I'm kind of famous for creating apocalyptic precognitions about the IT sector, and usually I'm right, such as when I predicted the collapse of Silverlight and Adobe Flash back in 2009. However, this time I'm about to publish a prediction that'll make everything I've ever said previously seem like childish. And even worse, it's only the tip of the iceberg. My current prediction is that APPL is about to go bankrupt. Totally belly up! Zip, nada, literally chapter 11!
I had my doubts about Apple's sustainability already back when Steve Jobs died, and I was admittedly a bit surprised when Tim Cook managed to make it survive. Not only did he manage to make it survive, but in fact also reach new heights, to the point where even Steve would have probably blushed by its evaluation had he been around to see it - However, therein lies its problems!
All credit to Tim for what he did the last 12 years, but APPL is doomed - And its problems are related to its current success.
To sum it up, Apple's fanbase have been its largest asset, and they're cannibalising it, alienating it, to the point where we're starting to feel shameful for being "Apple fanboys". This is true not only for me, but also the rest of their "community" ...
Apple, the underdog
When Apple was the underdog, it attracted all the right talent. Working with Steve Jobs was arguably the equivalent of being a disciple of God in the flesh, so Steve had no problems attracting talent. If Steve called you, you answered the freakin' phone, period! Steve was like the closest we've been to "the computer God in the flesh" on this earth for a couple of thousand years or something ...
Today Apple is no longer the underdog. If anything, it's become everything the original crew despised. 20 years ago, a lot of its workforce would wake up in the morning to fight the very same corporation that Apple has turned itself into today.
Tim has been fantastic, and I'm 100% positive about that most of his colleagues and team adores him - But it no longer has that "David against Goliath thing" going for it. So if it becomes rough, no war cries are ever going to make its people stand up for its leader and company the way Steve could. Not because Steve was such a great guy necessarily, but simply because "the enemy was still out there" in some shape or form, and Steve was "the David" in "the Goliath equation".
Apple WAS Quality
I've still got my 2014 MacBook air. I use it every now and then because it's got a standard old-style USB plug, and my sound card can connect to it. It's 10 years old today, but has survived one MacBook Air and one MacBook Pro with an M2 processor, in addition to at least half a dozen PCs, read "Piece of Crap". Both of my last two MacBooks have gone under, but my MacBook Air from 2014 still works like clockwork. So while my 2014 MacBook Air still ticks like a Rolex, I've lost two "new and improved MacBooks to 'the God of inferior quality products'".
Everybody who knows anything about economics immediately understands why. Once Apple became "the largest" they ran out of new users, so they had to apply planned obsolescence to sell more computers and continue the growth their share holders were demanding from their CEO. Explaining to some psychopath investor that you're already number one, and he should be happy with his 20% dividends per year, is like explaining to a Hamster he can't have anymore grains. Everyone who have seen a hamster "doing the hamster thing" will immediately understand what I mean here. If you haven't, do a YouTube search for it to understand ...
This has become such a serious issue that there are 10+ YouTube channels now with more than 3 millions subs today, exclusively serving factual content about Apple's degrading quality. Most of these channels are ran by independent repair shop owners, which again are the ones advising a huge proportion of society about which computers and phones to buy. My favourite dude here is Rossman, whom is now so angry at Apple for their inferior quality, he's been incapable of publishing a YouTube video for a decade, where he doesn't use at least 50+ curse words, as an analogy for the psychopaths in Apple's board room, devising their psychopath schemes, to prevent him from doing his job - Which arguably is to clean up Apple's garbage ...
A piece of advice here; If you have to sue the guy literally wiping your behind, you're probably doing something wrong, just sayin' ...
If you're too sensitive to watch Rossman curse for a couple of hours non-stop about Apple's inferior quality, here's the summary; To keep up revenue, Apple had to make sure their computers and phones stopped working, to make sure their customers comes back once every 2 years, to "upgrade" their failing hardware.
When you're selling products, inevitably at some point you'll run out of new customers - Simply because there's a finite number of human beings on the planet, and "creating more humans to increase the number of customers" doesn't have quite the same ring to it for some psychopath investment firms as "delivering inferior quality through planned obsolescence" ...
Browser Wars
I'm old enough to remember IE6. Google it if you've got no idea what I'm talking about. However, to make a long story short, we (the software developers of the world) basically went completely collectively ballistic, being tired of maintaining Microsoft's garbage, which again resulted in Google Chrome becoming the ipso facto monopoly of web browsers. Regardless of how many times Steve Ballmer would dance on stage shouting developers, developers, we just did our thing, which was that every time we came close to a computer, we'd do our best to remove Internet Exploder, and install Google Chrome or FireFox on it.
I love Microsoft for a lot of things, but today they could publish a new browser that would literally solve all world problems, make me rich, tall, handsom, and dark - And I'd still tell em' to go "f--- themselves" ...
