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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

Not only that, but the press seems to have a very myopic view on "innovation." It doesn't happen overnight. It was 6 years between the iPod and the iPhone, another 3 before the iPad, and they're still arguably refining both. If Apple still hasn't released something interesting in another 3 years, maybe (maybe) then it'll be worth agonising over.

And I couldn't agree more about the Mac Pro by the way.

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It doesn't happen overnight.

Maybe not, but that's how Steve Jobs made it seem. When he was creating the iPod, nobody was looking (except hard core apple geeks) and the bar was low. After the iPod became a huge hit, it still seemed like every year Jobs was introducing some breakthough feature. He was very good at manipulating public perception. Cook isn't as good at it, he started with the bar ridiculously high and everybody is looking now.

I completely agree with everything you and the parent said about innovation and the Mac Pro. But this is a perception issue, through and through, and something Cook is going to have to deal with if he's going to be successful as Jobs's successor.

Except every year there for quite awhile, there were innovations on the iPhone and iPad. There haven't been, for two years running.

Really? Let's look at diffs.

iPhone -> iPhone 3G: Addition of 3G, GPS. enclosure became plastic.

iPhone 3G -> iPhone 3GS: Video camera

iPhone 3G -> iPhone 4: Retina, significantly improved camera, new enclosure, addition of front facing camera

iPhone 4 -> iPhone 4S: Siri, better camera

iPhone 4S -> iPhone 5: New screen form factor, significantly improved enclosure, lightning connector, LTE

iPad -> iPad 2: thinner and lighter, cameras

iPad 2 -> iPad 3: LTE, Retina

iPad 3 -> iPad 4: lightning connector

I don't see any significant decline in diff quality over time.

edited for correctness

4S doesn't have LTE, and Siri is very debatable as requiring the new hardware, so that one was a pretty weak update.

As it is, 4S was developed under Jobs.

No, it really wasn't. Did he have some idea the 4S was the direction it would take? Sure. But for God's sake, that phone was released a week and a half after he died. He hadn't been at work very much for a year before that.

not to mention, each product iteration is much faster than the previous

The 5's screen form factor hasn't been taken advantage of at all, the new enclosure, while nice, you literally cannot call innovative, LTE isn't innovative, it would've been 4 years ago but last year it was old news. And the lightning connector isn't innovative in a world where it's getting clocked hard by USB 3.0, which was a done-deal standard by the time Lightning was announced.

The 4S, while having a better camera, it wasn't a huge jump, and Siri was software they removed(which had more features) from the 4's app store.

The 4 was the last truly innovative iPhone- no one was talking screen density, and they nailed it. The new camera was a gigantic step up, the front facing camera was as well.

Also, you missed with the iPhone->3G that the App Store came into existence.

As to the iPad, the iPad 2 was commonly referred to the moment it came out as "The iPad that Apple meant to release." because of all of the small, but numerous, improvements. Adding Retina to the 3 is arguably a similar jump, though admittedly I don't have a lot of room to really know, as I don't own one.

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