[mntmoss]

What I think Cook misses that Jobs got, and made for more exciting releases, is the idea of a totally integrated service. The iPod's victory was also a victory for iTunes. The iPhone was also the App Store. And when Jobs left, those kinds of distinct pairings did too. They are hard to concieve of, and to execute on.

In contrast, the AirPods and Apple Watch are more straightforward "make 'em smaller" incremental moves. The engineering work is leading in many respects, but it doesn't upend a market.

And Intel does have a history that was like Apple's in parts. A big part of their advantage as the PC market heated up was in marketing an entire nomenclature of what the platform could be and to provide comprehensive path-of-least-resistance solutions around that, ensuring that the industry fell in line around their technical lead rather than IBM or some competitor.

Those bones are still there in parts of the company - Intel chipsets are pretty well regarded for dependability(seeing Windows crash because of Intel drivers is a very rare event) and they've been good at getting the corporate office to standardize on them - but increasingly the platform is getting defined around mobile and server needs, which are a more competitive space generally. Intel doesn't get to call the shots on 5G, for example - and huge data center customers are in the business of optimizing the system end-to-end to provide the most efficient general computing resource possible; everything they touch commoditizes, and they will put their foot down if they smell enterprise contract crap.

[dannyw]

I think you're simplifying the AirPods and Apple Watch; while glamorising other Apple products. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player. It was a MP3 player that worked well. The iPhone was actually not the first smartphone; it was the first smartphone that worked well thanks to its multitouch screen.

Do you remember the first generation iPad? I owned it, and let me tell you. It was, almost literally, 9 iPhones stuck together.

The AirPods is more than just make it smaller. People praise its convenience, and its innovation is in skipping the cumbersome bluetooth pairing process.

[sudosysgen]

To be fair, how often do people pair their headphones? I think I paired my headphones only twice in the past month, and that took about 45 seconds.

[saagarjha]

Apple Watch ate the entire smartwatch market.