“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.
Listen, I LOVE Apple products. I have four iPhones to Macs and three iPads in my home. Don’t have an android or PC anything. I’m sorry to say it, I can’t speak for the US because I don’t live there, but in Canada Maps is absolutely unusable. I love the interface but it just gives you wrong directions! There is no way Steve jobs would ever let this app out of the gate, and if for some reason has IQ dropped by 70 points he would at the very least have put beta on it. Tim Cook dropped the ball on this one. It’s very un-Apple to release something this bad.
Yea its funny though because he was right, at least about apples slow but steady decline in the market. Most projections believe apple will hit single digits in smartphone market share sometime next year. Although its true they are consistently selling more phone year on year so far, they are not keeping up with the pace that the market is growing, causing their market share to decrease.
Also your delusional if you think apple maps is a better experience than google maps and are probably one of the only tech journalists to think so (you are a writer for macdailynews though so im hardly surprised). How can you even call yourself a journalists if you cant even admit any of apples mistakes, why should you take you seriously at all.
This article was biased journalism at its finest.
Also you do realize that android was founded in 2003, and is hardly a “knock off” sure it was released 8 or so months after ios but it was being developed long before ios wan unveiled. Sure in the beginning android was insecure, and generally on more budget handsets than apple which was the initial reason for its popularity, but that is hardly the case today it is on just as premium if not more premium devices than iphone (htc one anybody). Their is a reason android is dominating in market share it isn’t just a fluke its because its more in tune with what consumers want.
I love apple and mac, I had an iphone for years(screens got to small and stayed the same non native resolution so I switched to android late last year), my whole family owns macs, but I am not so delusional in my fandom that I cant even realize where apple has made mistakes or realize that there is a reason that their stock is steadily declining based on uncertainty over their future in the market place.