What was the last tech product you bought that really excited you? If you’re like the Macalope… well, God help you. Seriously, the back hair alone is enough to make it a miserable experience. Sure, the little birds that sit on the Macalope’s back help with the bugs, but in terms of summer heat…
Sorry, getting off track.
If you are anything like this horned observer, chances your last truly exciting tech purchase wasn’t made by Apple or any other large tech company, unless it was a while ago. For the Macalope’s money, the last new and truly exciting thing he bought from Apple was the original AirPods, which he got all the way back in 2016. According to math, that’s nine years ago.
Now, it’s not like even in its heyday Apple was releasing entirely new products every couple of years. The iPod came out in 2001 and the iPhone didn’t come out until six years later. Pundits, of course, thought Apple should be churning out a new iPhone-level product every year after that but that was a ridiculously unreasonable expectation. Sure, change the world every year, that’s sustainable.
It’s almost inevitably a problem when companies get bigger. They get entrenched and want to protect their current income streams rather than work on developing new ones.
None of this is to say Apple and other large tech companies don’t still make some nice products, and Apple has delivered several entirely new products since AirPods. The Macalope likes his HomePod mini, he just doesn’t love it like he loves his older Apple products. The Vision Pro is a nice device, it’s just out of most people’s price range.
Hey, it’s almost inevitably a problem when companies get bigger. They get entrenched and want to protect their current income streams rather than work on developing new ones. This is why the Macalope is so litigious about his highly lucrative blender mayonnaise franchise.
Surely you’ve heard of it. Those places where you go in and they have all the ingredients right there with blenders, and you can blend your own mayonnaise?
No? You-and-Me-onnaise? Seriously? They’re in strip malls up and down the I-95 corridor. Huh. Guess we’ll have to increase the ad budget.
But these days it seems worse.
Now you’re probably asking, “Ugh, are we going to talk about AI? Again?” Look, it’s not the Macalope’s fault we have to talk about AI almost every week. If it were up to him he’d talk about all the various toppings you can put into a cup full of delicious mayonnaise to make a healthy and delicious treat. (Disclaimer: not healthy. Also, some reviews indicate it’s not delicious, either.)
These days, venture capitalists have largely set themselves up as the self-appointed arbiters of which tech startups will get funded and which won’t. Having “gotten theirs,” they’re now intent on making sure the playing field is a slope that slides everything into their pockets.
So, yeah, this is how things like AI turn into required technologies. Even though it’s mostly just useful in certain use cases, it has to be shoved into everything in order to maximize the VC investment. Having made a bunch of people rich, Wall Street now takes these firms’ word as gospel and punishes companies that don’t fall in line.
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This all despite the fact that it’s bad for the environment, it’s built off of stolen material, it often doesn’t work right, and most consumers simply don’t want it. Yet somehow we’re locked into a multi-year cycle of trying to squeeze some kind of return out of it so the rich geniuses who foisted it on us make themselves even richer.
More and more the big companies seem to be making tech that satisfies investors rather than customers. That is, of course, backwards.
Apple is at something of a crossroads. Traditionally, it’s done well by charting its own course, often against the winds of the industry groupthink. The problem now is that the groupthink is so pervasive, it’s able to hurt Apple’s share price when the company doesn’t go along. Apple still does good things that the venture capital/Wall Street machine doesn’t value, like its continued emphasis on accessibility and privacy. But it’s rush (and miss) to jump on the AI bandwagon was a misstep.
Apple still has plenty of products in the pipeline. Cheaper Vision headsets, that HomePad, more than one foldable device and more, if you believe the rumors. Maybe one or more of these will “surprise and delight”. But lately, the Macalope’s most enjoyable new tech is coming from places other than Cupertino.