The end of innovation

John Gruber and others have finally moved back to critical thinking after years of being fanboys repeating Apple Marketing. Hence: Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino. In short, the early “Apple Intelligence” claims simply don’t add up, they aren’t being released, and one can only wonder if they ever will be.

Going beyond “Apple Intelligence”, Apple’s other major “innovation” of late has been those silly goggles that everyone promptly forgot about. Then there’s the car that never got out the door.

I think there’s a clear and obvious reason why companies aren’t particularly innovative anymore, to quote Robert Reich:

Apple now spends twice as much on stock buybacks as on R&D. Over the last fiscal year, Apple doled out $78 billion on buybacks.

Even Apple has turned to the trinity of American business: hype, dark patterns, and buybacks to make money on paper. And thus it’s not surprising to see what’s happened to the company.

Of course, massive companies don’t implode at the same speed across the organization. The m-series MacBooks are fantastic. That same article gives a plausible reason for why Intel fell so far behind and is not longer producing chips for Apple:

Intel, the largest chip maker in America, with revenues last year of $54 billion, was recently awarded an $8.5 billion grant from the federal CHIPS and Science Act, plus $11 billion in subsidized loans.

But Intel fritters away its profits on stock buybacks. Its website proudly touts that it has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks since 1990.

The private equity mindset has infected most big companies in the US, stifling innovation. Instead, they’re riding on the coattails of previous generations while playing games in spreadsheets to create artificial value. Sooner or later, the chickens are going to come home to roost.