12 ms·

Competing with a Mac

143 points by co_pl_te 13y ago

wiremine 13y ago
As an aside: anytime I read anything from asymco, I feel much smarter, and much dumber, all at the same time.
drivebyacct2 13y ago
I really wish someone would link the article that was yammering about the A7 and how it was going to lead to desktop/phone convergence. The HN comments were very insightful and mocked it as it deserved to be mocked. Meanwhile, while people circlejerk over iOS + bluetooth keyboard and laugh at the Surface... Microsoft is, you know, actually working on an OS that will truly bridge the gap across devices.
cwoods 13y ago
>The striking thing is how the two companies peaked are almost precisely the same time and how that moment (end of 2010) was not related to the entry timing of their nominal disruptor[iPhone]. Could it be that it was Android that hurt Blackberry and Nokia more than the iPhone did? Low end Android phones definitely replaced a lot of Symbian phones in the marketplace. It would certainly explain the timing of the change. >The idea that Apple is vulnerable to the low end is a relic of an idea. Not seeing how this follows from the data and analysis and seems to be a rather bold claim. There is a real chance of smartphones getting commodotized and it has already happened to a certain extent in China and India, where local OEMs are calling the shots. The reason it's not happening in the US to the same extent is that the carriers hide the true cost of the flagship phones into two year data contracts, unlike, say PCs. However, the contract free prepaid market is growing at a record pace [1] and we may see a real change in the marketplace if the trend continues. Is the upgrade to S4 or the 5s from the S3 or 4S worth $500? [1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/npd-one-third-us-smartphone-sales-were-prepaid-q1/2013-05-16 http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/npd-one-third-us-smartph...
- ricw 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more with both points. Of course android ate Nokia's pie (cheap phones for everyone). Rather unsure about blackberry, i think thats more a thing that android and ios both now have excellent infrastructure integration (MS exchange etc) for corporate support. You're also right with how cheap OEM android phones are taking over the market. iOS is losing marketshare pretty much everywhere where phones are not heavily subsidised or the comparative income is low, namely everywhere but the US and UK (and a couple of others). Unless apple drops its ios prices to more reasonable levels (they are really taking the p*ss), it's going to be the same story as the one that unfolded with mac/windows.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - gibwell 13y ago
    Whilst I agree that Nokia and Blackberry were disrupted by Android, not the iPhone, Apple is gaining customers everywhere. 'Marketshare' is a flawed concept because it assumes a unified market of undifferentiated customers. Apple is simply not in the market of commodity devices. It never had any of that market to lose. Claiming that apple is losing those customers is clearly incorrect. If the story does unfold as it did with Mac/Windows, Apple will again be the clear winner, just as they are in the PC market.
    - sien 13y ago
      Apple is not the 'clear winner' in the PC market, they are a small segment of it. Working in corporate and government environments is an Apple free zone. Lower price competitors have repeatedly caught up and outperformed higher priced vertical companies that make the entire stack. Android is well positioned to do exactly this to Apple over the next decade. Phones and cheaper devices also seem to see this happen repeatedly. Apple's phone division should see a warning in Nokia and RIM, not a comfort. SGI, Sun, Commodore, Atari, DEC and many others are all defunct. All full stack companies. Apple and IBM are left. IBM mainframes are extremely difficult to remove. Apple are easier but may survive with enough iOS lock in. But you'd be very brave to bet on it.
casca 13y ago
Mr Lazaridis and the ridiculous dual-CEO structure are significant contributors to the failure of Blackberry. I have friends there and not one believed that he would be as prescient as saying "If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia".
Kronopath 13y ago
Finally, someone else who agrees that the iPhone was a disruptive product. It had all of the hallmarks of a disruptive product except for the low price. It appealed to a different set of values (i.e. usability and interface), ignored features that were seen as critical in the existing market of smartphone users (No third-party apps at launch? No copy/paste? No editing of Word documents?!), and it blindsided the incumbents (who focused on business users rather than the new market of everyday consumers). Nowadays you'd have trouble convincing people that existing smartphone users mocked the iPhone when it first came out. It's worth noting that even Christensen didn't think the iPhone would be a success.[0] [0] http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/ http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/
- silvestrov 13y ago
