“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.
oh, please. MDN. stop trolling. look at the reality. AAPL is fallen way below $560. they lost $130 billions within two months. don’t you see the sign? if you don’t, you are just stupid idiot, mindless apple fanboy. look. apple is over. it’s very true.
Maybe he should flip pancakes at the Waffle House.
The markets sure are taking it in the shorts. I though WS loved the President.
What a stupid article. Sorry, a little grumpy after staying up all night following the elections in USA (from Europe).
But, “….I think in hindsight, we will see that Apple’s peak of creativity, innovation and leadership was early 2012.”
But, but, BUT. Where the hell does this guy come from? …… the future? … must be an alien or at least an (an)droid of some sort.
MacDailyNews Take: +1
He’s just cashing in on his five minutes of fame. All anecdotes suggest that Jobs had Apple thinking 5-10 years ahead to disrupt themselves. I expect they have stuck with that.
Sad but true. Jerks like Forstall & Browett put in charge, the loss of Save As, the dumbing down of FCP, the dumbing down of laptops by the elimination of optical drives and analog audio inputs, 10.7 Lion (aka “Vista for Macs”), it all adds up to a company that has lost it’s way. Apple appears to be following the trajectory of HP who used to make world class test equipment and is now just another money grubbing corporate joke.
I wonder why both Apple and Google fired him?
I wonder why the only job he can get in Tech is writing about tech?
Loser.
Apple Maps is shit as of yesterday. Had to find my way to a FedEx Office shop in the near downtown of a large city, so I decided to see if Apple Maps had improved since my precious less than stellar experience with it.
1- The routing is wrong- not the most efficient route- something that comes from crowdsourcing the database. This could have been fixed with a larger public beta.
2- The navigation was off by more than a little once I got away from the wide open spaces of the freeway. Attribute it to whatever, but it wasn’t a lack of GPS signal. Taking the same route out with a different app showed no problem.
3- Database information regarding traffic signaling directed me to a stop sign fronting a busy 8 lane street instead of a 4 way traffic light equipped intersection 2 streets further on the earlier route. Otherwise, it’s not aware of traffic lights vs signals when considering routing in busy and congested areas.
Apple positions itself as a premium product and this does not make the grade. One can easily get a 99₵ Fandroid that will kick it’s ass on navigation. This should not be so.
Apple Maps saved my ass last week. I used Google Maps on my iMac to find my destination in a nearby city, and when I got there I was totally lost, I looked it up in Apple Maps on my iPhone 4S and found that I was on the wrong side of the river, 20 minutes west of my intented destination! I used turn-by-turn and got there on time. Without my iPhone I don’t think I would have found the location let alone make it to my appointment on time… so I guess experiences vary.
this guy discredited himself by saying he worked for Google… Apparently after Apple… he has no idea what is really going on right now anyway…
if Eric the mole wasn’t a board member… there would be no question… the iPhone would be 70% of all smartphones (outside of China/India)…
correction… 70% of all phones….
Apple is hardly declining like Blackberry, Hewlett-Packard, or even Microsoft.
Piece should have been called “Hired by Gil Amelio”. That tells you everything you need to know right there.
I’m personally wondering when the tech press will pass its peak claiming Apple’s past its peak. I’m sure never.
Ask yourself: How much insight do you have about a place you worked at 13 years ago?
None.
Never heard of Dan Crow, but there were quite a lot of Apple employees who were shown the door in the year after Steve returned. Most of them are rather bitter.
-jcr
You’re entitled to your biased conjecture Dan. Have a good day.
Yeah, this guy has special insight because he worked for Apple in the late nineties…
Sounds like he wishes he still worked there. A spoiled little android brat.
Badmouth or spread negative news about your former employer always a really bad idea. I guess that “Mr. Stupid” is bitter about Apple for whatever reason.
Apple is treating everybody like shit, just like QuarkXpress used to do. We all know what happened to Quark. Sorry, but Apple has surely peaked, it is really downhill from now. Even americans will gradually have to realize this.
Hey Dan, I joined Apple when Sculley was CEO and left after Tim Cook took the reigns (not related!). I think you’ve been smoking too much Google Goodness. I know a fellow who was Steve Job’s personal assistant for several years and he tells me even he didn’t get to know Steve “really well”– you might have worked with him, even a lot, but you didn’t get to know such a private man “really well.”
Your logic appears to have been what got you accepted to Google: On the one had you assert the iPad 4th generation is no big deal versus the iPad 3rd generation and then you assert that iPad 3 owners are miffed at the quick product cycle.
Had you been around when the iPod was introduced, you would not consider the iPod one of Steve’s finest products: 5GB, $499, no support for Windows users. Later, when iTunes was released for Windows, the iPod started its meteoric climb and took everyone at Apple by surprise. So I would say that you have given plenty of evidence that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that which you should know about you’re either pursuing an agenda or you’ve charitably forgotten most of the real history.
So his example of a creative slowdown is iPads refreshing at 6 month intervals?
How fast does he THINK they should refresh?
‘MacDailyNews Take: Every single one of our experience with Apple’s Maps have been superior to Google’s Maps.’
You should try Apple’s Maps here in the UK. Loads of missing or incorrectly located places they even show local restaurants which have closed 8+ years ago. I’ve tried to send Apple local corrections but none of them have been taken up (it’s been 2 months and counting). Compare that to Google Maps on a Nexus 7, everything local appears correct and complete, together with restaurant information reviews and even pictures. Apple’s maps information is totally embarrassing in comparison.
The worst sign: abandoning support of original iPad and the 15 million customers who bought it. Completely inexcusable and angering as hell. How am I ever to trust buying anything Apple again after that slap in the face ?
FCOL, iPad 1 was still the current gen iPad a mere 20 months ago.
Every early adopter should be furious, if not they’re drunk on the koolaid..
+1
This is so bogus. I suppose the deification of Jobs was somewhat inevitable, but it just goes to ridicules proportions. Maps was unfortunate, but I consider that fairly medium to small compared to the Apple failures that finally led to what is now a very decent cloud service – MobileMe and whatever it’s precursor was – major failures under SJ’s watch. And now I’m supposed to believe that Maps is going to single handedly bring down Apple?! Get real. This kind of naysaying really makes me question the authenticity of the source of this article in the first place. Either he’s ten years old or just plain lying.
Jeepers.
maybe the headline should read “DISGRUNTLED Former Apple employee”.