May be people are disappointed with innovation in iPhones compared to previous years' or for the last few years, but every time I use my AirPods, I can't but feel good about the innovation it took to make it as easy to use and comfortable.
* If I open the case near my phone, it automatically pairs and shoes battery levels.
* They sound decent for earbuds (not in-ear plugs which I hate)
* Lasts reasonable amount of time on its battery and quickly charges while in case.
I could not get this experience ever before and honestly, even after I have had it for a year. I don't know of a better competition to it.
But, letting the Mac lineup vanquish with old internals for years and gouging prices on soldered SSDs and memory - no excuse, that's just shitty.
The AirPods are my favorite purchase I’ve made in the last several years and definitely the best new technology product I’ve seen in a long time. I use mine for hours every day and have for the last year and a half. Before I got my AirPods I had used and returned multiple other wireless earbuds and none of them hold a candle to the AirPods. And somehow the AirPods are half the price of any of those others. I’ve kept an eye on the industry and all the new things coming out and I still haven’t seen anything that has the size, battery life, functionality, range, and audio quality as AirPods at any price point. Even if you use them entirely with android/windows and don’t get any of the benefits of apple’s fancy pairing, the size, quality, and battery life are still light years ahead of any of the competition. (by quality I mean the audio doesn’t cut out except for on very rare occasions, and I can hear everything clearly whether I’m using the pair or just one. I’m not an audiophile so I’m not going to judge on that metric, but they sound great to me for music, audiobooks, podcasts, and phone calls)
I think their biggest innovation is making devices where everything just works. Look no further than any two year old who has been exposed to an iPad to see that their interfaces are super-intuitive. Plus, unlike most manufactures, they control all the hardware plus the software, so they can make sure that the entire experience is seamless.
Part of the problem with the Mac is that Intel has been slow to make progress. Particularly when it comes to faster low-power chips, Moore's Law has been failing us for some time now.
How long till Apple start putting their A-series chips in Macs?
There are lots of similar features which are just really nice from a UX perspective. The whole WiFi password sharing thing is basically perfect - and underlying a lot of these features are relatively complex technologies.
I agree it doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to Mac hardware though. That’s something I find absolutely baffling; I don’t understand the reason why they’re not periodically releasing newer Macs instead of letting whole chunks of the product line rot. I get that consumer devices are more profitable, but I struggle to think that they wouldn’t still make a handsome sum of money. The product lineup is still kind of spotty and weird. That said, it’s possible that the recent releases and upcoming Mac Pro will mark a bit of a change of pace on this front.
All those terrible things would be fine if people stopped buying them. You vote for what you want with money and if people are willing to buy terrible things then they will continue making it.
Unless we see some major innovations in battery or display technology, I don't even know what new territory we expect Apple to pioneer at right now in smartphones.
The tech press cares a whole lot about having a steady stream of new and shiny things. But I think most people want to live in a world where their relationship to technology involves just buying the best one you can afford at the time and use it until it either stops working or is no longer adequate to your needs. Then you repeat.
Banking on loyalty isn't a bad thing. It means people think your product is reliable and served them well the last time they made the purchase.
Is there any decent data on those AirPods? I am considering them against the OnePlus Bullet Wireless if I'm forced to go this way with a new phone. Overall I'm not a big fan of the completely separated earbud style Apple went with and I'm not using them with any other Apple hardware. The OnePlus design seems better, the price is much cheaper and the charging time is much less, but if the quality isn't there then maybe the Apple ones are the way to go.
I just wish they had decent objective quality numbers like I can find for even fairly cheap wired headphones via InnerFidelity. Anyone know if these are widely published for any of the wireless headphones?
The battery life and charging is arguably the best thing, and they do sound great, but they also have a high pitched electronic frequency in them that I've gone through a replacement and still had. Pain in the ass.
What a silly article. How someone could look at Apple's chip developments (A, T, S, W, etc. series of processors) and think they aren't innovative is mind-boggling. Apple developing key silicon in their devices is a major security benefit for their users and I consider that an innovative model.
The Apple ecosystem itself is innovative and I don't think there's a single company that does it better.
They still lead in interfaces (biometrics...FaceID) and multi-touch gestures.
I don't use Siri, but I'm glad they are developing that technology in a way that doesn't flat-out violate the privacy of their users. I just hope all the criticism comparing Siri versus Google Assistant and Cortana don't push them to change that posture.
