
Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It’s Mainly a Landlord - rayvy
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-02/apple-s-business-is-about-services-more-than-new-iphones-now?srnd=premium
======
reacharavindh
May be people are disappointed with innovation in iPhones compared to previous
years' or for the last few years, but every time I use my AirPods, I can't but
feel good about the innovation it took to make it as easy to use and
comfortable.

* If I open the case near my phone, it automatically pairs and shoes battery levels.

* They sound decent for earbuds (not in-ear plugs which I hate)

* Lasts reasonable amount of time on its battery and quickly charges while in case.

I could not get this experience ever before and honestly, even after I have
had it for a year. I don't know of a better competition to it.

But, letting the Mac lineup vanquish with old internals for years and gouging
prices on soldered SSDs and memory - no excuse, that's just shitty.

~~~
chadash
I think their biggest innovation is making devices where everything just
works. Look no further than any two year old who has been exposed to an iPad
to see that their interfaces are super-intuitive. Plus, unlike most
manufactures, they control all the hardware _plus_ the software, so they can
make sure that the entire experience is seamless.

~~~
hyperbovine
I do agree with this. When I was younger I would happily blow a whole weekend
getting my window manager set just so or figuring out how to load load songs
onto my Diamond Rio from RedHat. Now I’m middle aged and I’m willing to pay
all sorts of $$ to have it just work in a sensible way. And work it does —
nothing in android or windows land even comes close. It’s surprising how many
comments I see here that are completely oblivious to this and insist on
trashing apple for being “not free”. The market has spoken. Almost no one
cares.

~~~
rorykoehler
I have both android and ios devices. Android is far superior for file
management. Ios is a joke in that regard. Folders weren't broken but somehow
ios managed to break them. Now if I want to save a random file on my ipad I
have to choose a directory related to some unrelated app!? Why can't I just
create a directory like I do on every other device I own?

~~~
hellisothers
why are you trying to “manage files”? More control comes at the expense of
ease of use (generally) it seems like, if you can’t give up one you won’t get
the other

~~~
rorykoehler
Because I need to reference files quickly on the go and can't risk not being
able to access them due to poor/no internet connectivity. I also want to be
able to save files that ios doesn't provide a way to save (eg download
YouTube) and have now found a third party app that lets me do that. Should be
a core part of ios. ITunes is shit.

------
Wavelets
What a silly article. How someone could look at Apple's chip developments (A,
T, S, W, etc. series of processors) and think they aren't innovative is mind-
boggling. Apple developing key silicon in their devices is a major security
benefit for their users and I consider that an innovative model.

The Apple ecosystem itself is innovative and I don't think there's a single
company that does it better.

They still lead in interfaces (biometrics...FaceID) and multi-touch gestures.

I don't use Siri, but I'm glad they are developing that technology in a way
that doesn't flat-out violate the privacy of their users. I just hope all the
criticism comparing Siri versus Google Assistant and Cortana don't push them
to change that posture.

It feels like Apple hate is becoming a meme. You can certainly criticize the
company... their product line is becoming confusing, but to say they "used" to
be an innovator is ignorant.

~~~
lewisinc
> It feels like Apple hate is becoming a meme.

Hasn't it always been, though? This probably comes off as conspiracy-
theoretic, but I feel like there's a real financial incentive to keep their
stock prices as in-flux as possible to allow for proper buy-in/cash-out gains.

~~~
wtallis
I can certainly believe that there are plenty of people that try to manipulate
the stock price, but most Apple haters aren't playing the stock market.

By far the most common cause of Apple hate I see is what appears to be
consumers who are essentially disgruntled that none of Apple's products are
targeted at their own use case: eg. gamers who always decried the Mac Pro
because they wanted a cheap traditional desktop, not a workstation; or people
who wish Apple was competing in the $500 laptop market, or the 8+lbs mobile
workstation or gaming laptop market. A large portion of complaints about Apple
hardware being overpriced can be traced back to misunderstandings about what
Apple's actually selling and how it differs from the Dell that somebody tries
to compare it to. (Of course, there are plenty of things that Apple _does_
over-charge for.)

Next most common are probably the people who despise the "walled garden".
They're quite vocal in these parts of the web, but I doubt they outnumber the
previous category of Apple detractors.

~~~
cm2187
Or people who don't like having to deal with dongles.

------
bloorp
Two months ago, Apple announced an ECG sensor for your wrist. A year before
that, they announced face detection for the purposes of identity with enough
accuracy that it can be used for financial transactions. Also, AirPods are
incredible. I'm not saying Apple has a monopoly on invention, but to say they
'used to be an inventor'? That's weird.

~~~
SomeHacker44
Personally, I find FaceID to be vastly inferior to TouchID for many of my
regular use cases.

Perhaps the worst one is that you cannot easily unlock your phone while it
lays on a conference room table to see the contents of a message. You need to
picking it up and point it at your face. Likewise when using the phone while
it is in a stand/holder.

The one and only benefit I found is during the winter, it is easier to unlock
the phone with gloves on.

Both of them are terrible for security.