  It HAD lower price: it disrupted the portable computers which were more expensive at that time. You already needed to pay for a phone, so the real price compared to a portable was just how much more expensive the iPhone was compared to a standard mobile phone. Due to the system with 2 year phone contracts in USA, that extra price was low.
  - josh2600 13y ago
    This was state of the art around the time the iPhone hit: HTC8525 [0]. That is not a phone, that is a ridiculously small screen welded to a slow computer with terrible battery life; and it was $299 on contract at the time. The disruption in the iPhone was technical, social, political and economic. [0] http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32...
    - pekk 13y ago
      Nah, the old Windows phones were just fine. Did many of the things we now pretend that Apple invented. But they were for nerds. And huge phones sell reasonably well today. The functionality was really already there. The "disruption" was aesthetics, marketing and ease-of-use. And in the end, it's a phone, not a cultural revolution.
hosh 13y ago
Ok, if we're using this framework, here are some interesting thought experiments: (1) What is Google Glass disrupting? What are the faulty assumptions about it? ("iPhone was a pocket Mac, not a better phone. Google Glasses is a ____, not a ?") (2) What are the AI / Machine Learning disrupting? (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, MS) ("AI is a ____, not a ?") (3) What are the Kiva Systems robots disrupting? ("Kiva System robots is a ____, not warehouse automation? Not ?") (4) What are 3D Printers disrupting? Certainly not mass-production factories.
- bane 13y ago
  1) I'm not smart enough to guess on that one. 2) Education and reference resources. I now longer have to spend hours and hours looking up information and synthesizing it myself, I can get an AI to do it for me. (crossing fingers that it synthesizes it like I want it to) 3) Thieving, lazy, sloppy warehouse workers (no offense). The amount of stuff that gets stolen and "missing" out of fulfillment centers is astronomical. Plus, it's basically a a task that doesn't require human level intelligence. What do I need to ship? Where is it? Is it in stock? 4) Service Bureaus and Machine Shops. Prototyping physical things is expensive and time consuming and requires lots of skill to do. When making any kind of physical thing, the equivalent of compiling and debugging, is to run off a prototype at a Bureau. It's so onerous a problem that very few organizations even bother to make more than half a dozen physical prototypes of an item before committing to production. In the end, it'll probably just mean more variety of cheap junk we can buy off of Amazon.
  - hosh 13y ago
    (2) and (3) are interesting responses. But I don't think it is actually using the key insight described in this article. That key insight being that people compare it to what's come before, and that comparison becomes a blinder for it's actual advantages. (4) will happen, but I think the scope is far too small; again it also has the blinders that does not take advantage of the key insight from the article. With 3D printers, you wouldn't buy products off of Amazon so much as buy licenses to fabrication blueprints to print out a product in your garage, similar to the way you can now buy ebooks, digital music, and digital movies from Amazon without the physical product.
blinkingled 13y ago
Blackberry's was the case of being too much in love with their own beliefs and processes. Also known as inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Microsoft also has those tendencies but they tend to get their act somewhat together even if that's too late. Lazaridis saw the iPhone and the Engineer in him went - the battery won't last and it will bring down the AT&T network with its full fledged browser. Ballmer saw the iPhone and laughed at the $500 price. Both did not see the potential from a changing market's standpoint. Battery tech gets better, hardware, networks and OSes get better every year, and the prices can and do fall. But some of it was inevitable for Blackberry. There really wasn't any differentiation potential left behind for them. iPhone got the smooth, attractive, computer replacement part. Android got the customizable, ubiquitous, many options, open and the "not iPhone" part. There just wasn't any way for BB to differentiate and win. They could've had a perfectly smooth touch optimized OS with great BB hardware, security suite and BBM etc. and even then their target market would still be limited. The only way they could've saved themselves was if they had innovated ahead of time. After the iPhone and Android it was game over for them.
- josh2600 13y ago
  How can you innovate when the standard for your product is Java 1.3? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959705
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    If they had bought QNX early and switched to either a recent Java version or another decent language - even something like webOS HTML5/JS/CSS would've worked given a sane looking UI and frameworks.
    - josh2600 13y ago
      I wish I could find the quote but there's a long discussion by a former-RIM employee about the inability of management to come to consensus. To my mind, that's also incredibly ironic because RIM had the dual-CEOs for specifically this reason, to avoid conflict over technical and operational requirements. Edit: Look what I found!!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462453
