Tech Cycles

Complementing his marvelous Thoughts on Flash, Steve Jobs described tech cycles to justify Apple's position in D8. Essentially, tech cycles means that technology grows from infancy to maturity to the grave. While, in the case of Flash, it's certainly correct, the mantra has widespread influences so that tech blogs began to apply it across all technologies. However, email is clearly a counterexample in that it never enters the grave. There are pieces of technologies that are close to eternal.

The most conspicuous implication of the widespread mantra is that technological revolution occurs everywhere, rather than in specific fields. As a instance of the mantra, tech blogs claimed that smartphones are going to be replaced by other sorts of technologies, ruling out the possibility that smartphones in certain form may be close to eternal. These tech blogs were not far from Jack Ma's view.

We believe, however, that these tech blogs are misguided and misinterpreted the famous Steve Jobs critique. It's important to understand the context of the critique, rather than to give thoughtless generalizations. Our hope is that Apple is guided by wisdom, rather than advertising materials from tech commentators.