Pity The Poor Apple Robot

Apple, and all of tech, seem to have a problem. They are companies in largely mature markets, but their stocks are priced as if they are still young, explosively growing companies sitting next to untapped markets. This need to impress Wall Street is part of the reason that crypto, the metaverse, NFTs and now imitative AI have been tried on like new party clothes in the desperate hope that no one will notice your crappy personality. And it continues to shape their decision making.

Take the proposed Apple Robot.

Apple is building something that it calls a robot for the home. Will it load the dishwasher for you? No. Will it fold the laundry for you? No. Will it clean the litter box for you? No. Will it cook for you? No. Will it let the dog in and out? No. It will, and be prepared to be excited, sit on your table, be a smart home hub/Alexa kind of device, and rotate the screen to focus on you. Such innovation! Such daring! Such marketing!

Okay. The mocking might be a wee bit over the top. Having an easy way to control devices in your home, especially a smart home, is a nice bit of kit. And smart homes are the kind of incremental automation that provides some real value to people. But this thing is no more a robot than I am the starting center for the Blackhawks. But Apple calls it a robot and the press goes along. Why?

Well, Apple needs to impress Wall Street analysts, who tend to be as discriminating as a drunk at last call. You can almost always collectively fool them into thinking that you have the Next Big Thing of you use words that they have already decided are the Next Big Thing. And ROBOT sounds like the Next Big Thing in a way that “home hub” or “Alexa competitor” no longer does. Now, this trick does not always work, and it does not always work for long. There are analysts who know what they are talking about and eventually the lack of profit and business around these faux Next Big Things becomes apparent.

But if and while it does, it can provide the illusion that mature companies still deserve to be treated as if they were brand new and on the cusp of creating or dominating entire new markets. They aren’t, of course. They operate in mature, almost commodity markets, largely. And as of now, they don’t have any new gadget that will change this dynamic.

This is not entirely their fault. Completely new markets and completely new technologies don’t come along on a quarterly timescale, whatever Wall Street wants. Th real problem is that we have incentivized, though the concepts of stockholder supremacy, through treating capital gains different than income for tax purposes, through the abandonment of antitrust policy, the notion that it is proper to expect companies to grow forever. It is not, of course. Being profitable should be enough, but that is not what Wall Street measures. Until we squash the idea that profit is inferior to growth, then these companies will continue to pursue marketing more than making their customers happy. They will continue to take perfectly nice, inoffensive tech like home hubs and pretend that they are fancy new sci-fi gizmos that will lead to unlimited growth, at least for this quarter.

Apple calling its new device a robot is bullshit. But it is almost forced to, because Wall Street has devolved into a bullshit generating system. And we all deserve better than that. Especially the cute little home hubs.