I find it interesting that the author decries Apple's "aluminum brushed sameness" and then proposes copying its competitors (Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube). The irony of this cannot be missed and it also highlights how hard innovation is.
Apple is undoubtedly grasping at straws and going after a greater share of it's customer's wallets, instead of innovation. That's because it's easier and it's unlikely that Apple will innovate the next great product. When Steve Jobs retook the reins at Apple, it was way behind; trying weird things was possible (like an orange computer or an iPod). Technology wasn't advanced and there was nothing to lose because the brand meant beige towers and monitors.
But then it became a success and success killed investors' tolerance for risks. It's brand/market expectations doesn't let it try weird experiments like many of it's peers because every product must be a home run. While other companies can fail forward, Apple cannot. And now it's hardware is stuck in a stagnating world of homogenous screens.
But there's also a major identity issue at Apple. It attracts great engineers, but the emphasis for years was on hardware and operating systems. This caused self-selection in who ended up at Apple. They couldn't see that they were missing big opportunities, such as cloud computing (e.g., AWS). When they tried to play catch up, they lacked the quality talent to compete (e.g., Keynote, maps, most of the stock iOS apps).
3
How much technology can we stand? How many new gadgets do we need? I'm an older person, but yes I have a cell phone, and a computer on my desk. As a legal secretary I waited my way through a ton of software, and I can write music on my composition software, combine wav files, export them to Mp3s, etc. Etc. I love all this stuff, but people keep trying to sell me even more and gadgets. This auther seems to be unhappy that we are not seeing new magical digital whatever from Apple, but where does it end? There's always a price, in my case an endless series of advertisements as punishment for having ordered anything online. Maybe techies will only be satisfied when my cell phone with a push of a button can shoot me through a black hole to land on Mars.
3
Build a custom tower PC for your house, it'll crush anything Apple has ever produced for half the cost.
It's also fully upgradeable since it's a modular design and if you're squeamish about installing pieces for fear of breaking them there are a lot of places that will put it together for you.
Also, it runs literally every piece of software you'll ever need.
I was forever converted when I got my first in 2006, and I'll never go back.
2
I have been a consulting software developer to the nation's largest banks, financial institutions, transportation, telecom, medical, UHDTV, and numerous other domains. My client list is a who's who of the Fortune 100. In all that time, I have been involved in projects using virtually every computing platform from IBM mainframes, UNIX System V & Berkeley 4.x, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, a dozen flavors of Linux, and every version of Microsoft DOS & Windows since DOS 1.1. Yet the only computing platform I have never seen being used in any development shop was an Apple. You also won't find many top-tier programmers with iPhones. They prefer the more advanced Android phones with their open-source operating system, and, most importantly, the fact that only Apple charges a 100% markup on their iJunk. Steve Jobs insisted when the first Mac came out that all Apple products have a 50% profit margin or more (all of which Apple keeps in a tax haven subsidiary in Ireland). Unlike Bill Gates, who, for all of his faults, was at least a highly talented programmer, Jobs couldn't write a line of code. A friend who was a leader in designing the original Mac desktop quit in disgust a year after the Mac came out & has refused to this day to use any Apple products. He was infuriated by Jobs' contempt for the very people he was overcharging, the deceptive claims trying to make older technology look as good as PCs & Android phones, & his overall nastiness. He was nothing more than a snake-oil cult leader.
1
Agreed—the grand corporate vision is sorrily lacking. A "brushed-aluminum homage to sameness" with no plans to make the world a better place.
@jeanmi1
The substance of the argument here seems to be, “Apple, why aren’t you the tech messiah I want you to be?” But we should demanding higher standards and better behavior from Google and Facebook and the rest, too, not just Apple.
2
Have you ever met an Apple employee who didn't have a terminal case of planned obsolescence denial? It's like a religion with them.
1
Too many are too young to remember what it took to set up a computer on a network, either via WiFi or hard wire.
On Microsoft PC, expect to reboot multiple times, inserting and removing multiple 3.5-inch discs multiple times, and better learn which parameter to set to what in the DLL and autoexec.bat.
Then one day my company sent me home with an Apple machine. I started it up, and complained loudly about how stupid Apple was in not giving me instructions manuals, floppy discs and any support in network set up.
After 50 minutes of painful running around, I saw a tiny icon indicating the machine had connected with my network 49 minutes ago, all by itself.
A lot of ease-of-use improvements everyone takes for granted today originated with Apple. Of course, when one does not create, it is easy to underestimate the challenges and effort required to create something.
If it looks easy, it must be easy to create, right? :-)
2
Unfortunately Apple's arrogance in proportion to Apple's stock price. Lack of ability to easily change the battery in the iPhones, dropping the 17 inch laptop, not allowing aging Macbooks and MacPros to be able to install the latest operating system, the stupid round and overpriced MacPro that doesn't allow for addition of peripheral cards to be installed, the list just goes on. Steve Job's had a vision and it captured peoples imagination, sadly that is no longer the case. Unfortunately the end result will be the decline of Apple due to lack of innovation that was true under Steve Jobs.
2
"the demons who rule our era of surveillance capitalism" are almost as bad as Thinkpol in Oceania. Oh, wait, that was communism.
This non-techie would like to thank Farhad Manjoo for a very informative article.
Apple: Please go back to changing the world.
Apple schmapple
I can't upgrade to the next in line smartphone, never have owned one. Stupid me.
Only sad fanboys are suckers to the apple scam.
2
I own many Apple products and use a couple of their services. The services are Music and cloud storage.
My iPhone 6s still works great, the services I subscribe to require exactly zero intervention. I do curse the Apple TV remote controller, who came up with this silly design? However my old Apple laptop runs like new.
I would not trade one device of Apple, or one service of Apple, for a competitor.
I love Apple and will be their best customer, and when they screw up I will be their harshest critic.
I do not think that I am a snob. I just really like their products and services, and somehow feel that they are trying their hardest to keep me as a customer.
2
There is a limit to how useful hi-tech can be to the average person. Perhaps the industry has simply matured? My iPhone 4 still does everything I need a phone to do - phone calls, messages, internet search, driving directions. In the 1960’s there were always new and different types of jets arriving at the airports, but by the time we got to the 737, there was no compelling reason to go to the expense of anything bigger and fancier. Nevertheless, now we have the 737 Max. Instead of more economy and reliability, the tech industry provides costlier and more complicated. Not everyone is buying into it. An iPhone 11X running on a 6G network wouldn’t improve my life, but longer battery life in my iPhone 4 might.
No one is investing into private, and especially non-ad driven search because, while nearly banal to realize at this point, users show no great concern for privacy. It would be good if tech writers explained why that should be so, certainly. Nonetheless some of Farhad's point are valid. It totally puzzles me why Apple wouldn't at least try building a decent wireless service providers, instead of leaving its excellent devices to rely on the decaying quality of the current carriers.
1
The real impact of Apple was to enter industries and rapidly transform them. It first did it with computers, then music, and then the smartphone. It was never first to the game, but when it came in it left the entire industry gaping in awe.
What would truly be interesting to see if Apple can enter healthcare or transportation (apple car anyone?) or perhaps even education. There are plenty of industries that have a high financial entry barrier and are still decades behind in their ability and thinking. Even engaging in one of them would put a reasonable size dent in the universe.
3
Innovation is difficult.
The problem with articles about how some business should “try harder” is that they can reflect just as poorly on the author. When Mr. Manjoo says Apple’s latest announcements were, “so trifling and derivative,” it made me consider his comments in the same light. Criticizing Apple is an entire industry, mostly journalists who don’t fully understand the business urging them on to regain the moral high ground and restore the glory of device innovation. I’m sorry, those Steve Jobs glory days are past, and Apple is no longer an underdog or a startup; it’s the world’s most successful business with a billion users who depend on it for stable, secure, productive hardware, software and services. To suggest they should take on Google or Facebook on their own turf is, well, pretty trifling and derivative, don’t you think? Journalists have been suggesting that for years and Apple has thought better of it. Let those other giants hang themselves on the ropes they have woven with their unconsidered and rash attempts to conquer the world; when the dust settles, Apple will still be standing and their products will still just work.
3
“But instead of rising to the moment by pushing a fundamentally new and safer vision of the future, Apple is shrinking from it.”
Your vision of Big Apple as a self appointed ministry of truth in its dotage is a nightmare.
91
@God
I think the free market is in a position to fix the cyber-security and junk information problem much faster than government intervention.
My friends were de-riding Trump's FCC for not doing enough to stop scam callers and robo-callers. My phone now already has anti-spoofing where T-Mobile will tag a number of spoofing calls as "Scam Likely". Since I will never answer a call from "Scam Likely", I set it to block. I would pay $5 a month for a robo-answer service that screens my calls, and passes real, human, calls from people I want to talk to, and dumps the junk.
How effective has the do-not-call list been? Are scammers in Eastern Europe phishing for credit card numbers going to stop calling because the government enforces the do-not-call list?
I have more faith in the free market to solve today's security, privacy, and usefulness challenges in computers and phones more so than expecting the FTC or the FCC to find solutions.
4
And that is all they do. Long time Apple user, the new products stink for anyone that has little to do on them but social media or maybe write a report. They will be known as the people who took down the best computer ever made and then made a phone. My next three office computers will not be Macs. My next laptop will not be a Mac. Oh, and the geniuses? Not so much.
2
The Apple tax is on hubris and ignorance. Another de facto rent extractor.
1
Apple, please stop using new emojis as a selling point for the latest tech.
2
Try again.....
I’m a bit dubious of an article when it describes the Apple Campus in Cupertino as “An ethereal glass-and-marble cylinder set high on a serene hill.......”
the Campus is definitely NOT on a hill.
That headline... so pretentious... don't kid yourself... Steve Jobs wanted our money more than anyone currently at Apple... and they want it badly.
1
Well, as the saying goes, "the ones who can - do, and, the ones who can't... write columns!"
2
Tim cook is no Steve Jobs and never will be.
1
There is a messaging system available across both Android, iOS, Macs, and PC's running either Windows or Linux: Signal, by Open Whisper Systems. Check out https://siglnal.org . It is Open Source and there is no charge for the Signal client. It isn't run by "an ad company or friendly to the Chinese government." Just saying ...
An interesting column, Mr. Manjoo.
I attribute the rise of Apple to what used to be its core philosophy, described by 3 words: it just works. I attribute the current stagnation of the company by the replacement of this mantra by a new one: it just costs.
The new iphones, with fewer features and budget-busting price tags are emblematic, and Apple's perfection of planned obsolescence is indeed unfortunate; it was Apple that led the charge to the end of user-replaceable batteries in our devices (batteries are, of course, guaranteed to wear out over time).
Like you, I am more than a little upset with the erosion, make that eradication, of privacy by the likes of Google and Facebook, and I do appreciate Apple's apparent interest in protecting privacy. I very much hope they succeed, and personally I hope our laws and regulations will help in this regard; I would like to see a version of Europe's GDPR on our shores.
Perhaps unlike you and your colleagues at the New York Times, I also worry about censorship. I don't like to see Neo-Nazi propaganda in social media, but I fear even more censorship by the politically correct and advocates of trigger warnings. The Times seems to view the dissemination of factually correct information by Vladimir Putin and right-leaning media like Fox News as the greatest threat our democracy faces. I disagree. The solution to objectionable speech is not censorship, it is more speech.
2
You should go run Apple.. probably replacing Tim Cook... Apple is the only company which was not founded on selling Ads.... Look at the big 4 - Google, FB, Microsoft, and Apple... two of them were built on Ads and therefore on mining privacy... Microsoft is becoming a tool... Apple must champion itself as the most private universe in the universe... then it truly deserves our loyalty...
1
Re Apple "could create a YouTube that isn’t a haven for neo-Nazis."
Would this be the same Apple that protected the privacy of a domestic terrorist who had just killed 14 people and wounded 22 others?
Dings in the universe?
Become the universe.
They could try to create something along the line of https://mewe.com
Or as you said, make iMessage widely available.
But they won't. That would mean opening up the walled garden.
Does it occur to anyone that Steve Jobs selected Tim Cook for his mediocrity so Jobs' comparative brilliance will never be forgotten?
1
Tim Cook: the man who made Apple toast.
Apple's main problems are the dependency on one product for profitability, the iPhone, and the competition Apple faces from the Android. Even in an affluent market like the US, Apple trails Android in market share. see https://www.techspot.com/news/75658-iphone-sales-help-ios-grow-us-market-share.html
Unlike Apple, Android phones allow you to install any app you want. And Android phones are generally cheaper, since the Android operating system is given to phone makers free of charge. Google made a great decision in not charging for Android. In a world wide cell phone market a thousand dollars phone may not be sustainable, especially when i phones may not be superior to Android phones. see https://www.lifewire.com/iphone-vs-android-best-smartphone-2000309
Manjoo' suggestions for Apple will not solve the i Phones basic problems which is people don't see the necessity of paying another one thousand dollar for new phones.
1
"create a privacy-minded search engine to rival Google’s."
What the heck is a "privacy-minded search engine"? Does that mean it would exclude any information about people?
"It could create a YouTube that isn’t a haven for neo-Nazis"
It's easy to call for blocking nazis, but who gets to decide what content qualifies as "neo-Nazi"? My choice might be very different than someone else's choice. Is "democratic socialism" leaning in the direction of neo-nazi-like state control? Do we want YouTube to mimic liberal campuses where conservative speakers are shouted down? We need to be careful before we start censoring information we find offensive.
1
@Phil
I don't think the phrase "privacy minded search engine" indicates that the search results would be censored. Rather, it means a search engine that won't track the searches you do and associate them with your real identity.
Well said.
RIGHT ON!
This article perfectly fits the author's ideology of abolitioning billionaire and rich people piece by piece.
Oh No! Am I missing the new wave??
What’s next? Are we gonna find out tgat the easter bunny and santa claus aren’t real? It amazes me who thoroughly naive millennials are to reality. Worshipping left-wing hero billionaire democrats as if these guys cared about anything more than taking your $$$.
Question:
Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald Trump...
Which of the above cares about your personal welfare the most? Or at all?
If you picked “none of the above” then you may be on the path to learning.
But...Oprah!
Of all the people / companies to criticize in regard to online privacy, you choose to publish a hit piece on Apple and Tim Cook?! Bring David Pogue back.
I have an IPhone. i don’t know which model other than I bought it when AT&T still offered upgrades six or seven years ago. It’s turned off most of the time. I turn it on once a day to see who called me. 99% of the time I don’t recognize the numbers so I delete them. From time to time there is message waiting for me. It’s mostly from someone with an accent telling me that my SS number has been discontinued, or that it is the IRS and I am going to be arrested for not paying my taxes, or some other scam. I just delete them also. I do use the camera when there is something worthwhile to photograph such as my cat and my dog sleeping together on the couch, or when my grandson is here, but mostly the former. Recently, I started receiving messages from someone telling me that my ICloud was almost full and I needed to purchase more space. I don’t know what that ICloud business is, so I just delete those too. Oh! There is a little square on my phone labeled “ find phone”. I can’t figure why I would need to look for my phone when it is in my hands.
Other little squares are there too but I never figured out what they are. They have different colors and look cool though, so I left them there. I keep hearing about how I should be concerned with my privacy. I am not. If anyone wants to hack my phone and look at pictures of my dog or my cat, they are welcome. They both are very cute.
When my I phone dies, I’ll buy another one. For now, it still works.
1
Yes, Apple may have turned slightly bland, but when Apple releases a product, you can count on it being viable and supported for many years, unlike Google products which, as soon as you adopt them, they are discontinued. Looking at you: Inbox, Allo, Reader, Google , Talk, goo.gl, Picasa, Glass, Panoramio, Now, Freebase, Code, Orkut, Fiber, Checkout, Health, Wave and Answers (samples of the 155 or so products Google has killed after launch.) There’s even multiple websites dedicated to mocking Google’s defunct products with names like Google Graveyard. (Google it...)
So... you can overpay for Apple’s decent products or sell your soul to Google where they’ll chew you up in little bites and spit you back out in a year or two when they grow weary of last year’s product.
1
It's also worth mentioning that the recent Macbook Pro laptops are way worse than the earlier versions - it's the first laptop I've gotten where I feel like it's made cheaply. The keys stick, it crashes a lot, I get a weird colored screen when I turn it on, it'll say it's charging (on the ridiculously short chord they supplied me with) and yet the computer won't be charging, oh and there's no more USB in the computer so you need to carry a stupid dongle with you everywhere. It's like Apple is begging for me to just no longer be in their ecosystem.
Not to mention that they're not making smaller phones anymore.
Tim Cook: listen to what your customers want, rather than cutting corners, making worse products, and forcing things on us we don't want or need.
@ JS27..... They are making smaller phones these days. It is called an Apple Watch. Totally independent and fits on your wrist.
Yawn... the tech pundits (you know who you are) repeat this same doom and gloom scenario after every Apple event. iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple watch, ear pods, home pod, poor Apple can't seem to ever get anything right! Lucky their brilliant marketing department has convinced millions and millions of people from all around the world to run out and buy their products. I don't know if any of these new services will succeed, but don't be shocked if they do.
Something monumental and newsworthy would be a grammatically intelligent auto-correct feature. How can even Apple employees stand the idiocy of the iPhone's auto-correct? It's not funny anymore—as is not the requirement to have Bluetooth turned on to use earbuds—and I'm going to look at Android when it's time to upgrade.
I’m disappointed by what looks like Mr. Manjoo’s anti-Apple bias. Does he sincerely hold Apple responsible for not correcting Facebook’s and Google’s malfeasance? Does he not believe a wearable ECG device is not valuable innovation?
But to me, the most striking “think different” thing about Apple’s recent event is their approach to the credit card. Just as their iPhone has features that discourage smart phone overuse/addiction, their credit card has features that discourage consumer spending on interest! I don’t understand why this isn’t getting more attention from Mr. Manjoo and other journalists. Can someone correct me if I’m wrong? Is this not a first for any financial services offering?
My first cell phone was the I Phone 1 just after it came out - still have it use it as base for many songs. Got an I Phone 6 and it required continual connection to a power source and then after a couple of years the battery went and a local company said they could replace the battery for $250 but would only guarantee it for 6 months.
Well I was shopping at my local Costco and saw their display of smart phones. Their offer was this - for $250 they were offering life time guarantee and U could upgrade at any time for no charge. U would have to be an absolute idiot to buy another I Phone. Oh and BTW, the battery lasts easily for a week.
I always enjoy this columnist's writing. Thought-provoking and often - as with Ms. Swisher - brilliant in going against assumptions that lead to bad conclusions.
BUT THIS Column suffers from a perverse kind of blindness - both re history and "current events."
Steve Jobs was someone whose vision and accomplishments are up there with the Beatles and Dylan - people IN MY lifetime who changed things profoundly and for the better.
BUT make no mistake - it is not unfair to say that what he was best at ... and what was central to his success as a change-maker was SALES. Not a dirty word! ... The man behind Salesforce is not nearly as "visible" as Jobs, but he, Larry Ellison and several others were EVEN BETTER at marketing than they were at innovating. (Which is high praise actually.)
However, if you share my take on Jobs, Mr. Manjoo's snark at - in essence - "now Apple is just tweaking its products and services to try to get 10% growth in a good year" - is distorting history ... making it seem like Jobs was more of a visionary than he was and that Cook is a modern day Sculley - almost chilling, rather than fostering, innovation.
As for the present and future, I have the benefit of having lived through the DOS-to-Windows evolution, Netscape-to-Chrome/Firefox, etc.
GETTING IT RIGHT is often even harder than getting something out there. Rev 2.0 turns a niche product into one EVERYONE benefits from. Apple striving to be Amazon-re-tech-products&services is Jobs-level ambitious!
Oh, please. As if Steve Jobs wasn't a money grubbing CEO like any other!
Helloooo... It's a monopoly. What else would you expect from this behemoth.
Apple always wanted to put a ding in one's pocketbook by charging exorbitantly for proprietary dongles and such things.
All is image & perception. People who believe will believe & act... In a lot of ways Apple is more important than Jesus...
All three laptops are basically the same computer. How about 3 mm less thinness and 3 x better keyboards and 3 x better connectivity on the Mackbook Pros?
FYI - Suicide nets are planned for the Golden Gate Bridge in 2020.
Apple is dead. Any hipster who doesn't see that isn't a hipster.
I’m annoyed that the new iphones don’t have a phone jack and consequently I will hang onto my current iphone as long as I can.
Yeah, Apple is always late to the market. I mean IBM made a personal computer before Apple. Nostalgic sigh of being able to take 20 minutes typing in MS-DOS some weird language to draw a square.
Stupid Macintosh makes that some my 2 year old could draw a square in 2 seconds. Microsoft just made Windows as a joke, because GUI was no good.
at least 300 MP3 players when Apple came out with that stupid late to the game iPod. They could only get a 98% market share in that first year. Name 5 of the others. I only remember the RIO. I only remember this one because my youngest daughter had a boy who had a crush on her and his name was Rio and he Had a Rio.
Blackberry and the Q had smartphones and stupid late again Apple comes along with the dumb old iPhone with only ONE lousy button!
Not mention the iTunes music store which everyone said would fail because you could steal or download music from the net for free. 30 billion songs sold? What a loser.
Who is going to buy movies/TV from Apple? I mean there is HBO and Starz and well the newcomer Netflix.
Find me a Wall Street pundit who beats the market 50% of the time. Wall Street has been bad mouthing Apple forever.
Microsoft makes its operating system look like...?
Samsung makes smart phonebook like...?
Changed the face of computing, changed the face of buying and playing music, changed the face of phones, but everyone wants a newer bigger rabbit.
Yes, Steve Jobs could give a talk.
Ever see Steve Balmer talk about Windows?
1
Google, or some entity claiming to be Google, has been calling my landline multiple times per day to say, in stern tones, that "Your Company is not yet registered with Google. You must ... [blah blah blah]."
This is, of course, the most base form of harassment from one of the largest privacy invaders in history. For no reason. There's absolutely no reason my business should be "registered with Google." And these sales calls are illegal, as I'm on the do-not-call list.
I am forwarding a complaint to my state attorney general about illegal phone harassment that interrupts my day several times -- for nothing of benefit to me.
As Mr. Manjoo says, Apple could take the high road on related issues. But the world worshiped Steve Jobs instead, which is something that I'll never understand. Great little device and it broke new ground ages ago. But the guy was a complete jerk, by most accounts. And now people walk around, even crossing streets, without looking up. No wonder we were child's play for Russian manipulation.
Apple accessories? Meh.
I don’t know. Maybe the next step for the big ding is the creation of the “Ready Player One” world where we live in our virtual reality cocoons and come out only to sleep or eat. The iPhone already has the world glued to its screens, why not just close the loop and put on helmets or headsets?
That should do the trick. Ding. Ding.
The sad part is Big Apple doesn’t even know its navigation app is its rear view mirror.
i could start with your hope that a corporation (any corporation) will "change the future" or "change your life" or "put a dent in the universe."
sure.*
i could detour through the premise that a corporation is going to "protect your privacy" when most of what that corporation sells are digital devices with a camera mounted in the front to surveil you staring into a candy crush universe of dream clicks where you become a data udder squirting your data milk into the cheese of big data.
but, you know ... you like it ... you're "connected" ... "in the cloud" ...
a cloud full of selfies and powerpoint slides.
but i think i'll choose apple's plan to "sell more stuff to the same people." this isn't a plan, Farhad, this is just routine business operations in what is called a mature market. it's how all high growth businesses that achieve large market share end up: "sell more of the same, only make it look different."
once upon a time, people just ate plain corn chips ... now we have corn chips in 57 spicy varieties -- air baked, low fat, gluten free, organic.
ask yourself: where are we headed, and what do we expect to find when we get there?
you already know the answer: more of more of the same -- but air baked.
----
*current estimates put the diameter of the *visible* universe at about 93 billion light years.
Tim Cook is very happy selling carbonated sugar water. He makes obscene amounts of money and its calorie free. Indeed, how the mighty have fallen. Apple looks more like MSFT from 20 yrs ago. Who could have ever imagined MSFT being as “innovative” as Apple?
I miss Steve Jobs
1
I was wrong when I just wrote that the best thing that Apple can do is simply "ding" the world by just keeping on, keeping on.
No, after looking at the NYTimes article:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xinjiang-china-surveillance-prison.html
I want Apple to go to war, absolute war, against the coming digital prisons that will finally lock us all up in Big Brother's heaven, our hell. Link with those who offer internet from the satellites, make it all private as hell, and help protect us all from sky net.
Not an exaggeration...look at the article on the web.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
@Hugh Massengill
Thank you for the link to that article! That is the most chilling thing I have seen in a long time. Originally when I saw the article title I skipped it, thinking it was hyperbole. Sadly, no.
There is a web browser called Duck Duck Go you might want to investigate. Maybe if we all boycott Google and Facebook (I deleted that account) we will create a market for privacy...?
Oddly enough, I agree with the premise of the article, and still, I look at my iPhone 8, my iPad, my 4.5 year old iMac, and I am grateful.
Though I am a very low income person and must budget my cash mercilessly, I have found a way to get some Apple products into my life. I mall walk while listening to podcasts, I read the news on the iPad, and the iMac brings me the world in all its immediacy every morning.
Maybe the "ding" that is most important is the one that is labeled..."keep on doing what you are doing and don't screw it up". Sure, the Arab Spring dissolved into authoritarianism, but throughout this world people connect and question and learn, and the globe is better for it.
I think, for me, the future doesn't have to hold a magical Apple Car, or whatever, for it they just keep on doing what they have been doing, ok, with a better keyboard, the "ding" lives.
So yes, we all make our case to Apple for new and great stuff, but as for me, I think each time a low income person gets a used iPhone, learns to use it, and trades jokes with a friend a thousand miles away, that is a ding not to be minimized.
Good article, hope Apple reads it, but doesn't get too over its skis, though I am pretty taken with the idea of a personal AI assistant to set things up, to tell us we are great, to tell our Roomba to clean up the other room...
Hugh
When does stewardship of this planet become the best new idea! All these tech powerhouses. Just do it! help clean up the oceans! sustainable food and clean water for all living things! help stop the cutting down of the rain forests!!! air pollution!..... put your money towards innovation for the long term... you have an amazing pool of talent. the hell with the next iPhone!!!...…..Sometimes a great notion!!! is Now!
Where’s the money in that?
Bought my first Apple product in 1982, an Apple II+, and I've been using their products since. My latest MacBook Pro has provided the worst experience I've ever had with an Apple product--a series of broken keyboards, etc., that really screwed up my life on several occasions. Dealing with Apple to fix things only amplified the sourness of the experience. They've lost their way.
Another experience like this and I'll start seeking someone to come along and give me a reason to buy from them instead of Apple. The magic truly was absent in my latest experience. Apple will go the way of the American automobile makers over the last 40 years if it doesn't wake itself up. Nostalgia won't be enough to keep enticing customers.
1
I have used Apple products for 40 years. I chose Apple because they worked easily and lasted a long time. Times have changed and now it is “the man”. Software is not so good, laptop keyboards wear fast, IPhone batteries need to be charged almost constantly, prices are outrageous, devices come with no instructions. What good are all the toys without instructions? I have to print hundreds of pages online to figure out how to use the damn things. This is not the company it was. Instead it is just another money grubbing arrogant US corporation.
1
I’ve been using Apple products since the mid-90s and have purchased tens of thousands of dollars in Apple devices along the way. All 5 kids went to college with an MBP, and until recently almost every electronic device in my house was Apple.
Aside: The reality is that iPads and iPhones are just too damn thin. So thin as to be un-manufacturable and basically unusable in real life. Every new iDevice we own has a case: making them effectively thicker than their (old & fat) predecessors. So, are they really thinner in real life? Or do you just get to hide them behind a pencil in a keynote?
Earlier this year I decided to automate the lights in our house and Alexa won out based on price. I filled cart after cart with light switches, outlets, and dimmers. But I couldn’t justify doubling the cost for HomeKit devices. They DO the same things, but cost twice as much. How much is that licensing fee, anyway?
And now that Jeff Bezos’ nose is in the tent, other devices have entered. I ordered a Fire TV 4K stick to replace my long-in-the-tooth 3rd Gen ATV. Again, I couldn't justify spending $100 more just because it’s Apple. Maybe a 50-something father of 5, earning mid-6-figures, and living in Manhattan is not Apple’s target audience? I’m guessing it’s teen girls obsessed with selfies based on recent Apple products.
Sadly, Apple has become a camera manufacturer—albeit a camera tied to an iPhone—but cameras none the less. (Not sure about that? Go watch the last few iPhone announcements.
Yup. Apple has lost its way.
All of a sudden Apple decided that I have no need to synch my iPhone to my contacts and calendar through iTunes.
Tech support says that I need to synch in the cloud.
Psst! I don't want to be in anyone's cloud. My Calendar? My Contacts? Sitting on some server (they call the cloud) that could be hacked by some fiend in China and used for nefarious reasons? Hell no!
As with everything of late, monetization is most important to Apple and other cooperations. Not our privacy.
Rome (I mean America) is burning...
I remember in 1986 seeing and trying out my first Mac desktop. Compared to the TRS-80 and the mainframe terminal it sat next to, I thought it to be a wonderful tool.
But, that's about it. I never got all the hype, then and now, for any phone or PC. I feel like I'm missing something.
I agree fully. But I do want to point out that there is a privacy-minded search engine, one that does not track you: DuckDuckGo. It is sad that "To Google" has become a verb. And "DuckDuck" is unlikely to. But it should be more commonly used, and it can be selected as one's default browser.
