There’s another twist: Apple has been talking to the US government, asking for an exemption so it can buy chips from Changxin Memory, which is currently on a Defense Department list. The US government is also a big Apple customer (iPads and MacBooks). That conversation is still ongoing.
Apple has spent years being urged to “hurry up with AI,” yet it seems content to keep selling computers and phones. Reality shows that even if you don’t jump in, the ripple effects of AI on resources can still reach you.
This reminds me of several big industrial shifts in history. Every major wave tends to create three groups: the earliest movers, the ones who join midway, and those who refuse to move at all. Their outcomes differ, but society often ends up with real, lasting changes after the “bubble” bursts. Here are four stories that show the pattern.
1. Case 1: British Railway Mania (1840s)
Once steam locomotives appeared, Britain went all in. In 1846 alone, Parliament passed 272 railway acts authorizing nearly 9,500 miles of new track. Even priests, widows, and lawyers who never touched stocks put their life savings into railway shares. Prices doubled in just two years.
Railways needed massive amounts of iron and coal. Britain’s iron output jumped from over 2 million tons in 1840 to nearly 3 million tons by 1852 — more than the rest of the world combined. Iron and coal prices soared. Industries completely unrelated to railways — shipbuilding, construction, farm tools — suddenly had to pay more for materials. Sound familiar?
Among the earliest investors, some who backed lines with real passenger demand made money. But the ones who built the biggest empires on borrowed money (like “Railway King” George Hudson) collapsed when the bubble burst. He misused around £750,000 (roughly £74 million today) and ended up in prison.
People who jumped in at the peak got crushed. Ordinary middle-class investors who bought after prices had already doubled watched shares fall 66% by 1850. Many families lost everything. Ironically, only about two-thirds of the authorized lines were ever built.
Those who refused to participate and stuck with canals? Railways were faster and cheaper, so canal traffic dried up. They cut prices desperately but couldn’t compete. Many were acquired or abandoned. The canal companies were the “Apple” of their day — they just wanted to protect their existing business and got swept aside.
Society, however, came out ahead. The tracks stayed on the ground. Transport costs collapsed, Britain became a single unified market, and industrialization and urbanization accelerated sharply. Shareholders lost; society gained real infrastructure.
2. Case 2: US Factory Electrification (1880s–1920s)
When electricity arrived, factory owners expected huge efficiency gains by replacing steam engines with electric motors. What actually got expensive was copper for wiring.
For the first 30 years, productivity barely moved. Why? Factories simply swapped the steam engine for an electric motor but kept the old layout — one giant overhead shaft with belts running everything. Nothing about the workflow changed, so nothing improved.
Around 1910, a new generation of factory owners finally got it: put a small electric motor under each machine, rearrange the floor around actual production flow, and let machines start and stop independently. Efficiency exploded. By the 1920s, electrification accounted for roughly half of US manufacturing productivity growth.
Factories that refused to redesign and clung to steam power were gradually driven out by lower-cost competitors.
On a societal level, electricity didn’t stop at factories. It transformed homes and cities — electric lights, refrigerators, elevators, phones, radio. Modern urban life was literally redrawn by electricity.
This feels a lot like how many companies are using AI today: they bolt it onto old processes (writing emails, summarizing meetings) and then wonder why nothing changes. The real gains come only when people redesign the entire business around the new technology.
3. Case 3: US Auto Industry (1900–1920s)
At one point there were 253 car companies in America — more chaotic than today’s AI startup scene. Tires needed rubber, so rubber prices were bid sky-high. Capital rushed to plant rubber in Southeast Asia; acreage exploded nearly 30-fold in just a few years.
Most of those 253 early car companies died. By 1929 only 44 remained.
The winners were later entrants: Ford (with the Model T and assembly line), General Motors, and Chrysler. The three eventually took about 80% of the US market.
What happened to the carriage and wagon makers who refused to touch cars? America once had over 13,000 businesses tied to horse-drawn transport. By 1920 almost all were gone. Whip makers collapsed because cars don’t need whips. A few smart carriage makers survived by pivoting to make car seats, bearings, and brakes for the new auto factories. They adapted instead of fighting the wave.
Society was transformed: suburbs, highways, gas stations, motels, supermarkets. The entire geography and daily life of America were reshaped.
4. Case 4: Internet & E-commerce Bubble (1995–2002)
This one is closest to us. Add “.com” to any company name and the stock soared. Nasdaq rose 600% from 1995 to March 2000, then fell 78% by October 2002.
Most first-wave internet companies disappeared. Webvan, an online grocery service, burned through nearly $400 million before going bankrupt in 2001.
A few who survived the crash became giants. Amazon’s stock dropped more than 90% and nearly died, but Jeff Bezos used the crisis to strengthen fundamentals. It went from an online bookstore to the massive company it is today. The overbuilt fiber from the bubble era later became cheap broadband that enabled YouTube, cloud computing, and mobile internet.
Traditional retailers? Borders, once a bookstore giant, liquidated in 2011. Toys “R” Us and others followed. Walmart was slow at first but eventually invested heavily in e-commerce and survived.
Society changed permanently. Shopping, entertainment, social life, and work all moved online. Can you imagine your daily life without the internet now?
5. Companies That Saw the Future but Refused to Change
History also has cases of companies that clearly saw what was coming yet clung to past success:
- Kodak invented digital camera technology but dragged its feet because film was so profitable — and eventually died.
- Nokia dominated feature phones and had early smartphone efforts, yet mocked the first iPhone. Everyone knows how that ended.
- Blockbuster had the chance to buy a small Netflix and turned it down. It went bankrupt in 2010.
- Sears was once America’s “catalog Amazon” — housewives ordered from printed catalogs. It should have been perfectly positioned for e-commerce, but decided its old model was too good to change. It disappeared.
These companies didn’t fail because they missed the future. They failed because past success became the heaviest anchor holding them back.
6. Back to Apple and Today’s AI Wave
We’re back where we started. Apple has been cautious on generative AI, yet memory and storage prices are still rising because of AI demand. You don’t have to participate — the wave still affects the inputs you need.
History shows the same pattern again and again: bubbles burst, but the infrastructure and societal shifts that remain are real. Railways got built, electricity spread, cars changed how we live, and the internet moved everything online.
Many people today ask, “Is AI actually useful? Why hasn’t productivity jumped yet?” It sounds almost exactly like factory owners in 1900 who replaced their steam engine with an electric motor and saw no immediate gain.
The reason is usually the same: most are still bolting AI onto old workflows instead of redesigning the whole business around it. The big payoff comes later, once enough people do what the successful factories did in the 1920s.
Companies that swear they’ll never touch AI are making the same bet as the canal operators, steam-only factories, carriage makers, and catalog retailers who eventually vanished.
7. Practical Tips for Ordinary People
- Don’t ignore the wave. History shows standing on the shore is never free.
- Don’t mock the people getting swept up in it. Some are pioneers; others are doing the necessary trial-and-error that later benefits everyone.
- Stay open-minded and adapt quickly. The more successful your past model has been, the more carefully you should watch whether it’s becoming the very thing holding you back.
What do you think about Apple’s price increase — short-term cost blip or a sign of bigger supply-chain shifts in the AI era? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
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