A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

There have been many stories written recently about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doing a tour of America to try and find out what people all over the U.S. are thinking and are concerned with these days. He called it a fact-finding trip, and stated that it had no political focus.

But according to an article in Politico, Zuckerberg recently “hired a Democratic pollster, Joel Benenson, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, as a consultant, according to a person familiar with the hire. Benenson’s company, Benenson Strategy Group, will be conducting research for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s philanthropy.”

While Zuckerberg denies overt political ambition, the belief here in Silicon Valley is that he is thinking more seriously of some type of political run or campaign that he could launch in the near future, or at least trying to understand how he can be more influential in guiding U.S. policy when it comes to the potential impact that technology will play in America’s future over the next 30 years.

There is some interesting history of this type of Silicon Valley political activity — Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who recently launched a political advocacy project called The United Slate, recently said he was considering running for California governor himself.

 I wrote about this for Fast Company last fall, and here is a passage that explains the Valley’s early interest and influence on Washington:

“During my 35 years of covering the technology industry, I have seen firsthand how companies have tried to keep an arm’s-length relationship with the government. With some rare exceptions—the Pentagon’s cooperation and collaboration with industry brought us the internet—Silicon Valley has generally tried to avoid federal and state bureaucrats. After all, the less the government knew about what tech companies were doing, the fewer legal and legislative issues the industry would have to deal with. This dynamic no longer works.

In the mid 1990s, a group of technology heavyweights led by Cisco’s then-CEO, John Chambers, and Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm partner John Doerr, along with various other tech leaders, began to realize the Valley would need the partnership of government and politicians for their vision of the future to be realized to the fullest.

Chambers and Doerr et al also foresaw the dramatic impact that the internet and mobile technologies would have on the U.S. and the world. Already back then, Chambers was percolating his ideas of connected cities and the Internet of Things (IoT).

These executives began evangelizing these concepts within the Clinton administration and at the federal agency level. They made an effort to educate elected officials on how technology would impact every level of government, and how it would transform our cities, businesses, and system of education.

To their credit, Clinton and Vice President Al Gore understood what Chambers and Doerr were saying. Clinton and Gore opened lots of doors for the tech leaders in Washington, giving them a chance to share their vision of the future.

At the end of the Clinton era, when Al Gore battled George W. Bush for the presidency, Chambers, Doerr, and other Silicon Valley leaders wisely kept up their efforts to influence both candidates. It became clear that whoever became president would follow President Clinton’s lead and allow Silicon Valley leaders to continue pushing the tech agenda.”

The heart of this recent interest in the tech world getting more involved in politics by either running for office or finding new ways to influence our politicians is the even greater understanding today of the impact of tech on our worlds future and how it could dramatically change American education, jobs, businesses and our personal lives over the next 30 or so years.

In a separate piece I did for Time Magazine before the last election, entitled “Why Our President Needs to Take Tech Seriously,” I wrote:

“With 5G, it will begin connecting people to devices, and devices to other devices. The latter is called the Internet of Things, and it’s primed to profoundly change our lives, much the way the regular Internet has. It’s also a potentially huge source of growth — Cisco estimates IoT gear and software will become a $14 trillion market over the next decade.

5G isn’t the only innovation on the horizon. Connected and autonomous cars will hit the streets in the next decade. In combination with the IoT, they’ll “speak” to one another and to public infrastructure, helping us build smarter cities. Tech companies will roll out new ways to track our health, connecting us to our doctors to help us stay healthy. Artificial intelligence will be applied to just about everything that technology already touches. Digital security will become an even more vital issue, as businesses and individuals will be increasingly targeted by hackers. The very nature of computers will change, too, as virtual and augmented reality will be established as the new interface of computing, delivering new forms of utility and entertainment.”

I also add to this AR, VR, Machine Learning, Robotics in manufacturing and new advances in medical science and you see that technology is on course to disrupt just about everything that is around us today and well into our future.

