Different strokes. It’s much more to my tastes visually. I’ve always thought the 3D stuff and making buttons and whatnot look like their analog/real-life counterparts was stupid. There are a couple of things that weren’t as intuitive, like the swipe midway for search function. But it works for me. I would not ever go back to the old OS.
Then there’s the Headquarters Theory: when a company is rich enough to have a spiffy new headquarters building custom-built, it signifies that they’ve reached the top, become a mature company, and there’s nowhere to go but down.
As companies age, they accumulate a history of products and relationships to maintain, which becomes a larger and larger proportion of what they do. This leaves a smaller and smaller proportion of their resources to put towards innovation. Additionally, as a company (or any organization, really) becomes larger and larger, it must put a greater and greater proportion of its internal resources towards communication and coordination among its internal parts. And for publicly-held companies there are always the financial responsibilities towards shareholders.
The upshot of these three trends is that mature companies have a smaller and smaller proportion of their resources to put towards innovation, which is another way of saying that they tend towards conservatism and maintaining the status quo.
If the company is in a growing market, this isn’t necessarily a problem; the resources directed towards innovation can still be increasing on an absolute scale even as they are becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of expenditures. The old ways inherited from the times of being a small company with all sorts of room to expand into can still serve for a time.
In a stable market, one of unchanging size? The company needs to adapt to a steady-state existence. This can be difficult for people accustomed to growth.
But a mature company in a shrinking market? That’s a recipe for struggle.
I suspect that Apple is now a mature company. It has an enormous amount of resources; it’s certainly not going to die instantly. Maybe another personality can emerge to push it towards designs of new greatness. Maybe there are new markets to enter. Maybe there will be new halo products. But Apple is going to have to adapt and change. Again.
Well said, Sunspace.
Yeah, Apple never does that.
People have been saying this after the release of every Apple product.
Of course, every company will decline eventually. But I don’t think any of us have any way to know if now is Apple’s moment, or if they will soon have something new up their sleeves.
From the forgotten C. Northcote Parkinson; who enunciated ‘Parkinson’s Law’ — Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters.
Not that he could have imagined $9 billion.
Google and Samsung want to convince us that wearable internet is the next big thing. I wonder if we’ll all be sporting Apple broadband underwear in a couple of years.
When you consider that the US military built the Pentagon in World War II, there just might be something to that idea… 
It’s not quite that simple, though. Android phones share a lot of the same selling points, especially in the form of apps, so they’ve all sort of got stakes in each other.
You’re right, it’s not. But comparing a platform that encompasses dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different phones and a platform that is only available through a single phone isn’t right. But current estimates peg the battle at 70% Android, 29% iOS, and 9% “other.” And again, that Android is split across a ton of different devices representing multiple companies. Apple themselves, versus everybody else, is doing fine.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Globally Apple will be crushed by Android phones that can be manufactured cheaper due in no small part to a free OS. The 5C was an attempt to show that Apple could compete on price in the US market and now it appears that sales estimates for the 5C were grossly over estimated.
edit: However Apple is still a status symbol in places like China and if they can maintain their 40% margins, it doesn’t necessarily matter. You can sell 100 items at a $1 profit or one item at a $100 profit. The bottom line doesn’t really care.
Yep, that’s what I see happening as well.
In addition, people are already getting damned tired of buying a device in say… 2009 and finding out that Apple won’t back-port the spiffy new stuff to their older devices in say… 2012. I think people are getting a little tired of the constant churn that Apple wants to happen on their mobile and tablet devices.
Combine that with the walled garden approach, and you get an upgrade churn situation that blows away the PC hardware/software rat race in the 1990s and 2000s.
This is a bit off topic, but that’s why, if you know any system builders, you tend to find people that are loyal to AMD even though Intel tends to have technically superior chips. AMD makes a concerted effort maintain backward compatibility with motherboards when they release new CPUs and only introduce new motherboard socket specifications when it’s necessary. Until recently at least, Intel was much more cavalier in introducing m/b sockets and had an entire menagerie of them a few years ago.
Apple is significantly better at supporting old hardware than their competitors in mobile, and not far behind Microsoft on the desktop. Apple mobile devices have traditionally received software updates for at least two years. Most Android devices don’t even get updated to the very next release, and while it’s still too early to see what Microsoft’s future is, there have been numerous Windows phones in the same boat. No software updates at all. Yes, you can generally root an Android phone and install a custom ROM on it, which is awesome for the few people who want to do so, but given how few people do, I doubt the market is going to move one way or another based on that.
On the laptop/desktop side, Apple’s next OS will support computers made since 2007. That’s not quite as long as Windows tends to support old hardware, but it’s double the length of time you claimed.
I’m running Mountain Lion in a 2008 iMac. I’ve read that Mavericks, the next OS X, to be released in the very near future, also will run on it. If it’s like every other update, my iMac will run faster with it than any previous version.
This is what I was thinking as I had to reinstall iTunes on Windows last month because it couldn’t start up. As I try and search backups and load individual files into my iPad to restore a save game, using third-party programs. As I had to reset Photo Stream just today because it stopped syncing. As I shudder at the iOSification of OS X. But I look at Android. And I look at Windows 8. And I decide to stick with Apple for a bit longer.
I read an interesting article on the development of the first iPhone: And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’ - The New York Times Fascinating to see how rushed and unsure they were behind the scenes.
Of course. By 2021, the Apple iThong and iCod will be firmly entrenched in our technogenital landscape. Employees departing the Mammoth Cheeseburger Apple World Headqurters in Cupertino will walk past a handsome hologram of Steve Jobs reminding one and all to " Punch the clock and dock your cock. "
Apple without Jobs and Microsoft without Gates have been pretty meh.
My family sat around the table last weekend, 4 out of 6 had iDevices and various complaints and grievances about them. The complaints were mostly the latest iOS but my sis was talking about how her a while back her Notes app duplicated all her notes, then they were gone after that. My dad said his did the same thing.
Android isn’t perfect either, but Apple doesn’t “just work” any more, if it ever did.
Dear Leader thought he was so smart he could beat cancer on his own. Guess he bet wrong on that.