I was rejected by YC and still point to them (namely, the combo of PG’s essays and HN comment wisdom) as the greatest single source of startup advice as I’ve built a company in the 9-10 figure range. Thank you YC! You have done so much for the startup community!
Why are they doing this? Trickle down effects for their mass market products? There is no way that the prosumer market is big enough to justify this distraction for Apple even if it used to be their core business line.
Apple's market share has always been a small slice of the overall PC market. In a way, they never did "mass market". While the prosumer market may be a small proportion of the overall market, it could be very significant, for Apple, relative to the market Apple addresses.
Plus, I think a lot of people who would not normally call themselves a "prosumer" will want, and purchase these.
Apple's market share has always been a small slice of the overall PC market.
Small is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Apple sold nearly $11 billion worth of Macs last quarter. Once you get out of the HN echo chamber and enterprise IT circles, Macs are quite popular.
In a way, they never did "mass market".
Having an Apple Store within a 20 minute drive of 80% of the American public counts as mass market [1]. Haven't been lately because pandemic but my local Apple Stores were always packed with people. And of course there's a Best Buy, Micro Center and other regional retailers that sell Macs in places with no Apple Stores.
It's not just prosumers; it's normies who just want a good computer made by a company they've heard of and trust vs. a cheap plastic 3rd tier PC from a manufacturer they're vaguely familiar with. I've been involved in user groups since the 80's; trust me, most Mac users are just regular people—not music producers and cinematographers.
An M1 Mac mini, which certainly outperforms most PCs in it's price class. The retail price starts at $699 but is available for significantly less via 3rd parties like Amazon.
If you think of the market segment as "non-plastic computers that don't suck", Apple is doing quite well. And now that Apple Silicon performance continues to outpace the industry as a whole, this will continue.
The other segment is the "I like nice things" crowd. They aren't price sensitive; they just like nice things and Macs have that in spades compared to the vast majority of PCs.
> It's not just prosumers; it's normies who just want a good computer made by a company they've heard of and trust vs. a cheap plastic 3rd tier PC from a manufacturer they're vaguely familiar with
It's like when people say their iPhone is better quality than a $200 Xiaomi phone. Well, duh??? Why are you even comparing them? If you look at higher tier Xiaomi phones, or in your example, laptops from reputable companies such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, they're much closer in build quality, have a choice of tradeoffs ( you can choose if you want small, light, long battery life, type of screen, ports, performance, etc. and not have Apple choose), and were still quite a bit cheaper than equivalent specs Macbooks. That's no longer quite as valid for laptops due to the M1s l, but is still valid for phones.
"Prosumer" is also a somewhat vague term. It's probably supposed to mean consumers with lots of disposable income, but if you're an engineer, developer, video editor, or studio musician it just means you think of Apple hardware as a business expense.
Yep, this is the requisite "hey Hollywood I know we haven't thought about your studio needs in a while, here's a bone that reminds you why Apple is the industry standard" play.
So, you'd think, and that's certainly what I was thinking when watching the thing... but they teased a future Mac Pro announcement at the end. This is a mid-level machine, apparently (similar to the old iMac Pro, I suppose).
There is a big market of creatives/artists who basically own an apple product as a decent chunk of their personality, for good or bad. Ergo, they'll sell.
The indie professional market is more than big enough to justify this. Small films have been able to roll some pretty impressive vfx on desktop computers recently, and North American creative types tend to love Macs.
I look at it from the other side - why aren’t Dell and Lenovo and HP and Microsoft doing this? Have they given up? Is assembling commodity parts into the same computer everybody else makes the only thing they can do?
In one sense, yes. In another, though, most great artistic works draw inspiration from other earlier works, and so are arguably not a "creation" by a single human; more like an evolution, a synthesis, a derivation, a continuation...
Would Shakespeare have written Romeo and Juliet if there hadn't previously been Pyramus and Thisbe, or many other sources?
Seems like an especially smart investment. Tycoons purchasing storied media assets usually have to contend with journalistic integrity when trying to push their agenda. Binance will not have any such challenges with Forbes.
My business received about 1.25M from PPP. It was essential cash flow for us and helped save the business (from a cashflow pov) but it was also 100% a massive handout. On a systemic level it makes some sense I guess, but at a micro level it seemed like a bailout to the people who needed it the least. There is also basically no reason it had to be a handout vs an actual loan that required repayment.
A close friend of mine sold them a business. They are quick as advertised but pay bottom of the barrel multiples. Helpful if you need cash quick I guess.
I would say it like when you have the best ever basketball team with all Hall of Famers on it. And then team that has never done anything drafts a rookie that might be good (nobody knows) but at least that rookie looks cool.