It feels like Apple hate is becoming a meme. You can certainly criticize the company... their product line is becoming confusing, but to say they "used" to be an innovator is ignorant.
Two months ago, Apple announced an ECG sensor for your wrist. A year before that, they announced face detection for the purposes of identity with enough accuracy that it can be used for financial transactions. Also, AirPods are incredible. I'm not saying Apple has a monopoly on invention, but to say they 'used to be an inventor'? That's weird.
It's embarrassing that this doesn't include a massive, bold-faced disclaimer above the headline.
Bloomberg is in the midst of a credibility-destroying fight with Apple over a sensational story that no other journalists can corroborate. Bloomberg has dug in, staking their reputation on Apple being wrong.
Seemingly in response Bloomberg... publishes a hand-wavy piece of cultural criticism about the meaning of Apple doing iterative design?
Do you know what really worries me about Apple now?
So, when SJ came back to Apple, he reorganized their (then at the time) computer lines into more streamlined ones. Something like (I might get some of the names wrong), into consumer/pro and portable/desktop
iBook/Powerbook, iMac/Powermac
Now look at their line now
What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Why are there 2 iPad Pros? Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad? Which one is which?
They've definitely failed at saying 'no' - no to selling last years model as a budget, no to selling 2 different sizes of the same phone, they've lost their mojo in saying "this is the best product available if you're looking for an everyday driver and don't need all the RAM in the world", or, "this is the best product available if you're running Final Cut Pro on the road"
To your point, you can actually buy 2 different Macbook Airs from their official shop, clicking through the glossy introduction of the one released last week, 5th generation i5 or 8th generation i5 with TouchID, slim bezel, USB C etc
>What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not?
Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an S, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say their "S" naming scheme has been consistent since it was introduced after the iPhone 4.
> Why are there 2 iPad Pros?
Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well.
> Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad?
Agree here, they've changed this particular convention a lot, but looks like we're settling on Pro and base.
> Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc
Very much agree here. I really, really hope dongle hell will be a short lived phenomenon and USB-C adoption in peripherals and the rest of the industry picks up. Apple has been right about big bets like this before, so hopefully here too, but right now, it is definitely a mess.
You don't have to choose between an iPhone 4400, 9600, 8600, 7300, 6500, 5500, or 7600 though. Or even know the difference between all of those models. That's what the desktop Mac product line looked like when SJ returned to Apple, and those were just desktop Macs; there were also three PowerBooks, a couple Performas (which were mostly rebadged Power Macs), a couple Workgroup Servers, and a bunch of clones that were mostly indistinguishable except some of them were slightly overclocked.
Apple painted themselves into a bit of a quagmire with the iPhone X branding. There's no way to make "iPhone XS" / "iPhone Excess" not sound stupid†.
Personally, I think they should have just called it the new iPhone X. And eventually we'd start differentiating by year (iPhone X 2017), as we have with the iPad and Mac line for quite some time.
†Then again, this is the company that released a product called "iPad" and managed to make us forget how stupid that sounds.
Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it “loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea of moving years of photos and other data to a different system.
My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.
I’m not really sure I buy the premise - Apple has never been much of an inventor, instead being more of a “competent executor”. It’s true that Apple is likely to continue to increase its service offerings, but I don’t think that fundamentally changes the nature of the company. Since Apple has historically focused on executing extant ideas well, it’s quite possible that we won’t see any massive new markets until we know what the next “hot new tech” will be. AR maybe?
Steve Jobs was, among many other things, both good and bad, an irreplaceable human being. The Apple that created the Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone isn't coming back.
That having been said, of the two post-Steve Jobs Apples that we've seen, this one is still pretty damn decent. They aren't killing the entire company by throwing all their software engineering resources at a Second System Effect technical quagmire like Copland, they aren't selling laptops that spontaneously burst into flames like the PowerBook 5300, and they aren't investing in solutions in search of a problem like OpenDoc. They also aren't selling dozens of indistinguishable products that are only distinguishable by arbitrary four-digit product numbers.
I wish I could say Android was different. Yea, Google and Samsung et. al. do make a lot of other products, so their entire business model isn't the same as Apple. But in the phone market, customers don't have all that much choice regardless of who they pick. I'm an Apple hater myself, but I fear the day Apple finally goes away.
My particular pain point here is Apple music. I've got gigabytes of music that I've curated over the years, and had on iPods, then on my iPad. But Music has gone from a library first approach to a store first approach, it is getting pretty difficult to keep a set of tunes physically on your device. That makes me sad.
