Detroit Auto Show vs MacWorld

The annual Detroit Auto Show gets a lot of television news exposure every year around this time. Every year there is lots of flash and hoopla and cars rotating on platforms with music and bright lights. The cars look really cool and there are all sorts of promises about how great they are and how much they can do. The problem is that all the cars that look and are really cool are not for sale. They are “concept” cars and you can’t buy them. Well, “maybe in five years”, we are told.

Contrast this with the MacWorld show where every year Steve Jobs of Apple (while not rotating on a platform with music and bright lights), says “Oh, and one more thing” shows you something that looks really cool, tells you how great it is and how much it can do. Oh, and one more thing, you can buy it NOW! If Steve Jobs showed the newest “concept” computer at MacWorld and said: “Five years from now you might be able to buy this”, he would probably be laughed off the stage.

The media puts the auto industry on a pedestal (along with its spinning cars) with no criticism about the reality of how bad it is that you can’t actually buy the cool stuff. Mr. Market sees things differently and that’s why Apple stock has been hovering around 200.00 lately, while Ford has been hovering around 7.00. Perhaps, if Ford made a hover car…