takahisah

Great pod. Timing wise he had to have known about it during recording, but he didn't give anything away.

When was the last time USPS wowed you with their innovations and speed?

I think this is why modern day politicians are so bad. They need to be so good at rewriting history that they cannot put their thinking in clear writing. I read letters and essays written by Abraham Lincoln and was struck by the clarity of thought and the power of his words. I don't think I've read any writings of recent politicians that make me feel the same way.

Ten years ago I was at Infinite Loop, when Apple held a special event in memory of Steve. Everybody was wearing sunglasses to hide their tears, even Tim and Jony. I remember Jonys speech quite vividly as it showed how truly close they were. He joked about how he would never unpack his bags upon arriving at a hotel because Steve would call him and say the hotel is shit so they had to move immediately after checking in. I think it’s those human connections he made that made him so great. Lots of people have their Steve Jobs story. I don’t know of many other people that make that kind of connection with people on such a deep level. Thanks Apple for posting this and thanks for remembering and celebrating him. I’m no longer an employee, but always a fan. May your best inventions be in your future.

To me, a business decision is always based on _relative_ risk to reward ratio. If you're a startup hiring employee number 3 vs Google hiring employee number 739813, your risk profile is completely different, but the absolute dollar investment in one employee is about the same. In that scenario hiring an employee number 3 could be a huge gamble in a way that hiring employee number 739813 could never be.

But lets leave out the technicalities. Call it a gamble, stupid investment, whatever. Yes, I agree a billion is a lot of money. Apple still needs to have this project, in order to stay relevant to competitors and current/potential employees. Even if it does fail, the side effects of having this project mainly to attract talented engineers and stay relevant make it worth the investment.

> Project Titan is a huge gamble.

Titan is not a gamble. It's a hobby. And from the eyes of a Trillion Dollar Company, it's not even an expensive one.

What's the worst that can happen? They spend a few more years on it, poaching talent from Tesla and other car companies and from internal teams, and end up with nothing. Sure, they might spend a few billion in the process, but they already did that building a spaceship, and spending at that level doesn't hurt their books at all.

iPhone on the other hand, was a huge gamble at the time. It had the potential to ruin the company by cannibalizing iPod sales, diluting the brand, and destroying morale of top engineers who were at the time the "best" employees they had.

What's the best thing that can happen? They launch the equivalent of an iPhone in the auto industry, figure out how to scale, and change the way people go from point a to b. They are recognized as the company that pulled off something Tesla couldn't, and Tim Cook / Jony Ives get to put their names on a revolutionary product that changed the world again.

So it's a low risk high return situation for them to work on it. Can they pull it off? I would say much more likely than "traditional" auto companies but less likely than Tesla. But again, it doesn't really matter to them (part of why chances of success are lower), and competition is a good thing. As a shareholder of TSLA, I don't want to see Elon Musk smoking weed on YouTube anymore. Somebody please take away his Twitter account too.

It looks like this article came out a week after his death. Sometimes it amazes me how tasteless and low these writers can be.

They must be kicking themselves for spinning off Niantic. With Pokemon Go I guess their revenues in Other Bets segment would have been significantly higher. Why make bets in the first place if they're not going to see it through?

Of the 15 largest stock investments, IBM is the only one that has lost value (page 15). Simultaneously, it looks like the largest cost based investment (next to BAC, which is unlisted in the table). Yet, he does not seem to address that position in any of his writing. I wonder what he thinks of the company.

He made it sound as though it is technologically trivial, as long as society and businesses would get behind the movement. I don't think that is the case from a security standpoint and also designing an api that would allow for widespread adoption.

The QA is really interesting. Most of the questions I felt he handled well and showed that he has knowledge of the domain. Two questions in particular stood out:

Q: How can I, as a developer, get my hands on the expensive software suite?

A: Come talk to us. We can accommodate developers who are willing.

This may have been some early input for him to think about sdks and the philosophy of providing developers with tools early on.

Q: What is your view of transactions on the web?

A: We don't think it's a technology problem. It's more of a social/business problem

He was clearly wrong on this one, with the advent of cutting edge technology companies like PayPal and Stripe that followed.