~~~
Reason077
I find Face ID to be a vast improvement over Touch ID. It's much faster and
less fiddly to unlock the phone than with the old Touch ID. I love that you
can activate and unlock the phone just by looking at it. Apple Pay is much
faster. And I like that it's smart enough to not dim the screen when you're
looking at it, even if you haven't interacted with the device for a while.

~~~
threatofrain
I find that Face ID is only a mild win over Touch ID in situations where it's
better, such as when you're taking the phone out of your pocket in one motion,
or when the phone is propped upright and you get more details on a
notification.

But in situations where it fails I find that it fails harder and repeatedly,
which makes you want to choose a simple password (perhaps that's why Apple
tucks away the alphanumeric option). When a phone is laying flat on a desk,
you can lean your face over the phone. When your head is on a pillow, you can
lift your head off the pillow. When the lighting conditions aren't good, you
can just turn on the lights and position the phone at that "magic distance"
until it unlocks. But if you don't it'll just fail again and again.

As a minor point, I'm surprised that you prefer to double press while looking
at your phone, versus having a fingerprint reader on the back so you can
unlock your phone in one gesture of hand toward the payment system.

~~~
Reason077
_" When the lighting conditions aren't good"_

Huh? Face ID uses infrared. It doesn't need external light.

You're right about the pillow thing, but the way I see it, if you can't lift
your head off a pillow you probably shouldn't be using your phone!

------
ForrestN
It's embarrassing that this doesn't include a massive, bold-faced disclaimer
above the headline.

Bloomberg is in the midst of a credibility-destroying fight with Apple over a
sensational story that no other journalists can corroborate. Bloomberg has dug
in, staking their reputation on Apple being wrong.

Seemingly in response Bloomberg... publishes a hand-wavy piece of cultural
criticism about the meaning of Apple doing iterative design?

~~~
carlosrg
What is embarrassing is believing there's now a conspiracy against Apple
because Bloomberg got a scoop and decided to follow through.

Don't worry, Apple can survive some criticism.

~~~
albedoa
Your interpretation of the comment you are replying to is far from generous
and from what our standard should be.

~~~
hammock
Thanks albedoa for always being there to point out how others misinterpret
what different people are really saying.

~~~
albedoa
Nobody knows who you are.

------
raverbashing
Do you know what really worries me about Apple now?

So, when SJ came back to Apple, he reorganized their (then at the time)
computer lines into more streamlined ones. Something like (I might get some of
the names wrong), into consumer/pro and portable/desktop

iBook/Powerbook, iMac/Powermac

Now look at their line now

What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Why are
there 2 iPad Pros? Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad? Which one is which?

Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc

~~~
adpirz
A few quick thoughts:

>What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not?

Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an
S, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say their "S" naming scheme
has been consistent since it was introduced after the iPhone 4.

> Why are there 2 iPad Pros?

Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that
form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume
their must be demand for both sizes here as well.

> Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad?

Agree here, they've changed this particular convention a lot, but looks like
we're settling on Pro and base.

> Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc

Very much agree here. I really, really hope dongle hell will be a short lived
phenomenon and USB-C adoption in peripherals and the rest of the industry
picks up. Apple has been right about big bets like this before, so hopefully
here too, but right now, it is definitely a mess.

~~~
elsonrodriguez
> Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that
> form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I
> assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well.

Just a point of clarification on netbooks. Netbooks were a flop because they
were bulky, slow, hard to type on, had terrible screens, and came with
minuscule trackpads.

The air was none of those things, and was the progenitor of a new class of
laptop that would be known as "Ultrabooks".

~~~
sangnoir
Another example was when Steve said 7-inch tablets were "too small" and you'd
need to file-down your fingers to use them (not sure what you'd need to
operate 3.5-inch iPhones then). He said this while Apple had the 8-inch iPad
mini in development.

SJ was a salesman - he'd say untrue things to make his product look good, like
trash-talking 5.5-inch phones(!) and saying "no-one wants 'Hummer' phones"
while - you guessed it - Apple had larger phones in the pipeline, because the
demand was there.

~~~
eisa01
The iPad Mini has 4:3 screen ratio, so quite a bit larger and more useful
screen than the 7" 16:9 Android tablets

Same with the netbooks, weren't those often 9" 16:9 with terrible Atom CPU and
slow HD?

~~~
philwelch
It's kind of shitty and deceptive to measure screen size by the diagonal. You
could have literally a single row of pixels 15 inches wide; does that mean you
have a 15 inch display?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
How would you recommend we measure screen size? Length x Width I assume is the
obvious one, but that’s harder to compare. I suppose you could argue comparing
diagonals isn’t a good benchmark either, but it works well enough when screens
tend to have similar aspect ratios, as they mostly do.

~~~
philwelch
Square inches is also a single dimension.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Ooh, I _really_ like that one! Measuring area makes a lot more sense.

------
techsocial
I like this part:

Apple is milking its essentially captive audience. I hesitate to call it
“loyal” — these are, essentially, people who look with trepidation at the idea
of moving years of photos and other data to a different system.

My wife gnashed her teeth when she got one of the new, wildly overpriced
iPhones — but she just can’t imagine switching to Android.

~~~
yeswecould
The main Android dealbreaker for me is all the viruses, followed by OS
fragmentation and finally the fact there is no privacy protection ( i.e.
secure enclave )

~~~
jfim
Viruses: doesn't really apply if you just download non shady things from the
play store

OS fragmentation: doesn't apply if you're not a developer, just pick a phone
that will have a reasonable amount of updates over its lifetime

Privacy protection: really depends how you feel about Google on this one

Presence of a secure element: this one really depends on your threat profile

~~~
ar0
> OS fragmentation: doesn't apply if you're not a developer, just pick a phone
> that will have a reasonable amount of updates over its lifetime

Can you make a recommendation here? I am an iPhone user who might be inclined
to switch to Android, but I still haven't found a phone that would satisfy
this criterion. To clarify: "reasonable" for me means ~5 years, as this is how
long I expect to keep using the same phone.

