Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
apple.com
apple.com
To be sure it is not the hardware company of the 20th Century any longer.
Or stop carrying about growth. There are plenty of well respected dividend investments, even in tech.
More importantly, services, or really software, can be very exciting too, no less than hardware. Apple isn’t a hardware company, they’re a company that integrate hardware and software into packages that users desire. Services are just the extension of device’s software.
There all just 'me too' products levelling the ego system.
Apple TV+ is an odd one for example, it's not needed, there are plenty of streaming services around and they all work fine on apple devices.
They have not tried to do anything interesting or exciting with there services, they've just attached them in the most basic way and watched the cash flow in.
Apple created what was pretty much the first real platform for selling music online with iTunes. You could call Apple Music a “me too” move, but they really pivoted an existing business that had been threatened with disruption.
These comments about services have me reconsidering this plan.
* Some of their services actually don't work better. Apple Music sucks so people still use Spotify. Which is one of the areas of growth for Apple since they have the ability to make Apple Music the best, they just haven't yet.
Apple has had plenty of time to get their shit together with music. The fact that they haven't after 15 years tells me that they don't want to.
That said, this could change on a whim…
The next 'watch' would be a relatively minor product. The watch is a fairly pointless niche device. It helps apple and it's another product in the eco system, but it doesn't move the needle that much.
Too bad Apple is still so, so very bad at this. Their services are barely functioning, at best, with multiple WTFs daily.
When they work, they are not even magic. They are the bare minimum of what you expect them to do (like, for example, to quickly and correctly sync photos between me and my family).
I believ it uses this patch https://github.com/dylanaraps/openbox-patched
Here I am, enjoying my 4 year old iPhone, happily paying Apple $3/month for iCloud storage.
iCloud increasing the effective storage of the phone is about 10% of the value prop. Your point is like "dropbox is just rsync + a VPS".
No push notifications (this is unsurprising, Apple runs the push notification servers, and those cost money). I don't see anything about linking against third party libraries.
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More to the point, you keep using this term "rent seeking" to describe Apple selling optional services. Nobody is forcing an iPhone owner to pay Apple for services. Rent seeking implies once you have the thing, you have to pay rent on it. That's just not true for iPhones.
Setting up a new phone prompts you incessantly about Apple Wallet, iCloud, etc. and uses badges to make you think something is wrong until you begin the process for each (the badges go away if you cancel out of it).
Such things have only continued. They're adding new products and paid services at a slow but steady pace, and regularly sending me notifications to sign up for those services. When you "upgrade" the OS, you're confronted with a whole slew of opportunities to sign up for more services, with no way to just ignore these prompts. I don't blame them for doing this, but it's become increasingly grating, and turned me off of Apple in general.
Like a lot of companies, they're focused on growing their bottom line, and don't see how they're angering their locked-in customers.
yea those apple employees are so stupid they have no idea that nagging you constantly is annoying. no of course they just don’t care about other people including their customers.
although to be fair sociopathy is essentially just another form of stupidity
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?
It's all seamless and I rarely think about it. Yeah I could spend Apple prices for Apple gear and not get the cloud stuff but. Why?
Oh wow I remember when Microsoft did that! Wow that turned out badly for them, even if the Zune app had an amazing UI.
Same mistakes, different decade.
I do still have all my old itunes music in the Music app, so not sure if that's what you're complaining about.
OTOH both Music and iTunes can only handle a limited set of file types; neither can do anything with my huge library of flac files. Perhaps that's your complaint, which I agree with.
Plus, I can edit the metadata for tracks that come from Apple Music to my own tastes so I can tag that a song from the service is one version while my copy of it is a different version.
For me, Music is one of those things I hope Apple never "modernizes" because I feel like a lot of this nerd-level functionality would be lost in a major rewrite. It's certainly light years ahead of Spotify's truly pathetic "local files" function.
Apps like Ecoute are alternatives and better in some respects (better navigation IMO), but worse in others.
Music just doesn't sync well across my devices. Full stop. I can start playing something on my phone, select my Homepods as my speakers via Airplay, and it will play. But if I lock my phone and come back a few minutes later, it'll forget what is currently playing on my HomePods and make me "replace" the music. If I try to control it from my other devices it's the same story. More than once I've had it yell at me for trying to play music in more than one place at a time and try to get me to upgrade to a family plan. I'm single and live alone.
