Apple should absolutely be investing big into future product categories, as they have done in the past.
However, with revenue and profit levels where they are, it's baffling to see them seem to devote less resources in an absolute sense (not just a proportional one) to existing money-makers. Mac laptops are big sellers. iPhones are big sellers. Yet the refreshes get more and more basic, and the software quality seems to be sliding downward. Could they really not fix this without sacrificing future investment? They did it in the past when they had less money to play with, after all...
They have invested in future product categories, the Apple Watch being the most recent - and not very successful - example.
I'm afraid what Apple is doing is purely looking at figures - if it doesn't sell at least X or account for Y% of revenue, it's discarded. AirPort, gone, displays, gone, 17 inch MBP, long gone.
AR is still a category without an elegant 'Apple' solution, to its detriment. As they did with smartphones when the technology was at a place to support such a game changing device I could see them defining/kickstarting the AR category when mobile processors can handle it.
However, with revenue and profit levels where they are, it's baffling to see them seem to devote less resources in an absolute sense (not just a proportional one) to existing money-makers. Mac laptops are big sellers. iPhones are big sellers. Yet the refreshes get more and more basic, and the software quality seems to be sliding downward. Could they really not fix this without sacrificing future investment? They did it in the past when they had less money to play with, after all...