~~~
MAGZine
iPhones already don't get full updates. They get progressively trimmed updates
as time goes on. Stock android does a similar thing. If you get a Pixel, you
get 2 years of OS updates (my Pixel from 2016 is running the latest Android),
at least 3 years of security updates, and many software updates in the
meantime (most of Android's functionality can be upgraded without an OS
update).

FWIW, phones aren't designed to last 5 years. The batteries aren't, the
screens aren't, the casing isn't, and the hardware generally doesn't (newer
software = more demanding).

That said, if you do require to use the same device for five years, and need
the latest software on it, than Apple is probably your only option.

~~~
colinjoy
> FWIW, phones aren't designed to last 5 years. The batteries aren't, the
> screens aren't, the casing isn't, and the hardware generally doesn't (newer
> software = more demanding).

FWIW I’m typing this on a 4 year old iPhone and I expect it to easily last
another year. Battery was replaced once. Modern smart phones are complex,
expensive, ressource intensive assemblies. Swapping them out every 2 years is
crazy (... and yet common, sadly)

------
matthewmacleod
I’m not really sure I buy the premise - Apple has never been much of an
inventor, instead being more of a “competent executor”. It’s true that Apple
is likely to continue to increase its service offerings, but I don’t think
that fundamentally changes the nature of the company. Since Apple has
historically focused on executing extant ideas well, it’s quite possible that
we won’t see any massive new markets until we know what the next “hot new
tech” will be. AR maybe?

~~~
zjaffee
I disagree, when apple released the iphone, they changed the face of what
smart phones would ultimately become. The touch experience they pioneered
really shouldn't be overlooked, and add that on to future technologies like
the ipad, where both were deeply immersive devices that people were able to
generate new and exiting feelings towards.

Since then, apple has migrated from being a brand focused on the shear love of
using technology to essentially any other luxury brand (I disagree with the
premise that they aren't still inventors in the engineering sense, but they
certainly aren't innovating in the way they had prior).

The closest thing we have today would be something like Alexa, where people
young and old can be deeply immersed with a new, and further humanizing, piece
of technology. Apple certainly had a head start with Siri, but they were never
able to keep up and clearly misunderstood what people are getting out of
digital assistants with their homepod since it's too much of a luxury sound
product rather than something more utilitarian.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_they changed the face of what smart phones would ultimately become_

I get that, but they didn’t “invent” the smartphone. They executed an existing
concept far better than anybody else had been able to up until then, and the
result of that was a complete industry change. It’s great, but they weren’t
there when the first smartphones appeared - they came along with a much better
implementation of the concept.

I think they’ll continue to do this in other markets as they develop.

~~~
dorian-graph
This really sounds like people are splitting at hairs doing gymnastics to give
Apple as little credit as possible.

What does 'invent' even mean to you, and the others, then?

If Apple didn't do what they did, where would we be?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its really easy to find out this stuff by googling it. There were smart phones
back in 1993. Apple's came out years later. That hair is half a decade wide?

~~~
dorian-graph
[http://time.com/3137005/first-smartphone-ibm-
simon/](http://time.com/3137005/first-smartphone-ibm-simon/)

[http://thedoghousediaries.com/3345](http://thedoghousediaries.com/3345) ;)

------
philwelch
Steve Jobs was, among many other things, both good and bad, an irreplaceable
human being. The Apple that created the Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone
isn't coming back.

That having been said, of the two post-Steve Jobs Apples that we've seen, this
one is still pretty damn decent. They aren't killing the entire company by
throwing all their software engineering resources at a Second System Effect
technical quagmire like Copland, they aren't selling laptops that
spontaneously burst into flames like the PowerBook 5300, and they aren't
investing in solutions in search of a problem like OpenDoc. They also aren't
selling dozens of indistinguishable products that are only distinguishable by
arbitrary four-digit product numbers.

~~~
ken
> killing the entire company by throwing all their software engineering
> resources at a Second System Effect technical quagmire like Copland

They bought themselves out of this, of course, by buying NeXT (managed by SJ).
But NeXTstep itself could have easily fallen prey to the second system effect.
Was it luck or skill that saved it?

Back in 2000, SJ said that Mac OS X would set up Apple "for the next 20
years". It's 18 years later. What's next? I'm an avid Mac user but these days
it pretty much just looks like a good implementation of a 1980's Unix
workstation. The ways I wish it were improved are not easy to add to the
current architecture. When Apple decides that it has run its course, who's
going to lead the team to make its successor? There isn't another SJ startup
to buy.

Then again, I don't see Microsoft or the various Linux-based groups or even
DARPA taking the lead on next-generation operating system design, either. I
don't think it's fair to single out Apple. The whole industry has put all its
eggs in the basket of "basically a Unix workstation". That was a great design
for its day but I wouldn't use it if I were starting from scratch today. Are
we going to just keep adding new syscalls and userspace layers for every new
idea we have? Is this the endgame for computer science?

~~~
krrrh
The GUI and WIMP interfaces were born out of experiments by a small team doing
independent research, and future interface innovation is just as likely to
come from places like that. Even Apple's multi-touch gestures were largely
already thought out by the small company Fingerworks before they acquired
them. Though I also don't doubt that there is interesting stuff happening in
secret rooms at Apple that we aren't privy to.

