> One thing about Apple is things can make sense for them to explore that don't make sense for others to. They have a big enough ecosystem, enough cash to do R&D on an idea for decades, and a culture of killing things that aren't good enough that make them an ideal place to determine whether ideas are a conceptual dead end versus just haven't been executed well enough (or tied to the right ecosystem to make them work).

While Apple can do this, it isn't their typical mode of operation. For instance, they tend to accuhire companies specifically around getting an execution-oriented team for particular product areas, like developer tools (TestFlight) or weather (Dark Sky) or assistants (Siri).

This does mean building compelling product demos can determine how long a feature-under development can get extended.

> Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions.

Foldables make sense for Apple to explore also because even if foldable phones are a bad idea (and I kinda suspect they are), they make tons of other devices in different form factors which may have an entirely different set of trade-offs for flexible/foldable displays.