Update on this post in 2022… This is a cool post to read later. I had forgotten I wrote this and also forgotten that the iPad ever had the numeric moniker. According to this article on iPad history there was an iPad 3 and iPad 4 but then they dropped the numbers. And Apple actually started the differentiation I advocated by introducing the iPad Mini the following year (2012), and iPad Air (2013) and finally an iPad Pro 4 years (2015). ...
Update on this post in 2022… I wrote some posts around this time that were explicitly predicting things. This post wasn’t that. It was more what we’d call a ‘vibe shift’ take. But I think I actually called this pretty well! Original post… Like many tech minded people I viscerally hate prestige. We tend to want to view the world as a harsh meritocracy where only the best achieve success. It’s partly why we revere people who have the guts to drop out of school. They took the risk of losing the prestigious paper to hang on the wall. However, whether or not we choose to ignore it, prestige does matter. ...
Update on this post in 2022… This is funny to read 11 year later. In review I’d say: 3 of 7 were directionally right (Facebook, NYC startups, and undergrads studying technical fields) 2 were underwhelming but reasonable (Enterprise Tablet, Hardware Startups) 2 were extremely wrong (AOL making a comeback! Phone’s getting viruses) It’s not that surprising that the three I got right were, basically, the things I understood best. I was a Facebook user in the target demo of the time. I was choosing to move to NYC to work in startups. And I was an undergrad in tech. The other ones were all trends I learned about by reading other people’s thoughts. Good reminder to do things you understand! ...