Companies Live in the Future

I love the crowd that continually complains about Apple products having a 2 year window of working well. Everyone agrees that "after certain updates or 2 years, my phone breaks down." I would agree with them, and I feel that it has been that way for a decade now. But we keep buying, so who cares right?

This brings up the concept of intentional and future success tying into current projects. In a perfect world, the ethical business man is a moral man. He treats everyone with respect, his service never changes for any client, payment is fair and just, and his products always work to the best of their guarantees. What a man! But this is the real world and that fairytale concept isn't real. Money is involved along with competition. Its about the profits, stupid.

Disclaimer: all companies aren't ripping off consumers. The vast majority do a good job balancing profits and products regardless of the Twitter mob's opinions. Small businesses exist to support communities and bring faces to services. Business can and should be a net positive for the world. Are they perfect? Not even close.

What my focus was today was on the balancing of profits and products both now and in the future. The products you see on shelves are 2-5 years behind the times. Yes, you heard me correctly. Between design and R+D, crowdfunding, and marketing, that product on the shelf is years into development. It just seems new based on when it hits the shelf. That leaves me wondering the simple question of "what else is out there?" How many products are hidden for the future, both unintentional and intentional? Is this ethical? Consumers would say "sure, give me my phone now please." 

I would kill to see the products that Apple has behind the scenes knowing that they will sell them in 2 years for a boatload of money. Imagine Amazon's or Google's future plans to take over more markets. Its all a plan and the money will keep rolling in. Don't complain about the two year life cycle of your iPhone, you're buying the next one anyway (even though its 2 years old by purchase time).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pendulum Always Sways... or Does It?

The belief in the United States is the balance of political power will always be present. Throughout our history, the opposing party has never been "wiped out" so bad in an election that their party's future is destroyed. Just take a look at my lifetime: 1. Republicans won solid majorities in the early 2000's and the White House in 2004 2. Democrats won supermajorities in both chambers and the White House in 2008 3. Republicans won majorities in the House in 2010, Senate in 2014, and held all 3 in 2016 4. Democrats won back the House in 2018 and hold a narrow majority in 2020 5. Early indicators on the 2022 midterms seem to have Republicans roaring back to power in 2 of the 3 chambers This trend is not unusual. Despite the most popular Presidents in the US's history helping their party for sometimes 10-12 years (think FDR, Kennedy, Reagan), the opposing party comes back strong.  I heard the phrase "don't worry, the pendulum always sways back." But wi...
Read more

We Are the Product

There were two interesting topics I wanted to talk about but one will wait for Monday. I settled for us being the product in a new AI world. This concept has been a sci-fi thriller for decades but always seen as "in the distant future with flying cars and alien travel." That reality is now here, or scratching the surface of it. And it has been here for a decade, if you realized it or not. The mid to late 2000's saw two products change the way we interacted with the world: social media and the touchscreen smartphone. Both of these concepts used us, the user, as the product. Social media had no product except the user posting information to other users. The touchscreen allowed us to use our fingers to control the product with apps tailored for us with information about us (photos, contacts, texts). At the time, these two remained separate from each other due to limited capabilities of the mobile phone (first iPhone had no app store, limited web functions, no 3G, etc.) Socia...
Read more

There's a Crash Coming...

The market dropped yesterday and that trend will not change. Stocks and Cryptos are both down due to one decision: the Fed raising rates. Why? Well, when the Government spends trillions without adjusting for debt you get rampant inflation. Combine this with the Fed injecting trillions through quantitative easing and you get the worst inflation in 50 years. By raising the rate and buying back some of their debt they injected, inflation will crash. The issue is so will 401k's and investments. If they do not raise rates, inflation continues to increase but your 401k is saved. What is more frustrating is this was predicted to happen by anyone who has take a high school economics class. Our economy is hanging on by a thread for some and others are ready to scoop it all up. Just make sure you're buying.
Read more