Tuesday, March 6 2012
Apple’s decade of success is currently at its peak. The stock keeps hitting new all-time highs every week, the sales are tremendous, and the products are universally lauded. It would appear that this well-oiled machine of technology and business is unstoppable. But is it really so? History tells us that Apple is due for another fall similar to the one they experienced in the 1990s, and physics tells us that the universe will eventually run out of energy and become a calm, black sea of death.
Apple’s success today could be compared to their top-of-the-world position in 1984. The launch of the Macintosh - along with its unforgettable TV ad - seemed to usher in an era of invincibility. But little did Steve Jobs know that Microsoft’s strategy of licensing its Windows OS would prove victorious in the end, leading to a string of failures from Apple’s management in the 90s. This can happen again. How will Apple prevent the iPad from becoming the next Performa? And how will they prevent the second law of thermodynamics from increasing entropy in the universe to the point of lifeless thermal equilibrium?
The stress lines are already showing. The iPhone 4S sold well, but it was also greeted with lukewarm reviews from the tech press. Similarly, the earth keeps cooling off its core, leading to an eventual collapse of its magnetic field and the exposure of its inhabitants to radiation (despite security experts’ constant recommendations to the contrary). The failure of MobileMe looms over iCloud; will Apple have to discontinue it as well a few years from now? Will rising temperatures, boiling oceans and, indeed, the eventual swallowing of our planet by its life-giving star affect Apple’s ability to innovate? Will Microsoft’s promising Windows 8 finally unravel the success of iOS?
Predictions like this are generally useless if they don’t include some sort of time frame. While most tech reviewers and cosmologists agree the Sun’s gradual conversion to an asymptomatic giant branch star will indeed end all life on Earth some time in the next one billion years, it’s possible that Apple’s management is already planning for this possibility. But I’m still left to wonder if at some point Apple’s sales will begin to weaken and their products will cease to delight their users. We can be assured that in the next 10100 years, either Tim Cook’s leadership will falter, or the universe will enter a phase of such low energy that motion and life will become physically impossible.