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Big Sister

18 comments

(HT: Menzies House)

Written by Sinclair Davidson

July 27th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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18 Responses to 'Big Sister'

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  1. I was kind of hoping that 2010 wasn’t going to be like 1984.

    P.S. Anyone know what happened to the product that they were launching with that ad?

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 5:51 pm

  2. I’m a bit embarrassed – it’s a very famous ad, but I can’t recall the product. 1984 superbowl ad winner from memory.

    Sinclair Davidson

    27 Jul 10 at 5:52 pm

  3. Apple MacIntosh

    Sinclair Davidson

    27 Jul 10 at 5:55 pm

  4. Fairly successful product imo

    Yobbo

    27 Jul 10 at 5:56 pm

  5. I thought they went bankrupt in 1997.

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 6:00 pm

  6. Apple experienced financial problems in the 1990s but returned to profitability when Steve Jobs came back.

    Sinclair Davidson

    27 Jul 10 at 6:04 pm

  7. Bit of synchronicity there Australia had financial problems in the 1990s but returned to prosperity with a change of management.

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 6:11 pm

  8. I heard the other day that Apple has passed Microsoft in earnings and market cap, and now only exxon is bigger. Yet it still behaves like a scrappy startup.

    Love the products though (typed on my iPhone).

    Entropy

    27 Jul 10 at 7:02 pm

  9. Specifically they returned to profitability when they released the imac in 1998 and have been a powerhouse ever since.

    The original macintosh wasn’t a huge seller compared to the IBM machines at the time, largely due to a lack of software (specifically no access to Lotus 123 which was the primary reason for existence of desktop PCs at the time).

    OTOH most of the things that made desktop PCs a mass consumer product were first instituted in the macintosh, so it’s been pretty successful in that respect.

    Yobbo

    27 Jul 10 at 8:16 pm

  10. Must be so much pressure at Apple to keep producing gadgets. You’re only one bad move from becoming a Sega or a Motorola.

    Infidel Tiger

    27 Jul 10 at 8:19 pm

  11. That’s the funny thing about Apple though. They rarely are the first company to produce something. They just take an existing idea and perfect it.

    They aren’t really in the electronic gadget industry, they are in the user interface, style and ergonomics industry.

    They wait for other people to invent the technology, and then put it into a product that people who don’t know anything about technology want to buy. And this has been their business model since 1984.

    Yobbo

    27 Jul 10 at 8:23 pm

  12. Unlike Xerox, or Walkman which came to be synonymous with the products they branded because they were the first to release a commercial version, the iPod was released about 3 years after portable MP3 players already had significant market penetration.

    Yobbo

    27 Jul 10 at 8:30 pm

  13. I thought the story went they lost money on the Lisa but without it, no i Macs…

    .

    27 Jul 10 at 8:31 pm

  14. They wait for other people to invent the technology, and then put it into a product that people who don’t know anything about technology want to buy. And this has been their business model since 1984.

    Dunno about that, Yobs. I’d argue that the Iphone and Ipad were are entirely new products.

    JC

    27 Jul 10 at 8:31 pm

  15. Yobbo wrote:
    “They wait for other people to invent the technology, and then put it into a product that people who don’t know anything about technology want to buy. And this has been their business model since 1984. …the iPod was released about 3 years after portable MP3 players already had significant market penetration.”

    They certainly innovated it, in the schumpeterian sense by creating whole eco system for their mp4 players and upending the entire competitive landscape.

    Did they invent it? quite possibly. They were very involved in the whole MPEG thing and they did invent mp4. Did they release portable devices that were capable of playing compressed audio? Not that I can remember. Did they prototype them?probably. For every product that they release, there are many that don’t see the light of day.

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 9:31 pm

  16. the key difference is the ecosystem they create.
    There were mp3 players before the ipod, but they were big and clunky, did not have much hard drive space, and there was no integrated music store for legal downloads.

    There were smart phones before, but they were hard to use and did not have the app store.

    There were tablets before (a decade really) but they all tried to slap a desktop OS designed for muse and keyboard input onto a touch screen. A reckon it is already too late for competitors. The only thing that could give android tablets, when they appear, a leg up is if Apple doesn’t produce a CDMA (verizon) version.

    That said, Apple are at hear are bunch of engineers. If fit doesn’t fit their ‘vision’, it doesn’t get included. And their competitors don’t get it, and think the issue is that Apple has brilliant marketing and better focus groups.

    entropy

    27 Jul 10 at 9:40 pm

  17. Yobbo wrote:
    “They wait for other people to invent the technology, and then put it into a product that people who don’t know anything about technology want to buy. And this has been their business model since 1984.”

    If you want to make that argument, try since 1976. Though they do seem to invent a hell of a lot of technology, just look at how many patents they have.

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 9:57 pm

  18. Entropy “reckon(s) it is already too late for competitors. The only thing that could give android tablets, when they appear, a leg up is if Apple doesn’t produce a CDMA (verizon) version.”

    One of the reasons that is too late for competitors is that components that they would need are in short supply at the moment. Someone has been buying all the components.

    rob

    27 Jul 10 at 10:03 pm

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