Re: Bubble bursting
"Apple have never been interested in being the first into any product category, they just generally end up being the best, or (at very least, if you're unable to stomach that) the most profitable."
Actually, they usually end up being chased out of that market almost completely by a competitor who understands sell-em-cheap-stack-em-high is a a better long-term strategy than 'only send 12 to the UK on release day and sell them for $1000 each'. Apple generally drop down to about 10% market share. Steve Jobs' was at his best when he was picking new, immature markets; Apple's pricing strategy and generally low specs compared to comparable alternatives make it pretty weak once a market begins to heat up. They go from 'everyone has an iDoodad' to 'only rich people have iDoodads, but they're a status item' to 'no-one gives a shit about iDoodad now except raving fanbois, because you can get this other company's doodad that is half the price, works better, and plays nicely with stuff made by other companies'.
Tim Cook has proven to be really quite bad at picking immature markets to move into. He's very much a care-taker CEO, tbh; he seems most comfortable iterating existing devices, which is fine if you're able to compete in a market but really isn't that compatible with Apple's usual market strategy. His innovations are horribly hit-and-miss; the Watch is really a flop (sure, it's doing well in 'wearable' terms, but the entire wearable market is also a flop); Apple Music has proven to be a failure AND has hurt relations with groups who were working with iTunes; and frankly the iPad Pro appears deeply confused about what it's supposed to be and where it should be placed in the market - it's wading into a dying market, exactly where Jobs didn't want to be at any given time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
