I think the one really innovative thing that is going on at Apple is their investments in their AI/ML/N team. Plus, the silicon team always does great work with the A series cpus and all the new ones too like the S4 for the watch.
I'm going to use my iPhone SE until it no longer works. I don't want bigger phones, and I'll vote with my dollars.
I'm also in the market for a MacBook Pro, but the touch bar is not something I'm interested in at the expense of the function keys. We should be able to get the best of Apple hardware, but not at a compromise.
There is actually a lot of innovation in those spec upgrades. The A6 SoC is custom designed and pretty impressive considering it is faster than the competition whilst using less power. And the thinness of the screen (i.e. integration of touch sensors) is definitely innovative.
Whatever opinions I have against Apple I just cannot deny their ability to not only innovate but also deliver every year. I wonder just how far into the future they're working on stuff internally at the company. Well done to this company.
Part of it is just that Apple spent a bunch of time hiring the right people and making the right acquisitions.
Another part of it is just that designing a CPU with good single threaded performance is hard and costs a lot of die area and no one else in the ARM world was incentivized to do this - who needs a smartphone with that kind of performance (I know, I know - all of us, now)? But Apple also makes IPads which are kind of a bridge device - mobile and battery-powered, but also big and something people might want to do real work on.
I’m also going to say that I think Apple is still alone among the phone manufacturers in recognizing that smartphones are software platforms, not simply hardware devices. I think they have a special appreciation for the enabling power of a more capable CPU.
Innovation doesn't always mean new products, sometimes it means making the current ones better. In the case of laptops, tablets, phones, and smart watches: thinner, lighter, more power, and longer battery life are the innovations most people want. In support of that, Apple Silicon was an incredibly important innovation that was not even mentioned once in the article.
I still would argue that compare to its size Apple’s innovation is lacking. They did a lot between 2000 and maybe 2010 but now they are just iterating on the same things with only a few innovative things sprinkled in. Like all big companies their main strength is efficient execution and optimization of systems.
I do agree Apple's hardware is still top-notch. Their home-made chips have been amazing to use and I have no worry they'll continue to push the envelope there. And even iOS I feel is a solid piece of evolving software (other than Siri). It's MacOS and their lack of focus on devs that worries me.
I think this is an absurd simplification of things. Apple is all about the integration of top notch tech into a product that the market really wants. Take the iPhone’s touchscreen for example or the mini HDDs in the first iPods.
I agree with you but I also think that this situation that a company is making very unique computer is exciting. I wish Apple have 10-25% market share, not above 30%.
Apple processors always blow away the competitors by miles and it takes them the competitors up to a year to catch up. They have amazing cameras, music quality, build, looks, display, security, etc. If they aren't the best, they are in the top 3. And that is all in 1 phone.
I do not personally prefer Apple cause it is not my cup of tea (and I need headphone jack) but they have been coming up with amazing phones year after year, and you can easily skip a year without it affecting your usage.
I think Apple continues to innovate in new product categories.
Apple Watch
AirPods
M1 Chip
Services (Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Music, Fitness, iCloud etc).
I include iCloud for services likeHide My Email and Private Relay.
They do this all while maintaining a consistent release cycle of upgraded versions of their hardware (new iphones, macs etc).
Also, everything in the list above has been developed under Tim Cook which is also impressive. He's been able to maintain Apple's ability to expand into new products and services.
How I feel about the latest Apple devices is that they're good despite the "innovation". Touchbar, removing headphone jack, and going all-usb-c (but not on the iphone?) all either sucks or fails to add value, but the spec bumps are still good enough and the build quality's still great, and, crucially, the competition still doesn't have its sh*t together.
Agreed. Apple is fantastic at waiting for the moment technology to be mature enough to be useful to everyday people and jumping on it. They have a fantastic CPU department that no one else can match, and certainly must have a skunkworks AI team. They’ll let everyone else make the mistakes, learn from them, and release a great product.
AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple Pay, FaceID, huge strides in mapping, Privacy-aware services and much more were all created in the past couple of years and have tremendous category-defining value.
I don't think you can overlook those things and take them for granted.
There's still not great alternatives to AirPods or Apple Watch to this day. Music streaming is pretty much just Apple and Spotify at this point. Also, few companies have been able to align privacy and embed it into their business models.
Apple has also quietly built one of the best chip design teams in the industry - pumping out various custom silicon that is powering FaceID, ML, Photography, and AR among other things. The # of custom chips Apple uses in their products grows every year.
So they've done a ton of innovative things over the past couple of years, it's just that you're not going to get another product like the iPhone which is perhaps one of the best businesses of all time.
We may never see another business like it anytime soon, from anyone. So I think it's a bit unfair to grade everything Apple does on the "iPhone Curve".
I think if there is any company that could wow us with upgradeability and repairability, it would be Apple after they decided to innovate in those areas.
I want a nice, high-quality laptop or smartphone with hardware designed by the very best, and good production values from start to finish.
I can't really get that from anyone but Apple. I've got a Thinkpad, but even that very nice machine is in a lower class of industrial design compared to Apple products. Likewise, my HTC Incredible is a great phone, but bits of it are clearly of lower quality than my friends' iPhone 4s.
That's why some of Apple's practices annoy me-- because they're so damn good at everything else, they tempt me anyway.
I'm going to use my iPhone SE until it no longer works. I don't want bigger phones, and I'll vote with my dollars.
I'm also in the market for a MacBook Pro, but the touch bar is not something I'm interested in at the expense of the function keys. We should be able to get the best of Apple hardware, but not at a compromise.
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