The larger problem is that tech has become so complex that setting for privacy is harder for the average user to understand. And the odd thing is: most people do not really care that much about allowing their purchases, their health data, their geo-postion even, to be shared and the data sold to no-one-knows-whom. We are so anesthetized that the idea of a private personal identity, closed off from the global digital ocean and its currents, is becoming quaint.
@Mark
Duck Duck Go is wonderful.
"Put a ding in the universe." Not even close.
Some people do things that affect history in positive ways that were not inevitable. Lincoln is a good example, so is Churchill. Shakespeare and Beethoven are examples from a different category - there was nothing inevitable about Hamlet or the Glorious 9th.
But Mr. Jobs, talented as he was, changed nothing other than in relatively trivial ways. Every Apple product, from day one to today, was an inevitable child of its times, reliant on its technological parents coming together before it could emerge. Yes - each offspring is slightly different, and yes, some offspring perform better than others, but the very rapid evolution of hi-tech products means they all end up very quickly looking and performing much the same.
That's where are now with all Apple products, and we've more or less been there for years.
As a money-making venture Apple is almost unequaled, but to elevate it to universe-dinging status because of that is like calling Hamlet a universe-dinging creation solely because of all the revenue it has generated.
Let's keep our sense of proportion.
1
I started using Apple computers when I was in graduate school in 1992. Remember, this was when most students went to "computer labs" to work and "Windows" had not even been introduced. With a very small learning curve i was able to get papers and other materials printed. This was still a novelty when typewriters were only just starting to decline.
What I learned was that the uniformity of Apple software made my user experience like driving a car. All the basic functions and locations were about the same. Like a car, ANY CAR, I could operate the wipers, ignition, pedals and so forth. PC's forced the user to learn specific commands and jargon. Once I understood only one Apple software program it was easy to figure out any other one, even from different developers.
To this day I can depend on my Apple products to work. I am hard on them, and almost EVERY one are still fully functional.
I only just recently switched from my 2010 MacBook Pro. My point is, can the "Computer Wars" which is kind of like choosing who is better the Beatles or the Rolling Stones just end?
The article read like another "clickbait" opinion piece rather than a real world look at a products performance and value.
There are so many great products and price points by many manufacturers. Use the tool which is best for your needs and feels right in your hand. Oh, I love both the Stones and the Beatles.
3
Ive always considered apple devices to be over-hyped and over-priced, but much too my dismay, I have three of them. My first was a gift about 8 or 9 years ago - an ipod nano which I love. I use it to listen to podcasts while I walk my dog. I broke down and bought a phone when the small and relatively inexpensive (under $400) SE model came out and finally, I bought a large ipad, again the cheapest one and for purely trivial reasons, but i like it because the keyboard is bigger than the SE's so I use it for texting. I would be happy with email except no one in my family uses it much any more. The phone hangs in a pouch on the back of a chair where i can grab it when I leave home. It came in very handy when someone rear-ended my car recently and I would love the maps feature if I could hear the directions.
I can't say any of things made a ding in my universe and their new streaming service will proceed without me since I am inundated with streaming options already. I'm reminded of siri's response when, frustrated with her, I said siri, you're useless. She responded, "I'm doing the best i can". Apple is probably doing the best it can the momentum at the moment
Been involved with software and hardware for 50+ years. Apple has become a play-safe company. I find more adventure in the hobbies pursued by Musk, Bezos and Branson.
1
I'm not tech geek, but I think iphones would benefit from making them less annoying. I often find that my apps have been deleted or rearranged with no conscious effort on my part. My pictures have been uploaded to the cloud without my consent. A prompt to ask me to connect to a network keeps popping up when I'm trying to do other tasks and it insists on being answered before allowing me to continue. How about a removable cover so I can get a new battery without having to go to Apple?
"My pictures have been uploaded to the cloud without my consent."
You can disable iCloud functionality on your phone. See "Change your iCloud feature settings" at "support dot apple dot com".
In a column not open for comment, Charlie Warzel writing about Big Tech, says, "Intent is far less important than the actual outcomes. And the outcomes appear to suggest that these platforms were intentionally designed to keep you glued to your screen for one more video, one more retweet, one more outraged share of a hate read."
Really, ya think? It is quite amazing that this has been deduced by brilliant journalists in 2019. It was well-known inside of tech, and not just in social media, in the late 1990s. So was intentional intrusion on privacy, in the guise of "user preferences". The video game industry was obsessed with first person shooter games for precisely this reason -- testing revealed this was the best way to glue players to your game.
As for social media, Steve Strogatz wrote in this paper about the theorem of the mean and why it meant that your friends were always more popular than you on social media. That phenomenon on Facebook is used to leech personal information and outrageous behavior out of users desperate for approval.
And then there's Wall Street. As early as the 80s, people were warning about short term interests of shareholders, they even revised the tax code to try to make it less attractive, as the investors became preoccupied with growth only and as rapidly as possible.
It's always been there, it didn't take outcomes to see it, only more attention to warnings when you'd rather gush about your phone or the lunch menu at Google.
2
What made Apple great was a product-obsessed, charismatic and temperamental leader willing to bet the company on a product that really, really delivered. Steve Jobs preferred the company of his engineers over his shareholders and accountants. He was famously dismissive of shareholder meetings, and he relied on the financials only insofar as to keep the R&D humming.
But people like Jobs only come around so often, and then sometimes by accident or when there's no other choice (as when Jobs was rehired when Apple was nearly finished). Tim Cook is a good guy, but he was in a supporting role for Jobs. From what I see, he's still supporting - finding ways to generate more revenue, while Apple's ambitious drive for innovation has yet to be replaced.
Recall, Jobs was so product driven, he didn't see the potential for the App Store. People like Cook had to turn him on to this.
So, I get worried when Apple or any product company shifts away from products, and 'transitions' to a different kind of company. Like GM and their credit card before they nearly went bankrupt.
So here we are... the iPhone is good, but it no longer has the best camera. Dell has taken the lead in laptops, Apple apologizing for Macbook Pro keyboards. No satisfactory Mac Pro.
They've got a new HQ, but their energy is misspent neglecting its products, squandering its enviable, hard-earned brand loyalty. Lots of companies have faded into irrelevance this way. They need a new Jobs, hard to come by.
3
Yes, Apple is becoming pedestrian. But Farhad's new ideas - reinventing Facebook, Google or YouTube - are not very exciting either.
More broadly, technology is a process that moves at its own pace. Steve Jobs created the iPhone but he couldn't have created it in 1980. Things weren't ready. The next big thing will maybe come out of AI, and will be the work of many developers, researchers, entrepreneurs and end-users. The contribution of Tim Apple and NYT opinion writers alike is likely to be marginal.
I have difficulty accepting the lack of regulations that have escaped all of these companies, Apple, Google, Faceboook & Microsoft that have enabled these monopolies to exist, continue their outlandish, unethical business practices, allowing them to amass their unprecedented fortunes. Fortunes are not bad. But when business methods & practices take advantage, abuse the rights of consumers & equally disregard the environmental impact of society, even good products can feel purchased & used resentfully when forced out of lack of choice and felt held hostage. Congress has failed to regulate through the FTC and FCC. Apple and Microsoft build software mechanisms to purposely make products obsolete and require new purchases (this is fraud). Deceitful to a multi-income society of which these companies drain for profits for the wealthy. Corporate innovation today is one of a throw away society, affecting the carbon imprint on the environment as well as the financial well-being of society. Innovation is done & marketed with how quickly can the corporation change the product & make it obsolete so as to continue to make money on the new/next product. Innovation is not how do I create the best product for the consumer for the long term? One is consumer oriented-- the other only corporate. When AT&T was broken up-- it was to benefit the consumer, provide choice, lower costs. Change & innovation is positive but an overall philosophy of greed that drives the change is not.
"... Apple, Google, Faceboook & Microsoft that have enabled these monopolies ..."
None of the companies you listed are "monopolies". In some ways, they are COMPETITORS.
If a publicly traded company's only responsibility to society is to make the biggest profit possible for the stock holders there are going to be problems. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and big Pharmaceutical are all illustrative.
2
"... a publicly traded company's only responsibility to society is to make the biggest profit possible for the stock holders ..."
You don't know what you are talking about. All companies have CUSTOMERS to which they are beholden.
My iPhone can assist with many apps. One thing it cannot do is act as a good ‘phone. Poor reception, poor sound quality, poor transmission. No customizability of any of these aspects.
More reasons why people don’t talk with each other, but use media.
Maybe Apple is missing a great opportunity here?!??
4
"My iPhone ..."
"Poor reception, poor sound quality, poor transmission."
If you are going to complain, you need to provide some details. What iPhone are you complaining about? Is the software fully updated? What is your carrier and where are you using the phone?
And "sound quality" is meaningless -- how is the "sound" when you play high-quality digital audio files?
I agree with a lot in this article and have used Apple products, of an on, since the Apple IIe. It was disappointing to me when I switched from Android to the iPhone a year or so ago and found it so lacking, particularly in voice recognition. There is perhaps a good explanation for that: Apple encrypts user information and cannot use it for its own purposes, such as training deep-learning machines. Unlike its competitors in Facebook, Amazon and Google.
So this quote misses the point: "Yet, all around Apple, the digital world is burning up. Indirectly, Apple’s devices are implicated in the rise of misinformation and distraction, the erosion of privacy and the breakdown of democracy." These are devices using Facebook, Amazon and Google, among other vendors. But at some point, a vendor needs to give its users what they want rather than what the vendor thinks is good for them.
1
Apple has hit a design and sales plateau, and appears to be somewhat stifled in its ability to meaningfully innovate. That said, there is a marked difference between developing something merely to show that it can be done versus iterating to create a truly beneficial function that positively impacts a majority of customers.
I personally believe that some form of Augmented Reality (AR) wearable will be the “next big thing,” and I am all but certain that Apple will enter that market within five years. I also hope they continue their (presumed) efforts toward some form of autonomous vehicle or related technology.
On the whole, while imperfect, they are a positive company.
1
Apple is a money making machine. I don't think those kind of companies are running around being social justice warriors...and all this talk about privacy! if you are worried about your info getting out there, stay off Social Media as much as possible. Lets stop expecting companies and the Governments to fix everything, lets also be cautious of the activities we engage in, and restrict our social media footprint as much as possible
As an Apple fanboy for more than twenty years, I largely agree with your take on Apple's....what shall we call it? resting on its laurels? inertia? It's certainly become the boring "dad" brand in tech.
I don't think getting into Google or Facebook's game is the answer, though. Apple made its bones by building innovative and well-designed hardware. From the first Macs, through the Macbooks, MacPros and iMacs (not to mention the phones and tablets), Apple has always stood for innovative and high-quality hardware. If it is to snap out of its stagnant funk (that is, even if it wants to), I imagine they'll have to do it through hardware.
1
The cost of apple products, combined with the planned obsolescence, is predatory.
1
"The cost of apple products, combined with the planned obsolescence, is predatory."
That's ridiculous. No one is forced buy Apple products.
And Apple doesn't use "planned obsolescence". Your complaint seems to be that Apple doesn't support obsolete technology forever.
So a young and hungry company with a visionary leader grows up and morphs into a middle-aged company run by technocrats. Haven't we seen this movie before? It might be inevitable.
I've dropped Apple products like a hot rock. They should have quit using iTunes as their backup mechanism, and created a browser-based drag and drop interface like Samsung. Now I can plug my phone into my computer and browse through my pictures and videos.
Oh, I forgot. Apple wants me to quit backing up my phone and pay them to do it via the cloud instead. Why would they want to make it easy for me to back up my data myself and ignore their subscription service?
"They should have quit using iTunes as their backup mechanism, ..."
Sync your phone with your computer and use Time Machine to backup your computer.
"... and created a browser-based drag and drop interface like Samsung."
That's copying, not backing up.
Don't blame Apple for your inability to use the tools it already provides.
I was recently reminded of the gradual shift in Apple on a recent flight with the new Macbook Pro, which here in Canada cost nearly 4K all in. Looking to watch a movie or two and edit some photos I had one seat back tray for the laptop, and my wife's tray for an external drive (internal only 256gb, the same size as in some phones now), dongles to connect the drive and other dongles to read the SD card from my camera, no SD card reader on Apple's Pro laptop. It didn't use to be this way, and all to save a few millimeters which I would happily trade for more function. The emoji bar? Ridiculous and almost useless.
It isn't just hardware though. Not being able to use a file you've purchased on iTunes with some other media center, Plex for example in 2019 is a barrier I'm less and less willing to deal with. Being interrupted during a Netflix movie on Apple TV to sign into the iTunes store, often 2 or 3 times is a small thing yet somehow incredibly irritating. I've been an Apple customer my entire life, pro and consumer - value has always been easy to see, it's much less visible now.
The OLD Apple, c. 2006, gave us iWeb, a fabulous program that allowed the customers like me, who are not interested in learning code, to produce beautiful websites. By 2014 (?) Apple no longer supported that program, and customers had to publish iWeb elsewhere. This year, the beautiful iPhoto program that allowed customers to create stunning photo books and other products, took a sad turn, and no longer supported these extensions, but made customers find other apps to satisfy their creativity. And, the big LIE is about how how EASY that will be! Now, the BIG problem hits: 32g vs 64g and many apps are not leaning into the future. For me, the thousands of hours I’ve invested in Apple’s creative programs cannot be replaced. The products I’ve produced are not easily re-produced. My iPhone and iWatch are pinging me at inopportune times, and I am, even as an investor in the company, am becoming frustrated and feel that my life is about supporting that shiny flying saucer in Cupertino. Apple no longer has a Genius Bar, One-to-One for teaching skills, and promotes their products through classes to get customers to upgrade to the next generation. What a waste of time!
Unless Apple innovates its relationship to its customers, it will continue to shrink. And fast.
A good start would be adjusting the thinly disguised contempt by the so-called geniuses deployed to anyone who so much as step into an apple store.
Mr Manjoo seems confused. Apple is and always has been a commercial undertaking whose principal goal was to make money. Behind all the Jobs' hype (rather like behind all the Zuckerberg baloney) was the objective of extracting dollars from the market. No doubt some of the projects he mentions are socially desirable but unless they are likely to lead to a further clinking of the cash registers they are not the purpose for which Apple exists.
"pretty much everyone on the planet who can afford one already has one"
Except those of us who dislike Apple's business model and prefer Android
2
@kwb you prefer the business model of a giant advertising company whose intention is to track you everywhere you go in cyber and physical space so that they can push more and more ads to you every moment of the day?
2
It’s so sad that everything Apple does today is compared to everything Steve Jobs did while running Apple.
That’s what happens when a person becomes bigger than the brand/company they built — Steve Jobs became bigger than Apple and that’s truly sad, because everything Apple does now is automatically overshadowed by everything Steve Jobs did.
One thing we all have to accept is that, Apple cannot be everything to everyone — people want Apple to build cars, planes, schools, houses, farms, TVs, furniture, trains, robots, heaven etc...
This is not fair! — Apple is the only tech company that’s expected to do everything under the sun, that’s impossible.
Instead of saying Apple should build a social network and a search engine, how about we encourage Google & Facebook to do better.
The only thing I agree with on this op-Ed, is opening up iMessage to Android users.
Amazon, Google, Facebook & Microsoft are also flush with cash — they should use it to build better products or improve the ones they’ve already got ... Apple shouldn’t be expected to right the wrongs of other tech companies, because when Apple fails at something they take all the hits, not the other tech companies, so why is Apple getting crucified for the failures of Google & Facebook?!
Apple is in a great place today, and they are innovating — the only thing they are not doing is playing God, and you are looking for a savior.
Thank you.
1
I'll tell you what shrank at Apple. Customer service.
1
I Do Love @Jack Connolly he is my kind of person.
Recently my dumb 2nd generation HP phablet died on me and I had to buy a cheap under $200 Chinese phone while traveling in Philippines to record vandalism of my bags on Jetstar/Qantas airlines(which they won't replace) so I now have a dumb cheap smartphone and have to give much of my life to Google. Even Microsoft is riding that "get all that information" horse to death. I was conned into Whatsapp and Skype.
Now, I am going off both, getting the newest Acer Ryzen laptop PC that will not dent my pocketbook and letting people know that they can get in touch with me on email.
Steve Jobs had the talent of seeing pieces and assembling them into practical parts that could be sold at great profit to an eager public. After being ousted from Apple, he learned the lesson also of being in high profit or the shareholders would turn against you and so Apple went from being an economical alternative to the IBM PC to being a high priced house of gadgets that worked. My 7yo son looked inside a Mac II and told me, "Dad, this is nothing." but it worked and schools pushed it. Teachers were afraid of the complex IBM PC.
Really, Apple needs to do what our government won't? Which is to regulate high tech. MSN never took on social responsibly when it was the leader of the pack.
You just want them to foot the bill for solving problem instead of you/us the taxpayer.
So easy to pontificate from the outside.
1
I think they were always trying to ding our pocketbooks...
“... a parade of services that start-ups and big rivals had done earlier...”
Your grasp of Apple history is as weak as your distaste for the company is strong.
Things that “big rivals” did before Apple took them and made them into hugely successful products: the mouse, graphical interfaces, portable computers, laser printers, internet music distribution, smart phones, Wifi networked devices, tablets, drawing software, software for producing movies, all-in-one computers, built-in networking support, and on and on...
ThisIS what Apple does. They find a nascent product, refine it, and turn it (more often than not) into a gigantic success.
But... welcome to the decades-long list of writers reporting Apple’s imminent failure. Someday, possibly, one of you may actually be right. Maybe.
1
I think Mr. Jobs wanted to put a big ding in your pocketbook by talking, with some credibility, about putting a little ding (this is only information technology, after all) in the universe, and Tim Cook thinks the misdirection neither plays to his skill set (correctly) nor is worth the the trouble (probably incorrectly). This will work fine until Mr. Cook's used up all the goodwill Mr. Jobs' high production value narrative created.
Which at this rate could be soon. I code on Windows or Linux boxes, the former for the peripheral drivers, the latter because the Linux environment's a work of art. If anyone wants to give me a Mac, I'll take it, but otherwise, thank you, no.
One laptop,2iphones(x and se for travel),ear buds, 2 iPads, iCloud,Showtime.......I’m done!
On top of that I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, cable TV and Internet. Enough Already!
I’m not buying another phone and I am looking at eliminating services I don’t use much like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Oh I subscribe to the WP and NYT
Oh I forgot, I have two Apple watches.....HELP
I need an Apple intervention!
After 25 years of internet we are all bored with the devices and services. Important content creation has bypassed corps and empowered individuals in the A and B caste. We are more intelligent now while the G caste gotten dumber. Apple is irrelevant compared to what MS does is correct equivalency. Thugs running our democrazy because no decent person wants to get close to the dirty people. Polluting industries need to die. The war machine has to stop. Religiosity is braindamage. Overpopulation needs urgent corrective measures. Genderrelations are at alltime low. Apple? Its part of the problem.
Sentences like this are why we pay for good journalism:
“Here is a corporation with the resources of an empire, the mass devotion of a religion and the operational capacity of a war machine.”
Perfect.
1
No need to make new search engine. Go to duckduckgo and they don't track you, bother you with ads, and they don't store your information, best of all, it's free.
No vision at Apple with Steve gone.
So goes Apple, so goes America.
Enough about Steve Jobs already!
Cook has about as much imagination as a rock.
What has always been amusing for non-Apple users is the fervency of Jobs' believers that "their" company was doing something to make the world better.
It was always, and still is, a marketing ploy -- a remarkable successful one. Pity that the author still believes it.
Earth to Apple-worshippers. You have been had.
Apple invented the single most successful and profitable product in the world. Now we have a bunch of reporters that have never built any products sitting at their desks flinging criticisms at Apple for not topping that achievement. How ridiculous. Also, everything Apple does has to be completely original and amazing or else it is useless and they are incompetent. Talk about ridiculous expectations.
Let other companies handle streaming entertainment and... make another YouTube? This argument was a little perplexing, and feels a little overused. (Here I am, though, clicking on an “apple is expensive” article again...)
Mr. Jobs’s goal of putting “a ding in the universe.”
Pure mawkish sentimentality.
" There is a strong moral case for Apple to turn iMessage, its encrypted messaging app, into an open standard available to anyone..."
Spoken like someone who isn't a stockholder.
1
Who is Manjoo to condescend to Apple?
I have never used a cellphone, until I contracted for cellphone service two years ago. The package included an iPhone 6. This is an amazing device, with great features, including an excellent camera. It is a perfect size and slides into my jacket’s chest pocket with ease.
I dropped this thing on a concrete sidewalk thrice, and it was not fazed in the slightest.
I have no interest in upgrading to a “better” model.
The Apple store in my neck of the woods—located in a very popular mall—is packed every single day. It is by far the busiest store in the mall.
Apple does some things right.
OMG a company trying to earn money. This is one of the most asine piece and one by somebody who is really not very much in tune with what people actually use computers for. I am THRILLED with News+. Good for the environment, cheaper, and increase my knowledge of the world. This is a game changer for magazines, but hey, maybe you missed the game changing aspect of iTunes in its time too.
You do realize that Apple is a business, right?
As one of many who has witnessed the entire chronology of apple, and was blown away by both the prescience and iciness of Steve Jobs, I was elated to see Mr Manjoo state the obvious: that a bean-counter is adroitly cashing in on Steve Jobs ding in the universe, and the world is not in a better place as a result. If Steve Jobs could comment, and I am sure he would want to, he would he aghast at the utter and complete lack of discovery at Apple, and I shudder to think of what he, or for that matter so many, would think of the current obsession of people to screens rather than each other.
2
That’s an easy one, Cook wants to sell TV. Duh.
I’m over it. Apple camps it’s profits offshore in Ireland, the whole time using America’s infrastructure. Meantime, California’s roads are crumbling, bridges cracking , homelessness soaring and our famed quality of life crushed under the wheels of endless traffic.
No, there will be no new big ideas from Apple other than tax shell games their accountants ‘cook’ up. Steve is rolling over in his grave. Miss you Steve, we need you now more than ever.
2
Can we stop with this ridiculous conflation of Apple as some sort of savior to society and the world? This write-up acts as if Apple was the Messiah originally set on saving and changing the world. This, clearly, was the case sold by their original leader, a guy with about as big a Messianic complex as has been seen since Jesus.
But here's the thing, and it's a reaction to what appears to be this writers disappointment that Apple has not lived up to that expectation. Steve Job's was a salesman. He was hustling his product to a mass community; and to do so he took on all the affectations of an acolyte to the religion of tech whose devices he sold by the gobs. He, and by association Apple, was simply very adept at using all the tools a salesman uses in hustling his product. He was a huckster; albeit a very good one. That's all he was.
This is not to say no good comes from his professed dreams. There was plenty of good that fell out. But Apple is simply a business. It is not the second coming. It is not here to save us from ourselves, or even set society on the straight and narrow.
It is a vehicle for the creation of profit for the self-interests of its investors. Period. Get it? Stop drinking the kool-aide and go find yourself a proper religion if that is what you need to live your life. Leave Apple to its Capitalistic pursuits.
John~
American Net'Zen
I think Cook was cooked from day one because all the innovation that made Apple was really done by the time he took over. The iPod to the iPhone was transformative. Truly changed the world, albeit helped in large part by the whole concept of web and cellular networks to begin with. But since then everything Apple has done is iterative. Derived ideas based on the big idea. Cook is a manager not a Jobs. And I doubt even Jobs had much left up his sleeve. All the suggestions for ad free Instagram and privacy minded search engines are good ethical proposals. But Apple the maker of miracles. They had their moment.
I make enough on my Apple stock to buy all the Apple devices I could ever want.
1
Wondering why I have pay a subscription to the NY times but also have to pay one to play the crossword puzzle
It's almost as if company's want to make money in order to ensure their survival.
“The companies that will create the most economic value in the future,” Hagel says, “will be the ones that find ways to participate more effectively in a broader range of more diverse knowledge flows that can refresh knowledge stocks at an accelerating rate.” From Tom Friedman’s column
Apple helped free the world via tach. Now th job is to free the world from tech. But to free the world, to liberate from constraints, must still be the Big Mission. Time to think diffrent again.
1
It would be insanely great if the Times could publish the definitive history of Apple-negative journalism. Over the decades this hardy segment of the journalism economy has far outgrown its cottage-industry origins. By now it must be supporting thousands of bloggers, stringers, columnists, and op-ed’ers. And going forwards, the growth trend is nothing but up.
How about making typing obsolete? James t. Kirk never typed. Take voice recognition the final few yards.
Just now you are discovering that Apple's main concern is profits? They are a company like any other, albeit one that has brilliantly capitalized on it's position as a luxury-aspirational brand. Apple's greatest success is its ability to draw lots of money from their users, for which Wall Street loves them. They have so much money, they literally don't know what to do with it, hence all of the stock buybacks.
The single biggest factor in Apple's iPhone sales numbers is the loss of carrier subsidies. Confronted with the true cost of purchasing a luxury personal computing device every two years, consumers are making rational choices. As when purchasing a car, a phone is only worth its utility to the owner. Any car will get you from A to B. Any phone will message, call, internet, run apps, etc. Only if the phone no longer does those things is there a reason to purchase a new one. How much one chooses to spend for that utility is an outward signal of class and status as much as the brand of car that one drives.
I await the hammer of anti-monopoly regulations to come down and smash Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. All are involved in monopoly practices, establishing fiefdoms in which their users have no credible choices for alternative services. Apple's prohibition of apps not in its store coupled with it's 30% take is outrageous. Apple is a luxury brand that does it's best to crush competition. "Think Profits" is the only motto that matters to ANY company.
"a parade of services that start-ups and big rivals had done earlier, polished with an Apple-y sheen of design and marketing."
This has been Apple's model all along. It has taken ideas that others thought of and refined and marketed them. But others have caught up - rivals have gotten better at identifying the needs of consumers - which they may not have realized they had - and developing products to exploit them.
I have owned Apple products since the late 1980's...Steve Jobs was a master at marketing Apple products...always something new and better and at a lower cost...not so now...Tim Cook is a great marketer also but the products don't excite, and they are for a higher price...I find little now in Apple that I loved when Steve Jobs was the CEO...I find myself actually thinking about buying other brands besides Apple which may be better and at a lower price...
"...Apple showed off a service for subscribing to news on your phone and a credit card."
Um, a news service? Is that innovation? Really? I've been getting news (and weather) on my phone for at least a decade, from NYTimes, NPR, USA Today, BBC, Reuters, CNN, Engadget, and NOAA Local Weather), with top 5 stories for each, it all comes up at once, in one view for me to review. How new can a news service be?
And did you say a credit card? Is...it...maybe...ah! a drone credit card that flies out of my wallet to go make purchases and brings them back?! Because that's the only way I'm going to think Apple is cutting-edge-anything again.
And don't get me started on the stock buyback. Real innovation, that one.
Apple: Thanks for not being Facebook or Google or Twitter.
1
Not that I disagree with the premise of the article, but isn't it a bit ironic that the author's main point is Apple is now unoriginal and derivative, and then his suggestions for things Apple should do instead are literally "better Google", "better Youtube", and "better Instagram"?
Interesting..."selling more stuff to the same people".
That's what Polaroid did with each iteration of their instant cameras: They kept selling to their products to the same people.
And where is Polaroid today?
1
The only APPLE in our household is an APPLE to eat... PC, Amazon prime and Android are our best friends... never felt cheated...
Steve Jobs was 1 in a billion. There’s no telling when the next of this breed will arrive. I do hope he does something “insanely different” at Apple.
You do not have to buy you news from Apple. You have a choice.
And you forget to mention the encryption that comes with your iPhone and the company that will not play games with CIA and NSA. If they did, no one would be safe. NSA and CIA are foolish to think that China would not also want a back door is Apple allowed them to have on.
I'll wait and see what comes next. Folks who design for Android buy Apple for personal use.
Never ever buying Apple, unless it comes in a pie
Farhad's vision of the future seems to be that Apple should take over search, messaging, bulletin boards, and everything else so it can become our single, true, and complete digital overlord. Wow.
The exact opposite would be much better. All the major digital companies should be broken up. For example, Google should not be allowed to own search, youtube, android, gmail, etc. It gives them way too much power. Each of these should be spun out into separate companies.
1
Tim Cook can dress and try to act like Steve Jobs but he isn't and never will be Steve Jobs.
Jobs was not a technical wizard. Jobs had the unique ability to recognize the potential in an idea and bring it to fruition. Cook couldn't see the potential in an idea if came up and bit him. He's a business guy. All he has done since taking over Apple is make different size and color iPhones and copy whatever the competition comes up with. He also buys up companies with fresh ideas and stifles innovation.
Cook isn't the only one. I can't think of a single new idea that Microsoft has come up with -- ever. They bought DOS. Copied Windows from Apple who got the idea form Wang Ind. Copied Excel from VisiCalc. Copied Word from Word Perfect. The list just goes on and on.
We in America have bought into the idea that it is more important to "run" a business than to innovate. Now it's all about shareholder value and stock options. The most useless college degree is the MBA. The fiction that a CEO doesn't have to know anything about what a business does to "run" it is a myth foisted on us by the Harvard School of Business and Penn's Wharton School of Business. Look no further than the current US President, a proud graduate of Wharton.
