> They're actually spending a shit-ton of money on designer-hours and developer-hours in order to have everything custom, but still with a subpar experience.
Are they though? My impression is that most companies are just using frameworks or sdks that promise some degree of cross platform uniformity, and that’s why they don’t use the native toolkits. The savings come from not having to develop UI for multiple OS targets.
Pretty sure there's places doing it, but I haven't really worked anywhere that used a Vanilla framework, except for the first few months, or have used an app that just uses something off the shelf.
I'm in the YC startup space, though, but have seen this also in enterprise.
Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes. That deal was arguably what saved Apple near its nadir. I’m not a fan of Intel’s past monopolistic practices, but for the sake of sustaining competition in the CPU/GPU market, I hope this deal works out for them even half as well as the MS deal did for Apple.
>Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps? This is giving similar vibes.
Doesn't feel the same because the 1997 investment was arranged by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. He had a long personal relationship with Bill Gates so could just call him to drop the outstanding lawsuits and get a commitment for future Office versions on the Mac. Basically, Steve Jobs at relatively young age of 42 was back at Apple in "founder mode" and made bold moves that the prior CEO Gil Amelio couldn't do.
Intel doesn't have the same type of leadership. Their new CEO is a career finance/investor instead of a "new products new innovation" type of leader. This $5 billion investment feels more like the result of back-channel discussions with the US government where they "politely" ask NVIDIA to help out Intel in exchange for less restrictions selling chips to China.
> This $5 billion investment feels more like the result of back-channel discussions with the US government where they "politely" ask NVIDIA to help out Intel in exchange for less restrictions selling chips to China.
This style of classical fascism or economic fascism, or whatever the term is differentiate it from the modern unrelated usage of fascism, being used in the US is a bit unnerving, and it's crazy that it's usually from the Republican party, who claims to espouse free markets.
It also happened under G. W. Bush with banks and auto manufacturers, but the worst offense was under Nixon with his nationalization of passenger rail.
At least with the bank and car manufacturer bailouts the government eventually sold off their stocks, and with the Intel investment the government has non-voting shares, but the government completely controls the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, (the NRPC aka Amtrak) with the board members being appointed by the president of the United States.
We lost 20 independent railroads overnight, and created a conglomerate that can barely function.
That's how post-WW2 France was actually rebuilt. You could also see big hints of that in the US WW2 economic effort, which couldn't have been done without the Government taking a direct hold of things and instituting central-ish planning.
You're speaking of what is referred to as neo-corporatism [0] and it's a tripartite, democratic process, not the fascist sort where everything is within and for the benefit of the state [1].
There was not that much democracy in the French post-WW2 technocratic establishment, but I agree that they were not technically fascist (nor otherwise).
There's big difference between government allocating tax payer dollars by passing a bill than a president using their influence to force dealings between corporate entities that benefit the ruling party.
The parent comment is speculation. But yes, speculatively, a legislative act of investment would be less authoritarian than the whims of an executive that puts tariffs on your product constantly unless you do what he says.
Is the method by which it’s communicated what gives you negative feelings? Because this is an approach to handling the labor dumping that’s been allowed in nearly every industry since the 1980s, and it’s been used numerous times in the US and abroad. They typically only offer temporary relief, while domestic industries should be adjusting and better trade deals get negotiated. The last I checked, that’s been happening to some degree… but it also probably needs to be supported by the ability for companies to borrow money, which the Fed (until recently) seemed hell bent on preventing, while we continued to watch the job market burn to the ground. So cash flush businesses investing in each other to keep competition alive seems like a positive here. Maybe that’s just me?
Most regulation is effectively coercion. The difference is regulation isn’t easily rolled back, whereas the current approach to modifying behavior is (as we’ve seen, numerous times in the last few months even). One is more tolerant of failure than the other.
There is an extreme where policy cannot be modified, and there is an extreme where the whims of one person, and the precedent of having the US government defined as the whims and whiplashes of one person, is immensely harmful to our national credibility. It fucks with investment, immigration and education.
Microsoft also invested $100M in Borland at the same time.
Investing in Apple and Borland were an counter-anti-trust legal move, keeping the competitors alive, but on life support. This way they could say to the government "yes there is competition".
Google does the same these days by keeping Firefox alive.
I don't think that's an apt comparison, given that Microsoft and Apple were more direct competitors than Intel and Nvidia; the latter have a more symbiotic relationship. I think the rationale is closer to the competitor of my competitor is my friend -- they face two threats by AMD growing larger in the CPU market:
- a bigger R&D budget for their main competitor in the GPU market
- since Nvidia doesn't have their own CPUs, they risk becoming more dependent on their main competitor for total system performance.
