“With regularity, in grandmaster chess, we see moves that take our breath away,” John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer.
“We bow before the awesomeness of a move that is so bold that we would have never dared make it — unable to see the deep implications of a Queen or Rook sacrifice,” Martellaro writes. “Yet, there it stands — the winning move that crushes another grandmaster.”
Martellaro writes, “Is such a move within the grasp of Apple and its cash?”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mary P.” for the heads up.]
Somewhat interesting article, but it speculates that the “jaw-dropping grandmaster chess move” is the iWatch (or other iJewelry, such as an iRing) serving as an encrypted, biometric-protected gateway into the rest of your digital world.
One iRing to rule the world,
One iRing to find them.
One iRing to bring them all
and in the internet bind them.
*and in the iCloud bind them.
“iCloud” is a nice improvement over “internet,” fixer foru. Thanks for the edit.
My precious!
That’s “iPrecious.”
Silly hobbit. We eats it.
I believe the iWatch is Apple “clever deception ” leading the copy cats in the wrong direction.
Bingo.
Let me explain this article. Like so many things that are written in the media, this article was written by a man child who’s 40 years old and lives with his mother.
Do you people have any sense? There is no fucking iWatch! It won’t happen because it turns out tiny screens strapped to ur wrist suck at pretty much everything. They’re not better at anything over your smartphone. Not one damn thing except telling the time.
This sounds like an argument in 2007 about that silly iPhone thingy
No, it doesn’t. The iPhone was a clear, concise, and predictable evolution from previous phones which were getting smarter for years.
The iWatch is not an evolution of the smartphone, it’s several steps backwards because it’s not better at anything compared to a smartphone other than telling the time.
The iWatch has been around since James Bond in the 60s. It’s a cheap hollywood gimmick with nary any consumer application.
Dick was first!
On January 13, 1946, Gould changed Dick Tracy forever with the introduction of the 2-Way Wrist Radio that was eventually upgraded to a 2-Way Wrist TV in 1964
I see a future of 9-fingered people fleeing big cities…
“There are those who ask why Apple hasn’t yet figured out something smart, really smart, to do with US$XX billion dollars.”
Because most big acquisition end up as a big disaster.
I think it was said best when Steve said the money wasn’t burning a hole in their pocket.
Agreed. History is full of underperforming big dollar acquisitions. I doubt that Motorola Mobility or Skype will pay off. The AOL-Time Warner merger was a bust. History is full of wasted billions associated with major acquisitions/mergers.
It is even harder for Apple to find a good candidate, because Apple has a unique corporate culture.
Just buy Disney.
Ideas like buying Netflix seem pretty low risk and cheap to me. Not sure why Apple wouldn’t do at least that.
Why buy it when Apple can just duplicate the service with a free first month and increase it a dollar a month until it reaches $8.
Apple can’t “just duplicate” Netflix without making deals with every company that owns movies and TV shows on Netflix.
So many media companies believe Apple already has too much power in media distribution – the only reason why Netflix can get good deals for streaming content is because they are seen as a neutral third party among the media giants. An Apple controlled Netflix simply will not be able to get streaming rights new movies and TV shows at reasonable prices.
I’m betting Apple could work out deals for a subscription model if they want to. Don’t forget that Apple already has deals to stream rentals and sell Movies and Television content – they even occassionally get deals to rent movies while they are still in the theaters (and sometimes before).
I think Apple simply hasn’t gone to a subscription model because they don’t want to (yet).
Your comment goes without saying. When a company duplicates another’s service, they of course must duplicate all of the agreements. Apple can also produce original shows by funding production companies.
As far as ‘neutral third parties’ goes, Apple’s money is just as good as anyone else’s and the highest bidder will win.
Sorry, but anyone who has ever played Monopoly can see the basic – and naive – flaw in your statement. It’s not just money – it’s overall market advantage. If you sell something, you want to do your best to sell it to someone who is not going to parlay it into being a weapon against you later. While that’s not always possible, it’s enough to have a major effect on deals, often resulting in a surprise outcome to those who look only at the money.
You’re right. Anyone who has played Monopoly has what it takes to run Apple. Why doesn’t Apple get you to run it?
The media companies don’t want to work with Apple, so Apple buys Netflix. Who’s to say they decide they don’t want to work with Netflix. They don’t have deals in perpetuity. They have no ip Apple needs. It would be total waste of money.
What would Apple get? If Netflix sells all those “deals” with media company would likely have to be renegotiated. Apple has deep pockets so the media moguls would wait Apple out. No, buy small and create.
