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It kind of is, when they were given $500B and told to make a return in 10-ish years. They have to put the capital in play where it has the largest ROI potential
by jermaustin1 1y ago
It kind of is, when they were given $500B and told to make a return in 10-ish years. They have to put the capital in play where it has the largest ROI potential. They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him.
I don't know enough about any of this to weigh in on it, but when you take investor money, you aren't supposed to sit on it or do slow burn (at least not VC money), its meant to be gasoline, and you moonshot with it.
- pier25 1y ago> They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him. I seriously doubt it. If anything because Apple let him go exactly when they were looking for a new hit product like the iPhone. But also because how he handled the Mac the years before he was fired. All his big decisions were just bad. The butterfly keyboard, touchbar, USB-C only ports, etc. Heck even the 2013 Mac Pro (the trashcan) was an engineering failure. They could never upgrade it because, according to Craig Federighi, they got themselves into a thermal corner caused by the design of it[1]. [1] https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
- jermaustin1 1y agoThe greatest home run hitters of all time average < 30% hit rate (not 30% of hits are home runs, but 30% of swings are even hits). Sometimes you gotta swing for that fence regardless of the outcome.
- pier25 1y agoBut even those best home run hitters reach a point where the hit rate drops way below average...
- dowager_dan99 1y agosince we're torturing the analogy... you don't measure a baseball team's success by the # of HR's one player records in a season, you talk championships over time. Sometimes they're related, but less frequently than you'd think.
- some_random 1y agoThat analogy breaks down almost immediately. I get your point that when you go out and try to do things sometimes you will fail, but the problem is that many of his design failures were seen _even at the time_ to be failures.
- MajimasEyepatch 1y agoI don't necessarily think Ive is going to succeed, but if you're going to make a lot of bets, taking one bet on someone who succeeded before seems pretty reasonable. He wouldn't be the first person to rise to great heights, fall, and rise again, even in the Apple world.
- some_random 1y agoI absolutely agree right up until we start talking about price. Obviously this deal was all in stock from someone who has a history creative corporate control structures, but nevertheless the on paper cost of was $6.4 billion. That's a hell of a bet.
- b112 1y agoThis whole thread seems weird to me. There's no way on Earth this is to acquire talent, let alone one person alone. For this price, I'd figure something already exists.
- nmstoker 1y agoSam did say he took one of the prototypes home and he thought it was "the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen"
- to11mtm 1y agoA good batter knows when the pitch is bad and you take the balls and get a walk.
- SJC_Hacker 1y agoI hate sports analogies, because they're arbitrary A good QB will complete 65% of his passes A good goaltender will stop 90% of shots A good bowler will get a strike 95% of the time
- Waterluvian 1y agoThis gave me an idea: a Slack AI that will give me an analogy to support my point, whatever it may be. “Hey Analogai, help me out here.” “Ah I see what Chip Frumpkins, Director of Looking Relevant is saying. It’s basically that we need to throw a lot of paint at the wall to see what sticks. And if we fail, at least we’ve got a Jackson Pollock.”
- Spooky23 1y agoBaseball is the hardest sport, but it’s a zero sum game. The .300 batting average is against equally elite pitching. Engineering or design is about adding value. Taking the raw engineering of the components and interfaces that defined the iPhone and making a system of it is design at its peak and almost art. Taking a proven form factor like a laptop, not talking to users and making it worse is just a misstep. It wasn’t a complete disaster only because the bar is so low, the defective Apple laptop is still the best laptop in the market.
- paul7986 1y agoAs one of the fervent 500 million daily GPT users it’s a no brainer for Open AI to create a personal mobile AI device or an AI phone with GPT accessible right from your Lock Screen. It could… - interface with AI Agents( businesses, friends & family’s agents, etc) to get things done & used as a knowledgeable. Once u pick up the device it’s like a FaceTime call with your AI agent/friend in which u can skin to look however u want (a deceased loved one ..tho that might be too out there). - It visually surfs the Web with you.. making u not open a web browser as much - take the best selfies of u…gets you to the best lighting. Overall excited to see their vision and leave/drop Apple’s now boring iPhone for a GPT phone or personal mobile AI device. I think a phone form factor would be best, but we’ll see.
