“Joi Ito is the director of the ‘Media Lab’ at MIT — a place where brilliant creatives come together to grope around on the edge of the inventive darkness in which the future most of us think we see melts into things far more mind-blowing,” Lance Salyers writes for Forbes. “In his recently released book Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future, Ito quotes Google’s Larry Page, from this 2013 interview in Wired magazine: ‘[M]ost companies decay slowly over time. They tend to do approximately what they did before, with a few minor changes. It’s natural for people to want to work on things that they know aren’t going to fail. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time. Especially in technology, where you know there’s going to be non-incremental change.'”
“I was reminded of these words and Ito’s principle of ‘Risk over Safety’ as the internet took note of the significance of Monday’s date: the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ memorable reveal of the first iPhone at Macworld,” Salyers writes. “That iconic moment radically altered not just the smartphone world, but how we interacted with technology on a far more fundamental level. Even beyond that, however, the development of the iPhone exemplified Apple at its absolute best — bypassing mere incremental advances in favor of aiming for exponential ones, even at the expense of their own current products.”
“Today, at the ripe old tech age of 10 years old, the iPhone now sits where the iPod once did as the single most important product in Apple’s financial universe,” Salyers writes. “Which means it’s time for Apple to kill the iPhone…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple will be just fine, thanks. No need for them to heed Larry page’s advice, since it was likely Steve Jobs who gave it to him in the first place. Apple knows what to do. An arbitrary time unit between iPod and iPhone debuts is not the proper impetus for change.
I look forward to Microsoft killing Windows then. Slowly dying it may be but it would still be the quickest way to suicide for the company in the foreseeable future to kill its bastard child at this juncture. So one has to be ultra careful about stating and interpreting comments of that nature they usually are only correct around the surface so to speak.
Until we get some sort of brain implant or something I believe that for a long long time to come the paradigm of a pocket-sized tech interface for communication, information and transactions will be it. Could be many decades, could even be hundreds of years that this is it for paradigms.
And just what do they mean by “killing it?” Sure, we may have gotten used to our iPhones by now, but that doesn’t mean we’re tired of them. What made Steve Jobs such a genius was he was able to give us what we wanted before we knew we wanted it, rather than just responding to some sort of market pressure or conventional wisdom. Granted, I don’t think Tim Cook possesses that same ability, but let’s recognize what made Apple what it is.
Yeah! Lets kill the iPhone.
The modern world could embrace mediocrity again.
Woohoo! Everybody on Android! 😀
I’d rather chainsaw my leg 😡
I have the privilege of working with both Android and iOS. I’m with you Gotcha. Sometimes I feel like I’ve chainsawed off my arm. 🤳📵
Jobs didn’t “kill” the iPod because a certain amount of time had passed since its creation, he did it because it was obvious to him that MP3 functionality would be folded into mobile phones. After a failed experiment with Motorola resulted in the ROKR, he realized that Apple had to make that device itself (and make it much more than a phone that played music). There’s nothing obvious on the horizon that will replace smartphones/pocket computers.
A lesser CEO (see: Balmer, Steve) would have convinced himself/herself that people would always want standalone MP3 players. Jobs didn’t blink at creating the iPhone once he saw the writing on the wall. One of the many things that made him different.
Just because Apple has made the boneheaded decision to ignore all its products except the Watch and iPhone doesn’t mean that the market for other stuff isn’t there. People keep waiting and waiting for updates.
Lots of iPod users have no interest in huge iPhones. Look at the huge price increase that is necessary to deliver a full smartphone with all the bells and whistles. For someone who just wants a great music player, or just a music player with wifi browsing and remote control capability, or a superb portable hard drive that just so happens to support his preferred headphones without a dongle — there is a substantial market. The problem with the current Apple leaders is they refuse to keep the products fresh. Waterproofing, battery life, memory, etc — all the iPods are long overdue for updates. The iPod Nano is slow and needs at least 64GB of memory. The iPod Shuffle needs to be waterproofed, more ergonomic to allow for intuitive no-look operation, and at least 32 GB. The iPod Touch needs to roll in all the goodies from the iPhone 6S minus the cellular cabability, plus more battery and options of 128 or 256 GB memory.
Why can’t Apple deliver? Probably because Timmy hasn’t figured out a way to force iPod owners to rent his iCloud.
I agree Mike. Kids use iPod Nanos all the time and I wear a shuffle when biking. Apple needs to update its products more than once every 3 years.
Um….. yeah….. Apple didn’t kill the iPod, they gave it a touch screen and the ability to make phone calls.
Umm, the PC has basically remained the same for over 30 years now. Why all of a sudden does something like the iPhone, which ushered in the modern age of mobile computing, only last 10 years? If anything, it’ll be around, much, much longer.
