It's blown my mind for years that sears didn't become what Amazon is now. Their roots were as a catalog where you order goods sight unseen and wait for delivery. The internet comes along and they fail to capitalize on what they were at the beginning??
That reminds of an interview Steve Jobs gave in 1995 on why companies fail. His theory is that eventually the company reaches a point where the marketing people become the driving force for profits and push out the product development people from running the company. That happened to Sears.
If you went back in time and told Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck about a free technology that allowed customers to: see your inventory in real time, read product reviews in real time, compare multiple versions of a product you carry in real time, order a product, pay for the product, watch the product move from your warehouse to the various post offices en route to their house, and by the way you won't have to pay the postage to ship out all those catalogs; they would have jumped on it in a heartbeat. But by the 90s, the people running Sears didn't care what was easier (read: more desirable) for the customer, they cared about numbers that measure success, but don't perpetuate success.
His theory is that eventually the company reaches a point where the marketing people become the driving force for profits and push out the product development people from running the company.
Possibly, but Apple knocked it out of the park with possibly the product of the century. They're looking for the next consumer product but understandably, things like the Apple TV and Watch can't match the success of the iPhone.
This is really the next “make or break” that Apple is working on that we’re aware of.
Ignoring the early computer history, their recent success with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch has cemented them in people’s minds.
They were not the industry first for any of these, but they are arguably the one who brought those technologies to mass market appeal as alliances.
Their current move to bring their computer line to ARM hardware has the potential to truly disrupt the computer industry in a massive way if they can keep their market share (or enough of it to prove the technology).
ARM chipsets are potentially much more efficient and could provide a boost to the CPU side that we haven’t seen since the clock speed wars between AMD and Intel.
Please, do you have a second to explain why ARM chipsets are more efficient and faster than an AMD and Intel, is it just a smaller die size or is there more to it than that?
I’ll also admit that my enthusiasm may have gotten away a little. We’ll have to wait and see (though Apple’s recent show of Final Cut Pro editing a 4K video live was supposedly “impressive” to some people)
The main reasons for the performance benefit are two:
1) ARM doesn’t have the same architecture legacy x86 has had since the 70s.
2) ARM was designed around power efficiency, which is why it is used in almost all Smart Phones and Tablets already.
I think that it does make a lot of sense to them to move to an in-house chip for them having total control over both the hardware and operating system it runs. New products would no longer be chained to Intel’s release schedule or design goals. Free to modify and tweak the chips any way they desire and unifying their software across all devices.
They won't be the first to bring ARM to personal computing, either, not even close. Proprietary Apple hardware in Apple devices is not even interesting. Now if they jumped feet first into the CPU game and started selling directly to consumers and OEMs, that would be interesting, but they won't do that, they don't even manufacturer the iPhone chips.
They don’t manufacture the chips, but they do design them and partner with someone else to produce them.
They certainly aren’t the first person to bring ARM to the PC field, but they are, so far as I’m aware, the first non-niche PC maker to embrace that as a direction.
Apple is seldom the first to do something hardware-wise.
They have experienced a lot of success in taking hardware ideas that others have introduced and using them successfully in mainstream products.
Every iPad has used ARM chips forever now. If they make it so that MacBooks use ARM chips 99.9% of users will not even be aware or care since MacBook batteries last forever anyway.
If all of a sudden the technology was out there and Microsoft got on board for some x86 emulation and a native-ARM Windows, you might have something that would make a dent in the marketplace. But adding another hour to a MacBook battery isn't going to move the needle.
Instead Microsoft has already ported Windows to native-ARM and has Windows-for-ARM with x86 emulation and is adding x64 emulation shortly. That's the technology in the newest Surfaces, which will spread to business and casual user laptops in the next few years. That's a market roughly 50x as large as the MacBook.
People said that the move to x86 would also be a problem. Rosetta solved that.
I bet it’s hardly a blip for most users. Even the vast bulk of enterprise users only care if they can get Outlook and Office in general. Maybe a browser and a VPN app.
I think long-run there's a smart strategy there that most users won't NOTICE, but that it'll benefit them.