- pier25 1y agoAnd you seriously think Ive could be responsible for leading this effort?
- paul7986 1y agoYou & just a dude here with ideas that in time go nowhere or maybe somewhere. Altman noted different demographics use GPT differently with 18 to 20 somethings not making decisions without consulting GPT (could be marketing speak but with some truth).
- pier25 1y agohow is this related to Ive being competent or not?
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoObviously the plan is to bring back Jobs 2.0 AI Edition as a conversational agent and personal coach. Apple certainly aren't going to do it, so who better than Ive?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 1y agoThe trash can was a bet on external GPU enclosures, which are technically feasible but just never took off in the marketplace. It was great engineering for a use case that just didn’t pan out.
- pier25 1y agoApple never really wanted to support eGPU. That's why the marketplace never took off.
- snowwrestler 1y agoYes they did, they redesigned an entire very expensive product category around them.
- Spooky23 1y agoHe transformed the MacBook Pro into its pure essence, the ultimate form, meant to be used on a slab of polished granite in a HEPA filtered room, with only a precisely aligned array of dongles to offset the clean vision. The fact the you took your laptop out in the field or to a couch in some barn like a filthy animal, corrupting perfection with dust and grease, rendering the keyboard useless is on you. It is a reflection of your own animal nature.
- Naomarik 1y agoEvery Macbook user I've seen seems to have an ultra smudged fingerprint screen as if they were using an iPad with so many layers of oil it shimmers as a rainbow, with sprinkles with various unique flakes of dandruff, and dirt encrusted on their trackpad and keyboard. It stirs up conniptions.
- myko 1y agoUSB-C only ports were good though? Spot on about the rest, though. I still chuckle when I see a new laptop with USB-A ports
- AStonesThrow 1y agoYou know, when we upgraded to USB-C I thought they were mostly nifty. Reversible, quite universal, fully embraced by everyone. But over 7 years of using them, I've come to resent some of their differences with past USB connectors. Very small, insecure friction grip, reversible, more delicate. Also it seems that device designers think that a newer generation of USB needs fewer ports? My Lenovo ThinkPad had 2x USB-A and 2x USB-C in 2018. Now I've got a Pixel with 1x USB-C and a Chromebook with 1x USB-A and 2x USB-C; on each of those devices you need one port for charging. So if USB is more versatile and compatible than ever, why am I not allowed to plug in all my stuff at once?
- cma 1y ago> They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him All they have to do is convince investors of that before the next round and they get a net return on him.
- rchaud 1y agoThe iPhone's value comes from its software ecosystem and camera/SoC hardware, which Ive had zero involvement with.
- MisterSandman 1y agoThe first iPhone was a hardware engineering marvel, it was leaps and bounds more premium than any phone in that generation. It took other companies years to catch up.
- fernandopj 1y agoI'd add those 2G > 3G > 3GS > 4 > 4s were iteration marvels to witness.
- rockemsockem 1y agoBut you're not asserting that Ive was involved in that either, right?
- ycombinator_acc 1y agoI’m unsure what he’s trying to say either. The gibberish and out-of-context replies ITT are making me think HN, like many other sites, is laden with bots now.
- wpm 1y agoJony Ive never had even the iPhone in him. He is an excellent designer. He was never a product person.
- nine_k 1y ago> an excellent designer. He was never a product person. It's like an excellent captain who never was a mariner, some useless theoretical excellence.
- MegaButts 1y ago> when they were given $500B You're off by an order of magnitude here.
- rockemsockem 1y agoHow much credit does he really deserve for the iPhone? Jobs and Fadell were obviously both involved in the iPhone too and Nest has some pretty appealing design without Jony being involved at all.
- layoric 1y agoSource? They did a $40B funding round for which Softbank is on the hook for most of it, and they are going into debt cause they don't have the cash either [0]. IMO, these acquisitions are due to the fact they know just selling the model isn't where the huge margins are, selling the verticals is. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/softbank-taps-mizuho-smbc-jpmorgan-to-lead-15-billion-loan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/softbank-...