“However, for all these innovations to thrive — and deliver potentially huge economic benefits — they will need the help of our elected officials. Lawmakers need to understand these technologies, as they will be called upon to craft new laws and regulations to bring these technologies about smartly and safely.

Therein lies a problem. If you look at our lawmakers across the country, I would venture to guess that most are not very technologically savvy. For our country to truly enjoy the benefits of these new technologies, we’ll need politicians and officials who understand how these innovations work, and how they stand to change our lives.”

Tech execs who understand the role of technology on our future — and its impact on things like education, the future of manufacturing and the world of finance — look at our current president and some members of Congress and see almost no understanding or vision of what a crucial time we are in our history.

When it comes to the impact technology will have on every aspect of our business and personal lives and our culture going forward, their lack of tech savviness that will keep America from advancing, and will allow countries like China, Canada, France and others, whose leaders embrace technology rather then dismiss it, from potentially leaving us in the dust. Even worse, some of congressional leaders sees tech and science as a detriment to their political goals, and have become obstructors instead of visionary backers.

That is why some high-powered tech leaders are thinking the unthinkable these days. Many tech execs that I know hate and do not trust our government, but are starting to come to the conclusion that a president, senator and congressmen and congresswomen need to have a greater grasp of how technology will shape our world and country, and be tech-savvy enough to keep America moving forward now.

I am told behind the scenes that some very high-powered, forward-thinking tech execs who really understand how technology is going to drive so many major things tied to America’s growth and world position are starting to contemplate running for office in many states around America. Their goal would be to gain a stronger position of influence when it comes to the role government must play in guiding how technology is applied and integrated into all of our business and personal lives fairly and equally.

I have no clue whether Zuckerberg will or will not eventually move into politics, but I am willing to bet that as more and more tech execs understand the magnitude of what has to be called the great tech revolution of this century, we will see some of them trying to find a greater way to influence our current politicians, and we’ll even see some begin to run for office in order to influence our government from within as much as possible.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

I have the privilege of working with an American state (which shall remain nameless) on various issues related to tech in general and in education, broadband policy and, most recently, the need to develop its own autonomous-driving laws that would govern its roads in the future. All of the states will come under federal laws and policies for autonomous vehicles, but these laws will be mostly applied to interstates and other federal roads that the U.S. government might control within any state’s borders.

At the moment, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ellen Chao has the task of crafting the laws that will govern federal roads. With a large team helping her, she is working diligently to try and get an initial draft of sample rules and regulations in place as soon as possible. They need this draft in order to get feedback from all types of companies and citizens who will want and need to weigh in on any regulations in order to help the federal government create and fine-tune rules and regulations related to autonomous vehicles by the end of the decade.

All of the major automakers are lobbying the federal and state governments to be diligent in creating these laws as soon as possible, as these laws will impact how they design cars, and what types of extra guidance systems, cameras and sensors they will need to install in order to get on the road legally.

At least two major car companies want to have a fleet of self-driving cars on the streets in major cities by 2020, with a goal of actually selling autonomous vehicles to individual buyers in the 2022-2024 time frame. Uber and Google, if they have their way, would like to start rolling out their versions of these cars even sooner.

During the recent National Governors Association meeting with President Trump in Washington, D.C., all of the governors who attended the dinner with the president also had a side meeting with the Secretary of Transportation, who outlined portions of the government’s thinking on their autonomous vehicle strategy. She said their rules should be a starting point for every state to look to adopt when working on their own, more localized versions of state rules that will also need to be in place to complement the federal one, but at a more localized level.

But, while I was talking with various different state officials who are dealing with crafting their own laws for autonomous vehicles, they pointed out to me that, at the moment, a real conundrum for them lies in any final federal rules that will eventually make their way into law, and how those laws can be mirrored for state laws — they still need to have flexibility to create their own laws, even in competition with federal laws driven by Washington. As they pointed out, given things like terrain, weather and road conditions, as well as rural roads where even their own state laws are murky at times, trying to craft state regulations to accommodate these quirks as well as adhere to all federal guidelines when they come out makes their job of developing state laws governing autonomous vehicles even more difficult.

