Apple no longer innovates

[Strider64]

I look at this way. Take the Tire for example, once someone came up with the idea of using a round object to help you move then there wasn't anything else to innovate, but to make it better and safer. I remember as a child growing up without any smartphones and I look back at those days to realize it was pretty good not getting information that very second, minute, hour or even day. Don't get me wrong I all for technology and innovation, but I now don't pay attention to the news on a daily basis and I just check to make sure nothing major thing is happening (like WW3). As for innovation Apple can has a cash cow with the iPhones and iPads, it wouldn't make sense to rock the boat. Make improvements so they have more screen, higher resolution, faster and so on, but it would make no sense to do a risky total overall on them in order to be innovated. I know I have and I am sure others have also bought a product saying this production was going to be the next best thing since slice bread only to turn on to be a total flop. Unless Apple does a Kodak and doesn't change with new advancements in technology then Apple will be alright.

 

[AshleyHredone]

I'm not into the whole Apple Cult thing.
I just want a eco system that works and years ago I chose Apple as I thought they could provide it. Wonderfully that used to be almost all the time for Apple and now it isn't.

1 - My initial Apple ID was a me.com one that I was then told could be used seamlessly as an iCloud.com one - BUT this is not true and after months of glitches and hours on phone to Support I went to Apple ID page, changed the me.com one to iCloud.com and everything synced into place and worked again. Why didn't Apple engineers or Support know that?

2 - Then last week my new 27" iMac was sent to me in a damaged state and Support badly advised me so I had to buy another one then send the first one back. Senior Support then tells me I was badly advised by frontline Support.

3 - Today I am forced to change my my Apple ID password THREE TIMES - and obviously on all my devices. I ring Apple Support and get fobbed off with generic meaningless bull answers. Then find out on this site that many are having similar issues. I was assured by Support that no such issues existed.

I just want a system that works.
I'm doubting if this is Apple any more but what other choice is there £1000s down the line???

 

[grandM]

The latest events at Apple have me wondering. Apple is no longer the leader it used to be, and now it is a follower. This has not yet impacted Apple's market value or the revenues, but it may in the future.

Under Steve Jobs, Apple was all about innovation. The motto was to "think different". The products were new and fresh, and really innovated in many ways. Apple delivered products nobody had ever seen before, and, in this process, it created new market niches. The products did not always have the best specs in the market, or the most features, but they held on their own because they were different from anything else.

Under Tim Cook, Apple is about making the best. I am yet to count how many times Tim Cook mentioned that Apple's products are the best, in a way I never recalled Steve Jobs doing. But products are not really innovative, and many of them are simply copycats of existing products. The products quite often have some of the best specs in the market. Apple's products now are kind of luxury, and they sport higher price tags to show it.

Let me give examples. After Steve Jobs was back at Apple in 1997, Apple released some very innovative products. The iMac was released in 1998, and it was a colorful all-in-one that innovated in design. The redesign of the iMac in 2002 was also a radical departure. The iPod was released in 2001; it was not the first MP3 player in the market, but it was the first one that created a true platform for listening to music. I don't remember any product similar to the Apple TV when it came out in 2006. The iPhone was of course the breakthrough product we all know. Not the first smartphone, but a very well executed one. In 2008, Apple released the App Store, with apps to be installed in the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Also in 2008, Apple unveiled the breath-taking MacBook Air, which would craft the definition of ultrabook. Multi-touch gestures for the MacBooks were introduced in 2008 as well. In 2010, Apple released the iPad, which redefined the tablet market. In 2010, also came the "retina display" for the iPhone, which would make way into the iPads and Macs.

Now, Apple is a follower, not a leader. All the efforts are towards making the best, and making their products better. But I see very little innovation. Apple no longer defines trends.

The iPhone got a bigger screen, and that happened after all other smartphones in the market had large screens. The iPad got a pen(cil) and a keyboard, contrary to all Steve Jobs beliefs; and in doing that it became a competitor to the Microsoft Surface and other tablets. Apple released a smartwatch, following Samsung and other companies. The HomePod is a speaker that had no reason to exist except that apparently Apple had to compete with Google and Amazon in this particular market segment. And now Apple is in the business of streaming. It released Apple Music to copy Spotify, and will release its own Netflix-like service after nearly every company seems to be doing the same.

In addition to this, Apple is constantly increasing its prices, as if it wants to position itself as a premium, luxury brand. Under Steve Jobs, Apple products were expensive, but still affordable. Steve Jobs knew that the consumer is price-sensitive. Now these times are gone.

