<story><title>John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/12/john-giannandrea-named-to-apples-executive-team/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rabidrat</author><text>&amp;gt; Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve only happened every decade so far: 1960 (IC), 1970 (DARPA), 1980 (PC), 1990 (GUI), 2000 (Internet), 2010 (smartphone).</text></item><item><author>Despegar</author><text>Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged.&lt;p&gt;And you also have to make a bet that Apple won&amp;#x27;t come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren&amp;#x27;t first to it). AR glasses have some promise to be a new general purpose computing platform, but even then I&amp;#x27;m skeptical that it will be able to mount a serious challenge to the smartphone.</text></item><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>15-20 years? How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years? Let alone that Apple will still be the hip premium brand? 20 years is a LONG time. The average lifespan for an S&amp;amp;P 500 company is less than that these days.</text></item><item><author>Despegar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll take that bet. The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least.&lt;p&gt;Apple is a 40 year old company, and they&amp;#x27;re still raking in the dough from their original product category.</text></item><item><author>m0zg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I&amp;#x27;m on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it&amp;#x27;s from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent answers, doesn&amp;#x27;t require rigid commands, etc. Whereas Siri is so bad I use it only to set alarms and timers. Not even setting of reminders is reliable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>runako</author><text>Point of order: the last 3 transitions have been layering versus actual shifts.&lt;p&gt;Text-based computing -&amp;gt; GUIs was a shift. Broadly speaking, there is no market today for consumer-facing computers where text is the only input capability.&lt;p&gt;The most profitable company in the PC era also has the most profitable PC unit today. The Internet runs on top of the GUI layer. The smartphone is (in much of the world) an &amp;quot;also&amp;quot; not an &amp;quot;instead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;(One could argue that the original MSFT goal of being on every desktop was centered on work. By that metric, most smartphone usage falls into a separate category of consumer computing that largely is distinct from business computing, where desktops &amp;amp; laptops still rule.)&lt;p&gt;A grandparent(-ish) post compares the iPhone to the Google Home. Much like the iPhone did not replace my laptop (which did not replace the server in the datacenter), voice-driven devices will not replace mobile phones. All Excel (ahem) at different use cases.</text></comment>
<story><title>John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/12/john-giannandrea-named-to-apples-executive-team/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rabidrat</author><text>&amp;gt; Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve only happened every decade so far: 1960 (IC), 1970 (DARPA), 1980 (PC), 1990 (GUI), 2000 (Internet), 2010 (smartphone).</text></item><item><author>Despegar</author><text>Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged.&lt;p&gt;And you also have to make a bet that Apple won&amp;#x27;t come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren&amp;#x27;t first to it). AR glasses have some promise to be a new general purpose computing platform, but even then I&amp;#x27;m skeptical that it will be able to mount a serious challenge to the smartphone.</text></item><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>15-20 years? How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years? Let alone that Apple will still be the hip premium brand? 20 years is a LONG time. The average lifespan for an S&amp;amp;P 500 company is less than that these days.</text></item><item><author>Despegar</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll take that bet. The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least.&lt;p&gt;Apple is a 40 year old company, and they&amp;#x27;re still raking in the dough from their original product category.</text></item><item><author>m0zg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I&amp;#x27;m on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it&amp;#x27;s from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent answers, doesn&amp;#x27;t require rigid commands, etc. Whereas Siri is so bad I use it only to set alarms and timers. Not even setting of reminders is reliable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jen20</author><text>Are you calling out the time these became mainstream? I&amp;#x27;d argue if the PC can be slotted in at 1980 (the IBM PC didn&amp;#x27;t come out until 1981), the GUI should be listed as 1984, not 1990. Alternatively, the PC should be listed a lot later.</text></comment>