The 2001 Xbox launch featuring Bill Gates and The Rock exemplifies a forgotten marketing tactic. Instead of costly cinematic videos, hiring a celebrity can create a more memorable and shareable reveal. This approach is especially effective for founders who may lack on-camera charisma but need a "thumb-stopping" moment.
An LLM successfully solved a toddler's sleep problem, a task that previously required a human consultant charging hundreds of dollars per hour. This demonstrates AI's immediate power to democratize specialized expertise. It synthesizes vast knowledge to provide personalized, actionable advice for a fraction of the cost of a human professional.
By launching the iPhone at Macworld, not CES, Steve Jobs controlled the narrative. He prevented journalists from framing it as just another phone to be compared feature-by-feature against competitors like the Nokia N95, which was superior on paper. This allowed him to define a new category instead of competing in an existing one.
A key driver of future AI-fueled inequality is that most people hold their wealth in their homes. Unlike financial assets, home equity provides no direct exposure to the massive productivity gains and capital returns generated by automation. This structural issue means the benefits of AI will disproportionately flow to capital holders.
Human happiness is relative, not absolute. As technology rapidly advances, amazing capabilities (like in-flight internet) quickly become baseline expectations. This dramatically expands our set of comparisons, making us feel more dissatisfied than ever despite living in a world of unprecedented technological abundance. New conveniences create new frustrations.
Major tech companies like Apple, Google, and Meta have abandoned neutral trade shows for their own branded events (e.g., WWDC, Google I/O). Following Steve Jobs's playbook, this strategy allows them to control the entire presentation, avoid direct comparisons with competitors, and own the distribution of their announcements.