Siri also often misunderstands scene names. I just turned to one of the HomePods and said, "Hey Siri, activate 'Nightlights Only'" (a scene name). She said, "Good night." and did nothing. This happens no matter how well I enunciate (general American accent) or how many times I try.
In the process of messing with it just now to prove my point before sharing, Siri hit a snag and told me to go update my iCloud account in the home app, so I did and ran into the same problem as this user[0] did two years ago (disappearing password prompt). It's wild.
This is not the Apple that made iMessage and Messages in OS X the most seamless text messaging experience I've ever experienced before.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_upd...
Edit: I had my iPhone’s wifi off. Apparently I had to be on the same network to resolve the iCloud issue. Why not mention that?
I have two HomePods setup in stereo mode configured to an Apple TV 4K, and I cannot reliably get it to tell me today’s date, start a timer, play a movie, and not even pause or resume the Apple TV 4K.
It is so bad, that recently, if you say “Hey Siri, resume”, the audio resumes playing from the Homepods, but the Apple TV 4K still displays the screensaver until you press play on the remote. I do not even understand how that bug works (and it is a new one, the software continuously gets worse).
Overall I agree though. The core products are still good, but I’m hard pressed to spend any more money on this until they improve Siri and Homekit. I know there’s a big UI refresh coming that is welcome, but it feels bigger than that.
I wonder if it has to do with my five HomeKit secure video cameras and the HomePods or Apple TV 4K acting as a hub. And the fact that my Apple TV 4K is not wired to network.
The fact that you can't click a band name to navigate to that band's list of albums when playing local media is perhaps the thing I hate most about iOS. The band name renders in the color of a link, but is non-interactive.
I think I might have ADHD and I like to minimise any visual distraction by removing everything I can, else it becomes overwhelming for me, just seeing that badge marker when going through something was enough to annoy me.
I really wish there was more customisation so you could turn all that crap off that you didn't need / use so it wasn't even through, there is just too much junk on these devices but it's there to serve Apple and not you as a user.
So dumb.
What does services as a headline signify, why would it bring on regulation (and what kind of regulation), and why is that a bad thing?
The only thing they got their wrists slapped over was forcing OEMs to buy licenses for each computer shipped whether or not it ran Windows.
Do you really think that regulators in 2022 would force every platform vendor to remove all of their bundled software? They didn't do that in the 90s.
Mac sales -10%
Net sales +2%
Operating expenses +15%
Net income -11%
Under operating expenses, R&D spending is up >$1 billion YoY
Long page, scroll down and you'll find stats for the past 13 years through last quarter showing the numbers for each product per quarter. Sales are, overall, up since M1/M2 were released. There have been other past quarters where there is a major drop in Mac revenue (and same with other products). The iPhone numbers show this with a much more pronounced effect, but that's essentially a single release date for all products whereas Mac products get released throughout the year so it's harder to observe without more breakdown (at least to laptop and desktop levels).
Macs have been like that for a while, though I went for the M1 before my previous machine was "worn out"
Not coming from an investor mindset - mostly because the new macs are finally great value for money again and well built, mostly designed with actual users in mind and thus surprised there doesn’t seem to be a real impact financially.
Can anyone explain or put forward an interpretation on the “why” behind this?
Not looking very bright for my next equipment upgrade season coming up...
Maybe simply people are not buying as many computers anymore.
[0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4526269-amd-we-have-a-probl...
2. Everyone already bought a new one recently to work/learn from home
If you can’t make them you can’t sell them.
Base MBP with M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD: $2,499.00
Minimum desired MBP with M1 Pro, upgraded GPU so you can get more RAM, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD: $3,699.00
And that's just assuming we wouldn't have considered M1 Max chips. We are a smaller company but have had had to buy at least 2 "compromise" laptops that I know of due to lead time. I imagine larger companies are in a similar position so Apple is losing $1-2K per laptop just because we can't buy the one we want in a reasonable timeframe.
Intel macbooks are so goddamn hot that any dev I know envies the colleague with the M2 that has never such problems and whose laptop last an entire day with charging.
I would always choose my 2020 lowest specced M1-MBA over my highend specced Intel-MBP from 2017.
Not only are they hot, they are also loud. You notice when intel users join a video conference because of the constant fan-noise [1].
Not to mention that the constant heat comes with rediculous malfunctions over time.
