Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the have-you-tried-programming-on-a-tablet? dept.

Christopher Mims writes at the WSJ that Apple like all ambitious companies occasionally strays from its focus. According to Mims the iPhone is just coming into its prime, the iPad is an immature platform and the iWatch is in its infancy, yet Apple continues to invest in one-of-a-kind feats of engineering like the Mac Pro, which ships in volumes that are a rounding error on pretty much everything else Apple makes. "Something's got to give," writes Mims. "Showpieces like iMacs with screens that have more pixels than any PC ever (and four times the average selling price of a PC) are impressive, but what is Apple trying to prove? Is it really a good idea for Apple to continue to put resources against being king of a last-century technology?"

According to Mims the world's best tech companies can be the best at two things at once, maybe three and even a company as mighty as Apple gets to be the best at only a handful of things. "In a world in which the cloud is increasingly the hub of everything individuals and businesses do, and our mobile devices its primary avatar, what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I'd rather see Apple push the envelope on what's next."

takyon: Paywall buster.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:02PM

    by K_benzoate (5036) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:02PM (#203899)

    if refining a mature technology still makes money, why not?

    Because our current technology business climate has an obsessive, almost psychotically self-destructive, fixation on exponential growth. Even mere linear growth is considered a "dying" market that must soon be abandoned. If the market for some product provides only steady sales with little or no growth at all, you should be running from it as fast as you can. Disinvest! Get out of making desktops!

    Desktops then laptops then tablets and smartphones each had periods of explosive growth which smoothly led into each other, so that became "normal". Wallstreet, tech pundits, and business writers all calibrated their measures of success around this unsustainable model. Now, a return to some sanity and stability looks like a market segment about to die.

    People who actually use desktop PCs for work, developers, know better. And Apple needs developers for the rest of their business to make any sense.

    --
    Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4