These discussions with officials I work with, as well as two other states whose officials I have been speaking to, points out the incredible amount of work that must take place before we can have the proper rules and regulations needed to govern self-driving vehicles in the future. In fact, when I suggest to these state officials that they will need to have their own laws in place by 2020 — a mere three years from now — they pretty much scoff at this suggestion. In fact, these officials are not even sure the federal rules and regulations can be in place by 2020 to meet the aggressive schedule of some automakers who want to have fleets of self-driving cars in major cities by then.

When I speak to officials at the city level, where they need to add cameras and sensors to things like traffic lights, street signs, etc., to communicate with self-driving vehicles when they approach intersections as part of a even more localized approached to crash-avoidance intelligence, the first question they ask me is, “Nice idea, but who will pay for that?” Besides adding new levels of technology and IT infrastructure to city roads and intersections, this added burden to make their streets smarter to deal with self-driving vehicles makes their heads spin.

I think we in tech get too caught up in the big picture of autonomous vehicles and their value and promise, and do not really understand the enormous complexities something like this adds to those who have to write the rules and regulations governing this new technology at the federal, state and local levels. It is going to take a great deal of planning and foresight of the people making this technology. They will have to understand what is needed and work very hard as soon as possible with regulators at all levels if they want to get their technology in place even in the next five years.

To that end, I really believe that Google, Uber, the automakers and others involved with creating self-driving cars need to come together and create a serious roadmap to be used at the federal, state and city levels that educates on how self-driving cars are created and what they can and can’t do. They also should lay out what type of rules of the road are needed for them to even launch the first generation of self-driving vehicles.

I know they are lobbying government officials now and providing some education, but from what I can tell, each of them is doing so only with their own agenda in mind. It would be in their best interests if they pool their efforts together and come up with what might be a set of first-generation rules that can be applied to “Fleet Use,” and then even more precise guidelines that can be in place by the time these companies want to start selling these cars to private citizens. If they want the help of the local cities in delivering even more sophisticated crash-avoidance cameras and sensors, they need to lay out at least a basic blueprint for how smart cities need to develop the proper smart signs, traffic lights, etc., and not make them try and figure this out for themselves.

While I can see how the technology for self-driving vehicles is advancing rapidly, and why those behind it would like to get these vehicles on the roads as early as possible, I am convinced it will be the regulatory issues at the federal, state and local levels that will slow this advancement down. If the folks behind this technology do not come together to help these government officials navigate these completely new waters when it comes to autonomous vehicles, it will be the lack of consistent and concise regulations for the rules of the road that will keep self-driving cars from reaching their potential anytime soon.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

Merriam-Webster defines a “bully pulpit” as:

Bully pulpit comes from the 26th U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, who observed that the White House was a bully pulpit. For Roosevelt, bully was an adjective meaning “excellent” or “first-rate” — not the noun bully (“a blustering, browbeating person”) that’s so common today. Roosevelt understood the modern presidency’s power of persuasion and recognized that it gave the incumbent the opportunity to exhort, instruct, or inspire. He took full advantage of his bully pulpit, speaking out about the danger of monopolies, the nation’s growing role as a world power, and other issues important to him. Since the 1970s, bully pulpit has been used as a term for an office — especially a political office — that provides one with the opportunity to share one’s views.

Roosevelt’s use of this term as an adjective and not a noun made the bully pulpit term okay for the time, and if the person is using that pulpit for good, the term can be an endearing one. However, I am not sure we can see president-elect Trump in that light yet, given his history of “blustering and browbeating” people to get his way.

I took a call from a reporter last week who was asking me about Apple’s decision to have their servers in a single data center location instead of at each of the major data centers it has around the U.S. and the world. This will be done in Arizona, and the reporter asked if Apple did this to help get a better position in Trump’s eyes, by doing the manufacturing in the U.S. All told, it will only add 10 to 20 jobs, and I told the reporter that this was more strategic, and had nothing to do with wanting to gain favor with Trump.