I considered leaving the platform until the Apple Silicon CPUs arrived. I currently run a kubernetes cluster on my new MBP with 13 pods plus 2 dev servers for some Java BE and another for a web-FE - no fan-noise!
[1] at least those with a 13 inch MBP 2017
And I’m not an exception, you can find other people right in this thread saying “I had macs 10 years ago, went to windows, and the m1 was compelling enough to give it another try”. And while Joe Public may not be interested in the nuances of hardware specifications, those are the exact sorts of people macos is marketed to in the first place. The “happy bubblewrap os” that you decry is very popular among non-techies, and the techies respect the hardware.
I would ask why it's conceptually shocking that a wide performance gap at extremely aggressive pricing (for M1 MBA) could lead people to consider the product who otherwise wouldn't have - but a lot of people simply deny that entirely, despite the very obvious improvements in performance (this thing cranks indexing Spring libraries in intellij or doing builds) and battery life that self-evidently could not occur without the claimed performance benefits. There is a weird Alternate Facts Bubble / Epistemic Closure thing going on with a lot of people where the facts don't agree with their preconceptions so they're rejected entirely.
And sure, if your software isn't Apple Silicon-aware then you have a problem, but that's much less of a problem than people think it is. And M1 is such a performant platform that over time it will drive migration and that will continue to become even less and less of an issue - it’s a fast enough platform that If You Build It They Will Come. And it is already an edge-case for the most part.
For docker/k8s, in particular, just set up your NAS as a host. If you’re doing a build, Socket 2011-3 stuff has dropped heavily, a 2697v3 is $55 and 32GB rdimms are $50 a pop, or you can just slap some ram into an old Ryzen desktop or something. It’s not expensive to build yourself a much beefier machine than you could ever put into a laptop, and I work from home so latency will never be a realistic issue. I’m happy to work with it on the dev side to get the ide and daily-driving responsiveness.
Its sort of like Linux on the desktop - yup, if you aren’t interested in occasional debugging, changing away from generic x86 ISAs maybe isn’t for you and you probably will be better off with windows and a beige box from Walmart. But there’s a lot there if you will work with it.
There just is this primal shriek among a lot of the tech community - no, apple can’t be good! no, there can’t be a way to utilize it effectively within power-user workflows!. Like, the classic “apple fanboy” is a well-remarked phenomenon but there is clearly a group of people who are looking for reasons to pan the hardware because they don’t like apple and will grasp whatever straws they can find. The performance is a lie, no software will run on it, my k8s containers are x86 and cannot possibly be rebuilt with arm, no I can’t run those containers on my NAS… they’re digging for reasons not to do it. And the Irrational Apple Hater contingent is actually seemingly much larger than the Irrational Apple Fanboy contingent - this whole M1 saga has revealed that a lot of people hold latent negative oppinions based on the branding that they just haven’t felt threatened enough to reveal. Supremacy is very comfortable, it’s when that supremacy gets challenged that people start getting ugly about it, and x86 and commodity laptop hardware has held a very comfortable supremacy for a long time.
And you do you, but your consent is not required, it’s a good experience and it’s good enough that people are going to continue refining it to make it work. People will just move on without your approval.
You're either disingenuous or are very uninformed
FTFY
It didn't make sense to wait several months when the M1 Airs are already great computers. If this was a common sentiment, they lost around $1500 from me alone, and perhaps a similar amount from many other people.
I mean this is what he was known for (and still known for) before he took took the CEO role.
Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration.
[informal] Absolute (used to emphasize that a strong expression is deliberately chosen to convey one's feelings)
> 1769 F. Brooke Hist. Emily Montague IV. ccxvii. 83 He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.
A better phrasing that correctly uses "now" would be: The OED now recognizes that "literally" can be used to mean "figuratively".
> A better phrasing that correctly uses "now" would be: The OED now recognizes that "literally" can be used to mean "figuratively".
I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
“Lilies” may figuratively refer to “women” as a group of persons named “Lily”. If so, attending a party filled with “lilies” would mean to literally (literally) feed among them, presuming snacks and refreshments were served at said party.
However, there is a prior reference to lilies as a thing of beauty:
> Our beaux are terribly at a loss for similies: you have lilies of the valley for comparisons; we nothing but what with the idea of whiteness gives that of coldness too.
and it seems likely the author was referring to that theme.
Additionally this isn't the only quote from a similar timeframe:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.h...
