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from the the-tide-goes-in-and-the-tide-goes-out dept.
The New York Times published a story that states the obvious for anyone who has studied economics, that Apple's dominant position today is not permanent. They may be very clever and innovative thanks to the spirit (and curse) of Steve Jobs lingering around 1 Infinite Loop, but all fame is fleeting.
In a few short years, Apple has become the biggest company on the planet by market value—so big that it dwarfs every other one on the stock market. It dominates the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index as no other company has in 30 years.
Apple’s market capitalization—the value of all of the shares of its stock—is more than $758 billion, greater than any other company’s. Yet the Wall Street consensus is that Apple is still having a growth spurt. In fact, if Apple’s watches, phones, laptops and other gadgets and services keep generating favorable publicity—and if its quarterly earnings report on Monday is as strong as the market expects it to be—there’s a reasonable chance that Apple’s value will keep swelling. Not far down the road, it might even reach the $1 trillion level that some hedge funds predict.
Yet, IBM was once a huge computer company, the one to beat, not unlike what Microsoft became.
IBM thrived for years afterward, but just as [Steve] Jobs had predicted, it turned out to be vulnerable to disruptive change, as all big companies are. For decades now, IBM has engaged in a sometimes painful transition, and as it revealed in its quarterly earnings report last week, it is still hurting: Its revenues have declined and it has endured wrenching business shifts.
My take on this is pretty straightforward. I own IBM stock; I don't own Apple except in the form of an S&P mutual fund. While I use Apple computers and like them, I have little faith in Apple's long-term future, whereas I think IBM will be around and relevant for much longer once they get their business properly reoriented.
(Score: 5, Touché) by M. Baranczak on Monday April 27 2015, @05:14AM
Steve managed to do both.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 27 2015, @06:52AM
Steve Jobs was only a "hero" to people that either:
1) bought the inaccurate marketing-oriented narrative that Apple spun around him (giving him credit for all sorts of shit he didn't do)
2) are either unaware as to his persistently awful behavior (not just berating engineers or taking up handicapped parking spaces, but also things like telling Wozniak "project X must be done by day N or we won't get our $5k" when 'N' was really the deadline for a $30k bonus Jobs kept for himself) — or excusing the behavior for who-knows what reason.
Besides that, a "hero" by any definition I've been aware of involved personal sacrifice or substantial risk of some kind — or otherwise saving somebody, in which case it's a personal hero, not "a hero" in the objective sense (e.g. a doctor could be someone's *personal* hero for saving his/her life, or a teacher might be a personal hero for steering the kid away from a life of crime/drugs).
Even if we used the metric of "heroic" talent, Steve Jobs' were, objectively speaking, in salesmanship and persuasion. Those aren't exactly things we normally give people "hero" status for. Hopefully he thanked Apple's marketing department for their "brilliant founder returns to save the company" figurehead scheme, as that's what ultimately led people to believe he'd done far more than he really did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @10:08AM
“Sex–induced heart attack would be the best way to die: first you come, then you go.” —Alice Cooper
Oh Lord, when I die i want to be in bed, making love to a beautiful woman, on top, on the upstroke so I get one more go one the way back down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @01:58PM
The grand parent is 1/3 right because Steve
*Wozniak became a hero (but still lives)
*Jobs become a heartless bureaucratic institution and died.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @04:00PM
"Yup, I guess I took the right one." - Cancer