NBC News THINK published a ridiculous piece by the editor of New Statesman America, Nicky Woolf, which tries to make the case that Apple’s wireless AirPods were an attack on consumers.
Silicon Valley is in the business of creating near-monopolistic environments in which they can then push up the prices. Capitalists love to claim that markets are the best machine to find inefficiencies and drive progress, but the dirty secret is, and has been for centuries, that an open and competitive market is bad for the bottom line.
The mild inconvenience represented by tangled headphone wires was seen not as a human problem that needed to be solved for the good of mankind, but as a potential opportunity to replace a long-standing open and fiercely competitive market with a brand new closed and uncompetitive one, with all of the related commercial advantages that brings. –Nicky Woolf, NBC News THINK
Nicky seems to forget that a monopoly means the absence of competition. You can buy any number of wireless headphones for your iPhone from companies such as Bose, Sony, or JayBird.
But at a deeper level Nicky seems to misunderstand why everyone is starting to wear AirPods. Apple has made a superior product. When you look at the advantages of using Apple designed headphones within Apple’s hardware ecosystem, people like the advantages and willingly hand over their hard-earned money.
I could go on and on about all the convenience advantages of using AirPods over Sony headphones but that isn’t what this article is about. And this isn’t just about defending Apple. It’s about defending the underpinnings of what makes our economy tick.
My point is that within capitalism, money is a measure of one’s service to his fellowman. Even if you have inherited all of your wealth, your money is a sign that someone in your family has served his fellow man to a great extent.
Apple is in the business of building digital bridges. They serve their fellow man by connecting people with whatever information or content matters to them the most. Whether it’s the latest song from Bruno Mars, hearing how your grandmother’s day went, or collecting data for a drug trial, you need a physical device which can serve as a bridge to deliver you your digital content. The iPhone is the closest thing we have to a Star Trek transporter. Someone in Romania can create something and you can see it in your living room 30 seconds later in Sidney Nebraska.
Apple is amongst the most profitable companies in the world because they build the best digital bridges in the world. They are helping people at a monumentally grand scale. Don’t underestimate how important digital bridges are. I used to work for NASA where every project was categorized as either transporting data or transporting people. Transporting data was considered the highest calling. It is the future. Moving people was the miracle of the 20th century. Moving data is the miracle of the 21st and beyond.
And I’m tired of hearing how Apple needs to lower their prices so that goat herders in Malawi can afford to buy their own iphone. That’s the equivalent of saying that Tim Cook should be paid what your average Apple Store clerk makes. No.
There are services and organizations that strive to make the lives of the least fortunate among us better. Whether it is local government organizations, hospitals, churches, or small businesses that need labor. These are the “first responders” to global poverty. Apple’s place is to make the world a better place for these first responder organizations. They do that by providing communication tools, privacy, secure data collection platforms etc.
And what makes all this possible, are the healthy gross margins on Apple products. Ironically, were Apple to ever listen to their critics and focus their energy on making the cheapest possible phones, many of their noble sustainability projects would be in jeopardy.
As an American I’m immensely proud of Apple. I’d love to see a tweet from the President of Iran that was something along the lines of “To the country that brought us automobiles, airplanes, and iPhones, THANK YOU”.
Does Apple have an obscene amount of cash that is greater than the combined GDP of many countries. Yes. Is Apple’s cash also a sign of their immense amount of service to their fellow man? Also, a hearty YES.
The mild inconvenience represented by tangled headphone wires was seen not as a human problem that needed to be solved for the good of mankind, but as a potential opportunity to replace a long-standing open and fiercely competitive market with a brand new closed and uncompetitive one, with all of the related commercial advantages that brings. –Nicky Woolf, NBC News THINK
Nicky seems to forget that a monopoly means the absence of competition. You can buy any number of wireless headphones for your iPhone from companies such as Bose, Sony, or JayBird.
But at a deeper level Nicky seems to misunderstand why everyone is starting to wear AirPods. Apple has made a superior product. When you look at the advantages of using Apple designed headphones within Apple’s hardware ecosystem, people like the advantages and willingly hand over their hard-earned money.
I could go on and on about all the convenience advantages of using AirPods over Sony headphones but that isn’t what this article is about. And this isn’t just about defending Apple. It’s about defending the underpinnings of what makes our economy tick.
My point is that within capitalism, money is a measure of one’s service to his fellowman. Even if you have inherited all of your wealth, your money is a sign that someone in your family has served his fellow man to a great extent.
Apple is in the business of building digital bridges. They serve their fellow man by connecting people with whatever information or content matters to them the most. Whether it’s the latest song from Bruno Mars, hearing how your grandmother’s day went, or collecting data for a drug trial, you need a physical device which can serve as a bridge to deliver you your digital content. The iPhone is the closest thing we have to a Star Trek transporter. Someone in Romania can create something and you can see it in your living room 30 seconds later in Sidney Nebraska.
Apple is amongst the most profitable companies in the world because they build the best digital bridges in the world. They are helping people at a monumentally grand scale. Don’t underestimate how important digital bridges are. I used to work for NASA where every project was categorized as either transporting data or transporting people. Transporting data was considered the highest calling. It is the future. Moving people was the miracle of the 20th century. Moving data is the miracle of the 21st and beyond.
And I’m tired of hearing how Apple needs to lower their prices so that goat herders in Malawi can afford to buy their own iphone. That’s the equivalent of saying that Tim Cook should be paid what your average Apple Store clerk makes. No.
There are services and organizations that strive to make the lives of the least fortunate among us better. Whether it is local government organizations, hospitals, churches, or small businesses that need labor. These are the “first responders” to global poverty. Apple’s place is to make the world a better place for these first responder organizations. They do that by providing communication tools, privacy, secure data collection platforms etc.
And what makes all this possible, are the healthy gross margins on Apple products. Ironically, were Apple to ever listen to their critics and focus their energy on making the cheapest possible phones, many of their noble sustainability projects would be in jeopardy.
As an American I’m immensely proud of Apple. I’d love to see a tweet from the President of Iran that was something along the lines of “To the country that brought us automobiles, airplanes, and iPhones, THANK YOU”.
Does Apple have an obscene amount of cash that is greater than the combined GDP of many countries. Yes. Is Apple’s cash also a sign of their immense amount of service to their fellow man? Also, a hearty YES.
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