What Apple CEO Tim Cook looks like 5 years from now
Hey Snackers,
WeWork Update #43: It reportedly wants to knight T-Mobile CEO (and aged Adam Neumann lookalike) John Legere as its new CEO.
Markets dipped to start the week — Investors were probably planning an Avengers movie marathon on Disney+, the streaming network that launches today.
Augmented Reality (AR) vs. Virtual Reality (VR)... We all need a refresher. AR is reality, but augmented with stuff (picture a whackable Pikachu in Pokemon Go). VR isn't reality. You only see what the programmers want you to see. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk Apple, whose 5-year product roadmap got leaked to The Information. We just learned its next big bets:
Nobody wants to "miss" augmented reality... Back when Dell, Microsoft, and HP crushed life with laptop computers, Google and Apple invested in mobile: iPhone and Android. Microsoft missed mobile phones. Now a gaggle of tech companies — including Facebook, Alphabet, Snap, Microsoft, and Sony — think AR and/or VR could be the next big thing.
The difference between a good idea and a great idea... Good businesses/entrepreneurs solve a problem that exists today. Great ones anticipate tomorrow's problems, then fix them now. iPhone is Apple's profit puppy, but it's foreseeing an era when you don't want to use your hands to access its powers. iGlasses could be that future in 5 years. Apple's working on it now.
Georgia is known for dawgs, peaches, and sneakers... That last part was thanks to Adidas, which opened a highly-automated "Speedfactory" there about 3 years ago. The plan was to produce Boost shoes close to American customers instead of half a world away in Southeast Asia. But Adidas just announced it'll close that Speedfactory and the one in Ansbach, Germany, relocating them to Vietnam and China.
"They took our jobs" sentiment is common... China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries now produce many of the physical goods that America used to. But classic "cost of labor" justification is just one consideration companies make when deciding where to produce:
This was an expensive mistake... We love that Adidas tried out Made In USA shoes (it followed its comrade BMW's lead — they make their SUVs in South Carolina). But this trial was a failure. The 4-ish-year-old Georgia and German Speedfactories will shut by April, affecting 200 jobs. And this mistake may reveal itself as a billion-dollar cost somewhere in Adidas' next earnings report.