Pretty amusing to read this on Bloomberg of all places. Practically the definition of innovator turned rent-seeker. One of the most entrenched incumbents in technology.
I thought this was interesting. Although its charging for services, it fits in apples slightly more privacy focused business model.
"Rent extraction from a user base that finds it hard to go away may sound a bit like extortion. But it’s more honest and upfront than extracting data from users in ways they often don’t understand and then making money off the data, as Facebook does. That honesty is in itself a competitive advantage for Apple as it gradually reimagines itself as more of a services company."
I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time.
We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people are finding them good enough for most things, for longer periods of time.
You can't expect the same level of novelty and change every single year. This headline also under-appreciates just how much the world has changed in the past 10 years because of the smartphone. Everything is wildly different and even as I type this, it's really hard to have perspective about just how significant the changes have been especially since we experience them incrementally. 10 years isn't even that long of a time period.
It's all about the ecosystem and services now. Companies are investing deeply into integrated bundles of services and ecosystem add-ons (HomePod, Watch, Apple Music, iCloud etc) with the smartphone sitting at the center tying everything together.
Each piece might not be the iPhone in terms of size, but that's unrealistic. The iPhone is probably one of the greatest single business lines of all time. That type of step function product doesn't come along every year let alone every decade.
It's not about any single product anymore. It's about integrating technology deep into your life with the smartphone at the center (or in Amazon's case, Alexa since they missed the Smartphone era).
Ecosystems are inventions in their own. How they grow matter. What values they espouse matter. Focusing on the individual parts instead of how the pieces tie together to make a powerful whole is missing the forest for the trees.
That's just iPhone. If you count all iOS devices (iPad, iPod Touch, etc), they're well over a billion users globally. They serve more customers, in more countries, with more preferences than ever before in the company's history. If you're expecting the company to move the same way they did when they were barely international and had a tiny fraction of the operations and customers they have today, then that's also unrealistic.
Look at complex multinational products like Apple Pay and how difficult it is for anyone to deliver a service like that seamlessly in every country in the world (even Apple hasn't launched it everywhere). Services like that require multi-year planning, complex dealmaking, geopolitical factors, operational risk, complex financial operations, etc. Things like Apple Pay are severely under-appreciated because it doesn't make for a good headline and it doesn't make for a fun product review on The Verge or YouTube.
If Apple can make iPhone your only wallet and convince banking partners and retailer around the world to accept Apple Pay AND do it in a way that respects the privacy of every transaction. THAT is innovation. THAT is magical. But that is also hard to appreciate and it will happen incrementally over the years. We'll take it for granted, move on, and demand more.
As Bezos said in his previous shareholder letter: "Customers are divinely discontent"
The copy editor put a click-bait title on the article to get more hits/views, but if you read past it you'll find a fairly even and uncontroversial analysis. It's not an op-ed piece whining for more innovation as the title might imply
The author emphasizes how Apple has created an ecosystem with its iPhone, but that it needs to extract more value from the services provided to that ecosystem to make up for declining sales of the devices themselves (instead of continually raising device prices)
Authors for these publications rarely if ever write their own headlines
> I think people in the mainstream media just don't understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a long period of time.
In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously gave an address at a physics conference in which he stated: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
I think we may soon be entering a post smart phone era but the replacements just aren’t ready yet.
I had hopes that the Apple Watch 4 would be the iPhone 3g moment, but it’s not enough faster, smaller, or long running to make that logical leap.
For instance, if I could make calls from my watch and have an iPad mini 5 without also carrying a phone around with me, I might be tempted by that. But neither the hardware nor wireless plans are there for that. Yet.
You could say the same or similar things about other companies with similar business models today who rose to prominence because of repeated innovation yet have since become seemingly stagnant: Google, Valve, ...
It seems like stagnation eventually catches up to every company. Google got big on rapid innovation and emphasis on engineering, but by long observation we can see it becomes more and more difficult to do that in a large company, and todays heros on innovation seem to be tomorrows megacorps waiting for the upstarts to overtake them when some large event changes the market. Maybe it's a mix of pride, complaceny, internal politics, and large-corp culture.
I wouldn't say Google is stagnant... Apple users can thank them for forcing Apple to make their phone OS better (and vice-versa with regard to hardware).
Google's problem isn't innovation, it's supporting and following-through on their innovations past the honeymoon period.
