I think most of the changes we're seeing lately with Apple's approach to products have all to do with Cook's approach to the way the company operates. He's not a product guy like Steve was and his approach has all to do with economic efficiency. He wants to make Apple profitable as it never was. Of course this leads to loss of identity and if they start indeed releasing products within shorter periods of time, their product launches will stop being the phenomenon they used to be and will instead just be the release of another upgrade.
I don't feel the release of a new retina ipad today was a scam. I think the scam of this presentation was introducing the ipad mini as a new product, when it is basically a smaller ipad 2. This is clearly Apple wanting to go in direct competition with the Samapsung Note segment of devices.
Wether or not this is a clever strategy, only time will tell, but I do see the company falling into the same sort of product fragmentation it suffered from before Steve's return in the mid 90's. The ipad mini may be light and look pretty, but hardware wise it's rubbish for today's standards and even for Apple's own standards. The bigger sized iPhone, smaller sized ipad are all signs that Apple wants to compete head to head with the same segments of the android phones. Now, we all know how **** Android hardware generally is. Android is the PC of mobile devices, fragmented and without personality.
One of Apple's biggest weapons until now was the emotional connection its customers established with their products. Direct competition with the PC market was never Apple's top priority until now. The company always wanted to offer a solids state if the art alternative to PC. You paid premium and you got premium.
I feel all this going away lately. You pay premium for a product that comes with defects. my *used to be new* ipad is an example of that... I got it less than a month ago and the first one had 2 dead pixels and a stuff under the screen. this one has 1 dead pixel and light leaking in top. I might try to get it exchanged but I'm not going to rush into that because the point of the question isn't that there's a slightly better ipad out today. The point is that Apple is wanting to grow to a point which sacrifices its former premium service.
That may very well mark the beginning of a dark phase for the company. They may be the biggest company in the world, but so was Microsoft in the 90's and that didn't stop them from releasing trash after trash.
Even the release only now of the 13" rMBP is a freaking scam! I mean, when they released the 15" version the retina ipad was already out. So they could make a 15" model, a 10" tablet but couldn't make a 13" laptop? Of course they could! The decision to delay it was deliberate so they could make a couple extra bucks with the early adopters of the 15" model.
My 2 cents.
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