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/94/
[1] https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/brooke/emily/emily.h...
He has only gotten better at it since then.
Apple is supply-chain constrained today, especially around Macs. But it has managed this difficult supply-environment way, way better than most other firms.
For years I was telling anyone who'd listen that COO Cook was more important to AAPL than Jonny Ive.
People can't afford food, but they'll still buy the latest IPhone. Inflation isn't going to touch their sales.
You can buy an iPhone and pop in a Mint Mobile SIM. There's no "free phone tax" if you buy it the right way.
Carriers haven't subsidized phones for years now. I think the GP is mistaken. There is no "free phone tax" is you pay monthly for your phone.
For example, If I paid for £1000 phone up front the monthly contract would be £40. So if your argument was correct then that same contract should be £40 + (£500 / 24months) == £61. But it wouldn't be. It would be more like £75 a month. Sure that's only £10 a month more. But over 24 months that works out £240 extra. So that £500 ends up costing £740.
These are just made up figures but they're roughly in the same ballpark as what I've experienced.
On occasions when I've asked for a pen and paper so I can make a note of the differences over the contract term, the sales people have even literally said "So if you go on this contract, your phone will cost £x more". So I don't think it's even a fact they try and hide.
Even the contract you sign has to have terms explained by the sales person because that contract can be contested if the customer claims they were duped into signing something they didn't understand. We have a lot stricter consumer laws in Europe.
That $30.55 DOES NOT include the price of the contract, which costs an additional $85.00 for 5G Ultraband. I would have to pay $85 whether or not I bought a 0% interest phone, bought it at full retail or brought my own phone.
So no, I don't see where the "double" is coming from. It's just math.
I've also seen the handset cost separated at 0% APR with separate service charge from major UK telcos too.
> https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program
Plus the standard way to buy a phone since long before Apple entered the market was to buy from the network. So it's a habit that still persists today.
The other thing to note with that is you're continually trading in your old phone to access that scheme. Whereas mobile networks let you keep your phone (I mean, you literally own it). People often then sell it or hand it down to a family member. One of my friends went ~5 years without buying a new phone because he had my hand-me-downs.
I bet you those 38 stores are located strategically to cover a vast majority of the population.
You're simply nitpicking. The reality is, you can get an iPhone for 0% interest. It's not some kind of insurmountable quest. You don't even need to go into the store, you can simply order it from Apple.com.
I'm sure they are but if people have to travel when there's a competitor on their door step, they'll generally buy from the competitor. This is a fact that's as old as commerce itself.
> You're simply nitpicking. ... It's not some kind of insurmountable quest.
How am I nitpicking? I'm literally just stating how the UK consumers shop. You might not agree with their logic but telling them they're wrong on some random tech forum none of them would visit is about as productive as pissing in the wind. What I've described is literally how things work in the UK. Sorry if that seems egregious to you but it's a fact.
> You don't even need to go into the store, you can simply order it from Apple.com.
...and now we're back to my point that most iPhone users are unaware of that offer. Most wouldn't even visit Apple.com. I wasn't even aware of that and I'm a techie so none of my non-technical friends would have been aware. The way people buy phones in the UK isn't and hasn't ever typically been to buy direct from the manufacturer. So most people wouldn't know or even think to check apple.com for offers.
Please remember that the UK is a totally different country so some behaviourisms will differ from what you're used to. And telling me I'm nitpicking because an entire country of people shop differently to what you consider sensible (or perhaps "normal" in your country) is, frankly, ridiculous.
Honestly though, I'd be interested to know how many people in your own country are aware of that offer. I suspect it might be less than you'd like to believe. Are you going look down on them for being out of the loop too?
> The reality is, you can get an iPhone for 0% interest.
I'm not disputing that. I'm stating why most UK iPhone users don't take advantage of that. You can argue that fact to your blue in the face but it means jack shit if the actual consumers either aren't aware of it, or are too lazy to take advantage of it. THAT is the real issue, not whether the 0% interest offer exists or not.
Wasn't Apple trying to do some of their own financing here?
At $1.5 per day for the latest iPhone+AppleCare, the upgrade program made me realize I get at least $5-$10 of value out of my phone daily. Even in just time saved on daily tasks e.g. banking, shopping, taxis, work (I don't have to walk to the "location" or even to my desktop).
Context: For a long time I stayed on my iPhone 6, trying to extract every last bit of value from it (replaced the screen 1x and the battery 2x) before it was no longer getting updates (I had it 6 years).
