I love contrarian takes but I don’t love uninformed cynical takes not backed up by data or experience, especially the kind we’ve been seeing the past few days with Apple Vision Pro. (John C Dvorak was also commenting about the <i>unreleased</i> iPhone at the time of writing)<p>Reality is the best teacher and cynics (as opposed to honest critics) are best disregarded and downvoted. When unsure, I remind myself it’s best to reserve judgement and see how things play out and not overgeneralize from my own limited preferences. I tell myself that I am one small speck in the market — i do not represent the market.<p>Because even if cynics turn out to be right, their reasons for being right are random and we learn nothing from them. In financial market for instance it’s not enough to be right (it’s a coin toss) but to have the right reasons for being right.
John C. Dvorak is an admitted anti-Apple troll who went all in on click-bait to drive advertising revenue: a pioneer, if you will. [0]<p>Eventually, he pissed of his editorship about 5G advertorial and was fired. [1] [2]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA</a><p>[1] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.com/@dvorak/5g-got-me-fired-ce407e584c4a" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.co...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157869" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157869</a>
I joined Nokia in 2008 about a year after the iPhone launch, and even at that late date, the general consensus was that it wasn't a big deal and/or just an American thing, similar to Japan's i-mode.<p>For those of us who knew what a leap ahead it was - the capacitive touch screen alone changed everything, let alone the usability and functionality like the physical mute switch - it was an uphill battle to convince decision makers how much of a paradigm shift it was. In fact my first boss, the CTO based in Palo Alto where I worked - had a boardroom showdown about it and lost, resigning immediately after.<p>Dvorak wasn't the only one with his head stuck in the sand. A lot of actual industry players just couldn't get it either. Blackberry for example.<p>The most amazing thing to me, honestly, is how quickly Google shifted gears. Android first launched with an emulator that looked exactly like the Nokia E71, Symbian phone with the exact same UX. I posted a video of it on Vimeo back then [1] (it's still there!!!). Within the year they had turned 90° and copied the iPhone in almost every way. That's Silicon Valley flexibility and drive which Nokia and other established mobile companies just couldn't match.<p>1. <a href="https://vimeo.com/384481" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/384481</a>
> On February 19, 1984, in an article in The San Francisco Examiner, Dvorak listed the mouse as one of many reasons Apple Inc.'s Macintosh computer might not be successful: "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things."<p>Incredible. From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak</a>
So tasty. And useful, to remind us what “smart” “sober” commentary looks like in tech — mostly negative, mostly missing the mark.<p>> What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.
>In fact it's gone so far that it's in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.<p>Even the closing sentence is funny; consolidated into bankruptcy. But hey, at least the article is consistent in getting everything wrong.
Before you get mad, understand that John C. Dvorak does it just for the clicks:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/gOHzHVF-4Mg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/gOHzHVF-4Mg</a>
John C. Dvorak is famous for bad takes. But if you’re alluding to Apple Vision being successful because he was an iPhone naysayer, you’re wrong. Reality doesn’t work that way. The jury is still out on VR and it changes little when Apple enters the market at that price point and there’s not a killer problem for it.
Off topic, but this site has literally 6 advertising blocks in the article and still it asks for a subscription.
I am running a multi million user platform, but in no way i need to have such a destructive monetization model. My users would flee. My platform would die quickly.
In 2007 the question was "can Apple compete with other cell phone makers". The market for cell phones (even smart phones) was already well established, but Dvorak here says the iphone "will be passé within 3 months". What he didn't know is that Apple had made something far better than all the competition.<p>Now, with AR/VR I think the skeptics aren't saying Apple's product won't be good, but that even if it's the best product in the category there's still just not much of a market for it.
People who are crazy enough that think they can change the world are only the ones who do, so when Steve Jobs has to deal with these non-sense so he never said what he is working on, he focused on shipping great products: "There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share."
Competitors at the time included Nokia (Symbian OS), Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, OpenMoko, and Android; but not Apple Newton OS (1987-1998).<p>Cisco IOS (for network gear) was created in the 1980s.<p>It was possible to run Linux on the 1st gen iPod (2001). IIRC the Archos Jukebox also had a 2.5" drive enclosure with audio (and then video on a color LCD) decoding.
> Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it's gone so far that it's in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp and Motorola<p>I've never seen someone be so right and so wrong at the same time.
This one was not John Dvorak's best predictions, and he really should have seen this one coming.<p>The PC was a general purpose device that replaced a whole office full of fairly expensive specialty devices (word processor, fax, teletype, calculator, intercom system, etc...). iPhone was no different. General purpose that could replace a bunch of expensive specialty devices (anyone else have a PDA, phone, music player, camera, GPS, etc...) at a personal level. It was obvious iPhone would succeed and it was equally obvious that Android was running the Wintel play and Apple was playing the Apple play with iPhone.