Benjamin Basche
@basche42
Apple has absolutely lost a step
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@thumbsup.eth
Shareholder capitalism forces this. AI features are the hyped narrative to which all money began to flow. By not offering AI features, Apple started to lose value as people sold shares to invest in other companies claiming to have AI products and features. The problem is, for most of these companies, most of these features are more gimmicky than useful. Apple had been leading the way in truly useful, under the surface features, and they should have stayed on that course. Instead they have to promise something that’s neither ready nor what people even value, because it’s what shareholders value.
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Benjamin Basche
@basche42
The contradiction of Steve Jobs is fascinating. His last move was to personally lobby to hire Dag Kittlaus and Siri team. His successors simply milked his complicated brilliance as a leader and manager. An old echo of the birth and death of entrepreneurial capitalism period from the 19th and early 20th century
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@thumbsup.eth
Apple is yet another example of where a cooperative structure would have made for a better outcome. Tim Cook is excellent at supply chain, Steve was excellent at vision, but the need for maximizing shareholder value, combined with never listening to experts from within the ranks of the company led to countless moronic decisions from design to narrative to strategy
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Benjamin Basche
@basche42
So you’re telling me the Apple was a contradiction?
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@thumbsup.eth
Im not sure what you mean. My point is that smart people with good ideas can make incredible products. Steve was one of these people, as were/are many of the folks at Apple. The people who weren’t helping make the best products are shareholders. Apple has spent the past two decades focused on stock buybacks and producing a thinner version of whatever they made the year before to motivate a predetermined upgrade cycle. Imagine what they might have created absent of these perverse incentives. Imagine what they might have created with workplace democracy. And imagine what might have existed in parallel to Apple’s inventions if they didn’t kill so many companies by buying them or sucking all the money out of the market/consumer space.
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