I'd still look at projects like Dynamicland [1], or to scifi: the form factor
for the iPad appeared in _ST:TNG_ 20 years before it did on shelves[2], many
AR researchers reference Vernor Vinge's _Rainbow 's End_.

[1] [http://dynamicland.org/](http://dynamicland.org/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVqHoGKQXLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVqHoGKQXLI)

------
mjfl
Apple used to be a slave to the gods of productivity. Now it's living its best
life using the 4 hour work week strategy!

~~~
themodelplumber
Just riffing on that metaphor, which is true in a lot of ways, Apple could
really, _really_ benefit the world by publishing "Apple standards for
business" or something similar, a reference point for other corporations who
will frankly never be Apple, but could at least kick things up a notch in
terms of overall professionalism and impact.

A few very successful corporations have come to the point where they are
practically worshiped and almost universally admired, but we are not getting
all the cultural benefit from them that we can. That needs to be part of the
deal--we give you our markets and cultural attention, you return to us your
cultural technology in a more concrete form, at the very least by publishing
standards that can be applied to other human organizations. This will help us
accelerate human cultural evolution and we'll all benefit.

------
gmiller123456
I wish I could say Android was different. Yea, Google and Samsung et. al. do
make a lot of other products, so their entire business model isn't the same as
Apple. But in the phone market, customers don't have all that much choice
regardless of who they pick. I'm an Apple hater myself, but I fear the day
Apple finally goes away.

------
ChuckMcM
My particular pain point here is Apple music. I've got gigabytes of music that
I've curated over the years, and had on iPods, then on my iPad. But Music has
gone from a library first approach to a store first approach, it is getting
pretty difficult to keep a set of tunes physically on your device. That makes
me sad.

------
Tycho
Pretty amusing to read this on _Bloomberg_ of all places. Practically the
definition of innovator turned rent-seeker. One of the most entrenched
incumbents in technology.

------
acomjean
I thought this was interesting. Although its charging for services, it fits in
apples slightly more privacy focused business model.

"Rent extraction from a user base that finds it hard to go away may sound a
bit like extortion. But it’s more honest and upfront than extracting data from
users in ways they often don’t understand and then making money off the data,
as Facebook does. That honesty is in itself a competitive advantage for Apple
as it gradually reimagines itself as more of a services company."

------
askafriend
I think people in the mainstream media and even most people period just don't
understand innovation cycles. They expect novelty every year, but they don't
realize that revolutions are created by consistently great evolution over a
long period of time.

We're nearing the top of the S curve with regards to the smartphone business.
Upgrade cycles are getting longer. Phones are getting as powerful as laptops
and people are finding them good enough for most things, for longer periods of
time.

You can't expect the same level of novelty and change every single year. This
headline also under-appreciates just how much the world has changed in the
past 10 years because of the smartphone. Everything is wildly different and
even as I type this, it's really hard to have perspective about just how
significant the changes have been especially since we experience them
incrementally. 10 years isn't even that long of a time period.

It's all about the ecosystem and services now. Companies are investing deeply
into integrated bundles of services and ecosystem add-ons (HomePod, Watch,
Apple Music, iCloud etc) with the smartphone sitting at the center tying
everything together.

Each piece might not be the iPhone in terms of size, but that's unrealistic.
The iPhone is probably one of the greatest single business lines of all time.
That type of step function product doesn't come along every year let alone
every decade.

It's not about any single product anymore. It's about integrating technology
deep into your life with the smartphone at the center (or in Amazon's case,
Alexa since they missed the Smartphone era).

Ecosystems are inventions in their own. How they grow matter. What values they
espouse matter. Focusing on the individual parts instead of how the pieces tie
together to make a powerful whole is missing the forest for the trees.

Apple also isn't the same company they were in 2007. Just look at the iPhone
install base growth: [https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/Screens...](https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/Screenshot_3-4.png)

That's just iPhone. If you count all iOS devices (iPad, iPod Touch, etc),
they're _well over_ a billion users globally. They serve more customers, in
more countries, with more preferences than ever before in the company's
history. If you're expecting the company to move the same way they did when
they were barely international and had a tiny fraction of the operations and
customers they have today, then that's also unrealistic.

Look at complex multinational products like Apple Pay and how difficult it is
for _anyone_ to deliver a service like that seamlessly in every country in the
world (even Apple hasn't launched it everywhere). Services like that require
multi-year planning, complex dealmaking, geopolitical factors, operational
risk, complex financial operations, etc. Things like Apple Pay are severely
under-appreciated because it doesn't make for a good headline and it doesn't
make for a fun product review on The Verge or YouTube.

If Apple can make iPhone your only wallet and convince banking partners and
retailer around the world to accept Apple Pay AND do it in a way that respects
the privacy of every transaction. THAT is innovation. THAT is magical. But
that is also hard to appreciate and it will happen incrementally over the
years. We'll take it for granted, move on, and demand more.

As Bezos said in his previous shareholder letter: "Customers are divinely
discontent"

~~~
hinkley
I think we may soon be entering a post smart phone era but the replacements
just aren’t ready yet.

I had hopes that the Apple Watch 4 would be the iPhone 3g moment, but it’s not
enough faster, smaller, or long running to make that logical leap.