clarky07 13y ago
The interesting thing about this is that the original iPhone was barely something that could be called a success. It sold 6.1 Million phones over 5 quarters. The recent launch was 9 Million in 3 days. They sold 50% more phones in a weekend than they did in 450 days. Reports of Apple's death are exaggerated I think.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  I think it would be better to compare it to a smartphone of the day, like samsung's blackjack.
- rythie 13y ago
  As a disruptive product, it did exactly what you'd expect it to do, i.e. start slow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
QuantumGood 13y ago
Disruptive products as initially defined are reliant on advances in technology to become good enough to challenge established markets (while they advanced via emerging/self-created markets). Apple was always biding their time, waiting for the right moment for a giant leap forward in consumer satisfaction to become possible; it's the opposite of the incrementalism of the usual disruptive product. Few companies would consider such an approach because it seems to be a much, much bigger risk, leaping so far forward in consumer satisfaction that you are practically creating a new market. But there is an enormous leverage opportunity created when you take this approach: A visionary new product can generate a lot of marketing leverage from a strong sales pitch. It really is better. Using a strong sales pitch for an established "me too" product doesn't generate a lot of marketing leverage. And Apple had the head visionary as head salesperson. The flip side of the potential sales pitch leverage is that the product can likely only be sold via strong sales pitch. It's too new. So the best positioned company to take advantage of the strong selling opportunities of the Apple approach is one with a strong brand as an innovator. Upstarts or stodgy old companies won't know how to really pitch the product compellingly, or will be at too large a disadvantage from their non-existent/badly matched brand. I worry that Apple with Jobs gone will forget to sell their next big innovation strongly enough, and will just rely on their existing customer base and strong brand. It will probably only work well the first time (existing huge base/incredible brand). I say "I worry" because I want Apple to continue creating products that are great leaps forward, and I don't think they can do so perpetually without acknowledging the huge role that a really strong sales pitch plays in the success of such products.
- pekk 13y ago
  Apple was trying and failing for many years. Now they have found a bigger niche in little electronic devices. Good for them! But let's not pretend the earlier failures were all intended as some kind of grand strategy. Apple is not a perfect unicorn. It's just another company, selling products.
  - schraeds 13y ago
    Apple makes more money selling macs than any other pc vendor...
innino 13y ago
Good article, good to see someone who appreciates how strong Apple's strategy really is, rather than just hating. A nice comment somewhere in this thread about CEOs of corps competing to get the best app - Apple managed to turn the iPhone into arguably the premier ego-arena on the planet. A characteristic which gives iOS an allure which should not be underestimated, unless you happen to enjoy being crushed like a bug.
- smackfu 13y ago
  If you weren't aware, Asymco is very pro-Apple. I would be shocked to see any hating from him.
  - innino 13y ago
    Do you mean pro-Apple as in a fanboy who thinks everything Apple does is great, or pro-Apple as in he appreciates and respects their design chops and business acumen?
    - smackfu 13y ago
      Neither really. Pro-Apple in that he is willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt. If they make a decision he doesn't understand or agree with, he will figure out some acceptable reason they would do that he can agree with. Someone who is anti-Apple would look at the same facts and come up with a reason they are incorrect, for doing the same thing. Essentially, I would be shocked if Asymco had a post saying he disagreed with Apple's strategy.
ghshephard 13y ago
The first iPhone was the disruptive product. Everything after that has been incrementalism. The 2013 iPhone 5 is a direct descendent of the 2007 iPhone 5, and the 2007 iPhone 5 was almost a completely different product than my 2006 Treo 700w.
utopkara 13y ago
This article is based on the false premise that somebody with deep knowledge can predict disruptors. I'll tell you why talking heads/pundits/experts couldn't predict, because they are useless, and the whole business of market disruption prediction is built on a ridiculous premise.
canistr 13y ago
I hesitate to agree with this article given that that hindsight is 20/20. If anything, you could mark the decline of the BlackBerry with the introduction of the iPad.
normloman 13y ago
Who cares whether something is disruptive or not? Does it make any difference at all? Are you trying to crack some formula to making disruptive products, because it ain't gonna work.