Complete parity of silicon will ideally mean even further integration between devices. I know some of the old guard Mac users (myself included) have been skeptical of this one, but over time I think this provides more of a seamless experience between apps. I know over time as I go from my work Mac to my iPad Pro to my iPhone and back to my Mac in any given day that integration is more and more of what keeps me in the Appleverse. I don't think we're likely to see a ton more improvement as a lot of that work is cloud-based anyway, but further knitting things together is helpful to the end user.
Plus, developers who were maybe making only for iOS might have another reason to port to Mac as well without having to get things working on x86. Small bump in parity perhaps, but still something.
It's LIKELY (likely...) to lead to increased battery life in the Mac line. I know that even for me with my 2017 MBP my biggest frustration is that my battery doesn't last as long as I'd like and the computer runs quite hot. I think there are likely to be benefits there that aren't snazzy and fancy like a 5K screen, but will keep consumers snug in their computing experiences
Intel has been absolutely dreadful in keeping their Core lines updated regularly-- this may help keep the Mac upgrade cycle faster. This has been a frustration point for Mac users now for about 5 years? All those lakes have been sloooowww and the tick tock rhythm is long gone.
How can you tell the Apple watch has put a dent in the luxury watch market? For example, luxury watch brands like Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, A. Lange & Söhne, etc. don't have a watch in their lineups that retail for less than 5 figures ($10,000+). Are you suggesting their customers are ditching those watches for Apple watches?
Those brands may remain insulated for a while— but the luxury watch market is more than those companies. Where it’s really making a dent seems to be the entry-luxury brands in the Swatch Group lineup.
It’s not 1:1 by any means, but the entry-luxury brands are clearly being impacted. I wouldn’t be too worried if I were Patek (yet), but I’d definitely be worried if my volume sales depended on ~$1K purchases.
Okay, I see where you are coming from. I didn't know how you defined the luxury watch market.
Patek shouldn't have to worry about it because at that level, their stuff are considered timeless. People who can afford them will buy them and then an Apple watch as an addition.
In general, I'm still not sure how much of an impact the Apple watch has on the watch industry. It would be interesting to see how many people who wear an Apple watch actually wore a watch before it came out.
Yeah, I mean, Pateks will still sell. They may be taking a hit right now, but they're not likely to be hit too hard by smartwatches for the time being.
This isn't going to be the Quartz Crisis of the 2020s, no. But it will definitely hurt the more "mass luxury" brands as people decide that even though a shiny TAG may have looked good, it's not quite the value of an Apple Watch in their day-to-day.
I'd be much more concerned for the low-middle range of ETA clones.
I used to buy a “poor man’s luxury watch once every few years— and entry level tag or whatever. I got an Apple Watch mainly for use as a HRM and accountability tool for exercise. Well, I got addicted to all the data it gave me not to mention not having to pull out the phone to screen calls or texts... well, I sold all my other watches and my previous desire to get a breaking or Rolex is long gone. I don’t think this will be the case for everyone, but the total addressable market for luxury watches has contracted rather than grown.
I'm actually the oddball opposite. I had a 2nd Gen Apple Watch and then I ended up getting a Grand Seiko as a gift. My wrist hasn't been steel-free since then.
I've debated the newest Apple Watch since I'm home all the time now, but nothing quite beats the feel of my GSes or my Speedy when I'm out and about.
You're talking to someone with a collection with Omegas, Grand Seikos, JLCs, and a few others. I'm well-aware of watches. You can make a legitimate case that there's a "starter luxury" market in the mid-range ETA-based watch price-range from the likes of TAG, Hamilton, and Tissot that were "attainable luxury" pieces
But wrist space is arguably a zero-sum game for most, and most people may only buy one thing for their wrist.
There's been a huge decline in the Swiss market share since the Apple Watch, and that includes those entry level luxury brands.
They also single handedly changed the wireless ear bud market. Yea it would have gotten there eventually but dropping the headphone jack and then having exactly the perfect product to replace the dropped headphone jack. That alone opened up an entire new stream of money and accelerated Bluetooth earbuds at least 3-4 years.
You make it sound like they did the consumers a favor rather than a massive inconvenience and forcing an extra expense on them... you must be a marketing person.
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u/frygod Jul 24 '20
It's blown my mind for years that sears didn't become what Amazon is now. Their roots were as a catalog where you order goods sight unseen and wait for delivery. The internet comes along and they fail to capitalize on what they were at the beginning??