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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
by zepto 6y 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 6y agoI 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 6y 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.