143 points by co_pl_te 13y ago

As an aside: anytime I read anything from asymco, I feel much smarter, and much dumber, all at the same time.

I really wish someone would link the article that was yammering about the A7 and how it was going to lead to desktop/phone convergence. The HN comments were very insightful and mocked it as it deserved to be mocked. Meanwhile, while people circlejerk over iOS + bluetooth keyboard and laugh at the Surface... Microsoft is, you know, actually working on an OS that will truly bridge the gap across devices.

cwoods 13y ago

>The striking thing is how the two companies peaked are almost precisely the same time and how that moment (end of 2010) was not related to the entry timing of their nominal disruptor[iPhone]. Could it be that it was Android that hurt Blackberry and Nokia more than the iPhone did? Low end Android phones definitely replaced a lot of Symbian phones in the marketplace. It would certainly explain the timing of the change. >The idea that Apple is vulnerable to the low end is a relic of an idea. Not seeing how this follows from the data and analysis and seems to be a rather bold claim. There is a real chance of smartphones getting commodotized and it has already happened to a certain extent in China and India, where local OEMs are calling the shots. The reason it's not happening in the US to the same extent is that the carriers hide the true cost of the flagship phones into two year data contracts, unlike, say PCs. However, the contract free prepaid market is growing at a record pace [1] and we may see a real change in the marketplace if the trend continues. Is the upgrade to S4 or the 5s from the S3 or 4S worth $500? [1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/npd-one-third-us-smartphone-sales-were-prepaid-q1/2013-05-16 http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/npd-one-third-us-smartph...

ricw 13y ago
Couldn't agree more with both points. Of course android ate Nokia's pie (cheap phones for everyone). Rather unsure about blackberry, i think thats more a thing that android and ios both now have excellent infrastructure integration (MS exchange etc) for corporate support. You're also right with how cheap OEM android phones are taking over the market. iOS is losing marketshare pretty much everywhere where phones are not heavily subsidised or the comparative income is low, namely everywhere but the US and UK (and a couple of others). Unless apple drops its ios prices to more reasonable levels (they are really taking the p*ss), it's going to be the same story as the one that unfolded with mac/windows.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gibwell 13y ago
  Whilst I agree that Nokia and Blackberry were disrupted by Android, not the iPhone, Apple is gaining customers everywhere. 'Marketshare' is a flawed concept because it assumes a unified market of undifferentiated customers. Apple is simply not in the market of commodity devices. It never had any of that market to lose. Claiming that apple is losing those customers is clearly incorrect. If the story does unfold as it did with Mac/Windows, Apple will again be the clear winner, just as they are in the PC market.
  - sien 13y ago
    Apple is not the 'clear winner' in the PC market, they are a small segment of it. Working in corporate and government environments is an Apple free zone. Lower price competitors have repeatedly caught up and outperformed higher priced vertical companies that make the entire stack. Android is well positioned to do exactly this to Apple over the next decade. Phones and cheaper devices also seem to see this happen repeatedly. Apple's phone division should see a warning in Nokia and RIM, not a comfort. SGI, Sun, Commodore, Atari, DEC and many others are all defunct. All full stack companies. Apple and IBM are left. IBM mainframes are extremely difficult to remove. Apple are easier but may survive with enough iOS lock in. But you'd be very brave to bet on it.

casca 13y ago

Mr Lazaridis and the ridiculous dual-CEO structure are significant contributors to the failure of Blackberry. I have friends there and not one believed that he would be as prescient as saying "If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia".

Kronopath 13y ago

Finally, someone else who agrees that the iPhone was a disruptive product. It had all of the hallmarks of a disruptive product except for the low price. It appealed to a different set of values (i.e. usability and interface), ignored features that were seen as critical in the existing market of smartphone users (No third-party apps at launch? No copy/paste? No editing of Word documents?!), and it blindsided the incumbents (who focused on business users rather than the new market of everyday consumers). Nowadays you'd have trouble convincing people that existing smartphone users mocked the iPhone when it first came out. It's worth noting that even Christensen didn't think the iPhone would be a success.[0] [0] http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/ http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/