For instance, if I could make calls from my watch and have an iPad mini 5
without also carrying a phone around with me, I might be tempted by that. But
neither the hardware nor wireless plans are there for that. Yet.

~~~
empath75
The apple watch 3 was probably the 3g moment. It's the best selling watch in
the world. They're probably mostly limited by the requirement of owning an
iphone.

------
adamrezich
You could say the same or similar things about other companies with similar
business models today who rose to prominence because of repeated innovation
yet have since become seemingly stagnant: Google, Valve, ...

~~~
hunta2097
I wouldn't say Google is stagnant... Apple users can thank them for forcing
Apple to make their phone OS better (and vice-versa with regard to hardware).

Google's problem isn't innovation, it's supporting and following-through on
their innovations past the honeymoon period.

~~~
adamrezich
They keep making new messaging apps that compete with each other instead of
providing users with one great messaging app. Gmail's getting objectively
crappier and they're killing off the much better Inbox interface. I'm not
saying they make unilaterally bad decisions and I'm decently happy with my
cheap Android phone but ten years ago Google was making new and exciting stuff
and I haven't felt that way about them in years.

~~~
matwood
Google is also milking their moat. Look at the 10x price increase for using
map APIs in the middle of this year.

------
Nokinside
This partially explains why Berkshire Hathaway is now largest stock holder in
Apple. They prefer companies with 'moat'. Ability to innovate is
unpredictable.

~~~
lisper
Of course they do. Moats are great for investors. Not so great for consumers.

~~~
toasterlovin
Depends on the company. Moats extract additional value from customers. I think
Google, Apple, and Amazon are all examples of companies that use that extra
value to invest in innovation (benefitting customers in the end). Comcast is a
great example of a company that doesn’t.

------
redwyvern
I've learned that some of Bloomberg's journalism is bullshit, and this article
helps me stand by my opinion.

FaceID? ECG monitor? AirPods and the general continuity between Apple
products? Seems like Bloomberg is just an attention whore. I can see an
argument for the Apple customer market becoming saturated, but Apple has not
lost its inventiveness.

The idea of becoming a landlord who is unable to bring in new people with
exciting technology is only true if you consider

------
Confusion
Meanwhile geeks are marvelling at the speed improvements of their latest SoC's
over the previous generation and over their competitors.

~~~
based2
[https://liliputing.com/2018/11/qualcomm-
snapdragon-8150-appl...](https://liliputing.com/2018/11/qualcomm-
snapdragon-8150-apple-a12x-bionic-benchmarks-leaked.html)

~~~
Skunkleton
Tinfoil hat theory: Is apple holding back their x86 offerings so that their
in-house arm processors can catch up performance wise? Perhaps in preparation
for an all-arm line up?

------
georgeecollins
This is completely unfair! It is not that the pace of innovation at Apple has
slowed down, it is that the success of their innovative products is dwarfed by
their legacy business. The Apple watch would be a game changer in terms of
revenue for Apple circa 2003 (when it was presumably innovative). It is still
an excellent and innovative product, like AirPods.

------
aibrahem
Apple always seemed to have had four things going for them; Product
Innovation, Developing extremely high-quality HW and SW with attention to both
details and user experience, a world-class supply chain and finally a
technological edge.

I would argue that under Steve Jobs both the supply chain and the
technological edge had some focus but there wasn't a huge gap with the
competition, This could be either because it required time to achieve this gap
and Steve simply wasn't at the helm for that long or it wasn't his main focus
and is currently the focus of Tim Cook considering his background, either way,
I think Apple is currently and going to continue to blow everyone out of the
water with technologies like their SOC's and will continue having the most
efficient supply chain and manufacturing capacity in the world churning out
products that beat the industry margins by a mile.

Regarding the quality, design and user experience it mostly stagnated, don't
get me wrong they're still way higher than the industry average and I can see
Johnny Ives touch in most of their products, but I don’t see the kind of
passion that went into designing the interface of a device like the iPhone
with ideas like pinch to zoom and the spring effect. Apple seems to have a
design team that is world class but uninspired and just doing their job.

Now the most important point and this is what I honestly believe is the
problem with Apple is the Product Innovation, this appears to have completely
stopped after Steve, I try not to believe that Steve Jobs was THE product
manager at Apple and avoid the cult of personality, but it's very hard to
shake this idea when during his tenure they've released multiple industry-
changing products, and they've failed to release a single one after he left.

I think Apple is going to continue to release high-quality, well designed,
cutting edge and high margin products, but I highly doubt with the current
leadership they'll be able to release a single new product that changes the
status quo like Steve used to.

------
coldtea
Yeah, the kind of landlord that designs its own CPUs, GPUs and co-processors,
has its own language (Swift), solves several difficult engineering problems
with every new product, and so on.

Meanwhile, since I was watching Apple in 2000-2007, when they "used to be an
inventor", they used to put out barely incremental updated for the iPod, the
OS, and Mac laptops every year.

People would circulate rumors for months, and then cheer, for tiny
generational spec updates on iPods. Now we get 10x the technological change we
got every year of that era between iPhone models, and people are blaze about
it.

Also, Google aside (and them only on the software assistant side) who solves
any interesting consumer problems in the space Apple works?

------
mothsonasloth
Its sad state of affairs that companies are tying and locking down their
hardware to specific software:

You cant modify the new Xboxes or Playstations.

Some Android phones are dependant on the manufacturers customised version of
the AOSP.