I would suggest that Apple launch a DBS satellite service instead of buying Netflix. Apple would get better access to content that way, just like DirecTV or Dish Network. Then, imagine an iPad or Apple TV with a built-in satellite receiver – you could watch video all day without running up a huge mobile data bill from AT&T or Verizon. Apple could also use it to distribute OS updates, iTunes content, apps and other digital services.
It could start out as a one-way service. Then in the future, Apple could launch a fleet of low-orbit Teledesic-type satellites for two-way communication that would be better than existing satellite Internet services.
Apple should buy NASA to get all of those rocket scientists on board and launch those two-way communications satellites. Legal Momopoly any one?
monopoly, I know.
It’s a great pie dream but terrestrial reception from satellite communications requires a lot more horsepower than you can stuff into a tiny hand held device. Physics comes into play here.
I’m not sure if satellite is the only answer or indeed a truly practical answer, but it does seem like a possible answer. The question should be “What can Apple invest in so that the customer gets a better user experience ?”
At the moment, existing internet suppliers are a weak point for the user experience. They can be slow to adapt to new technology, poor quality and ridiculously expensive when customers travel abroad.
If Apple were able to provide a global internet service with consistently high quality, then Apple would be able to take responsibility for the entire user experience from source, through software to the hardware in end user’s appliance. The way that Apple operates is now totally dependent on a reliable internet service, but Apple has negligible control over that service.
We’ve already seen how vertical integration offers a much better user experience. Further integration will deliver further improvements.
It would be a hugely expensive operation, but it’s a much better ‘grandmaster move’ than handing out cash to short-term speculators and will deliver much more to long-term investors. It would be a spectacular slap in the face to those who want to get their greedy hands on that cash pile and it would vividly demonstrate that Apple has much more imaginative ideas about what to do with it’s cash surplus than bloggers and analysts will ever do.
Only problem with your argument is DBS as it currently stands still requires direct line of sight between an antenna with a low noise block and a geosynchronous orbiting satellite. So unless you expect people to stand outside with a pizza sized dish style antenna aimed at a satellite and connected to their IPads your idea would be a still-born dud. Something like what Sprint had with Wimax might work but would be then another radio in the iPad that would bounce it out of compatibility with other Apple products. I think even satellite phones had trouble indoors, note the following quote from Wikipedia:
“Geostationary satellites have a limitation of use in latitude, generally 70 degrees north of the equator to 70 degrees south of the equator. This is a result of look angles being so low on the horizon increasing the chances of terrestrial and other interference from sources in the same frequency bands.
Another disadvantage of geostationary satellite systems is that in many areas—even where a large amount of open sky is present—the line-of-sight between the phone and the satellite is broken by obstacles such as steep hills and forest. The user will need to find an area with line-of-sight before using the phone. This is not the case with LEO services: even if the signal is blocked by an obstacle, one can wait a few minutes until another satellite passes overhead, but a moving LEO may drop a call when line of sight is lost. “
Tim Cook is totally and forever incapable of even relating to, much less leading the company to any sort of “jaw dropping” move. His jaw has dropped and now just hangs there with that totally clueless look on his face. If you want to see something – anything beyond another tweak or thinner something or another, you will first have to see a new CEO. Okay, now flame.
Pppppppppppppppppppptroll much!pppppppppppppppppppppp
You’re not worth a flame.
He’s not even worth a fart in his general direction.
The crickets are still chirping, pp…
You still have not had the courage to defend your constant berating of Apple and Tim Cook with any indication that you have put your money (not the lunch money you get from your care-taker but real money that you earned and then invested in – tada! – Apple shares) where your digital mumble mouth is,
Well?
You have no idea about the capabilities of an asswiper much less the genius behind Apple University making sure that Apple continues to out grow and out perform itself.
You may want to review your personal flexibly adaptive logic with your Lord and Master – your Precious: Androiturd and Gargle…
BTW: If you can’t answer a simple question about your share ownership with such as:
a) I don’t even know how to place a buy order
or
b) What are shares? (tilt head from side to side with a blank stare)
or
c) I have XXX (insert true honest value) of shares so FO, MizuInOz
The crickets are tiring and need rest…
Cheers all.
Apple: constantly creating the puck, and skating to it.
This is exactly what I thought the iWatch would be.
Spend wisely Apple (i.e. don’t take any financial advise from fanboi blogs).
I think Apple could make such a move. But it will not be a new gadget. It will be some acquisition on characteristic of Apple. Something outside the technology circle that somehow cements Apple’s position with regard to eco-system and services.
I dunno. A country? A network? A shipping channel?
I’ve never read anything that was so close to being an actual prayer to the Apple Gods. I would suspect such a prayer would have all of the same effectiveness as any prayer to any imaginary deity.