Apple adhered to market segmentation as well, and this is consistent with the price policy. Under Steve Jobs, there was just one iPhone. One size, different storage options. The same with the iPad. Steve Jobs wanted to keep it simple and was against the policy of offering a trillion different products at different price points. Now, that is exactly what Apple is doing. We have the iPad and the iPad Pro; and the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, and the iPhone XR.

And yes, there are the new features. Steve Jobs used to reduce features, take them away to give minimalistic products, get to the core of each of them. No unnecessary features. Now, it seems to be the opposite. There is Force Touch, Face ID, Touch Bar, and other features nobody really asked for, and yet they are here.

Somehow, I prefer the old Apple. It just looked more honest and more focused. Now, Apple is doing little to differentiate itself from Microsoft, Google and Amazon. It is just one of the giant tech companies of the Silicon Valley, living on the glories of the past, on its legacy of innovation, and on the premium quality of its products. But there seems to be very little innovation going on.

yes and no
Apple is gaining new markets for instance health
Could be google was first but I was impressed by apple watch notifying emergency services upon fall
You are looking at hardware
Apple is about experience

 

[Starfia]

skaertus – I've read that whole thing. I agree with a few of your observations, but I don't think they add up to your conclusion – there are too many contradictory points you seem to omit.

One thing you're right about is that prices in some of Apple's areas have risen for premium products, like the iPhone and the Watch. The HomePod is a higher-end smart speaker if you consider it to be a competitor with Amazon's and Google's.

At the same time, the entry-level iPad is much cheaper than the original iPad, and it's massively more capable. The iPhone 7, which would have seemed like a time-transported marvel from the future if it appeared in 2007, costs $150 less than the price of the original iPhone. You can pay the "luxury" price if you want to get a device even more impressive than these already-incredible devices, but no customer is limited to that.

The only exception might be the entry-level tier for a new Mac, now the introductory 2018 Mac mini – but getting a serviceable, good, reliable Mac at a lower price is perfectly possible.

Tim Cook does go for "the best," but "the best" is much more familiar as Steve Jobs' mantra. He'd certainly lionize being "different" along with other traits, but when it came down to stating a single, timeless directive by which choices were made, he'd clearly say "we want to make the best products we can for people."

His era brought an entire line of products named after power: "PowerBook", "Power Mac", and so on. (Not "DifferentBook.") And when Apple had convinced the world its products were powerful, they'd move on to place "Mac" in all their names instead. Yes, different was great for that time, and yes, power was great at that time, but "the best" they could make was the perennial thing with Steve, according to him.

As for innovation: how is Apple Watch not a modern example of the tradition of "not the first, but Apple's great version"? The Watch has come to dominate the market over its first few years, and it was certainly among the first of its subgenre of devices. It's also a device the executives have mentioned Steve didn't work on.

The HomePod, at its price point, clearly isn't meant as a direct threat to Google's and Amazon's markets. Rather, Google released a higher-end speaker more resemblant of a HomePod subsequently.

The Watch is the first to do an electrocardiogram. The iPad Pro's internal power is utterly unmatched. No reasonable interpretation of these points would yield that Apple is following in those areas.

Apple also attempts to lead the industry (and arguably the world) in terms of encouraging their espoused values: environmental friendliness, diversity, accessibility, and privacy, to name a few. It's up to people to determine how well they do, but their evidence for their support of those values – as a company and in their products – is on the table, and often their money is where their mouth is.

While supporting VR to some extent (as Vive and Oculus attempt to forge that path in a serious way), Apple has invested heavily in AR, a technology which has existed here and there, but which no one has really changed swaths of lives with. Apple appears to be aligning its chess pieces to do so in the future using something closer to a common pair of glasses than anyone has produced. (That counts as speculation, but I'll submit that as evidence for their continued proclivity to innovate.)

Features are indeed disappearing when they prove extraneous. A couple of examples: Time Travel is gone from the Watch, as did Glances – that entire OS seems to be an exercise in refinement in service of cohesion, and that may continue. OpenGL on the Mac, the core graphics library on top of which the entire OS's graphics and most of its games were written, is now deprecated.

A lot more than that would have to change for me to believe Apple is no longer innovating and no longer leading. The core spirit, way at the root of the tree of what they do, would have to be disrupted for them to lose their way permanently as they seemed to be in danger of doing in the late 1990s. But since Steve's death, they seem to understand the importance of guarding that well.