On Macs it is not easy to install another operating system, like you can do
with a PC (although I have managed to get Ubuntu 18.10 running on my Macbook
Pro 13,1)

Consumers are going to be really challenged at some point and think, "hey, I
have very little control over this thing I bought. Am I ok with this or am I
going to start hacking?"

We could see another renaissance like you had in the early 80s with hackers
sharing and porting software onto the weird and wonderful computers they were
building back then.... who knows?

~~~
max76
Sorry, I think consumers are perfectly fine with severe limitations of control
over their hardware. The percentage of hacked consumer electronics is slim.

------
amelius
Why don't we all steer towards the IBM PC clone model, but for smartphones?
Why do we have free/open Linux on PCs and not on phones?

By the way, ironically, with its single user OS, an iPhone is more a "Personal
Computer" than most PCs.

~~~
philwelch
> Why don't we all steer towards the IBM PC clone model, but for smartphones?

Isn't that Android?

~~~
scarface74
What makes Android, Android to everyone outside of China is the proprietary
Google Play Services and all of Google’s first party apps.

~~~
philwelch
And what made an IBM-compatible an IBM-compatible was the proprietary
Microsoft DOS and Windows operating systems.

~~~
scarface74
And neither were ever considered “open” unlike the legendary tweet of by
Rubin...

[https://twitter.com/arubin/status/27808662429?s=21](https://twitter.com/arubin/status/27808662429?s=21)

------
CM30
Sounds like a good description of Valve after Steam too. Used to focus on
products and invent new series, now mostly cashes in on services and
microtransactions relating to its older works.

Wonder if this is a trend, especially for larger companies.

------
Nokinside
This is partly the reason why Berkshire Hathaway is now the largest owner of
Apple stock. They believe that Apple has a 'moat' they can use to defend their
position. It think they are correct.

What can always happen is that they fail to see change coming and drop the
ball like Nokia did. They had incredible moat in multiple areas:
manufacturing, supply chain, technology and scale. They were able to produce
high quality phones with the same cost as cheap brands and pocketed the
difference in profits but they didn't see the revolution coming.

The future of Apple's growth is pivot to services and rent from platform.

------
kerng
Apples product line is not understandable anymore, it used to be simple but
now there are too many dubious options and weird branding.

Even Microsoft's Surface line (which is a similar mess) is easier to
comprehend now.

~~~
dymk
Complexity in the names of devices has nothing to do with those devices being
innovative, or Apple being inventive.

And from sales numbers, clearly the naming of the new iPhone lineup hasn't
deterred people from looking at apple.com and figuring out what device suits
their needs.

------
ProfessorLayton
The most unfortunate part for me is that Apple's service apps like Apple Music
are pretty awful to use. Their stock Music app on iOS takes far too many taps
to do anything, is buggy, and overall not a great experience.

The same is true on my MacBook, the only way for me to use Apple Music is
through iTunes, a complete dumpster fire of an app on OSX. Apple Music is an
otherwise fantastic service, but it is hobbled by terrible UX.

~~~
krrrh
It had a difficult version 1, but having been a subscriber to Rdio, Deezer,
Spotify, and Apple Music. While they all have areas where they could improve,
I prefer Apple Music to all of them from a UX perspective (especially in how
it handles music that you upload to your library). I think a lot of it comes
down to different UX being more or less appropriate to the way a person
consumes and conceptualizes music.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
Difficult V1 is a generous way to put it, it was a mess, and I agree Apple
Music has since improved on iOS. I came in from Spotify and moved to AM family
plan, and while I found Spotify a little better in terms of UX, I wanted
better integration into my device ecosystem.

I understand that not all apps can be perfect for everyone, but I find the
latest iOS app overall very regressed from the previous ones. For example,
from a fresh start (as it often happens due to iOS nuking apps in the
background) _none_ of the tabs are cached whatsoever, so I have to wait for
them to load every single time. Music.app has a completely different feel than
other iOS system apps I use frequently, like Photos for example: All tabs are
loaded upon start, and importantly, it remembers _which_ tab I was last in,
even from a cold start. I discover a lot of new music via the Radio tab, and I
almost always find myself waiting for it to load. Often times when dealing
with a bluetooth disconnect I have to go into system bluetooth settings to
reconnect because for whatever reason, they won't be in the audio output menu
in the Music app.

This may seem like a rant, but I use their music service hours every day on my
way to and from work, and while working. It's the little details that made me
like Apple's ecosystem in the first place, and that seems to be missing
lately.

I'm not even talking about the mess that is iTunes.

------
baxtr
What's the point here?

\- There were mp3 files and player long before the first iPod

\- Before the iPhone there were other smartphones

\- Before the iPad there were other tablets

\- Don't get me started on the Watch...

Apple was _never_ an Inventor. Everything they've ever created was built
around a technology or even products that existed before. Apple "just" gets
the user experience right and and builds products that most people find
accessible, easy to use, and reliable.

~~~
paulcole
I'll give you the watch but the iPod isn't an mp3 player, the iPhone isn't a
smartphone, and the iPad isn't a tablet.

The iPod is THE mp3 player, the iPhone is THE smartphone, and to a lesser
extent the iPad is THE tablet.

No, Apple didn't invent the concepts but they created the definitive product
using those concepts.

~~~
natch
Multi-touch input was an Apple invention, and it enabled the iPhone and the
iPad.

