“The story of Apple Incorporated is far from over. It is the most valuable company in the world, by a large margin. Apple produces a range of exceptional and much loved products. It employs many of the most talented designers and engineers on the planet. But I think Apple has peaked and the story of the next few years will be one of a slow but real decline,” Dan Crow opines for The Guardian.
“Some background: I worked at Apple for four years in the late 1990s, as a software engineer and engineering manager. I joined during the disastrous reign of Gil Amelio, the desolate end of a desolate decade for the company,” Crow explains. “I was there when Steve Jobs returned and executed the most spectacular business turnaround of our lifetimes. I got to know Steve quite well and Apple really well. I’ve been rooting for them ever since. I’m an avid Mac user, though for mobile devices I prefer Android – I also worked at Google for five years.”
MacDailyNews Take: He prefers an inferior, insecure knockoff of Apple’s work? Google must have paid him well.
Crow writes, “Why do I think Apple has passed its peak? There are a number of signs. The most visible recent one is the Maps debacle. Replacing Google Maps with an obviously inferior experience shows how much Apple has changed.”
MacDailyNews Take: Every single one of our experience with Apple’s Maps have been superior to Google’s Maps, from faster redraws to better visuals. Anyone who calls Apple’s Maps “obviously inferior” to Google’s has either never really used both or has an agenda.
Crow writes, “Maps is the most obvious recent sign of changes at Apple, but there are other, more subtle, signs of a creative slowdown. The iPad 4 launched just six months after the iPad 3 with Retina Display. It doesn’t improve substantially over the previous version, yet has managed to annoy users who just bought an iPad 3. This insipid update is not the sort of magical product launch on which Apple has built its reputation.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, puleeze. Reality does not mesh with your tripe, Danny:
• iPad 4 graphics upgrade a serious horsepower increase; Apple’s A6X is one massive processing machine – November 2, 2012
• Benchmarks: Apple iPad 4′s A6X beats all comers in GPU performance – November 2, 2012
• iPad 4 has processing power to spare; benchmarks show plenty of speed; beats Google Nexus 7, Microsoft Surface
– November 6, 2012
Crow writes, “It’s not just on the product side where there are signs of Apple slipping. While the recent departure of Scott Forstall has, rightly, garnered a lot of headlines, it’s important not to overlook the fate of John Browett. He was in charge of Apple’s retail stores – a vital component of Apple’s success over the last decade. Browett was in position for just seven months and by all accounts he presided over a significant and ill-advised change in strategy, focussing on profit over customer care – another example of Apple putting its corporate needs ahead of its customers.”
MacDailyNews Take: Browett was a mistake that has been corrected. The average Apple customer was not impacted. Cook needs to field a better candidate.
Crow writes, “Apple has serious structural faults. The loss of Steve was devastating – the entire company was built around him and the mistakes we have seen since he left are entirely consistent with a very hierarchical organisation trying to find its way without its leader. I think in hindsight, we will see that Apple’s peak of creativity, innovation and leadership was early 2012.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We shall see.
I am naming my first child Maps Debacle.
Vector based graphics are too fast for you?
+100!
-101
+2
What if it’s a girl?
And Maps spelled backwards is Spam.
Did you learn that at school today?
Gee, with a brain like that no wonder he’s a *former* employee!
That’s why he’s a formal employee 😞
This legacy dude is per-Mac OS and pre- iOS 🙂
You are way too early to call the peak!!! Watch the following years to come how Apple will not miss a beat on product refresh and “new” products!
AAPL stock is a buy BUY now as it will be $1100 by 2015 🙂
Yes, and in related news, the Foxconn chairman says company is falling short of demand for the iPhone 5….
Totally bullshit .
With Apple making its map , we won’t have such a beautiful turn by turn natvigation . In fact , I think Apple will go downhill if it doesn’t develop it own map as a lot of services use location .
Ipad 4 early release is to offset the influence by ipad mini . Apple is alsolutely right to do it .
I’m tiered of hearing how aweful Apple Maps is. It works great for me and has never steered me wrong. It works even when I’m in areas that have bad reception for 3G or cell coverage. I know it’s not perfect but it’s not as bad as people paint it.
I agree. I have had a couple of goofs. But, nothing serious and nothing within the past week. I love the 3D effect and the turn-by-turn directions. Has saved me a ton of time and I did not have to shell out cash for a turn-by-turn app. I do not miss the old verison of Maps or Google Maps at all. The current situation and the future with Maps is very bright.