This partially explains why Berkshire Hathaway is now largest stock holder in Apple. They prefer companies with 'moat'. Ability to innovate is unpredictable.
I've learned that some of Bloomberg's journalism is bullshit, and this article helps me stand by my opinion.
FaceID? ECG monitor? AirPods and the general continuity between Apple products? Seems like Bloomberg is just an attention whore. I can see an argument for the Apple customer market becoming saturated, but Apple has not lost its inventiveness.
The idea of becoming a landlord who is unable to bring in new people with exciting technology is only true if you consider
In benchmarks, sure. But day to day, the new phones only really show their speed in things like games. The Everyman is good with a 6S. That's about when peak phone happened. That's when phones got "fast enough". That's why the 6S is still one of the most used iPhones (14% last number I read.)
This is completely unfair! It is not that the pace of innovation at Apple has slowed down, it is that the success of their innovative products is dwarfed by their legacy business. The Apple watch would be a game changer in terms of revenue for Apple circa 2003 (when it was presumably innovative). It is still an excellent and innovative product, like AirPods.
Apple always seemed to have had four things going for them; Product Innovation, Developing extremely high-quality HW and SW with attention to both details and user experience, a world-class supply chain and finally a technological edge.
I would argue that under Steve Jobs both the supply chain and the technological edge had some focus but there wasn't a huge gap with the competition, This could be either because it required time to achieve this gap and Steve simply wasn't at the helm for that long or it wasn't his main focus and is currently the focus of Tim Cook considering his background, either way, I think Apple is currently and going to continue to blow everyone out of the water with technologies like their SOC's and will continue having the most efficient supply chain and manufacturing capacity in the world churning out products that beat the industry margins by a mile.
Regarding the quality, design and user experience it mostly stagnated, don't get me wrong they're still way higher than the industry average and I can see Johnny Ives touch in most of their products, but I don’t see the kind of passion that went into designing the interface of a device like the iPhone with ideas like pinch to zoom and the spring effect. Apple seems to have a design team that is world class but uninspired and just doing their job.
Now the most important point and this is what I honestly believe is the problem with Apple is the Product Innovation, this appears to have completely stopped after Steve, I try not to believe that Steve Jobs was THE product manager at Apple and avoid the cult of personality, but it's very hard to shake this idea when during his tenure they've released multiple industry-changing products, and they've failed to release a single one after he left.
I think Apple is going to continue to release high-quality, well designed, cutting edge and high margin products, but I highly doubt with the current leadership they'll be able to release a single new product that changes the status quo like Steve used to.
[+] [-] reacharavindh|7 years ago|reply
* If I open the case near my phone, it automatically pairs and shoes battery levels.
* They sound decent for earbuds (not in-ear plugs which I hate)
* Lasts reasonable amount of time on its battery and quickly charges while in case.
I could not get this experience ever before and honestly, even after I have had it for a year. I don't know of a better competition to it.
But, letting the Mac lineup vanquish with old internals for years and gouging prices on soldered SSDs and memory - no excuse, that's just shitty.
[+] [-] OkGoDoIt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chadash|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iscrewyou|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reason077|7 years ago|reply
How long till Apple start putting their A-series chips in Macs?
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|7 years ago|reply
I agree it doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to Mac hardware though. That’s something I find absolutely baffling; I don’t understand the reason why they’re not periodically releasing newer Macs instead of letting whole chunks of the product line rot. I get that consumer devices are more profitable, but I struggle to think that they wouldn’t still make a handsome sum of money. The product lineup is still kind of spotty and weird. That said, it’s possible that the recent releases and upcoming Mac Pro will mark a bit of a change of pace on this front.
[+] [-] izzydata|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naravara|7 years ago|reply
The tech press cares a whole lot about having a steady stream of new and shiny things. But I think most people want to live in a world where their relationship to technology involves just buying the best one you can afford at the time and use it until it either stops working or is no longer adequate to your needs. Then you repeat.
Banking on loyalty isn't a bad thing. It means people think your product is reliable and served them well the last time they made the purchase.
[+] [-] antpls|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cowmoo728|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shittyadmin|7 years ago|reply
I just wish they had decent objective quality numbers like I can find for even fairly cheap wired headphones via InnerFidelity. Anyone know if these are widely published for any of the wireless headphones?
[+] [-] wsinks|7 years ago|reply
I love 'em, and I want them to be better :)
[+] [-] jotjotzzz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rauhl|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] biglenny|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wavelets|7 years ago|reply
The Apple ecosystem itself is innovative and I don't think there's a single company that does it better.
