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There's nothing new about this. Apple has been doing vertical integration for decades. When things went badly, pundits criticized it. Now it's the whole new rag

by zeteo 15y ago

There's nothing new about this. Apple has been doing vertical integration for decades. When things went badly, pundits criticized it. Now it's the whole new rage. There's nothing particularly enlightening in this article, nothing that would be of any use to anyone hoping to replicate some of Apple's success. Advice to have good design and a low price is just a platitude.

mechanical_fish 15y ago
I'm upvoting your first three sentences: It's true, Apple has indeed been vertically integrated for decades. My upvote does not extend to the last two sentences, however. This article is not merely about "have a good design and a low price". It's about focus: By building a smaller number of products with a much smaller variety of configurations and tightly controlled interfaces, Apple gets economies of scale that allow it to reach a previously unreachable plateau of quality-for-cost.
deleted 15y ago
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wavephorm 15y ago
Apple's vertical model didn't work for the PC industry for a variety of reasons. But now in the new mobile industry it is so successful, that literally every big company is trying to go all vertical, all the time. Hardware, software, development tools, operating system, mobile and desktop platforms, app stores, single sign-on, cloud services, music, movies, and tv delivery, voice and video communications... Google, Apple, and Microsoft are all trying to build an entire computing stack, back to front, and leave the other guys out. Nokia, Motorola, and HP knew they weren't going to be able to compete in the new vertical world. Samsung is trying to get into the OS game with their Bada and maybe something after that.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Apple's vertical model is working in the PC industry now, but only because everyone else is fucking up so much. I think if any other PC manufacturer handled these issues as well as Apple does, it wouldn't matter that they don't make the operating system. Even Apple barely makes any of the actual hardware.

by zeteo 15y ago

mechanical_fish 15y ago

I'm upvoting your first three sentences: It's true, Apple has indeed been vertically integrated for decades. My upvote does not extend to the last two sentences, however. This article is not merely about "have a good design and a low price". It's about focus: By building a smaller number of products with a much smaller variety of configurations and tightly controlled interfaces, Apple gets economies of scale that allow it to reach a previously unreachable plateau of quality-for-cost.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

wavephorm 15y ago

Apple's vertical model didn't work for the PC industry for a variety of reasons. But now in the new mobile industry it is so successful, that literally every big company is trying to go all vertical, all the time. Hardware, software, development tools, operating system, mobile and desktop platforms, app stores, single sign-on, cloud services, music, movies, and tv delivery, voice and video communications... Google, Apple, and Microsoft are all trying to build an entire computing stack, back to front, and leave the other guys out. Nokia, Motorola, and HP knew they weren't going to be able to compete in the new vertical world. Samsung is trying to get into the OS game with their Bada and maybe something after that.

philwelch 15y ago
Apple's vertical model is working in the PC industry now, but only because everyone else is fucking up so much. I think if any other PC manufacturer handled these issues as well as Apple does, it wouldn't matter that they don't make the operating system. Even Apple barely makes any of the actual hardware.