“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.”
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