1
Your point about Apple taking more direct aim at the highly invasive reality of Google, Facebook, Amazon,and even Microsoft is spot on. These tech titans make tons of money through data on people that is sliced and diced before being sold to the highest bidder. Their original business breakthroughs have been hyper charged by their selling of data—about you. This would blow the minds of people if they understood just how extensive it’s become. Apple will take them on directly. We are rapidly entering a transparency age when protection of customer data will be a distinct competitive advantage. Google, Facebook and many other tech leaders will be exposed and Apple will help lead this charge.
I am not at all an Apple loyalist/apologist. Yet, I have owned a number of their devices. They have had a few good points over competitors' products, but not one of them has not had some significant issues: software, hardware, planned obsolescence, whatever.
"Ding your pocketbook" is spot on, yet many of the mass affluent continue to buy into Apple without much thought. It's so annoying. One daughter refuses to consider anything else. God forbid you open up your Acer laptop in class and feel totally ostracized, regardless of the utility of the product. One thing that has helped for a while, but obviously may not at some point, is to own some Apple shares, to share in the company's outsize profits and reduce some of the gouging at your expense. Admittedly this is just for those who can afford some shares of Apple in the first place, but there are, or were, ways to buy shares a little at a time.
1
I have a 17” MacBook Pro from 2011. I’ve been wanting to replace it but when new MacBook pros start at well over $2000 and come with no RAM or hard drive space I’m starting to find myself looking to the Microsoft surface.
I am disappointed by apple’s ruinous prices for substandard machines.
1
The real reckoning for Apple may be something they can't control. Like middle class parents being unwilling or unable to support their unemployed children increasingly expensive Tech purchases. My daughter has an iPhone. A gift from her grandfather for her birthday. In just a few months I have bought several new Chargers and headphones, because even when you spend the money to buy the proprietary Apple Chargers and headphones they either stopped working or are way too fragile and break with little use. My stepsons iPhones have become an entire Cult of existence for them. My husband has spent a small fortune replacing my stepsons iPhones over the years. We the workers and Bill payers, have a moto and a Galaxy that have long since been paid off. But my step son's iPhone is not,even though we replaced our old androids before he got a new iPhone. And to add insult to injury, when his phone proved to be defective from glitch that Apple was aware of, apple and Verizon did not want to fix it. But rather expected my husband to shell out more money for a newer model.
The only Power we have is withholding our money from companies who demonstrate they don't value our business. We are also doing our children a disservice by letting them think it'll be that easy to afford expensive electronics when they have to pay their own expenses and bills.
2
@wcdessertgirl
Couldn't agree more!
1
@wcdessertgirl Couldn't agree more
1
When we decided to downsize in 2014, I got my Apple mac book and gave the desk top (2008) to my grandchildren who still use it. Since 2010 my husband has been through 3 PCs. My original iPod nano and iPod are still going after many years. Apple provides wonderful, free help for using their devices.
The author seems to have a case of sour grapes.
Steve Jobs was the visionary; Apple the money machine. Steve Jobs is gone, but the money machine endures.
1
This is why finance executives shouldn't run innovative companies. What else did people expect from a man whose principal brilliance was leveraging tax shelters for obscene profit? Tim Cook only sees the world as it is, while breakthrough leaders like Steve Jobs see the world as it could be.
1
I think Farhad has something with his "big ideas" suggestion.
Privacy will likely be one of the big things going forward.
That and privacy centered apps that are open (an oxymoron if one) i.e. not restricted to the Apple ecosystem.
if iMessage were to work as well in an Android as it does on iPhone, would it undercut Apple's sales of it's devices or would it motivate more people to try out an iPhone (and reduce the market share of WhatsApp that's owned by Facebook)?
Microsoft came to similar conclusions as it embraced the cloud and even - gasp - Linux. And it's only been good for them.
Gee, let’s invent Amazon Prime four years later. Zzzzzzz.
The good news is that the next Jobs doesn’t have to worry about competing with Apple. I’m still an Apple hardware guy, but it’s clear that Jobs is dead and Apple’s innovation died with him.
1
Longtime Apple customer- first Apple was a pre-Mac Apple II. Longtime Apple shareholder- I bought my first Apple shares when they were cheap around the release of the OS X Public Beta. I type this on a Mac with an iPhone XS and iPad Pro nearby.
I say all that because once Apple stood for value and great customer service and today it has morphed into something very different. Last year I replaced my Airport Extreme Wireless Base with an eero because apparently Apple cannot be bothered with keeping its wifi stuff up to spec. I also replaced my MacBook Pro laptop with a Surface Pro slate/laptop running Windows 10 Pro as the Mac laptops have increasingly become last year's technology at tomorrow's prices.
Apple is facing the same thing that happens to many companies in the generation after the founder leaves- it loses focus and strays from the path that made it successful in the first place. Tim Cook is by all accounts a nice man, but he is in no way a visionary or a trailblazer. Apple under Cook increasingly looks like Microsoft under Steve Ballmer- imitation and iteration instead of innovation.
Apple today seems to be all about the money and none about the experience- making a "bicycle for the mind" to use a Steve Jobs quote. He built a company to make things to allow people to be more productive and creative, but Apple is now just another company selling people stuff- hopefully on a subscription.
I wonder who will be Apple's Satya Nadella.
3
Several 'privacy-minded' alternatives to Google already exist. After providing a relatively stable OS (built on UNIX by the way), it's unclear what Apple offers of value. It and its brethren (or sistren, if you rather) in tech gargantuanism are a vehicle for high-end consumer culture burnished with a patina of millenial chic. That's all.
I want the iPhone and iPad to be able to establish groups for e-mails. There is the word “groups” in the phone already, but there is no way to actually set up a group for e-mail.
I belong to several groups, and it is tedious to have to enter each address separately. I must use my desktop computer to send an e-mail to 30 people.
Apple needs to get back to work on this function.
Apple has lost its mojo. Steve Jobs was the company. Without Jobs, there is no company. Apple, like many Silicon Valley creations, was essentially a cult organization based on a cult of personality. Once the cult founder dies, the organization around the cult founder slowly withers and dies as well. What we are witnessing is the slow death of Apple. The company will become Sears or Xerox very gradually, over the years.
Over time, Apple will be replaced by companies, new upstarts with essentially cult leaders in their intellectual and creative primes.
The best way to understand Silicon Valley is to do a thorough analysis of cult leaders and cult religions. I am doing the reading and research, and my research is truly mind-opening, and incisive. Hope to publish a book, or at least give some lectures on this fascinating topic.
2
"Yet, all around Apple, the digital world is burning up. Indirectly, Apple’s devices are implicated in the rise of misinformation and distraction, the erosion of privacy and the breakdown of democracy."
Are you serious? Can you suggest anything that Apple can do to stop misinformation?
I'm fully bought in on the Apple ecosystem and I really like my three year old iPhone and six year old MacBook Air. I'm tired though of this constant pressure by Apple, BigTech and other industries to get me to buy something or spend on extras. Too much consumption is the problem. That's why personal debt in the US is high, the planet is warming and personal well being is the lowest it's been in years.
2
Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is in the last gasps of their dominance, and most of them are blindly unaware that the U.S. will soon be dependent upon Asia for technology.
1
Anyone for whom a shiny new phone represented a ding in the universe deserves a life of further disappointments from Apple and any other company that they, the consumer, believed would constantly bring forth the newer, faster, the suddenly indispensable. Things can only get so fast, so shiny, and apps can realistically only do so much before you have to realize that there are downsides to any company’s supposed groundbreaking technologies. The ‘break it and worry about the consequences later’ philosophy has grown increasingly stale, and who really thought that China would be the never-ending market when their MO is to make it for you while stealing all of your technology so they can make it themselves. So now we have robotics and AI, with the most proximal incarnation self-driving cars. Designed with one thing in mind, taking the last jobs worth having for those not among the engineering class, while enriching the same thin crust of the ultra-wealthy. Never did they stop and ask not whether we can do it, but whether we should. Ask Boeing how that’s going for them lately. I will never set foot in any car that doesn’t have a fully engaged human driver, not any plane without a pilot that can resume control if something goes wrong, and neither should you.
1
What galls me about Apple is the way in which its products slow down after a few years and one is told that the machine upon which one tries to type has "gone vintage".
I find that I use the computer less.
2
An article a few months ago in the Times mentioned the gold colored phone had a culture taunting name used to describe Chinese new money. When a company begins to believe that it is so elite that it can mock people, it's lost it's way. Ford had a saftey problem with Broncos flipping and killing passengers in the 1980s. The safer redesigned SUV Ford came up with was named the Escape, wink, wink. Victim's families should sue for that alone. I think Ford was THE automaker somewhere along the way.
I had two early model iPhones. When Samsung started the Galaxy models, I switched and love the android system. As a product, it's design is superior and the operating system is more intuitive. I was given a new iPhone6s and never activated it.
1
I knew there is a problem with Apple's ability to perform well when it became clear that my MacPro from 2009 could be upgraded to perform better than the latest MacPro (Trash can) and is easier to work on.
Jobs would not be happy.
1
Apple needs to innovate its attitude towards its customers. Start by eliminating the barely disguised disdain by the so-called geniuses inside the stores.
The world is happy with the targeted advertising model. People don't want to have to pay for everything, and we would rather see ads that are relevant than ads that are irrelevant.
If you think that a computer showing you ads for dog food because you have viewed dog-related content is a privacy problem, then you may be a bit paranoid. To most people, this is a total non-issue.
1
How do you figure the ads are "relevant"?
I might buy something -a device, a tool, a musical Instrument, you name it. If it happened to be bought online or through Amazon, within days & hours, ads of the very product/s I bought pop up everywhere on my PC. The exact model, etc
"Intelligent" computing ? AI ? Not too much...
It is laughable. Especially to hear the worshiper's gush about trivialities & tools of it all. Yikes, doesn't take much anymore does it ?
It puzzles me why the writer with great ideas implement himself
these ideas. Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg etc. had courage to venture unlike so called experts who only know how to criticize.
These corporations are not social or charity organizations.
Apple makes excellent phones, tablets and computers. As my phone is permanently on silent and my notifications are turned off, they don't get to make a ding in my universe.
1
I wish there was a react button for kudos.
As a long-time Apple fanboy, who fell for its vision and exceptional product quality in middle school, I have to say that I no longer have a choice but to look for alternatives. And the alternatives are just about ready; sometimes better.
I didn’t think that Mr. Jobs’ death would affect the company so much. Mr. Cook was hand-picked from one of the most talented groups of people. Plus, he is gay—a reason to believe that the iconic “Think Different” would live on. In many ways, I even liked the change as the company seemed to become more open and responsive to users.
But we seem to have passed an inflection point.
The hardware defects, the condescending attitude towards customers—we are holding the phone wrong, people with issues are always a minority (does that really make things better?), the iPads are not bent, keyboards were updated for unrelated reasons—sometimes flat out lies. It is bewildering how much Apple PR has been getting away with.
And one of the things that really made me frown was that Apple will not inform you about repair programs. I personally know two people who have been quoted $500+ repairs for defects covered by MacBook Pro repair programs, which seem to be a tradition now. How do I know they’re covered? I took them back to the store and got them fixed for free.
Times are changing. Apples standards are good, but maybe not OK for a luxury brand. Their Aesthetic and tech are no longer exceptional. I am sad.
THANK YOU for finally introducing the phrase “surveillance capitalism” to this paper.
It is a topic LONG overdue for the hallowed columns of these pages, as well as everywhere else in the developed world.
Apple’s position to possibly change the economic logic behind the most pervasive and insidious manifestation of capitalism yet is indicative of it possibly being a fulcrum of history; an axis upon which spins the wheel of humanism and the notion of moral agency... Now is such a moment, should Apple summon the courage to seize it.
Motorola invented the cell phone... Sony invented the portable music player... and some guy back in the 1600s invented the computer.
Apple has not really "innovated" anything. They've taken other people's ideas and put them in a really shiny package.
1
@J
Absolutely!
Is it not obvious to anyone who had or knew about Treo phones that the iPhone was just a very polished update of it? The main innovations were an on-screen keyboard, kind of radical at the time, and an app store, instead of having to hunt around on your own for Treo apps. Apple's leg-up that let it eventually dominate was its base of iPod lovers, who naturally just "upgraded" to the iPhone. And then the always-texting youngsters moved away from Blackberry to the iPhone, and here we are today.
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the sound of future generations laughing at those who lived through the final desperate throes of capitalism. With the seeming mantra of "What have you done for me lately?", we now only value, indeed depend upon, the latest shiny distraction on offer whether it provides any genuine improvement to our lives or not. Perhaps our descendants will wonder, didn't they ever stop to think how all this mindless consumption is killing the planet and not even making us feel any more fulfilled or satisfied with our lives?
If you follow closely what Mr Jobs wanted to achieve and compare it to what seemingly Mr Cook wants to achieve then I'm afraid Mr Manjoo is whispering into the wind. Mr Cook was, and possibly still is, brilliant at logistics, but a creative entrepreneur he is not, and that much can be seen if one follows Apple's trajectory since the passing of Mr Jobs.
For eight years they have tinkered at the edges, they possess enormous power, but it sits, unused and atrophies by the day as the other tech behemoths carve up the world for the taking, and they are the only ones at the table.
It's time we looked seriously at how these giants will be regulated. But one look at our lawmakers, and all we can do is but despair: venal and incompetent, partisan to a fault and rarely do they see beyond the next payday. Would that we could sweep them all away. We can put our hope in the next generation; but we'll have to wait until the bubble of boomers and their offspring die off as they slowly bleed us dry.
Time for a newer company to push them to the side. Apple is too big and too old now.
I was surprised to learn they took away the USB drive on new laptops. Saw my brother using an adapter to plug it in. They change their charger input every couple of years. But it's not just Apple falling. Samsung caught up. Windows has had good OS lately.
Farhad has never built anything of substance, and his arguments are beyond weak.
He blames Apple for me-too thinking, but Farhad's "other big ideas"?: re-do existing services.
He's missing the forest for the trees.
Steve did v1: the iphone. Everyone can have a computer.
v2: Apple has the only secure computing devices available to hundreds of millions of people. It is the only private and safe space in the digital realm. Worldwide. That in itself justifies Apple's existence forever, as far as I'm concerned.
Now v3: is it "Streaming entertainment"? How about global safe space, where you can see anything and not be assaulted by sex and violence and marginal extremist groups. It's the community we need in the age of digital imposters.
Apple has never been first with technology, but it has always been best. There is no way to run any marketplace - for search or social media or broadcasting like twitter and instagram - and still impose your vision of best, so Apple is wise to stay out of that.
But it will be very nice to have the quality and authority of 1960's networks with the diversity of the 21st century.
The vast majority of people are not on the digital front lines, but they want to be in the digital space. Apple makes that a good place to be.
Ah Apple! "Enjoying the loyalty of every moneyed hipster and suburbanite on earth?" Not so much and not as much as in the past.
Not even moneyed hipsters, or at least not many of them, enjoy getting ripped off by a rapacious company whose business model is to obsolesce its shiny gadgets so fast that they lose essential corporate support almost before their packaging has been discarded.
2
Next Big Thing: Apple, recycle your products.
Not sure why people expect this company or any other to be revolutionary year after year after year. An iPhone, the Internet, and other similar inventions are once in a lifetime events.
Frankly, it will be foolish for Apple to try and take on Google or Facebook.
It appears it is easy to sit on the sidelines of invention and be critical.
This negative view of Apple falls far short of a balanced assessment, and is as shortsighted as it claims Apple to be.
Let’s see...the author’s big ideas for Apple are to copy Instagram, copy YouTube, and to copy Google. Personally, I would like to see innovative, new products rather than some lame copies.
The ear pod issue infuriates me. In order to listen to a podcast or my music in the car I need a Dongle to go with my aux cord. I don’t feel like wearing glaring white sticks in my ears- not to mention that I’m sure I will lose one at some point. So my iPhone X is useless for one of the things I really enjoyed.
There are several other Bluetooth earbuds on the market that work excellently. Why do you need to plug into the phone when Bluetooth exists?
Bingo. Or how about donating a billion to the Solid Project?
Reminder: We live in a very corporate state; don't we know?
The corporate state manages on all kinds of ways to fool us, pick our pockets, curtail our now shrinking democracy and freedom as it continues to shrink the middle and working classes almost out of existence compared to wahat they were 50-60 years ago.
1
Don't kid yourself. Steve Jobs might have been a more 'visionary' leader than Tim Cook, but Apple was always first and foremost a business. Steve excelled at the vision thing, while Tim is an operations guru. Both were/are about maximizing revenues and profits for Apple and it's shareholders...
Good thoughts, right idea, keep 'em coming, and the pressure on Apple.
They can't even get the iTunes store right.
For my persoanl phone I use a Sony Ultra Xperia
An Asus laptop. FOr my business all my servers run windows. I will never use apple products again as I had in the past and sorry to say they were not suitable. With out Bill Gates Apple would not exist today as they were bankrupt and he saved them with an angel investment.
Apple is a stark example of why CEOs, in fact, do matter.
1
Honestly, not a lot of tech is beyond trifling and derivative these days.
I have been an Apple loyalist since 1991. The company I loved is over and without a doubt is what should be crashed with a giant hammer just like the famous Apple television commercial.
30
@Fred K.
Right, so we are back to the dark days of coding for Microsoft Windows where pop-up's is "User Interface", or only for Androids where OS version management on multiple devices is a nightmare.
Or where OS is cheap and a penny a truckload so any and all companies can build the cheapest hardware to sell to you, right? Except when the Blue Screen of Death appears, there is no support.
You really want to return to those "GOOD" old days?
Too often, too many lack the deeper understanding of why a company like Apple is critical to the health of the high-tech software engineering and hardware engineering industries.
2
And to my knowledge Apple has yet to repatriate their earnings and pay their fair share of taxes. Albeit they are still ahead of Amazon in coming clean with the IRS and the American public.
38
@CadronBoy
Would you pay to park your car if you could find a parking space for free?
It’s Congress, not Apple, that writes and passes the tax laws. Apple is still a great company, even though Tim Apple is no Steve Jobs.
Steve still lives in all my Apple hardware products. I still smile when I use them.
@CadronBoy: and could bring 1 million jobs back here from China, but Tim Cook said in a 60 Minutes interview (12/20/15) that "It's a skill, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in response to a question on “60 Minutes” Sunday from Charlie Rose as to why the company’s products are made in China. Rose clearly wasn’t buying it. “They have more skills than American workers? They have more skills than German workers?” he pressed.
“The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills,” Cook explained. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” So, we're too stupid to learn how to do what Chinese workers do in making Apple products.
And he also said they weren't going to repatriate their overseas taxes "Earlier in the interview, the conversation heated up just a bit when the subject turned to allegations that Apple is a “tax avoider” and is “engaged in a sophisticated scheme” to shelter the $74 billion in revenue parked overseas.
“That is total political crap,” Cook fired back. He said he’d “love to bring it home” but doesn’t because “it would cost me 40%... and I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do. This is a tax code, Charlie, that was made for the industrial age, not the digital age. It’s backwards. It’s awful for America. It should have been fixed many years ago. It’s past time to get it done.”
@CadronBoy
I suspect they are also way ahead of trump in those areas
Excuse me? “all while enjoying the loyalty of every moneyed hipster and suburbanite on earth”
What planet do you live on? You actually think that every single person who is sophisticated, affluent and lives in a city or suburban is loyal to Apple? That is incredibly narrowminded.
Personally, I own an iPad Pro because it is simply the best tablet for my business as an independent teacher, but that is it. I don’t subscribe to Apple services apart from minimal iCloud back up and the rest of my products and services are Google/Microsoft.
I’m pretty sure I am one of millions out there who look at the cost/benefit equation and make their own autonomous decisions.
40
@PhilB You absolutely nailed this. Speaking for myself, any brand loyalty has to be earned and deserved, though often it ends up being coincidental. I am on my second Acer laptop because, once again, the specs that I needed for the price won out over other manufacturers, not because I love Acer(my previous laptop was stolen. Otherwise, I would still expect to be using it well into the future). The only brand loyalty I have is in my running shoes(Under Armour), and only because their sizes are consistent enough between styles that I can confidently buy them online and be sure they will fit. If you are a loyalist to any company, at least have a reason to be. "Because their stuff looks cool" is a stupid reason to get locked into the Apple ecosystem and pay such high premiums for their gadgets when equivalents from other manufacturers are at times half the price.
5
@PhilB I think that's what called hyperbole.
5
Let's remember that Apple is a public company. Cook has done Apple's stockholders a huge favor by not venturing down the rabbit hole of social media or thinking it needs to take on Google or Facebook. For Mr. Manjoo, "thinking a little bigger" seems to be equated with expanding market share; isn't Apple already big enough? Everyone understands how this works, right? Apple is a publicly traded company; it has no moral imperatives.
23
@JeffB Only if you subscribe to the idea that a company's only obligations are to its shareholders.
6
@JeffB there are publicly traded companies that do have a 'moral imperative' and those are the companies I invest in. Incidentally, I have gained significantly from this investment strategy.
I have a pile of useless garbage in my house. It is worth exactly nothing to me and a negative amount of money when I eventually choose to actually dispose of it. I started buying Apple garbage when IOS was introduced because I was living in Japan and IOS was actually multilingual. I was using Microsoft at work because that was all that was available and knew that if you owned a copy of the current software and did not understand Japanese, it was more or less useless for the average person.
IOS was very exciting, the infamous lamp like configuration.....
Fantastic piece of machinery. Unlike Windows, the only alternative, you could buy one OS and switch among different languages. If you wanted to use Microsoft garbage, you had to buy a machine which would only operate in one language. But I digress. It is a bit difficult to calculate who has ripped off the ignorant in a greater way, Jobs or Gates but there is no question that the recycling of well earned money from the poor to the ultra rich is a phenomenon that was mastered by those two and Google is doing nothing to change the 'business model' as we speak. And as far as I can see, there are no plans to change it.
13
I walked away from Apple when I first learned how Apple controlled the production quotas of Foxcon employees. Downright medieval, soul crushing labor at pennies an hour while prices climbed becuase the product was isomething and Apple bros offered to pay Apple even more to assuage their passing guilt over the treatment of these factory workers.
Here's an obvious contradiction the author makes, which undercuts a large part of his own thesis: "The iPhone is the most profitable product in the history of business, but more than a decade after its debut, pretty much everyone on the planet who can afford one already has one, and many customers see little reason to upgrade. ... So now, instead of selling better stuff to more people, Apple’s new plan is to sell more stuff to the same people."
Apple is, in fact, already selling better stuff if it means that people don't need to rush out every year or two to upgrade it.
Like all other devices and appliances, cars, electronics, etc., phones are adding on so many new bells, whistles and security extras so that you need tech support just to figure out how to work them. My new cell phone is so much more cumbersome to operate than my previous three year old model, that it's no longer easy to do something that was formerly simple. One must navigate through an ever increasing array of drop down menus of choices.
You've all gone too far with the fun and spiffy features. Stop making phones that are more suited to video game addicted adolescents and go back to some grown up models. A lot of grown ups don't want to play games or design a new website on our phones in the course of our working day.
What phone are you using? Doesn’t sound like an apple product. The article is about apple.
There’s a lot at stake here. Look for Apple stockholders to defend Tim Cook’s leadership tooth and nail. That said, your assessment of the current state of the Company is spot on. I knew this the moment I tried to transfer photos from my digital camera to my new MacBook Pro (missing any appropriate port). The digital acrobatics it took were nothing short of comical.
Pardon my doubts about Mr. Manjoo’s understanding of “the breakdown of democracy.” He is, after all, a person of so little depth that he abandoned his preferred brand of coffee simply so that he could order coffee with Amazon’s Alexa. Even allowing for his failure to understand broad societal issues, though, he should grasp that Apple’s task is not to save democracy but to be profitable and make money for its shareholders. To expect otherwise is misguidedly naive.
2
If how we order our coffee indicates our grasp of "societal issues" then the whole idea of democracy is already lost.
I wish Apple would focus on completely upending the way health care and education are delivered, and thus break both the monopolies of these two industrial complexes and forcing innovation that would improve results while cutting costs. Here we are in 2019 and we still deliver education in the same way we did in the 1600s and with about the same results. We still deliver medicine via an employer based system, and man, it is time for a reboot.
Apple needs to do to the education and health care complexes the same as they and the tech industry did to say the travel agency complex, which was to put the consumer at the steering wheel. So, instead of the teacher/school system or doctor/insurance running the show, why not having the student and the patient calling all the shots. This is what great technology is supposed to do - empower the clients, not the masters.
2
Bought my first Apple laptop in 1992, a Powerbook 170. Nearly $5 grand, 4 megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive. We've come a long way baby. Compared to that, the computers they make are nothing short of amazing today. In other words, the computers can actually complete tasks the software is built to achieve. When I first bought Final Cut, we weren't sure if it was operator or machine error when things didn't work...and neither did the consultant we'd hired from Apple to instruct the edit team. Today Final Cut Pro works amazingly well.
My concern is, Apple was once the company that built computers, the computers were the priority and the company was focused on making their machines run better and run faster. Today the computers seem to be an afterthought. I would much rather the company go back to its' roots instead of trying to roll out the next Netflix.
1
In the world of computing, Apple has positioned itself as a brand similar to how Mercedes is positioned in cars. It is always more expensive than similar quality products and caters to a market share where high price is part of the appeal to improve status. People who stay with Apple products are those people who grew up using Apple products and wish to avoid the learning curve switching to another system and those whose loyalty relates to identity and status.
With the evolution or maturation of available technology, the difference in quality and cost becomes increasingly obvious. A Mercedes was a premium value brand when the American car business model was planned obsolescence and durability was not a priority. Apple was a premium product when PC clones were of such variable quality and people didn't want to deal with MIcrosoft's limitations. Like Apple, Mercedes has kept its reputation despite the gap between it and other brands having narrowed so that it only gets average ratings on reliability. Apple's slick marketing that "dinged" the universe is facing the problems of market saturation and maturity of product. How much more involved can we get with our gadgets and technology?
2
Yeah, but...Apple has reached the point in its evolution that all successful companies reach. There’s nothing left on the original platform to innovate over. They’re left to add more cup holders. It happens all the time. The suggestions here are interesting but in their own ways they are also derivative. Apple would have to become a software company to implement these ideas, something that would require a change of business model, and that would require a brawl in several board meetings. Good ideas though.
1
My interest in Apple as a non-tech consumer is that in the 90's I found their computers consistently easier to use than their PC counterparts, and usually (but not always) more reliable. Steve Jobs designed a great operating system and snappy looking hardware to run it. And I have not forgotten that Microsoft's success is in part due to their having stolen parts of the Mac OS in a competitive environment in which Apple couldn't successfully defend its patents without going out of business. Apple felt like the morally right choice as well as the user friendly right choice. Even today, I don't think this is all legacy. I think they make great computers.
But post iPhone and the eternal drive for "growth" to satisfy investors (of which I am one), the new service drive is starting to look like a GE style conglomerate, trying to splice finance and entertainment onto an unrelated business. Perhaps Apple is feeling that putting content onto its hardware is not all that related and leveraging its phones to facilitate credit transactions is not all that unrelated. But as with GE, I worry that it is trying to be "cool" (Hollywood) and "rich" (Wall Street) at the expense of the business that made it a great company.
The less that Apple's existence depends on making great computers (big or small), the more I worry about the future of what it does, or has done, best.
1
The only world changing idea that Steve Jobs created was the first Apple computer. Everything else was based on optimization of other devices. The iPod was not the first MP3 player nor was the iPhone the first smart phone. They were clearly better than their predecessors along with the connectivity between devices. Your ideas are also derivative. Better social media and search engines have value but are not quantum leaps. The next quantum leap may or may not come from Apple. It will not be readily recognized as such because such inventions are not obvious. It most likely will be in healthcare an area of substantial investment by Apple and other tech giants. In the mean time Apple has the responsibility to it’s customers and shareholders to deliver products, services and profits. It is doing quite well.
Many people hold on to their iPhones largely because they are locked in to the Apple ecosystem and particularly iMessage. Turning iMessage to an open platform would only cannibalize the sales of Apple’s own high-margin hardware, which Apple will not do in a million years.
2
Apple is a for profit organization. We as a society should find what we want and go for it. They seek profits. If they seek them long term engagement based on values or short term cannibalizing their base, it's their problem. Get over it.
Since Jobs passed I can't think of a single great product or service from Apple that wasn't in development before Cook over. And therein lies the problem. Cook isn't Jobs and few are. Apple as we knew it is "dead", despite being the biggest most successful company on earth. Will another genius show up to lead them out of the wildness. The odds are high.
1
I don't know which celebrity I would want to see involved with a new Apple service but it certainly isn't Oprah or Spielberg! And it's disheartening to see Tim Apple meeting with Trump.
2
Apple success has been built over user experience: that includes innovation, hardware/software quality, seamless integration of devices and services, and overall service quality. Just speaking for myself, a great portion of service quality has to do with the Apple Store concept and refund/replacement policy.
It's true you pay a premium when buying any Apple product, but Apple service comes with it. Or at least it's what customers used to expect.
As long as Apple honors its commitment to quality and service, while not becoming pure luxury, it'll keep a loyal customer base. Otherwise they'll get into big trouble.
In retrospect, it's clear that Steve Jobs was quite visionary and uncompromising in his quest for usable technology. I always viewed him somewhat unfavorably as a person and manager, but the inability of other technology giants to recreate his wonderfully unexpected and, yes, sometime delightful, products is telling.
The last product that I recall really amazing me was the iPhone. When will Google or IBM or MicroSoft or Facebook or Samsung (or the new Apple) create something even half as interesting and surprising?