But other companies, such as Ford and Carrier, have made decisions to move jobs from planned facilities outside of the U.S. back to America. On the surface, it does appear as if Trump “bullied” them into doing it. It seems very clear to me that Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, who met with Trump at Trump Tower and pledged to bring one million jobs to the U.S., had being in Trump’s good graces in mind.

Last week, Amazon announced that it would add 100,000 jobs in the U.S. When this was announced (and because of Trump’s bully pulpit), I was asked by reporters if this decision was because of pressure from Trump or something more related to strategic growth.

I would hope that it was because it was a strategic decision, but I have a sneaky feeling that Amazon and many others do not want to rile Trump. What he says and does from his “bully pulpit” could hurt them during his time in office. Let’s be clear: I am 100 percent behind creating more jobs in the U.S., but I believe that this should come as a result of great business conditions, innovation, a true need for these companies, and that it is strategic to their business growth. I also believe that they should not be doing it because they were bullied into it. I am of the school that believes bullying companies to create jobs may be a temporary fix. Unless it’s done with the right motive, conditions and strategy, it will not deliver the fundamental change needed for these jobs to be long lasting.

I believe strongly the tech industry and companies should not succumb to Trump’s bullying tactics in any way when it comes to the issue of strategic planning, growth, innovation and even jobs.

That does not mean they should not want to work with him and, when necessary, lobby to influence Trump’s policies so he and his administration do not stand in the way of growing our tech economy. But if any of their moves are done just to placate Trump, then they are building foundations that will crumble under the weight of forced motivations. Unless strategic to their growth, it will set them back, not move them forward.

In a recent piece I wrote for Fast Company, I outlined my involvement with a council of independent tech influencers that helped shape President Bush’s tech agenda. In the article, I suggested some of the types of councils I believe President Trump needs to help him understand tech and, more importantly, use them to help develop a tech agenda of his own that would benefit his economic goals and get these companies to help support an agenda that moves our industry forward.

I believe working with Trump in a civil, proactive manner should be the goal of every tech company, but not kowtowing to him because he bullied them into some action. The tech industry needs the resolve to stand up against any bully pulpit, and only do what is right for them to grow their market. Anything less than that won’t have a lasting impact on them or our industry.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

I’ve tracked the tech market for the past 35 years, and there is one major theme I have seen over and over again when it comes to the goals of many tech innovators. They believe and have faith that the technology they create has the possibility to change the world. I have frequently heard tech executives say how they think their inventions or technology are world-changing devices or services.

From a historical perspective, that is very true. Technologies like the Gutenberg press, the steam engine, Edison’s light bulbs, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone or more recent inventions like the semiconductor, PC and smartphones have indeed been world-changing in what they do and how they drive new industries and the world’s economies.

Steve Jobs was one of the most vocal on this topic; in many speeches, he talked about Apple’s goal to change the world. Some of his products, especially the iPod, iPhone and the iPad, have been world-changing devices in terms of how they expanded personal computing, communications and entertainment. Products like Facebook and Twitter have had a huge impact on connecting people around the world in ways we could not have imagined even 10 years ago.

Lately I have been wondering if Silicon Valley, with its innovative thinkers and problem-solving skills, took a stronger aim at some of the huge problems we have in health care and especially in finding cures for diseases like cancer, diabetes and other major illnesses, how this could impact the fight against life-threatening problems.

I think most of us either know of people who have had cancer or have it themselves and surely want a cure for this awful disease. Vice President Joe Biden’s son died from cancer, and Biden has devoted his life to what he calls a “moonshot” to try and find a cure. There has been great work and serious strides in the world of health science done to deal with cancer, but even with these advances, there is still no actual cure.

It turns out that Silicon Valley has been pretty active already. I recently found out about one of the newest initiatives of a major Silicon Valley company called Nvidia, which, along with key government and private organizations, has made finding a cure for cancer a high priority.

