07-31-2015, 04:12 PM
I do find it bizarre that Apple has so many billions of dollars.
I just finished reading "Ready Player One", which is basically about a near-future world where a sort of "Second Life" type virtual MMORPG has taken over the entire online gaming, shopping and social scene. It's a hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars business that actually seems feasible (even if we assume there is no VR component) and raises some interesting thoughts.
Imagine if Apple spent a mere one billion dollars developing something along these lines. The potential is huge and at worst they burn a billion dollars which was otherwise doing nothing. Imagine what kind of online world you could develop with a BILLION dollars. A goddamn billion dollars, and Apple could put one hundred goddamn billion dollars into it if it really looked like it was going somewhere.
Microsoft has a shitload of cash too.
The old industry giants lost their leadership. They are piloted by people who have no sense of direction, no desire to take any risks and are basically just lending out their money because they apparently don't want to try anything.
This is why I still like Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and Tesla (Elon Musk). There must be something about this type of person (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs). These people all make pushes and take risks and whether it pays off or not, at least they're not idle. They're aiming for the Next Big Thing.
The people who inherited Apple and Microsoft are not that kind of people. No drive, no creativity, no risk taking. I assume these companies will just sit idle until technological progress renders them obsolete or until some new CEO with real drive takes over. But then, maybe the problem is that all of THOSE people are running their own companies somewhere else.
Incidentally, if the numbers I looked up are correct, Apple could take all of their cash and give every full time employee a bonus of $2,000,000.
I just finished reading "Ready Player One", which is basically about a near-future world where a sort of "Second Life" type virtual MMORPG has taken over the entire online gaming, shopping and social scene. It's a hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars business that actually seems feasible (even if we assume there is no VR component) and raises some interesting thoughts.
Imagine if Apple spent a mere one billion dollars developing something along these lines. The potential is huge and at worst they burn a billion dollars which was otherwise doing nothing. Imagine what kind of online world you could develop with a BILLION dollars. A goddamn billion dollars, and Apple could put one hundred goddamn billion dollars into it if it really looked like it was going somewhere.
Microsoft has a shitload of cash too.
The old industry giants lost their leadership. They are piloted by people who have no sense of direction, no desire to take any risks and are basically just lending out their money because they apparently don't want to try anything.
This is why I still like Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and Tesla (Elon Musk). There must be something about this type of person (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs). These people all make pushes and take risks and whether it pays off or not, at least they're not idle. They're aiming for the Next Big Thing.
The people who inherited Apple and Microsoft are not that kind of people. No drive, no creativity, no risk taking. I assume these companies will just sit idle until technological progress renders them obsolete or until some new CEO with real drive takes over. But then, maybe the problem is that all of THOSE people are running their own companies somewhere else.
Incidentally, if the numbers I looked up are correct, Apple could take all of their cash and give every full time employee a bonus of $2,000,000.