I actually see his assertiveness as a sign of how much Jobs respects the potential of his competitors and the ruthlessness with which the market will walk away from his company's products if he doesn't sell, and just how much obligation he has to employees who sacrifice so much to make it look like magic.
It's worth mentioning that last year's Google I/O featured some intense competitor bashing from Vic Gundontra that actually did a lot to strengthen the Android brand, and cemented its status as the primary anti-Apple underdog (now uberdog?).
I think any harsh remarks from Steve Jobs at this event should be viewed in that context, and are a reflection of the overall shift in tone between Apple and Google. The sniping is probably good for their brands and for their 'brand advocates,' who along with the press are really the primary consumers of Apple Event streams and Google I/O conferences—the people discussing this shit ad nauseaum in forums and comment flamewars.
When a perceived underdog bashes it's "scrappy", when a perceived leader does it it's "bullying", simple as that.
I think the thing I took away best from the original post is the presentation of some severe cognitive dissonance: huge pumping of specs, followed by carefully omitting specs that may not look the best, followed by "specs aren't important anyways".
Yes, I think it's a pretty fair assessment to say that they are all losing steam. Their basic problem is that smartphones and tablets have gone from being the cool new toys of yesteryear to being mainstream, expensive tools, with just a soupçon of "too clever for your own good".
I saw an interesting debate a few weeks ago on HN. Some people saw these generic tools as the future and specialised tools increasingly becoming obsolete. Other people saw the generic tools as Jacks-of-all-trades whose weaknesses next to dedicated mobile phones, music players, e-book readers, satnavs, etc. were becoming increasingly apparent as practical experience starts to trump the hype.
If I were brave enough to invest in hi-tech companies, I imagine I would be shorting all of the stocks I mentioned above right now. They are making a staggering amount of money today, to be sure. I'm just not sure how much all these new technologies they have been coming out with recently actually help real people to do things they care about, and I think they are highly vulnerable to indirect competition as consumers become more aware of what they actually care about and which gadgets help them do those things.
[Edit: Would the downvoter(s) care to explain why? Apple have or have recently had significant problems with the reliability of the iPhone 4, the spec for the iPad, and their reputation among the communities of app and content developers who support their entire infrastructure. Google have released a string of flops, many of which have been killed within a year, and are starting to look vulnerable even in their main playgrounds of search and on-line advertising, so unless something is fundamentally different in Android world there are probably similar difficulties there as well. RIM's last two big product launches have made Microsoft's handling of Vista look professional. Microsoft themselves have released a string of Windows Mobile platforms that have horrible reliability, functionality and performance compared to other major mobile operating systems. How are any of these companies not losing steam?]
Your perspective is interesting. But I think it weakens your argument to claim you would short these stocks in theory, but actually won't. The market price is determined by people who are confident enough in their beliefs to act on them. And those people collectively seem to think market-cap-weighted bundle of AAPL, MSFT, GOOG and RIMM is a good bet. If you are not confident enough to act, then that significantly discounts the evidentiary value of your opinion.
Think of it as a figure of speech. I don't believe the current path taken by those companies is sustainable if they come up against well-considered competition.
Also, please don't read too much into my not investing in this particular case. For one thing, I'm not in the US, and for me trading US stocks directly and in a tax-efficient way would require jumping through hoops that just aren't worth the hassle.
Good god, why on earth did that get downvoted? It's an intelligent opinion, and he's not the only one who thinks it.
That said, I strongly disagree. iPad class tablets are a portable window into the digital world. Apple's video did a pretty good job of showing how that could help people do things they care about, and we're only just getting started.
Apparently we'll just have to have a civilised discussion in light grey. ;-)
I would certainly agree that mobile devices with networking capabilities are a big step forward in general. What I think remains to be seen is whether tablet-style devices like the iPad and Galaxy Tab can carve out a sustainable niche fast enough to survive in a notoriously fickle market.
For leisure use, they seem to have fundamental weaknesses like very short battery lives and being difficult to read in sunlight. No doubt with time these will improve, but for now they reduce the applicability of tablet-style devices, and notably leave them vulnerable to competition from Kindle-style e-book readers in a major segment of the market.
