Peter Thiel Says The Age Of Apple Is Over

BI ^ | 1-12-2017 | Steve Kovach

[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)

[Richard Kimball]

The annual upgrades aren’t making ‘leaps and bounds’ improvements...and the quality is so high, the phones are lasting longer.

Agree. I got a Galaxy Note II in 2012, and am still using it. It texts, takes ok photos, phone, songs and audiobooks, google maps.

2012 was, IMHO, the breakover point for smart phones, and you can buy used ones now for a hundred to two hundred bucks. Phones prior to that became obsolete, cause they couldn't handle the new apps. That hasn't been the case since then.

At some point, there will be a new thing, but Tim Cook won't be the guy who oversees it. It will come from somewhere else. Cook is a supply chain guy, not an innovator.

This is Jobs talking about Xerox, but a lot of what he says is applicable to Apple since he passed: Steve Jobs on Xerox

[ctdonath2]

Yes, pains me to conceal a sleek polished lightweight device in a thick cheap (but effective!) plastic case.

[angelrod]

I just bit the bullet and bot the MacBook pro for my wife. She hates windows and won’t bother to learn windows 10 and I was tired of being the IT guy for it. Expensive but worth it for me since my wife will be happier with the pro.

[wright2bear]

My wife loves the MacBook too. Now she wants an iMac to use for her teaching job. I’m sure I’ll have to break down and meet her wants.LOL

[CincyRichieRich]

Darn guaranteed...Rush...WON’T talk about this on today’s show.

[proust]

Unless Apple pulls off an innovation equivalent to the first Ipad soon, its age has past.

Past few years, all incremental improvements. The Watch was a flop, Cook just had to take a pay cut for having such a poor year. The chip problem is affecting all consumer electronics this year as well. Plus the election didn’t go Cook’s way either. He has to hustle to please the new boss.

Cook is good, but he’s no Jobs.

[Dr. Sivana]

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.

Ahh, but we have the long interregnum between Sculley ousting Jobs, wandering in the desert with Amelio and Spindler, with the Macintosh down to 1-2% of marketshare, largely from loyalist from the Jobs era. When Jobs came back, the magic was back with the iMac, new OSes, and the iPod/iPhone/iPad came later and fed off of that. Mac itself was up to 10% and occasionally was the number 1 seller of desktops and laptops. We already knew what a computer was when Jobs exited the first time.

[pepsi_junkie]

I gotta say, when Steve Jobs died I put the likelihood at 90% that he turned out to be irreplaceable. They tried it once (they fired him at Apple and replaced him with the head of Coca Cola) and it was a total disaster. Steve Jobs wasn't just the CEO, he was the visionary, the evangelist, and a cult of personality. Tim Cook is none of those things but in fairness almost nobody is. However at the very least they needed a visionary because that's Apple's identity. Under Jobs they put out products that people said "whoa, what's that? Wow, why didn't someone think of that sooner!" Their identity was the company that created the trend which everyone else followed. And the visionary thought leader company can charge a premium, which Apple has taken advantage of.

But a bean counter who plans regular updates with small incremental improvements in existing functionality passed off as innovation ("now our camera has more pixels, our speaker is louder, and we have new emoticons!") will eventually kill that identity off. Nobody wants to pay double for a phone that's the same as everyone else's or, even worse, copying another company as Apple is now doing by making them bigger, having more pixels, etc. They are a follower but still charging a premium. Doom.

[1Old Pro]

Apple’s innovation and imagination died with Jobs...................

Yep, I agree (flame away)

[ptsal]

Don’t forget BRAVE

[Secret Agent Man]

Jobs was a definite singularity. Good and bad. no one can duplicate him.

[Trump Girl Kit Cat]

I have never owned an iPhone either they are just to damned expensive, I have an android which I love, I do however own an iPad which I LOVE !!! I firmly believe that this company’s imagination and forward thinking died with Steve Jobs it is impossible to replace a persons imagination I don’t care how closely they may have worked together Cook just doesn’t HAVE IT!!!!

[Red Badger]

No asbestos underwear needed. I think just about everyone already knows this whether they like to admit it or not.............

[HamiltonJay]

There is no doubt the smart phone is now a commodity, the free/subsidized update cycle is over and Margins naturally will decline in the industry....

This isn’t a bad thing, its just business...

The question is, will Apple really come up with the next big thing... or not... there is little doubt ipod and itunes changed the music industry and iphone changed the communications industry....

The question is will Apple come up with the next big thing? And that remains to be seen.

Apple has plenty of time, money and research dollars to do it... but that doesn’t always mean success.... but given how little R&D is spent by other companies... and the sheer amount of cash Apple has on hand, pretty good chance they will indeed be on the forefront of the next big thing, whatever it is.

[aquila48]

Definitely not an early adopter, eh!

So what did you get?

[AFreeBird]

MoDo Rules

[Yaelle]

Just sayin’ - here on my iPad Air - our iPads have been thrown from the top of stairs and landed on wooden floors.... we case em in the soft convex rubber cases for kids. Indestructible under all kinds of conditions and not as boxed in as otterboxes.

[RegulatorCountry]

I had one of those first generation titanium case PowerBooks, used it for years without issue. One day, I was charging the battery and my 110 lb very energetic Lab got excited, tangled himself up in the cord and send it flying across the room, bounced off of several pieces of furniture, skidded across the hardwood and crashed into the baseboard on the other side of the great room. Dented the corner of the case. Didn’t even have to restart it. Everything worked just as it always had.

[aquila48]

Jobs dared imagine what most other people never dreamed and had the will and determination to make it real.

The new Steve Jobs is Elon Musk. Except that Musk dreams even bigger things and is just as determined.

[Leep]

Its amazing that you can get a big screen tv cheaper than a smart phone.
Beside that the complaint i hear from most people is they almost always pay more than the monthly contract price.
Due to extra data fees and so on.
So, $40 a month turns into $60 or $70 a month.
Not to mention you are lock into a contract for 2 years?
Pass.