Posted on 01/12/2019 3:33:51 AM PST by dennisw
The iPhone is arguably the most valuable product in the world, representing the backbone of Apple Inc.'s half-trillion-dollar hardware business and undergirding its software-peddling App store. It remains the envy of consumer-product companies world-wide.
If history is any indication, though, America's favorite handheld device will someday take up residence with the digital camera, the calculator, the pager, Sony's Walkman and the Palm Pilot in a museum. Although it's hard to imagine the iPhone dying, change can sneak up rapidly on contraptions that are deeply entrenched in American culture.
Consider it was as recently as the mid-1990s when I spent an hour a day during my senior year in high school in a room full of electric typewriters learning to type. Today, I spend most of my working hours using that skill to bang away on a keyboard, but I have rarely touched an actual typewriter in 25 years.
"Over time, every franchise dies," said Nick Santhanam, McKinsey's Americas practice leader in Silicon Valley. "You can innovate on an amazing mousetrap, but if people eventually don't want a mousetrap, you're screwed."
Kodak, Polaroid and Texas Instruments are all examples from the recent past of companies that held too tightly to an old idea. Today's tech giants, ranging from Netflix (having already reinvented itself to be dependent on advertising-free streaming video) to Google parent Alphabet Inc. (counting advertising as 86% of revenue), should take note of those painful demises to avoid the same fate.
FULL ARTICLE AT SOURCE
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If AOC and the rest of the crazies have their way, there won’t be any electricity to power any device.
“Personally I think pagers are in line for a comeback. I don’t know about you but my phone has become worthless. I get ten telemarketer calls a day saying I am preapproved for $250,000 or I should buy their health insurance or some crap. I can see how a pager would help filter the trash.”
I have found that the trend for telemarketers is to trick people into answering by telegraphing your area code and exchange to make you think its a local call. So if your phone number is (aaa) bbb-xxxx, they will “call you from” (aaa) bbb-yyyy.
The area code and exchange for my phone number is on the opposite side of the country, in a place I have never lived and have zero association with, so there is absolutely no reason for anybody to call me. Any number that calls me from there gets blocked. You would think it would be a lifelong process as there are 10,000 potential fake numbers, but fake calls trickle down to almost zero after a hundred or so are blocked
IPhones, iPads, iPods, etc are going to go the same way. Planned obsolescence, like a 1914 Stutz Bearcat or a tatted linen couch arm doily, stunning in its day and still beautiful in its own way, but in time utterly useless.
Kodak, Polaroid and Texas Instruments
Polaroid went bankrupt in 2008; Kodak in 2012. TI, on the other hand, while having sold off its defense unit, continues to plow along and is selling for close to $100 a share. Now I agree that their pizza oven line wasn't a rousing success, but they pay a nice dividend.
All current IPhones will be obsolete in a year or two.So there is a huge replacement market wave getting ready to hit. And unlike those of us who were slow to move from our flips and sliders, the typical Iphoner will jump on the 5G bandwagon for $1k or $1200 a pop. Disclosure - I own no Apple stock and use not Apple products.
Instead of setting the metal letters individually into a box (typeset), they set the letters on individual spikes tied to buttons. Instead of rolling ink on the letters and pressing onto paper, the letters strike a rolling inkpad in front of the paper.
The typewriter was the first "desktop" word processor. Wrap it in a plastic case, and it was the first portable laptop, too.
-PJ
If one has to choose between Google's evil monopoly and spy infrastructure (Android), or Apple's commitment to privacy, I will pay the premium. It won't always be that way, I suppose, but for now Guck Foogle.
Amen. Agree 100%. That’s why I work to be a non-tracked person.
Of course it’s impossible to stop all tracking but you can stop a large percentage of it if you’re willing to give up the latest and greatest and do some things the old fashioned way.
I was in a fast food place recently and the person in front of me paid for lunch simply by holding an Apple watch up near the cash register. As I pulled the non-trackable cash from my pocket to pay for my lunch I thought: How silly was that? Pay with your watch and hundreds, if not more, of companies now know what you had for lunch, where and when you had lunch and how much it cost.
Sorry, not for me.
Texas Instruments is stronger than ever. They are the world’s largest manufacturer of analog integrated circuits.
I bet their factories are in China/Asia. What part of their business is in the USA? I hope the R&D is.
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