cross pond high tech

The absence of official numbers for the Apple Watch leads to speculation that the device is a flop — why else would Apple hide the numbers? But the company’s penchant for secrecy shouldn’t prevent us from looking at a few facts, and from thinking about the company’s long game.

How widely and how quickly will autonomous cars be accepted? As hard as it might be for an urbanite to imagine, many people love their cars. And if early autonomous vehicles cause a few well-publicized accidents, fear of the unknown could slow the trend, even to a halt.

Is owning a car factory an advantage or a disadvantage? In the minds of many from Silicon Valley, "Detroit" is a euphemism for inept. They believe the most important part of a car is its software, and they're probably right. But isn’t a century’s worth of expertise worth something? And don’t get carried away about Tesla: Last year it delivered 50,580 cars, approximately one-quarter of one percent of Detroit's output.

Is ride-sharing a commodity product? In Brooklyn, I can use a car-hailing app to get Uber, Lyft, Juno, or a taxi. I don’t see any significant difference between any of the services, each of which arrive quickly, charge similar fares, and offer clean cars and knowledgeable drivers. Selling a commodity tends to be a pretty awful business.

How long can ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft take a loss on many of the rides they provide, in their race to garner riders and drivers? "There’s never been a market as subsidized as this," one venture capitalist told me. "We’ll only know the winners and losers after that settles down."

Will governmental regulations slow or speed this transition? The environmental benefits of electric vehicles and fewer cars on the road are clear. Yet cities like New York, Austin, Berlin, and Paris have at different times threatened to strangle car-sharing with regulations. Look at the airline business: governments like regulating travel, for better or for worse.

What kind of "driver" or "passenger" insurance will be required? The average American driver now pays a bit less than $1000 per year for auto insurance. But who is responsible when driverless cars collide?

Will we continue to personally own cars, or will we instead have monthly subscriptions to companies that will provide all the rides we need? Subscription services seem likely, but if my current subscriptions—to companies like Time Warner Cable and Verizon—are any model, quality suffers and prices creep up.

Why is it so difficult to design a driver-friendly dashboard? Mapping services and accurate engine diagnostics are welcome additions to the information a driver can see, but more data has resulted in cluttered screens using interactive controls designed for phones or laptops. Steve Jobs understood that the user interface was the most important part of any consumer technology. Can Apple solve this problem?

Are Uber and Lyft drivers employees or contractors? This is an issue of short-term importance, but is caught up in a broader societal concern: How to define those who participate in the so-called ‘gig economy.’

Who has the most important leverage? The company that designs a car's software? The manufacturer? Or is it Uber, whose app is used by so many consumers? As with any nascent transition, it's hard to know what will emerge as the most important bottleneck.

Can any ride-sharing company become a truly international brand, or will local services trump those ambitions? Uber is losing billions of dollars trying to snare a leading market share in Asian countries. No one know exactly how much resistance it will face from governments that prefer local providers.

How strong are the network effects that Uber gains by being such a well-funded first mover? Benchmark VC Bill Gurley likes to point to this tweet as a key reason that Uber will continue to thrive. But if car-sharing has as much subsidization and government interference as the airline industry, will those network effects hold true?

Cars are no longer what they seem to be. On-board computers and their algorithms have invaded all organs, making cars better, but also more susceptible to hacks and invasions of privacy.

Having driven Route 85 between Cupertino and Mountain View a few thousand times, I’m familiar with every rift and gap in the concrete, every subtle camber shift as I follow an habitual, gradual arc through curves and lane changes. Some early Chevrolet episodes aside, I’m behind the wheel of a European vehicle, silent, good lungs, surefooted, precise, the kind of car that translates the driver’s steering motion into a smooth trajectory, no ifs or buts, no need for correction as the suspension takes its time to settle. After 31 years of driving this pleasant road, the feeling doesn’t get old.

A few weeks ago, I drove the familiar route in a new vehicle freshly delivered from Sindelfingen. Something is wrong: The first curve line is “dirty”, it lacks Germanic rigor. At the next curve the steering wheel argues with me, politely but clearly demanding a different trajectory.

When I get back home I look around the dashboard and notice two red indicators that had been hidden by the steering wheel while I was driving. The walkthrough tech at the dealership had set the vessel to autopilot. In retrospect, I should have seen the argumentative steering coming: I had ordered the autopilot and other geeky features that were unknown when I bought my previous chariot just five years ago. On the road, the autopilot had interpreted my steering ‘optimizations’ as daydreaming lane drift and had stepped in to keep me in line.

I disconnect the autopilot and go for a drive; the familiar pleasant feeling returns.