1. The cognitive overhead of trying to extract every last dollar is greater than $1 a day. In the back of my mind I kept going back and forth, do I upgrade the battery again, or switch to a newer $1000 phone? If I include the time and money ($100 every 2 years - $0.14 per day for the battery; $150 every 3 yeas - $0.14 per day for the screen) actually spent getting the phone fixed, then the upgrade program is a no brainer winner.
2. The improvements were noticeable! Significantly. When I got my iPhone 11 Pro after giving away my iPhone 6, my laptop usage reduced by 75% (I had been thinking of buying a new laptop - the iPhone purchase saved me money overall).
3. I stayed on my iPhone 6 because "I just didn't believe X, Y, or Z was actually worth the upgrade". For $1.5 per day (vs $0.3) for a tool able to save me $5-10 per day, every day, why ever lag behind? What if the 14 is able to save me $15 per day because of X, Y, or Z but "I just don't believe it" and miss out on years worth of "savings".
4. Even without everything I've said prior, I can afford the $1.5 per day, even for frivolous reasons. When my iPhone, a tool, costs the same as one bubble tea / fancy latte a week, I'd rather reduce my cafe visits slightly and use the best version of the tools that are known to improve my life.
5. There is still a lot more iPhones can improve on, and I would like them to improve. I specifically also buy the Pro because I view "giving Apple that margin" as a "vote with my wallet" that there is a market for a more feature-rich iPhone can do next year and the more my vote counts.
I'm sure a lot of people are frustrated by food costs, and have adjusted their food purchasing decisions, while also buying new iPhones.
And it makes sense, because an iPhone is a fairly inexpensive luxury good. Certainly, it's cheaper than a comparably high end purse, car or house. And, in the US, it's heavily subsidized by carriers.
Yes you pay less upfront, but in exchange for paying more on your monthly phone bill. Less of a subsidy and more of a payment plan.
The free phones aren't going to be the latest generation, but they often have partial subsidization when you switch, like maybe half the cost.
The only area they're not conservative in is chip design, but that's not a cool and trendy thing. You don't hear regular people talk about the chips in their iPhones. How is Apple able to stay relevant among younger people and convince them to buy iPhones when Android phones are just as capable and look just as good?
There's an embedded statement in this that might be incorrect and would give you the answer to your question.
Completely leaving out services , the “secret” projects and incremental improvements in hardware to existing products, in the last decade:
- AirPods - Apple Watch - Apple Sillicon
Each one of these new product verticals would be ten to hundred-billion dollar companies if independent.
I look forward to hearing why none of this is actual innovation and actually quite boring.
I doubt that's a $10B company with that type of negative growth.
Also, you link is to 2021. In 2022 it grew again, https://www.counterpointresearch.com/smartwatch-market-grows...
All the other companies are constantly rebuilding their products from scratch, or dropping them entirely. Apple sets a vision and just continually works toward executing on that vision with small advances every year. That’s why users love them.
If you truly can't figure it out, first thing I'd recommend is checking your assumptions.
The Google Pixel’s Android version is better but not iOS.
There are probably ten thousand hackers on here that day dream about being at the helm of Apple with a world class team and war chest at their disposal. I know I’ve day dreamed about it and truthfully if money and technology were no object I’m not sure what opportunities remain for products that can fit inside a briefcase that Apple does not already pursue.
Curious to hear ideas that aren’t VR/AR or a SmartCar..?
(The best I can do is just a new take on existing products like a eInk iPod with 2 million songs and a month long battery.)
Hopefully the reason work has slowed on this is because Apple & Google (and others) are actually getting Matter[1] right, so home automation will actually, finally work without having to geek out over all the details all the time.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/17/matter-has-been-delayed-yet-a...
Actually this has just been rebooted as part of the "Thread" and "Matter" alliance. Might finally start working.
Apple's niche, as usual, is privacy, and part of their go it alone attempts (yes, plural) was because they wouldn't certify anything that nakedly leaked info. I don't know how all that will work now that Nest and Alexa devices (which share info with the cops without a warrant) will also be thread/matter devices.
I think Apple would just need to aim for a market that barely exists. Single person transport vehicles would be my guess. It would need a big name brand which emphasizes safety and privacy over noise and power.