What am I missing here? Why is spacex valuation 100bn if this is true? I would think it would be 1tn easily in this kind of capital abundant environment. Is the risk that high? Is the market size being overestimated?
I'm no financial guru, even enthusiast, but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit. If you listened to last Telsa's shareholder meeting, one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends! People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history, building largest factories left and right, to pay dividends to its share holders! I'm in awe how they didn't just laugh the question off and didn't take back the shares from those shareholders (only if they could).
> People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history
Tesla was founded in 2002, during the same timespan Facebook became ubiquitous in our lives, Google became the homepage of the world and Amazon became the go-to place to make purchases.
Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995. The world was much larger and disconnected back then and yet they managed to became so ubiquitous to reach the monopoly status, such a dominance that the US government had to step in like they did with Standard Oil.
I commute to work daily . 25 miles back and forth and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .
After 20 years the company most successful and ubiquitous product is its stock
Are you comparing software companies to a manufacturing company?
They were making new technology that people basically thought was impossible. By 2012 they had only sold 1000 vehicles. That how hard it was.
Since Model S however they have grown about as fast as any manufacturing based company in history and they have very clear potential to continue to do so for a few years more at the very least.
Tesla basically invest huge into growing a chemical industry to make the batteries. That simply not something that just magically happens within a few years.
> Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995.
Because Microsoft was running on ALL computers designed from lots and lots of companies. Rather the computers were designed for it.
> such a dominance that the US government had to step in like they did with Standard Oil.
When you advertise yourself as a tech company you are bound to be compared against other tech companies.
More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life .
Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible.
Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely dominate Tesla in this fundamental, during the same timespan.
They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.
> More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life .
Cars are the single largest expense other then a house people make. Of course its gone have less overall impact then a free product that everybody is gone spend very little time on.
The Supercharger network alone and showing the way for EV infrastructure will have a huge impact on everybody.
> Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible.
People usually love their Tesla and that is reflected in the data that is gathered about that. Cars are the second most expensive people buy behind a house. They have huge impact on the people who buy them and clearly less on those that don't.
> Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely dominate Tesla in this fundamental, during the same timespan.
Idiotic comparison, no matter how long you talk about it.
> They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.
And I want to turn into an adonis bedding a different Hollywood actress every night
Doesn't really matter what the CEO of a company tells you about his projections about the future of the company
It will always be an up& to the right chart.
Especially here people should know better and take those promises and straight up throw them into the bin because they are just that.
As the old saying goes: "It takes one to see one".
With Microsoft, Google and Facebook you didn't have to be on the lookout for anything suspicious because they provided very conservatives estimates, begging financial analysts to be conservative for their own estimates too.
That's one huge difference between those companies and Tesla, an other huge difference is the fact that you can tangibly see those companies products in your daily life, whereas Tesla is only famous for future projections of techno-utopian dreams and the stock price which is constantly inflated by the cult leader CEO. The same cult leader CEO who managed to get in this privileged position by overselling equity to bigger fools for his whole life.
You are the only one comparing those companies. Its neither insightful or clever to do so. But I guess you feel clever coming up with that.
I'm pretty sure the people who drive Tesla see them quite often. People see supercharger all the time and the stigma against electric and travel has been broken.
Every large car maker and most countries have admired and are now pushing for EVs.
Tesla is famous for making EV popular more then anything else and by that had massive impact as every in the car industry has addmited.
And the Cult leader said in 2014 they would do 500k in 2020 and they did exactly that. Their growth has hit pretty much what they have guided for multiple years now.
Anybody that observes the industry knows they will continue to grow fast, its not really a question.
That’s not apple to apple comparison. Try other vehicle manufacturers and see where your numbers end up. Ramping up a multi thousand part product with hundreds of suppliers is a whole different ball game than scaling an online website.
> I commute 25 miles back and forth to work and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .
Where on earth do you live? I can barely walk down the street without tripping over one. It's not a stretch to say I'd see several dozen on a short morning run.
Not the original poster, but I'm guessing they live somewhere other than California or New York. The nearest Tesla supercharging station to myself is a two-hour drive away, for example. While I could use one to drive to and from work or to businesses in the area, I won't be using it to go almost anywhere else any time soon. At least, not without planning my routes around that availability. As a contrast, the small town I live in has six gas stations.
I'm looking forward to the day that the infrastructure is ubiquitous enough that I can buy a fully electric vehicle, but that day isn't here yet.
For those interested, Barry Diller's IAC or Mark Leonard's Constellation Software might be better examples of a Berkshire of the Internet or Software, respectively.