Nvidia recently announced that it is teaming up with the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Energy and several national laboratories on an initiative to accelerate cancer research. The research efforts include a focus on building an AI framework called CANDLE, for Cancer Distributed Learning Environment, which will provide a common discovery platform that brings the power of AI to the fight against cancer. CANDLE will be the first AI framework designed to change the way we understand cancer, providing data scientists around the world with a powerful tool against this disease.

One of Nvidia’s claims to fame is its incredible graphical processors, which help power some of the fastest supercomputers in the world. These processors are also at the heart of Nvidia’s major push around something called Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning. These processors can handle billions of transactions per second and are central to a new data-science technology used to mine data at its deepest levels, and use AI and deep learning to try to find answers to big problems.

I have known Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang for 15 years, and he is one of the most energetic and visionary leaders in Silicon Valley. He is very passionate about deep learning and its potential impact on our world. “GPU deep learning has given us a new tool to tackle grand challenges that have, up to now, been too complex for even the most powerful supercomputers,” he said. “Together with the Department of Energy and the National Cancer Institute, we are creating an AI supercomputing platform for cancer research. This ambitious collaboration is a giant leap in accelerating one of our nation’s greatest undertakings, the fight against cancer.”

The cancer moonshot strategic computing partnership between the DOE and NCI to accelerate precision oncology includes three pilot projects that aim to provide a better understanding of how cancer grows; discover more effective, less toxic therapies than existing ones; and understand key drivers of their effectiveness outside the clinical trial setting, at the population level. Deep learning techniques are essential for each of these projects.


Nvidia is not the only tech company taking aim at the cancer “moonshot.” IBM’s Watson has joined with the Veterans Affairs to launch a public/private partnership to provide veterans who have cancer a better chance for recovery. Watson is the supercomputer that won the game show “Jeopardy,” and is one of the most powerful AI-based computers in the world.

Another of Silicon Valley’s giants, Intel, has invested heavily in AI and deep learning research, and is creating a new AI framework around their most powerful processors which will help power some of the biggest data projects in the world. In terms of cancer research, Intel has teamed up with the Oregon Health and Science Institute-Knight Cancer Center, the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to create a collaborative “cancer database” they will use to help advance the research on finding better ways to treat cancer, as well as someday find a cure.

Given Silicon Valley’s quest to change the world and its immense problem-solving skills, having the Valley turn its technology and skills to target these diseases perhaps can help speed up the search for treatments and, ultimately, cures for cancer, diabetes and other major health maladies.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

The first time I saw and played with the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pros, the concept of the macros of the past popped into mind. Like many who read this column who are power users, we all know the value of creating macros and applying them to our apps to speed up a particular business process. What Apple has done through the Touch Bar is basically deliver this kind of functionality, and gives the power of macros to the masses.

How many of you remember the role macros played in the early days of the PC? Macros are basically shortcuts to set up an often-used spreadsheet or to add a set of database formats that would be employed for repetitive data input. These were very important during the days when Microsoft’s DOS ruled the PC world. Even today, programmers use macros all the time, and power users still create macros for use in various types of apps where they are still supported. However, most users don’t even know these shortcuts exists, or if they do, consider them too difficult to find and use.

Then Apple introduced the Mac, with its graphical user interface. This, and the next generation of GUIs, made navigating through apps much easier. Also, these GUIs introduced an updated version of cut and paste that, in many ways, allowed a person to do similar things macros did when it came to interjecting what, in binary code, is just mathematical equations used over and over within an app of some type.

Another way to look at this is to look back on Apple’s influence on UIs in the past. With the Mac, Apple introduced the graphical UI and the mouse. This advanced the user interface of man-to-machine dramatically. With the iPhone and the iPad, the company introduced touch, something that is now mainstream in UIs for smartphones and tablets and even PCs and laptops.