Yet another Arm Chair Steve Jobs.
Dime-A-Dozen. *Yawn* We certainly have plenty of them around MDN. 💤💤
But lately I do wonder what exactly Apple is going to be doing inside their giant Mother Ship. I’d hate to see the monstrosity be abandoned and go derelict. There has to be more tech creativity in the world post-Steve Jobs, apart from Elon Musk.
Once the circular campus is complete, and all the staff have moved their file boxes, espresso machines and yoga mats into the complex, they can resume their daily routine of running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
I do so hope that’s not the case. I continue to hope Apple will take a break to ‘breathe’, as I call it. That means evaluating why their aspects of failure, tossing out the dead wood employees and seeking out new live wood to inspire and energize the company into the future, until another breathing event is required. Having a hardass in charge makes such Review-And-Renew events far easier and effective. That’s one thing a Steve Jobs is for.
You’re much more the expert on these problems than I am. I can only speak from my experience and perspective. As ever, I am pleased when we can share. 😀
I was joking, of course, along the lines of “Oh, Apple has no plan at all! Horrors!”
Of course they have a war plan. First, strengthen their functional organisation through architecture designed to promote collaboration, even intimacy. See the discussion of round tables in Creativity, Inc., the story of Pixar. Next, add more value to services. That’s the area of growth after the device market is saturated. We’re not there yet, but pile on now. Third, attract the best and the brightest through perks and working conditions. The latest sign of this is allowing their scientists to publish. Fourth, wheel and deal, and be there with the shovels (and the photographers) when it’s time to break ground for new manufacturing facilities in the US and other privileged locations. 5. Increase their lobbying on Capitol Hill: in progress. 6. Double down on personal security (privacy). It’s an increasingly strong product differentiator, as we enter into an era of cyber fear.
Notice that their plan isn’t a road map littered with product way stations. (They have one of those too, but it changes like a operational tableau in General Eisenhower’s situation room.) Theirs is a plan of conquest — not of markets or of nations, but of human longing and need. It’s Steve Jobs’s plan, written up long ago and since amended as required by reality, and faithfully sustained to this day. — We oughtn’t lament that Apple’s errors foreshadow failure, but instead keep faith. Did Dunkirk foreshadow Britain’s defeat? Depends on who you listened to, back then, when 1941 was the future.
I’ll keep watching and seeing how it goes. Of course, I view it all from my own POV (I just gave ‘Dick’ a rise). If Apple does identify itself with a/the Steve Jobs Plan, the company is certain to have detractors of that plan in the form of the usual personality clash of the creatives/producers versus the relationals. IOW: Beware of Marketing-As-Management getting in the way of the Type A, hardass, annoying hard work of The Steve Jobs Plan. Producing new things is hard work. Sitting around chattering is not. We humans, generally, tend toward laziness unless we’re greatly inspired. Jobs provided inspiration. What replaces his physical presence as inspiration? Is Steve Jobs University enough?
My POV (yes, again ‘Dick’) is that Apple is in The Breathing Time and will be slapped about before it rediscovers, as a company, what all that inspired hard work is for. It’s certainly NOT about pleasing the shareholders, who live in a completely separate and dissociated world. (There’s a subject for a book or two).
And what a sick shame that any company has to play the game of lobbying, aka puppet string pulling. The entire process is sick and I’d love to personally apply the scissors.
Apple is already killing the iPhone. When the last upgrade pitch is “We’ve removed a headphone jack and replaced it with an adaptor” they are already killing it themselves. Then failed to ship a proper alternative (air pods) for 6 months plus. I am use to Apple taking things away, but they used to give us something new to take away the sting. Apple, give us a reason to believe again. All those that call me apple basher, ask yourself this ‘would Steve jobs been ok with the iPhone 7?’ –All those who are saying YES, keep sending your money to cupertino. I will wait until something worthwhile is released.
Removing the headphone jack and giving an adapter is not killing the iPhone. Removing the jack is the next step, but since not a ton of people own lightning headphones the adapter is necessary…. for now. Soon heaphones with lightning connections will be more abundant and the adapters can be forgotten. The “age of the adapter” is the transition period, not a representation of the end game.
But you are right that Apple took too long to release the AirPods. That should have been handled better than it was. They should have been released earlier than 1-2 weeks before Christmas.
The proper “alternative” to the headphone jack are wire EarPods with a lightning connection, they provided that from day one. They also included an adapter. Additional ones are rather cheap.
Since Forbes has been around for more than 10 years, do we get to “kill” that?
What an idiot. Kill the iPhone that is making Billions of dollars?
You don’t get rid of a product that is making this kind of money unless you are really a dumb ass. The headphones work get over it already.