 

[skaertus]

I like innovation. But why do I like it? Because it's useful to me.

My point is: do we really need all-out innovation? Or do we need quality in the features we get rather than quantity?

Did we really need bezel-less displays on smartphones? I thought so, so I ditched my iPhone 6 for a Samsung Galaxy S8+. It lasted one year, then I replaced it with an iPhone 8 Plus. Why? The Samsung had a bezel-less display, and a stunning one, but what did it add to my experience? To the everyday productivity and usability of the device? Edge shortcuts?

I used to be all out in comparing specs and I was greatly underwhelmed by any iteration of the iPhone after the 5S, I was underwhelmed by the "old" processors in the iMac and the lack of features in the MacBook Pro when my father got Windows Hello and pen support with full Windows 10 in his Surface. But then, out of necessity, I went out and actually got them. I got the 2014 iPhone 6 in 2015, the 2017 iPhone 8 Plus in 2018, the Mid-2017 iMac and Mid-2017 MacBook Pro respectively in April and October 2018, and you know what? I don't care. Because they're so good that I enjoy using them to do my work (they're tools for me, and that's saying something since I use them a lot) without even thinking about other login methods, the bezels and pen support.

I'm not advocating for ugly, old and not updated products because they "do their work". I love innovation, I love seeing the industry get ahead, I hate those companies that keep running Windows 7 because they use an old software which wouldn't run on newer systems, I dislike those advocating for backward-compatibility at all costs (one of the reasons Windows has become the mess it is today), but neither do I think that we should get foldable phones or flying iPads just for the sake of having them.

I'd much rather prefer Apple investing in perfecting what we already have and make the platform even more stable, suitable for professional use in the many fields it has potential in, and ultimately more enjoyable to work with. I don't buy Apple because it's innovative: I buy Apple because when they make something, they make it pretty damn near perfect. Not perfect by any means, but you see an attention to detail and a coherence between design and functionality, hardware and software you won't get, in my opinion, anywhere else.

I agree that Apple may well invest in making its products better than in making something new.

However, Apple is not doing only that. It is blatantly copying what everyone else does, and adding an "Apple flavor" to its fanboys. Apple did not have to launch a smart speaker, a music subscription service, or a streaming TV service, but it is doing all that. And by doing that it simply joins the other big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, which offers the same kind of products. Apple's differentiation factor is fading when it does that.

 

[C DM]

I agree that Apple may well invest in making its products better than in making something new.

However, Apple is not doing only that. It is blatantly copying what everyone else does, and adding an "Apple flavor" to its fanboys. Apple did not have to launch a smart speaker, a music subscription service, or a streaming TV service, but it is doing all that. And by doing that it simply joins the other big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, which offers the same kind of products. Apple's differentiation factor is fading when it does that.

With that approach Apple didn't have to launch yet another MP3 player, or yet another phone, with their flavor to it...

 

[maflynn]

And by doing that it simply joins the other big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, which offers the same kind of products. Apple's differentiation factor is fading when it does that.

Apple joined other big tech companies years ago by launching a laptop, iPod, tablet, phone. Name one product that apple produced that no other company made beforehand?

They were not the first in creating a computer, laptop, phone, MP3 player, etc etc. Even the Macintosh which is revolutionary largely came from Xerox. Apple's differentiation factor is that they took an existing product and made it much better. That has not changed one bit, so I'm not sure why all of sudden you're using that as an example of apple not innovating. Apple is true to is roots, by providing a music streaming service. People questioned and lambasted them for launching a music playing program and selling music back in the day, but it was a stroke a genius, streaming is just a natural progression.

 

[Alan-in-CO]

Stopped reading after the first sentence

Then, did you put your fingers in your ears and run around saying "LA, LA, LA, LA!" ???

 

[grandM]

Apple joined other big tech companies years ago by launching a laptop, iPod, tablet, phone. Name one product that apple produced that no other company made beforehand?

They were not the first in creating a computer, laptop, phone, MP3 player, etc etc. Even the Macintosh which is revolutionary largely came from Xerox. Apple's differentiation factor is that they took an existing product and made it much better. That has not changed one bit, so I'm not sure why all of sudden you're using that as an example of apple not innovating. Apple is true to is roots, by providing a music streaming service. People questioned and lambasted them for launching a music playing program and selling music back in the day, but it was a stroke a genius, streaming is just a natural progression.

Actually the Xerox Parc invented the GUI/mouse. They never turned it into an innovation.