Yep, you gotta give Jobs his due.
Apple has fallen far from the tree.
Apple should consider manufacturing most of its products in the USA instead of making them at cheap prices in China and elsewhere and selling it at exorbitant prices to its US customers.
Now, that'll be a big idea.
2
All of apple's "revolutions" were largely refinements of existing technologies. Xerox had essentially done a rough draft of the Mac, Iomega of the iPod and Blackberry of the smart phone. These products were "in the air" as they say. The genius was seeing the potential in other people's early work and then essentially perfecting it on the first try. Steve Jobs went from 1984 to 2001 without a new gadget success. So just kind of silly to expect these "revolutions" on a regular basis. Subscriptions services are where the high margin recurring revenue is. In retrospect Apple may again find itself in a low margin hardware business and wishing it had tried to lock people in to subscriptions more effectively.
3
Until medicine reaches into the future with the next new wave on life-changing innovation, we will have to learn to enjoy what we have with incremental improvements. This is not Apple's fault. I agree with the author that Apple could significantly improve the future by developing better privacy technology. I am actually going backwards now and unwinding some of the innovations of the past because they are destroying my privacy and diverting my attention from actually living in the natural world instead of staring at a screen. The screen is done.
5
Agree strongly with the author about Apple’s responsibility to repair the digital world that they helped to create and then break. However, the very robust alternative is for we, the people, to simply stop putting all our trust and personal information into these digital devices. Fake news, fake identities and fake politicians are ruining our reality. Adults need to teach our kids of the dangers and to just say “no!”
4
I've used Apple laptops and desktops for years, beginning with the 128K Mac, and I would be open to a new laptop, if it was better than my current 2012 MacBook Pro. But every time Apple introduces a new computer advance (faster processor, better screen), they also take away something that is very useful. With those advances, we have to accept the loss of all the standard ports that the rest of the world uses, along with the slot for camera memory chips. Expensive dongles anyone? In order to get a thinner profile, we have to make due with a terrible keyboard, that is difficult to type on, and frequently fails. Has anyone benefited from the loss of function keys, replaced by a useless display strip? IPhones lost the earphone jack, just to promote sales of overpriced wireless earbuds, that I hear are prone to failure. The most popular, perfect-sized iPhone (SE) was taken off the market, to encourage sales of $1000 too-large phones. Why not bring back a lower cost, smaller IPhone with fewer features, for those with less demanding needs? If Apple would just keep the best of the old, while adding some of the new, I would be at the Apple Store, credit card in hand.
10
Fabulous comment...spot on!
I have used Apple products since their inception when I was given an Apple Macintosh SE to use in my dorm room as a undergraduate resident advisor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is perhaps a testament to my age that when I visited MOMA in New York ten years ago with my wife, I saw my first machine behind glass as a museum piece. When I became a graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UIUC, my nanotechnology research group at the Beckman Institute used Apple computers. There is no doubt that, initially, the power, flexibility, and creativity that the Mac OS and software allowed me was what kept me on Mac machines. However, over time, the Mac OS became a burden, forcing me to buy new software and machines with almost every new generation of OS, at two to three times the cost of a PC. By the sheer weight of the previous work I had created, and the serious cross-platform issues that remain to this day, I have been effectively forced to stay with Apple. So, working almost exclusively with Apple computers for the past 40 years, from everything I have witnessed and lived through in this time, I can state unequivocally that Apple has become the very monster they set out to destroy in that now infamous 1984-esqe Superbowl Commercial that christened its birth.
5
100% spot on observations. I've been clean of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp for quite a few years now. I stick with Apple partially because I like the feel of their equipment but mainly because of privacy. I've insisted that any close friend buy an Apple device so we can Message and FaceTime. The quiet sense of independence and freedom was part of it. Now my heart has sunk as I watch them embed Google into this environment, and it has nearly collapsed to see the Murdoch, who I think is the devil incarnate, get his hooks in. I didn't like it when Jobs hooked up with Murdock and I don't like it now. So "no" to the streaming. I'll hang in for the privacy for the moment. For the moment. But when that is removed, when our details and patterns are allowed to be farmed by Google in any way that I cannot correct, then Apple becomes only more of the same. And if there is no difference why stick with the most expensive? Surely, this is an abject lesson in how to kill a brand? If I owned any Apple shares, I would sell now.
3
I do too feel the void of Apple after Jobs. I've felt it for years already. I've preferred macs since the mid nineties, although i use Windows (often work) and linux (tinkering). That was pre osX, when their operating system lacked multitasking and would freeze mid sentence while you were typing a document. I loved their macs nonetheless simply because they, despite the problems, were far more user friendly than windows 95. MacOS looked better and it was easy to see that they put a lot of thought into the user interface.
However, it has become increasingly clearer that they are in totally into maximizing profit of what is already achieved, rather than innovating. So I think the article is spot-on. Where are the big thoughts? The crazy ideas that might turn wildly successful? I just cannot see that nowadays.
1
I never went Apple nor Facebook nor Twitter nor Amazon. But I Google and YouTube.and Chrome. I also Android and Dell.
I fear that they are all new gilded age robber baron malefactors of great wealth who are using our personal information to manipulate and profit from that knowledge. We are not their customers. We are their prey.
We are not diners. We are on the menu.
Bust them up. Lock them up. Fine them up. Regulate them up.
6
The manor issue with this article is that it ascribes more forward thinking in the Jobs era. Steve Jobs was better at manipulating the press and public image, but only due to his obsession with control. His products were among the first identified as collecting and sharing private information with the government. He single-handedly eliminated fixed keyboards due to personal and production preferences despite consumer preference.
Tim Cook is not as driven to control and manipulate all customers, and in that respect, his efforts don't seem as grandiose.
2
People forget that Apple almost went bankrupt. It was mocked for being a hardware company in a software industry. The IPod saved it. The IPhone sent it soaring. Those were two great innovations, and very hard acts to follow. Maybe the new annular headquarters means Apple has come full circle.
@mr isaac. The original iMac, The original iPad.
The movie ‘A Toy Story’
The brilliant aspect of the iPod were the deals with the music industry and the connection to iTunes.
The iPad ( a grown up Apple Newton)
Jobs had a continuing release of brilliant products. He was also a highly flawed individual but he was a brilliant arbiter of consumer ‘wants’.
Here's a small idea, that is actually very big.
Improving the iPhone battery! It's the absolute worst cellphone battery there is, with all my friends with phones from other brands having batteries that by far outperform mine.
But...no...we have to search big explosive ideas, when current products are hugely problematic. Apple owes every iPhone user a better battery, so its phones are real!
3
"It's the absolute worst cellphone battery there is, with all my friends with phones from other brands having batteries that by far outperform mine."
That isn't a valid comparison, because battery life depends on how the phone is used.
Do you make more calls than your friends? Do you have apps running in the background? How do you have display brightness configured? Etc.
For more, see "Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan" at apple dot com.
“I wonder why Apple isn’t working feverishly to create new privacy-minded versions of social-media services the world needs.”
Really?
First of all, the world does NOT *need* social media. In fact the world would be much better off without it.
9
C'mon .. Ease up .. Apple started and maintained a long revolution in technology that has finally reached the peak of the curve of diminishing returns. The company has no choice but to quietly change direction without dramatically upsetting its fan base, let alone its stockholders. It's a tall task but given Apple's reputation of quality and diversity in its products and activities, one can only expect more of the same as time passes. The author here has suggested revolutionary ideas - maybe not the same ideas that Apple will ultimately surprise us with, but new and powerful ideas will come. There can be no doubt .. These attributes are firmly established in Apple's DNA.
A good critique, except for the Jobs worship. Apple, from the beginning, has always been about corralling users within its brand, herding them to the company store for the slaughter. iCattle. If not for the fact that Bill Gates had to play the hand he was dealt as an IBM vendor, who knows how long personal computing would have remained a prisoner of company hardware and platforms, as Jobs and Apple would have had it.
4
The idea that you put a ding in the universe by introducing a new product, however influential and mold-breaking, is risible. If you want to see what we've collectively achieved with all our consumer products, look no further than the junk in the oceans, land and space.
2
"If you want to see what we've collectively achieved with all our consumer products, look no further than the junk in the oceans, land and space."
You are changing the subject.
Anyway, Apple has a recycling program. Do a web search for "apple recycling".
Apple has more money than God. I wish Apple would do something big and patriotic and symbolic for America. Like fund broadband everywhere. Just to say thank you to all of us who have loved Apple so much.
I got my first Mac in 1984, when the computer's whole brain was on a floppy disk that you had to eject and swap with another floppy to save your work. I have continuously upgraded Mac computers since then, and my family buys everything Apple makes, including iPhones, of course. So, yeah.
3
@Madeline Conant
You wish Apple would do "something big and patriotic for America"? Here in the Silicon (formerly known as Santa Clara) Valley we're still waiting for Apple to do anything philanthropic to acknowledge that it was the Valley that nutured Apple and allowed it to be the success that it is.
Apple, nor hardly any of the Silicon Valley companies, came to the rescue when our symphony and San Jose Rep Theatre foundered. Nowhere is there an Apple Civic Auditorium, Art Museum addition or collection, nor any other visible evidence of grand scale support for the arts or education, not to mention any effort at amelioration of the horrific homeless problem here caused, in part, by the high salaries paid to the employees of Apple and other tech companies.
If Apple were a child you would characterize it as narcissitic and ungrateful in the extreme. The Tech companies in the Valley take and take. They never give back. Apple, especially.
5
I feel the same way. Though I do use and enjoy their products, their vision is in the private realm, not the public—witness a mass of individuals gazing into their cellphones. It is heartbreaking that in places like Oakland, too, children go without textbooks while Apple and the other tech companies offshore profits to avoid paying the taxes that would transform our area, in transportation, education, housing, the environment, and arts, as you say. Materialism is vampiric. The current metallic surfaces of the products are cold like coins.
3
I concur. Apple is the least philanthropic tech company in the Bay Area, despite all they’ve made on the backs of the community.
I'm pretty old, but even I don't remember Gutenberg being pilloried year after year after year after year for not coming up with his next big world changer.
My, how the expectations of people have changed. Then again, so have attention spans.
7
I have Apple laptops, computers, iPhone, iPhone, etc... but what troubles me is that a company who wants to appear as modern and intelligent, acts as a business as the most trivial , attarded, dishonest, cheating, conservative agent in the world today.
Apple declares itself fiscally in Ireland, in the EU and cheats to pay zero taxes while invading the market and pretending to be a modern company. Apple steals and profits from dishonest business practices. 250 billion $ repatriated through dubious illegal offshore banks back to the USA while abusing European workers and tax payers.
3
I’m with you... but I submit that the vision can be limited to what they do best... good products. For example, why is Alexa better at responding to me than Siri? Someone dropped the ball on that one. Apple should never be in a position where another company is doing products better. That’s what I fault Tim Cook for.
1
Apple has done a poor job of marketing. There - I said it. Apple is the only way in the modern world to spend money in order to protect your privacy. I am happy to pay over the odds to have Apple not use me as the "fuel" for their business.
1
I find it surprising that you would attack Apple without any mention of Samsung, a company that copied from Apple, charges as much or more, and has no respect for your privacy.
Steve Jobs was indeed a very talented businessman, but in all fairness the iPads were invented by the Star Trek franchise. They were used by Jean-Luq Picard instead of paper. The iPhones also appear derived from the ubiquitous tricorders.
Without any review or mention of Samsung, this column is, in my view, an unfair attack. Yes, Apple is very rich, but few companies are as deserving or can be as proud of their end-user products.
6
"... in all fairness the iPads were invented by the Star Trek franchise."
In all truth, TV and movie props don't have to actually work -- they are FAKE.
Since you don't seem to know anything about product development, here is a book that might help:
"New Product Development For Dummies" by Robin Karol and Beebe Nelson.
Don't know why anyone would think Apple is going to solve our problems for us. Not a dig at Apple though. It's just kind of lame to try to throw that on some corporate entity. Our problems are human problems and need human solutions. Shiny tech gadgets will never change that.
Having never been an Apple fanboy, I switched to their brand after many years of using competitive products such as IBM PCs and BlackBerry smartphones. I appreciate Apple's commitment to security and customer service delivered by accessible and well-trained staff. It bothers me not one bit that they are extending their brand to credit cards and other mature product categories, as long as they do it well.
71
@Peter Blau I didn't get the sense that the writer was bothered, more that if the company wants to remain a cutting-edge frontrunner, it needs to do something new and big.
5
@Peter Blau Apple's lack of commitment to the Mac line is its most glaring sea change the last several years. The laptops have unreliable keyboards, "ghosting" of displays caused by a $6 flimsy cable made necessary by anorexic emphasis on the "thin" aesthetic. The cable can only be replaced by replacement of the whole display subassembly at a cost of $600. iMacs are plagued with cooling problems due inadequate ventilation, causing an accumulation of dust in the machines after 2-3 years - the machines can't be easily opened up for cleaning. The top Mac, the Mac Pro, hasn't been updated since 2013. I, too, some 13 years ago, switched to Macs from PCs, from Android to iPhone phones. At that time, Apple's reputation for high quality hardware/software and customer service was indeed deserved. No longer is that the case.
9
@kitty: I think some people expect not just something new and big but also something better. Apple is in a unique position to provide a safer, more private, more secure alternative to the world that other tech giants like Google and Facebook are shaping. The problem with Apple now isn't what it is doing but what it is not doing. People might well be content with its current products and discontent that it misses opportunities. I say this as someone who has also used PCs and Blackberries extensively and who is also a long term Apple user and shareholder. I'm not thrilled with a company that will settle for less, both as a business and as a social force. I don't want Apple to be the company that thinks the same. And I'm encouraged that people will complain about that.
4
What if the next big thing has no screen or "entertainment" value? What if we directed our collective creativity to clean energy products for consumers? Wouldn't that be something.
5
Apple 's mission should be to intentionally break the surveillance economy.
The Internet has allowed something altogether new -- persuasion technologies of astonishing power based on the collection of granular profile data of unprecedented depth and breadth. Because of some nearly random architectural decisions by Netscape engineers, the so-called cookie protocols, Facebook and other large entities have instrumented virtually every click a user makes.
Whenever you look at a page or click a link, you are submitting to a Rorschach test producing deep psychological insights and astonishing persuasive power.
Apple once said it was going to save us from the Orwellian future mocked in their famous 1985 ad introducing the Mac.
Well, the company needs to carry through.
To lobby congress to force Facebook, in particularly, to
1) give up its propriety control of the social graph.
2) make migration of users to other social media systems easy and inexpensive, and
3) provide interoperability that surveillance free services can use to compete against Facebook
To do this, Apple's going to have to expend a lot of political capital, as well as money, to break open Zuckerberg's closed silo.It will have to build services as good or better, superior, to Facebook's that are inexpensive but devoid of advertising incentives that have made Facebook ground-zero for attention grabbing through entertainment distractions and promotion of fear.
4
Way back in 1991 SUNY Press released a title, "When Prophets Die," which looked at the results of religious movements from the Hare Krishnas, to Rastafarians, to Christian Scientists and Mormons, among others, once their often charismatic founders passed on. Some have continued to the present, some have exceeded the original expectations, others are mere shadows or have faded into history. The late Steve Jobs as a "prophet" certainly created a devotional "cult" that has maximized profit by having a proprietary model upon which has been built a mystique. And enough wealthy people have bought into it to take it to where it is today.
Yet if Apple is to transcend the niche which it has carved for itself, perhaps letting go of the proprietary mindset is the first order of change. In an age of a lot of skepticism about tech overall, embracing the larger world is the better way to ensure long-term relevance. Incremental upgrades will only get you so far. Eventually other, more reasonably priced alternatives may even start to sway some of the "faithful" that keeping the faith isn't what it used to be. If they can get the same (or more) functionality at half the cost, um, why not?
18
@Patrick That not of what you said is in fact true doesn't stop the same old nonsense from being repeated over and over. It's a lazy construct to call it a cult. It's no more a cult than the fans of Witcher 3 or Fortnite. It's simply a dismissive ad hominem attack on people you don't approve of. And that's what cultists do to assuage their feelings of inadequacy and persecution.
2
@Patrick "Apple is to transcend the niche which it has carved for itself,"
minor niche, should say minor niche there are 7 billion people on the planet and only 1 billion of them are using iPhone.
Glad to see you know your history and the massive success of the Mac clones!.
1
I currently use an Apple Mac Book Pro I bought in 2012. With the exception of a defective chip that Apple introduced in this model -- a widely known defect that users have now learned to disable -- the machine works great. I've upgraded the memory, but it's still going strong after 7 years. Should I buy a new one?
I'm tempted, but Apple has now downgraded its new models in that one can no longer upgrade the memory or the hard drive. Apple says that it's to make the machine thinner. However, it's really planned obsolescence. Almost every 4-year-old computer can use a memory upgrade. Apple will force you to buy a new machine.
That's innovation running backward. It's also Apple not listening to their customers.
235
@Ken L - Meanwhile, just the other day I just added 8GB of RAM to my Windows PC for $30. It was an old dog of a computer that now has a new lease on life for just a few dollars.
17
@Ken L
I am still using a Powerbook from college (1997) for a few things and it works great for what I need.
I use a Macbook Pro for work (2018) that has had too many problems. Fortunately my company's IT department is efficient.
When I had to buy personal devices for myself: Samsung S9 (over an iPhone X) + Surface Go (over an iPad Pro). Apple is predatory with its planned obsolescence and incompatibility within its own ecosystem. While Apple was degrading itself, Microsoft emerged as a hardware & user experience leader.
35
@Ken L Your 7 year old laptop that still works great is not a very good example of planned obsolesence. Just install a little extra memory in the computer you buy to hedge your bets and you'll be fine for at least another 7 years.
6
The worst part, after the inflated prices, is that the quality of their products is down (IMO). I have a nice 2018 MacBook Pro that, six months after purchase, developed the unacceptable habit of setting some peripherals on fire. I have a 2018 Mac Mini, full bore specs, and it performs only slightly better than the MacBook Pro despite having a significantly "better/faster" processor (although it has yet to set fire to anything, so it does have that benefit.) Meh. I've been an Apple customer since 1987 (Apple IIc, followed by a beloved Centris 610 in 1993, and so on). Apple has highs and lows in terms of quality. Now is not a high.
42
@Erik K.
Hi Erik,
I’m curious to know what kind of computing work you perform on your machine. Expectations of better/faster are often unmet because your computer is already so fast that going from 1 msec to 0.1 msec to perform an operation won’t be noticed. However, if your performing a couple billion calculations on a complex model or processing 4K video content, you will see the improvement. The same is true for many high-end games and VR.
1
@bwp Nothing that complex. The most stringent task is dealing with very large pdf files (making them searchable, and searching.) The difference between the Mini and MacBook Pro has been that the Mini doesn't (usually) crash under conditions where the MacBook Pro does. When the spinning color wheel of death shows up on the MacBook Pro while processing a very large pdf file, that usually means a bunch of force quits will be necessary, including the Finder. And I do reduce the pdf file sizes. I will give Apple credit for Preview as more useful than Acrobat once the file is searchable. I find it to be faster and more stable once the file is fully searchable.
1
Apple would be liberated by a big increase in taxes on high incomes and especially dividends. It would reduce the stakes associated with the share price, increase the stakes of producing something new, and reduce the power of the "activist investors" who in reality are hyper-entitled vultures.
And it would also enable Apple to view their business model less conservatively. The idea of iMessage as the killer app is very sound, and we're at an inflection point in the market where the model of producing more and better hardware is no longer sustainable nor really wanted by customers nor unique to Apple now that other companies, especially Huawei, have figured out/copied their techniques.
Apple as a services operator isn't really going to go anywhere without being cross platform, but the current configuration of the stock market and tax system incentivizes short-term maintenance of their current dividend at the expense of long-term development and locks them into the tried-and-true methods of the recent past.
23
@Chicago1 - Probably true, I have to take your word for it. But there is nothing stopping Apple from investing in long term development. They have money to burn and wouldn't harm their financial viability by spending a few hundred billion dollars. (What else is all that cash for?) It may put a "ding" in their stock price, which wouldn't be very popular with the shareholders and institutional investors, but you're right, it's the only thing that would make the company stand out in the future.
6
@Chicago1 Well said, especially the first paragraph. Less pressure to deliver shareholder value, i.e. squeezing margins on revenue generated in a saturated market, could lead to a revitalized urgency to deliver truly innovative products.
3
@Chicago1
Apple has cross platformed since the 1990s. Ironically, nearly all Microsoft programs have long functioned better on OSX.
I wonder what Apple R&D is doing. I hope they'll come up with the "next big thing" as they have in the past. I've been waiting for a couple of years.
I was at an Apple store Sunday to buy an Apple watch. I'm prone to falls and it's unfortunately gotten to the point where I'm like the woman in the commercial who says "I've fallen and I can't get up." I bought the large screen Apple Watch (version 4); with the protection plan and all the rest, it cost me over $600. It detects "hard falls" and has a screen offering calls to 911 and emergency contacts; it automatically dials 911 if there's no movement for ten minutes.
I never thought in my wildest dreams I would ever pay $600 for a watch. But the thing will pay for itself in about two years, over what the help button medic alert systems cost.
The watch links up with my iPhone and I can take calls on the watch, which is very handy when driving. It has alarms, a countdown timer, weather, a very good version of Siri and a bunch of other stuff I really don't need. Every few hours the phone chimes and says it's time for me to fight stress by measured breathing. It tells me it's time to stand up. It tries to get me exercising when I really don't want to.
I told my wife I really liked going to the Apple store, but it's a good idea we don't go very often. Every time we go we spend a lot of money.
96
@Mark "it automatically dials 911 if there's no movement for ten minutes" ??? Hopefully that timeframe is customizable for those who meditate and simply enjoy stillness.
5
@Wizened - After the watch has detected a hard fall and then no movement for 10 minutes, it calls 911
20
@Mark I bought mine for the same reason, a few months ago. I slipped going out my back door and almost fell. If I had fallen, I would have likely hit my head on a concrete step, so I bought an Apple Watch 4. I absolutely love it. I've been tracking all my workouts on it and the first time, I wore it AND my Polar fitness trainer with a heart rate monitor strap and the Apple Watch tracked pretty much identically, with a much better display and no strap around the ribs necessary. I also like the breathing, timers, spoken text. It's very convenient and turning out to be far more useful that I thought it was going to be.
15
All very good suggestions Mr. Manjoo, but you left the biggest one out: Apple needs to create an app that is a direct competitor to Facebook. Produce something that does not turn me into a product to sell to advertisers, that does its best to deny access to hate groups, and that makes security a top priority. Make it free and available to all. This would mean great PR for Apple AND increased sales for Apple products.
I've lost count of real friends who have left Facebook over the past two years because that company has no interest in its customers. FB's actions left them little choice. It would be nice if there was a government big enough to take them on. Unfortunately there is not. Apple is our only hope.
44
@Greg
Perceptual frame shift: Facebook's users are not the customers. Those who pay Facebook to place ads and other content, and those who pay Facebook for access to users' data are that company's actual customers.
The users are merely the freely contributing inexhaustible resource that Facebook "value adds" and monetizes for its real customers.
65
@Greg I don't see Apple creating and spending the enormous resources to maintain a free competitor to Facebook without advertising. If they charged for the service to finance the costs then it would become a social network for the 'elite' rather than the masses which would be shunned to the extreme. Their only option IS to advertise and then you're back to Facebook.
The first computer I bought was a Apple Mini Mac to connect to my projector and stereo in order to edit film. Seemed like a good deal around five hundred bucks.
After Apple created upgrades that rendered it inoperable I looked around and what I found out hurt more than the obsolescence, I was addicted to the Mac program, the Mac way of doing things. It took incredible power from my soul to perform tasks a different way, a cheaper way.
Although Google has tried the same trick of laptop obsolescence, the Chromebook costs $75 on eBay and so far, in years, continues to perform for me rather than me for it.
11
If Apple does make a ad-free, privacy-first version of Google or Facebook, how is it going to make money? The only other way is to charge a subscription service, but wouldn't that worsen economic inequality? The elites get an internet where their privacy is safeguarded, while everybody else gets a free internet where their personal data is bought and sold?
Mr. Warzel has another column where he says the original sin of Big Tech was to make money. WELL DUH. It's the same original sin as Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banking, etc. The root of all this is our capitalist system. Until someone solves that riddle, don't expect Apple to be the magical savior of the sins of Big Tech.
169
@Scott Ad money comes from your pocket anyway. Taking your money without a contract doesn't solve inequality.
@Scott There is ONLY one principle of capitalism: ROI.
That's it. "Magical saviors" have no place, nor should they, in any discussion of a company's role in our society.
There's no "riddle" there.
Creating absurd false expectations is the "magic" of marketing, whose ONLY objective is market ownership.
1
@Scott
Apple, like other tech companies will roll it into a multi-function cross-device subscription service. What Apple needs to do pronto - needed to a decade ago - is to both fix iTunes and unlock the Apple TV.
1
Apple is fundamentally no different than any other business. I see Apple "innovations" as minor and trivial relative to other electronics purveyors who also make minor and trivial "innovations". What Apple have been best at is hype.
The microchip engineers at the chip chip companies are the ones doing the real innovation and development. Apple, like others, buys those actual innovations and chucks them into its products. But with "minimalist" so-called design.
Now that the marketing hype is wearing thin and the market saturation waxing full, we can still expect more of the same level of "innovation" we've always seen, perhpas manifested in different ways, but without the rose colored glasses. It's never been about changing the world. It's always been about the bottom line.
2
@trebor Apple makes it own chips for iPhone. Just FYI.
Farhad’s headline offers more than it delivers. Apple has been through lots of changes in fortune and strategies. One thing it has never done is opt to take on and correct other companies failings. It seeks innovation not imitation. This tendency to want to chart their own destiny is what makes them both appealing to their fans and so annoying to their critics. Farhad is entitled to be annoyed if he wants. It is unlikely his analysis will sway Apple or Tim Cook.
3
You cannot blame Apple for becoming what all very successful large businesses are designed by our society to do. They are designed to make money using whatever tools they can conceive and create to accomplish that fundamental function. I bought an Apple II back in around 1980 for my young son who was rendered quadriplegic on a respirator for his life at the age of three and it gave him back the wonderful possibility of using his immense intelligence until he died in the hospital at the age of 32. This is the essential miracle in my life and something that made me grateful for being alive. I am now 93 and almost everybody I knew is dead and the dreadful grasp of AI is attempting to finish the sentences I try to write with no idea about what I am trying to say. Much of the world is energetically applying its wealth to bring nuclear war into space instead of helping the still widespread awful miseries that humans are creating on the planet which, according to the latest predictions has a few more decades until a handful of hopeful ignorant people will flee to Mars to see what they can manage on a total planetary desert. Perhaps Apple has a gadget in the works that can terraform a planet. For that, humanity would be most grateful.
5
If Apple were unable to make any money, it would not have a chance to make a "ding" anywhere. Apple is first and foremost a business. It has to be profitable first, in order to fund the R&D necessary for innovative designs.
"Innovation", in the eyes of a novice, is about some eye-catching, heart-rate raising exciting gizmo that glitters and enthralls like a Hollywood film. All eye-candy and entertainment with little practical value.
Innovation, to the computing professionals, is about hardware and software collaboration. The iPad is "just a tablet", but iOS has made it possible for commercial pilots to use it for training, USAF Air crews to use it for navigation, and doctors to use for multiple purpose in actual application. iOS supports development of software products that drive such innovative usage. When I can use the iPad to model a molecule in 3-D, able to zoom into the structure to show the bonds, and model interactions with other molecules of interest, that is innovation to me and my colleagues.
NASA uses a bank of Mac Minis to drive a wall of displays that shows simulation models of climate data across the globe at great resolution. The ability to visualize models at such a scale is an innovation.
The CPU, the GPU and the hardware architecture inside, hidden from the novice level users, enables iOS and OS/X to support development of innovative software for innovative applications.
What is your definition of "innovation"? Eye candy?
10
Sadly, I fear this article is basically right. I've been a Mac user since 1989, enduring the high prices because I preferred the feel of the OS, which was clearly more stable than Windows. (And still requires very few updates, unlike W10). The hardware has also always been well-made and durable. I still have a fully functional 2009 iMac, and what's more, I can actually get inside (with difficulty) and replace the HD. Imagine that!
Steve Jobs famously declared that "people don't know what they want until you show them", and he wasn't wrong. But "people" have moved on and I think we DO now know what we want, but Apple seems to still feel they know better.
"Google will pay Apple an estimated $12 billion in 2019 to act as the default search engine on the iPhone." Incredible, given Apple's insistence on privacy! I will continue to use DuckDuckGo or Startpage, thanks.
We still need good computers. Drop the obsession with miniaturization. Give us ports and serviceability. Your laudable insistence on privacy (but see previous paragraph) could be harnessed to rival Blackberry. Build a plant to make your own chips in the US to avoid possible compromise from Chinese sources. (Weren't they going to do this?) This might still justify the high prices. Lord knows, Apple can afford it.
2
It is an opinion article and it's looking for a reaction, but Farhad shows that he has to learn a little more about business. Apple is a company, not a cult leader. Being a trillion dollar company or having the innovator moniker is meaningless. They do have to behave ethically and continue to generate value for stakeholders. There is plenty of competition, so they are subject to the same supply and demand forces as anybody else. The credit card product is brilliant, but doesn't excite pundits. Apple just have to continue to please their target market and continue to think strategically and be fiscally responsible. Creating another search engine, a free ad-free instagram, or a clean YouTube is just unwise. Are Facebook or Google going to sit around while it happens?
