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Steve Jobs Would Have Celebrated His 69th Birthday Today
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I think it is a mistake to say Apple is behind on AI. Every company seems to be doing for photo based stuff and a lot of it is questionable as being AI. To some degree Apple has been using AI for years.
What he would not have accepted today, would be Siri being so terrible…. Tried today to get it to read my latest WhatsApp message. Never mind reply. It’s almost useless and so un Apple
What would want to use it for that you can’t?
If you want to use it to troll the web like Google, then Google is the answer, not Apple. It’s what Google does.
If you want to use it to find products, Amazon is the best.
If you want to use it for to use it to control your home, without giving up your actions to a search or product engine then Apple does that best.
What is your flavour of Voice assistant? Limited. Sure, they ALL have limitations, but definitely not useless 🤦🏻♂️
Makes you wish you could go back to the tail end of the 2007–2008 financial crisis in 20 Jan 2009 and bought $AAPL at its 2 decade low.
Buy 4,000 Apple shares at $78.20/share for a total of $312,800.00 and today's portfolio value would be $20,442,240.00 at $182.52/share. Quarterly div for more than a decade would be $25,760.00.
Do you know how expensive Apple products were?
The Apple II was not the cheapest hobbyist computer, by far.
The Macintosh was expensive. The Lisa was very expensive.
People have created absurd levels of mythology about Apple and its personalities.
By "original" you mean the ones who made the Apple, then Apple II and then the Macintosh?
Even after Jobs departed they were pricy... My high school bought several Mac Iicx and IIfx machines back in the 90s, for the tech lab and school newspaper, at a cost of $10,000 each ($23,000 in 2024 dollars).
The original Mac for $2495 would equal $7300 USD in 2024 dollars... that's quite a ton to pay for a machine that had no hard disk, very little RAM, booted by floppy, etc. and had less practical use than the $1200 cheaper Apple //c (which we purchased in 86).
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The 1st base model iMac, 1998 iMac 15" G3, sold for $1299.
Over 25 years later the 2023 iMac 24" M3 starts at the same $1299.
Inflation adjusted that 2023 model is less than 1/2 the price of the original 1998 model at a superior build quality.
Cumulative rate of inflation is 89.2% between those years.
This is why I am confident that when the next gen 32" 6K display parts reduces to <$500 after 5 years with the 2019 Pro XDR display that a base model 2024 iMac 32" 6K M4 8GB RAM 256GB can be sold at $1799 like the base model 2020 iMac 27" 5K Core i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD
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Technology was very expensive for everything back then. While wages were way lower then todays salaries, a surprising amount of people were greatly interested in the first consumer adaption of a graphics based OS personal computer. They even stood in lines at school to buy these when they first became available. There was no discounting like today. But the cost of living was way less back in the early eighties, food, gas, cars, entertainment, travel, so even if this was a expensive tech novelty a lot saw the future of Apple in the Mac. I would not try to claim everything in 2024 dollars as it's a poor argument against what people really could afford back then.
In 1984 almost 250,000 Macs were sold.Technology was very expensive for everything back then. While wages were way lower then todays salaries, a surprising amount of people were greatly interested in the first consumer adaption of a graphics based OS personal computer. They even stood in lines at school to buy these when they first became available. There was no discounting like today. But the cost of living was way less back in the early eighties, food, gas, cars, entertainment, travel, so even if this was a expensive tech novelty a lot saw the future of Apple in the Mac. I would not try to claim everything in 2024 dollars as it's a poor argument against what people really could afford back then.
39 years later Apple sold 21.7 million.
Worldwide human population, income and jobs using desktops & laptops increased.
Apple's traditional product price points kept relatively unchanged for decades.
What did change greatly are PC laptop & desktop price points.
I can buy a headless mini PC with a 10nm Intel N95 chip, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD & Win11 Pro license for less than $120. Its dimensional volume is 500mL.
Steve Jobs would refer to these devices as junky but they're good enough to do word processing, spreadsheets, email, presentation and even video conferencing.
If you're a parent that does not want your child enjoying Fornight and Minecraft then this would be great to buy.
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I would. I was an FP&A data analyst for a FAANG company. (I'm currently a data analytics manager.)
CPI = consumer price inflation. Yesterday's technology at today's prices is relative to yesterday's salaries converted to 2024 dollars. I make six figures and I wouldn't spend $7k on any computer today.
The 80s had
Yeah, that's the whole point. Is there something going on in today's gradeschool math classes I don't know about? It seems everyone younger than me continues this dubious argument that "yesterday was not today therefore you can't compare them"... I absolutely can, especially when "yesterday was not today" is precisely the point I'm illustrating.
Do this math: My net worth has grown 22% annualized versus the cost of borrowing on a mortgage at 3% (I have no other debt). Despite that John Hughes movies would have you believe that everyone grew up in Chicago's posh North Shore, the 70s and 80s were the opposite of that.
Time Value of Money is not a new concept.
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I think if Steve were alive today, Apple would have been the first to integrate AI into their phones. This is the type of innovation that made him who he was. What something like Samsung has now, Apple would have probably had it way before.
Sadly he was too stubborn for his own good. He’d be alive today if he’d sought traditional medicine right away, but he delayed while perusing other options and that sealed his fate. His genius failed him when he most needed it. 🥲
Thinking outside the box made him unique and made him great. As you’ve said, it also probably killed him too.