Tag Archives: horace dediu

Is the iPhone good enough? »

September 18th, 2012

Horace Dediu on the iPhone’s value to the market:

Therefore, how to tell whether a product is over-serving a market is one of the most important and frequently asked questions I get asked. [...]

If you have to add features and drop prices at the same time then it’s likely that the market does not value the improvement. [...]

As the product has been improved along these dimensions, sales have increased and prices have held steady (even rising occasionally.)

As per usual the entire post is great. I especially like to see how each of the original iPhone’s features (display, storage, ram, camera, cpu, etc) have been improved over the years.

Why Microsoft is making Surface »

June 22nd, 2012

John Gruber, on why Microsoft needs to be the one making Surface (and not a third-party like HP or Sony):

The intention is obviously to slow the iPad down, but the radical shift in Microsoft’s strategy is about the fight over the profits that remain after Apple’s. The math no longer works out for the Windows you-sell-the-hardware-we-sell-the-software model. It works for unit share (cf. Android), but it doesn’t for profit share. Nothing works sustainably in business without profit — profit is the oxygen companies breathe.

His take and Horace Dediu’s (who could ever argue with Horace?) make perfect sense to me. Microsoft is now doing what Apple began to do in the early 2000s. Begin chasing profits not marketshare.

More benefits of turning off comments

January 5th, 2012

Over four years ago whether a blog should or shouldn’t have comments was a heavily debated topic in the blogging community. Back then I wrote about one possible benefit of disabling comments.

One of the benefits I see coming from disabling comments is the number of links you end up getting back to your site.

Almost a year ago I wrote about the fact that blogging was ready for disruption. (I still think it is.) And that the new “pro blog recipe” was a blog without comments.

Lately this topic seems to have risen its head again yet not in the same way as it has in the past. In fact, rather than there being a debate for or against a blog having comments it appears that most independent bloggers have resolved that a blog without comments is simply much more enjoyable and manageable while larger outfits still see the need to engage the community.

Matt Gemmell, who recently shut off comments on his personal blog, added a few reasons to the fray. Here is one of his reasons that I have also enjoyed since turning comments off on my personal blog.

I feel more willing to publish short pieces, and to write more frequently.

When I had comments on I wouldn’t publish anything that I thought may not start a conversation. Which ended up leading me in a direction I simply didn’t want to go in – I was starting conversations for the sake of starting conversations. That isn’t why I have my personal blog and I don’t want it to be. So, off went the comments. And it isn’t because I don’t want to hear the opinions of those that read my blog. It is because I don’t want to write simply for the gratification of receiving comments. It has been very liberating.

There is still a place for comments on blogs. Even personal blogs. Some blogs have very good reasons to have comments on them. In fact, even Jason Kottke turns on comments from time-to-time when they are needed. But there are better examples like Horace Dediu’s Asymco. He has made it plainly clear that he runs Asymco in order to work with his community on figuring out a problem. He wants feedback, questions, answers, rebuttals to his hypothesis and blog comments is his primary way of accomplishing that.

So while the debate rages on – and all debates are good when they furnish constructive conversation – unlike Gemmell I firmly believe it is a matter of choice by the publisher rather than a cut-and-dry answer. There are pros and cons to having comments on or off and, once weighed, the publisher can then make a decision on how he or she would like to run their own blog.

Will the next Apple TV be really inexpensive?

December 28th, 2011

Horace Dediu of Asymco thinks so. Him, on Twitter:

I’m starting to believe that if and when Apple TV is updated the hardware price will be surprisingly low.

As you may very well know Eliza and I use our Apple TV a lot. We don’t use all of the features but we use it daily. For $99 (its current price) I think it a steal. I can’t imagine what would happen if, say, a new Apple TV was priced at $29 (my guess at what “surprisingly low” could be).

This, of course, is besides the notion that Apple will, at some point in the future, debut a brand-new television-related product. Perhaps a TV of their own. Or, perhaps, a really inexpensive Apple TV in addition to a TV of their own. Who knows?

But I can say this… I highly, highly recommend anyone with an iPhone, iPod, iPad or Macintosh to consider the Apple TV a must-have accessory. A must-have accessory. And if a new one is priced lower than today’s models than my recommendation would only be stronger.

What ‘Back to the Mac’ really meant

October 22nd, 2010

In a post entitled ‘Back to the PC’ Horace Dediu postulates that the title of the recent Apple media event – ‘Back to the Mac’ – was a fantastic play on words.

Where we all assumed it meant that Apple was refocusing everyone’s attention on the Mac from the iPhone/iPod/iPad, Dediu suggests something else. Jobs himself stated during the event that some of the things they’ve learned from iPhone, iPad and iOS were being applied to the Macintosh in both hardware – the new Macbook Air – and to OS X Lion. So these lessons-learned were being brought Back to the Mac.

Clever. Genius. Awesome. (via John Gruber)