Apple is in danger of being boring
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
That was my thought as well. I'm no fanboy, and actively avoided the iPad mania some of my friends were going through. That is until a friend came to stay, along with his iPad, and my wife and I suddenly discovered ourselves actively choosing to borrow his iPad over loading up something on our laptops, just because it worked so well.
A huge shame to discount such success. I put it down to the "It's 2012, where's my flying car?" train of thought.
IMO the MBP's retina display is a game changer for professionals who need to be mobile. Once you use it you can't go back - and there is no PC laptop in sight giving you that kind of resolution. But probably the number one reason why mac users are caught up in the ecosystem? The touchpads. And this is something the author can't possibly understand. Testing it in the apple store is not enough to realize that this is how a laptop interface should work and that no other manufacturer has been able to match it.
Since then, I've picked up two more mac devices, and sundry other apple bits. They just work. Makes me happy to get to not manage that stuff and to be able to work on the really important stuff.
There will be plenty when Windows 8 comes out.
> And this is something the author can't possibly understand.
If you don't like gestures, you will be totally unimpressed by the mac touchpad. The author may be in that category.
Most people that I know use a mouse, which has better scrolling and is much more precise.
On macs, many people even prefer a touchpad on their desktop iMac. And that's not because of Apple's ridiculously bad mouses, most people know that they can connect any logitech.
I call two finger scrolling a gesture.
Most mac users I know don't know any gestures at all, they just use it like a PC trackpad.
For me, I immediately turn off all gestures as soon as I buy a new laptop. They are just more trouble than they are worth in my opinion. I've tried them - they just get in the way.
I also know people that swear by gestures and the macbook touchpad - and for them the mac is a good choice. For the rest of us, it's just a slightly bigger touchpad with hidden mousebuttons (another thing that makes macs difficult to use for beginners).
Original iPod: 2001. Completely destroyed the walkman/cd player industry.
iPhone: 2007. Redefined the mobile phone.
iPad: 2010. Defined what tablets look like.
----
How often do you expect one company to completely shake up an entire ecosystem?
You never know what happens :)
What? How many computers are there out there other than the iMac with "fancy physical designs"? The iMac had virtually no impact on the industry.
Your other points are dubious at best. Apple are never first to market with new products, they only ever tweak existing markets and set up hype and an ecosystem around them.
The question is, are there any other markets out there right now that are just on the edge of taking off, that Apple can sneak into?
http://www.crews.org/curriculum/ex/compsci/7thgrade/intel/ho...
Yeah, and how long did that "trend" last?
USB was fairly mainstream before the iMac. I don't think I ever saw an iMac in the wild that didn't have an external floppy drive sitting next to it. I've seen computer labs with banks of iMacs and external floppy drives sitting next to them.
That trend lasted for a while, until case manufacturers started copying the G-whatever tower, and then eventually the Mac pro tower. The Shuttle small-form-factor PC I bought in the early 2000's had a Mac-like "candy" design.
>> USB was fairly mainstream before the iMac.
I was Windows 9x user (I left Macs right before Jobs came back) when the iMac came out, and most of the peripherals I was buying were still parallel devices. It wasn't until a lot of peripheral makers realized that one hardware version could sell to multiple platforms that USB really took off.
>> I don't think I ever saw an iMac in the wild that didn't have an external floppy drive
That's not the point. I didn't say that the need for a floppy was obviated by the iMac design, because you always have legacy users. Apple has a history of dropping legacy features in their hardware (VGA, mini-DVI, optical drives, the soon-to-be EOL'ed dock connector) before PC vendors do.
Sure you don't mean Zip drive? They were all the fashion at the time. Oh the joyous days when the Click of Death decided to pay a visit!
AlienWare and case mods...
Tell me with a straight face that mp3 players would never have taken off without the ipod.
Apple have had a big impact on the market, but most of the time they just release products at a time that the market is changing anyway and then claim to have "invented" all the technology that goes into it.
Dell laptops c. 2000:
https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=&...
Dell c. 2012:
My computer still looks like it did back in 1995. The monitor is thinner. The mouse is a little more ergonomic. The keyboard looks the same.
Tablets look like they did when Moses was holding up the Ten Commandments.
So, a revolution every six years. We are due for one next year.
I think you're not looking very closely. Sure, it's all about small details, but a quick and highly unscientific Google image search shows precisely what computers used to look like at the turn of the century:
I do believe that Apple is working on products that are 3-7 years out that are more in-line hopefully with the Google Glass Project. Hopefully some Apple innovation is happening...
The concern is that without Apple's founder at the helm the product will continue to fall into the squeal death spiral with the iPhoneX coming out in 2020.
As a middle aged user, I don't use the advanced or cool features of the iPhone or iPad. Most of my time is spent doing relatively unexciting stuff like Safari, e-mail, calendar, weather, maps and the phone app.
Right now, the only thing that really drives me to upgrade my iDevices is when the OS gets too fat and things get slow or crashy, which seems to translate to 3 years.
Please tell me what is the exciting stuff then :-)
iphone was launched and sold on the basis of these so called unexciting stuff and this is how apple disrupted phone market.
I hope I did not get your sarcasm, if it was :-)
Augmented reality, location based anything, multiplayer gaming, Bump, filtered photography, CPU intensive stuff like iPhoto, iMovie, etc.
>> iphone was launched and sold on the basis of these so called unexciting stuff and this is how apple disrupted phone market.
Well, that's not so much the case today. Today, it's all about showing off all the wizzy apps in the app store.
