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Comment by j1vms | Hacker News Reader

> "Apple innovates like no other company on earth, and we are not taking our foot off the gas."

Apple has indeed accomplished many things since Jobs handed over the reins, but delivering a new, innovative compelling product line is not one of them. If they finally deliver on the Apple Car or some as yet unknown new product, they might finally fully move out of the shadow of Jobs' final tenure.

If not, they will find their existing product lines eaten away by relentless, industry commoditization. Having to bump profit margins on the iPhone X was their first serious stumble -- only to be rectified, if they can deliver a new, compelling product line in the next 1 to 2 years.

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Apple Watch and Air Pods are two examples of innovative and compelling products introduced since Jobs left. Cook notes today how well they are selling, and that's after reporting in July that trailing 4Q revenue topped $10 billion on 60% growth--which is more revenue than iPods did over any 4 quarter span, BTW.

Usually when people complain that Apple hasn't delivered a great product since Jobs left, they are comparing to the iPhone. But it's important to remember that Jobs himself only delivered a product like the iPhone once! No other Apple product line, no Macs, no iPods, no iPad, nothing, ever came close to the impact of the iPhone.

If the iPhone is your bar of success for a new Apple product, I feel pretty confident that you're going to be disappointed. But Apple doesn't need another iPhone to grow very well for a long time.

Jobs delivered the personal computer, an achievement that far outstrips the iPhone. He is a remarkable figure because he did do it twice.

>>Apple has indeed accomplished many things since Jobs handed over the reins, but delivering a new, innovative compelling product line is not one of them.

What company has, though?

My observation is that, while technology evolves very quickly, revolutionary product lines appear about once per generation. iPhones came out in 2007, so we have at least another decade to go.

I mean, I think that's false even among Apple! The iPod came out in, what, 2001? I think a lot of people then (and me, now) would have said that that was a genuinely revolutionary product.

I don’t see why the iPod was revolutionary. While it was a very popular product, and set a high bar for MP3 players, at the end of the day it was still just another MP3 player. It didn’t create entirely new ecosystems and allow people to do things they previously couldn’t, the way the iPhone did.

I think far more revolutionary in the long term with the iPod were the digital licensing deals they managed to forge with the record labels. However, for a device of it's time it did hold novel technical features.

Agree. And not to overstate the role of the CEO or to open up a can of worms about Steve Jobs, the fact is that Steve was a product guy and Tim is an operations guy. And not that creating innovative new products that will sell at worldwide scale is easy, but they haven't come up with one in a while.

That’s what people have said over and over again. What’s the difference between BMW and Apple? Why doesn’t BMW need to get into a completely new product line all the time? (Outside of cars)

Exactly. Imagine how silly it would sound if someone said "Not sure about this new BMW CEO chaps, unless we see some innovation from the company like them developing a line of smartphones or computer tablets and an app store, we can safely say they are not properly innovating"

There are two major differences.

1) BMW is a much smaller company, 15x smaller than Apple. Apple's valuation is partly based on them pocketing _most_ of the smartphone profits globally. There is no expectation like that towards BMW. Remember, stock market is a game about expectations.

2) Cars don't seem to be a winner-takes-it-all market. IT services are not always like that either, but closer. It doesn't make your life harder if your friend is using a VW and you're driving a Toyota; but it does make a difference if your friend is on iMessage and you're on Android. So there's a market force towards oligopoly.

1) so if size is an argument: does google need to have a new product every 5 yrs? I don’t think google has innovated outside its main product “search” (like a new category with a major source of revenue on the size of search). They’re doing just fine

2) that’s actually a strong argument pro Apple and not against them (that’s like saying: no one will ever use another search engine than google and because of that they’re growing bigger and bigger)

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