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Late Breaking Geekery

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A few important items

Sony may pull it's music from iTunes, and it's game ideas appear to be a way to compete with Apple.  Of course as we saw Apple is looking into games.  This sounds like a suicidal move on Sony's part, but makes some sense if they want their own ecosystem.

A look at why Nokia's plans with Microsoft may not solve its problems.  I agree the organizational choices don't sound prime, it sounds like splitting to try and get the best out of all markets – with no unified strategy.  I'm starting to think Microsoft is taking advantage of Nokia.

– Steven Savage

 

Late Breaking Economic Geekery

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As the resident Econogeek (say "Econogeek" it just SOUNDS cool), I of course consider it my duty to keep everyone informed of economic issues while not putting them to sleep.  Well we had a few things come up I wanted to post today:

The Wrecksas in Texas.  Remember how Texas was going to be the next big thing?  Turns out they've got a lot of budget problems too and I'm guessing there's not going to be a lot of effort to fix them in a manner that'll let the state grow.  If you don't think a state can do stupid things to its budget that constrain growth, then let me just mention I live in California, which is still pulling itself out of decades of bad choices.  An interesting description: Texas is Ireland.  (By the way, I'm not holding out hope for Florida either).

Goldman Sach's deal with Facebook.  This one has several repercussions, and frankly few of them good for Facebook.  Goldman's involvement has brought SEC attention which could force Facebook into an IPO.  Goldman does not have a good reputation among many after the financial meltdown, and it's involvement could tarnish Facebook.  Goldman is known for making all kinds of deals so they might draw Facebook into ventures, partnerships, and so on that aren't in the company's best interest.  Finally, Goldman's been known to be involved with "bubbles" before, and I wonder if their involvement might end up jacking up Facebook stock prices when it goes IPO – only to have a crash later.

Rudgers releases a study of a survey on workers here.  Some useful insights.

There's your quick economic blast!

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Applenesia

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Apple is on top.  Apple rules our world.  iI want my iPhone, my iPad, and my iSystem.

Sure there's some bumps.  Ping has spam.  Apple has higher prices than some.  There's concerns expressed by people about closed technology ecosystems that are very legitimate.

However, let's face it – Apple is on top.  Everyone talks about them, wants to be like them, praises them.

So, I'd now like to see some people kindly discuss why all the doomsaying about Apple that we've seen on and off the last twenty years was wrong.  Publicly.  In detail.

I'm not angry it happened.  In some cases the various Apple-will-die stories seemed relevant at the time.  However they all turned out to be dreadfully wrong, so can some of the journalists and pundits and writers please go back and explain why so many of us were dead wrong?

Would it be hard to stop the praise to look back and ask just what we were thinking here?  Maybe it'll help us get better at predicting and evaluating.

Would it hurt to explore what Apple did to survive all those many years?  Maybe we can learn some lessons.

Could we ask ourselves if the death-of-Apple stories were just a fad (much like the death-of-Twitter stories these days)?  Perhaps we can stop history from repeating itself, as it often does to our embarrassment.

So, please news pages and magazines, journalists and writers, take a moment and explore why Apple lived when there were many times its demise was predicted.  Give us books, or articles, or even blog posts.

You can even write the draft on your iPad if you want, to get you in the mood.

– Steven Savage

(By the way the title of this?  One of my lamest.  Seriously.)