4 ms·

>None of Apple's "stack" is available to other companies because they have no incentive to sell components. The reverse happens, they buy up independent compani

>None of Apple's "stack" is available to other companies because they have no incentive to sell components. The reverse happens, they buy up independent companies (like the touch id folks) and prevent anyone else from using a given piece of tech. As Apple's sales success allows them to invest even more in R&D, their tech stack become an even bigger moat. Competitors are going to find it increasingly difficult to create products that can compete with Apple's tech stack on a technological basis.

mschuster91 5y ago
> Competitors are going to find it increasingly difficult to create products that can compete with Apple's tech stack on a technological basis. No one is stopping anyone (outside of US economic sanctions) from getting an ARM architectural license and designing their own CPUs to compete with Apple. There are countless vendors to choose from if you don't have the experience to do yourself, there are IP cores for everything from battery management over memory to AI available on the market. The problem is that, rather than go the expensive Apple route, most seem to be content to pay top dollar to Qualcomm (or for lower classes, Mediatek) and get buggy hardware and BSPs in return, instead of pushing Qualcomm to deliver better quality. And for what it's worth, there are serious competitors to every Apple product. There have been Windows laptops with 32 and 64 GB of RAM years before Apple finally updated their line. Samsung puts up a diverse lineup of phones and tablets that definitely compete with iDevices. Sony has AirPod clones (admittedly they're bulkier, but have more selection in earbuds). There are a number of Apple TV competitors - Roku, Amazon's TV stick, Chromecast to name the most popular ones.
- mrkurt 5y ago
  You literally just said "no one is stopping someone else from building a vertical monopoly". The problem with vertical consolidation is _not_ that they prevent other large companies from competing. There's always a scale where you can replicate work and release a competitive product. ARM is inaccessible to most companies, including companies that don't compete with Apple. In a world where we prevent vertical monopolization, those very nice ARM CPUs Apple and Amazon have on lockdown become commodities and spur all kinds of innovation in other areas. Who do you think pushes Qualcomm to deliver better quality when the two primary consumers of those CPUs aren't buying from third parties?
  - zepto 5y ago
    The framing here is off. It’s fair to say that catching up with Apple is next to impossible. This has absolutely nothing to do with monopolies, and everything to do with their velocity. The idea that we have to somehow overthrow Apple in order to build better things is the problem. Ironically Apple itself had this problem when Steve jobs returned. Microsoft was seen as the ‘problem’ to be overcome and thinking that way prevented Apple from seeing what else was possible. Jobs explicitly rejected this kind of thinking “We have to stop thinking that in order for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” The same holds true now - we need to stop thinking that in order for others to win, Apple has to lose. Apple’s solutions are not the only possible solutions. We don’t have to mimic them.
    - mrkurt 5y ago
      I don't understand why you keep talking about Apple's direct competition? Vertical consolidation is a very different, potentially more harmful problem than "a mobile phone monopoly". More competitive phone market is pretty boring. Good ARM CPUs are not boring, there are all kinds of places those would be amazing that Apple isn't going to bother using them. Apple doesn't have to lose, in a healthy market they'll be able to buy good ARM CPUs just like I will. The problem is that Apple's solutions are the only solutions that get to use certain technologies because they don't want other people to compete with them.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > The problem is that Apple's solutions are the only solutions that get to use certain technologies because they don't want other people to compete with them. This just misunderstands what vertical integration is about. Apple’s solutions aren’t general solutions. They are narrow solutions that work in Apple’s ecosystem. Apple hasn’t developed general solutions that other people could use. This is the whole point. It’s why they can move faster than a modular ecosystem can. This has nothing to do with not letting other people use their technologies. They don’t actually have technologies that anyone other than Apple can use.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
mrkurt 5y ago
I'm less worried about moats (although we should be wary of anticompetitive moats) and more worried about an ecosystem where the already successful companies monopolize access to innovations. Forget competitors, you can't buy the touch ID tech to create things like door locks. Big companies locking up access to markets means big companies are the sole arbiters of what even gets sold.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Forget competitors, you can't buy the touch ID tech to create things like door locks. Doesn’t that mean there is a business opportunity for someone to make touch technology for door locks? Apple isn’t the only company that uses touch sensors.
  - mrkurt 5y ago
    Maybe. The two biggest consumers (apple and google) of touch id like components won't buy from someone else. So the opportunity is quite small. And it's too expensive for a small company that might just want to build a consumer door lock. Apple also acquired patents when they bought AuthenTec. So it might be tough even with unlimited money. Consolidation problems are never an outright ban like a law would be. But raising the cost of entry is just as effective.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > So the opportunity is quite small. And it's too expensive for a small company that might just want to build a consumer door lock. That just indicates that the value of a modular component isn’t high enough to make it worth building for now. Touch ID is not a modular component. It’s part of a system and it’s not designed to be used in door locks. It took a huge amount of R&D overall which was worth it to build into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of phones. Touch ID isn’t just a sensor. It isn’t a technology that can be used in a door lock. At some point it will be cost effective for a door lock component to be built, but there is little connection between this and touch id.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Competitors are going to find it increasingly difficult to create products that can compete with Apple's tech stack on a technological basis. No one is stopping anyone (outside of US economic sanctions) from getting an ARM architectural license and designing their own CPUs to compete with Apple. There are countless vendors to choose from if you don't have the experience to do yourself, there are IP cores for everything from battery management over memory to AI available on the market. The problem is that, rather than go the expensive Apple route, most seem to be content to pay top dollar to Qualcomm (or for lower classes, Mediatek) and get buggy hardware and BSPs in return, instead of pushing Qualcomm to deliver better quality. And for what it's worth, there are serious competitors to every Apple product. There have been Windows laptops with 32 and 64 GB of RAM years before Apple finally updated their line. Samsung puts up a diverse lineup of phones and tablets that definitely compete with iDevices. Sony has AirPod clones (admittedly they're bulkier, but have more selection in earbuds). There are a number of Apple TV competitors - Roku, Amazon's TV stick, Chromecast to name the most popular ones.