silvestrov 13y ago
It HAD lower price: it disrupted the portable computers which were more expensive at that time. You already needed to pay for a phone, so the real price compared to a portable was just how much more expensive the iPhone was compared to a standard mobile phone. Due to the system with 2 year phone contracts in USA, that extra price was low.
- josh2600 13y ago
  This was state of the art around the time the iPhone hit: HTC8525 [0]. That is not a phone, that is a ridiculously small screen welded to a slow computer with terrible battery life; and it was $299 on contract at the time. The disruption in the iPhone was technical, social, political and economic. [0] http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32...
  - pekk 13y ago
    Nah, the old Windows phones were just fine. Did many of the things we now pretend that Apple invented. But they were for nerds. And huge phones sell reasonably well today. The functionality was really already there. The "disruption" was aesthetics, marketing and ease-of-use. And in the end, it's a phone, not a cultural revolution.

hosh 13y ago

Ok, if we're using this framework, here are some interesting thought experiments: (1) What is Google Glass disrupting? What are the faulty assumptions about it? ("iPhone was a pocket Mac, not a better phone. Google Glasses is a ____, not a ?") (2) What are the AI / Machine Learning disrupting? (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, MS) ("AI is a ____, not a ?") (3) What are the Kiva Systems robots disrupting? ("Kiva System robots is a ____, not warehouse automation? Not ?") (4) What are 3D Printers disrupting? Certainly not mass-production factories.

bane 13y ago
1) I'm not smart enough to guess on that one. 2) Education and reference resources. I now longer have to spend hours and hours looking up information and synthesizing it myself, I can get an AI to do it for me. (crossing fingers that it synthesizes it like I want it to) 3) Thieving, lazy, sloppy warehouse workers (no offense). The amount of stuff that gets stolen and "missing" out of fulfillment centers is astronomical. Plus, it's basically a a task that doesn't require human level intelligence. What do I need to ship? Where is it? Is it in stock? 4) Service Bureaus and Machine Shops. Prototyping physical things is expensive and time consuming and requires lots of skill to do. When making any kind of physical thing, the equivalent of compiling and debugging, is to run off a prototype at a Bureau. It's so onerous a problem that very few organizations even bother to make more than half a dozen physical prototypes of an item before committing to production. In the end, it'll probably just mean more variety of cheap junk we can buy off of Amazon.
- hosh 13y ago
  (2) and (3) are interesting responses. But I don't think it is actually using the key insight described in this article. That key insight being that people compare it to what's come before, and that comparison becomes a blinder for it's actual advantages. (4) will happen, but I think the scope is far too small; again it also has the blinders that does not take advantage of the key insight from the article. With 3D printers, you wouldn't buy products off of Amazon so much as buy licenses to fabrication blueprints to print out a product in your garage, similar to the way you can now buy ebooks, digital music, and digital movies from Amazon without the physical product.

blinkingled 13y ago

Blackberry's was the case of being too much in love with their own beliefs and processes. Also known as inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Microsoft also has those tendencies but they tend to get their act somewhat together even if that's too late. Lazaridis saw the iPhone and the Engineer in him went - the battery won't last and it will bring down the AT&T network with its full fledged browser. Ballmer saw the iPhone and laughed at the $500 price. Both did not see the potential from a changing market's standpoint. Battery tech gets better, hardware, networks and OSes get better every year, and the prices can and do fall. But some of it was inevitable for Blackberry. There really wasn't any differentiation potential left behind for them. iPhone got the smooth, attractive, computer replacement part. Android got the customizable, ubiquitous, many options, open and the "not iPhone" part. There just wasn't any way for BB to differentiate and win. They could've had a perfectly smooth touch optimized OS with great BB hardware, security suite and BBM etc. and even then their target market would still be limited. The only way they could've saved themselves was if they had innovated ahead of time. After the iPhone and Android it was game over for them.

josh2600 13y ago
How can you innovate when the standard for your product is Java 1.3? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959705
- blinkingled 13y ago
  If they had bought QNX early and switched to either a recent Java version or another decent language - even something like webOS HTML5/JS/CSS would've worked given a sane looking UI and frameworks.
  - josh2600 13y ago
    I wish I could find the quote but there's a long discussion by a former-RIM employee about the inability of management to come to consensus. To my mind, that's also incredibly ironic because RIM had the dual-CEOs for specifically this reason, to avoid conflict over technical and operational requirements. Edit: Look what I found!!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462453

clarky07 13y ago

The interesting thing about this is that the original iPhone was barely something that could be called a success. It sold 6.1 Million phones over 5 quarters. The recent launch was 9 Million in 3 days. They sold 50% more phones in a weekend than they did in 450 days. Reports of Apple's death are exaggerated I think.