They still lead in interfaces (biometrics...FaceID) and multi-touch gestures.
I don't use Siri, but I'm glad they are developing that technology in a way that doesn't flat-out violate the privacy of their users. I just hope all the criticism comparing Siri versus Google Assistant and Cortana don't push them to change that posture.
It feels like Apple hate is becoming a meme. You can certainly criticize the company... their product line is becoming confusing, but to say they "used" to be an innovator is ignorant.
[+] [-] bloorp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForrestN|7 years ago|reply
Bloomberg is in the midst of a credibility-destroying fight with Apple over a sensational story that no other journalists can corroborate. Bloomberg has dug in, staking their reputation on Apple being wrong.
Seemingly in response Bloomberg... publishes a hand-wavy piece of cultural criticism about the meaning of Apple doing iterative design?
[+] [-] raverbashing|7 years ago|reply
So, when SJ came back to Apple, he reorganized their (then at the time) computer lines into more streamlined ones. Something like (I might get some of the names wrong), into consumer/pro and portable/desktop
iBook/Powerbook, iMac/Powermac
Now look at their line now
What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Why are there 2 iPad Pros? Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad? Which one is which?
Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|7 years ago|reply
To your point, you can actually buy 2 different Macbook Airs from their official shop, clicking through the glossy introduction of the one released last week, 5th generation i5 or 8th generation i5 with TouchID, slim bezel, USB C etc
[+] [-] kirykl|7 years ago|reply
iMac SE / iBook SE iMac Aluminum - Core2/i3/i5/i7 20, 21, 24, 27 iTools/.Mac/MobileMe/iCloud iPod Mini/Shuffle/Nano/Touch 3rd 4th 5th gen USB1/USB2/FireWire400/800/30-pin/ . . iPhone XS/XSMax/XR lightning/usb-c
[+] [-] adpirz|7 years ago|reply
>What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not?
Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an S, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say their "S" naming scheme has been consistent since it was introduced after the iPhone 4.
> Why are there 2 iPad Pros?
Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well.
> Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad?
Agree here, they've changed this particular convention a lot, but looks like we're settling on Pro and base.
> Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc
Very much agree here. I really, really hope dongle hell will be a short lived phenomenon and USB-C adoption in peripherals and the rest of the industry picks up. Apple has been right about big bets like this before, so hopefully here too, but right now, it is definitely a mess.
[+] [-] philwelch|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|7 years ago|reply
Personally, I think they should have just called it the new iPhone X. And eventually we'd start differentiating by year (iPhone X 2017), as we have with the iPad and Mac line for quite some time.
†Then again, this is the company that released a product called "iPad" and managed to make us forget how stupid that sounds.
[+] [-] techsocial|7 years ago|reply
Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it “loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea of moving years of photos and other data to a different system.
My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|7 years ago|reply
That having been said, of the two post-Steve Jobs Apples that we've seen, this one is still pretty damn decent. They aren't killing the entire company by throwing all their software engineering resources at a Second System Effect technical quagmire like Copland, they aren't selling laptops that spontaneously burst into flames like the PowerBook 5300, and they aren't investing in solutions in search of a problem like OpenDoc. They also aren't selling dozens of indistinguishable products that are only distinguishable by arbitrary four-digit product numbers.
[+] [-] mjfl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmiller123456|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tycho|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|7 years ago|reply
"Rent extraction from a user base that finds it hard to go away may sound a bit like extortion. But it’s more honest and upfront than extracting data from users in ways they often don’t understand and then making money off the data, as Facebook does. That honesty is in itself a competitive advantage for Apple as it gradually reimagines itself as more of a services company."
[+] [-] askafriend|7 years ago|reply
We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business. Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops and people are finding them good enough for most things, for longer periods of time.
You can't expect the same level of novelty and change every single year. This headline also under-appreciates just how much the world has changed in the past 10 years because of the smartphone. Everything is wildly different and even as I type this, it's really hard to have perspective about just how significant the changes have been especially since we experience them incrementally. 10 years isn't even that long of a time period.
It's all about the ecosystem and services now. Companies are investing deeply into integrated bundles of services and ecosystem add-ons (HomePod, Watch, Apple Music, iCloud etc) with the smartphone sitting at the center tying everything together.
Each piece might not be the iPhone in terms of size, but that's unrealistic. The iPhone is probably one of the greatest single business lines of all time. That type of step function product doesn't come along every year let alone every decade.