I have iOS6 on my Ipad and Apple Maps still shows dublin zoo in the middle of the city and not in the Pheonix Park where it actually resides. This is months after the release of Apple Maps. Dublin zoo is the most visited tourist location in Dublin and the fact this obvious mistake hasn’t been fixed looks to me like Apple are not prioritising Maps. There is no way that Apple can make its map product as good as Google Maps without spending an absolute fortune on it. Apple are great, I love their design, their products are absolutely beautiful (particularly the new iMac- what a stunner ). Dont be surprised if Maps is cancelled soon
Anyone can say something like that.
Apple exiles don’t have the best track record
I think that the MAIN reason for the mid-term update of the iPad was mostly to bring connectivity parity to iOS devices, with the A6X being a bonus. WIth iPhone, iPod, and new iPad mini all using lightning connection, it would have been awkward for them to offer the flagship iPad with the older tech. I’ve had my iPad 3 since just after launch, and I’m not ticked off about the bump, although I would probably enjoy it and the improved wifi. But I see this as Apple just going ahead and unifying the connectors and accessories going forward. No big deal, as most people who have an iPad with 30-pin probably have other 30-pin devices, too.
Apple should have offered free adaptors for iPad 3 users
Umm… that kind of thinking is what got Obama re-elected 😉
Nice try…
Also, the new iPad 4 counters new tablets from Google and Microsoft.
Yeah it ain’t frackin rocket science why the iPad 4 was released.
The 10″ Retina iPad is the flagship iPad.
It had to have the lightning connector like the other current idevices.
The processor needed to be upgraded because they couldn’t have the flagship iPad being outperformed by the iPhone 5.
They also needed to provide better “global” LTE support.
The reasons are dead simple.
I also don’t get the disgruntled buyers of the iPad 3.
Their device will be supported with easy iOS upgrades for years to come. Yet they still complain.
Samsung on the other hand releases new devices every 2 weeks. It will probably ship with an outdated OS and will likely never be updated. (Unless you root it)
Nobody bats an eyelid at this complete lack of support and they carry on like Samsung are the good guys and cash do no wrong.
I just don’t get it.
Former employees are always disgruntled. Do you really value their opinions concerning unbiased insight?
“Former employees are always disgruntled” – Not true at all.
As an example of my point: Tony Fadell
He not only came up with an innovative product outside of Apple, Apple sells his product in their stores.
This is just another paid hit piece designed to get “hits” and manipulate the stock lower, which is what is happening. HELLO Securities and Exchange commission, please start investigating this.
lol SEC? …let’s get the fox to defend the henhouse.
Yea, who cares?! Former emplyee since the dinosaur period, many revolutions ago!
Too soon to call an epic Fail.
Every Apple employee likely has at least a small stock interest keeping them attuned to doing the best they can.
Senior people with large stock holdings have an incredible incentive to make the right decisions and pick the best of a lot of new product ideas.
Let us judge: Invest in GM or Apple? MS or Apple?
This was a really funny article. Yep, Apple, you need to pack up all your toys and GO home. Your done. You’ve had your day in the sun and it’s over. Yeah, right!
How could it be that a company can become like Apple and lose everything like a cheap suit.
Hasn’t this always been the fate of Apple. Close up shop tomorrow and then they always do something to change the world. Apathy is good. It keeps the status quo.
This guy needs to get a life.
So, Steve Jobs, as brilliant as he was, never made a mistake? Can anyone remember Mobileme? Apple Maps will improve fairly rapidly. Meanwhile, iPad 4 is offers a very significant performance upgrade at almost twice the speed! The logic in this article is deeply flawed.
And the anntengate too
Sour grapes from an ex-apple employee.
Of course he isn’t gonna sing Apple’s praises.
“Nothing to see here, move along move along”
Huge numbers of people seem to have retroactively convinced themselves that Steve Jobs was perfect and that Apple never made any missteps or mistakes after he returned and that every product they released was something astounding that had never been seen before.
The 3 really revolutionary products Apple launched during that second period were the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Sure there were other amazing products, products which made huge leaps on previous offerings, but in terms of fundamental paradigm changes, those defined the Apple we have now.
The iMac changed the way computers looked and brought us into the era of constant development for Apple computers, but it was still fundamentally a computer, with a mouse, screen, and keyboard. Does that make it any less revolutionary or great? No.
Some changes to models now may to an extent just be evolutionary, not revolutionary, but as fast as technology moves it does have limits.
The 4th gen iPad could just be called iterative, but so what. the previous model is hardly obsolete, it’s not going to force anyone to upgrade any sooner than they might have, and for those people who didn’t have a retina display iPad, they can now get a new one without having to wait. No-one loses out. New models are always going to come out earlier than some people are able to upgrade to them, but that doesn’t mean companies should never introduce new things. They’re hardly churning out dozens of new models with a new one every other week.
