Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Apple Days Of Innovation Are Over? History Doesn't Seem To Agree.

This is a note I posted on a local newspaper website that I wanted to share: 

START COMMENT

I'm hardly an Apply "fanboy" in that I proclaim Apple to be untouchable. I do have a Mac Computer, iPad and iPhone but don't hate it if people want to use other stuff. Heck, I use Windows and Blackberry for work! 

I am a bit of an Apple historian though. I grew up using an Apple IIe (1980's baby!) and quite familiar with Apple's history before and after the Apple IIe. Apple's history has always been "to innovate" with some product and then build on it incrementally.

The Apple I was nice but it was the Apple II that really took off. While Apple added some things over time: Upper / Lower Case keyboard, Disk Drives, More Memory, etc, the basic Apple II features hardly changed for the better part of a decade. The Apple II graphics and sound capabilities that existed in 1977 were the same capabilities that went through the Apple II+, IIe and IIc. It wasn't until the Apple IIGS was introduced in 1986 that there were significant upgrades to features.

The original Macintosh was like that as well: Mac 128, Mac 512, Mac SE. There were a couple of desktop Mac's, then the Performa line.

It wasn't until Jobs introduced the colorful iMac's that the computers got a huge makeover. The MacBook Air was well received but these days are just getting some makeovers.

These days, Apple is just doing the same thing everything. The iPods, iPhones, iPads and computers are in the "let's update incrementally mode". At the end of the day, nothing wrong with that.

Is Apple's days of innovation over? We won't know for a while but let's not discount them. Apple has a history of innovation (most of it with Jobs). However, I have faith that someone will step into the role in time.


END COMMENT

I'll add that people are expecting way too much for any company to continue innovating.  Maybe I'm from an older generation but at the end of the day, I just need an iPhone to make calls.  The rest are just perks.  That's why I still have an iPhone 4.  If I do need the newer model then I will move to a newer model.