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by dwaite
811 days ago
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> One thing about Apple is things can make sense for them to explore that don't make sense for others to. They have a big enough ecosystem, enough cash to do R&D on an idea for decades, and a culture of killing things that aren't good enough that make them an ideal place to determine whether ideas are a conceptual dead end versus just haven't been executed well enough (or tied to the right ecosystem to make them work). While Apple can do this, it isn't their typical mode of operation. For instance, they tend to accuhire companies specifically around getting an execution-oriented team for particular product areas, like developer tools (TestFlight) or weather (Dark Sky) or assistants (Siri). This does mean building compelling product demos can determine how long a feature-under development can get extended. > Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions. Foldables make sense for Apple to explore also because even if foldable phones are a bad idea (and I kinda suspect they are), they make tons of other devices in different form factors which may have an entirely different set of trade-offs for flexible/foldable displays. |
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Yeah small M&A is great for advancing/derisking R&D for a given part or tech. They also embed / work closely with manufacturing partners. Nevertheless they're also doing a lot on their own R&D work; a bunch of Vision Pro stuff is homegrown and there's always new potential techs we never see that show up in patent applications showing their R&D is moving along at a healthy clip, e.g. this radar based tracking system from two days ago [1].
I think folks like Google and Meta talk a lot more about their R&D where Apple is very tight lipped, since part of Apple's magic is the part of R&D that's figuring out how to take janky half-working parts, polish them relentlessly, and combine the right ones together into something that makes sense as a product.
[1] https://www.patentlyapple.com/2024/04/apple-wins-patent-for-...