I'll go out on a limb and say that Apple is indeed working on products that are 3-7 years out, but that they will not be in-line with the Google Glass Project. Instead, they will be:
- available for purchase soon after announcement
- address mass market needs/wants
- something a salesperson at Bebe would use
- likely to be composed of small tweaks to popular products in the marketplace. Taken together, those tweaks will make the products feel revolutionary.
Google Glass is none of those, but this is pretty much the template for Apple's resurgence over the last 10+ years.
I think many people would rather buy a "Glass Project" like product from a product company than an advertising company.
VR has been around for quite some time and this has to be something apple is looking at. Google is looking at it in a more academic light,
It would be the ultimate Apple product, i, no pod, no touch, no pad, just "i".
Obviously, this person has never been excited enough by Apple's direction to even shell out any money.
Are we supposed to be surprised that he still doesn't want to shell out any money when there's a lull in game-changing product releases at Apple? The real question is, "Will that lull continue now that Jobs is gone?"
It's too soon to tell. It will probably take a couple of years before we could say, "Apple no longer releases products that can shake things up."
They've had 2 years since iPhone 4, so the expectations are pretty high, and most are expecting something jawdropping. This is the double-edged sword with being an innovator at the level that Apple has been over the last 10 years - people's expectations get bigger and bigger, possibly to unrealistic levels.
To be honest, I can't imagine what else Apple can do that would blow my mind... fingerprint scanner? Breathalyzer? If it's just another "faster processor, better screen, more flash memory", then people like me are going to be sorely disappointed. I'm hoping for the best though.
You mean nerds' expectations. Most normal people don't even really care.
--edit-- caveat: I'm middle aged and so is my peer group.
Avoiding buyer's remorse is normal consumer behaviour.
People do the exact same every summer/fall for cars when the new model years start trickling out.
Break what? The markets still growing, there are always people entering the smartphone market. Good hardware is important but Apple's ecosystem also attracts a lot of people. Most people don't buy a new phone every year, they wait for their contract to expire. So people with an expiring iPhone 4 contract will get all the new features of the 4S plus the larger screen and whatever else comes. Lots of people complained the 4S wasn't a big upgrade but it was a whole new experience for me upgrading from a 3GS.
And they may have had 2 years since the iPhone 4 but they released the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 in the time.
Why do you want a fingerprint scanner and breathalyser? Those things would disappoint me, as most people have almost no use for them. Why would I ever need a breathalyser on my phone?
If they reach the point where it becomes a "faster-cpu-nicer-screen" type event, it means that smartphones have become fully commoditized, and it means the rest of the smartphones will catch up shortly, if they haven't already.
You people are getting so spoiled. The excitement and flurry over new Apple products makes everyone completely forget how insane it is that phones already do what they do. Step outside and take a breath for god's sake.
If, after 2 years since iPhone 4, they can't come up with a feature set that will push smartphones once again to the next level, then it likely means that the smartphone is for the most part commoditized, and I won't "miss out" on some great feature by exploring other manufacturers.
Apple hasn't really been that innovative for the past 10 years and they've done well. I doubt it's time to panic.
I have tons of friends sitting on an iPhone 4/4s waiting for a new phone. Frankly when you put an S3 next to these things they really show their age (http://1.androidauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/iph...).
The current attitude among most of them is "I'll wait and see if the iPhone 5 has anything crazy otherwise I'll probably switch to Android".
Feel free to start a flame war over this comment, but I'm just repeating what I hear.
(1) claim the only thing special about Apple products is their form and that people who care about functionality should buy something else
and
(2) complain how boring it is that Apple doesn't constantly change the products' form but rather keeps improving all that functional stuff with better displays, better cameras, better transmitters, better CPUs...
It's almost like you can't win with this guy.
Apple isn't really about making devices with the highest specs out there (things like retina displays are the exception, not the rule), nor are they about innovating brand-new types of devices (there were plenty of Mp3 players around before the iPod, plenty of tablet PCs around before the iPad, and plenty of Palm and Windows Mobile smartphones around before the iPhone).
What they are about is building things that do what they do, extremely well.
Part of this is design, part of this is their legendary supply chain (though that's a relatively recent advantage) but in my opinion the most important part of this is an intentional willingness to sacrifice features for user experience.
My first iPhone was the 4, and when it came out, I was debating between it and the Evo 4G. On paper, the Evo 4G was a higher spec device. Hell, it's right in the name. It had 4G.
I'm very glad I went with the iPhone. I have friends who didn't, and now, 2-years out, their Evos last for about 4 hours before they have to plug back in. My iPhone can still go happily for 2 days of normal use between charges.
Could Apple have included a WiMax radio in the iPhone 4? Of course! But they had the foresight to say, "It's better to have a phone that lasts for 2-days without having to be recharged than one that has faster download speeds."
That's a single example of a very "Apple'esque" decision, and the type of decision that makes most of the hardware they make, very good hardware.
There are valid reasons to criticize Apple, and be concerned about its future. But this article didn't touch on any of them.
Having a range of 3 iPhone's, each priced differently and with different specs is better. So the lowest spec, cheapest model is 2 years old, the mid range is one year old, and then the highest spec is the newest one. This is pretty similar to the way computers are sold. A new MacBook comes out, the old one is cheaper at retailers.
I very much doubt it, given that Apple seems to do all that it can to hide the specs of the iPhone to consumers. And rightly so, IMO- a 1.2GHz CPU vs a dual core 1GHz processor means absolutely nothing. The model numbers they have right now makes a lot more sense.
You see cameras, washing machines, microwaves, digital watches and even mobile phones[1] among other things with similar nomenclature. Sure it's more organized than just sequential numbering, but why does something like that sound too outlandish for the iPhone?
[1]: Nokia Lineup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nokia_products#1000.E2....
Fine, but I can't take the rest of the article seriously after that.