3
@Jose Santos You've succumbed to the propagandized notion that companies are obligated exclusively to its shareholders. That a company like Apple is just another monodic entity, with no moral imperatives other than providing maximum "shareholder value" is absurd. Maybe Ma and Pa's coffee shop has different obligations, but Cook has an obligation to correct an economic design flaw that's making money hand over first for Facebook, but corrupting our cognition by abusing our attention.
The reason why Apple isn’t selling more devices is because the devices aren’t getting better. The reason the devices aren’t getting better is that the underlying chip technology isn’t getting much better. The reason the underlying chip technology isn’t getting much better is that Moore’s law is running up against limitations in physics.
You can see this with Apple products, but the effect of the end of Moore’s law is far more widespread, and can explain stagnant productivity growth, wage stagnation, and a host of other social ills. We are entering an era of linear growth, rather than exponential growth, and the effects on society will be profound.
5
Hi Mark,
I beg to differ. Adding more computers to solve a problem does not increase the efficiency of solving that problem, it just outsources the problem to more computers.
In fact, one of the main reasons that cloud computing exists today is a consequence of the end of Moore’s law, not a way around it. If computers were getting faster exponentially, you wouldn’t need to rely on a vast network of processors in the cloud.
I agree that cloud computing does improve “perceived” efficiency of devices (eg, an Apple Watch appears powerful because its compute is outsourced to the cloud), but there is little actual efficiency gain.
Cloud computing will buy us a few more years of perceived efficiency improvement (as will other gimmicks like ASICs), but without exponential improvement to the underlying chips, we’re headed towards sad linear growth,
3
The innovative alternative to copying and competing against Netflix is to copy and compete against Google and Facebook?
8
The iPhone and iPad were clearly landmark products, the iPhone and it's associated apps will forever change how we live. However until we can plant a chip in our brains I think we have reached a technology threshold.
Apple continues to release new phones with marketing that makes it seem like the second coming of Christ, but the last few generations basically all do the same thing. Over-lauded jumps in speed are not discernible in any way, everything is already instantaneous. So "more instantaneous" is not really helpful.
Apple really needs to move laterally into other markets, or perhaps use that godtrillion dollars they have offshore to do good works. That would really be a landmark.
9
The theme of this piece is on point, but the actual suggestions of the author don't make any sense. "Apple’s affair was a brushed-aluminum homage to sameness ... they are all so trifling and derivative". And then later on the author suggests that Apple instead should be making a search engine or youtube or messaging app? Sorry but I thought the whole point was that Apple was lately being too derivative, not to be even more derivative.
10
Several friends of mine worshiped Apple in days of old as a socialist statement against Microsoft and Intel, rooting for the underdog to cut the capitalist beast down to size.
Now who is the capitalist beast? The largest company in the history of the world?
Long live Windows XP SP2.
Having a Windows 10 Laptop, an Android personal phone and an iPhone 7 for work, I miss computers that served me. The cloud has destroyed the computer. The computer is no longer personal. The person is a money machine for the computer to milk.
Yikes, now I sound like the paranoid people that used to buy a Mac so the government couldn't read their thoughts. . .
5
@Tom Stoltz
You don't have to use the cloud if you don't want to. The only cloud service I use it Dropbox. Everything else is local.
"Several friends of mine worshiped Apple in days of old as a socialist statement against Microsoft and Intel, ..."
You and your friends must have been really naive, because Apple has been a participant in the capitalist economy since it was incorporated in 1977.
And Apple has been publicly traded since 1980 (ticker symbol "AAPL").
Apple has great products. But their pricing policy is becoming unrealistic . A premium smartphone shouldn’t cost more $800.00.
4
That’s why Apple has the iPhone XR...
TODAY they want to ding your pocketbook? I have Apple products because they suit my computer interface style but they are way overpriced and I don't update often. I remember taking my old white Macbook in to get the a new keyboard since one of the keys failed and the disc drive failed. It was only a few years old (5 years?, if that) and they didn't have parts and in fact, when they updated the OS (something they COULD do) I could NOT leave it in the store but had to wait there because was "vintage" and that meant they could not take it "behind the counter". Whatever. I have a MacBook Air and a iPhone SE which I purchase for a third of the price from another provider, and I'm good for now, thanks very much.
1
I have an iPhone and a MacBook Air, which I bought on the assumption that they would work reasonably well together. However, the devices are being continually “updated”, and each new “update” seems to introduce confusing and unhelpful changes. Half of my software can only be updated from the “US store”, and the other half from the “Canadian store”, which requires me to maintain two Apple IDs.
To cut a long story short, this is not a business where I’d want to pay for a subscription. I think I’ll wait to see how they do.
2
Articles with this same tone appeared in droves before and after iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, and iPad. I do get the feeling that Apple is reaching a "gilded middle age," but for me at least they've earned a chance to spend another couple of years developing the next universe-dinging device or service before I judge them to be on the downslope.
6
Apple's devices have always been grossly overpriced and if one thing is certain about them it's that planned obsolesence is always built in. Years ago Apple switched from Motorola to Intel processors it's Mac products. That made existing Mac's functionally obsolete with no path for future operating system upgrades. Their computer products harware can't be easily upgraded in field by end users which is another nail in the Apple coffin. The end result is overpriced, often underpowered computers that have a finite lifespan and no ability to be upgraded with newer technology.
4
I agree that messaging should be off limits from advertisers.
Apple doesn't sell that data so I trust them more than Facebook.
Why did Facebook pay $20 billion for WhatsApp if they didn't intend to extract some data from users?
1
As Hemingway said, isn't it pretty to think so? You answered your own question as to why Apple isn't taking the long view and doing what desperately needs to be done to at least ameliorate the worst aspects of the rapacious tech industry: short-term profit trumps everything in the capitalist world. Shareholders are demigods who must be served. That needs to change. Good luck.
3
Once Apple lost its product visionary it failed to replace the void. Jony Ive tried but all he cared about was making the products thinner. And Tim Cook is a strong operations exec but never had a feel for products. Sadly the remaining candidates are too rich from Apple stock to care any longer and the employees that care have little power in what’s become a bureaucratic quagmire.
4
Apple is past its sell by date. Its products are dated and overpriced. There are better (and cheaper) offerings by competitors. It's living off its reputation. Sure, it has huge financial heft but so did GE and GM before their falls from grace. Like Apple is doing now, both these companies lost out by ignoring the changing market and customer expectations. The consumer has become more sophisticated and Apple can no longer decide what people want.
In a way, Apple epitomizes the late stage US empire - an emperor with no clothes.
9
All good things come to an end. Thanks you Mr Jobs for your vision.
Oil is the most profitable product in the history of business.
OIL...
Apple is the Polaroid of today.
Tomorrow it will be gone because it is not innovative or interesting.
Apple is a jewelry company.
4
Apple hasn't really ever done anything but things that are profitable for Apple. They will not open the iMessage protocol because that would lessen the social pressure on teenagers with Android phones to get iPhones just so their message bubbles are the right color in their group chats.
But you're much more wrong about iMessage as being the privacy savior than that:
Apple stores iCloud data - including iMessage encryption keys - of Chinese users on infrastructure in China, and inherently accessible to Chinese government. They do that so they can sell iPhones in China - so for selfish, commercial reasons they compromise security of heir messaging system for a large fraction of their customers.
This is why Google's messaging is inherently more secure if you ever might participate in any group chat including a user based in China. Even though it's hard to see that from all the negative coverage, it is Google that will keep your conversations safer. It's also why dissidents would never use Apple mail.
Also, why is a company serving ads for a living somehow automatically less trustworthy than a company selling luxury hardware at an outrageous profit margin?
I know you like Apple and want them to be the agents for good. Problem is, they aren't - never have been.
5
Apple has an unsurpassed ecosystem consisting of Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, AirPods, HomePods, Apple TV, etc. that work (nearly) seamlessly together using iCloud, Continuity, Airplay2, etc.. These products were rarely the first to market, but in each case they redefined their categories. Out of the gate these products are elegant and good, but Apple's strategy is to evolve them. For example, the Apple Watch is now excellent in health and fitness, but not originally, and it gets better in each release. The real power are the custom-designed chips which are very powerful with specialized features, e.g., for security, and the software. There have been a few missteps in hardware under Jobs and Cook, but relatively few compared to those of Google and Microsoft (you can google these hardware and software failures). The next category will probably be AR devices (sorry about the wait you will have for autonomous cars) and Apple will take a similar approach in their evolution and integration into the ecosystem. The recently announced News, TV, and Game services likewise will evolve just like Apple Music gets better and better. Finally, Apple has never been reluctant to jettison old technology to move ahead, e.g., the floppy drive, CR ROMs, and yes the "phone jack." And few who use FaceID on iOS devices would go back to TouchID.
8
So Tim Cook May be more of an operational guy, who can execute well on someone else’s vision; he himself is not a vision guy.
With all due respect to Mr. Jobs, even iphone was not a new idea in its own day; it just brought together (converged) technologies on one device.
The writer is spot on in saying that Apple may have lost the plot in making a ding on the universe. I am very happy with my IPhone 6s Plus, and there is absolutely NO REASON for me to upgrade etc.
2
Jobs was an innovator who could not scale
Cook can scale a business but cannot innovate
Apple needs both...but it doesn’t have the innovator
4
"Google will pay Apple an estimated $12 billion in 2019 to act as the default search engine on the iPhone."
Does that mean that Google Maps will be the default maps and finally respond to Siri?
5
Although there have been down periods in Apple and, in particular, Mac OS usability and stability, Apple was always about empowering creativity in individuals, rather than supporting corporate droids. Their products were always more expensive, but far easier to use and generally worth the price over. While Mac OS still puts Windows to shame when it comes to usability, Apple has definitely slipped far from the days of yore, ignoring longstanding UI issues and often going backwards, such as with the spotlight UI. We have also seen very little true innovation from them on the desktop OS. iOS has likewise stumbled. For instance, it now takes many more steps to send a text message with a photo from the photo library, because Apple decided that we needed tons of emojis. Well sorry, I don't need them. Traditional text-based emoji's are easier to type and read. While still better than Win 10 (which I use everyday as well as Mac OS), and (with iOS) better than Android, each new release from Apple seems to close the gap even more. It appears that the marketers and bean counters are largely in control of what is shipped. There are real consequences here. Because Apple products command a premium, their customers expect more. Since they are not really delivering anymore I have now begun switching to Windows desktops and laptops. These are much cheaper to begin with and easier to upgrade. Apple is making it increasingly impossible to upgrade machines. Overall, they are not looking good.
1
Frankly, this commentator felt soon after Steve Jobs passed away in late 2011, that Apple could shrink sometime in the not-so-distant future in spite of its success with iPhone at that time. Apple was STILL expanding.
That feeling was NOT because of Steve Jobs' untimely demise and that Apple had lost its greatest innovator. It was because there was NOTHING comparable to iPhone in the pipeline - as subsequent history showed.
So, it does NOT come as a surprise that if Apple does NOT come up with a revolutionary product like iPhone, it may very well follow the footsteps of MANY other great but now-defunct corporations such as Polaroid and Digital Equipment.
Apple's and other tech companies' lifeblood is creativity - or to put a ding in the universe. Me-too will NEVER save Apple. In the past, Apple had been the EXACT opposite of me-too and precisely because of that customers did NOT mind their pocketbooks getting dinged. The situation is not so anymore!
Hope Apple learns its lessons.
1
There's no profits in privacy because people don't value their privacy. It's a cultural and legal problem, doesn't matter how many apples you have, ain't gonna change that.
1
I have been a Mac user for nearly 32 years.
Apple since Jobs' death is more interested in pleasing institutional and other large shareholders rather than its users. The Macintosh computer is now but a tiny profit blip now on a gargantuan bottom line. A professional class of user, mainly engaged in video production and graphics, still depends on the Mac. How much longer that will be the case will depend on whether Apple decides to give these users what they want. These are the customers that stuck with Apple through thick and thin for decades, whose allegiance gave them the chance to develop the other product platforms that have now far surpassed the Macintosh in terms of revenue and profit.
For years, Apple has ignored demands for an inexpensive, easy-to-configure Mac. Instead we got hermetically-sealed, non-upgradable machines that look good but cannot be modified under warranty. The only way to enhance any one of the current Macs is to pay Apple excessively at the point of purchase. And the OS for phones has been slowly taking over the Mac, a problem for anyone who still needs a normal desktop operating system.
Those of us close enough to retirement are doing everything we can to keep our vintage equipment running with older software, rather than allow Apple to take the entirety of our wallets. Apple won't care if we move to Windows. They can then drop the entire Macintosh division and focus on phones and services. Breathing the air is destined to be a service.
13
@Bill Planey: Well said. I brought home my first Macintosh, the original 128K jobbie, a few months after it was introduced, and from 1987 until I retired thirty years later, I made my living on it as a designer.
It’s difficult to escape the impression that Apple’s best engineering talent has been shunted off to other products. One hopes that they get the re-imagined Pro design right. Even if the Pro line is not a big profit center, even if it loses money, Apple should maintain it as a prestige product—they can certainly afford it. High-end users kept the company alive back when it was a month from bankruptcy, and Apple would do well to maintain their goodwill.
7
Well said, Farhad. Unfortunately, the problem is broader than Apple. The giant tech companies have become complacent and less innovative, and at the same time, they are killing and suffocating entrepreneurs and startups who might challenge their businesses. Many entrepreneurs are throwing in the towel and joining the big tech companies because they can't survive their ironclad and preferential grip on almost everything. As long as, likes of Tim Cook, shareholders, board members, etc. make more money year over year, none of them would care about fostering innovation. It is all about making more money, period. The only game in town is to ding pocketbooks or leeching traditional businesses. Now Apple is planning to squeeze more out of content producers like newspapers and magazines. The middlemen take a big cut and producers and creators have to scrape by.
1
Apple is now the old Microsoft, mediocre products, living off installed base. Mr. Cook even has trouble production forecasting. Why does the US continue to allow Apple to have all the manufacturing development and production to be done offshore? Today, Microsoft is the new Apple Computer Company.
8
For me it is just a crime to sell a program then call it obsolete and turn to subscription. I paid, bought and owned that program. And no, it is not obsolete because it can not work on the new upgrade anymore. It is just the IT guys not adding some/ changing code into the new operating systems.
For me it is absolutely mind boggling that no government has ever looked into this kind of theft.
Mac user since the very beginning. Working on a decade old iMac and switching to Microsoft when that machine fails.
5
@me Um, you do realize that Microsoft is pushing subscription-based Office 365 over the traditional Office iterations?
It is surprising to me that in some hardware areas where Apple could make a bold statement, they have not.
In HD Audio, where formats go by names like FLAC, DSD, and MQA, it is companies like Sony, Pioneer, and Astell & Kern leading the way with hardware on the leading edge. Apple has nothing.
If you've delved into the power of a modern Networked Attached Storage from the likes of Synology or QNAP, they do amazing things like act as media centers, DVRs, file sharing, and safe storage backup solutions, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Yet Apple offers no hardware at all in this category.
In the area of home automation, it is the wild west of companies offering connected lighting, home security, thermostats, and much more. Apple has the Home Pod.
There is something to be said for staying focused on doing a few things well. Perhaps that is why Apple left the wi-fi router market, and no longer sell a standalone monitor. But I would love to see Apple lead in portable digital players again, and an Apple NAS has the potential to be a huge game changer.
No one at Apple is doing any real innovation. Tim Cook says they have some awesome things in the pipeline. But a more expensive iPhone with marginally better features at greatly higher prices is not innovation. As far as I can tell this Apple is not only shrinking, it is all wrinkled, turning brown, and is getting soft and squishy. That is not a pretty place to be.
4
@Stew well said particularly about Apple Music using 20 yr old technology and missing the revival of quality audio.
1
These are ideas that I would be interested for Apple to take on. Would they be able to profit off an ad-free YouTube, Instagram, and non-pay for play search engine? All the while hiring costly engineers to support these projects.
Steve Jobs made a ding, Tim Cook is polishing that ding. Frankly, there is no shame in that. There is great value for Apple to lead the privacy war. They would be the one I would trust because they are not at the hands of advertising companies. However, they should not just throw their hat in every ring like Alphabet. Alphabet's credibility has significantly declined because of announcement of large change-the-world endeavors which have led to failures, i.e. Google+, Google Glass.
2
Where is Apple's strategic vision for Services? - for example a Health & Wellbeing Service (not just apps to retain IPhone users and sell more Apple Watches). Strategic leadership matters - the contrast to Alphabet and Amazon is striking.
1
Although having previously worked for many years in Silicon Valley myself, in the information technology and communication field, I have never purchased an Apple product.
Not because I think they are inferior, not because of any social, political or moral stance but simply because I've always thought they were overpriced and their competition provided all I really needed. When I buy a pair of jeans all I want is a good fit, durability and yes some style points but I don't want to pay 30% extra for the logo on the back pocket.
9
As one who was part of the Apple revolution for 12 years, I see how the sense of special mission is no longer the mantra. In my time, we were evangelical , we were pro active, we were enthused in a crusade , in the education division especially, to change the world - one desk at a time and to empower ALL learners to achieve a greater part of their potential and have a new way to navigate knowledge and perhaps make a better world.
It sounds so "out there" now to even write those words...but many of us really believed it.
What is Apple now besides very big and rich ? Could it be more than that again ?
Our nation, our world needs such new vision.
That does not seem to be the Apple path these days.
Think Different may have had grammatical issues, but certainly not lacking in imagination.
I miss those old days...I miss the mission.
8
Great article. Thanks. All of the tech companies are blind to the ethical world they have built. Apple has been a bit better but you are correct. It has fallen off track.
We look at the mess and wish someone would claim a knighthood and fight for a more morally beneficial world. Something other than just more and more money, please.
6
Everything Apple does is intended to monetize some aspect of our interconnected lives. If you want to have everything that you think or do directed toward some form of profiteering, buy an iPhone/iPad/iMac. The business model of all these firms - Apple, Google, or Facebook - is based upon stealing our data and focusing on our lives. Enough, already. The only force that can stop this encroachment is government; let's hope it does its job.
4
Apple is in fact responsible for the biggest invasion of personal privacy perhaps ever. It's not that it hands over data to federal agencies or private companies. No, it's Apple's "seamless syncing" of services across all its devices. The average iPhone user's messages, photos and physical location (and indeed everywhere they've ever been) is available to anyone with access to that person's Macbook. Maybe a husband or wife should have nothing to hide from other family members. But that's not Apple's decision. And ensuring one's iPhone is not sharing information with other devices is no easy task.
9
"The average iPhone user's messages, photos and physical location ... is available to anyone with access to that person's Macbook."
macOS supports multiple user accounts on one computer. You need to set up separate user accounts on the Macbook and NOT share passwords for those separate accounts.
Likewise for Apple IDs -- set up one for each user.
@TC : When the administrator account on that device us compromised every account on that device is open to the public.
1
@TCR. I’ll get you to explain to my wife why my Apple ID needs to be private...
To anyone interested in seeing how far Apple has drifted, watch the video of the 2007 introduction of the original iPhone. Yes, there were so-called smartphones before the iPhone, but the iPhone was stunning in its capabilities and simplicity of use. Nothing Apple has introduced since then has "made a dent in the universe" in the way that the iPhone did.
Steve Jobs famously stated that Apple did not use market research to find out what people wanted, because it was Apple's job to create products that people didn't know they wanted, but soon couldn't live without.
As much as Steve Jobs respected Tim Cook, and wanted to make sure that Tim was his successor, he also made it clear that Tim was "not a product person". Since Steve's demise, Apple has not been the "product company" it was in the Jobs era. The recent Special Event makes that painfully clear.
7
Yes, Virginia, there is a life cycle for companies, and Apple is decidedly middle-aged. In fact, they have developed quite a paunch.
After hitting home run after home run (Mac OS, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) Apple hasn't even swung at a pitch in 8 years. After a few walks and a few times being called out strikes, Apple has decided that even stepping into the batter's box is a bad idea. Much better to just raise prices on the beer and hotdogs and hope that nobody notices that there is no longer a ball game going on.
Apple has always been the most skillful corporation on the planet when it comes to product pricing, but now that pricing is the centerpiece of corporate strategy - wring every nickel from those turnips, er, customers. Who needs new products when you can just jack prices? Even better, in fact. The entire price increase drops straight to operating profit. No pesky increase in Cost of Sales to siphon away profits.
As a long-time Apple-head, I can tell you that I'm starting to feel like a real Rube. Much more of this and I'm going to look seriously for another ball game.
10
At some stage of a corporate life cycle the bean counters replace the visionaries.
19
@Alex BEAN COUNTERS - Is that true.
The news service isn't just derivative it is an acquisition. They bought Texture which I have been using for two years already. It is a great service that allows you to subscribe to hundreds of magazines at a low monthly price. Thanks to Apple that low monthly price has been raised 2 dollars and there is no longer support for windows. Now that's innovation!
4
Apple creates beautiful things that people enjoy using. At least when they’re at their best. Mac, iMac, Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.
The rest of the industry sells things people need to use, at work.
Now, Apple wants to sell beautiful services that people enjoy using. But it comes without any Jobs or Jony innovation. It’s an idea that was worked over before Apple took it on. It’s over-Cooked.
And that was the beginning of the end. Apple will still make money, but it just stopped being Apple.
4
Apple built the iconic iPhone using the technology its contract manufacturers licensed from Qualcomm. But Qualcomm also shared their technology with Apple's competitors. So Cook has cleverly conspired to destroy the Qualcomm business model so as to leave Apple the dominant maker of cellphones. Who says there isn't genius still at Apple? And he has used the FTC to carry his water. That's brilliant. If Apple and the FTC prevail against Qualcomm's licensing model in Lucy Koh's federal court, the enabler of Apple's competition will be destroyed and Steve's Job's admission that Apple "shamelessly ripped off the IP of others" will become the business model for companies not willing to invent for themselves. That's a "ding in the universe."
9
Want to see innovation ?
Both Huawei and Galaxy manufacture phones with foldable screens - twice the screen size for the same phone size
Where's Apple ?
13
@John you say that as if a foldable screen is a feature people want
6
I have never owned anything made by Apple, and I don't think I'm diminished or my life lacking one bit because of it. Maybe I don't know what I don't know.
Even if that's so, I don't care.
6
Anyone who knows the history of Apple should know that they could only innovate under Steve Jobs leadership. They've tried doing it without him before and failed. The only thing that saved them was re-hiring Jobs. That option is no longer open to them. They need to find the next best person because Cook obviously isn't it.
8
Nowadays, all smartphones are black rectangles of almost identical dimensions. The only thing to challenge that recently has been folding phones, but I am far from convinced that a normal sized rectangle being able to change into a bigger rectangle is the next big thing.
I don't know what the next big thing is any more than Huawei etc does, but I am pretty sure that Apple will not be designing it. A few years ago they changed from industry leaders to followers in what seems like the blink of an eye.
4
We must have watched different Steve Jobses. The one I remember introduced duds like the Power Mac G4 Cube, the iPod Hi-Fi, and the Motorola Rokr phone as often as he introduced wonders that are the only Apple products pundits remember. The notion that Steve Jobs was an innovator while Tim Cook is nothing more than a copier is a reality-distortion field pundits happily apply to themselves.
23
I have some Apple products, iMac, iBook, iPad and iPhone, and love them all. In fact I'm likely a few weeks away from upgrading my 6 year old iMac with a newer snazzy one; however, I did recognize Apple's doom when they rolled-out their Apple Watch. Watch??? Most people over the age of 15 think of watches as status symbols - not gimmicks. What adult worth his or her salt would be caught dead wearing a watch 5-year old's worth their salt would wear. I think the roll-out of the Apple Watch was a harbinger that there's little more to come but the same you already got.
6
@David
I've had my MacBook Pro since 2011 and it's worked perfectly fine.
2
@David Do those watches tell the time? That's all I need.
@David If you understood the capabilities of the Apple Watch, you would probably be a convert to that, too. I resisted, too, but now I love mine.
1
An interesting thought experiment would be what if Elon Musk was made the acting CEO of Apple? Musk of course is quite mad but very brilliant and creative. I think he would envision an I phone that would do absolutely everything for everyone. It would monitor your health, prescribe medications, pay your taxes, pay all of your bills, manage your retirement program, your mortgage and any chores related to your children's education. All entertainment and travel planning would be seamlessly integrated into your Apple Phone which might be handheld or in fact integrated into your eye glasses or perhaps in some very advanced version as a machine brain interface.
The Apple would protect your home, file insurance claims and manage your employment whether self employed or working for an institution. If you were to die, the phone would arrange your funeral and also create a permanent and comprehensive digital record of your existence for the cloud and a hard disc copy just in case. Obviously, the obit and the will would also be included.
I think this indeed would be the Musk version of the Apple. But will Apple follow suit?
2
@Yankelnevich up next: Apple iMplant.
Apple is nothing more than a cult catering to those who think they are somehow special because they pay more for less. I learned Basic on the early Apples in the 70s, and had a Macintosh in the late 80s/early 90s. That was all great. Today I am wise and happy with my Android which I can code as I like, and with all the free apps I can toy with.
When I learned of how Steve Jobs treated his own daughter, about the sweatshops where people could barely breathe, that being burned to death was an acceptable business 'cost', and that exporting labor to sweatshops in Asia was the norm for Apple, it became very clear that Apple was not the global citizen it professed to be with its polished looks, black turtlenecks, and holier-than-thou attitudes. Sure, Apple is attractive, but the seedy underbelly is something I simply couldn't unsee.
That so many continue to use Apple products well after their nefarious business practices were widely know publicly is something I find really repulsive.
Bill Gates at least started the Gates Foundation with his riches, and billions are now spent annually by them bettering the world for the destitute, the sick and starving, and those destined to a life of poverty for no reason other than because of where they were born.
Frankly I find Apple and their overpriced items built using exploited workers just disgusting. I could never use their products. Do other companies exploit workers? Sure they do, but they don't lie and preen like they don't.
32
@Birbal
One wonders where those Android devices are made and by whom they are put together at what pay rate.
1
@Birbal
Well said! All true and then some.
@Birbal thank god all those android devices aren’t made in sweatshops
1
I have mostly enjoyed Apple's ecosystem as it evolved from the Apple //e, my first computer. Apple has never been cheap, but historically has had great value in its products.
However, I must say Apple's fairly drive to make everything thinner and unrepairable, along with the reduced product longevity and declining software quality is disappointing.
I don't care if my laptop is 5mm thinner. I'd like a keyboard that works well (it's the primary physical interface!), the ability to replace a batteries, disks, and memory as standard features.
I'd like an iPhone update that doesn't cause the phone part of my iPhone to fail every other day and require a reboot to be able to make a phone call.
I'd like an iMac update that isn't just stuffing over-stocked processors into a several year old design after nearly two years of nothing.
Perhaps there are some insanely great products on the cusp of delivery that capture my imagination and compel me to spend some hard-earned cash (a new range of iMac Pros, Mac Pro, something else)? But clearly, Apple has lost it's magic for true innovation and replaced it with innovative manufacturing and profit-making.
When my near decade-old 27" iMac finally croaks, I will get a new one (instead of getting one of the updates now). But I wish the excitement was back. And the software quality, too. Steve Jobs was jerk, but his vision and drive for innovation, perfection, and quality are greatly missed (and seemingly forgotten by Cook and Ives).
16
@historyRepeated I too am using an old iMac- an excellent machine that meets all the needs I have for a desktop. Unfortunately, Apple has recently decreed that my machine is now obsolete and soon I will cease to receive updates. I suppose I can't complain much; the machine is ancient by computer standards, but the replacements Apple sells now are really disappointing. Slightly thinner, slightly shinier but the specs haven't improved that much and the machines are missing features I still use. Nothing that I'm really looking forward to purchasing, so I will put it off until my current machine becomes unusable.
1
Privacy is all well and nice, but that isn't going to sell iPhones because, frankly, no one really cares.
What Apple is missing is the *technological* innovation that was the company's hallmark under Jobs. The company that gave us the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and Siri now plays perennial catch up to Samsung and Google, and missed the boat on personal digital assistants -- the category it originated -- and home automation -- markets that, under Jobs, Apple would have owned.
Sadly, this is an all-too-common fate when the founding entrepreneur leaves the company and a manager from the operations side takes over. The magic is gone, and more limber competitors step in.
At this point, Tim Cook's approach seems to be to maintain Apple's immense profits by charging more for less, and that just won't work; Apple became the profitable company it is by charging more for *more.*
26
@Josh Hill
Who said nobody cares? I will stick with Apple when I buy my next cellphone due to privacy concerns. I’m sure lots of people feel the same.
Sure you can buy a cheaper phone, a cheaper computer, songs, storage, software, etc. What differentiates Apple is its unified customer experience and its unique ecosystem, one that is not powered by selling its customers’ data to advertisers. Yes, you do have to pay for this ease, consistency, safety and privacy. If you value it, the choice is yours.
8
GOOD GRIEF! Apple makes the best phones for a myriad of pocketbooks and a myriad of tastes. Privacy is head and shoulders above the rest. Regular software updates allow older iPhones to stay secure and keep operating far longer than any alternative. The iPhone I’m typing from, has been my reliable personal assistant for more than three years.
Why slam a company for continuing to grow its selection of products?
There's no penalty for not subscribing to something new.
Apple keeps me tuned in because there product line remains reliable, innovative and cost efficient. It’s easy to remain loyal to Apple.