DigitalJack 13y ago
I think it would be better to compare it to a smartphone of the day, like samsung's blackjack.
rythie 13y ago
As a disruptive product, it did exactly what you'd expect it to do, i.e. start slow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

QuantumGood 13y ago

Disruptive products as initially defined are reliant on advances in technology to become good enough to challenge established markets (while they advanced via emerging/self-created markets). Apple was always biding their time, waiting for the right moment for a giant leap forward in consumer satisfaction to become possible; it's the opposite of the incrementalism of the usual disruptive product. Few companies would consider such an approach because it seems to be a much, much bigger risk, leaping so far forward in consumer satisfaction that you are practically creating a new market. But there is an enormous leverage opportunity created when you take this approach: A visionary new product can generate a lot of marketing leverage from a strong sales pitch. It really is better. Using a strong sales pitch for an established "me too" product doesn't generate a lot of marketing leverage. And Apple had the head visionary as head salesperson. The flip side of the potential sales pitch leverage is that the product can likely only be sold via strong sales pitch. It's too new. So the best positioned company to take advantage of the strong selling opportunities of the Apple approach is one with a strong brand as an innovator. Upstarts or stodgy old companies won't know how to really pitch the product compellingly, or will be at too large a disadvantage from their non-existent/badly matched brand. I worry that Apple with Jobs gone will forget to sell their next big innovation strongly enough, and will just rely on their existing customer base and strong brand. It will probably only work well the first time (existing huge base/incredible brand). I say "I worry" because I want Apple to continue creating products that are great leaps forward, and I don't think they can do so perpetually without acknowledging the huge role that a really strong sales pitch plays in the success of such products.

pekk 13y ago
Apple was trying and failing for many years. Now they have found a bigger niche in little electronic devices. Good for them! But let's not pretend the earlier failures were all intended as some kind of grand strategy. Apple is not a perfect unicorn. It's just another company, selling products.
- schraeds 13y ago
  Apple makes more money selling macs than any other pc vendor...

innino 13y ago

Good article, good to see someone who appreciates how strong Apple's strategy really is, rather than just hating. A nice comment somewhere in this thread about CEOs of corps competing to get the best app - Apple managed to turn the iPhone into arguably the premier ego-arena on the planet. A characteristic which gives iOS an allure which should not be underestimated, unless you happen to enjoy being crushed like a bug.

smackfu 13y ago
If you weren't aware, Asymco is very pro-Apple. I would be shocked to see any hating from him.
- innino 13y ago
  Do you mean pro-Apple as in a fanboy who thinks everything Apple does is great, or pro-Apple as in he appreciates and respects their design chops and business acumen?
  - smackfu 13y ago
    Neither really. Pro-Apple in that he is willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt. If they make a decision he doesn't understand or agree with, he will figure out some acceptable reason they would do that he can agree with. Someone who is anti-Apple would look at the same facts and come up with a reason they are incorrect, for doing the same thing. Essentially, I would be shocked if Asymco had a post saying he disagreed with Apple's strategy.

ghshephard 13y ago

The first iPhone was the disruptive product. Everything after that has been incrementalism. The 2013 iPhone 5 is a direct descendent of the 2007 iPhone 5, and the 2007 iPhone 5 was almost a completely different product than my 2006 Treo 700w.

utopkara 13y ago

This article is based on the false premise that somebody with deep knowledge can predict disruptors. I'll tell you why talking heads/pundits/experts couldn't predict, because they are useless, and the whole business of market disruption prediction is built on a ridiculous premise.

canistr 13y ago

I hesitate to agree with this article given that that hindsight is 20/20. If anything, you could mark the decline of the BlackBerry with the introduction of the iPad.

normloman 13y ago

Who cares whether something is disruptive or not? Does it make any difference at all? Are you trying to crack some formula to making disruptive products, because it ain't gonna work.