<story><title>Amazon’s New Customer</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bipson</author><text>I had to exit at this quote:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Apple’s goal was not to build a phone but to build an even more personal computer; their strategy was not to add on functionality to a phone but to reduce the phone to an app; and their tactics were not to duplicate the carriers but to leverage their connection with customers to gain concessions from them.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I disagree here, this is hindsight and speculative, and the provided link is from 2013. The initial iPhone did not come with a market (the &amp;#x27;iTunes App Store&amp;#x27;) and AFAIK we don&amp;#x27;t know for sure if it had been planned from the beginning to pan out the way it did.&lt;p&gt;I am not trying to play down the success of the iPhone and how it has changed the world. Yes, it was incredibly successful, yes it all panned out nicely. I am just questioning if it was all planned to come out exactly this way from the beginning, or maybe there were some decisions made after initial success and someone came up with even better ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>petra</author><text>Ben Thompson(the author of stratechery) is a smart guy, but his free articles, even though that they seem deep, do lack domain&amp;#x2F;technical knowledge. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that on the subjects of self-driving-cars, car-sharing and now on logistics&amp;#x2F;delivery&amp;#x2F;e-commerce - notice how abstract and detail free this article is.&lt;p&gt;But actually, that could be a great content authoring strategy: create a really good, smart name for yourself. write articles that the smart people of the internet like to read. give them the wrong answer, they will be forced to correct you. collect replies(including those from you your closed forum) and grab the right answer. publish and charge.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t know if that&amp;#x27;s the strategy. But it could work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon’s New Customer</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bipson</author><text>I had to exit at this quote:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Apple’s goal was not to build a phone but to build an even more personal computer; their strategy was not to add on functionality to a phone but to reduce the phone to an app; and their tactics were not to duplicate the carriers but to leverage their connection with customers to gain concessions from them.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I disagree here, this is hindsight and speculative, and the provided link is from 2013. The initial iPhone did not come with a market (the &amp;#x27;iTunes App Store&amp;#x27;) and AFAIK we don&amp;#x27;t know for sure if it had been planned from the beginning to pan out the way it did.&lt;p&gt;I am not trying to play down the success of the iPhone and how it has changed the world. Yes, it was incredibly successful, yes it all panned out nicely. I am just questioning if it was all planned to come out exactly this way from the beginning, or maybe there were some decisions made after initial success and someone came up with even better ideas.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TallGuyShort</author><text>I distinctly remember the way Steve Jobs presented it: &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s a phone, it&amp;#x27;s an iPod, and it&amp;#x27;s an Internet communications device.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That just comes off to me as though even he didn&amp;#x27;t realize how ubiquitous phones would become, and how integral to our lives they would become, even replacing computers for so many tasks. It&amp;#x27;s my phone, my iPod, my work outside of office hours, schedules and times my workouts, my alarm clock, my camera, my GPS and mapbook, my library, my notebook, my flashlight, my scanner, my TV, the way I look at cat pictures and the way I look up where to find an AED in an emergency.</text></comment>