In a 1957 essay about the Citroën DS (pronounced “Déesse”, goddess) Roland Barthes hailed the modern car as…

“…the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists…it excites interest less by its substance than by the junction of its components. ”

The striving, energetic copulation of the arts and technologies, the ‘junction of components’ has continued. Cars are now nearly completely penetrated by automation and algorithms.

In the past 40 years our personal computers have, of course, become immensely more powerful and convenient, but the roots of our interest in personal computing haven’t changed. And, against many odds Apple, has become a giant, world-spanning, immensely rich company.

In retrospect, we can see three Apple eras.

Apple 1.0 was a turbulent period: The rise of the Apple ][, its loss to the IBM PC and Microsoft; the hope and trouble with the Macintosh; Jobs forced out followed by a succession of “professional” CEOs and progressively deteriorating finances.

In retrospect, Jobs’ departure from Apple was one of the best things that happened to him and the company he co-founded. If hadn’t left for an outside tour, the Pixar success and the NeXT technical achievements and business challenges, he wouldn’t have been able to return and jump start the company’s next phase.

Apple 2.0 began in late 1996 when Jobs managed what turned out to be a reverse acquisition of Apple. We owe much gratitude to then-CEO Gil Amelio who unwittingly saved the company hiring Steve to “advise” him. Jobs’ advice? Show Amelio the door and install himself as “interim” CEO. Jobs then made an historic deal with Bill Gates which gave him time to let his team of NeXT engineers completely rebuild the Mac OS on a modern Unix foundation. Steve also rummaged through the company and found Jony Ive who gave us the colorful iMacs, the first of a series of admired designs.

What followed is recognized as the most striking turnaround story in any industry, one that has been misunderstood and pronounced as doomed at almost every turn. The list of Jobs’ “mistakes” includes killing the Macintosh clone program by canceling Mac OS licenses; getting rid of floppies and, later, CD/DVD-ROMs (mostly); entering the crowded MP3 player field; introducing iTunes and the micropayment system; the overpriced, underpowered $500 iPhone; the stylus-free iPad (ahem)…

We’ve seen the punishment for these mistakes: Apple sells approximately $250B worth of iPhones every year, that’s six phones every second manufactured and delivered to more than 130 countries.

Despite it’s enormous size and influence, Apple’s business remains simple to understand. The company makes personal computers, as illustrated in this telling line-up:

Personal computers, small, medium and large.

Everything else Apple does — from iTunes to iCloud storage, apps and accessories — has one and only one raison d’être: Push up the volumes and margins of the company’s personal computers.

Steve Jobs left us in early October 2011, Too Soon, as I wrote in my heartfelt homage to the once unmanageable co-founder who turned into a manager extraordinaire, captain of industry, and editor-in-chief of a team of designers, engineers, supply-chain managers, and finance experts.

We’re now in the Apple 3.0 era, under Tim Cook’s leadership.

Over the past years, I have found AppleScript very efficient when it comes to manipulate and process Contact or Agenda information on a Mac, either to detect and process duplicates, as well as for updating dozens of contacts when corporate mail domaine changes, building and maintaining mailing lists through specific tags in the "Notes" field, or processing boucing emails "en masse" to clean up address book after season's greetings.

ics-file-cleaner is An AppleScript designed to process and trim (organizers, attendees, requests) .ics files sent from Outlook before importing them in iCal.

This is the only way to avoid iCal resending or confirming invites via Outlook, or canceling an invent and notifying attendees while you just removed it from iCal.

The following AppleScript is triggered by a mail rule and process the .ics file content before opening it with iCal/Calendar app - which results in an import.

It has been posted on GitHub so it can be forked and improved beyond my basic and remnant AppleScript skills.

People are focusing on the wrong thing when analyzing Apple's path forward in the face of slowing iPhone sales. Instead of debating how much Apple will try to monetize the iPhone user base with services (not as much as consensus thinks), the company is instead planning its largest pivot yet. There are only a handful of logical explanations for Apple's current R&D expense trajectory, and all of them result in a radically different Apple. In a few years, we are no longer going to refer to Apple as the iPhone company. 

As I pointed out last May, Apple's R&D expense saw a significant bump up beginning in mid-2014. It was clear Apple was up to something big. However, after looking at Apple's 2Q16 results, it appears I underestimated the situation. As depicted in Exhibit 1, Apple is now on track to spend more than $10 billion on R&D in 2016, up nearly 30% from 2015 and ahead of even my aggressive estimate. This is a remarkable feat considering that Apple was spending a little over $3 billion per year on R&D just four years ago.

One of the more interesting aspects of Apple's R&D expense trajectory in recent years is that the increase has been outpacing revenue growth. As seen in Exhibit 2, given my current iPhone sales expectations for FY16 and FY17, Apple is on track to approach a multi-decade record in terms of amount spent on R&D as a percent of revenue. 