Some poor family member, 3rd cousin removed or something, left their laptops with us, and "catching! Congratulations, I've upgraded your browser to Google Chrome!"
Slowly we (the devs of the world) basically as an act of protest, eliminated a 98% monopoly, because we were "the most important people in the equation".
When it comes to computer repair guys, such as Rossman, I suspect him and his peers have a similar position, except this time it's the hardware, and not a stupid browser we're talking about.
In ecosystems these species are referred to as "corner stone species", and they're notoriously difficult to spot, before it's too late. From Apple's point of view, Rossman is just one guy, and they're a trillion dollar company, so why should they care? Well, Rossman has a reach that's incomprehensibly difficult to understand for corporate douches like Apple's lawyers - Creating the illusion of that Apple can in fact fight these guys, while everybody who knows anything about anything, already knows it's too late, and Apple is destined to loose ...
Don't believe me? Read the story of David versus Goliath ...
The one key difference between the browser wars and the resentment towards Apple, is that browsers wasn't even Microsoft's bread and butter stuff - While hardware is literally the only thing Apple's got going for it. Microsoft could easily survive loosing the browser wars. Apple however, will not survive the hardware wars.
Wrapping up
I've got one MacBook Pro M2 at the local repair-dude's shop. He told me 14 months ago that my part didn't exist, because Apple had used some non-standard garbage for their resistors, they invented to avoid independent repair dudes from fixing their shit. I'm writing this article from another junkbook, this time it's their Air model, and I can barely use the space bar because of (God knows what), and Apple in their infinite wisdom added a "new and improved keyboard", they're still struggling with making work, 7 years later.
I went by the local store the other day, asking myself if I should buy one of those new and shiny M3 things - However, even if I do, I'm fairly confident it'll be my last. I simply cannot handle this "planned obsolescence rubbish" anymore ...
Sorry Steve, I let you down - But I'll throw a rose on your tombstone if I'm around it one of these days to make up for it ...
R.I.P. Steve and R.I.P. APPL ...
Top comments (9)
Great article and interesting read. I am using a MacBook pro 2012 model and love it for ease of setup for dev. What setup would you suggest when I need to upgrade
I wish I knew. If you figure it out, let me know ... :/
Read my comment to David to see what I think about your 2012 model ...
Indeed, I would not know what to upgrade to either. There was a time thinkpads were at least solid if plain machines, but those days seem long gone too. The custom built linux laptop houses all seem to use the same shitty suppliers other PC laptops vendor do, and charge a premium to put that together for you.
learn these:
When you finished learning process you will see how deep goes the rabbit hole, Neo :)
So, here's the summary of your article: Apple is a like a crocodile. Since it has negligible senescence it doesn't die from old age. It doesn't have natural predators. However, it eventually dies of hunger because it grows too big for its ability to get fed by the ecosystem.
I couldn't have summed it up better myself
The best laptop I have is actually an old 15.2in Macbook pro with an i7, I guess 2012ish. It was I believe the last one made with an ethernet port (1git) and the first made with usb 3 support. It was also the last before retina displays and maybe the last that also still had a real keyboard. And it was probably the last with a built-in dvd "super drive", too.
Other great things about this laptop is that the drive bay, memory, and battery can all be replaced or upgraded. You could open it with a simple jewelers screw driver. It makes an excellent Linux system, and it was still better made / more useful to me than PC laptops I have seen or used even a decade later, let alone the modern crap Apple has made since. It's kind of like achieving the Apollo program and then forgetting how to even go to the Moon.
Hence, everything about the rise and fall of Apple computers feels like it is in the history of this one machine, which, incidentally, I do continue to use to this day. In a broader perspective, in a consolidated industry, they are also squeezed between Google and Microsoft. And neither feels need to extend artificial life support to avoid anti-trust scrutiny. So in this broad sense I kind of concur with you.
Back in the days, as in 2012, MacBooks were an IT miracle. They were 1,000 years ahead of everything else out there, and so was the iPhone. Today both are shiny objects, with a good marketing campaign, and nothing else going for it.
Every time somebody asked me what computer to buy, I'd say; "Get a MacBook, they simply work. You don't need to do anything to make them work, they never fail, and it's impossible to misunderstand how to use it".
Today they come "pre-broken" from the factory, I can't even set their latest operating system to the battery configuration I want - And if a tiny resistor breaks down, something that costs 50 cents to replace may I add, I have to buy a new hard drive, motherboard, CPU, and RAM - Because everything is soldered together into a single piece of iron to make it impossible to repair ...
The reason? They've modelled their hardware business on the SaaS business model, out of greed, which of course is a joke for a company manufacturing hardware.
I can relate to that, but how long away is that destiny? Maybe you could make a play-money bet on Manifold?