“Whatever happens over the next few weeks, or even the next year, Apple will be just fine,” Jon Nathanson writes for Slate. “In the past, Apple needed dazzling new devices every few years to phase out the old ones, and to expand into new use cases and new markets. That’s less the case today. Apple has learned to build on previous success, not to start from scratch every time.
“The iPhone and the iPad, and all the apps developers have made for them, have built a powerful ecosystem in iOS. In the coming year, and in the years beyond, Apple’s future will depend on how necessary it can make iOS to every aspect of our lives,” Nathanson writes. “For Apple to succeed, it’ll have to position iOS as more than just a place for games, a place for media, a place for daily distractions. It’ll need to make iOS indispensable. It’ll need to differentiate iOS from Android and other would-be competitors.”
“Apple will always be a hardware company, but we need to look beyond the hardware,” Nathanson writes. If you want to understand Apple’s future, don’t focus on any one device. Focus on the platform that unites them all.”
Read more in the full article here.
Because Apple lacks the PR to list all the many things that Apple has done and is doing, let us all list them here for Apple:
– the world’s only 64-bit smartphone and tablet OS and chip
– the world’s largest network of international billion dollar server farms and growing
– CarPlay
– iBeacon
– Apple’s very own cone of silence covering the Apple board room
Server farms. Where they grow those great products!
Isn’t it too bad the only servers they ever grew on those farms got plowed under?
Nah, the ones they grew were never used in those farms.
The 128-bit iPhone cometh,
The 128-bit iPad cometh,
The 256-bit iMac cometh!
They all cometh like an avenging angel to lay-about and scatter Apple’s enemies into the nether regions of the ether.
Mongol General: Apple! What is best in life?
Apple: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their lawyers.
If you lack PR you lack bullshit!
Duh.
About time someone got it right and where the real value in Apple’s products lie. Most people and analysts can’t see the forest for the trees. All they see is a piece of hardware sitting on a shelf with a list of specs and try to compare it with other devices. What they all miss and look over is the platform that supports the devices and how Apple has worked over the passed few years to enhance it.
When you take into consideration all things going on at the company right now, you can’t help but think they’ve got some fairly large plans for their products and services in the future… Hiring of all the medical/health personnel, building their own CDN, renewing their contract with Liquid Metal, the monstrous sapphire plant in Arizona, the possible use of NFC, the purchase of PrimeSense and LuxVue, not to mention all the mapping companies in the past year.
Actually most people, including this writer, are well aware of all the things you mentioned. They’re very obvious. Only the completely uninformed would not be aware of these things.
“Apple will always be a hardware company… “??
Apple is not just a hardware company.. It is just as much a software company.
Plus apples pace of innovation having slowed down is just a PR game played by apple haters.
If anything apples pace of innovation as gone up !
Apple is a SYSTEMS company. There is no “NOT JUST” in a systems company. They make the product from A to Z, the ecosystem, the connectivity, some of the chips, the OS, the fundamental SW programs (WP, SS, Photo, Presentation……).
Think of MS, an OS and SW company (wanna be hardware). HP, Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba,…. are mainly hardware. Samsung is mainly hardware. These guys are more tire companies, not auto companies.
….more like tire companies.
You guys know I can come off as a contentious prat, but on this occasion I’m waiting 10 days….
Apple is like a chess master with a drinking problem. Can take an age to respond to a competitor’s move, and often responds either by surprising everyone with a killer move, losing his queen, or inexplicably conceding the game.
While the clock ticks you never know which it’s going to be.
There is an old Apple saying: It’s the software stupid!
It is far harder now to challenge people via pop culture to be as shocked by the introduction of something like The Beatles, Star Wars, Jaws, the iPhone, the iPad, etc.. Those kind of thermonuclear paradigm shifts are rare. Only problem is now that the genie is out of the bottle it becomes harder to impress people with newer devices. Just improvements on what we have. Sure an iWatch or iTV might “shock” people a little bit but now I think people are on their guard and will react much more jaded about it no matter what it is. The world has changed. Those Steve Jobs driven “shock & awe” days may be behind us REGARDLESS of worthiness of the technology being presented to us.
I hear u… But everything is relative to its time . And genie has always been out of the bottle relative to its time !
Haven’t people always been jaded by technology of their era and then been blown away by some parading shifting innovation they did not expect?
Given the unprecedented speed technology is moving forward,I actually feel we live in times ripe for blowing us away with incredible innovations !
Bring us Flying Cars, Transporters, Warp Drive, AI Robots and Replicators and that might actually get people roused.
Flying cars.. you mean I have to deal with my fellow drivers in THREE dimensions? Joy. I had just finished getting a full 360 degrees rotation on the tank turret I mounted on my 1974 Pinto. Covering the rest of the sky is going to be a real feat.
Ahh laddie, computers will do it for you. No way the average consumer could fly a car without grave danger. They can barely drive on land and are inefficient at that.
Back in 1984 or ’85 there was a space shuttle simulator available for the Mac. Lost to history is whether this was a joke or an actual experience but we did have occasion to discuss the app (and by inappropriate leaps of imagination the actual shuttle) aborting with an error dialog of “Illegal target of GoTo at line 21603”.
Fast forward to your confidence in the computers of the future. Blue screen of death while navigating in 3D? Scary stuff!!
Believe it or not most of what you just mentioned are in the labs…
Including transporter… As it has been achieved at particle level.. The rest is a matter of time !
Which you and I will run out of before seeing these on an Apple Store shelf. Oh I forgot the iFusion.
Maybe Apple needs to buy this technology:
The very reality that this question even needs to be asked is proof that concerns have built to a point that if we don’t see the WOW at the upcoming WWDC followed by a positive reaction on Wall Street, then Tim’s reign is done, done, done. Anyone in denial about this is just being stubborn without any reason whatsoever.
I think you are a bit uninformed about the pace of innovation at apple at Jobs times and now with Tim Cook !
There is no slow down in innovation. .. None !
Super innovations dont happen every year..
Given normal apple pace of putting out hit wonders ..Tim at least has 7 months to show something super impressive!
That said the last 2 year have been anything but a vacuum of innovation from apple!
Tim cook has done an incredible job at a very difficult transitionary time !
Wwdc is a software venue .. Don’t expect any hardware!
Who’s calling the stubborn kettle stubborn?
Hey, if you don’t like Tim Cook, go back to Windows and Surface!
Easy solution, no bitching, good-bye!
Tim took an impossible job and made it worse by spewing gay politics and demonizing conservatives who doubt the dubious claims of global warming after 10 consecutive years of cooling. He needs to go. I know I will never see the likes of Steve Jobs again, but at least give me someone who inspires rather than offends me!