It's not about any single product anymore. It's about integrating technology deep into your life with the smartphone at the center (or in Amazon's case, Alexa since they missed the Smartphone era).
Ecosystems are inventions in their own. How they grow matter. What values they espouse matter. Focusing on the individual parts instead of how the pieces tie together to make a powerful whole is missing the forest for the trees.
Apple also isn't the same company they were in 2007. Just look at the iPhone install base growth: https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Screens...
That's just iPhone. If you count all iOS devices (iPad, iPod Touch, etc), they're well over a billion users globally. They serve more customers, in more countries, with more preferences than ever before in the company's history. If you're expecting the company to move the same way they did when they were barely international and had a tiny fraction of the operations and customers they have today, then that's also unrealistic.
Look at complex multinational products like Apple Pay and how difficult it is for anyone to deliver a service like that seamlessly in every country in the world (even Apple hasn't launched it everywhere). Services like that require multi-year planning, complex dealmaking, geopolitical factors, operational risk, complex financial operations, etc. Things like Apple Pay are severely under-appreciated because it doesn't make for a good headline and it doesn't make for a fun product review on The Verge or YouTube.
If Apple can make iPhone your only wallet and convince banking partners and retailer around the world to accept Apple Pay AND do it in a way that respects the privacy of every transaction. THAT is innovation. THAT is magical. But that is also hard to appreciate and it will happen incrementally over the years. We'll take it for granted, move on, and demand more.
As Bezos said in his previous shareholder letter: "Customers are divinely discontent"
[+] [-] roymurdock|7 years ago|reply
The author emphasizes how Apple has created an ecosystem with its iPhone, but that it needs to extract more value from the services provided to that ecosystem to make up for declining sales of the devices themselves (instead of continually raising device prices)
Authors for these publications rarely if ever write their own headlines
[+] [-] tnecniv|7 years ago|reply
In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously gave an address at a physics conference in which he stated: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
[+] [-] hinkley|7 years ago|reply
I had hopes that the Apple Watch 4 would be the iPhone 3g moment, but it’s not enough faster, smaller, or long running to make that logical leap.
For instance, if I could make calls from my watch and have an iPad mini 5 without also carrying a phone around with me, I might be tempted by that. But neither the hardware nor wireless plans are there for that. Yet.
[+] [-] wjp3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|7 years ago|reply
I think this very article shows the author understands this phenomenon well, he just doesn't use terms like "S curve" to describe it.
[+] [-] adamrezich|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brobdingnagians|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hunta2097|7 years ago|reply
Google's problem isn't innovation, it's supporting and following-through on their innovations past the honeymoon period.
[+] [-] Nokinside|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redwyvern|7 years ago|reply
FaceID? ECG monitor? AirPods and the general continuity between Apple products? Seems like Bloomberg is just an attention whore. I can see an argument for the Apple customer market becoming saturated, but Apple has not lost its inventiveness.
The idea of becoming a landlord who is unable to bring in new people with exciting technology is only true if you consider
[+] [-] Confusion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] based2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgeecollins|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aibrahem|7 years ago|reply
I would argue that under Steve Jobs both the supply chain and the technological edge had some focus but there wasn't a huge gap with the competition, This could be either because it required time to achieve this gap and Steve simply wasn't at the helm for that long or it wasn't his main focus and is currently the focus of Tim Cook considering his background, either way, I think Apple is currently and going to continue to blow everyone out of the water with technologies like their SOC's and will continue having the most efficient supply chain and manufacturing capacity in the world churning out products that beat the industry margins by a mile.
Regarding the quality, design and user experience it mostly stagnated, don't get me wrong they're still way higher than the industry average and I can see Johnny Ives touch in most of their products, but I don’t see the kind of passion that went into designing the interface of a device like the iPhone with ideas like pinch to zoom and the spring effect. Apple seems to have a design team that is world class but uninspired and just doing their job.
Now the most important point and this is what I honestly believe is the problem with Apple is the Product Innovation, this appears to have completely stopped after Steve, I try not to believe that Steve Jobs was THE product manager at Apple and avoid the cult of personality, but it's very hard to shake this idea when during his tenure they've released multiple industry-changing products, and they've failed to release a single one after he left.
I think Apple is going to continue to release high-quality, well designed, cutting edge and high margin products, but I highly doubt with the current leadership they'll be able to release a single new product that changes the status quo like Steve used to.