[simonh]

For the first part I think you're probably right, their all powerful absolute advocate for user experience above all else has gone and isn't about to be replaced. I don't think that's an existential threat to the company, even now who else does any of this stuff better? But it is a problem.

>...domineering attitude over the devices in a billion peoples’ pockets are largely preventing the greater market from innovating...

Where the heck does that come from? Apple coming up with the first 64-bit mobile processor didn't stop anyone else doing it, and the M1 isn't stopping anyone else developing fast efficient ARM processors. In fact it's pretty obvious its pushing their competitors into upping their game.

As for breaking up the company, OMG no, a thousand times no. It would destroy everything good about them. The only people it would benefit are their competitors. The last thing we need is enforced mediocrity. Who else is going to come up with FaceID, M1, Neural Engine, W1, T2 and goodness knows what else. Breaking up the company isn't going to make such tech more ubiquitous.

Well, it might for the existing stuff but it's going to cut off the pipeline cold. It's only their scale and commitment to huge investments and far forward looking technological bets that make these things possible. How is a divided company going to manage the close collaboration and integrated design of hardware and software at every level if they're in separate companies? It would crush out the distinctive features that make Apple what it is.

[gduffy]

If you saw, for example, how deals that lock up fabrication resources (and the surrounding global politics) work to prevent competition, you’d see one small example out of many that illustrate how smaller competitors can’t keep up.

As for the rest of your comment, I am actually a HUGE FAN of vertical integration. But your connection is a non sequitur because a $100B company can do everything the way Apple does if and only if there isn’t a $1T company next door locking up every single one of the best chip engineers, industrial designers, worldwide supply of miniature CNC machines, & etc with golden handcuffs, trade deals, capital and etc that only a monopoly could afford.

Our theoretical $100B company would still have some of the greats. But right now, some ridiculous percentage of engineers and infrastructure are controlled by like 5 tech companies. It isn’t healthy for individual citizens, and it misses huge opportunity costs if you compare it to a truly competitive economy with enforced rules against monopolies or oligopolies.

It’s one of the truly rare situations where proper, concise and well-planned government intervention (in other words, laws!) could and should help.

[simonh]

I’m constantly reading that phone technology has hit a plateau, it’s commodified, everyone else will catch up to Apple any day now and their competitive edge will disappear. That’s been the story since the day the iPhone was announced.

Apples competitors actually believe this and have done for over a decade. Were Samsung or Huawei ever going to put that much investment into advanced tech? No because they are constantly being told by analysts that they don’t need to.

All those small tech startups Apple keeps buying with advanced Flash memory controllers, new optics, advanced sensors, AI optimised processing hardware. Nobody else in the consumer space sees the value in that, they’re all chasing the lowest common denominator. The idea that Vivo would be investing in tech startups and pushing technological boundaries if only Apple hadn’t beaten them to it is pure fantasy. The nearest any of those companies get to innovation is stupid gimmicks like built in projectors and edge screens.

Breaking up a company vertically can’t work. You wouldn’t end up with 5 smaller Apples. You’d end up with an OS business, a chip business, an applications business, a Mac business and a mobile device business. Everything good about Apple would die on the butcher’s block when it was carved up.

[gduffy]

Wow, “can’t work”. That might be the strongest signs of cognitive dissonance I’ve ever seen.

Trivial logic disproves your statement and in 10-20 years it will be proven empirically through disruption from the market (including mini-Apple splinter groups that do exactly what you say is impossible).

SJ’s (awesome, to be admired) reality distortion field was strong and its effects clearly still linger, as evidenced by your leaps here.

Apple is decidedly less innovative than it was in decades past (make sure you don’t misread that as “not innovative”) and others will take the mantle in due time. It’ll just be faster, better for the economy, and better for individual citizens if Apple isn’t allowed to exert undue influence against competitors via monopoly/oligopoly tactics along the way.

Side note: funny enough, your sort of reverence for the status quo is a huge factor in keeping large companies unaware of looming disruption. But nearly every exec that could act on it has a personal time horizon that preserves their legacy and makes it the next guy's problem. This phenomenon, while frustrating to experience on the inside, is one of the most heartening aspects of the situation for would-be competition to take hold.