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Comment by guptaneil | Hacker News Reader

I love Apple, but they seem really focused lately on how good they used to be. It's a troubling cultural trend.

This sentiment, posted every time Apple does something post-Steve Jobs, is essentially American declinism [1] but for Apple. Substitute Apple for America in this Robert Kagan article [2].

>But how real is it? Much of the commentary on American decline these days rests on rather loose analysis, on impressions that the United States has lost its way, that it has abandoned the virtues that made it successful in the past, that it lacks the will to address the problems it faces. Americans look at other nations whose economies are now in better shape than their own, and seem to have the dynamism that America once had, and they lament, as in the title of Thomas Friedman’s latest book, that “that used to be us.”

[1] http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/declinism-is-america-and...

[2] https://newrepublic.com/article/99521/america-world-power-de...

I don't think it's a good idea to compare a country made of 300+million people and many more millions of entities, with a single entity driven by the decisions of 1 person.

While you may be right that people are reacting incorrectly, it's significantly easier for a single corporation headed by 1 person to actually decline than it would be for an entire democratic nation.

As the first article noted American declinism has been a popular genre since the 1950s. It comes with the territory with being on top for so long.

I made no claim about Apple being in decline. Just that Apple has been spending more time naval gazing than usual. This book is a prime example. Their September keynote, which spent more time talking about their past than showing how the new MacBook's are the future, is another.

http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2016/

From 25:45 to 30:39 (5 minutes), discussing the Mac's past. From 30:39 to 35:00 (4 minutes), introducing the new MacBook Pro. From 35:00 to 36:07 (2 minutes), discussing the history of the function keys (on an IBM terminal, not discussing Apple's history). From 36:07 to 73:21 (37 minutes), discussing the new MacBook Pro. From 73:21 to 74:21 (1 minute), showing the new MacBook Pro next to a PowerBook 100. From 74:21 to 79:37 (5 minutes), discussing the new MacBook Pro.

Generously, they spent 8 minutes total referencing the past (3 minutes of that was for framing the new product) and 46 minutes exclusively talking about the new product.

Memberberries...

We need to make Apple great again.

Because someone in their marketing/design department published a retrospective coffee-table book?

> (for better or worse the most novel hardware change to a laptop in a decade)

not by a long shot. I see this kind of statement all the time from apple fans about apples oh-so-unique innovations, and it's rarely something that hasnt been done before

I could give several examples of more novel features in the last decade, but that's subjective, and this isnt: the touch bar concept has been done before [0] (and better imo)

0: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3136325/computers/razers-radi...

Here's an interview in which Jony Ive somewhat addresses this point:

http://www.wallpaper.com/design/apple-charts-twenty-years-of...

I believe it's a normal cycle of mutations. A time comes when a system has to choose between evolving or not.

s/Apple/America/. Or the UK for that matter.

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