Unusual R&D Perceptions

The most shocking aspect about the amount of money Apple is spending on R&D is how little attention it has garnered in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Other than my R&D post last year, there is rarely any mention of Apple's R&D, and this doesn't seem to make much sense.

I suspect most of this has been due to the fact that Apple does not draw attention to its product pipeline and long-term strategy, choosing instead to embrace secrecy and mystery. Now compare this to Mark Zuckerberg laying out his 10-year plan for Facebook. It is easy and natural for people to then label Facebook as innovative and focused on the future. The same principle applies to Larry Page reorganizing Google to make it easier for investors to see how much is being spent on various moonshot projects. Jeff Bezos is famous for his attitude towards failing often and in public view, giving Amazon an aura of being a place of curiosity and boldness when it comes to future projects and risk taking. 

Meanwhile, Tim Cook has remained very tight-lipped about Apple's future, which gives the impression that Apple isn't working on ground-breaking ideas or products that can move the company beyond the iPhone. Instead of labeling this as a mistake or misstep, Apple's product secrecy is a key ingredient of its success. People like to be surprised. Another reason Apple takes a much different approach to product secrecy and R&D is its business model. Being open about future product plans will likely have a negative impact on near-term Apple hardware sales. Companies like Facebook and Google don't suffer from a similar risk. The end result is that there is a legitimate disconnect between Apple's R&D trends and the consensus view of the company's product pipeline. Apple is telling us that they are working on something very big, and yet no one seems to notice or care. I find that intriguing.

Logical Explanations for Apple R&D

Even though Apple remains tight-lipped about its dramatic increase in R&D expense, there are three logical explanations for what may be happening.

1) Apple's expanded product line requires additional R&D. This theory represents the most straightforward explanation. Essentially, because Apple has grown significantly over the years, the company needs to spend more on R&D just to keep up with its more expansive product line and greater competition. The company is now invested in four hardware categories (iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch), not to mention various software and services initiatives. 

2) Apple plans on doing more. Keeping with another simple explanation, Apple's increased R&D spend could signal that the company is willing to try its hand at more things. The expectation would be that Apple will begin releasing a greater number of products in terms of hardware, software and services. 

3) Apple is looking to pivot. Apple is ramping up R&D because they have a few big bets that require a massive increase in investment. The two most logical areas for these bets are wearables and personal transport initiatives. In both cases, Apple is moving well beyond its comfort zone of selling pieces of glass that can be held in one's hand. Instead, Apple is literally building a new company with additional capabilities and strengths.

L'année dernière, Carlos Diaz, un entrepreneur limougeaud habitant à San Francisco depuis sept ans, a reçu en tête-à-tête les PDG de 113 start-up hexagonales. Identifié par les entrepreneurs comme une figure française de la Silicon Valley depuis sa participation au mouvement des « pigeons » en 2012, il s'est retrouvé bombardé d'e-mails de jeunes créateurs d'entreprise, avides de conseils sur l'installation de ce côté-ci de l'Atlantique. Il s'est dit qu'il existait sûrement une manière plus efficace de les aider que d'enchaîner les cafés… 

Avec deux autres chefs d'entreprise de la Vallée, Géraldine Le Meur, cofondatrice du festival LeWeb, et Pierre Gaubil, un autre serial entrepreneur, ils ont décidé de lancer un accélérateur de start-up françaises basé à San Francisco. Baptisé «  The Refiners », il accueillera 12 à 15 start-up n'ayant pas encore réalisé de levée de fonds, pendant trois mois, deux fois par an. La première promotion commencera en septembre. 

L'accélérateur prendra 3 à 7 % de leur capital, en échange d'un chèque de 50.000 dollars pour les aider à démarrer. Un modèle inspiré des fameux accélérateurs Y Combinator et 500 Startups, d'où sont sortis Airbnb, Twitch ou Makerbot, mais qui prendra en compte  « le fossé culturel, un élément trop souvent négligé », explique Carlos Diaz.  « Pendant les trois premières semaines, on fermera les portes et les fenêtres car ils ne seront pas "montrables" et on leur apprendra comment agir ici », détaille-t-il. Au programme, quelques éléments clefs de la culture de la Silicon Valley, comme la différence entre les fonds de capital-risquefrançais et américains, ces derniers  « ne demandant pas des tableurs et des business plans à trois ans », explique Pierre Gaubil. Ou encore la différence de relation avec les grandes entreprises :  « dans la Silicon Valley, les grands comptes ne sont pas un élément de destruction des produits des start-up mais des partenaires qui les distribuent ».

Doté de 6 millions de dollars, le fonds est abondé à 60 % par une centaine de partners, moitié américains, moitié français, qui endossent également le rôle de mentors. Les 40 % restants sont apportés par bpifrance.