Maps has issued, some more serious than others, but some are mostly cosmetic and will be fixed. The record for web bases services under Steve Jobs was hardly prefect.
The iPod Nano is probably the most changed range Apple has ever produced. Does having a completely new form factor every release make the line fundamentally better? Is a completely new design an admission that the old one was no good? What matters is the quality of the products on sale at any one time.
If they released an iPad 5, and/or iPad mini 2 in a month and they were a fundamental upgrade on the recently released models, people could perhaps be a bit annoyed, but they won’t. 7 months in technological terms is a long time.
The big differentiating factor of the iPad 4 is the lightning connector. They could have just added that and still kept everything else the same, and still called it the iPad 3 (new iPad) but they were good enough to upgrade performance for the same price. How is that a bad thing?
Great points. People foolishly act as if EVERY product has to be astounding and revolutionary. As though each year, in addition to unimaginable upgrades to current devices, should bring a completely unheard of product that will change the world. Apple is the only one which doesn’t get away with not living up to this expectation. I wonder why people don’t treat Ford the same way for taking so long to provide features that Mercedes and BMW have had for a long time. A vast majority of people really are just ignorant to the difficulty of product development and managing a business. We live in a “snap your fingers and magic happens” kind of world.
An employee in the ’90’s, for four years. Great track record, pal! Since worked for Google and prefers Android. Really? Well, there’s a frackin’ surprise.
Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.
Although everybody has got one, Rorschach finds it necessary to show his by posting this type of ‘opinion’ with potty mouth to go.
Couldn’t have said it better.
I’m an iPad 3 owner, very happy with it, and not at all distressed by the G4 release.
For Pete’s sake, tech is all about improvement and renewal.
This man seems to be a tool, though it’s hard to imagine a future product as far ahead of anything else on the market as the iPhone and iPad.
But that’s the point – we didn’t see them coming, and I doubt we’ll see a future game-changer until it arrives.
Another ridiculous article from this site. “a former employee” says it all over.
post real news please
I am tired not only for the “maps app is a debacle” but also for “Apple is a company built around Steve Jobs”.
SJ knew he will die soon and he loves Apple so much that he prepares his beloved company to work without him.
I am tired also to heard that “Innovation at Apple is in the past” because they are working hard to make their products faster, better.
What does people want? Well, people likes drama and the better of them is seeing Apple falls.
This guy said: “I prefer Android over iOS. But it does not matter I work now for Google” Ha! If he had said “I prefer iOS”, he will be not only “former” Apple employee, but also “former Google employee”.
It is very easy to talk from the outside.
Shit happens, always®
Who the f__k are you Dan Crow? Only at Apple in the 90’s under Amileo, what do you know about the Apple of the new millennium.
He was an Apple employee. But now he is 100% loyal to Google. So obviously he is going to say shit like….liking android over iOS (that is just too funny in itself) and saying that I new iPad is nothing new and that maps is a mistake. These are ALL the things that upset Google.
He must have been one of the Bozo’s that Steve got rid of.
Apple maps looks terrible compared to Google maps. Just terrible, in fact worse than terrible. I hate looking at it – it’s like using a Fisher Price toy.
More rubbish from Apple. That and Siri sucks donkey balls.
you and dan crow can freakin bite me
Yeah you wish Siri could get it going. All you want is an iPhone and a whole in the pocket.
And you suck Ballmer’s left nut. It’s a bit sweaty I bet.
Going back to Windows anytime soon? See ya! Asshole!
Apple’s real problem lies in their inability to meet demand for their products. If they can fix that they’ll be fine.
I didn’t think I’d ever say it but this is probably correct. Apple will now decline along with the rest of the USA. The writing has been on the wall for some time now. Anti big business forces have prevailed and the Apple bashing from the press, media and leftist pundits will only get louder. Even the supposedly Apple oriented blogs like Cult Of Mac have switched to a snarking, condescending tone that looks down upon their own readership. If you like Apple products you’re portrayed as an elitist, snob who profits on the back of the poor workers. Apple was once a shining example of an American success story. But it will only take a few more years until the progressives demean and minimize the company. We’ve seen how Apple is a target of Greenpeace and other leftist labor/union causes. America is quickly headed toward mediocrity ala socialist Europe and in that climate Apple and future Apples are just not needed when you have the Government running the show.
Blah, blah, blah…
Sour grapes?
This guy is more like an Apple has been. All his rhetoric is pointed to his current alliance. His statements are meaningless drivel.