~~~
paulcole
I think you'll find this isn't true. Invented in the 70s and in-use as early
as 1985. But just like everything else, Apple _was_ the game-changing
commercial implementation of it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
touch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch)

~~~
natch
Yes multi-touch used in the context of a smartphone, I should have said.

------
talltimtom
People keep complaining that Apple isn’t bringing the next iPod, iPhone, iPad,
Apple Watch level innovation, but honestly no one is pushing them so why
should they? As far as moving markets they’ve done enough to coast a bit.
Noone is complaining that companies like Ford and Toyota are “just making new
cars instead og innovativt”

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Poor examples - Ford reinvented itself recently, dropped sedans entirely from
its product line, doubled down on trucks. Toyota brought its hybrid power
train to Camry and Lexus product lines. They're innovating all the time.

~~~
talltimtom
Innovating by making new cars. Just like Apple is innovating by making new
iPhones new laptops and new iPads. Have you seen the new iPad Pro? It’s a
beast that almost deserves a new catagory all for itself. Yet people say Apple
has stopped innovating because it’s “just another iPad” which is my point
exactly.

------
mikestew
Yeah, that's a click-baity headline; but they're not wrong. There's a shift
from the "line up at dawn for the new Apple Dingus" to an arguably more stable
"tic-toc" upgrade cycle, with hopefully some Apple Music and iCloud
subscriptions thrown in. That's where I'm at right now. Both of us are still
on iPhone 6s. I have an iPad from last year that I expect to last a few more.
Hers is the generation prior, and will get replaced when iOS no longer
supports it (or I upgrade). Newest Mac is from 2012. Now, part of it is "good
enough". The new phones aren't so outstanding as to warrant an upgrade, the 6s
does the jobs we need just fine. Part of it is "there's nothing to buy"; see:
laptops. But Apple still gets money for Apple Music, iCloud, and whatever we
get off iTunes.

But as for the click-bait headline, we both just bought our first Apple
Watches, the Series 4. Strap one of those puppies on your wrist for a day and
talk to me about "used to be an inventor". (Side note: AAPL might not have
sold us phones for a while, but they _did_ "invent" a watch that we'd buy.
They still got our hardware money.)

~~~
rashkov
If it's not too off topic, what is it about the watch that you like so much?
I've still got my iPhone 6 and was nodding my head in agreement until you got
to the watch part, so just curious, what makes it a compelling product for
you?

~~~
mikestew
Background: Pebble user since the original Kickstarter, had several of those.
I've been using Garmin products for ages for running and cycling. Briefly
flirted with the original Samsung Gear band (what a POS _that_ was). Went to a
Garmin Fenix 3 HR when they got iOS notifications, thus combining high-quality
fitness watch with sorta-smartwatch. In short, I'm sold on smartwatches, and
do endurance sports.

Objectives: notifications so the phone can stay in bag/pocket. The more "phone
stays in pocket" features, the better. Must function as a standalone fitness
device (IOW, must have GPS; syncing later is an expected compromise).

Series 4 is finally the perfect storm to get me to buy one. The first ones had
no GPS or water resistance. I'm not paying that much if I still have to keep a
Garmin around. Series 3 added LTE. Ah, now I can go for a long run in the
woods and leave my phone at home. But I'd laid out big bucks for a Fenix 3,
and meh, nothing about the 3 really grabbed me, and by then I was used to
ignoring the Apple Watch. But with the 4, it looks like Apple decided to make
the fitness aspects stop sucking. IOW, maybe I could use this as a running
watch, too. As a person who has Wolfe-Parkinson (heart condition fixed with
ablation), the ECG piqued my interest. Now, doc said I'm fixed, so ECG
_shouldn 't_ be an important feature. But it got me thinking, which led to
talking to the wife, which led to "well, why don't you just buy one, then?".

"Well, maybe I just will."

"Buy me one, too. Silver aluminum with nylon band."

"Yes, dear."

We've not had them but a week, but I'm more impressed than I expected to be.
(I mean, I'm _really_ impressed, but I don't want to drip fanboi on anyone, so
I'll tone it down.) The stock workout app would do just fine for most folks.
If you're not most folks, WorkOutdoors has been impressive the few times I've
used it, and there's RunKeeper and the like. We used the LTE functionality
first day we ran with them to co-ordinate (we run separately, with dogs). The
screen, OMG, it's head-and-shoulders better than my Fenix. Raise-to-wake is
reliably better than the Garmin (you'll need raise-to-turn-on-backlight for
the Garmin in anything but outdoor sunlight or a bright room). It's gettin'
dark here in the PNW, and for my old eyes the Apple OLED is easier to read on
a dark run than the Garmin backlight reflective.

As far as the "smartwatch" part, I'll just summarize and say that IMO it's the
best smartwatch going right now. YMMV, or maybe that's not even all that
important. Of the functionality the Garmin replicates, the Apple version is
just much more refined. As one example, if there's a notification on the
Garmin, better hurry and look before it goes away. Apple waits until you raise
your wrist to look at it before the timer starts.

The Garmin will stick around in the rotation. Even as a close-to-three-hours
marathon runner, I wouldn't trust the Apple battery to go the distance, let
alone anything longer. If I'm knocking around on wooded trails, the Garmin
will probably take a hit better than the exposed glass on an Apple. IOW,
serious outdoor work. But I'm not as adventurous as I used to be, so for
everyday-carry I'm really enjoying Apple's offering.