But Apple’s philosophy on touch does not extend to laptops and iMacs for one key reason. Jobs always believed, right or wrong, that, when your hands were on the keyboard, the best position for input was via a keyboard and mouse. He felt that the motion to take the hand from the keyboard and move it to the screen as part of navigation was unnatural. Although adding a keyboard to the iPad breaks with this view, this is more a function of the iPad’s design, and many of us who use iPads with keyboards would love a mouse to use with it. An interesting side note comes with Microsoft’s Surface tablet. Most of my friends who use it with a keyboard also carry a mouse, as they don’t like using their fingers because the touch input is not as precise as one can get with a mouse.

The Touch Bar is an important evolution of Apple’s contribution to user interface design. It brings the functions of power-user macros to the general user by demystifying the concept of shortcuts for repetitive tasks, and it adds easy-to-use and fast access to all types of functions within applications that will support it. This is why the Touch Bar matters. Once people start using it, this will be viewed as a logical next step in UIs for laptops, and we will want this on other Apple laptops and desktops as well.

This will be especially true as the software community embraces this new feature and uses Apple’s APIs for the Touch Bar in their own applications. At the Apple event, the company showed us the tip of the iceberg for use on its own applications and ones from early partners like Adobe. But Microsoft plans to support the Touch Bar APIs in all of its Mac applications, and by early next year, we should see thousands of macOS apps supporting it. This gives Mac users a new way to speed up navigation and access within apps on a portable computer, and enhances the laptop experience significantly.

As for the new MacBook Pro’s design, I believe it will be a big hit for Apple’s high-end customers, and the entry product, which still has the older function keys, will be targeted as a replacement for the MacBook Air, especially in the enterprise. I have played with this model for about four days now and can see this as a great replacement for the Air.

I am concerned with the new MacBook Pros pricing, but to be fair, if this meets the needs of their pro customers, it will still sell well. However, if Apple’s new Touch Bar is the next evolution of Apple’s contribution to mobile user interface design, I suspect the Touch Bar will eventually be on all laptops Apple brings to market over time, and if history is our guide, the prices of these MacBook Pros will also go down in next-generation models.

I realize there will be naysayers who will be skeptical about the role the Touch Bar plays in the future. But if there is one thing I have learned over the 35 years of covering Apple, it is that when Cupertino puts a lot of thought and detail into user interfaces, it is best to take note. That is why I believe the Touch Bar not only matters, but that it and the special chip Apple uses to power it will have more of an industry impact than most can see right now.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

One of the things most consumers do not know about Apple is that its supply chain and manufacturing is one of the best in the world. Tim Cook, when he was in charge of that chain, created one of the most efficient supply and manufacturing systems in the market. Cook managed this side of Apple’s business for more than 10 years before he was elevated to the role of CEO. Even today he has an eagle eye on this part of the company’s business, and understands the supply chain better than any other CEO in the tech world today.

But what really makes Cook and Apple stand out is that, when they design hardware, they only marginally look at what type of equipment they will use to make this product. Creating a product that is great, easy to use and extremely well-designed is the first priority.

Once that is in place, they get serious about how they can manufacture the product in mass quantities, and in the most cost-effective way. However, Apple stands above most in this area because if they can’t find the right equipment to make a product, they actually invent and/or create the equipment, either with the help of a partner, or they do it themselves.

This extension of their technical prowess is critical to Apple’s success. In 2013, Apple worked with a key supplier to customize robots to manufacture new iPhones and iPads, and spent about $10.5 billion to create these special tools.

Over the years, I have talked with various ODM and manufacturing equipment makers, and many have told me Apple’s real secret to success is how deep the company goes into the overall manufacturing process.

Very few companies go to that level of detail when it comes to their supply chain. Besides Intel, Apple is one of the only other major tech companies I know of that will actually invent the manufacturing equipment needed to bring a new product to market. Most others accept the limitations of the equipment, and instead design the product around the things these machines can do with as little customization as possible.

Horace Dediu of Asymco has created a great chart that looks at Apple’s equipment spending from 2011-2016:

As you can see from this chart, Apple constantly pours investment dollars into its machine and equipment spending, and sees this area as an important differentiator that helps make them one of the most profitable companies in the world.