14
@Zab Fitz
" because there product line remains reliable, innovative and cost efficient."
There goes it's spell-checker, again!
Steve Jobs had a vision; he used that vision to create a product and then other products and founded a company; the company became a public corporation; for Jobs going public was like getting a tattoo, just one more thing - it didn't get in the way of his vision and he kept building new things people discovered they wanted and needed.
Anyone after Jobs who manages the corporation IS the tattoo (How many tech visionaries can there be at one time?). The corporation, meaning the stock holders, desire one thing - profits and increased stock value; products and "vision" only come into play when the profits/stock value decline. Can a CEO/manager really be expected to be a visionary under the kind of pressure stock holders exert; that pressure never goes away while you're on the job.
Yet maybe right now somewhere in a garage somewhere in the world two people or a bunch of people with a vision are addressing the ideas you've put forward with real solutions. Maybe we'll be reading about them before long.
IBM was the GIANT in the room when Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates were seeding their visions; where is IBM now?
@erayman
The stockholders you refer to are not mom & pop, they are CEOs, execs, Board members etc. with hundreds of thousands of shares. Is Mr. Cook exerting pressure on himself not to be a visionary?
1
@erayman IBM is not on the front page anymore. But the stock value is $143.63 last I checked. Not bad for a company that is no longer at the forefront of consumer technology. Ironically a few years ago IBM big wigs decided that their employees could use Apple products.
Things change.
Look no further than their price of RAM - it is way out of line with any other company. Add in their fight to the right to fix bill in CA and the fact that none of their newer computers allow you to upgrade any components. The only way to upgrade is the buy a whole new machine. When my current MBP dies I will be replacing it with one from Alienware
3
I don’t think comparing him to Jobs is fair. Jobs had great ideas and was a great motivator but more importantly he had the people to make these ideas happen. Jobs was also at the right place and the right time because the technology he worked with was expanding rapidly and has probably peeked for the most part now. Unless they can figure out how to let a cellphone give you accurate medical results by doing blood work, scanning your body like a MRI and other miraculous things. These devices have already gone well beyond what most people would have thought they would at least this fast. As for security, Apple already has more than many in our government are happy about. I doubt this industry would be any more advanced if Jobs was still there.
5
A month ago, I bought a brand-new ipad pro, so now there are an ipad, an iphone (it's not mine but my wife's) and an old macbook around me. The ipad and iphone are real siblings (or even twins); once connected with a cable (well I actually don't need the cable if I can afford a large cloud), they immediately come to look the same. But the macbook is exactly like a disowned son; to connect it to the new ipad, I had to upgrade its OS and to spend a week to clean up the mess due to the OS change, had to buy a better cable that is recommended by apple, had to give a call twice to apple with a long waiting queue, etc. etc. Even after connected, they are still doing a sort of fight between them. iphone (and ipad) is polished but has no freedom. macbook hasn't had a big change for decades but gives a lot of freedom to the users. I have long been wondering why no macbook-type smart-phones are around. Looking forward to seeing MacPhone...
6
Asking one company to do the thinking and innovation is not realistic. Indeed, all innovation is evolution, building on their own and others works, sometimes big jumps other incremental.
The great innovations not only introduce new technologies but do so at the right time.
The reality at this point in history is that we are in between tech generations— after phone, what? All industry players are thinking about and the masses are equally digesting the phone era, including understanding its limitations. Those limitations will be the seed for the next era of tech innovations.
2
Apple/Tim Cook/Johnny Ive are all misleading the public when they say Apple cares about privacy and security. They have implemented new (unwanted) "features" in iOS 12 that scan your Photos for metadata and compare it to the users in your address book then "make suggestions" for things you might like or events you and your friends might have attended together for photo sharing, etc. That's done using the Location Services data (GPS) and the indexing of virtually eveything they can get their hands on in your computer or mobile device. So while they're making attempts to thwart outside invasions of privacy, their internal invasions or going stronger than ever.
Why can't we turn off the facial recognition in the Photos app? Why can't the tracking of our activities and data be disabled. I don't want "suggestions" for anything from Apple or any other company, for that matter. And, what's worse, if you don't use iCloud/Siri/Location Services/iMessages/AppleMusic/etc they still try to get your data with nearly constant calls home to Apple. My device contains my intellectual property not Apple's.
Privacy in Apple's world is only Apple's concept of what that term should mean. And, that's not necessarily how the rest of the world percieves it. So "Think Different" purely means "Think Apple's Way Or Else."
15
Apple, in the end, is a company that makes super-premium-priced products under labor conditions so extreme that suicide nets had to be placed around its Chinese (outsourced) production facilities, after some 14 workers leapt to their deaths. How is it that Apple company stores lavishly appointed and always located in the highest rent areas of town? Ultra fat margins, by making a high priced product at dirt cheap cost.
This is relevant because as the super-premium-priced unrivaled market leader, Apple has long had the power to change the appalling labor practices that are the tech hardware industry norm. Apple has long had a power that its low-priced competitors, with a fraction of Apple's market share, do not.
But Apple has done little of substance to change its horrific working conditions.
It's nice that Apple products are thoughtfully designed, and that its stores are spiffy and staffed by grinning 20 yr olds. It's commendable that Apple is relatively less atrocious regarding privacy. But Apple's conduct in the end is disgraceful.
16
It is extremely rare for a corporation to sustain its creative engine, growth, and profitability for 50 years. Apple and Intel share the longevity title in Silicon Valley but both are seeing geriatric problems. IBM is even older and more ossified these days. You can bet that the same will eventually happen to the current generation of tech giants.
5
Mr. Cook is not Steve Jobs. As nice as he undoubtedly is,
Cook is not an innovator. Jobs by all accounts was a madman
A terrible boss, not a good dad, but he had vision that turned into
Product It is not only Apple. There is a dearth of vision almost anywhere you turn. Some have discussed a change in culture.
Instead of looking at the future, we becoming more immersed in the past. Looking through the rear-view mirror, as McLuhan talked about
5
"But they are at least big ideas; they match in scope and daring what Apple was created to do. Let other companies handle streaming entertainment. To paraphrase a wise man: Does Mr. Cook want to sell prestige TV for the rest of his life, or does he want to change the world?"
Sorry, but I really don't see where Apple legitimately can claim ownership of a "big idea:"
1) The Apple Mac was an alternative to the IBM PC.
2) The iPod, the seminal product that transformed Apple into the mega-marketing power it is today, was an pedestrian product (an MP3 player) successfully (and expensively) marketed in a flashy anodized casing.
3) The iPhone? Basically a scaled down computer on a cellphone platform. But again, so much marketing flash as to be blinding to the pricetag.
To me, Apple's greatest success is how it has been able to market itself into the economic powerhouse it has become, not because of technical innovation. It is like Nike -- all trademark and little innovation beneath a flashy exterior.
3
@Dan88
Hmm, interesting points.
1) If the Mac was merely an alternative to the IBM PC, why was Apple "the personal PC" out and selling like crazy before IBM had one? Why did Microsoft try to copy the Mac OS with Windows so IBM PC could have a GUI?
2) Did you ever use an different MP3 player when the iPod came out?... Did your MP3 player have anything like iTunes to help catalog and manage your music seamlessly?
3) So why was this "scaled down computer on a cellphone platform" so much more successful than others? Have you ever tried developing and manufacturing a scaled down anything that looks and acts like something from Star Trek?
Apple maybe can't claim ownership of a "big idea", but they can claim ownership of taking big ideas bouncing around in a lab and integrating them into a product that works well, breaks ground in a product offered to the public, offered in a form factor that is usually very appealing, and makes lots of money from it.
If there's so little innovation beneath a flashy exterior, Apple would be done.
4
@historyRepeated
As to your points:
1) That it was a basic personal computer was my fundamental point. One that did word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Computing was going in that direction in the early years, and the Mac was not meaningfully different in functionality than the PC, which came to dominate in the business and home environment for decades. The cut-throat infighting between Apple and Microsoft went both ways and in any case was not my point. But it does underscore that money and market share was a fundamental motive.
2) I owned at least 3 or 4 MP3 players prior to the introduction of the iPod. They were all about $40 or less. I specifically rejected the iPod because of price and the proprietary format of the music files. I am my own manager of my music collection and in any case automatically organizing and moving data files between devices is a simple idea, not groundbreaking.
3) You are unintentionally making my point: The iPhone is primarily successful because of the packaging and the marketing, which originally piggy-backed off the iPod’s success. That you call it unique and compare it to Star Trek demonstrates the power of marketing.
You final comments characterize Apple as fundamentally piecing things together using existing technology, spiffing them up in a nice package and then trying to hit paydirt through marketing. That is basically my point.
1
@Dan88
Obviously Dan you haven't been paying attention to the hordes of teens standing in groups, their eyes fixed on the screens of their smart phones. That "scaled down computer" has changed the way most people live their lives. If it was so easy, why didn't anyone else do it before Jobs had the vision to see the future where EVERYONE would be staring at that small screen? Yes, they're marketing geniuses but you really have to put blinders on not to see where they have innovated.
This what banks have been doing for decades. In the banking industry it’s called, “walleting.” Put a fee on every conceivable function of the bank. Since banking got away with this behavior, or executive in communications, high tech, retail and others have picked up on that extortionist practices on consumers. Verizon believes every customer should be billed at least $250/ month. That’s the new business model. With a thieving administration we have in office now, all these monopolies are going to have their way, unless consumers find alternatives.
5
@DavidJ
The Apple credit card has no fees.
Maybe Steve Jobs wanted to change the world decades ago, and he kind of did, but Apple is not about that anymore. They just want to sell sell sell anything they can. I expect a car next, and maybe down the road an actual brain implant so they can totally control all of our "data".
I own an embarrassing amount of Apple products, and yes my iPhone is old. If I upgrade I will actually lose features I like, so I expect to have this phone for the next 10 years. Sorry, Apple.
8
The author writes as though Apple used to be a revolutionary company more interested in "changing the universe" than in making money.
This was never true.
Apple has always put profits first, and has never been revolutionary. It has always been significantly behind the curve in technological development.
The only thing Apple has ever been good at is marketing.
They sell the image that they are revolutionary, not interested in money, and counter-cultural.
And people believe them.
That explains why they can sell inferior products at absurdly high prices year after year.
15
Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and all are singing from the same old Milton Friedman "predatory capitalist" play book of 50 years ago. They are dollar seeking missiles looking for every nickel in your pocket and then want you to borrow more nickels to buy more of their "cool" stuff. What is truly, "the next big thing in tech"?
Imagine if these cash laden behemoths got together and purchased the Republican party (from the coal, gas, oilogarchs) and got behind the kind of leaders we and the world need immediately. Imagine if they had their new puppets (ex-Repubs - they'd throw McConnell, McCarthy, trump, and the whole bucking funch into the compost heap as worm food - all their good for anyway) pass legislation / regs that actually enhances the well being of all life and the natural world? Imagine if they set the right example for all business? Imagine the loyalty and gratitude people would feel. Imagine the enormous opportunities to invent and innovate new energy sources and systems; I'd bet that if companies and people like these folks decided to figure out how to capture and permanently sequester the excess CO2 in the atmosphere (using the CO2 as in the circular economy), we could clean up the world, the oceans and co-design the next stage for resources on earth. All this can be done. Is Tim Cook a real leader or just like the rest, just a little better at what he really does - taking the nickels out of your pocket. That is until we "all fall down."
9
@LoveCourageTruth- good one!
Nothing is forever. Some say that even the laws of physics governing this universe may have changed over time.
So, after the departure of a unique individual, the company he created is not doing the same thing as when he was running it.
Is that really news?
1
Your point is that Apple needs to change from a hardware company to a software company.
That's not "changing the world." That's changing Apple.
Post Jobs Apple does seem a shriveled source of brave new ideas. But the path you suggest is one that would require the company to transform itself before it "transforms the world."
4
Apple has invented nothing. Not the PC, not the graphical user interface (gleefully stolen from Xerox), not the PC, not the digital music player, not the mobile phone, not the TV. Rather, its genius has been perfecting the user experience, making technology easy an intuitive to use. If it can continue to do that, it will continue to win. Apple is the postmodern Ford.
6
"Apple could embark on a long-term project to create a privacy-minded search engine to rival Google’s."
This has already been done. It's a 3rd party search engine called DuckDuckGo, and it's available in macOS and iOS.
11
Apple under Cook is, not surprisingly, not Steve Jobs’s Apple. Sadly, a company that used to focus on innovation and customers is now primarily concerned with profits. I have nothing against making money. But it’s not sustainable to have a business strategy based on wringing out every dollar possible from a product you invented and for which there are now numerous, less expensive and truly competitive products. Lack of innovation and treating customers like chumps will contribute to Apple’s downfall. Apple products used to be innovative, elegantly designed devices that solved problems for people. They aren’t anymore and yet still command premium prices. I just replaced my old MacBook Pro with a new one. Want to connect a USB device? Buy an adapter. That seems to ruin whatever “elegance” the product may have had. And as others have said, the only thing “pro” about it is the price. If not for my immediate need to have a replacement and the ease of setting up a new one from a Time Machine backup, I would not have gotten a Mac. Mr. Cook doesn’t seem to understand that even long-time Mac loyalists like myself have a breaking point.
15
@Hoss yet you still buy Apple...when you stop, maybe Apple will listen.
I do believe it is now abundantly clear that Cook, while being smart and considerate is not an inventive genius. Apple has not introduced anything all that groundbreaking in the last decade (iWatch?), and have become as predictable as their old nemesis Microsoft. Because they have more money than god, they are not going away any time soon. Still it is sad to see a once innovative institution playing catch up and resigned to being tech's safe workhorse.
3
I still remember the days when personal computer was still a thing, how Apple used to mock IBM in commercials. Now, it seems to me, Apple has become the giant it used to tease. Perhaps it's time for us consumers to "Think Different" again.
9
I can't disagree with the author's assertions. Yet they don't negate the reality that Apple continues to produce reliable, intuitive and classically simple technical devices that earn customers' undying loyalty.
4
Okay, I guess we're all just waiting for the next 'big thing' in tech to be revealed, right? But innovation, creativity takes time, it's not going to happen every year at every Apple event, so back off! Ease up! For now Apple is offering 'services' they are 'servicing.' The iPhone, iPad, MacBook, they're all matured, nothing really new or exciting to reveal at this time. You mentioned privacy and security? Does it really get any better than Apple? Ding in the Universe? Inventions take time and that requires patience. I have have faith the seeds of Apple tree Cupertino will bloom once again!
4
The ability of a company, or an entire industry, to provide an uninterrupted stream of major innovations, each more groundbreaking than the last, is clearly finite. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most important rate limiting step in this process is the inability of the public to meaningfully absorb technological changes that come at them too hard and too fast.
13
Amazing to think of all the historic missed opportunities that Cook has squandered at the helm of Apple during its recent era of financial mega-strength. Instead, he sat there and did nothing. The quality of staple products like the MacBook Pro is declining. Apple is busy foisting unwanted features on iPhone users, while refusing to give consumers the functionality they want. Cook is betting that Apple can coast into the future in neutral, making only incremental changes that lack ambition...this will inevitably backfire.
10
@John
Hmm, I guess profitability is a bad word in the comment section here. Shame on Apple for trying to make more money in ways that don't appeal to Apple bashers.
1
In 10 years time Apples headquarter spaceship will be a ghost town. Product lifecycles of technology driven products are becomming shorter.
The Apple II computer that dominated the personal computer market was soon replaced by cheap IBM clones. Consumers can buy a cheap Chinese phone for half the price of an Iphone that does what an Iphone does. That does not bode well for Apples future.
5
Apple has always, from the Mac onwards, been about corralling their customers into a company town and shearing them regularly. From the very start, you had to go to Apple itself for any repairs or upgrades - and the preferred upgrade was to buy a new computer entirely, so actual upgrading was always hard.
They always tried to use their hardware to capture you into a sole software ecosystem, as with the iPod practically forcing you to buy your music through a computer company.
I credit Apple with one inadvertent good: they provided Microsoft with enough competition that we only laboured under a duopoly instead of a monopoly.
Even there, I would compare Apple to the "rebels in the foothills" of a banana republic, fighting against the "junta in the Palace" of Microsoft: that is, if the rebels ever won, they would surely install a regime even more oppressive than the current one; only valuable as an opposition.
I don't berate Apple users for their choice any more than I'd try to talk a devout Scientologist out of their beliefs; it would be just as pointless and painful. But Apple users do not have notably higher productivity or any other clear convenience that consumers of alternatives do not have, and nobody should give them even more business: we need more choices and competition, not less.
10
Great points, Farhad!
However, I do wish Apple were producing "countless upscale accessories" or even a few new, high-qualty, innovative pieces of hardware. Every year or so Apple gives up on a perfectly reasonable technology which could make them money and make our lives better and our houses more attractive. Apple printers, gone. Routers, gone. Monitors, gone. The list goes gone and gone.
Take Siri, please. How could Apple have missed the opportunity Amazon's Alexa seized? Take Apple Home, pretty please. How could Apple engineering talent possibly produce the smart home app that is the most difficult to interface with?
Even the most recent upgrade of the iPad Mini (which was rumored to be on the chopping block for a couple of years) is a half-effort for not supporting the latest Apple Pencil.
Here's a product idea Steve Jobs would have loved: Tivo for Apple TV. Maybe it's impossible to capture streaming internet programming coming through Apple TVs. I'd like to hear Mr. Jobs says it's impossible. If it is possible, I'd sure like to have it, would pay for it and hope Apple builds it.
Apple, it's not about pretty buildings, it about building pretty things that work insanely well.
[Alternatively, how much could Apple make closing down everything (really, everything) and just licensing their cute logo? Enough to keep Mr. Cook and a team of lawyers and accountant in chips for quite a while I bet.]
3
To answer your last question about whether Mr. Cook wants to change the world, I know his shareholders want him to keep growing Apple's profits. That is the only job that Mr. Cook has. And given the competitive threats of Samsung, Google etc., that is a very challenging job.
4
Yes, it is sad but it's true: Apple's success was because of Steve Jobs. They've got nothing else. The company is nothing without him. There has not been a single notable innovation since he left, and there will likely not be one.
Of course, it's still immensely profitable and will be for years to come, but it's in a slow decline, and will be until it dies a slow death. But let's not forget that this is a good thing: There will be other entrepreneurs like Steve, building different products and different companies.
18
Monetization will get in the way of some of Mr. Manjoo's otherwise good ideas.
Google Search is free because of advertisements, which exploit users' privacy. Apple isn't infinitely rich. I think it would have to monetize search (again at the cost of its users' privacy) to be a significant competitor. I'm an Apple critter, but I doubt I'd pay Apple for search when I can get it 'free' from Google.
iMessage? Maybe. The incremental cost of extending iMessage to everybody currently outside Apple's walled garden could perhaps be absorbed as an ongoing cost. I might even be willing to pay a nominal fee, say 0.5¢, for messages sent to non-Apple destinations if really good privacy were guaranteed.
In my view, however, these potential forays into a better world should wait until Apple re-learns how to build a reliable laptop keyboard. It also needs to lash its Odysseus (Sir Ive) to the mast until Apple sails out of earshot of Circe's imprecations: "thinner is better....industrial anexoria is great...".
5
In some ways Apple is beginning to remind me of Microsoft and the ways are not nice. I have long resented how Microsoft decided that THEY should regulate how many computers we can use our copy of MS Office on if those computers are ours. Then, having us pay a yearly fee to "subscribe" to MS Office was another clever moneymaking trick. Apple is following in their footsteps with some of its more recent "shenanigans" about how we get iMacs, iPods, iPhones, etc., fixed.
How about a new old idea: I buy it, I OWN it. I have the choice of getting it fixed by Apple, an Apple technician or not. And Apple doesn't run fancy check ups on it that I have to pay for because they want more of my money.
17
I used to be a real fan of Apple since my purchase of an all-I-could-afford Mac SE, way back when. I took Macs apart, updated software, ran utilities, scan for viruses, etc, both persoannly and at the USEPA.
The best Mac that I (unfortunately) couldn't afford to have bought was a Mac SE/30 with System 9.x. Fast and reliable, nada mas. And Apple's hardware was very reliable.
It became frustratingly apparent that Apple liked to cripple it's low end Macs. A tower that I bought had sound so low as that you literally had to stick your ear on the speaker, until a class action law suit caused a fix. Its special floppy drive formatting made a walled garden. When iTunes appeared, Apple's garden walls became higher. Dealing with the computer for the rest of us's currently annoying dumbed down clicklet icon interface has become too much. As for the AppleStores in shopping centers, I stay away from that people soup and the people it now calls geniuses.
10
Apple’s coziness with the Chinese government worries me a lot. Why cooperate at all with suppression and mass surveillance? Same for Google which is helping enforce the Great Firewall. Tim Cook does not impress me as a thinker, but he could help his standing here in the western world by cutting all possible ties to China. No manufacturing, no IP transfers, and no help to mass human suppression/surveillance. Be a company we and Steve Jobs would be proud of.
4
@JTFJ2
Why hit upon Apple?. China is not the USA.
China makes most of the worlds ingredients for our Rx drugs if not the medicine itself ,would you say to our American drug companies to stop producing our medicine
in China for political reasons ?
1
@JTFJ2
Not so cozy anymore though. Apple sales are plummeting in China. Price and competition have begun to halt their market expansion. Add to that, this administration's feud with Huawei (which has now become a matter of Chinese pride) and Apple will soon kiss the Chinese market goodbye.
2
@Carlyle T. Yes. Stop pandering to that odious regime and the cult of Xi.
1
In the late 1970s when IBM was broken up for anti-trust issues and the old AT&T in the early 1980s. Apple being a $1 trillion corporation should be sending up alarms. The same goes for companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. High tech is getting bigger and bigger, but in fewer and fewer hands.
You can say the same thing about T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. The new AT&T is starting to resemble the old AT&T. While tech companies are resembling the old IBM.
There is too much personal information floating into all these companies, and many are using it without anyone's permission. Even the old IBM and AT&T do that.
If "2001: A Space Odyssey" were made today; Apple would be emblazoned everywhere, Google/Facebook be used fro space to Earth communication, and Emirates would be running space shuttles.
In the original movie it was AT&T Picturephone and PanAm.
It is no small wonder why the EU is doing things to rein in high tech, than the United States.
Finally, instead of investing in making the Internet much more secure, Apple is talking about another rho hum streaming service. As we have seen, all too painfully, the world is one breach away from exposing many millions of people private information. High tech is no longer leading the way; they are too self absorbed with profits, patent lawsuits and greed.
16
My iPhone 6 is around four years old now and continues to do everything I want it to do: I make calls and text, read the NYT, check out the weather, get directions/navigate, sometimes look something up online, take pictures.
It may be that the new phones are a zillion times better, but even if they are, it doesn't matter to me; no new feature is worth the cost.
I do not relish the idea of phones going into landfills, and I figure the fewer phones I buy in my lifetime, the fewer phones go into landfills. I also don't relish the idea of spending $1000. No amount of features will change that. And I do not want to spend any more time than I already do on my phone. I know I spend too much time as it is, and if the new features are alluring I might spend more. I don't want that in my life, so I'm actively choosing not to invite it.
I enjoy my iPhone but I'm not a committed Apple user. When this phone dies, as it inevitably will, I'm open to another brand of phone. Whatever I get, it will NOT cost $1000 because I refuse to pay that much.
47
@Kristina
If you return your old iPhone to Apple, they recycle it instead of sending it to a landfill.
1
There was an article in Atlantic magazine long time ago titled "Who Killed the Internet". It was Steve Jobs.
Internet was developed by government and schools using taxpayer money. It was supposed to follow the pubic library model with all the information all the time for everyone.
Steve Jobs was a visionary who also had rabid followers who were willing to pay for books and music and other services.
Their platform became the consummate middle man making tons of money providing so called services. They can also charge hefty amount of money to those who want to supply application for their platform.
Judge Greene broke up AT&T that paved way to all the innovations that we have seen since 1980. This includes all high technology comapnies.
Apple is acting exactly like AT&T did for access to their network. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon -- they are in the business to monetize, not innovate.
6
The Apple bashers are out in force, still pining for Steve Jobs. I'm very happy with all of my Apple products and the customer service that Apple provides. If they have found a way to integrate more services to make more money and expand the business, then that's what a successful corporation does. It's too bad the disappointed commenters feel that new and shocking revelations aren't blowing them away every few months.
6
@Conner
What's really disappointing about recent Apple is not the lack of new products--no matter how game changing they used to be--but the lowering of quality standards. My most recent MacBook Pro has had more serious problems than all of the past Apple products combined that I have had over 40 years. The decline of quality in this model is shocking. I hope Apple wakes up.
@Che Beauchard Similar experience. One MacBook with a keyboard failing 3 times and requiring half a new computer each time to replace the few defective keys. Product design madness!
I am cheap. I used iPods as free wifi phones for a long time.
Now I use a year old iPhone SE bought new at Walmart a year ago for $150 and just bought a spare refurb for $70. Walmart again.
I use Walmart Tracfone aka Total Wireless, AKA Verizon paying $35 a month for Unlimited talk and text with 5 GB data.
No deals anywhere for a one phone user that beats this cost.
I did just sign up for the new Apple $10 a month feed, but it's clumsy and worthless. I will quit that before the free month runs out..
In addition my Air 11 late 2010 bricked on OS upgrade long ago.
Apple better wake up, soon!
I also watched the entire boring intro last week, 2 hours of employees clapping...
Typed on a 5 year old WIN 10 tower
7
Apple is caught in the profit trap. Any new innovation is seen as too risky compared to investing its profits into T-bills. It doesn’t have enough competition to warrant bold innovation on its smartphone platform.
The news that they were offering a credit card seems to validate the idea that once companies become profitable and successful enough their only rational goal from a fiduciary perspective is to become a financial services company.
The weird thing about this is that their cash on hand is enough to pay for the inflation adjusted price of both the Apollo program and the Manhattan project.
Cook has been a fantastic guardian of fiduciary responsibility, but he’s so lacking in any vision when you consider he could actually buy access to the moon but instead chooses to launch a credit card.
3
@Mobocracy > Apple is caught in the profit
> trap. Any new innovation is seen as too risky
> compared to investing its profits into T-bills.
This is how American auto thought about things in the 1960s and early 70s. Look where they are now.
3
@Mobocracy
Strange, I thought corporations were supposed to find new ways to make profits and expand their business. I guess that's why there are so many Apple stockholders who are not wound up in such extraordinary "visionary" hoopla. Making sound products and expanding business is good enough for me.
1
Salient points throughout.
The market is now lead by iPhones and Galaxies. With smartphones entering their teenage years, they're entering the awkward phase. Odd cutouts, awkward ergonomics, and foldable screens? Oh, and they cost $1k-2k. It hurts.
Smart phones no longer have the cultural cache they once maintained. They're a commodity. You are no longer a source of envy if you have the latest Galaxy or iPhone. Apple knows this, so they're turning inward, and looking at the device's 'soul', ha. AKA: services. What can it give me? News delivered reliably? Family-centered entertainment? Sure, for $9.99 a month...maybe times two or three...? Perhaps a single Prime-style subscription is in order.
Would love to see them make the privacy-minded products you envisioned.
2
I would have been more impressed if they said they were going to spend a year focusing on nothing else but improving auto correct and siri.
19
@Alan P Sanders
Oh, dear. This sounds a bit like a Henry Ford strategy. If I remember correctly, GM ate Ford's lunch during Ford's "sabbatical."
I agree with much of this article, but I take issue with the assertion that "everyone who can afford an iPhone already has one". This is simply not true, even among the well-to-do. Perhaps everyone who can afford to and *wants to* can have an iPhone, but that's not quite the same thing. I used to have an iPhone 3GS back in the day, but switched to Android 7 years ago and have no intention of switching back. (Spare me the tired cliché's about the relative merits of the two systems; that's not what this comment is about.). Furthermore, much of my extended family are Apple fans but they already use WhatsApp for communication precisely because iMessage is not cross-platform. The next interesting development will be folding phones, if anyone can get it beyond a flashy prototype and make it at reasonable cost. Is Apple even working on this?
6
I am poor now. I no longer am able to freely buy Apple products though I wish I had when I was able. Now I buy old-very old-product but it is superior to other computers. I do not use a mobile. I do use an old MacBook Pro that I love deficient as it it.
I have owned several Dell computers. They were a mixed group. Two were terrific and one-an expensive device-was a great disappointment.
5
Long-time iPhone and iPad user with 4 kids and a spouse also users of multiple devices. No complaints. my iPad going on 4 years. No problems.
3
@John YOu missed the point.
While we’re considering what Apple could do, how about a simple, obvious matter. How about an iPhone that works AS A PHONE? In tests iPhone was way down the list in quality with the 6S and has only become lower on the list since. For some reason, non-smart phones outperformed smart phones!
5
The genius has left the building. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs. The rarest breed of all.
2
@Jason Sypher Edison was a chronic bumbler, and Ford was a fascist. Better examples might be needed to compare with Jobs.
Oh, how novel, an article about how tired Apple has become. Personally, I'd argue Apple naysayers are far more tired than Apple itself. The biggest challenge for every massive company is continued growth, and it is naive to expect the wheel to be re-invented by the same company every 5 to 10 years. I mean, please...
Also, the evolution of AirPods could become the next layer of interactivity, succeeding where products like Google Glass have failed.
10
Though I have used Apple products for 29 years starting withe the Quadra series and now have a laptop, iPhone and Apple watch I will have to say the corporate culture has gone down hill.
