Posted on 03/26/2014 6:44:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Apple may be the most valuable company on the planet, but two and a half years into the Tim Cook era, it already looks like a different outfit. Though Cook has brought revenue up 58 percent, and profits up 40 percent, the Steve Jobs-led fervor to innovate seems to be subsiding. Apple is in an industry where it has to keep coming up with daring new breakthroughs, and the famously bland Cook doesn’t seem like the man to deliver them. Revenues in the last fiscal year were up only 9.6 percent, the slowest increase in a decade, and earnings fell for the first time since 2001.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane‘s book Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs has been denounced as “nonsense” by Cook, but Cook has good reason to bristle at the book, which paints him as a mere caretaker, not a creative genius. Sony was once the coolest kid on the block too. Here are some early warning signals that stasis and even decline beckon for Apple.
1. Regression to the mean. Apple came up with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, in each case not only creating a blockbuster new product but a whole new category. Like a football quarterback who throws for 400 yards a game for a month, Apple is overdue for a slump. “Apple was essentially in violation of business physics for an extremely long time,” says Harvard management professor Gautam Mukunda in the book. Today, portable music players are an aging product category and competitors are stealing market share from the phone and tablets. Will Apple be able to pull another rabbit out of its hat?
2. Tim Cook doesn’t think different.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Maybe there’s nothing left to invent...
I am an Apple fan, but cannot agree more. Each IOS and OS-X update has produced more frustrations than appreciations for both the wife and I.
I’m thankfully into Linux at work (where we need a reliable OS) and therefore am building up expertise just in case Apple keeps (dis)improving.
Of course, I’ll continue to avoid Microsoft (the Yugo of operating systems) like the plague.
In defense of Apple, how many years were there between the first iPod and the iPhone. Than now many between the phone and the iPad. If they release another revolutionary product in the next 2 years, they will be on schedule.
I do agree their software updates are increasingly less ‘Jobs-like’ with bugs, less desirable features, etc.
Well ... we’ll just have to see ... :-) ...
The mention of current leadership stomping on anyone that fails/disappoints... Yeah, that kills creativity so thoroughly, so insidiously, so subtly that you don't even know you've done it until you realize you've gone months or years without anyone doing anything significantly interesting. I have been "in the trenches" as an engineer in several organizations and you can just tell. You can tell when people are excited and doing fun stuff, and when they are just doing their job, keeping their head down.
Damn I needed a laugh this morning, and there it is.
Apple need to return to America.
That is their problem.
If Apple were to do that their capital would be erased overnight by the feral government chomping at the bit to get at their offshore money. Fix the government problems first, make a business friendly environment and business will come pouring back in. But you already know this because freepers remind you every time you post your copy/pasta.
Eh, give them time. If Tim isn’t the guy, maybe they will find someone else. They are working on the watch thingy and tv thingy.
I read yesterday they’ve now sold 500 million phones...
Apples best days are behind them, it’s all downhill from here.
I have started the switch from Apple products to android and am very satisfied.
RE: Apple need to return to America.
And pay the highest corporate taxes in the world? How’s that going to help their bottom line?
For the shareholder’s part, I hope that they are working on innovations. I still think that wearable tech is the next big leap; then again, Facebook just paid 2 billion for a tech company which doesn’t actually have a product or customers yet, so it would appear they’d agree with me.
But what form will it take? Seems like every ‘smart watch’ has been a design failure; Google Glass still appears to be stirring up excitement. But the wearable tech that seems to have the strongest sales are activity trackers and GPS run trackers. Only problem is Apple has ceded a lot of that territory to partners already in the field and likely contractually forbidden from entering it themselves.
I certainly don’t count Apple out.
I had two androids that were pretty good, but had major flaws...battery life and stability over time. A year and a half in to each, the device was a mess. I switched to iphone to avoid those issues. It was hell using the droids as a business phone.
