[nthuser]

You have got to be joking. Looking at the revenue numbers, it's clear that Apple is more diversified than Google. The declining iPhone sales are a short term problem. People are just keeping the devices for longer, not abandoning the ecosystem. Their services and wearables are seeing an impressive growth. I think the watch will grow even faster once Apple makes it a completely independent device.

The difference between these two companies is that one publicizes the stuff it's working on and rushes it to market, while the other keeps it all secret until it's ready.

Also, Apple is working on AR glasses(rumored to be announced next year), self-driving car and are making a big push into digital health.

Apple is far from doomed, they still have a lot of room for growth.

[partingshots]

Alphabet is doing all of these things and more though no? With much more success too from what I can garner.

Waymo is the defacto number one leader in self-driving, whereas Apple’s self driving unit is having huge issues internally. Similarly, didn’t Verily just receive a $1 billion dollar investment a few days ago with Silver Lake as the primary backer for it’s various life science hardware/digital technologies it’s working on like LiftWare [1], Project Baseline [2], etc?

[1] Liftware - https://youtu.be/cFHwoOkSj7w

[2] Baseline Study - https://projectbaseline.com

[nthuser]

> Alphabet is doing all of these things and more though no? With more much success too from what I can garner.

Apple has more diversified revenue than Alphabet. Why would you say Alphabet is more successful?. All this tells me is that Apple thinks long and hard before publicizing what it's working on, they won't show us prototypes.

> Waymo is the defacto number one leader in self-driving, whereas Apple’s self driving unit is having huge issues internally with getting anything done.

ALL of Apple's reported problems had to do with the MAKING of a car, not autonomous systems. People just don't get this distinction. We will know how far their system is at the end of this month when the DMV releases their disengagement report. By the way, recent developments indicate that Apple is back to building an electric self-driving car instead of a self-driving platform.

[sah2ed]

> By the way, recent developments indicate that Apple is back to building an electric self-driving car instead of a self-driving platform.

This is the correct approach, yet a lot of people still haven’t internalized this subtle distinction.

For a self-driving platform to deliver on the promise of being more reliable than a human driver, it has to constantly monitor two environments: its internal environment and its external environment, but most discussions dwell on the external.

External environment failure in the worst case scenario can lead to loss of life. OTOH, internal environment failure can lead to internal inconsistency and in the worst case, a machine shutdown; but because cars share the road with other road users, a sudden failure in one car can lead to multiple car accidents and in a worst case scenario, several lives lost. In a way, the failure outcomes are identical.

An electric car is far less complex than an ICE car meaning there are fewer moving parts and subsystems whose state needs to be kept track of constantly. This is where electric drivetrains hold a lot of promise: a low complexity machine can be made more reliable at a lower cost than a high complexity machine.

[partingshots]

So far I’ve listed Waymo and Verily.

What about,

Loon - https://loon.co/

Dandelion - https://dandelionenergy.com/

Wing - https://x.company/wing/

Chronicle - https://chronicle.security/

Malta - https://blog.x.company/introducing-malta-81bceb559061

Apple is almost 100% definitively not working on a molten salt energy storage solution I can promise you. And the reason is because it’s just not in it’s corporate structure or culture. Far too constrained / trapped in it’s niche to expand outwards into such a vastly different market.

[sharcerer]

And you didn't even mention GV, CapitalG and other investment arms. Well forget the others, I am surprised that Google's investments into Oscar, Magic Leap, SpaceX, Impossible, Slack, Stripe,Lyft,Uber, Snap, AirBnb aren't talked about much. I think these can be counted as successful, guaranteed future cash troves. In 10 years, all these are going to be worth a lot. Google should hold onto these. It's like a mini Berkshire hathaway is brewing up.

Some links: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/a-peek-inside-alphabets-in... http://www.gv.com/portfolio/ https://capitalg.com/companies/

[scarface74]

And none of these are profitable.

A “successful” product for a profit making company is one that makes money.....

Google hasn’t shown an ability to ptofitably sell anything but ads.

According to numbers that came out during the Oracle lawsuit, even Android has only made Google $31 Billion since its inception.

[whatshisface]

>Google hasn’t shown an ability to ptofitably sell anything but ads.

The $31B revenue would be huge for almost any company. The magnitude of Google's largest cash cow, a glowing golden cow towering over the farm house, makes their normal-sized livestock look small. Because everything is so insignificant compared to advertisements, Google has killed projects that could be the entire product of a sustainable smaller company.

[scarface74]

$31 billion revenue of 8 years? To put that in context, that’s about the same amount of revenue from Apple’s non iPhone business in one quarter.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/11/reminder-apple-financial-...

And that’s $31 billion in revenue not profit.

The profit over 8 years is only $21 billion.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate...

[nthuser]

Again, Apple has a more diversified revenue stream than Alphabet and it is growing. Contrary to what you are trying to imply, Apple is actually more successful than Alphabet. The difference is they don't tell the world about their internal projects.

[jean-cs]

> Again, Apple has a more diversified revenue stream than Alphabet and it is growing.

Based on what?

[nthuser]

iPhone sales generate 59% of Apple's revenue, while ads generate 86% of Alphabet's revenue.

[deanCommie]

> Malta’s solution is to store electricity as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed. The key insight behind Malta is that electricity can be stored as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed.

Does nobody proof read these things before they get published?

[lawrenceyan]

The grammar is perfectly correct though I think?

Perhaps this portion is what confuses you: stores electricity as heat in "the form of a combination of a" high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid. This would be an explicit wording which might help to clarify things, but is not used due to redundancy.

[deanCommie]

The 2 consecutive sentence both contain the identical LONG fragment "as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed"

[phaus]

If they announce AR glasses that look like anything besides a regular sized, normal looking, but super stylish pair of sunglasses running amazing software that always works, with a killer feature that no one even knew they needed, it will be safe to end the tired debate of whether Steve Jobs was the biggest reason that they regularly made great things.

I do agree though that Apple is more diversified than a company that keeps selling super-expensive beta tests that get killed after the first or second try doesn't work.

[gamblor956]

TIL I learned that contrary to Apple's own statements, it is more diversified than its primary competitors like Google and MS.

Oh wait, no I didn't. Because of those 3, Apple is the least diversified company, and it's major revenue source is driven by a single line of products (the iPhone) which drives nearly every one of its other major revenue sources (i.e., the App Store). The double-whammy effect is part of why investors are so concerned: users not buying new iPhones means that users are also buying fewer apps in the App Store.