Up until about 7 years ago Apple employees were attentive and responsive to any problems that arose with your product which was not often. Now with many visits for many issues the employees are all about APPLE and not about the customer.
I have heard multiple times "wow you have a real antique" when referring to my iPhone 5. It still worked fine for me so why should I throw money away just to enrich Cook and the investors.
Apple if you're listening hear take a look at Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard. They build great products, like Apple, they guarantee theirs for life, UNLIKE Apple, and they do not want you to buy what you don't need. They can still make great profits, treat their employees and customers GREAT and be responsible World Citizens.
Get back to innovating and stop shaming your customers for using your devices until they die.
72
@J. R. So agree with you about Patagonia; one of the best and responsible companies ever ( love Costco too ).
9
@J. R. Even something that is 18 months old, they will be snotty about. I'd say it's training policy.
3
@J. R. I always joke that I'm just not cool enough to own an iPhone. And the attitude you describe from Apple workers is the reason why. When some 20 something with no mortgage or children to raise starts talking about how a phone is an 'antique', it's more than insulting. It's totally tone deaf. If a phones that's a few years old is an antique, than it's implied that the phone owner, likely in their 30's or 40's is old and outdated as well. The entire concept of branding and influencing is predicated on making people feel like they have to own some item or belong to some group to be relevant. Even when it's obviously not worth the time or money. (cough, Facebook).
I personally like antiques, like tables made of real wood that stand the test of time, and not press board recycled wood chips that falls apart in a few years.
I'm in my 30's but I still remember products that were built to last, and consumers could trust that if they spent a hefty amount on an item, a lifetime guarantee was a given, not an exception. But I'm not in the income bracket where one can afford to knowingly spend $500-1000 on disposable goods.
5
Mr. Manjoo's article has clearly hit a nerve. Its title, The Incredible Shrinking Apple, reminded me of a comment made by one of my colleagues when the $5 billion, 2.8 million square foot Apple Park in Cupertino was under construction. He said that when highly successful corporations build huge monuments like this to themselves, expect a major downturn in their business.
In 2011, Steve Jobs claimed Apple would build the best office building in the world (I disagree) such that architectural students from around the world would visit. They cannot. Last year, Tim Cook said the campus cannot be open to the public due to security concerns. So much for Jobs' vision. The campus, concealed behind man-made berms and landscaping, represents Apples approach to be inwardly Apple focused rather than consumer focused. As an early adopter of Apple in 1992, i concur with many of the critical comments herein.
It will be interesting to see what will happen to the Apple Campus forty or fifty years from now. Most likely it will considered Cupertino's white elephant and be torn down as was the 1950's IBM campus is South San Jose. It certainly won't be able to be re-purposed for another company.
25
This article and some of the comments are a bit misinformed. Apple has seldom led the way. Instead Apple views markets or products and disrupts those eco-systems with better designs or different approaches. The iPod wasn't the first digital music player, but it changed the landscape of personal music. Likewise, the iPhone was hardly the first cellular, or even smart, phone. But it's idea of congregating features on one device was brilliant. There are many other instances of Apple wading into other markets and then causing disruption with better-thought-out concepts. That is the "core" (sorry) of Apple. So when the author thinks he has found a fault, all he's really found (in my opinion) is Apple's standard modus operandi which continues to play out in all its designs, including smartly produced new ones such as AirPods.
21
@sugarandd - I had a Palm Treo smartphone before the iPhone even existed. It was fine for my purposes. No GPS/mapping app (which truly is a killer app for smartphones) but it had a web browser, calendar, email, and MP3 player, which other than maps is 99% of what I use a smartphone for. I have always been amazed when people say that Apple invented the smartphone.
4
@sugarandd
You are SO right. Historically, Apple is seldom the innovator, but rather the perfecter.
Apple has long stopped being the company that had a vision and a capability to achieve such heights.It's now simply about making money and lots of it. And as someone who has been a loyal Mac user since the very beginning,that's hugely disappointing. Apple used to be different. It's not anymore...it's just another big tech company.
37
Apple is no ordinary company? How so?
Maybe Apple is different from other companies in it's capacity to disappoint consumers. And maybe that's the fault of these particular consumers, the type of personal computer and mobile phone consumers who believed Apple invented those things when all Apple really did was make them cool.
2
Apple sold itself and the Macintosh pc as the great anti-authoritarian tool. Many fell for that yarn, hook, line and sinker. Now Apple is politically and economically a subversive force with overpriced products couched in pretentious design and behavior. It has made an art form of selling old wine in new bottles, making deals with the very authorities that it positioned itself against, enabling their surveillance of our daily lives. Apple is not alone in its industry, but it certainly is the most sanctimonious in its industry. This article deserves to be expanded and serialized. Thank you.
5
I just don't see how raising the price of phones to $1,200 is going to help their business in the long run. They have a customer base that borders on a cult, but most of those people are clinging to 3-4-year-old iPhone 6s and 7s and have no affordable path forward.
If Apple wants to have a significant services business they have to A) Find a way to hold on to iPhone users who don't want to spend $1000 or $1200 for their next phone and B) Sell services that appeal to people with Android phones. At the moment it doesn't look like Apple has figured out either of these things.
5
@Tom
Apple is selling the iPhone SE for $350 on the Apple clearance site. It has the guts of the iPhone 6 in the smaller chassis of the iPhone 5. It has been postulated that Apple is doing this to test the consumer response to a lower cost option and the classic iPhone design after disappointing iPhone X. If true, this is quite a departure from Steve Jobs' approach. Jobs was a true visionary. His brilliance was to develop products that the consumer did not know they wanted. He did not rely on consumer research or focus groups. I finally replaced my iPhone 4 with the SE and am quite pleased. The X is cool but totally impracticle for me.
1
@joe Yes you can buy used SEs for around $100. You can buy Iphone 5cs for less. But that is not a path forward for people with 6s and 7s who want the larger screen.
1
@Tom I agree with you. I use the iPhone 6 but the 5 series, which is very affordable, has too small a screen for me. I am especially concerned since this is my only Internet connection.
A privacy-minded search engine to rival Google? Just download Firefox to your iPhone, install the DuckDuckGo search plug-in, and you’re up and running. I haven’t used Google or Chrome in years and I am no longer inundated by intrusive targeted advertising.
3
@Jim DuckDuckGo is good; another private search engine and the one I use is Startpage, formerly called Ixquick. I stopped using Google sixteen years ago and have never once used Chrome. I also use an ad blocker and if I land on a site that tells me to turn it off in order to read the article, I just leave. It is possible to live without things, after all. Good calls all around!
Taking away the cd/dvd drive from the MacBook Pro is not progress. I hate the hassle of attaching an external drive for this purpose.
25
At least we have Elon Musk to take over from Steve Jobs.
The Tim Apple flub was also an acknowledgement that Cook is ordinary.
2
Sorry, @Scott, but the reality is that Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of the counterculture.
9
@Scott,
The Tim Apple and Marillyn Lockheed flubs tell us more about Trump's brain than Elon Musk.
It's not easy to build a company and disrupt entire industries Apple did that few times with Steve Jobs at the helm. Lately Apple isn't disrupting, it's letting others lead the charge inspire of having resources - Tesla, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, Google, Airbnb...yes it comes down to what the author say "the new services aren't terrible.." and their strategy will work okay. There is a lot Apple could/can do
I was the Moscone Center when Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone on Jan 9, 2007. I was amazed but had absolutely no idea how much it would change the future behavior of billions of people on the planet. How many hours a day do you spend on your mobile phone?
Over the convening years, much to my family's chagrin, I've owned and used just about every piece of gear made by Apple. It's been a very satisfying experience with the knowledge that eventually everything that Apple makes will become outdated and useless.
Without revealing sources and methods, hand held devices will be replaced with technologies we will wear that includes glasses that look and feel like regular glasses but provide the functionality of digital phones. It will only get better. My only complaint is being born too early to experience technologies that are still forming in the imaginations of future entrepreneurs.
3
As a computer science student who’s followed Apple intensely for years, I completely agree. Apple will lead in AR. No other company is as good at combining hardware and software, the fusion of which will be the factor deciding the success of the category. Additionally, Apple has the consumer trust for users to strap object-recognizing cameras to their heads. Glass didn’t have any of those things. I’m so excited for the future!
2
@Andrew As
Long as by “lead in AR” you don’t mean how they have “led” with Siri, HomePod, maps, butterfly keyboards, bulimic device design etc. They do a lot amazing stuff and then roll out some real duds.
Apple lost its visionary reputation years ago. All the big ideas mentioned sound great, but it would take a complete makeover of Apple's executive team and BOD to occur. And that won't happen. True innovation comes from small teams of motivated workers. Everybody at Apple is resting and vesting.
8
IMO, Apple deliberately pretends that older equipment is obsolete. What probably happened is that the key software developers for a particular device move on to either another company or to a new computer, the new software maintenance can no longer figure out all of the unique intricacies of the original device. That makes the software exceptionally fragile and eventually unusable.
SPECIFICS: My wife and I each received an iPad2 on our 50th wedding anniversary: March 2012. Slowly, the downloading speed of my iPad declined and presently needs to "reload" pages when they come into memory. Often, downloads are not completely made. Eventually, I took it to the local Apple store where they tested it and said that I should purchase a newer model. Instead I had them do what they said was a total 'reset' of the system and no longer use the iPad 2 for my email. I also deleted all programs which I don't use. I still have the same problem.
What's interesting is that my system presently uses 1.3GB of an available 11.4GB. This amounts to using only 11.4% of the available memory. It seems to me that it is an Apple systems programming problem and and one of incompetence rather than simple obsolescence.
If my assumptions are true, my question isn't why our federal government isn't investigating Apple's behavior.
I apologize to if my assumptions are incorrect, but I can't understand why my system worked fine and using only 11.4% of my available memory does not function.
6
@Enarco
I swear I don't work for Microsoft but as I mentioned in another comment, I LOVE my Surface Go and the rest of my family loves my partner's Surface Pro. It provides a lot more functionality and value for the money.
I was a lifelong Apple user , but I couldn't bring myself to buy an iPad when I saw how it compared to Microsoft's Surface.
2
@Enarco
Your iPad2 is fine, that's not the problem. The problem is, it's fine, but for the average web use patterns of 8 years ago. A hint at what may be one of the main factors is to be found here: https://speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-page-bloat/
@Enarco
You’re confusing storage with memory. You have 11 GB of available storage, but only 512 MB of memory. All active apps need to be running from memory because it’s many times faster than storage. Web pages have been getting larger because they can; both bandwidth and processing keep increasing.
Apple remains my favorite company ever, but its products have lacked much in the way of inspiration for the better part of a decade. Not to mention their increasingly esoteric product mix—why in the world do we need an iPad mini, iPad Air, iPad Pro (in two sizes), not to mention a plain product known only as "iPad"? To use just one example.
I keep waiting for Apple to show it still has a soul and keep coming up disappointed.
2
Apple is stuck in its vanity. It used to be about what you can do with an Apple product. It was a tool to accomplish amazing things, both in the arts and technology. Now we have devices that frustrate for what you can't do. It is making peripheral devices which were new two years ago obsolete unless you purchase new devices to connect to them. The professional user has been abandoned. MacBook Pro? Not so much. But more emojis? Check. And what about being able to superimpose a dinosaur over a video of your kids birthday party? Wow!
6
"As I watched Apple’s event, I felt the future shrink a little. In its gilded middle age, Apple is turning into something like a digital athleisure brand, stamping out countless upscale accessories for customers who love its one big thing, a company that has lost sight of the universe and is content merely to put a ding in your pocketbook."
This is what you get when you have a Tim Cook at the helm. Thing is, Mr. Cook has done a very good job at managing Apple. But he is no visionary, he's more of an operations guy. The vision and creativity died with Steve Jobs. So all thats left is sameness, safety and just improving on what its already done, it's what you get when you put an MBA in charge of something. Apple is what you get when a college dropout who has an inspiration and the drive to force it into being. As the article here points out, it doesn't have to be this way but Apple lives largely on Steve Jobs ghost. Its become the General Motors of the tech world, reliable, safe well packaged but nothing really new and compelling. Apple I think is a spent force creatively, there just doesn't seem to be anyone there, certainly not Tim Cook, who has the imagination and vision to take risks. The next wave of innovation and answers to problems (such as the dominance of Google and Facebook) is likely to come from someone else.
5
What I wish is that Apple would build a computer for the rest of us. Remember those days? I feel as if Apple has totally forgotten that some of us still use computers.
11
@Muriel Pritchett
Try an iMac. It's a really great computer, Muriel.
1
If by "pocketbook", you are meaning paying creative content providers their fair share, then I have to agree with you since Apple is the only one that came to the table in support of artists, musicians, and writers. You didn't see that from Amazon, Google, or Spotify.
Consumers want champagne and caviar at beer and bread prices. Content developers need to make a living providing content and Apple is trying to play a delicate balancing game but understands that without the content providers, they don't have a business since most of the trillion dollar worth comes from the selling of content (not hardware).
It wasn't that Steve Jobs made anything revolutionary, he just bought existing and repackaged. iTunes: bought and repacked, Mac OSX: BSD UNIX rebranded while at NeXT and brought over to Apple. So seeing Steve Jobs as innovative and Tim Cook as the opposite is just being dishonest with yourself.
Should more be spent on innovation and R&D, probably, but that applies to almost 99% of US corporations who feel rather than risk $2 million on unproven technology, spend $200 million on proven technology that consumers are already buying. The problem is these corporations (Microsoft, Google, and Amazon included) can afford to just pay for innovation rather than take the risk themselves.
Is this bad, not necessarily. It only seems bad for those expecting innovation from these companies.
3
Ouch. This stings, but I have to agree with the argument (but not the recommendations). Apple needs to get back to basics and think of new, breakthrough value they can create for their customers, not just incremental optimizations of current products. Cook's expertise in operations is clearly coming through in what we've seen from Apple in the last several years.
@TeoNYC The essential problem is that you can't just decide to be "innovative." If you could, everyone would. You either are, or you are not.
3
i've been reluctant to upgrade my old iphone because it still works mostly ok, but also because i don't particularly like the new gigantically priced and gigantically sized new ones.
finally, i think apple lost me for the foreseeable future when my dad's barely 2-year old ipad suddenly died (without having been dropped or submerged or anything), and the apple store asked me $299 for "fixing" it (probably just replacing it for another used one) without even attempting to diagnose what is wrong with it.
bye bye apple.
18
Maybe it'd also be better if Apple went back to doing the things right that they used to do right. For instance, the utility of desktop Mac's software is slowly being ground down by Apple's drive to make them look more like mobile devices. To take just one example, Apple had a great word processor in Pages '09 but instead of continuing it's development they trashed it, came out with a new Pages with greatly reduced functionality, in order to make it look like an iPad app - for instance, locking a menu on the side of the document window so that you can't have two windows open side by side on most machines. Who cares if they look alike or not? Even Apple Stores clerks will whisper to you when you complain that they know Apple is ruining its desktops. I could go on... None of that would be happening if Steve were still alive. He used to walk down to the Apple Store in Palo Alto from his house and talk to customers. But the Apple of today has closed the loop.
12
$1,000 for an iphone broke the bank. There is NO REASON to "upgrade" anymore. It's a PHONE, although it's the internet/computer/camera that provides the utility. HOWEVER, there is no reason to pay such exorbitant prices for these products (NOT original, but copies of existing technology when first introduced), anymore than for Mac computers and tablets. Attempting to compete in the already-flooded and quality-deficient "video streaming" market will NOT be kind to shareholders.
That big glass donut is looking more anachronistic every day.
10
@Slann
Slann, if you want a phone there are plenty of options for $50. An iPhone is a computer that happens to also be a phone.
If price is a concern, one is not apples target customer. This is not an inclusive brand.
The government needs to play a role in protecting privacy. And what could Apple do about cell phones that use the Android operating system from Google, which is on the majority of cell phones? The Android system supposedly collects much more private information that Apple's system. Google apps are designed to maximize data collection. The government needs to make sure their is transparency so that people can find out what personal data is being collected and what is being done with it. The internet of things promises to take personal data collection to the another level. Already most TVs for sale are smart TVs and they are sold cheaply because the money is more in selling personal data than selling TVs. Does the American public really want the internet of things? Probably not assuming mot people still care about privacy.
Facebook and Google are not demons. Oh how the media loves freedom of the press until it means... competition.
1
Perhaps what we really need is just a little less innovation and a little less automation. I am not for the dumbing down of society. Anyone who thinks we're living smarter has the wool pulled over their eyes. Yes, Apple revolutionized hardware and essentially communication via that hardware, but maybe we got too far ahead of ourselves with all of this. Maybe we should share less online and do more things in person. More face to face conversations. More holding tangible things in your hands to read that aren't behind a glowing screen. We've created a monster, but we do little to consider how to tame it.
And yes, I realize the irony of that statement while I type from my Mac.
3
I'm losing the faith. The new iMac is priced outrageously in terms of storage capacity. You ain't worth it anymore, Ted!
I didn't want this to happen, but it has.
5
"In its gilded middle age, Apple is turning into something like a digital athleisure brand..."
This is the most apropos summary of Apple's current trajectory I've read. They are happy to pump out incremental updates of their flagship products and co-opt existing products and services to sell to their loyal consumers. This is still a profitable business model, but they are getting away from what their core business used to be - technological innovation and disruption. Nobody is asking Apple to spend billions on developing a $1000 iPhone with 3 cameras instead of two, yet that seems to be their main priority in recent years. Let's hope they get back to their roots in the coming years.
10
I am losing faith in Apple every time it announce new products and services. The company is clearly well-positioned to create something great, but the company has been generating mediocre derivatives ever since Job's death.
The company's new product update in the past has been "equivalent in price", but vastly faster, improved hardware/software, but now it's the other way around. The functions are equivalent to last generation's, but the price is vastly higher. And including cheap, slow charger for a $1,000 phone product? That just shows how Apple has become a company driven by profits, not innovation or real-world solutions.
11
@Mike
". . . generating mediocre derivatives ever since Job's death."
If there were truth in advertising, that would be Apple's new slogan. Could also be Tim Cook's epitaph (but I doubt it will be. See below).
Companies like Apple can skate by for a long time on what the MBAs call "brand equity". Cook is skilled at eliminating inefficiencies in the supply chain and keeping margins healthy, but under Cook it's highly doubtful the company will ever again be the innovation powerhouse it once was. Those days are long gone.
3
At least Apple respects our privacy, doesn't collect data and doesn't sell user data.
2
@AC I love optimism! But your supposition is highly suspect.
2
You really believe that “Apple respects your privacy”? They just haven’t been as blatant as Facebook.
Sound quality on IPhones is terrible. My old Nokia flip is better for that. Sometime you actually need to use it as a PHONE. For that much money I expect better.
4
Apple needs to reinvent itself so it can reinvent the world
I see the need for the seamless integration of hardware and services.
If I was Mr. Cook I would step aside so somebody with the imagination and big dreams can dream of a IoT integrated future.
Apple has lost the imagination. I see my 2013 Apple MacBook Pro as a much more polished product than my wife's newest 2017 MacBook Pro. The attention for the detail at Apple is long gone.
Sell
4
Apple's problem is that the smart phone and tablets are mature technologies. All they can do is add doo-dads. A new "operating system" is just more doo-dads and gimmicks, nothing that improves the guts. It's like cars. You can add anti-lock brakes or heated armrests, but it still does basically the same thing in the same way. Apple, with all its creativity, should be thinking about radically changing the way a phone works. And if the phone has hit a dead end, invent something new like they have done before.
They also need to work on simplifying OSX and making it play nicer. They lost their way after cats. The cloud now runs everything and the cloud often just gets in the way. I still like their products and think they're better than the competition but I resigned from the cult long ago and now only recommend them conditionally.
11
Steve Jobs was a visionary, Tim Cook may be a good manager, but doesn't seem to have anything close to that kind of vision. The iPhone revolutionized mobile devices. How often does one idea literally take over the world like that did. They need to take a bit of that trillion dollars and research what the world needs next.
5
Really 🙄
So does google, so does samsung, so does huawei, so does tesla, so do the real estate moguls (buy “low” sell stratospherically high), so do the pharma companies.
Wow. Someone really drank the Kool-Aid Steve Jobs was handing out.
Apple was a company ruled by a selfish, self-promoting jerk whose creativity and vision was comprised of pushing truly creative people to make something that would impress the buying public. Admirable in a middle manager, not a savior.
The Great Oz/Jobs was never the Wizard of Menlo Park. Jobs wouldn't have been able to get a job with Edison. While Apple products are cool, and beautiful, they are just a company worth a trillion dollars. They will act like companies always act.
In their self-interest.
48
@Nick R.
maybe, but Jobs created one of the most valuable companies with one of the best selling products in the history of capitalism.
6
@marcus
Capitalism. There's your problem right there.
This author sure believes in the infallibility of Apple's software and solutions, their vertical-ity, their 800lb gorilla-ness. But a search engine ? A video hosting app ? A social network ? Surely Apple can build a better mousetrap than Google, YouTube, and Facebook... fifteen years ago. So they should reach across the isle and embrace the proles, well, it's been years since I used iTunes on a PC but I still have the scars. As for secure messaging,I have no particular reason to trust Apple any more than any other Death Star. But I can appreciate the critic / fan's review of the new album: "I liked their old stuff better, now they're just phoning it in."
3
"Some (or many) of these may be dumb ideas"
...Like making Bing the default search engine on iPhone? or copying Instagram? Correctamundo.
I appreciate the main thrust of the article - apple does need bigger ideas (and I trust we will see those - eventually) - but these suggestions border on completely ludicrous.
4
My casual observation is that their products are becoming less and less intuitive. You need that phone number for support when the instructions you read forecast results that don't match the actions you're observing.
3
You must understand it is no longer about the device. It is about having us live in an Apple universe that is quite difficult to leave.
All the things you have stashed in their cloud. If you take them back, where will you put them? As software changes, how will you ever see them if Apple isn't housing them?
They don't need to be great if they keep you - me - captive. They simply need you to keep paying for all the things they offer - music, data storage, Apple TV - and whatever else they bring on.
Maybe they might even invent a new device. I'd like a flying car, personally. Or a time machine.
5
The real lesson of Apple is that you can’t teach genius and a good corporate steward, which Cook certainly is, can only take you so far.
When Jobs died he left a few years of guidance for what to do next. Apple has been bereft of good ideas since that ran out , and has had some real stinkers. The absence of Jobs’ notoriously obsessive management style has resulted in all sorts of sloppiness that nearly never occurred prior.
Anyone who thinks Jobs would have run out of ideas doesn’t understand what it means to have a mind like Jobs - unsurprisingly since so few do. People take for granted the contributions made to technology under his leadership because it is now so natural it feels indubitable. This is itself half his genius: let us not forget that people thought you could never have a single button on a phone or get people to type on glass, and for anyone who used decades of Palm Pilot or IPAQ (or still some android phones today for that matter...) that seemed perfectly plausible.
3
Apple reminds me of another fading icon, Harley Davidson. They both share an aging cohort of loyalists. Folks willing to pay a premium for commodity products. I would have loved to see Apple enter the autonomous electric car business, but that project appears to have been abandoned. To its, credit Harley is at least trying to evolve with an electric motorcycle.
1
The same argument could apply to all the big tech companies - Google, Facebook, Amazon. Now that their management level employees are all billionaires (literally), why not start to alter these engines of the future to make them more safe, more secure, less open to being compromised by evil people? Maybe you'd make a little bit less money, but how many more billions do you need to feel like you've made it? And just imagine - you could truly change the world for the better!
2
I've been an Apple user from the start, but last year I bought a $100 Moto phone and it works great. I spend my days editing on an older Mac, but it might as well be a PC, as the Adobe interface is nearly identical.
Point being, other than nostalgia or an ease with the OS, there is no compelling reason to overspend on Apple products. None.
6
Apple makes pretty gadgets. They're very good at building them, and very, very good at selling them.
But, in terms of software and services that people want to use, they're way behind the competition. The Surface (Microsoft) computer I've used for years? Apple has nothing like it, with a detachable keyboard *and* a touch screen and it can do anything including running a big IDE for software development.
A long time ago, I was an Apple fan, but I went with Microsoft because (unlike Apple) Microsoft delivers the values that business needs. Today, that's even more true. Microsoft is about a decade ahead of Apple for IT security (although perfection is not possible).
To me, Apple is still the company that sold Macs by lying cleverly about a specific competitor with their "Hello I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. That was harmful to consumers in general, and I don't think they've changed at all.
5
Apple devices have the "it" factor for sure. Smart, sexy, sleek, sensual and sophisticated, reflecting every quality of superior status validation their users of impeccably good taste aspire to but will never openly admit. Apple's tightly closed source system of devices and software quickly enslaves their users into abject fealty to the company which includes a lifetime pledge to dedicate a significant portion of one's annual income to pay for that privilege of being an Apple serf. But, seriously, Apple users are a bit like Trump supporters in that the object of their adoration, or more precisely, their blind faith, can do no wrong--EVER. It would seem among Apple's army of faithful users, any tech company outside of Apple is part a Deep State cabal intent on destroying Apple. For those of us who don't have a lot of disposable income, we can exist and even thrive perfectly well without buying any Apple product, maybe even spreading our limited tech dollar expenditures among many other companies.
2
@Jeff
"Apple users are a bit like Trump supporters...."Really, all Apple users. Maybe you don't know why I use Apple products, but I certainly do, and have known why since 1995.
I'm an iPhone user who is thinking of switching everything--including my TV service and my credit card--to Apple because of Cook's embrace of privacy.
Last night I threw out my Google Chromecast. They want too much of my information, and they force me to share it in order to watch TV.
Enough!
(I probably won't abandon Windows, though.)
3
I agree with the column. I bought my first [of several] Apple computers almost 30 years ago, because it was easier and more fun to use. I'd like to switch from flip to iPhone, but since Steve Jobs died, Apple products are increasingly less easy and less fun to use. Why doesn't Apple make a phone model that is easy and fun to use [and doesn't share my info]? I'd buy one.
3
@Anne Cohen - Same experience. My first computer was an Apple Performa something-or-other in 1992. It was light years better than DOS, which isn't saying much. But the new operating systems (post-cats) and Icloud have made my life miserable at times. I find myself muttering "this is terrible" more often that I'd like. (I hate icloud. I want a divorce.) The interface with the other devices has added a level of complexity that is unreliable and unnecessary to a lot of users. Apple has junked up its system with so many useless doo dads that the user experience is almost more trouble than it's worth.
4
@Anne Cohen
Why don't you buy a "Jitterbug" phone?
Apple stock per share about 4 months ago when they had a poor quarter was down to roughly $144.00 per share ,today roughly $195 per share . end of story.
The theme of the last batch of iPhones was "Welcome to the bigger screens."
Bad sign when a famously innovative company can't come up with anything better than that.
2
@J
There was more to the iPhone than that, for your information. Notice you and nobody else suggests anything that's "innovative."
1
@scsmits They chose a lame theme for their advertising. If they had something more interesting, it was up to them to get the word out.
@J
Well, what else do you want? Sometimes you max out on something. Cars still just drive you places.
If you've got an idea on what a handheld device can do for you that it does not do now, let us know. Are you thinking you want it to spit our a 3-layer chocolate cake?
Other tech companies may be more directly responsible for the death of privacy; Apple killed solitude.
I believe Tim Cook has done a superlative job of replacing Steve Jobs. I also believe that Steve would have struggled inventing the next ding. There are only so many dings in a company's existence.
185
Indeed. And keeping in mind Steve Jobs did not invent anything. He took existing technology, dressed it up nice and pretty (by hiring great designers) and marketing it well (by hiring good ad agencies). He did design some aspects of the Apple experience. But he did not invent the PC, the phone, a music playing device, etc. His genius was being able to be attributed with these things.
35
@Matthew "Dressing it up nice and pretty" significantly downplays Apple's many accomplishments. Their products are possible through cutting edge innovation in engineering, range of hardware, software, cloud services, business operations, customer centric product design. And innovation is always iterative whether in music, technology, science or other fields --"standing on the shoulders of giants" as Issac Newton said.
27
@OldNCMan
I couldn't disagree more. Jobs practiced his magic multiple times -- the Mac, the iPod, OS X, the iPad, the iPhone, Siri, and an entirely different company as well!
The obvious next place to go was the personal digital assistant and the smart home, and Jobs would have owned that market -- it was an obvious fit. Instead, Apple did nothing while Amazon innovated and Google followed in Amazon's footsteps. Now Amazon and Google own a product niche that is becoming ubiquitous.
15
Add me to the list of Apple users saddened by the direction the company has taken the last 3 or 4 years. I've been unhealthily obsessed by the company for a long time, bought the original iPhone, the iPad, Apple TV, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, etc. The money spent on their tech, if spent on their stock, would let me retire early. But times change.
Their latest MacBook Pros? Glued together, form over function, with keyboards that feel like you’re typing on a block of wood, plagued by repeating keystroke glitches and absent the most widely used ports. I’m holding on to a 2009 MacBook Pro in hopes that they some day come to their senses and build a machine that is once again reliable, and has useful ports. My Mac Pro, built in 2010, still being used. That computer was last updated in 2013 - six years ago! - to another unusable, and overheating, form factor. 3 years ago they admitted it, promised a realistic update… and creative professionals are still waiting. I’ll give them credit for the AirPods - great - the Apple Watch - love it - but many of their hardware and software products, once loved by people like me, are left to languish, are redesigned to take away much of their functionality, or are discontinued altogether.
