I have now seen it all....

[KYnyts]

Oh good! We are the exact same page. Neither of us cares whether or not the other likes AAPL. That means we are just having a good old fashioned discussion with differing views.

I took an advanced management course a few years ago (please don't ask how I ended up in that one...it's a long story) and it was very helpful in understanding why innovative companies are generally more successful than their counterparts. If the odds of an innovative product being successful is 1 in 1000, then the odds of an original idea becoming successful are astronomical. A very good example of what happens when companies are not innovative can be found by looking at the history of the Polaroid Corporation. Polaroid came from seemingly out of nowhere to enter the imaging industry. It launched the first instant camera in 1948. When digital cameras hit the market in the late 1980’s, Polaroid was far behind and never managed to catch up because it had failed to innovate. In 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and most of the business was subsequently sold. We have seen the same thing happen with Kodak and Xerox, resulting in massive layoffs, downsizing and reorganization.

New products are often ahead of their time, and yet as time passes and the idea has time to mature and the technology has time to catch up (and prices drop) then innovation takes over. I don't see that as a bad thing at all, but it is okay with me if you do.

(Checks to see if my reputation has suffered yet.)