------
dano
This morning I watched two non-technical Apple users be amazed by something
automatic - WiFi credential sharing.

User 1 wanted to connect her MacBook Pro to the Wifi. User 2 picked up her
phone and was prompted to share her WiFi credentials with the MacBook - it was
almost like magic and it worked.

------
camdenlock
How utterly embarrassing for Bloomberg. My respect for them has plummeted
recently.

------
GiorgioG
My issue with Apple is they continue to hold product launch events as if
they've invented a new class of product(s), when they are incremental changes
at best (with the exception of the ECG on the Apple Watch.) With the resources
Apple has, they should be taking more risks. Tim has basically turned Apple
into a boring incremental product company...like a traditional car company.
New model year, this model is the best we've ever made...sure, fine but don't
pretend that you've created something groundbreaking at every launch event.

------
ilovecaching
Eh... I mean Google's entire business model is to essentially rent you out
services in exchange for your personal information.

Also, I contend that Apple's "invention" has been to repackage computing in a
premium package. Smart phones, music players, tablets all existed before Steve
flashed them on stage, he just made you want to use them by making them sexy
and cool, which wasn't that hard, because the early days of computing is about
as unsexy as it gets.

~~~
rhacker
I don't think something like the iphone specifically existed before its debut,
but I could be wrong.

~~~
jshevek
Which characteristics do you consider distinctive? I think of capacitive touch
with no keyboard, but such phones did exist. Costs for those kinds of screens
had been coming down before the iphone launched. It was obvious we'd see more
capacitive screen phones before the iphone launch, though Apple certainly
accelerated it.

~~~
timcederman
Gesture UI (the audience literally gasped when Steve scrolled through a long
list by flinging it, and applauded pinch-to-zoom), and actually using best of
class components (except the camera).

All the other smartphones then were laggy/poor screen/plastic shells/etc.
Their UIs stunk. It was a huge step up with a bunch of key incremental
innovations in a single package.

~~~
natch
Exactly. And he said Apple was five years ahead of everyone else, and I think
he was right, or it may have even been an understatement, because trying out
competing phones years afterward, they were still more clunky than any iPhone.

------
xiphias2
I look at Tesla as the next Apple. There's not much room for fast innovation
in the smart phone space, but cars are outdated, and self driving / electric
cars with better robotic manufacturing methods give an opportunity for new
entrants to appear. It's too late for Apple though at this point to
manufacture the full hardware (and also behind Waymo in self driving
software).

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Self driving cars are a way to fleece investors for 5 or 10 more years until
everyone realizes it just isn't happening.

------
Jerry2
Is this article the payback for Cook asking the Bloomberg to retract that
Supermicro story?

~~~
natch
Maybe, but weak-ass payback since it's so obviously dead wrong.

------
jiveturkey
Admittedly I'm not even going to read the article to see if the headline is
just clickbait. The premise is absurd. Apple still sets the bar for
innovation. The fact that it is also incredibly good at monetizing its efforts
does not take away from that fact.

~~~
jimbokun
You should read it, it's more about how everyone has a phone already, and
there are fewer must have improvements to drive new sales, so revenue growth
is coming mostly from services instead.

------
robbiet480
Just like McDonalds...
[http://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-
beyo...](http://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-beyond-the-
burger/)

~~~
mywittyname
The article didn't mean landlord in the older, literal sense of making money
off of leasing land, but in the more modern, figurative sense of taking a cut
of products and services provided through their platforms.

------
pl0x
Apple has botched the Mac lineup and is becoming anti-consumer. I've been a
Mac users since the 80's and this is a very different Apple today.

------
berbec
This draws parallels to Valve, for me.

------
ronreiter
Same narrative since Jobs died. And yet, their stock keeps skyrocketing.

------
nil_pointer
Steve Jobs was Apple's inventor. They've been trying to emulate him since his
passing, which is showing obviously to not be the same thing.

------
eruci
Apple died with Steve Jobs. No new products just same shit with double and
triple price. Shrinking customer base due to overpricing is the death of any
company and utter betrayal of Jobs vision.

------
Bjorkbat
From the comments I see a lot of people are confused by the headline. Apple
still invents, but only for the sake of improving existing products, and not
really in a way that makes you imagine what you can do, thus it's not the type
of invention that matters.

There, I said it.

I made the mistake of buying a Macbook with a touch bar because I thought it
was kind of cool when I finally got to see it in person. The novelty that came
from this cheap gimmick wore off in a matter of minutes, even though the
technical obstacles that had to be overcome must've been great.

The face-tracking cameras in the latest iPhones and iPads? Impressive on their
own, but Apple has failed to do anything really fascinating with them besides
using them to unlock your device or to puppet an emoji.

Apple invents only for the sake of creating additional cheap gimmicks without
creating genuinely exciting products. As I fumble with the awful keyboard on
my Macbook I question just how capable they are of even creating quality
products.

------
solidrake
What has Apple invented? As far as I'm aware, they have patents of re-
purposing other inventions, or design patents. But cannot think of anything
they "invented" that didn't already exist before.

~~~
bsimpson
They were the first to mass market capacitive touch/multitouch. I believe they
acquired many of the underlying technologies, but so far as I know, they were
the first to ship a multitouch user interface with a capacitive touchscreen.

~~~
briandear
Multitouch was an Apple invention.
[http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1036701/US7479949.pdf](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1036701/US7479949.pdf)