Required in that Nvidia would like to sell them to you. But customers seem to be hesitant and prefer x86-based DGX and similar systems. At least from what I've heard and seen.
This is a big ask for a shrinking market- with the pressure that the Chinese government is putting on their domestic companies to not buy H20's, I'm not sure how big this is going to be going forward. 5 billion (plus whatever it costs to build these products) is a lot for a market that is probably going to be closed soon.
> Remember when Microsoft invested in Apple when Apple was down in the dumps?
Had Apple failed, Microsoft would probably have been found to have a clear monopolistic position. And microsoft was already in hot waters due to InternetExplorer IIRC.
That Microsoft-Apple deal was part lifeline, part strategic insurance. Intel clearly needs a win, and Nvidia needs more control over its ecosystem without being chained to TSMC forever
Your best moat against low effort copycats? Stamina. Keep your app in the store, update it regularly, add support for new devices, add new features if appropriate, keep marketing and selling it, and keep polishing it. The copycats don't want any part of that. They want to make a quick buck with as little work as possible, hence the copying and plagiarizing. In a matter of weeks or months, unless they're making bank from it, their app will start to rot. If your app has staying power, then you will eventually rise above them all. And when you have another good idea down the road, cross promote between your own apps (but don't be obnoxious about it), and you'll begin to grow a user base who trust you. That's as good a moat against copycats as you could ever get.
Wow, thank you so much for this. That's an incredibly thoughtful and well-put response.
You've perfectly articulated the exact strategy I think we should be trying to follow. My entire bet is that stamina is the only real moat. The copycats are looking for a quick win, but I'm committed to playing the long game: regular updates, new features, and genuine support. I already have new updates for macOS 26 rolling out.
Really appreciate you taking the time to lay it all out so clearly. This is exactly the kind of advice I was hoping we can all get from this discussion.
This is a very naive view of what goes on in China. Not saying China doesn’t do anything right, but it’s far from the utopia you seem to think it is. There’s pretty rampant corruption at all levels of government and business, even to the point the central government acknowledges that repeated reforms are necessary. There are also plenty of billionaires in China who, along with the rich and well connected (often one and the same), enjoy a level of privilege and freedom unimaginable to the ordinary people. China’s social safety net has also been eroding to the point that if someone really has to depend on the state to take care of them, they’d be living a very meager life indeed.
Western Capitalists didn’t and don’t give two shits about a liberal China. The investments were made and technologies transferred because the Chinese government required them in order for Western companies to access China’s enormous pool of stable and cheap labor. As for this being the Chinese century, I think it’s not an inevitability. Japan at one point also looked like it had a shot of becoming a dominant economic superpower.
I'm not sure much matters to them aside from quarter-over-quarter growth. Take climate change, for example. Bad for business in the long run but here we are.
Sadly I agree with you. But I think society can't work if this is accepted. I think you need some amount of intrinsic orientation, because if this is forced then it leads to even more evil.
My mother tongue (German) has a term (Herzensbildung) that I would like to use here, but I don't know a good english translation. The dictionary gives me "nobleness of heart", but I don't think this captures it, because it is about the education to lead to this, not a final state. Literally it means "education of heart". But this is not about morale, good and evil (that's Gewissensbildung). It's about being educated to want things and to care about them.
When looking at past times, it is often assumed that they were as focused on advantage as much as we are, but I don't think that's true, and I think loosing this is also part of the sickness of "the West".
Some part of American students’ education, yes, but a large number of colleges have also used the extra money to inflate spending in other non-academic areas such as administrator salaries, athletics, resort style dorms, etc. Of course when the international money runs dry, those are not necessarily the first areas to see cutbacks.
Most states (at least in the midwest) have not kept up with their obligations when it comes to funding the historical land grand universities ("state" university, etc.).
A lot of state universities (not just in the Midwest) have become professional football teams with an educational institution attached. And I say this as a fan of one of those teams.
I think both realize that nobody wants to buy an Apple or Amazon car. They want a Mercedes that drives itself. Mercedes is going to release one and Tesla is going to go bankrupt because of their ongoing negligence and disregard for safety. There's going to be a tidal wave of civil litigation at some point in the next 10 years.
Some people read a story like LotR and think, “If I were Sauron, I would do such and such, and I would’ve won.” A few of these people have the means to actually live out that scenario.
