14 DAY TRIAL // Despite having nearly $180 billion in the bank, Apple’s tremendous appeal may be eroding, warns Atari’s Nolan Bushnell, the man who gave Steve Jobs his first job in the ‘70s.
Bushnell and Jobs were close friends back when Silicon Valley was just beginning to take shape. Jobs had already begun to envision the future through technology.
Bushnell tells The Australian Financial Review that Jobs had asked for $50,000 (€44,000) to start a computer company, but that he turned him down because he believed Jobs’ company would conflict with Atari, which was also in the computer business.
He was probably right, but at the same time it was also a bad choice, Bushnell admits, considering that the $50,000 (€44,000) would have secured him a 1/3 stake in Apple today: “Yeah … that was a big mistake, what can I say?” he said.
Apple is going down, basically
More interestingly, he also told the paper that he thinks “Apple has a dreadful problem.” He explains why some companies are too successful for their own good (using slightly different terms), and concludes that “If [Apple] don’t continue with some remarkable innovation, then pretty soon their ability to charge premium prices for their products will go away.”
This is a warning many analysts and company watchers have issued over the past three years. In other words, since Steve Jobs passed away, many have started to fear that Apple will become the new Microsoft, a non-innovator that keeps cashing in on a well-established ecosystem, brand name, etc. That’s hardly the case with Apple.
As if the Apple Watch doesn’t count as innovation, people like Bushnell warn that Apple needs to move mountains to keep up its momentum. Somehow these claims almost always come after Apple posted a record quarter, making it very hard to believe that Apple is slowly spiraling into a black hole.