For serious work, I think the lack of a real keyboard is a major disadvantage compared to netbook-style devices. It's going to be a long time before some sort of physical feedback screen is anything like as comfortable and efficient for sustained typing as even a cheap-and-nasty keyboard already is today.
Speaking of controls, while touch-based UIs could become the norm and stylus-type pointing devices might take over from mice for precision work, I don't think I'll hold my breath. Portable mice are widely used with laptops, simply because even the best built-in trackpads are relatively clumsy controls. Also, many a useful UI feature over the past couple of decades has been driven by awareness of what the user is passively observing, typically deduced by where a pointer is positioned. Again, this might change, but it's going to take a long time for conventions that have become as intuitive as handwriting to die, and I don't think the alternative UIs being developed for smartphones today are even close to refined enough for that job yet once you scale them up to tablet-size devices and applications.
I can certainly see tablet-style devices with custom UIs quickly becoming widely used in many niche areas where the flexibility has value, such as shop floor or industrial applications. And I'm sure there will always be an enthusiast segment of the market that values the flexibility they offer, though perhaps tempered in this case by the current closed/tightly-controlled software ecosystems that have been associated with these devices by the big players so far.
However, I think there is a long way to go before a general purpose device that is expensive enough to include components for everything but still only does one thing at once will beat out dedicated and cost-effective GPS satnavs, e-book readers, digital photo frames, wrist watches, and so on. I'm not saying it can't or won't happen, just that I don't think we're there yet, and until we are, companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM are highly vulnerable not so much to competition from each other but to competition from specialist firms whose specialist devices do one thing, but better and at a lower price.
I think you're overlooking the idea that tablets only have to be better at one or two things in order for people to adopt them. Once you have one, the additional functions don't have to be objectively better in order to displace single function devices because they have two unassailable advantages - zero additional hardware cost, and zero mass.
For example - just being able to browser, keep up with light email, and read ebooks is enough for me to carry my iPad in a lot of situations. I used to carry a backpack full of books and a laptop to get the same functionality. Once I'm carrying the iPad, the fact that it can become a music keyboard for another $5 is just a bonus. I was never going to buy and carry a small portable keyboard. Likewise the GPS and maps. I wouldn't have bought and carried an independent device for that. For specialists, dedicated devices will better for some time to come, but for most people that doesn't matter - the tablet is enabling activities that were simply not practical before.
As far as UI conventions go, most non-geeks just aren't very good with the desktop metaphor anyway. Sure there are experts and for programmers or digital content creators by profession it pays to become one, but most people just aren't.
My 87 year old father (who's last computer was analog!) was able to take my iPad out of my hands and operate the browser without me even telling him what the device was let alone explaining UI metaphors.
I think the key is that tablets can work in situations where netbooks etc. simply can't, and they can make functionality ubiquitous where a collection of special purpose devices would be too much overhead.
And then it's not going to take long for them to evolve to outpace the development of independent specialist hardware because all those separate makers don't stand a chance of putting the same level of resources into the development.
And for all the things that need custom sensors, why not simply have them be extensions of a tablet?
Take something really specialized - e.g. a metal detector. Why not make that into just a Bluetooth sensor that communicated with an iPhone? Setting could be adjusted on the touch screen, but more importantly the phone could log the output, put it on the map with GPS, and upload it to the cloud. All this extra capability, and the sensor could probably be lower cost than a standalone device.
So once tablets enter the equation, previously devices can become cheaper and more capable.
We aren't going to see tablets fall to standalone devices, altough other hardware isn't necessarily going away either.
I would certainly agree that there is room in the market for both specialist and generic devices, if that's what you're arguing.
I just think the generic device probably doesn't make much sense unless there are several things a customer would use it for but not simultaneously, and those things do collectively make use of the bells and whistles to justify the relatively high hardware cost. I'm not sure how many people that really applies to today, and market forces can be a harsh critic.
I think he means that when a company switches from ignoring competitors to acknowledging them by ridiculing them, then they are not as far ahead as they used to be.
So it does imply losing steam in this case.
Phases:
1) Ignore
2) Ridicule
3) Fight
4) Lose
If a company was in phase 2 last year, and phase 2 this year they are not losing steam. A company is losing steam when it moves down the above phase ladder.
