TIM COOKED HIMSELF. APPLE COMPUTER CEO GETS THE FUTURE SO WRONG. HERE IS WHAT THE FUTURE WILL LOOK LIKE FOR US.

“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?” ~ Tim Cook, CEO Apple Computer, Inc.

Of course Tim Cook said this only days away from the Christmas holiday shopping season likely in hopes of increasing sales of Apple Computer iPads and iPhones. However, can anyone play Assassin's Creed or Fallout 4 on an iPad?

Tim Cook seems to lack vision. Tim Cook might have joined the pantheon of bad claims about products.

• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- William Orton, President, Western Union, 1876
• "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.
• "The wireless music box [radio] has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff, circa 1920
• "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
• "With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market." -- Business Week, August 2, 1968.
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
• "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." -- Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft, 2007

And now I give you the future.

Smartphones and tablets will seem quaint in 10 years.

The future is bigger screens much bigger screens. Screens will become detached from CPUs. Screens will pop up everywhere. Through NFC, anyone will have access those bigger screens.

The future also is roll up screens that people put in their pockets. Again, screens will be fully detached from the CPU device. Control will be through your hand gestures and your voice.

The CPU device will act more like a key, a FOB for the cloud-based, wireless, accessible everywhere Internet. Your CPU FOB will have little more than your ID info and comm support.

All of your data will be accessed either from the cloud or from your own home storage.

Social media will be dead in 10 years too.

The future is mediated advertising where you will have a virtual assistant with artificial intelligence who will negotiate deals for you watch and hear sales pitches made exactly for you.

Selfie narcissism likely will come to an end once today's young and future adults discover they have harmed their careers. Without the selfie narcissism, there is little reason for social media. 

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OH NOAH, OH NO. AN ACADEMICIAN SEEKS STREET CRED BY ATTACKING FOR-PROFIT BUSINESSMEN

So there is this new guy on the Internet, Noah Smith. Having been awarded his Ph.D. in 2012, Noah Smith seems like a baby-faced Ph.D. barely out of his grad school diapers.

Nerds and Noah Smith

Noah has taken to attacking well-known speculator Peter Schiff, well-know financial blogger Mike Shedlock and the Austrian School of Neoclassical Economics.

Likely, Noah has learned there is a big contingent of Internet users who subscribe to Mises.org, Shedlock, Schiff and others. Likely, by attacking them repeatedly, Noah sees this as short-cut to Internet stardom. It seems Noah is trying to build an Internet reputation by associating his name with popular Internet figures — Schiff, Shedlock.

Noah first should show that he knows anything about reality irrespective of the crap that was shoved in his head in grad school. Noah Smith seems to be like most eggheads, insufferably self-deluded over importance that is woefully lacking.

That Schiff has $2 billion under management means Schiff and his team is doing something right. Schiff actually must devise speculation strategies, enough of which must be successful thus enabling Schiff to remain in for-profit, actual competition commerce, otherwise, Schiff's reputation would be so tarnished as no one would place cash and bank credits with him thus leading to his bankruptcy.

Noah Smith has exactly $0 under management. Not only does Noah not have any cash-denominated bank credit under management, but Noah relies on taxpayers of the State of New York to make sure Noah doesn't end up homeless.

I'd rather roll with Schiff than Noah Smith when laying out a bet on speculation. Rather than title his attack article on Schiff and Shedlock as When Entertainment Passes for Investment Advice, Noah should write one about himself titled, When Entertainment and Self-deluded Nerdiness Passes for Trustworthy Intellect.

It is unlikely that Noah has ever established a sustaining for-profit business in his life. Noah's public CV fails to detail anything like it. It would be interesting to see if Noah ever even held a job in any for-profit venture beyond a fast-food job during high school.

In effect, Noah is a ward of the State of New York, living off the taxpayers of New York, collecting what amounts to high-paying welfare. Noah might convince himself, deceive himself even that his employment is legitimate, but free market participants have not called for Noah's work. Noah's work would not exist without heavy subsidy from both the U.S. Congress through Pell grants as well as the State of New York through massively subsidized operations of SUNY.

Politicians alone by de jure have created Noah's job. Politicians alone impose duty upon themselves to give Noah the right to collect a paycheck in name from them for make-work politicians decree.

Academia economics is so flawed as knowledge as to be laughable. Anyone professing understanding of any economy by virtue of having taken a PhD in economics is the ultimate charlatan con-man. Yet, here Noah is ranting about Schiff and Shedlock as con-men.

Austrian, Keynesian — it doesn't matter. Both are schools of neoclassical economics and as such both arise from the same false premises — scarcity and utility give rise to price. Nothing could be more wrong and more stupid than to believe such. This is why academicians of all stripes get it oh so wrong.

The problem with jokers like Smith is they believe all of the foolish flawed theory pumped into their heads from their equally foolish professors.

Here is what one of his former SUNY Stony Brook students had to say about Noah:

"Noah Smith is a terrible professor. He's a straight economics academia with no way to relate to students. Knows nothing about real business while trying to teach business courses. Stay Away!! Far Away!!"

Here is what another student had  to say:

"No experience in teaching MBA courses whatsoever. PhD in Economics with no real world experience in investments or finance. Unclear in teaching methods and expects students to have a very strong background in mathematics and economics. Do not take this professor unless you want to be frustrated all semester."

For more on the failure that is economics, check out WHY IS THE ECONOMY SO HORRIBLE? BECAUSE ACADEMIA ECONOMICS IS FAKE.

Speaking of Oh No, here is the Knack singing Oh Tara, oh no.

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FROM THE DOTCOM ERA AND BEYOND, AMAZON TRUMPS ALL

According to GeekWire, a $1,000 investment in Amazon from the IPO would be worth $239,045. That is 239 times return on money staked.

eBay and Yahoo end up as great investment decisions. Google ends up as an OK investment decision. Comparatively speaking, LinkedIn ends up as a weak decision and Facebook ends up as a quite bad decision.

Now let's take those numbers above and truly put those numbers into perspective. Look at those surprises!

On a yearly basis since the respective IPOs, Google ends up being the second worst investment though yielding a bit more than 1.5 times Facebook. Yet, for years, the chatterheads on CNBC, Bloomberg and elsewhere on blogs have decried Yahoo! as a poorly run business while singing praises for Google.



What is the lesson here? Jeff Bezos and the succession of execs at eBay have proven the real money on the Internet comes from selling goods packaged in boxes along with brokering sales of goods packaged in boxes.


Social media fail to make good investments. The costs associated to run social media are high. Yet, in spite of growing revenues, revenues fail to exceed costs.

Look at Twitter. The kiddies who run Twitter never have been able to turn a profit in seven years! According to 
Bloomberg, in a recent filing, Twitter execs reported doubling revenue in its third quarter of accounting, yet those execs could only do so by quadrupling their losses.

All should be surprised even when professionals take over Twitter after the IPO, that Twitter ever turns a profit.

By wasting untold resources on G+, Google execs have drifted far from their model as a digital billboard by pushing ads on anyone's internet property through Doubleclick and AdMob. For the hundreds of millions Google execs squandered on G+ and G+ related acquisitions, these same execs could have added an alike functionality to Blogger for pennies per blog. Blogger already supports advertising welcomed by tens of millions of Blogger users.

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