There are gyroscope based motorcycles with roof shells which would be great for the average consumer which would be in line with their environmental goals. Combine that with a complete augmented reality surround experience and some sort of ridiculous safety features like multi-limb airbag deployment or emergency jet obstacle avoidance they are in a unique position to completely change personal transport.
Add in some alternate transport options which are not available at all which would require major corporation negotiating power. Short flights added in as an option dropping some wings to bypass traffic. Perhaps some sort of rail connection to hook into those single car tunnels or existing railway tracks. Open the railways for traffic each direction when not otherwise occupied. Perhaps an optional jet ski and snowmobile accessory. Make it buoyant so it never sinks like trashed scooters in the river.
I would imagine they would focus on ergonomics, smoothness of the ride and energy efficiency over power. All digital so lots of haptics. Light enough to take into an elevator to park in your apartment. Just flip a switch and the gyro makes it stand on one wheel to fit in an elevator. Imagine being disabled and it opens your front door and drops you off in your living room.
I should imagine they would combine some high resolution camera technology to easily snap photos in any direction of whatever is interesting, 5G cellular for live-streaming in vehicle with easy swapping between internal and external cameras, automated pickup so you could send your bike to the store for curbside pickup without going with it and taking control from home if necessary. Disable local control so can send it out to pick up the kids from school. Or send it to park when you have reached your destination and it pays for parking and comes back when you need it.
Perhaps OLED exterior so you can change the look on the fly. 360 degree camera coverage so you have no blind spots. Auto collision avoidance from any direction.
There is a huge wishlist out there and it is easy to brainstorm all sorts of things that small companies just could not pull off in any sort of scale. Production wise they already custom design all the phone manufacturing hardware which runs 24/7 and there is always the possibility of just acquiring what they need.
I will bet against that any time.
To get out of China, Apple will need to again reimagine all its operations from first principals, and they need someone who is intellectually and emotionally free to do that—even able to repudiate Cook's past decisions in order push Apple in the right direction. Just as Ballmer couldn't lead a shift away from Windows and it took Nadella transform Microsoft, Tim Cook will not be able to remake Apple.
So I'm on my MacBook, pull out the device (like a cartridge) and it's a phone. Plug it into something else and it's a desktop. Plug it into a car and it's a CarPlay. Everything I plug it into charges it too.
A universal computer.
I think the current idea is that the universal computer is the clown, and your terminals (phone/notebook/laptop) have some local processing and different kinds of views into that computer's space.
I actually like that model and remember it well from the late 70s/early 80s. Unfortunately as unix workstations became more popular their somewhat stovepiped model overtook that (despite Sun's "the network is the computer" bull). I hoe we come back to that.
- released Apple Watch
- all displays are Retina. (As far as I can tell by looking at all the monitors from other companies in an electronics store, they all still think that 96-dpi is acceptable)
- Apple displays have a much wider color gamut (I suspect the largest in the industry, but don't know)
- Apple Silicon (as you mentioned)
- AirPods, which people seem to really love
- continuously improved cameras on iPhones; no comparison between the current camera(s) and the iPhone 5 from 2012.
- Touch Bar (might or might not like it, but it is innovative)
- new, thin keyboard design (turned out not to be a good design, but it was innovative)
- integration between iOS/macOS: use your iPad as a monitor, handoff calls between phone and computer, shared copy/paste, etc.
- macOS can now run iOS apps
- Rosetta 2: invisible translation of x86 code that even runs faster than on their most recent native Intel laptops
- privacy as a feature (arguably innovative, but compared to what everyone else is doing it is...)
There's not so many new-category-defining innovations, but Apple have hardly been sitting on their hands.
Yep! With more to come too. Seeing Apple’s take on VR/AR in these next few years is going to be very interesting. Probably not as big of a paradigm shift as the iPhone, but still exciting nonetheless.
Apples AirPod revenue alone in 2020 was more than Twitter, Spotify and Square combined.
Apples ability to create diverse, revenue generating lines of business is unparalleled.
There is quite an element of peer pressure for young people to display status through having new and expensive technology (which I believe is one strong reason the design of smartphones are rev'd every year, so that people can tell at a glance whether you have the latest device), and add upon it Apple's cultural cachet to be the "cool/in" brand, it's often hard for young people to resist the pressure. This has led to issues such as "blue bubble versus green bubble" where young people on Apple devices exclude those on Android device based on not wanting to see an out-of-place color in their text message window.