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Disclaimers:
I'm a mac user.
I have an iPhone.
I think the article... if you can call it that, is laughable. Perhaps I don't understand her point, or am misunderstanding her view. So, because Apple innovated where others didn't, because they built product that were easy to use and it "stole" business away from other companies who were NOT providing customers with what they wanted (or didn't know they wanted until it came along) this somehow makes Apple an evil empire seeking to dominate the universe? I think it is a really bad comparison to try and drive some ridiculous business 101 point home. So when people started buying Toyotas, Datsuns, and Hondas back in the late 70s because Detroit didn't make anything worth a damn... that makes them evil? No. It's business. Innovate or get out of the way. Provide a good or service better than some one else or die. I really don't see the point of this article. If anything, the only comparison I could see to Apple being the Death Star is the article that wasn't written: Apple runs the risk of being a big target that a small group of scrappy rebels could ruin with a pair of well placed proton torpedos.
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I don't think he was using the term Death Star to connote evil (or anything like that). He was using it to connote 'Awesomely powerful', which, looking at all of the data he provided in the article, is quite apt.
The article is commentary, and the point of it is to illustrate just how astonishing what Apple has achieved is in the business landscape. I think you mistook the tone of the article. The author is obviously a very impressed fan of Apple and what it has accomplished. Words like 'stole' don't have moral connotations for business people taking in terms of market share, and shouldn't be taken to imply morality or invite judgment. Paul Kedrosky is actually one of the most creative-minded data-driven writers on finance & markets imo. I've read his blog, Infectious Greed, for a while now.
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It's not a matter of tone necessarily. I care less that the article is about Apple and more about the metaphor - this isn't an Apple fanboy thing. I'm not even saying it's a bad metaphor, it just doesn't work for me. The Death Star DOES have an evil connotation for me, I would imagine most people who have seen Star Wars. The rebels never spun the Death Star around and used it for "good". It was always an instrument of evil.
"I call this the Apple Deathstar. Like its Star Wars counterpart, Apple has created a kind of interplanetary weapon that has the capacity to quickly raze entire planets, or at least entire companies." The Death Star was built with the purpose of destroying planets. Apple was not started to destroy other companies. I'll grant that he uses the words "has the capacity" not "actively uses to". Maybe words like "stole" don't have a moral connotation in this context, but the sentence "Apple gutted a host of firms, all of which were reliant on the same customers." seems a bit aggressive or accusatory. I understand that in context, it kind of makes sense, but when you stack up the title, and some of the verbiage, the article could be mistaken (by fools such as myself) as having a tone. Again, this isn't an Apple thing. I just don't like his metaphor. I think thenewgreen was right, the "hyperbolic title" hooked me and got me to read it... so perhaps it's perfect. (embarrassed confession - I had been reading too many articles too late the other night and confused this article with another that was written by a woman - hence all of the feminine pronouns in my first comment)
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>Apple was not started to destroy other companies.
But it was. The moment you form a company for the purpose of selling something, anything, for profit, that is exactly what you are doing. You're competing for market share, and trying to take the lifeblood of profit away from as many competitors in that market as you can. This isn't evil, it's just the way it is. If all Steve Jobs wanted to do was make computers, he could have. He didn't want to just make computers, -thousands of hobbyists do that. He wanted to sell them and compete in the marketplace. I think this quote of his is illustrative: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40bn in the bank, to right this wrong...I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." Now granted, this is over a patent dispute. But my point is that Apple is trying to do that to it's competitors in every category regardless. Yes, without as much vitriol, but really, who cares how flowery your words are (or aren't) if the result is the same. For profit companies are formed to sell and compete in the marketplace, -to destroy as many competitors as they can. It's not mean, it's not evil, but it is true.
thenewgreen · 2639 days ago · link ·
Disclaimer: I'm a mac user that has had a sapphire martini and several glasses of absinthe.
I think you can call it an article. I think the point of the article is to establish the opportunity cost of Apple. The article does a nice job of doing so without the emotional attachment you so obviously have. The point is not to criticize the innovation of apple but to say that Apples gain comes at someone else's loss. It's a pretty straight forward article with a "hyperbolic title." -so maybe your emotion is justified.
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thenewgreen · 2639 days ago · link ·
"Apple has grown sales 413 percent...It is now $108-billion in annual sales, up from $24-billion in 2007". -That's amazing.
Jobs told him he had finally "cracked" television -Good, someone needs to. It's a horrible medium right now and is terribly inefficient. My favorite part of piece was this though, "While it's nice to imagine creating whole new markets, most new markets come from old markets. The money has to come from somewhere. It is why one of the most compelling pitches I can hear -- venture capitalist hat on -- is how some hot young company is going to grow by shrinking another market. That's the way it works, not money from off-planet". -I work with businesses all the time that think they have no competitors and have a completely unique product. The businesses that think this way don't last very long. It's amazing to me the arrogance that many entrepreneurs have (In all industries). You have a competitor, trust me. Get to know them. Get to know them very well. Differentiate yourself based on value (not cost) or you are toast.