> Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this.
Only techies care about decentralization. Most people would rather follow a Twitter feed rather than an RSS feed. Most would prefer a mega forum like Reddit rather than multiple, standalone forums with separate accounts. There are also network effects that give centralized platforms more of a competitive advantage.
I keep hearing people talk about the need for decentralized social media, but nobody knows how to make it an attractive, viable option for the masses...especially when such a solution wouldn't be as profitable (or as frictionless) as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Yeah, but companies like Imgur and PlentofFish reach millions of users without hiring anyone. So for similar companies that do hire, I'm wondering what exactly are all of those people doing all day. Is it just bs/busy work? Or are of the founders of Imgur, PlentofFish, etc. so clever and capable...they're simply more productive than a team of people.
No, we simply wouldn't be using tablets or the market would be much smaller.
In the 90s, MS attempted mobile devices using Windows CE (based on Windows 3.1—long after the release of Windows 95) and that went nowhere. Microsoft has always been the first for the longest time they were incapable of building things people genuinely wanted to buy.
If Apple didn't make the iPhone or iPad, all MS could do is rip off Blackberry. They wouldn't have made anything worthy of spurring the mobile industry we have today.
And Apple didn't really need that $200M from MS. Instead the investment had more symbolic value—signaling that Apple was still a viable company that had software support from the biggest tech company of the day.
Also, before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Larry Ellison wanted to buy up shares for a hostile takeover and then install Jobs as CEO, but Jobs talked Ellison out of it.
I've never seen anyone work as hard at being an ass hole as Linus Torvalds. He has literally made speeches celebrating his rudeness and insensitivity. His change of heart doesn't make up for decades of really shitty behavior.
Lots of people think like this. During the housing crash there were lots of news reports about people earning mid six-figures losing their homes because they went out of their way to buy extravagant mansions they could barely afford, rather than a more modest-sized luxury home they could have paid for outright in a year or two.
People don't want to pay $100 a month for cable TV either, but they did it anyway (for decades) and continue to do so. Now we're being asked to buy a bunch of streaming services and we'll bitch and moan, but ultimately we'll pay because every major platform will have at least one show that justifies their existence.
I associate CBS with bland procedural crime dramas and awful three-camera sitcoms. CBS All Access would have been doomed without Star Trek: Discovery. Admittedly, the show isn't particularly good, but I'm a trekkie so it doesn't matter. On the plus side, I discovered The Good Fight (a surprising smart, entertaining and well written show) so I now I have a legitimate reason to give a damn about All Access.
And then Apple will offer their own gateway drug (Lord of the Rings?) and Disney (...well they could just offer their back catalogue alone and still be a major player) and so on.
I've often felt the same way about the need to label one's self in order to have an identity. But I can empathize with people who have some kind of undefined handicap/limitation and ultimately find solace in a label and sense of community.
For example, pretty much anyone over the age of 40 who has dyslexia will tell you how cathartic it was to be diagnosed when previously they were just regarded as stupid or lazy. A diagnosis meant that they had a medical condition that they could overcome (or at least manage). If they were simply stupid then it meant there was no hope for them. So their new, better, label mattered.
However, one could argue that pretty much anyone who suffers from any kind of limitation...is suffering from some kind of medical malady. Perhaps, in the future, people we will create new labels and therapies for many of the currently unlabelled, but afflicted, people as well.