But this type of thinking also underscores Apple’s overall attention to detail when it comes to creating a product critical to its ecosystem. Apple’s designers are at the heart of their products, but I see their counterparts who manage the supply chain and the manufacturing of their products as equal stars in Apple’s success. No matter what tiny design adjustment Jony Ive and his team ask the supply chain and manufacturing teams to give them, they somehow are able to accommodate Ive and co.

In many other companies, it is the other way around. A design team will come up with a product idea and, most of the time, they are forced to create that product around what existing materials and equipment are available. These types of limitations impact innovation. That is one of the reasons we have so many me-too products on the market today.

We all know Apple marches to the beat of its own drum. This is just another example of Apple’s formula for success.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

As all industry watchers know, “2-in-1s” hit the market about three years ago as the new Next Big Thing in the PC market, and were positioned as the successor to the traditional clamshell PCs. Intel and Microsoft led this charge with the help of their PC partners and started to brand 2-in-1s and convertibles as the most versatile PC a person could buy. However, that message fell on deaf ears and even today, 2-in-1s and convertibles represent less than 10 percent to 15 percent of all laptops sold.

One reason for this pushback has been the fact that in the first generation of 2-in-1s, there was a real push for its use as a tablet with a pen. But the current PC audience has spent decades becoming highly proficient with clamshells, and this new design really rocked their boats. It also introduced the touchscreen into the design, another thing that saw real pushback from users who loved their trackpads and the usability of a mouse.

Today, our research sees most laptop users still kicking the tires on 2-in-1s and trying to determine if their versatility makes them worth the extra expense to shift to a totally new design in laptops.

Apple’s blessing on this category has the potential of floating all 2-in-1 boats.

Of course, this has been very frustrating for Intel and Microsoft specifically. Windows 8 was designed to help push the 2-in-1 concept and get more people using a touchscreen. The good news is that with Windows 10 most laptops now support a touchscreen to utilize this new OS, but most of them are still clamshell in nature, and not 2-in-1s.

While that has helped push touchscreen laptops, it has not created what Intel and Microsoft had hoped: Serious change of laptop users’ mindsets and starting a major upgrade cycle that would drive laptop and PC sales. Instead, PC sales look like they will be down at least 6 percent to 8 percent over last year, and even that year saw a 10 percent decline in PC sales.

But there is something interesting going on that has come out of the blue that could finally make 2-in-1s much more interesting to a lot of users. It’s coming from one of Microsoft’s and their OEM’s major competitors.

For the entire time that Intel, Microsoft and their PC partners pushed the 2-in-1s concept, Apple has gone on the record dismissing it. Tim Cook called them a toaster/fridge at one point, and while Apple was pushing its tablets into business, it really thought that the idea of 2-in-1s as a laptop replacement did not make sense.

However, as its overall iPad business has declined, Apple has now made a conscious decision to start positioning the iPad Pro 13.9-inch tablet as a laptop replacement. Microsoft and Intel should be mad that, after all this time saying that a product like Microsoft’s Surface or other vendors’ detachables were toaster/fridges that didn’t make sense, Apple is now placing TV ads that basically have the same message Microsoft pushed when it launched the original Surface.

But I don’t sense Microsoft or Intel being mad that Apple has finally agreed with them. Instead, they have realized this is probably a good thing for the future of 2-in-1s and convertibles. Indeed, Apple’s blessing on this category has the potential of floating all 2-in-1 boats, as Apple’s marketing and overall industry position can only help people get more focused on the 2-in-1 convertible design.

From our research, as well as research done by most big OEMs, they know that if there is to be a resurgence of PC sales, it most likely will come through converting people to the 2-in-1 or convertible platforms that provide more computing flexibility. They are not opposed to getting help in achieving that goal, even if it is coming from one of their fiercest competitors.

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981, and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others. Reach him @Bajarin.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.