Are Apple's Best Years Over? | Hacker News Reader

Are Apple's Best Years Over?

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9 pointsrevorad17 comments

That's a toughie. Apple's had an extraordinary decade that'll be hard for them to top. I certainly think it's prepared to have another extraordinary one. But whether it'll compare to the decade of the iPod and iPhone and iMac is a bit trickier.

That said, I'm going to bet on them surpassing themselves. The iPad is a truly extraordinary device, and Apple will spend years and years making it more and more powerful, more accessible to the public, and easier to develop for. (At least, I hope that last point is true.) At the same time, they're continuing to evolve the Mac OS X to a point where it's really differentiated from Windows, and serves a different kind of purpose for different consumers. I think they might see a resurgence in laptop/desktop popularity. In fact, I'm certain their desktops will become more popular, especially with the huge screens; the laptops will get more popular unless they're eclipsed by some future brilliant iPad.

I'm also going to bet on the Apple TV seeing a lot more attention than it's received so far. I have the latest one and it's a beautiful little box. I can see them doing a lot to innovate in the world of streaming video and music. They've got the iTunes store, after all, which is still expanding. And they've shown hints in the last two years that they're looking at new innovative ways to deliver content. I know the iTunes LP hasn't seen much attention recently, but systems like that which add more content to the music we listen to have the potential to really invigorate the music world, especially if they give indie artists access to those tools.

It's possible that the iPhone will soon see a peak, especially if competitors finally rise to the occasion. But I predict it's still going to rise in popularity. And the iPod touch still hasn't got a decent competitor. Certainly no music player comes close. Maybe the 3DS can compete with it as a gaming platform, but the 3DS isn't attempting to be a universal device like the touch.

The new millennium has been kind to Apple. I don't know if they'll be able to keep up their momentum for another ten years, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

The ipad is in its first version. It will improve and, presumably, sell better on the back of that.

The guy's lugging around a kindle, an ipad, and a laptop. Someone (Apple?) is going to make money consolidating all of that into a single device while attending properly to the associated user interface issues.

What will happen when Steve Jobs' health declines, or when the stock market start to believe Steve Jobs' health would decline?

I am not sure if you can ever find a replacement for Apple's CEO....

"The analysis was therefore based only on the 3,673 adult recipients [of liver transplants] for whom the 15 year patient survival rate was 58%" https://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/statistics/presentations...

Enough with the "Oh gosh, Steve Jobs is not going to live forever! Run for the hills!" quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) hysteria.

Whenever Steve Jobs stops working for Apple, for whatever reason, there will certainly be a drop in Apple's stock. And then after a couple of quarters people will see that the company is performing just as greatly as it has been before Jobs' leave, and things will get back to normal. If you don't feel like weathering such turbulence sell your Apple stock right now and enjoy the ROI.

I do think that there probably isn't anther Steve Jobs out there, but I disagree that there aren't people, who can be great next CEO of Apple. In fact I think there are plenty such people at Apple.

Hopefully that's the case :) I've never bought any Apple stocks but the only computers I've ever owned are all macs. Looking forward to more brilliantly designed products.

You had to jinx it ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112128 ), hadn't you. :)

I'm almost like you - I haven't been exclusively a Mac user, but I've always had and used one Mac or another ever since the Mac SE. And I'm fairly confident that Apple will continue delivering products we'll enjoy. I'm confident because of one of Jobs' most overlooked qualities - his ability to find and attract to his company people that can create great stuff.

One can assume that the chances for Steve Jobs are better then for the general public. As bad as it is, but more money buys better doctors and better care.

It depends how you want to think about Apple, I would think. If you think about Apple from a Wall Street perspective then losing Jobs would be profound. From a product perspective, I don't think it will have as big an impact. There is so much room to grow with iPhone and iPad now and it seems that the Jobs "aura" is pretty strong. I hope they would elevate a product person to the top spot instead of a manager. Maybe Ives.

Having worked at Apple for a large chunk of the last decade, I'm not sure that Steve Jobs is necessarily all that integral to their continued success. Certainly, Apple will never be without Steve what they can be with him, but my interactions with Tim Cook, Ron Johnson, and a handful of others lead me to think Apple will be in very good hands once Steve's out of the picture. Apple-without-Steve will very likely still be head-and-shoulders above everyone else in the industry.

It's not about one man. It's about the culture.

Well, Apple's whole walled garden approach to convenience computing (which may start to extend to their Macintosh range as well) could prove to be the only thing standing between safety/prosperity and oblivion (hacking, piracy, malware...). That could put Apple in pole position, but if things pan out differently they are free to pursue another strategy and still have a chance to grow.

My concern is less with Job's health as such. Rather I'm concerned he'll get bored. He's done it. He showed everyone that he's awesome. He's overcome his forced exit from Apple and shown the world his magic. So what now.

Maybe he'll start a Dylan tribute band. I'd pay to see Jobs singing I'm a rolling stone...

Did you mean "like a rolling stone"

That's right.

Maybe it looks to others as if "he's done it."

The question is: does it feel that way to Jobs?

I agree, that he does not like to be bored. But what seems to have been his 'fix' in the past for being bored is... revolutionizing some corner of techdom. Seems to me it's only a matter of whether he comes up with a materializable dream to tackle.

Ah the great cycle of apple.

Hardly.

Apple could certainly avoid continuing to innovate and continuing to compete and get eaten by competitors (especially Android in the mobile space). However, there's still plenty of room at the top for Apple. The developing world is a huge, and growing market. And smartphones and similar devices are likely to be a huge business there for a variety of reasons.

Moreover, Apple is better poised than ever to compete against Microsoft on MS's own turf (business computing). Computing devices that take advantage of ubiquitous networking and heavily rely on managed applications (in the style of iOS) are almost certainly the wave of the future in enterprise computing. The era of ad-hoc application deployment is on the wane, managed applications will be a huge boon to enterprise IT, and to users as well. There is still a lot of work that needs to happen before that vision can be realized though, but Apple certainly has as much, if not more, of an opportunity there as anyone.

To a quick approximation I'd say that Apple could grow its revenue by a factor of maybe 5-10 in the near future without having to do much heavy lifting, merely by continuing to keep up (and occasionally get ahead) in what it's already doing (in phones, computers, and music). And it could grow by another factor of 2-10 in the near future (10-20 years-ish) if it made significant investments and pushed into new markets. They'll probably do the former, the latter is probably more unlikely.

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