Posted on 01/12/2017 7:11:40 AM PST by blam
Steve Kovach
January 12, 2017
Silicon Valley investor and Donald Trump transition-team member Peter Thiel says Apple is past its peak.
Here's what he said in a Q&A with Maureen Dowd of The New York Times when he was asked to confirm or deny that "the age of Apple is over":
"Confirm. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It's not the fault of Tim Cook, but it's not an area where there will be any more innovation."
Thiel is best known in Silicon Valley for his early investment in Facebook.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I just got my first smartphone last weekend!!!
Don’t care what he does in his bedroom. (Dont want to know though!)
He’s the closest thing we have to someone right of center AT ALL who’s a Silicon Valley big shot.
Will they start making things people can afford now ?
Reminds me of the guy who ran the patent office about 115 years ago. Wanted to shut it down because everything that can be invented has been invented.
I have never had one....................
Apple’s innovation and imagination died with Jobs...................
Yeah. Right.
No computer innovations after the Mackintosh. We know what a computer can do.
No innovations after the Model T. We know what a car can do.
No innovation after pong. We know what a video game is.
We will all be shopping at Sears. We know what a store is.
Change is the only constant in life.
Apple has over priced products that can be copied and sold much cheaper. Apple won’t be able to keep prices up much longer.
But the age of Apple’s HUGE PILE OF MONEY isn’t.
They’re an investment company now. Heck, they’re a bank.
I'm a big Steve Jobs fan so I see your point. And you could be right.
But Jobs came along when we didn't have computers in our homes let alone in our pockets and purses so there was plenty of room for innovation and invention.
But now we do. I have an iPad and an iPhone and a good enough Core i7 based Windows 10 PC. And they all connect to the Internet almost everywhere I go. So right now it is not clear to me why I need to replace any of these nice gadgets. I'm not as interested in going to the Apple Store as I was a few years back. I'm not sure what Steve Jobs would be working on right now that would change that.
But I wish he was still around. Maybe he could lure me back.
I went to Best Buy last night thinking of upgrading my MacBook Pro to more current model. Golly Miss Molly those things are expensive. I’ll just stick with my MB until it bleeds to death.
I’ve wondered for a while if we may be approaching a saturation point in the market - for smart phones at least.
The annual upgrades aren’t making ‘leaps and bounds’ improvements...and the quality is so high, the phones are lasting longer.
So why upgrade to a new one as often as before?
Same here.
Thiel is also invested in thorium nuclear. Smart guy, I need to contact him.
What Steve Jobs had was foresight. He could think, not only ‘outside the box’, but outside the entire industry to see things that could be but were not yet.
Apple without him at the helm is just another techie company. Unless they continue to create things that never were, they are doomed to be a producer of things that just are...................
I’ve chafed at their prices for years, but can say my iPad Air has been worth every penny and probably gives the most useful Apple bang for the buck. I find some aspects of iOS frustrating, but the cohesive whole of it lets you forget about flashiness and just USE it. Boring...in the way that Apple is known and loved for.
On a side note, I’ve wondered if the deglamorization of the cellphone/other came about in large part due to the fact that we end up hiding the things in ugly PLASTIC. I bought an Otterbox Defender for my iPad. Not only does it completely hide the device but it has a shell/stand for another layer of protection and WEIGHT.
I have dropped the thing, watched it fall off freight rollers, etc. and face-planted on metal grates and have yet to crack the screen or hurt the device. Impressive case and impressive product that I’ve field tested unwittingly.
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
A phone salesman summed up smartphones for me a few years ago: “Smartphone is a misnomer. This isn’t a phone at all. It’s a computer with a phone app.”
What’s inside those little glass slates is amazing, and that you can get one for $1/day for the normal usage lifetime is absolutely staggering. That IS affordable.
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