Now, Android has made leaps and bounds in those areas and I would not hesitate to go back when it’s time for my next phone. I think Android overall is ahead on software at this point. They innovate much faster.
To a certain extent I think that is true. The Steve Jobs innovations came at at time when personal, portable electronics that could connect to the Internet were in their infancy. Looking back, the evolution from iPod to iPad seems obvious. Give Jobs credit - he saw that evolution looking forward from the iPod.
But what does an iPad evolve to? It is not obvious? It will be mostly refinement and not innovation. Faster processing, lower price, better optics, larger storage, longer battery life. The basic functionality is portable connectivity. That was the big step. There aren't any steps of that size left that I can see.
Nevertheless, Jobs developed a lot of talent in his organization and I still have faith that there is innovation in Apple's future. It just may not be limited to portable widgets. Time will tell.
If Apple does not return to America, their capital will be erased eventually by China, acquiring the company.
Apple needs to choose its country.
A lot of companies do. American companies.
Come home.
I am finding more and more stupid things in Apple products, these days.
I recently had to update the OS on my iPhone, and the new system has useless battery sucking features that do not add to the utility of the phone. It has dynamic graphics that are visually interesting the first time you see them, but get to be annoying the hundreth time you see them. The default font for things like the clock and calendar is very elegant and thin, but it is nearly impossible to see.
I find the same annoying things on my iPad and on the Mac I use from time to time at work. A few years ago, I had confidence that I could use any Apple product and I would not find anything in the design or function that was glaringly stupid. Not is not the case anymore. Not by a long shot.
It appears that one of the functions of Steve Jobs was to look at things and ask “Is this stupid?”. That gatekeeper function is no longer being met. So the GPS guys can slip in a function that appends your location to each text message, but nobody pays attention to the fact that they just decreased battery life by 10%. Get three or four things that do that, and your phone dies at 5:30 PM every day.
Once my phone starts dying every day, it is worse than useless to me. I have announced to the World that I can be reached by any means at any time, and half the time I am carrying around a dead brick, and pissing off everybody who tries to contact me. I have disabled as much as I can, but the battery suck continues. It is almost as if the competing feature architects have insulated their little contributions to the battery suck and leave it to some other department to invent the Magic Battery Fairy to make it all work.
I could get a Mophie. I could upgrade my phone to an iPhone 5. I could install a charger on my work desk, my car, my home desk and my nightstand. Or I could just buy an Android phone.
Since I don’t see things getting better any time soon at Apple, Samsung is looking better and better. And I loved my iPhone. You know how Nixon never said “If I have lost Walter Cronkite, I have lost America”. Well if Apple has lost me, they really have lost America. Time to get out.
Right now I have three products. I have a laptop, a smartphone and tablet. The next step is to integrate these three functions into one portable product, that shares one connection, so I can meet all my needs at a reduced cost.
Apple does not want to do that, because they want to sell me an iPod, an iPhone, and iPad and a MacBook Air. But as soon as somebody figures out how I can do all of these things at half the price, I'm all over that.
I read that after the transition to Tim Cook that Apple started hiring many more people with MBA backgrounds. Under Steve Jobs they didn’t have that many MBAs outside of finance. Now, from what I read, they have a lot of them. The article suggested that it might indicate a shift from a creative company to a managed one.
Steve Jobs was a visionary product guy. Tim Cook is a manager. Not to say anything against Cook — there’s nothing wrong with that — but it is a personality difference.
Cook has brought revenue up 58 percent, and profits up 40 percent... Revenues in the last fiscal year were up only 9.6 percent, the slowest increase in a decade, and earnings fell for the first time since 2001... Apple came up with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, in each case not only creating a blockbuster new product but a whole new category.The iPod didn't create a whole new category, it merely perfected it. The iPad is just the best of its genre, not the first, or creator of the category. The iPhone trailed the Blackberry by four years in the 'smart phone' category, but kicked everyone's ass, and in terms of how much market share Apple commands with the line, still rules.
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