mrkurt 5y ago
You literally just said "no one is stopping someone else from building a vertical monopoly". The problem with vertical consolidation is _not_ that they prevent other large companies from competing. There's always a scale where you can replicate work and release a competitive product. ARM is inaccessible to most companies, including companies that don't compete with Apple. In a world where we prevent vertical monopolization, those very nice ARM CPUs Apple and Amazon have on lockdown become commodities and spur all kinds of innovation in other areas. Who do you think pushes Qualcomm to deliver better quality when the two primary consumers of those CPUs aren't buying from third parties?
- zepto 5y ago
  The framing here is off. It’s fair to say that catching up with Apple is next to impossible. This has absolutely nothing to do with monopolies, and everything to do with their velocity. The idea that we have to somehow overthrow Apple in order to build better things is the problem. Ironically Apple itself had this problem when Steve jobs returned. Microsoft was seen as the ‘problem’ to be overcome and thinking that way prevented Apple from seeing what else was possible. Jobs explicitly rejected this kind of thinking “We have to stop thinking that in order for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” The same holds true now - we need to stop thinking that in order for others to win, Apple has to lose. Apple’s solutions are not the only possible solutions. We don’t have to mimic them.
  - mrkurt 5y ago
    I don't understand why you keep talking about Apple's direct competition? Vertical consolidation is a very different, potentially more harmful problem than "a mobile phone monopoly". More competitive phone market is pretty boring. Good ARM CPUs are not boring, there are all kinds of places those would be amazing that Apple isn't going to bother using them. Apple doesn't have to lose, in a healthy market they'll be able to buy good ARM CPUs just like I will. The problem is that Apple's solutions are the only solutions that get to use certain technologies because they don't want other people to compete with them.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > The problem is that Apple's solutions are the only solutions that get to use certain technologies because they don't want other people to compete with them. This just misunderstands what vertical integration is about. Apple’s solutions aren’t general solutions. They are narrow solutions that work in Apple’s ecosystem. Apple hasn’t developed general solutions that other people could use. This is the whole point. It’s why they can move faster than a modular ecosystem can. This has nothing to do with not letting other people use their technologies. They don’t actually have technologies that anyone other than Apple can use.
- mschuster91 5y ago

mrkurt 5y ago

I'm less worried about moats (although we should be wary of anticompetitive moats) and more worried about an ecosystem where the already successful companies monopolize access to innovations. Forget competitors, you can't buy the touch ID tech to create things like door locks. Big companies locking up access to markets means big companies are the sole arbiters of what even gets sold.

zepto 5y ago
> Forget competitors, you can't buy the touch ID tech to create things like door locks. Doesn’t that mean there is a business opportunity for someone to make touch technology for door locks? Apple isn’t the only company that uses touch sensors.
- mrkurt 5y ago
  Maybe. The two biggest consumers (apple and google) of touch id like components won't buy from someone else. So the opportunity is quite small. And it's too expensive for a small company that might just want to build a consumer door lock. Apple also acquired patents when they bought AuthenTec. So it might be tough even with unlimited money. Consolidation problems are never an outright ban like a law would be. But raising the cost of entry is just as effective.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > So the opportunity is quite small. And it's too expensive for a small company that might just want to build a consumer door lock. That just indicates that the value of a modular component isn’t high enough to make it worth building for now. Touch ID is not a modular component. It’s part of a system and it’s not designed to be used in door locks. It took a huge amount of R&D overall which was worth it to build into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of phones. Touch ID isn’t just a sensor. It isn’t a technology that can be used in a door lock. At some point it will be cost effective for a door lock component to be built, but there is little connection between this and touch id.