The moment in the last keynote where they devoted one of those segments to the laser etching of… wait for it… a credit card… left me with a hollow feeling. That was when I turned off the livestream. I don’t know what is going at Apple Inc. but it just makes me sad.
167
Largely because PCs/laptops became commodities with diminishing returns on touting faster processors/more memory/more drive capacity/faster graphics, which were are standard one-ups man ship marketing in the hay days. Now that’s all taken pretty much for granted.
And, keep in mind, Apple nearly died a couple deaths in the 90s, so this current era will transform as well. We may see a resurgent Apple again. In the meantime they are a highly profitable behemoth making products as good or better by and large than their competitors. So you can still enjoy.
8
@Mark Holmes I have to agree with you on the sad downward trend of what should be their core products, like the Macbook Pro. I'm a devoted user, have jumped through a lot of hoops to use my Mac instead of the PC some of the companies i do work for would like me to use.
But my last MacBook? A couple of keys stopped working, then many keys, then the trackpad. This one? The battery needs replacing - fine. Made an appointment at the Apple store. Where they tell me that's not something they can do in house, so they'd have to send my laptop out and it'll take 2-3 WEEKS to get back. Excuse me? That's pretty shoddy service.
I almost feel like we've reached peak technology - there seem to be more and more articles (even in the NYT) about people weaning themselves off the iphone, getting off of FB, just getting tired of it all and what a timesuck it is. I don't think that's a bad direction in which to go.
8
@Mark Holmes This is what happens what a lot of the-world-is-my-oyster techies think that other people with a whole lot less money who actually work for a living (cooking, cleaning, taking care of sick people, etc.) want to adopt their worldview -- for a hefty price. When you think so much of yourself, it's natural to believe that everyone who's not like you must want to be like you, and are willing to pay a lot to chase that dream.
3
Mr. Cook is beholden to Carl Icahn. Icahn and other activists will rip the board to shreds if Apple sacrifices one iota of profit to "save the world.' That will be the harsh reality. Not the "virtual" reality. Either way, the hyenas will be ready to pounce. I would not own their stock anymore. It has nowhere to go but own from here. They are not Amazon. Who has done a prestidigitation of stock performance, since investors know that there market share of "retail" is but 5% of all "spend." They have to be concerned at some point as well. Changing the world can get pretty expensive, after all.
1
We've been here before.
In 1985, Apple fired Steve Jobs and afterwards declined to the point that in the mid-90s, the company was expected to fail. He was hired back 12 years later and within a year debuted the original iMac, which proved to be a huge success.
Steve Jobs had always been the true source of all of Apple's good ideas. The worst possible position to be in as a corporation is to have the CEO who is the sole source of your success die.
When Jobs death was announced, I knew it was the death knell of Apple. What have they produced since his passing? A slightly smaller iPad? A slightly larger iPhone? Without Jobs, they seem incapable of innovating.
I've viewed Apple as a dead man walking for some time.
12
@Ben I agree but they are hugely profitable with the iPhone. They can last a long time on that life support.
2
@Robin
Wait until there is a breach in iCloud. Because I guarantee to you that this is coming. You really think that apple will be able to recover from an event where the entire contents of every iPhone is available online to the highest bidder?
4
@Ben
So Apple has been a failure since Jobs died? I'm tired of the deification of Steve Jobs. He was a brilliant guy, but Apple has been a huge success in the years since his death.
2
I'd like Apple to re-think iOS UX. It feels like it's become bloated and probably a bit too complicated with the accumulated ways of interacting with it. With it could introduce a new grammar for how to interact with our devices that takes into account what we've learned since the first iPhone appeared. An experience that people feel they have more control over, rather than now feeling like it is in control of them (and their children), still intuitive and "magically" helpful, and provides next generation security and privacy capabilities without bogging the user down in these concepts.
2
For a profit-driven company, Apple does a lot of things to keep their customers safe, and that's their way of business.
They aren't a charity. They can afford to do the right thing often because it serves their bottom line: selling hardware.
They bring their services to other devices as little as possible, and especially not free ones like iMessage.
Opening iMessage up wouldn't help them in any way. People already want an Apple device who actually care about a feature like that, and people who don't care would just buy someone else's.
Jobs would hated that.
They things you're suggesting would be nice, but not wise decisions for Apple to do. Like make a search engine.
Jobs never would have done that.
It's not something they're good at, and they'd pratically need to make a new company just to do it.
Meanwhile a games package, streaming television, a credit card, and a magazine subscription service are basically just extensions of things they already do, have the infrastructure for, and pay people to work on.
Also they've been doing me-too announcements for a while. The company hasn't been about making it to markets first as much as trying to be the first to do things right.
There is just very little that this piece gets right at all, and shows that the author probably knows Apple less than they know about Apple.
They list obstacles that could be a problem for the company, and then list awful solutions for them.
13
I don't think the author understands the genius of Steve Jobs. He, upon returning to Apple via their acquisition of NeXT two decades ago, made it successful again by doing the exact OPPOSITE of what Mr. Manjo advocates here. They jettisoned a lot of mildly profitable but distracting products (e.g. the Laserwriter) in order to focus on just two things, the Mac and the iPod.
The columnist thinks he is advocating for the return of Jobs' approach, but he is actually suggesting they depart from it *further*.
28
@MadManMark Exactly! History that Tim Cook is ignoring to his peril. Apple currently offers 13 variations on the iPhone, 9 ipads, 6 laptops & 6 desktop computers.
Just surrender, now. Resistance is futile. The Engineer Husband spends at least ten thousand Dollars per Year on Apple devices,
Services, service plans, etc.etc.. I get the old models when he buys something new. “ The main difference between Men and Boys, is the COST of their Toys “. It’s nice that he has a hobby.
And, unbelievably, I am not perfect either.
Seriously.
13
@Phyliss Dalmatian - But I'm sure you're constantly trying to improve, as is Apple. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I'm sure you're irreplaceable, as Apple products are not. :-)
3
Steve Jobs made a remarkable cult leader, that much is undeniable.
Whether it’s the iconography of a once-bitten apple, the emotional manipulation utilized by Apple’s sales force, or simply debasing individuality through nihilistic product branding, his impact on the world has been profound.
It does seem rather convenient that the man’s surname would match up with the ‘Book of Job’, all things considered.
8
@ubique
Steve Jobs was no cult leader. He was just the CEO of a company that made products of very hight quality. Cult leaders don't subject their worth to the vagaries of Wall Street.
I too find Apples' foray into entertainment and media content to be less than inspiring. But there's a critique of the "parade of services that start-ups and big rivals had done earlier, polished with an Apple-y sheen of design and marketing" as if this is something new. Apple has a long history of taking ideas and tech that were either outside the mainstream or poorly implemented and turned it into something more useful and more widely used. We can start with the GUI and add the 3.5" floppy and USB and so on. I'm not sure what Apple can do in the media space other than offer content that some will enjoy and others will not (just like everyone else) but maybe they have something up their sleeve.
We do all remember iTunes made the “buy the song not the album” a profit making business for the first time, right?
Amazon & Netflix have done a great job for creating a market for streaming videos, which Apple did flop at, but Apple is so much better at the whole integrated environment thing than anyone else I have little doubt I’ll be adding their service.
1
Apple is here today because they took already existing technology(MP3 player) and marketed and packaged their version in a way cooler wrapper. I must have missed this era when Apple was inventing truly ground breaking stuff, although I do remember the marketing narrative where we all supposed to believe Steve Jobs was the greatest mind on the planet because he sold a lot of Walkmans and phones. Their biggest lawsuit win was over the shapes of the corners on a phone. As for t privacy concerns, learn to take care of yourself, bro. You want anonymity, download Duckduckgo. It's an awesome search engine that does exactly what you want.
20
@Edward
My iPhone has DuckDuckGo installed. It is a great product.
4
@Edward
Just wish to add that my Ipod "classic" still works purchased in 2002. that was Job'sn& Mac's greatness for me.
1
@Edward
Welcome to the 21st century. No Apple's version of the MP3 player was a lot more sophisticated than just putting the player in a "way cooler wrapper."
I read recently that Apple was considering issuing a credit card and the first thing I thought of was GM, who was once deriving a large part of their profits by this means. When these companies get too big, they make the switch from manufacturing to finance. As all those super geniuses on Wall Street discovered long ago, there's more money to be made by chicanery than machinery. Even the most downloaded apps cannot compare with the returns on sloshing electrons back and forth to no useful purpose.
77
We discovered the Texture magazine service/app a few months ago and have been loving it. Last week, Apple (who, it turns out bought Texture some time ago) announced Texture would be subsumed into Apple News and --wait for it-- only be available on iFruit devices and Macs! This is a strategy I really cannot figure out; the service is good, but enough for me to dump my Android/PC devices for their expensive ones which I do find really inferior? I don't think so.
2
@Dave The strategy is obvious: they make more money selling hardware and services which keep people tied to their hardware & to their other services, than they make selling individual services to people who don’t buy their hardware, and who aren’t heavily invested in their ecosystem. i.e. they make much more money by getting tons of money each from fewer people than by getting a little money each from a few more people.
1
Apple has always been a bright spot on, when I was a kid a rather boring and bleek technology landscape.
One thing I think a lot of critics fail to account for is how fun their products are to use and generally how reliable they are. I have never purchased virus software in my life and my love of music has only grown with the advent of the ipod and iphone!
114
Intrepidman, you live a sad lonely life if your iPhone is the best thing in it.
Apple is now a mature business. They are not looking for new products as much as profits and continued growth.
Their new product would seem to be some sort of smart TV or OTT delivered video. And in that business the experts say you need content to compete.
Same thing with their delivery print media or news.
I can't really blame them given their position. Nonetheless I would not expect any earth-shattering Apple hardware ever again.
Don't we have enough digital devices and digital entertainment already?
4
Don’t count Apple out for coming up with an improved version of X that again changes the game. They did it with the Apple II, the Macintosh, the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. All of which blew open the market, because they just simply did it better.
2
I’d like it if they just brought back the Nano. Also, I do like their recent announcement that you can transfer content from your iPad to, I would guess, your Nano, without having to make a ridiculous detour through iTunes, which necessitates a PC, Mac, or full laptop computer. However, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Maybe after I figure out how GarageBand works. I know! They could start a publishing company that explains, in language a preschooler would understand, how to make full use of their gadgets and software. I’d pay for that. One thing I’m very grateful for: None of my Apple gadgets have been successfully hacked. As for Apple doing into streaming entertainment, why? Kind of a crowded field already. A little like saying they’re going into the soft-drink business. Again, why?
3
@Anonymous
Yes please bring back the nano! Bluetooth headphones are just too finicky and I am a tiny bit freaked out by extra radiation near my brain and I just want to be able to listen to podcasts or music with regular wired headphones and a storage device that fits in the pocket of my running shorts. I don't need it to improve but they only last a couple of years so can't you just make a batch and sell them?
3
@Tracy: Why would Apple make Nanos? Most people who would buy one are willing to spend the money for an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods. All of them are more expensive than a Nano, and they lock you into the Apple ecosystem much more.
Nano sales would be puny, and would probably mainly just cannibalize Watch & AirPod sales. Plus, offering lower end devices would tarnish Apple’s luxury brand reputation, which is what leads many to just buy expensive Apple devices & services without even considering the competition.
It’s not worth distracting Apple or their customers from their more profitable devices & services (or from finding the next profitable devices & services). Apple doesn’t exist to satisfy a few outlier people; they exist to make gobs of money. You (& all outliers) are completely unimportant to them.
Why do people continually wonder why massive businesses don’t cater to their atypical whims when doing so would obviously most likely hurt the company’s bottom line, and, at best, only infinitesimally improve the company’s profits?
@xyyx
Well I wish someone would create a good small size digital music and podcast storage and playback device for the exercise market. It is not progress to make me wear a fanny pack to hold a clunky phone when I run when I used to be able to just use the nano which drove all its competition out of the market. I purchased an apple watch to use as a substitute but using the podcast app on the watch without the phone is challenging -- it is impossible to tell whether podcasts have been downloaded to the watch so that you can listen to them without the phone and there is no spotify app for just the watch -- and I hate earbuds or anything inside my ear and there just aren't a lot of over the ear lightweight sport oriented wireless headphones. I don't think people are buying nanos instead of phones and the difference in price with a watch is huge. Since they have already sunk the design costs it seems like keeping customers happy would be worth something since I know I am not alone (see the comment I replied to).
Yes! Google is collecting and selling our data in ways we don't even understand. Facebook is invading our privacy and knows our most personal information, which they monetize without remorse.
Clearly, blaming Apple is long overdue.
64
"Tim Apple" and company are doing brand extension. There are only so many revolutions one can do before technologies reach the top of the S-curve without a fundamental change or breakthrough in fundamental science. Notice there's no vast improvement to the fork or spoon since the innovation of the spork.
Furthermore, technologies are often limited by the needs for standardization and compatibility with other systems outside of one's control. If you look at all the best devices and systems, they were created essentially solo - top-to-bottom with no reliance on anything else. Once there is reliance on inputs outside your control, you become limited. Garbage in, garbage out.
2
I still own an iPhone 6 and it mostly works fine. I have hesitated to upgrade because every next version does not have phone jack and I have invested in at least a dozen wired headphones so I never have to look for one. Taking away the phone jack for no customer benefit other than to sell us more expensive ear pods was literally stomping on the customer experience. I'l probably use this iP6 for another year and then probably upgrade to the Samsung 10E which is a great size and still has the phone jack. It will do my brain cells good to learn something new.
148
@Sipa111 A headphone to Lightning adapter is literally $10 and allows complete compatibility with all your existing headphones. The jack is not the earth-shattering problem many have made it out to be but has instead allowed for incredible thinness.
14
@Casey Penk, I have lost the dang dongle several times. I absolutely hate the design. BTW a blue tooth version of any headphone is still inferior to a wired version. Bluetooth was not designed for media, it was shoehorned in. I agree with sipa111.
I also have a Moto X4. An amazing device, capable of expanding its internal removable storage AND a bonus FM tuner. I read that Apple, Google and others disabled that function in their phones. That is not customer friendly...
10
@Sipa111 I didn't like the idea of removing the jack, but had reasons to upgrade to an 8 from a 5, and it turns out not to be very much of a big deal. It came with the little adapter, which are cheap enough that I bought a bunch to put on all my headphone jacks.
3
Apple wants to charge consumers for the content, services, and products that they are spending billions on to create? How dare they!
43
@LegalEagle Sure, but margins by Apple were typically around 40% - highest in the industry.
I stopped buying apple laptops once they refused to make a touch screen and only offered that cheap touch strip. I emailed them about this and never got a reply. The age of "oooh a fancy new apple device" is nearing an end.
3
Nice piece. I like the big ideas. Maybe social media is impossible to do without controversy because it's a platform for human society and therefore always prone to corruption. Individual consumerism is Apple's way of life. Maybe they lack the capacity to think about bringing people, not devices, together.
5
@Jay F.: Facebook & Google / Alphabet make money from harvesting as much data about users as possible to sell ad space to target them. They generally provide their services for free. Apple either sells its services, or monetizes them by tying them to Apple devices.
Apple couldn’t tie a public user content service to Apple devices, and couldn’t sell those services, because that would limit the audience for posters, who therefore would post elsewhere.
Public user content services will become even more controversial over time, even if they don’t harvest data, because different people disagree on the delineation between appropriate & inappropriate content.
Becoming a content arbiter for public user content services could drive away customers from their existing hardware & services business. It’s not something they want to get involved with more than absolutely necessary.
Apple is already a content arbiter in ways, as it obviously decides what shows to make for AppleTV+, what sources to publish in Apple News, etc. But the public is used to TV / movie services & news aggregators selecting content; yet the public is also used to being able to post & watch just about whatever content they want from public user content sites. Now, most segments of society want public user content services to censor posts, yet each wants different rules, which is causing a lot of social & political friction for said services. It’s a minefield that Apple is well advised to stay clear of.
1
The reality is that there is no there there in tech. Sure, tech is great at collecting, storing, and mining data, but what else? There's the promise of self-driving cars, but the first self-driving aircraft, the Boeing 737 Max, is a disaster. Self-driving aircraft? If you don't know what I mean, you aren't paying attention. Did Boeing let customers know they were boarding a self-driving aircraft? I doubt it: who would board the thing. I expect some Boeing executives to be charged with negligent manslaughter, and I expect tech to continue to do what they do best: surveillance. Would you ride in a self-driving car produced by these folks?
2
@reaylward: The 737 MAX is not the first self-driving aircraft.
Also, tech is great at tons of things:
Cars
Planes
Boats
Computers
Smart phones
Tables
Medicine
Air conditioning
Plumbing
Etc.
If you just mean software when you say “tech”, there’s still tons of stuff which successfully runs software all the time, including most cars, planes, etc.
Software is, however, harder to make bug free than anything else, because it’s not constrained by three dimensional space, yet its execution almost always leaves almost no margin for error before something goes wrong (even if it’s only a minor problem). Old code can still be reused by new code, and can be modified over time, too. The broad range of capabilities, and the necessity to create code quickly to beat competitors to market makes software engineering particularly challenging.
Don’t flippantly denigrate one of the most difficult human endeavors, and one of the crowning achievements of humanity, when you obviously don’t understand it (or seemingly many other things) at all.
1
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm sort of glad that the tech "revolution" passed me by. I don't see the point of a $1000 cell-phone. My phone was cheap, and all it does is make phone calls and send text messages--which is all I want it to do. (I'm reluctant to take pictures, because I'm not a very good photographer. Selfies are a non-issue, since I never like the way I look in photos.)
When I bought my phone, the sales rep asked me, "So, how much data do you want on it?" "None," I answered. The rep was flabbergasted! "None?" he asked in disbelief. "I don't need it," I replied. "That's what my laptop is for." "But what if you don't have your laptop with you?" he asked. "I'll survive," I said.
My phone costs me $30 a month for unlimited talk and text. I use it to keep in touch with friends and family. Otherwise, it sits in my jacket pocket, while I'm busy living my life. I don't want to spend my every waking hour staring at that little screen. I also don't walk into doors or lampposts, which is a pleasant bonus.
368
And in the end, you probably have a better phone. iPhones and Androids are really good PDAs (still not as good as Palm was) and portable computers, but they all stink at being a phone. My favorite cell phone is still the Motorola Timeport. One full charge, 2-3 days of talk time.
16
@Jack Connolly, I agree with everything you said except the texting part. I haven't learned how to do that and don't intend to. If I need to communicate with somebody I will give them a call or send an e-mail on my desktop.
18
@Jack Connolly. To each his own, but how is this relevant to the article?
31
The author criticizes Apple for working only on derivative products, then proceed to offer his own, slightly different list of derivative products. Would the situation really improve all that much if Apple aped Google Search instead of Google News?
15
It would.
Google News is not a monopoly where 80-90% of people go to find their news everyday. Google Search is. So if Apple enters into this market with a derivative product that has its polish, like Apple Maps, then it would make a difference.
1
@Two-Headed Bear Privacy-aware, ad-free versions of Google and Facebook's services are not "me too." They would be fundamentally different products, with a far different effect on the world. The worst excesses of Facebook, YouTube, Google -- on privacy, misinformation, extremist content, everything -- are made possible by the incentives of the ad business. Versions of such software that were not tied to ads would be much better for users and society, sort of in the same way that a zero-emission vehicle is better than a gas-powered car.
2
@Two-Headed Bear
Plus, there's already an excellent privacy search engine: Duck Duck Go
1
I’m a software developer for AR in Apple’s Xcode. Just wait until we replace your handheld devices with our magic!
53
Can't wait to get that technology cheap from a competitor!
10
@Merriwether
I hope your magic includes some Corporate Soul which has been missing for a while.
Trump promises "magic" for his supporters and we see where that is getting us. Trump believes he is "magic"
1
@J. R.
To Merriweather and and@JR:
I am old and and do not understand technology. I have been with Apple put 10 years since my son put 10 years since my son and see it and see it I get an iPhone and MacBook Pro I get an iPhone and MacBook Pro after I retired.. The new and next best thing? I don't know what it is.. But this piece from Wikipedia makes me wonder:
Composition[edit]
The main application of the suite is the integrated development environment (IDE), also named Xcode. The Xcode suite includes most of Apple's developer documentation, and built-in Interface Builder, an application used to construct graphical user interfaces. Up to Xcode 4.1, the Xcode suite included a modified version of the GNU Compiler Collection. In Xcode 3.1 up to Xcode 4.6.3, it included the LLVM-GCC compiler, with front ends from the GNU Compiler Collection and a code generator based on LLVM.[11] In Xcode 3.2 and later, it included the Clang C/C++/Objective-C compiler, with newly-written front ends and a code generator based on LLVM, and the Clang static analyzer.[12] Starting with Xcode 4.2, the Clang compiler became the default ........
I come along with with tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people who have no idea what this Targarian Speak means! But,, if it makes it easier for me to do things or opens up an avenue or opens up an avenue for less intelligent people to be involved in programming, it may be the next really big Ding. I guess I am just waiting to see what happens..
All I want is for Apple to make the very best phones, iMac, laptops (MacBook Pro, Air), iPads, etc..
Is that too much to ask for?
4
Overpriced and low quality.
I was once lent a two-year-old Apple computer. In a year or so the hardware died. Our usual generic PCs running linux last a decade before they become obsolete, and the hardware is still good.
1
@Jonathan Katz
Perhaps you got your hands on a lemon, or an abused Mac. My MacBook Pro is late 2011 and runs flawlessly, as does my mid-2012 iMac. I process and edit 95 MB photo files with no problem on either machine. Yep, I paid top dollar and am extremely pleased with the function and long life of these computers, not to mention their sleek appearance.
9
@Jonathan Katz
I have a white MacBook from 2006 that I upgraded to its max RAM potential. The OS is a few years behind at this point so it's slow on the web but fine for everything else. Aside from that memory which I installed myself it's never needed repair.
I also have a 2015 era MacBook Pro that I use for work and a circa 2000 iMac DV SE (Snow) that runs OS 9 applications and plays the music library.
2
The suggestion that Apple devices are somehow more privacy-minded than Android devices is laughable. Apple is "security through obscurity": You'll just have to take their word that their phones won't do anything suspect with your data. Meanwhile, Android is open-source, free for anyone and everyone to review and decide for themselves. If you actually care about security or privacy, the choice is obvious.
4
@Alexander Golden you can find out how to hack an Android phone online. Try finding that for an iPhone. I'm not sure why you find privacy laughable, but it is a fact. Apple doesn't sell/share your information. If you have information otherwise, ypu can sue them for a few billion as that is what they advertise. Also, Linux can get viruses, worms and all the rest. I'm not sure why you think it is safe.
1
@Alexander Golden
Given the ties to Google, that's a laughable statement. Open source ensures nothing at all, the problem is in the basic design of a data-collecting ad machine that Android serves. You can open source that evil very, very easily.
2
@Brad Price If you don't want to feed the ad machine that is Google, you can very easily use an Android device but choose not to use Google's bundled apps and services. Try using an Apple device without getting locked into their "platform"
1
Apple is treated differently by the media than any other company. Samsung, Microsoft, etc. can have product after product fail miserably without hardly a peep, but Apple can't even have a dip in phone sales. A dip due to the fact that, according the the author, everyone already has one. Other products are cheaper because your information is actually their payment. Apple does not collect your information and sell it. I have read about the death of Apple for decades, and I plan to read about it for many more. They do what they choose to do brilliantly, and that isn't always what everyone thinks they should be doing. So what?
104
I can't disagree more with "they choose what they choose to do brilliantly." Starting with the original Mac that had this wonderful screen for making documents that looked on the screen the way they would on paper--but the screen was horizontal! Stuck with the 1-button mouse YEARS too long. iPad and iPhone keyboards still make you switch just to type a number, and you can't change the battery or insert a memory chip. Really, the most brilliant thing about these devices are the boxes they come in; those have been awesome since the first iPod.
35
@Teddi it's because they only have a few products that contribute to their bottom line. A dip in phone sales really impacts Apple's bottom line. Samsung, and Microsoft not as much.
This company (like all of the other behemoth digital conglomerates) MUST be broken up.
Furthermore, the tax inversion loophole (which this company has used to great extent in me own country to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars) must be closed.
Trade practices that allow substandard working conditions in foreign countries must be elevated to 1st world standards.
Penalties for breaking trade practices must not be so low that they are factored into the cost of doing business and written off.
Trade practices that deny even opening up their products to repair them if they break, must be changed as well.
These are the steps that must be taken. Now.
86
@FunkyIrishman
Closed end-to-end products have many advantages and no one forces anyone to buy them.
@FunkyIrishman
You mention it MUST be broken up, but don't explain why. So, why?
I don't disagree with your other more general points, however.
1
@FunkyIrishman. Monopolies are a wonderful thing until they're not.
2
Canadian Broadcasting Corp ran an item this week which reported on a small business in the Cleveland area which allows around 90%users of accidentally water submerged iPhones to recover all their data and photos etc. - cost about $300. The astonishing part was that Apple refused to acknowledge what was going on: instead they insisted on misinforming their customers that what this woman's business was routinely doing was impossible. Apple refused to talk with CBC about it. I found that news item surprising because I do have a generally positive impression of Mr Cook and his company. But how does this help them make a dent in your wallet? Somebody isn't so smart.
34
@Charles I'm the one not being smart. Now I recall - the pitch was to buy a new phone and forget the old one.
1
@Charles Apple can’t repair water damage due to business constraints. Have you ever been to a Genius Bar? They are always overcrowded.
Apple can’t refer water damage business to other repair shops for liability reasons. If something were to go wrong at a 3rd party repair shop, Apple could be liable since they referred a customer to them.
It’s far more economical to simply replace the water damaged components.
And always backup your data so it won’t be lost.
9
@LegalEagle Folks had thousands of memorable pictures they had taken on months of travel and dropped their phone in the drink. They were lied to by Apple who specifically said recovery was not possible. Apple repeated the same lie consistently to other similar inquiries. When asked specifically about the business in Cleveland Apple said it could not help. The business in Cleveland got all the photos back after the phone being dropped in SALT water. The business has grown, started by a very smart Ph.D. lady accustomed to microbiology who retrained herself to deal with cell phone electronics and then trained a bunch of other women to do the necessary diagnostics. The success rate is only 90%. In the US there must be a lot of people that think it is a liability to tell the truth. lol
11
If Apple creates social networking, messaging, and web search tools which respect users' privacy, they will need to be paid for somehow, most likely by user's fees. Then we can see if people really care enough about their data that they're willing to pay a small monthly fee to keep it private.
5
"turning into something like a digital athleisure brand"
"Turning into?" Apple has been "digital athleisure" for its entire existence. (Btw I like that phrase a lot, I will be stealing it just as Apple has done for each and every one of its "innovative" products.)
5
Android does not lack for privacy apps as stated in this article. The privacy offered by WhatsApp and Signal which can be used on an android or iPhone are generally considered the best for privacy.
2
The sadder news for me is that the Apple of today cannot make a decent laptop keyboard or, for crying out loud, a charging device for wireless devices. Still cranking out new emojis, though. So there's that.
239
@Ted
The 2016 Macbok pro update was delayed two years while Tim tried to make a new battery. After two years of delays, the salesman gave up on that project too and released the new MBP with the old battery. Apple can't do anything technologically, but they are big into advertising.
23
@Ted The keyboard on the current MacBook Pro is easily the best I've ever used.
3
@mooch ....but the Touch Bar is appalling. And I know 2 people personally who have needed new keyboards after some keys stopped working. All in all - Apple are losing their tech edge, and it is SOOOOOO sad to see. Another 3 years - and unless they can turn their ship around - they will be history.
2
I own an iPhone, not because it's an especially nice phone, but the alternative is to give Google unlimited access to every single facet of my life.
244
@Randall
It doesn't go by the phone, but by which apps you choose to use on the phone, and how you choose to use them. Any phone will do.
17
@Randall
I use Google but make it hard for them to figure out who I am. I have a couple of different fake accounts for different things. I throw out contradictory searches for incoherent things to drive their algorithms crazy. I periodically clear my cookies and start over. I'm a digital Frank Abagnale from "Catch Me If You Can."
3
@Randall U just about convinced me to buy an iPhone as I do agree with you, Google has too much of our information and Facebook is showing how that data can be used to make us Pavlovian dogs.
I am like @Jack Connolly and like being a dinosaur but now being forced to get either a new phone or or a new fantastic laptop PC at 75% of the cost of a premium phone. Going for the laptop, I need it.
1
Even though I disagree with the myriad of business ideas proposed at the end of this article (Telegram, WhatsApp, viber, Line, and Signal have all been used in foreign countries to subvert internet regulations on apps), I do think the core idea of Apple shifting it's business strategy is true.
And sad.
Growing up, Apple truly was the paradigm of the tech world in terms of taking an idea, perfecting it, and releasing at just the right time. Palm Pilots had been around for years, but no one had been able to perfect a mass market smartphone until Steve Jobs walked on stage at Macworld 2007. But now, with Kickstarter democratizing funding as well as a slowing of Moore's Law, the magic is fading. I'm saddened by the move towards subscription services for Apple, but I understand it as a necessary shift in the industry. Expand your ecosystem while keeping it locked = more money.
Until the iPhone 11 comes out with a foldable screen...
4
@David
"Growing up, Apple truly was the paradigm of the tech world in terms of taking an idea, perfecting it, and releasing at just the right time."
With a very heavy emphasis on "taking an idea..."
27