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Comment by LiweiZ | Hacker News Reader

Apple is leveraging its established ground to pursue more profit. This requires operation excellence. However, to win in the future, it needs products like what Jobs delivered. Based on the products Apple offered in the post-Jobs era so far, Apple has not shown any sign to provide a product that really shines as a whole. Even though I am a big fan of Apple, this makes me wonder its future.

edit: typo

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A few [1] have argued that the last thing Apple needs now is a hit driven mentality. If there's an opportunity to make a difference to an entire market, sure... But otherwise the focus should be on stabilizing and growing the ecosystem of these post-PC devices and continuing to let the the Mac ecosystem swallow up what is left of the PC world's profits. So far, that's exactly what Tim Cook has been doing, with the watch being less about a new hit and more about keeping the innovative thinking warm while they exploit iOS/tvOS.

[1] http://blog.gardeviance.org/2011/10/why-i-believe-aapl-will-...

With the ground Apple has taken and the product's life cycle, yes. It's natural to start grabbing more and more profit. That's what business is for. However, the advance of operation excellence could also post a bigger challenge to the organization's product-oriented DNA. It would not be an easy task to keep both balanced. Most of the time, I found things went the operation route. Whether the past few products were big hit was less related here, it is the lower quality of the deliverables as a product that raises my concern.

Yes, we saw this last time with the Mac devolving into myriad options and variants under Scully, Schindler and Amelio. The true test of Jobs' legacy will be if he left structures in place to keep creating the new while building and growing ecosystems for the old.

I think about this a lot, but I can't come up with a single product that has an average selling price of over $600, that pretty much EVERYONE (at least adults) in the world would need, that they would also want to upgrade every two years.

The Watch would be this device as long as its gets more independent of the phone. Maybe a car in the future!

But in the near term, I would imagine their growth would taper off as more and more of the developing world get an iPhone (China still has few more years of growth) & Moore's law means features aren't added as often.

> But in the near term, I would imagine their growth would taper off as more and more of the developing world get an iPhone (China still has few more years of growth) & Moore's law means features aren't added as often.

Apple has enough in the bank to make a strategic shift or leap into another market when that starts to happens (who knows what they haven't released that they've been prototyping for years).

I hope so!

I mean what would buy apart from a phone and a watch (& a car) thats worth more than $500?

Smart Shoes? :)

The problem is not about resources. It's about the organization's product-oriented DNA and its familiarity to the field it works on. I hope Apple could show us some more polished products so that as someone who works on iOS could see a clearer and brighter future.

An iRobot: android capable of basic tasks to help out with repetitive chores. Costs much more than $600 and every few years it gets progressively less stupid, meaning that people will happily shell out money for the latest and greatest because the newest one is just absolutely gorgeous and can not only take the dog for a walk but will teach you another language.

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