example of the benefits of open systems is ... Kinda weird. ISA busses were open, but the remainder of the systems tended to be clones of a proprietary system, and they "took the world by storm" by snowballing on the success of said proprietary system. PCs didn't only become successful after ISA created an open market for peripheral cards -- that enabled a slew of companies to expand and profit on an existing demand for PC compatibles running DOS/Windows.
- scruffyherder 6y ago
  And yet soviet computers were at best stolen western designs. Where is AT&T defining the market today? Where is General Motors in the world of operating systems today, despite being an early licensee of UNIX?

rektide 6y ago

> Acquiring talent and putting them to use on projects that achieve more scale and impact, sooner, than could happen at a small company -- that seems like innovation and the free market market at its best. So, you're a fan of a free market, where free is defined as whatever direction Apple wants to go. Got it. Free for Apple to do as they please. I don't know if there's quite "consensus", but definitely one of the top 3 greatest, most important events in all computing was the Gang of Nine taking & extending IBM's AT Compatible bus to build the new, intercompatible ISA[1] bus. It took the fractured, proprietary world of microcomputers by storm, savaged many great company, by creating a genuine open market for personal computers. It commodified the system, allowed anyone to compete & to deliver peripherals & changes & innovations. The Gang of Nine freed a locked down proprietary computing market. Without their actions, we might not be typing on laptops, we might not have smartphones today. They freed the market. Innovation churned greatly, because there was so much going on, so much creativity, so many different things being tried. Today, only a very very few have the power to shape things. There are only two major smartphone OSes on the planet. There are only a couple scrappy hopefuls about, intent on freeing the market from this stagnancy, from everyone being on the same OSes for the entire next decade too: folks like Pine64, who are building a Linux PinePhone project, who are building great low cost open source dev boards, who are building DIY low-bandwidth long-distance LoRaWAN[2]. Society needs to support healthy competitive free market innovation. Simply measuring how quickly one company is free to do whatever it wants, how quickly it can iterate, is not enough. All great events in computing, the modern saga of computing as we know it, came from a genuine freedom to explore & tinker with what might be possible. Leaving Tim Cook in charge of this human project is drastically against the human spirit of liberty & progress, and there's no good in computing that has ever come from these kinds of totalizing powers, extreme vertical integration, & closed systems. These players have always ended up ossifying, off in some crystal palace they've built themselves, direly needing to be disrupted. Being free from competition, alone in your innovating, is a tragedy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standard_Arc... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145684

mushufasa 6y ago
> Free for Apple to do as they please. What other definition of free do you suggest? The companies and employees they hired also had the freedom to reject the offers if they so chose. Freedom is consent.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Which ultimately ends in monopoly or oligopoly, and strips consent from all but a tiny handful of beneficiaries.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
spijdar 6y ago
May I suggest the term you're looking for might be "open market" more than "free market"? Everything Apple is doing is empowered by the free market. As an aside, using the ISA bus as an example of the benefits of open systems is ... Kinda weird. ISA busses were open, but the remainder of the systems tended to be clones of a proprietary system, and they "took the world by storm" by snowballing on the success of said proprietary system. PCs didn't only become successful after ISA created an open market for peripheral cards -- that enabled a slew of companies to expand and profit on an existing demand for PC compatibles running DOS/Windows.
scruffyherder 6y ago
And yet soviet computers were at best stolen western designs. Where is AT&T defining the market today? Where is General Motors in the world of operating systems today, despite being an early licensee of UNIX?